Lina Khan Fights For Workers' 'Liberty' Amid Attacks From Democratic Donors

WASHINGTON — In over three transformative years as the country’s top antitrust regulator, Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan has faced down powerful foes, from private equity titans to tech CEOs and supermarket moguls.

But Khan, nominated by President Joe Biden and confirmed by a bipartisan Senate supermajority, now faces adversity from a less familiar corner: allies of Vice President Kamala Harris, the newfound Democratic presidential nominee and a Californian with closer ties to Silicon Valley than Biden.

Reid Hoffman — a co-founder of LinkedIn, a venture capitalist and one of the Democratic Party’s largest donors — is among the prominent Democrats calling for Harris to ditch Khan. His comments last month pushing for her ouster, along with similar remarks from billionaire donor Barry Diller, set off a low-level civil war between the party’s ideological wings.

Progressives are increasingly confident that Khan — or at least one of her ideological allies — will remain at the top of the FTC, especially after Harris’ first economic speech Friday showed her aggressively attacking corporate greed and proposing new powers for the commission.

But as the Harris campaign decides whether, and how much, to break with Biden’s populist anti-monopoly policies, Khan is engaged in a high-profile fight for workers’ rights, showcasing the broad appeal of her aggressive approach to enforcement and precisely why Harris might want to keep her in the job.

Khan’s most ambitious initiative is a rule banning the use of noncompete agreements barring workers from getting a job with a competitor of their current employer, or leaving to start such a company themselves. It’s a policy that polls well, has bipartisan support in Congress and even