SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
federal trade commission
Trump FTC Deletes Lina Khan-Era Blog Posts Warning of Threat AI Poses to Consumers
The FTC quietly removed from its website an article titled "AI and the Risk of Consumer Harm" as the Trump administration looks to undercut efforts to regulate artificial intelligence.
Oct 20, 2025
The Trump administration's sweeping purge of government content that conflicts with its far-right ideological and policy project has extended to Federal Trade Commission blog posts warning about the threat that burgeoning artificial intelligence technology poses to US consumers.
Wired reported Monday that the Trump administration has, without explanation, deleted AI-related articles published by the FTC during antitrust trailblazer Lina Khan's tenure as chair of the agency. The headlines of two of the removed posts were "Consumers Are Voicing Concerns About AI" and "AI and the Risk of Consumer Harm."
The latter article, which can still be read here, states that the FTC "is increasingly taking note of AI's potential for real-world instances of harm—from incentivizing commercial surveillance to enabling fraud and impersonation to perpetuating illegal discrimination."
"As firms think about their own approach to developing, deploying, and maintaining AI-based systems, they should be considering the risks to consumers that each of them carry in the here and now, and take steps to proactively protect the public before their tools become a future FTC case study," reads the post, which was authored by staff at the FTC's Office of Technology and Division of Advertising Practices.
The page on the FTC website that previously hosted the article now displays an error message.
Wired noted that the Trump FTC's deletion of the Khan-era blog post is part of a broader scrubbing of government content critical of tech giants and artificial intelligence. In March, the outlet reported that Trump's FTC—currently led by Andrew Ferguson—"removed four years' worth of business guidance blogs as of Tuesday morning, including important consumer protection information related to artificial intelligence and the agency's landmark privacy lawsuits under former chair Lina Khan against companies like Amazon and Microsoft."
The mass removal of Khan-era posts marks a sharp—and potentially illegal—break from the previous administration's handling of government-hosted content that conflicted with its views.
"During the Biden administration, FTC leadership placed 'warning' labels on business directives and other guidance published during previous administrations that it disagreed with," Wired reported. One unnamed FTC source told the outlet that the Trump administration's removal of the Khan-era posts "raises serious compliance concerns under the Federal Records Act and the Open Government Data Act."
The Trump administration's deletion of government content critical of AI comes months after it released an "AI Action Plan" that watchdogs pilloried as a gift to large tech corporations and an attempt to hamstring future efforts to regulate artificial intelligence.
The plan calls for a review of all AI-related FTC investigations launched during Khan's tenure "to ensure that they do not advance theories of liability that unduly burden AI innovation."
Robert Weissman, co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said in July that the Trump White House's AI plan was "written by Big Tech."
"A serious AI plan would recognize that the regulation to which this administration is so hostile facilitates innovation—it can help us ensure that we have AI for social good, rather than just corporate profit," said Weissman.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Drop in the Bucket': Lina Khan Rips Trump FTC for Giving Amazon a Wrist-Slap Settlement
The Federal Trade Commission's decision to settle with Amazon would be "a big relief for the executives who knowingly harmed their customers," added Khan.
Sep 25, 2025
The Federal Trade Commission announced on Thursday it had reached a settlement with Amazon over allegations that the online retailer had tricked consumers into subscribing to its Prime service—but the woman who led the FTC under former President Joe Biden was not impressed.
According to the FTC, Amazon has agreed to pay $2.5 billion to settle claims that it deceived customers into subscribing to Prime and then deliberately made it difficult for them to cancel. In all, Amazon will pay a $1 billion civil penalty, as well as $1.5 billion in refunds to consumers who unwittingly subscribed to Prime.
FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson framed the settlement as a victory for the Trump administration and touted the deal as "a record-breaking, monumental win for the millions of Americans who are tired of deceptive subscriptions that feel impossible to cancel." Ferguson also said the settlement would ensure "Amazon never does this again."
Amazon, for its part, said in a statement that it didn't break any laws despite agreeing to pay out billions.
"Amazon and our executives have always followed the law and this settlement allows us to move forward and focus on innovating for customers," the company said. "We work incredibly hard to make it clear and simple for customers to both sign up or cancel their Prime membership, and to offer substantial value for our many millions of loyal Prime members around the world."
However, former FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan accused the agency of letting Amazon off easy, while describing the $2.5 billion settlement as a "drop in the bucket" for the tech giant.
"In 2023, we sued Amazon and several top executives for tricking people into Prime subscriptions and then making it absurdly difficult to cancel," she explained in a post on X. "This week marked the start of a historic jury trial, where American citizens would hear details of Amazon’s business practices and determine if it had broken the law. A couple of days into trial, FTC announces it has settled all charges, rescuing Amazon from likely being found liable for having violated the law and allowing it to pay its way out."
Khan added that the settlement was "no doubt, a big relief for the executives who knowingly harmed their customers."
Amazon currently has a market cap of over $2.3 trillion, meaning the $2.5 billion settlement represents a little more than one-tenth of 1% of its total worth. Its billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, is among the richest people on Earth, with an estimated net worth of nearly $240 billion.
Matthew Stoller, an antitrust advocate and researcher at the American Economic Liberties Project, faulted the FTC for letting Amazon settle without any admission of wrongdoing.
"A judge already ruled in summary judgment they violated the law," Stoller observed.
Amazon may not be completely out of the woods legally, however.
As NPR noted on Thursday, Amazon "still faces another, bigger federal lawsuit, in which the FTC has accused the company of functioning as a monopoly." That trial is currently projected to begin in early 2027, NPR added.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Supreme Court to Weigh 90-Year-Old Precedent and Let Trump Fire FTC Commissioner
"Rest in peace to the presidency, and long live the king," quipped one attorney.
Sep 22, 2025
As US President Donald Trump faces mounting accusations of authoritarian conduct, the Supreme Court's right-wing majority on Monday empowered him to proceed with firing a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission and agreed to review a 90-year-old precedent that restricts executive power over independent agencies such as the FTC.
Trump in March fired the FTC's two Democratic commissioners, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya, without cause. Slaughter fought back, and US District Judge Loren AliKhan allowed her to return to work while the case continued. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld that decision, but it was halted Monday by the nation's top court.
Monday's decision was unsigned, though the three liberals collectively dissented, led by Justice Elena Kagan. In addition to letting Trump move forward with ousting Slaughter, the majority agreed to reconsider the precedent established with Humphrey's Executor v. United States, a 1935 case that centered on whether the Federal Trade Commission Act unconstitutionally interfered with the executive power of the president.
In Humphrey's Executor, the high court found that Congress' removal protections for FTC members did not violate the separation of powers. Along with revisiting the precedent established by that landmark decision in December, the justices plan to weigh whether a federal court may prevent a person's removal from public office.
The court's stay allowing Trump to fire Slaughter was granted as part of the court's emergency process, or shadow docket. In a short but scathing dissent, Kagan noted that it is part of a recent trend: "Earlier this year, the same majority, by the same mechanism, permitted the president to fire without cause members of the National Labor Relations Board, the Merits Systems Protection Board, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission."
"I dissented from the majority's prior stay orders, and today do so again. Under existing law, what Congress said goes—as this court unanimously decided nearly a century ago," she wrote. In Humphrey's Executor, Kagan continued, "Congress, we held, may restrict the president's power to remove members of the FTC, as well as other agencies performing 'quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial' functions, without violating the Constitution."
"So the president cannot, as he concededly did here, fire an FTC commissioner without any reason. To reach a different result requires reversing the rule stated in Humphrey's: It entails overriding rather than accepting Congress' judgment about agency design," she argued. "The majority may be raring to take that action, as its grant of certiorari before judgment suggests. But until the deed is done, Humphrey's controls, and prevents the majority from giving the president the unlimited removal power Congress denied him."
More broadly, Kagan declared that "our emergency docket should never be used, as it has been this year, to permit what our own precedent bars. Still more, it should not be used, as it also has been, to transfer government authority from Congress to the president, and thus to reshape the nation's separation of powers."
Kagan, of course, is correct that the Supreme Court will soon overturn Humphrey's Executor and allow the president to fire leaders of any independent agency (other than the Fed—maybe?!). She's also right to bemoan the fact that SCOTUS effectively overruled Humphrey's on the shadow docket already.
— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjsdc.bsky.social) September 22, 2025 at 3:20 PM
Sandeep Vaheesan, legal director at the anti-monopoly think tank Open Markets Institute, slammed the court in a Monday statement.
"Today, in a one-paragraph order, the Supreme Court authorized President Trump's illegal firing of Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and his ongoing destruction of the independent, bipartisan Federal Trade Commission," Vaheesan said.
"As Justice Kagan wrote in her dissent, Commissioner Slaughter was fired without cause and is clearly entitled to her position under the FTC Act and controlling Supreme Court precedent," he added. "The court could override Congress' decision to create an independent FTC on specious constitutional grounds but until it takes that step Commissioner Slaughter has a right to her job.”
While the justices agreed to take Slaughter's case, they turned away petitions from two ousted Democratic appointees referenced by Kagan: Cathy Harris of the Merit Systems Protection Board and Gwynne Wilcox of the National Labor Relations Board. According to SCOTUSblog: "The court did not provide any explanation for its decision not to take up Harris' and Wilcox's cases at this time. They will continue to move forward in the lower courts."
The New York Times noted that "the justices are separately considering the Trump administration’s request to remove Lisa Cook as a Federal Reserve governor. The Supreme Court has yet to act, but has suggested that the central bank may be insulated from presidential meddling under the law."
However, as Law Dork's Chris Geidner highlighted on social media, the second question the justices will consider in the Slaughter case, regarding courts preventing removals from public office, "would have implications even for the 'Fed carveout' exception that the court suggested exists."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular