When the news alert hit, jaws dropped and whispers befell the one room of Democrats that might see a silver lining to Matt Gaetz’s nomination for attorney general.
Pennsylvania Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon was talking about the future of corporate power to a stoic Senate boardroom of progressives discussing corporate power when Trump announced that the hard-right Republican was his pick to lead the Department of Justice.
“This could be great for antitrust,” the stunned anti-monopoly advocate Matt Stoller told NOTUS at the event.
Gaetz is a self-proclaimed Khanservative — a group of populist conservatives who supported the Biden administration’s aggressive antitrust regulator in the Federal Trade Commission, Lina Khan.
Despite the avalanche of things progressives disagree with Gaetz on — including how he might manage the rest of the department — the nomination blew oxygen on the tiny pilot light of hope progressives are grasping onto that some in the Trump administration will stand up to billionaires and corporate influence.
Journalist Ryan Grim posted on X after the announcement, “Matt Gaetz is good on a lot of stuff,” subsequently flagging a post from Gaetz supporting Khan’s work.
Not everyone in the room was so quick to hope, however. For one, Gaetz isn’t singularly an antitrust champion; he’s a hard-liner on immigration and an outspoken critic of the DOJ investigations into Trump’s involvement in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election — what he has called the “weaponization” of government. The House Ethics Committee is also investigating him for an alleged underage sex scandal (Gaetz denies the allegations).
Rep. Becca Balint, a House antitrust subcommittee member who spoke at the event, told NOTUS she had no faith in the Gaetz pick benefiting their cause — pointing to the swath of other rumored reasons he may be seeking the position, including the ethics investigation.
“I don’t believe anything that they say. I hope I’m wrong,” Balint said. “I hope that actually he does care about antitrust, but I believe nothing they say. How can I?”
Among an AG’s duties is overseeing the DOJ’s antitrust division, which has taken a similar approach to Khan in proactively challenging corporate power and consolidation in recent years.
Congressional Democrats have previously pointed to Vice President-elect JD Vance as a potential ally on these issues. He has also praised Khan in the past, including to NOTUS.
“There has been strong support for antitrust efforts, including from President-elect Trump in the past,” Senate antitrust committee member Sen. Richard Blumenthal told NOTUS before the Gaetz news dropped. “I’m hopeful that we will continue to have support for antitrust policies.”
Democrats are exercising caution, however, with how hopeful they should be on the next administration carrying out this agenda.
“One would expect Republicans to be very bad on antitrust. They have been,” antitrust advocate Rep. Jerry Nadler told NOTUS this week. “But JD Vance says he is taking contrary positions. We’ll see what happens.”
On the House antitrust subcommittee, Gaetz has regularly stood up to his more corporate-aligned Republican colleagues, including Chair Rep. Jim Jordan, in support of more aggressive tech regulation.
As lawmakers grapple with the new congressional reality of Republicans controlling all three branches of government, progressive lawmakers have been pitching the bipartisan anti-monopoly points of agreement.
“I have been able to work with some Republicans on this issue,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar had told the crowd before the Gaetz news dropped. “It is really important that we try to make those reach-outs right now, because I don’t want to just stop in our tracks and yell about it for four years.”
She added to NOTUS later, “I just hope that [Republicans] continue aggressively taking on these cases.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren echoed the sentiment after her speech at the progressive event Wednesday, telling reporters, “The American people like the provisions that the FTC has put in place, and there will be one hell of a price to pay for any regulator or politician who wants to start taking all of that away.”
NOTUS later broke the news of Gaetz’s nomination to Scanlon, who has been on the antitrust subcommittee with Gaetz.
She just gave a shocked, “Well, he must be thrilled.”
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Claire Heddles is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.