The following article is a supplement to the MRC Report: The Biden Administration Waged War on Free Speech with 57 Censorship Initiatives.
Initiative #9
The Attack on Antitrust
Type of Censorship: Direct Action
Agencies Involved:
- Department of Justice
- Antitrust Division
Summary:
As well as running afoul of the First Amendment, the Biden administration’s extensive partnership with AI developers to collude in creating a censorship-minded AI model (see Initiative #8) raised serious antitrust concerns. It is unsurprising, then, to see that the Biden Department of Justice launched a years-long attack on antitrust law, often disregarding and sometimes perverting it to push for more censorship and less market competition.
As detailed in an MRC report, Biden’s Department of Justice touted an imaginary, alternative version of antitrust law which in fact required firms to engage in anticompetitive censorship. This assault on the law imperiled enforcement actions taken by law-abiding officials in the Federal Trade Commission and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, who were identifying egregious Big Tech antitrust violations the DOJ refused to enforce.
Key Individuals:
- Merrick Garland, Attorney General
- Jonathan Kanter, Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust
