Since first jumping into the race for president five years ago, Kamala Harris has run as a tough prosecutor and on the promise of an America where “no one is above the law.” Yet, at dizzying pace, big donors and Washington lobbyists have swarmed her campaign, demanding she replace federal enforcers for doing exactly what she has spent five years running on — holding powerful people to account.
If she gives in, the promise and brand of her campaign will be shaken and, worse, the integrity of federal enforcement may not recover.
Harris’s message reflects a record she has built over years in public life. While serving as California’s attorney general, she took on the big banks and won $20 billion in relief for consumers who had lost big in the 2008 mortgage meltdown. She took on the pharmaceutical industry for artificially inflating drug prices and deceptive marketing. And she challenged proposed mergers in the drug and hospital industry to lower costs for consumers.
Federal enforcers in the Biden-Harris administration have similarly held powerful companies to account, fighting back against Big Pharma mergers, forcing Big Finance to return illegally collected fees, suing Big Tech monopolists, and more. This aggressive approach has unnerved many finance and tech executives who were accustomed to crushing competitors and abusing consumers with impunity. With the presidential campaign now cresting, they are flexing mightily through their media appearances and checkbooks.
Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler and Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust Jonathan Kanter have borne the brunt of this private and public retribution campaign emanating from board rooms across Wall Street and Silicon Valley. Speculation abounds that, if elected, Harris may give in and replace these and other enforcers from the Biden era as an olive branch to aggrieved corporate leaders.
If she does, it will send a clear message to the entire machinery of federal enforcement that, in a Harris administration, challenging entrenched billionaires is unwelcome — and doing so could cost you your job.
Rather than pursue the systemic abusers, enforcers will retreat to safer targets: smaller players with less political heft. Past Republican administrations tended to protect giants at the expense of smaller, more vulnerable firms, leaving the big players free to dominate their markets. A Harris decision to gut the Biden enforcement apparatus would create an unmistakable “too big to prosecute” status for America’s most powerful individuals and corporations — unraveling years of hard-fought progress not just in antitrust and securities enforcement but across the enforcement landscape.
For state attorneys general — the Kamala Harrises of tomorrow — taking on corporate power will be less attractive, with the federal government’s commitment called into question. For smaller companies, this environment will mean yet another competitive disadvantage against the huge conglomerates threatening their survival.
And for massive corporations, the deterrent effect of enforcement, a critical lever in ensuring compliance with the law, will quickly collapse. Companies already know government lawsuits take years to play out, and they tend to act like it’s business as usual in the meantime, as Google CEO Sundar Pichai admitted last month. If massive corporations get the cue that they are returning to what is in effect an accountability-free zone, they will be further emboldened to push the limits of legality.
Preserving the Biden administration’s turn toward aggressive enforcement would be popular across the Democratic coalition — and could, in fact, help keep that coalition intact.
Just look at Lina Khan, the poster child of corporate backlash. September polling of Democrats from the Tech Oversight Project shows that 80 percent think the government should be doing even more to take on corporate monopoly power, and 88 percent support her leadership. Khan is backed not just by progressive senators like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren but by House power brokers like Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) and Joe Neguse (D-Colo.); by swing-state moderates like Sens. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) and John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.); and by prominent party allies ranging from the NAACP to the AFL-CIO.
Republicans and independents, meanwhile, have long heard Biden, Harris and other Democrats attack Donald Trump for politicizing federal enforcement and promise not to do the same. In their 2024 convention platform, the Democrats warned that Trump would inappropriately “exert presidential authority over what have long been independent agencies.”
If Harris cracks down on Biden-era enforcers to please powerful benefactors, she will be doing just that. The whiplash and backlash will be severe.
Presidents don’t always get dealt the hand they want when they assume office, but they must play the hand they have. If Kamala Harris wants to maintain her brand as a strong leader who is unafraid to take on powerful interests — and, more importantly, if she wants to act as one — she should lean into the Biden-era enforcement apparatus, not retreat from it.
Dan Geldon is a former senior official at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He previously served as chief of staff to Elizabeth Warren and was a top adviser on her presidential campaign.