A profile of Gail Slater, the head of the DOJ's antitrust unit who has become the leader of the MAGA antitrust movement over Big Tech “censorship” concerns
very much not what some in the business world & antitrust bar have hoped for (or at least publicly predicted) from this admin. Nancy Scola / @nancyscola : I profiled the new head of the DOJ antitrust division, Gail Slater for @POLITICO. Some reporting bits... 🧵 [image] Nancy Scola / @nancyscola : Slater interviewed personally with Donald Trump, then-president-elect, at Mar-a-Lago just weeks after him getting re-elected — teeing her up to take office six month sooner than her counterpart in the first admin. Katie Fossett / @katelynfossett : “Censorship,” Alford, Slater's deputy, tells me, “is the downstream manifestation of monopoly power.” @nancyscola with the Friday Read this week: https://www.politico.com/... Nancy Scola / @nancyscola : One v. open question is how Slater's thinking on “Big Tech censorship” fits into her enforcement vision. The response from DOJ antitrust at the moment: break up the monopoly and remove platforms' ability to ‘censor.’ Here's Slater's top deputy, Notre Dame prof Roger Alford: [image] Nancy Scola / @nancyscola : Steve Bannon, for his part, says he sees Slater ("I love Gail Slater") as central to his ongoing attempt to build alliances with those on the left who might share his belief in the wisdom of leaning into gov't's antitrust powers. A bit of Bannon: [image] @gc22gc : “As the great Stephen K. Bannon would say to his audience,” she says of the former Trump adviser, “it's time for action, action, action.”
Context & Ripple Effects
Slater moved from being reported as a potential antitrust leadership pick to Senate-confirmed head of the division in her March confirmation. This profile gives the clearest ideological account in the coverage of how that appointment could shape DOJ priorities.
The emphasis on platform “censorship” links market-power enforcement to a political concern shared by MAGA allies, rather than treating antitrust solely as a conventional competition-policy question. It also follows an earlier era in which DOJ leadership was drawn from a prominent Google critic, Jonathan Kanter’s nomination.
First-order effects
- The DOJ Antitrust Division’s leadership is publicly aligning monopoly concerns with platforms’ control over speech and distribution, putting Big Tech’s business practices and moderation power under a single political frame.
- Slater and deputy Roger Alford gain a clearer rationale for pursuing structural antitrust remedies: in their account, concentrated platform power enables the downstream conduct they call censorship.
Second-order effects
- Large platforms face pressure to address antitrust scrutiny and political criticism together, complicating any effort to separate competition cases from content-governance disputes.
- The framing gives populist conservatives and cross-ideological antitrust advocates a potential common agenda, while forcing the antitrust bar and business groups to reassess expectations of a more industry-friendly DOJ.
Third-order effects
- If this rationale guides enforcement, US antitrust could become more explicitly intertwined with disputes over platform governance, broadening the policy stakes of monopoly cases beyond prices and market share.
- Its durability remains uncertain: it depends on whether the DOJ converts leadership rhetoric into cases and remedies that survive institutional, legal, and political constraints.
The trend: This is one data point in the politicization of technology antitrust, where concerns about platform power increasingly encompass both market structure and control over public discourse.