Andrew Ferguson

Andrew Ferguson, a former Solicitor General of Virginia, was appointed as a Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) by President Trump. Ferguson does not believe the FTC should continue to operate as an independent agency, and instead espouses a severe version of unitary executive theory: “The FTC has always been called an independent agency […] I think 2020 teaches a lesson how dangerous this is. So I’m optimistic that the president and his new admin are going to take very seriously requiring government officials to execute the laws the way that the president believes the people have empowered him to do it.” Ferguson justifies his belief in the President’s absolute power, stating “He gets to tell lower level officials here’s my vision for governing America we need to execute it, and if you’re not going to execute it, you gotta get out umm and so I think that the first step um, and I’m optimistic that the new administration will take this seriously is, treating the federal government like it actually is, it’s the executive branch, it’s executing the President’s vision that we the voters have given the president the mandate on and if you know, government officials don’t want to execute the president’s lawful vision they need to get out of the way.” Despite believing in such executive branch authority and FTC subservience, Ferguson recently characterized FTC rules aimed at protecting seniors from predatory scams as part of the Biden Administration’s “regulatory assault on American business.”

Ferguson’s full embrace of unitary executive theory is unsurprising given his close relationship with Justice Clarence Thomas. Ferguson clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court and has described Thomas as “the greatest living American,” seeking his advice on multiple career decisions. Ferguson has said that Thomas convinced him to join the effort to secure Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court, saying, “You’re like a True Believer in this judicial project.” Ferguson has said that his interest in politics was driven by a desire to overturn Roe v. Wade and to reshape the composition of the judiciary, a goal that continues to inform his views on antitrust enforcement. Beyond voicing admiration for Justice Clarence Thomas, Ferguson also expresses his alignment with Trump’s pick for FCC Chair and author of Project 2025’s FCC chapter, Brendan Carr.

Ferguson has pledged to use the FTC’s authority to investigate Big Tech’s decisions on content moderation and advertising selection, arguing “the antitrust laws may have something to say about what’s been going on in this space, and there are two things that come to mind. The first is, um, advertiser boycotts[…] and it became really obvious after Elon Musk sort of purchased X and saved um American uh the free exchange of ideas that’s so indispensable to the American way of life he may have saved that with that purchase.” Ferguson implied that advertisers violated antitrust laws by colluding to deny X advertising revenue, claiming that advertisers refusing to sell advertisements on X were “choking the lifeblood out” of the platform. Beyond interpreting antitrust laws as permitting the FTC to prosecute corporations refusing certain advertisements or platforms. As Solicitor General of Virginia, he aided the state’s role in the landmark antitrust lawsuit against Google, calling for the breakup of Google’s advertising technology business. Ferguson argued that Google’s advertising monopoly harmed competition and was unlawfully maintained.

Ferguson alleges that NGOs are also part of a “censorship industrial complex.” Ferguson claims that content moderation decisions are not protected by the First Amendment, when companies engage in what he characterizes as “collusion” with other corporations or with the government. Ferguson goes on, “The FTC needs to examine if we’ve got a bunch of like collusive cartels running around here.”

Ferguson has criticized Big Tech platforms for their control over public discourse, signaling support for investigating their advertising algorithms, moderation policies, and access restrictions Ferguson describes social justice and pandemic events of 2020 as shaping his anti-Big Tech views: “[…]this for me was sort of my like like my baptism by fire where I really started to understand look yeah, the point of government is human flourishing and government tyranny and censorship can get in the way of that but it isn’t just sort of government power than can interfere with the human flourishing that we’ve all expect ah our government and ah our society to promote, it can be big agglomerations of private power too, umm, and sort of like the widespread suppression of ideas on big tech is really what umm, on big tech platforms in 2020 is really what alerted me to these problems.”

Ferguson dismisses the prevalence of disinformation on tech platforms: “The Department of Homeland Security under the Biden administration set up a disinformation governance board um which is like the closest thing to like Orwell’s ministry of truth that I’ve ever seen like the American government set up, it was like a board within DHS that was supposed to monitor and recommend censorship for big tech platforms on any disinformation which is just you know, um new speak for ideas that the government and and progressives don’t like.” Ferguson, alongside Virginia’s AG Miyares, led the charge to pressure the Biden Administration to shut down the disinformation governance board. Ferguson celebrated the closure of the disinformation governance board, posting “Big win for free speech. One of the major organs of the censorship industrial complex goes down. No government agency should be in the business of policing speech. Nebulous terms like ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and ‘malinformation’ really mean any speech which goes against the elite consensus in DC and Silicon Valley.” Ferguson, in a concurring and dissenting statement, goes so far as to chastise “content moderation” as “pervasive political censorship and election interference carried out by the studied companies,” referring to a Commission study of social media and video streaming technology companies. Ferguson shares that he anticipates the Trump administration focusing “a lot of resources on sort of liberating Americans from the shackles of private censorship to the extent that the laws allow.”

Going even further, Ferguson has also argued that antitrust enforcement should focus on more than price and output, stating that “labor markets are markets,” a position that could increase antitrust scrutiny of hiring and wage-setting practices. He raises the possibility of investigating corporations that he believes collude to avoid hiring certain groups of people or that engage in labor allocation agreements. Ferguson has also endorsed expanding the originalist interpretation of antitrust laws like the Sherman and Clayton Acts, asserting that antitrust law has strayed from its historical meaning: “What did this thing we’re arguing about, what was it originally understood to mean?” Ferguson posits “ I think that this answer is going to be written by academics and judges who dig into the original meaning of the Sherman and Clayton acts and try to figure out does did Judge Bork get this correct as we now do originalism I mean like it or hate it a lot of the work that you and I did on judges in the Trump Administration was we put people who take originalism incredibly seriously um are in many ways outcome blind like we have our interpretive theory it must be followed to its conclusion, um and we got a lot of scholars who think that way too largely because we created like a judicial market for it for this scholarship. I think that there are folks you know on the right who are beginning to sort of dig back in into the original meaning of the Sherman and Clayton acts, um and to see whether they’re consistent with what we today call the consumer welfare standard, and if they aren’t I think judges are going to be more open to embracing other theories of antitrust more quickly […]”

Ferguson is a product of the Federalist Society milieu, having worked for years advancing right-wing judicial nominees and jurisprudence. As chief legal counsel to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Ferguson was deeply involved in shaping the GOP’s judicial confirmation strategy. He worked closely with McConnell’s staff to prioritize conservative judicial appointments. Ferguson aided McConnell during Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial. Ferguson recently expressed support for elevating several judges to the Supreme Court from “an embarrassment of riches” including Judge Thapar on the 6th circuit, Judge Ho and Judge Oldham on 5th circuit, Judge Matey on the 3rd circuit, Judge Branch and Judge Lagoa on the 11th circuit, “and that’s just like a fraction of the list.”

During his tenure as chief nominations counsel to Senator Lindsey Graham, Ferguson played a major role in the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh. Ferguson initially resisted joining the confirmation effort but was convinced by Justice Thomas to join. As a member of the nominations team, Ferguson worked to secure Senate votes amid accusations of sexual assault against Kavanaugh. He described the confirmation process as “grueling” but “interesting,” signaling his commitment to reshaping the judiciary to reflect originalist legal principles. Ferguson’s anti-Big Tech agenda is also influenced by his work with prominent conservative legal figures. Ferguson worked alongside Mike Davis, the former chief nominations counsel to Senator Chuck Grassley. Ferguson described his initial impression of Davis as “off the wall” and “hyper-aggressive,” but later admitted he had misjudged Davis’s strategic abilities, noting, “oh he does understand very much how to work here better than I do…” Ferguson has maintained ties to Davis and his work with the Article III Project, a right-wing legal group which supposedly worked with Leonard Leo and the Judicial Crisis Network, remade as the Concord Fund. Steve Bannon described Davis as “a full fucking MAGA warrior.” On Benny Johnson’s show, Davis outlined a dystopian “three-week reign of terror” to fire “deep state” employees, indict Joe Biden, put “kids in cages,” pardon Jan. 6 defendants, and detain people in the “D.C. gulag.”