Gail Slater, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, is finally expected to be confirmed by the United States Senate in the coming days. From her work on the Senate staff of Vice President JD Vance to her pro-consumer bent, she’s proven she’ll be prudent and effective.

In her recent confirmation hearing, Slater made it clear that she will bring the DOJ back to its evidence-based approach of targeting companies that have truly harmed competition rather than those who are merely scapegoated for macroeconomic conditions. Adherence to the facts and the law will improve antitrust enforcement, allowing the department’s staff to focus their talents where they belong — on cheaters.

I believe in strong antitrust enforcement. As a lawmaker, I often joined bipartisan coalitions to encourage it when warranted. That legitimate enforcement of antitrust laws is impaired when overreach becomes the rage. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened under the Biden-Harris administration.

For example, as Fox News recently highlighted, the Biden DOJ recently went after Visa’s debit card network. Are we really supposed to believe that not enough companies are competing in the debit card space? With tokenization and decentralized finance tools spreading like Georgia Kudzu, actions like this strain credibility. More likely, the Biden-Harris administration needed to deflect blame for inflation, so Visa became a political “whipping boy.”

The Biden DOJ also sued property management software, blaming them for higher housing costs. Why blame supply chain issues, restrictive zoning laws, and high regulatory costs when you can just blame the software that told the American people about the rising costs of Biden’s economy, I guess?

Gail Slater can fix it. In her confirmation hearing, she said she will prioritize “surgical enforcement” over reckless attacks on innovative businesses. Instead of wielding antitrust law as a blunt instrument to reshape entire industries like the Biden Antitrust Division did, she will deploy it only as a “precision tool”—intervening only where there is clear, demonstrable evidence of consumer harm. And in those cases, Gail Slater will be a warrior for consumers. By removing so many false positive cases off the Antitrust Division docket, Slater will have significantly more time to devote to the most pressing threats to free speech and collusive corporate behavior, of which there remain plenty.

For example, Slater stated in her confirmation hearing that she will pay significant attention to Google. This is great news for the conservatives who have long argued that the company, as the dominant force in online search and digital advertising, has used its power to marginalize conservative perspectives, including by manipulating search algorithms, demonetizing conservative content on YouTube, and restricting access to conservative news outlets. Google could likely resolve many of these concerns by remediating the censorship it has allowed. Of course, putting the One America News Network on YouTubeTV would be a great start!

Another area of enforcement that Slater highlighted as a prime example of antitrust violations deserving DOJ scrutiny is the issue of group boycotts against conservative businesses. We’ve seen the coordinated exclusion of conservative media outlets from advertising platforms through entities like the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) and NewsGuard. We’ve also seen financial institutions denying services to firearm manufacturers and faith-based organization.

It is clear that when dominant players in an industry collude to exclude or financially strangle disfavored businesses, competition is not just distorted — it is intentionally sabotaged. This represents precisely the kind of collusive conduct that antitrust law was designed to address — and Slater’s DOJ will make sure these cases are treated with the seriousness they deserve.

As you can see, Slater’s strategy is not to avoid enforcement — it’s to make enforcement more effective. By concentrating on cases of monopolization and exclusionary practices, the DOJ can achieve more successes and stronger legal outcomes.

This kind of focused enforcement incentivizes better behavior and compliance from industry, too. When businesses know that the DOJ will act decisively where real harm exists, they are more likely to be better corporate citizens with consumer protection top of mind.

This is the antitrust policy America needs — one that fosters innovation, consumer choice, and economic growth while holding genuinely bad actors accountable. The Senate should confirm her immediately.

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Matt Gaetz is a former U.S. congressman from Florida who served on the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, including the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government and the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law. He is also a former Attorney General nominee from President Donald J. Trump. Presently, Gaetz is the host of The Matt Gaetz Show on One America News Network.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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Why The Senate Must Confirm Gail Slater As DOJ Antitrust Czar