Evizda

President Joe Biden’s failure to nominate top regulators at the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, and the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division has extended the influence of Trump-era officials at key federal agencies—undermining the effort to curb Big Tech’s monopoly powers and prompting progressives to demand that Biden immediately fill these executive branch positions.

“If Biden doesn’t move quickly, there won’t be enough time left for his administration to take on big targets and tackle thorny policy problems,” Axios reported Tuesday. Unlike other policy agendas, public oversight of the technology and telecom industries “will be largely shaped by the executive branch and regulatory agencies, rather than by a divided and distracted Congress.”

Although the White House has immense power to establish antitrust policy, the Biden administration “has fallen months behind” its predecessors in naming new leaders of the FTC, the FCC, and the DOJ’s Antitrust Division, Axios reported. The Revolving Door Project on Tuesday urged the president to quickly fill the posts with officials “who will take on Big Tech monopolies.”

Axios, which compiled data on the previous four administrations’ timelines for nominating permanent leaders of these key agencies, noted that “since the Clinton administration, March has been the most common month the president has sent nominations for these positions to Congress, starting the often lengthy confirmation process.”

“It’s now three months past that, with no indication that nominations are imminent,” the news outlet added.

While Acting FTC Chairwoman Rebecca Slaughter and Acting FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel are “getting things done” and “angling for the permanent jobs,” Axios reported, “temporary agency leaders are not as empowered to pursue an aggressive policy agenda as permanent heads.”

As Andrew Schwartzman, senior counselor at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, told the news outlet: “The absence of permanent appointees delays work on anything controversial, as the actings, properly, don’t want to commit major resources to big projects that the permanent person wouldn’t want.”

The lack of permanent antitrust leadership at the federal agencies tasked with reining in the technology and telecom industries has coincided with a wave of corporate consolidation. In just the past two weeks, Amazon announced an $8.5 billion deal to acquire MGM Studios, and AT&T announced a $43 billion deal to merge WarnerMedia with Discovery, as Common Dreams reported.