Name: How Lina Khan FOUGHT Monopolies
Uploaded: 2025-11-16T14:00:36.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'How Lina Khan FOUGHT Monopolies' from TAFS Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-11-16. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'How Lina Khan FOUGHT Monopolies' from TAFS Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-11-16. Transcript available.

having a robust civil service is how like planes don't crash into each other
and like we don't get
screws in our cans of tuna you know yeah like I guess like what changes were
made at your shop
after you left and like what have they chosen to pursue since you've been gone
the new commissioner
yeah so I think a lot of people have left especially in the consumer protection
part of
the work but Xerox guys are back I think they're you know they apparently are
now trying to hire maybe
they they like too many people go but there's been a real backsliding I mean
you know we were firing on
all cylinders and taking on all sorts of you know big companies that were
breaking the law and there's
definitely been a slowdown in activity there they've also kind of shifted gears
so you know
they allowed this big merger to go through between these two ad agencies and
one of the conditions
of that was basically that they had to buy ads from Elon Musk more or less on
his platforms
yeah under the purview that they couldn't kind of discriminate on political
grounds so it does seem
like they're they're more eager to use the law to kind of advance their
political grievances
and they pursue sex changes yeah they're they're doing some workshops to see if
they should go
after doctors workshops yeah like you go for a weekend to a hotel I think it's
like a bunch of
bureaucrats in like a conference room for for half a day but yeah what was it
like being 40 years
younger than everyone else actually it was pretty strange at times I mean there
were definitely people
who'd been there since before I was born and um was a bad hang no I mean people
you know I think it had
been tough for some people because I had been known before I got to the FTC as
a critic of the FTC
um and so I think some people interpreted that as kind of you know personal
criticism uh and I'd been
critiquing you know the political leadership and the way they've been doing
this yeah there was a sense
that like wait why is the hater now our boss you know so um so you know had to
navigate some of that
but people really came around and I think people were proud to work at an
agency that was on the
front lines of protecting people from corporate abuse and so um is it supposed
to be an independent
agency like ostensibly the justice department is supposed to be but we're
seeing it's not at all
right now but like did you is it like the the president can't really mess with
it or is it
like yeah the president's not supposed to direct us you know I'm sure trump is
giving them their space
right now yeah I mean it's an interesting dynamic because previously there used
to be a lot of
speculation about kind of who's heading what agency but now it doesn't really
matter as much because
it's all being run out of the white house so a lot of those decisions just you
know it just doesn't
matter and what cases have they carried on from your tenure so they're still
continuing the case
against amazon um against facebook uh there are a bunch of cases against like
ag monopolies uh against
john deere uh it was making it really hard for farmers to fix their stuff um
they're continuing some
cases uh against uh we have one against adobe that was making it really hard to
cancel
subscriptions for pdfs yeah yeah exactly acrobat yeah so the vast majority they've
they've actually
continued oh really the cases but the place they pull back are the rules so we
issued a rule that
would ban non-compete clauses for americans these are those like contractual
provisions yeah they're
like doing it to people at mcdonald's yeah you can't work at wendy's after you
leave that's right fast
food security guards janitors healthcare workers why the fuck are they what's
the point of it
i mean they would say it's because they're trading in workers and they don't
want to lose their
investment but for to a lot of people it seems like it's just to get greater
control and power over
the workers i took introduction to micro and macro economics so um so so i'm
kind of i think i i'm
called i don't want to speak from a position of of authority unless i'm
qualified but i think i'm
qualified here but what like my understanding is the argument for consolidation
is they say that it
will create more efficiencies that could be passed on in savings to the
consumer is that is that kind
of what you've been pushed back on that's often the argument yeah but it's
stupid no because it's
like if there's one company they could charge a zillion dollars and still and
make it for cheaper
yep and you say that to the judge i could be a lawyer i think so yeah yeah do
you ever give a
closing argument i know we had very talented litigators that were in the
courtroom i was not
personally making those arguments so you do the boring parts of the lawyer that's
right you don't do
the razzle dazzle parts no unfortunately lena why are you doing the homework
parts you like you do the
worksheets parts yeah exactly oh you love homework why don't you do the like
give a speech you know
we had very talented people who were and i will not experience at litigating
litigating and and did
that very well you can't handle the truth you never want to do i want the truth
um you would be so good
at that thank you let me know maybe let me write for you yeah who's your
favorite who's your favorite
uh like supreme court justice i mean brandeis was pretty great nice yeah okay
what is number two
i don't know i mean third good marshall is pretty great sick yeah pretty cool
yeah let's go down the
um i don't know if i have them ranked beyond that but what did you do at law
school you didn't play
with top five we didn't actually no but really missed out on that yeah i mean
on the jury trial
thing it's interesting because you know we did there was an effort to kind of
bring some of these cases
before juries and the companies were really terrified of it so the justice
department brought
one of their google cases before a jury they wanted to have a jury trial and
google basically just gave a
bag of money to the justice department so that they could avoid the jury trial
it was in a bag
more or less i think they sent them a check or maybe it was something in a bag
it would have been
cool it would have in a trash bag yeah yeah and um and you know there was a
recent survey there was
law firms are advising their clients you know to avoid jury trials because they're
realizing that
people's sentiments towards corporate america have turned negative people hate
companies
i think i think that's good though right uh you're gonna follow the rules and
not say that's good
i mean it's good i think people are realizing that a lot of the thing that's
bad in their lives
is sometimes being driven by corporations that are breaking the law and have
bought influence
perhaps perhaps in our politics perhaps perhaps you could say yeah allegedly
allegedly allegedly that's
right counselor counselor asked and answered yes hearsay have you ever fallen
asleep in court and
then objected when you wake up uh i haven't had that experience that's from a
movie right if you ever fall
asleep in court you have to object when you wake up uh-huh i think the the john
grisham when you
enforce um a policy as when you were a commissioner um you oftentimes would
file a lawsuit um a lot of
discussion has been made about how the judiciary is kind of uh it's a kind of
it's is there ever a fear
that something could potentially go to the supreme court which is kind of um it's
understood to be a
quite partisan at this point and six three on it in the other to the other side
is there a fear that
you could actually those initial regulations that you're trying to enforce yeah
i mean there's a lot
of strategizing that has to go into like does it make sense to appeal this case
is there a risk of
making things worse yeah so we definitely have to think that through but if you
win and they appeal
they're like we're gonna ride this to the top and then they're gonna let us
make one company for the
whole world so what is the current state of the judiciary like in your
estimation like you know
i'd say a few things like there are a lot of you know district court judges appellate
court judges
that are just trying to do their jobs and like be faithful to the law i think
there has been a general
drift coinciding with more republican appointees on the bench of like just more
hostility and skepticism
of federal agencies when they're trying to use you know trying to make things
better in the economy more
or less um so that's been a challenge i mean during the biden administration
you know there were dozens
of rules that were basically blocked sometimes by just a single judge in tex in
texas uh even rules that
were trying to you know limit overdraft fees or say that airlines can't lie
about the price of a ticket
the ftc non-compete rule you know we even passed a rule that said companies
have to make it as easy to
cancel a subscription as it is to sign up uh and a lot of those rules ended up
being blocked so there's
just greater skepticism of of agency power i think this is going to be a
revealing moment as to whether
that's selective skepticism like are you only skeptical when it's democrats in
those agencies
or is it actually a bit more consistent and principled that's very fair and
noble to say
honestly i mean that i mean seriously i mean the court shouldn't be partisan
right they should be
enforcing the law you know yeah interpreting law that's right um what is if you
had to look at the
american economy like what industry do you think just fucks like our my
audience or out the the people
the most like i mean healthcare probably yeah yeah they have the most blood on
their hands yeah yeah
um when you were we were talking about the orange book i i that was me
something i heard five minutes
ago and i said to impress you but like one of the ways that they raised the
price of inhalers to 500 was
that they would file a patent on like a strap that's right unlike just pieces
of plastic that
have nothing to do with like the actual drugs um but there are all sorts of
tricks i mean you know
there are people who have died because they can't afford their medicines in
this country and when
we were at the ftc we would kind of do these regular open meetings where
anybody could sign up and come
talk to us and we would hear from people who would say i have a family member
who's having to literally
ration their insulin or their life-saving medicine because it's too expensive
and some of that was
done through illegal tactics by the you know drug manufacturers by these
pharmacy benefit managers
um and so you know let alone the fraud that we see uh in all sorts of parts of
the health care
of the health care system where they're literally defrauding the government and
just like bilking money