2024 presidential election: the pragmatist’s guide

It’s easy to look at a gridlocked legislature or unpredictable judicial decisions and feel like American presidential elections don’t matter. What’s the point of getting individual in the White home if they can’t get government on their desk to sign or veto and courts can shut down their all move? Politicians always break their promises, goes the cynical — and frequently reasonable — grumble. Why pay attention in the first place?

In many respects, the president is simply a figurehead, but the office of the presidency is a occupation with a concrete description and very circumstantial levers of power that connect to many of the areas The Verge covers. For these issues and more, whoever wins on November 5th will set a direct course for the next 4 years and possibly longer.

Most significantly, the president appoints executive branch personnel, specified as heads of independent agencies, who then go on to set and enforce policy on antitrust, broadband, and climate change. There’s a direct chain of origin and effect between Joe Biden taking office and the national Trade Commission forcing gyms to let you cancel your membership, due to the fact that Biden appointed a circumstantial individual known to be tough on consumer protections; similarly, Republican control of the national Communications Commission under erstwhile president Donald Trump resulted in the end of national net neutrality rules, while Democratic control of the FCC under Biden resulted in a revival.

Of course, the return of net neutrality is on hold due to conservative judges, and that’s yet another explicit power the president has — they nominate judges to national courts, a power that has lasting repercussions for all area The Verge covers. (Incidentally, that click-to-cancel regulation has besides been challenged in court.) another circumstantial powers encompass pardons, immigration, and abroad policy, including everything from war to global trade and tariffs.

There are besides more nebulous powers that the president holds. Although the White home does not control the budget — that’s a power reserved for legislature — the president submits a budget proposal for the executive branch, which impacts the national government’s priorities in a given year. And even though the president does not make laws, they will nevertheless play a large function in what kind of laws will pass — or will at least effort to pass — in Congress.

As president, Donald Trump or Kamala Harris will aid find the future of electrical vehicles, ecological disasters, and net infrastructure in the US and, in any cases, the full world. They’ll form how Silicon Valley holds and wields power over consumers. More broadly, they’ll play a function in whether the government can address these kinds of questions at all.

Neither Trump nor Harris has detailed everything they’ll do in office. Harris hasn’t said whether she’ll keep key figures like FTC Chair Lina Khan. Parsing Trump’s myriad long-winded and contradictory statements is simply a occupation unto itself. And there are lingering questions about how closely Trump could hew to task 2025: a technically unrelated series of recommendations by the Heritage Foundation that’s linked powerfully to Trump’s own campaign. The proposals in task 2025 could gut or destruct parts of the strategy we have now.

By the same token, neither candidate’s erstwhile terms in office are a precise blueprint for their future plans. Harris evidently wasn’t the key decision-maker in the Biden administration. Trump is expected to dramatically weaken the institutions that checked his power during his first term, stopping actions that ranged from a sweeping immigration ban to an effort to overturn the 2020 election results. If we’re looking for clues about the direction of a Harris or Trump administration, though, the candidates’ own words, past actions, and track records as elected officials are reasonable guideposts.

The topics below aren’t the only ones that substance to Verge authors and readers. But they’re pressing issues that will find what kinds of stories you’ll be reading here in the coming years as a direct consequence of whoever takes office in January 2025.

Harris: “​​We know that we can actually deal with this issue. The young people of America care profoundly about this issue. And I am arrogant that as vice president over the last 4 years, we have invested $1 trillion in a clean energy economy while we have besides increased home gas production to historical levels.” – presidential debate, September 10th, 2024

Trump: “The biggest threat is not global warming, where the ocean’s going to emergence one, one-eighth of an inch over the next 400 years. The large — and you’ll have more oceanfront property, right? The biggest threat is not that. The biggest threat is atomic warming, due to the fact that we have 5 countries now that have crucial atomic power, and we gotta not let anything to happen with stupid people like Biden.” – interview on X with Elon Musk, August 13th, 2024

The president appoints key regulatory personnel, including the heads of the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and has the power to place scientists or skeptics in key leadership roles. The president besides proposes yearly budgets for these agencies.

As the world’s leading oil and gas maker and the biggest historical polluter of carbon dioxide emissions, America’s diplomatic cooperation, as well as actual action or inaction on climate change, has global consequences. The president has the authority to make treaties for the United States, giving them control over whether the country joins global agreements on climate change specified as the Paris agreement. Should the US stay in the Paris agreement, the next administration will be tasked with submitting an updated climate action plan by early next year.

The next administration will besides be tasked with continuing the distribution of funds from the Inflation simplification Act (IRA), which was passed in 2022. The IRA includes $369 billion in spending on clean energy and climate action, which is expected to cut US greenhouse gas emissions by about 40 percent by 2030.

The Trump administration rolled back more than 100 environmental regulations in the US and isolated the country from global climate negotiations. Trump weakened rules meant to rein in contamination from power plants and transportation, the 2 sectors that produce the most greenhouse gas emissions in the US. He put fossil fuel lobbyists in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency and stacked the US ultimate Court with justices whose deregulatory agenda has made it harder for national agencies to crack down on pollution.

Trump has said that he would “rescind all unspent funds under the misnamed Inflation simplification Act.” He has besides said he’d retreat the US from the landmark Paris agreement, which he briefly did during his first word in office. If Trump follows the recommendations in task 2025, he could gut key agencies liable for regulating greenhouse gas emissions and studying the effects of climate change so that there are tools in place, like updated flood maps, to aid Americans adapt.

Harris’ environmental track evidence precedes her word as vice president, stretching back to lawsuits she filed to hold polluters accountable as California’s lawyer general. She’s been comparatively mum about climate change on the run trail, however, as she courts key swing states. That includes Pennsylvania, which produces more gas than any another state aside from Texas — much of which comes from fracking. As California’s lawyer general, Harris filed suit against the Obama administration to halt offshore fracking but now says she would not support a ban on fracking as president.

The Biden administration has pledged to reduce the nation’s greenhouse gas contamination by at least 50 percent from 2005 levels by the end of the decade under the Paris climate accord. The keystone government that gets the US most of the way there is the IRA. Harris has regularly touted her function in helping pass the IRA as well as the legislation’s success in creating jobs and boosting energy production.

Harris: “As President, she will direct her Administration to crack down on anti-competitive practices that let large corporations jack up prices and undermine the competition that allows all businesses to thrive while keeping prices low for consumers” – 2024 run site

Trump: “Google has been very bad. They’ve been very irresponsible and I have a feeling Google is going to be close to shut down due to the fact that I don’t think legislature is going to take it, I truly don’t think so. Google should be careful.” – interview with Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, August 2nd, 2024

The White home nominates 2 of the country’s most crucial antitrust watchdogs: the assistant lawyer general for the Justice Department’s antitrust division (currently Jonathan Kanter); and the chair of the national Trade Commission (currently Lina Khan). Not only can they launch investigations and file lawsuits against individual tech companies but they can besides form broader regulatory guidelines, like the rules for when a merger should be blocked. Any national judges who oversee an antitrust suit are besides presidentially appointed — albeit, obviously, not all by the current president.

That said, these officials must be confirmed by the legislature before they can take office. Agency policies can be changed by a future administration. And legislature would gotta pass fresh laws to change the fundamentals of antitrust law, like the much-criticized “consumer harm” standard.

The Trump administration made any efforts to attack tech giants. Following a general investigation of respective companies, Trump’s FTC and DOJ, respectively, sued Facebook (now Meta) and Google in late 2020. But the Trump administration’s antitrust work was frequently mixed up with Trump’s individual anger at the expected liberal bias of tech companies, which produced confounding results like a demand that agencies rewrite speech law. During this election cycle, he’s promised to prosecute Google for “only” showing “bad stories” about him.

Biden’s appointment of Khan and Kanter put 2 of large tech’s biggest critics in high-level government positions. Kanter’s DOJ argued the Google search antitrust suit filed under Trump, leading to arguably Google’s biggest US legal defeat. The DOJ and FTC besides filed many suits against a scope of tech companies, including a DOJ complaint against Google’s ad tech dominance, an FTC monopoly suit against Amazon, and (failed) attempts to halt acquisitions by Microsoft and Meta. The administration has gone after tech-adjacent businesses like Live Nation-Ticketmaster and signaled stricter merger scrutiny as well.

Harris hasn’t signaled how closely she would hew to Biden’s way here — including whether she’ll keep Khan around. She was relatively quiet on antitrust during her time as a senator. But with respective of the cases above inactive brewing, it’s an issue she likely won’t be able to avoid.

Harris: Harris has not spoken late on net neutrality.

Trump: Trump has not spoken late on net neutrality.

The national Communications Commission has 5 commissioners, including 1 chair. Each must be appointed by a president and confirmed by the Senate, but then goes on to service a word of 5 years. The chair usually resigns erstwhile there is simply a fresh president, who then appoints individual of their own choosing. A maximum of 3 commissioners may come from the same party.

The math-minded will realize what these rules mean, generally: erstwhile the president is simply a Democrat, the FCC is 3-2 in favour of Democrats; under a Republican, the commission is 3-2 in favour of Republicans.

The FCC does many things, but most importantly, the FCC makes regulations that affect net service providers, telecoms, and how broadband access subsidies are used. The most celebrated among these regulations: net neutrality.

While neither candidate has spoken straight to the issue of net neutrality during this campaign, due to the structure of the agency, the very fresh past of the FCC is simply a good indication of what would happen under either candidate.

Almost immediately after Trump’s election in 2016, FCC commissioner Ajit Pai signaled a strong interest in overturning the net neutrality regulation that was established during the Obama administration. Trump tapped him to become the fresh FCC chair, and the remainder is history. Despite the policy’s tremendous popularity among average people, in late 2017 the FCC voted 3-2 along organization lines to kill net neutrality.

When Biden became president, Pai — as is tradition — resigned his seat, and Biden appointed politician Jessica Rosenworcel as the fresh chair. He besides nominated the legendary open net advocate Gigi Sohn as a 3rd Democratic commissioner. The legislature stalled on Sohn’s appointment, yet managing to kill her nomination. The FCC remained deadlocked until 2023, erstwhile Anna Gomez was sworn in. In April of this year, the FCC yet voted — 3-2, along organization lines — to restore net neutrality.

At the moment, the net neutrality regulation is on hold, blocked by an appeals court as a direct consequence of a ultimate Court decision this summer. In Loper Bright v. Raimondo, the court’s conservative supermajority, which is stacked with Trump-nominated justices, overturned longstanding precedent and kneecapped regulatory agencies like the FCC.

Harris: “Millions of children ride on diesel school buses daily, breathing toxic fumes that can harm their health. This week, we announced nearly $1 billion to fund electrical and low-emission school buses across the nation—an investment in our children, their health, and their education.” – tweet, January 12th, 2024

Trump: “I will end the electrical vehicle mandate on day one, thereby saving the US car manufacture from complete obliteration.” – speech at the Republican National Convention, July 19th, 2024

Trump: “I’m for electrical cars. I should be because, you know, Elon endorsed me very strongly. So I have no choice.” – speech at a rally in Atlanta, Georgia, August 3rd, 2024

One of the main ways the executive branch can influence the kind of car you buy is through tailpipe rules. The Environmental Protection Agency regulates how much contamination the car manufacture is allowed to spew into the atmosphere. By setting tighter limits, the agency can effectively force the manufacture to sale more environmentally friendly vehicles — or hazard paying steep fines for noncompliance.

The executive branch can besides incentivize consumers by offering taxation credits to bring down the cost of vehicles that are pricier but produce little pollution. It can spend payer money on building out the EV charging infrastructure and investing in another alternate fuel sources like hydrogen. And it can offer taxation breaks to manufacturers to retrofit factories for battery production.

It can besides do the other of all of that: loosen contamination rules; destruct favorable taxation breaks; and slow rotation (or cancel) infrastructure improvements. Doing so would send an tremendous signal to automakers that they can keep polluting as usual.

When he was president, Trump did everything in his power to forestall the inevitable emergence of electrical vehicles. He rolled back regulations passed under the Obama administration to force automakers to produce less-polluting vehicles. He tried to revoke California’s authority to set its own emissions standards. And he championed a plan to rewrite the taxation code to destruct credits for EV purchases.

And yet EVs continued to sale at evidence numbers, an indication that marketplace forces were having more influence over consumer demands than Trump’s policy decisions. erstwhile Biden took office, most of those efforts were reversed. But even before the Biden administration could pass its first EV-friendly policy, EV sales took off like a rocket before yet flatlining.

Still, the Biden administration saw EVs as a crucial part of its plan to fight climate change. Biden directed the Environmental Protection Agency to pass new tailpipe emanation standards to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 55 percent by 2032. He passed new taxation credits for EVs that were made in North America or by its trade partners, utilizing parts and battery components sourced from the same allies. He poured billions of dollars into EV charging infrastructure and battery manufacturing, and he did the same for trucks and another heavy-duty vehicles.

Harris has promised to keep most of Biden’s policies in place, but she has responded to criticism from Trump that she would “force” consumers to buy costly EVs by vowing to never ban gas car sales.

Harris: “She’s going to support policies that guarantee that emerging technologies and that kind of manufacture can proceed to grow.” – message from elder run advisor Brian Nelson to Bloomberg, August 21st, 2024

Trump: “If crypto is going to specify the future, I want it to be mined, minted, and made in the USA. It’s going to be. It’s not going to be made anywhere else. And if Bitcoin is going to the moon — as we say, it’s going to the moon — I want America to be the nation that leads the way.” – 2024 Bitcoin Conference speech, July 27th, 2024

Trump: “On day one, I will fire Gary Gensler and appoint a fresh SEC chair.” – 2024 Bitcoin Conference speech, July 27th, 2024

The main thing a president does to make policy is appoint personnel. erstwhile it comes to crypto policy, the key function is that of the chair of the SEC, who is presently the much-embattled Gary Gensler. Trump has promised to fire Gensler “on day one” and install individual more friendly to crypto, specified as Robinhood’s Dan Gallagher.

Whether the president can actually “fire” Gensler is simply a more complicated legal question than 1 would think. But regardless, Trump most likely would not actually be firing Gensler. By tradition, an outgoing president directs political appointees like Gensler to submit their resignation sometime between Election Day and mid-December, leaving the next president the choice to accept that resignation and install their own pick. (Trump broke with that tradition in 2020, refusing to send out a call for resignations until the day after the January 6th insurrection.)

Harris hasn’t been especially clear about what she’ll do, but her run adviser, Brian Nelson, was active in a Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) proposal that raised crypto manufacture hackles.

Though Trump is now courting crypto enthusiasts, he oversaw policies during his word in office that were frequently hostile to the emerging tech. “I am not a fan of Bitcoin and another Cryptocurrencies, which are not money, and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air. Unregulated Crypto Assets can facilitate unlawful behavior, including drug trade and another illegal activity,” Trump tweeted in 2019, in what the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance called a “thunderous” denunciation.

His SEC didn’t print much guidance, although he did nominate commissioner Hester Peirce, known to any as “crypto mom.” What the Trump-era SEC did do, though, was say that US securities laws might apply to token sales and then make a new cyber unit for monitoring first coin offerings, among another things. It besides went after celebrities who’d endorsed ICOs, including DJ Khaled and Floyd Mayweather. It rejected outright an attempted Bitcoin exchange-traded fund, or ETF, and requested that any companies withdraw their applications. (A Bitcoin ETF was yet approved under Gary Gensler’s SEC earlier this year.) It sued Kik and Telegram over token sales. Oh, and the SEC besides initiated the Ripple Labs case.

Meanwhile, FinCEN proposed fresh rules for crypto and gave a shortened time period for consequence — which was extended after manufacture outcry. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency published guidance for stablecoins. And most controversially, SEC authoritative William Hinman said that, in his opinion, Ethereum isn’t a security.

Harris’ evidence on crypto is thinner. Though she’s served as the VP of an administration the crypto community has mostly perceived as hostile, she’s signaled that she’s willing to reset policy. Harris recently said she would support a “regulatory framework” for cryptocurrencies and another digital assets to defend buyers.

Harris: “And erstwhile legislature passes a bill to reconstruct reproductive freedom, as president of the United States, I will proudly sign it into law.” – remarks at the Democratic National Convention, August 22nd, 2024

Trump: “When I’m reelected, I will proceed to fight against the demented late-term abortionists in the politician organization who believe in unlimited abortion on request and even executing babies after birth.” – speech at the religion & Freedom Coalition conference, June 22nd, 2024

The most impactful thing either candidate can do is sign whatever government comes out of legislature — either codifying access to abortion as laid out in Roe v. Wade or mandating a national abortion ban. Harris has said she supports eliminating the filibuster to codify Roe. Trump has suggested he’d sign a bill banning abortion after 15 weeks, though he’s besides said he wouldn’t sign a national abortion ban and believes that the issue should be left up to the states.

Even if legislature doesn’t pass government on abortion, the president inactive has discretion over the Food and Drug Administration, which can work to make birth control pills, another contraceptives, and abortion medicine more or little available. Under Trump, the FDA could reverse regulations allowing pharmacies to dispense mifepristone, 1 of the pills utilized for medicine abortions. Trump’s allies — including the Heritage Foundation, the primary architect of task 2025 — have floated the thought of using the Comstock Act to ban the shipping of mifepristone and misoprostol, which would effectively ban medicine abortion everywhere in the country. Trump has not publically commented on whether he’d do this.

The ultimate Court overturned Roe v. Wade during Biden’s term, but it wouldn’t have been possible without Trump’s nomination of 3 justices during his last term.

During his term, Trump reinstated and expanded a global gag regulation on abortion that prevented global organizations from getting US backing if they supply abortion services or mention patients for abortions — even if those services are provided with the organizations’ own funds. Trump besides implemented a domestic gag rule prohibiting taxpayer-funded clinics from making abortion referrals. The regulation besides forbade clinics that get national money from sharing space with abortion providers.

Under Biden’s administration, the FDA has allowed pharmacies to dispense mifepristone, 1 of the pills utilized for medicine abortions. The Biden administration besides required national agencies to issue guidance to guarantee that FDA-approved contraceptive medications are available for free under the Affordable Care Act.

After Roe was overturned, the Biden administration directed the Pentagon to pay for service members’ travel for abortion care. Biden besides issued regulations strengthening privacy protections for people who search abortions, specifically designed to defend women surviving in states where abortion is illegal who travel elsewhere for the procedure.

As California lawyer general, Harris signed onto a brief urging the ultimate Court to uphold reproductive rights. She besides co-sponsored a law that required “crisis pregnancy centers,” which effort to steer women distant from abortion information, to clarify that they are not licensed medical facilities. The ultimate Court later granted an injunction blocking the law, ruling it was likely unconstitutional.

Harris: “Federal agencies have a distinct work to identify and manage AI risks due to the function they play in our society, and the public must have assurance that the agencies will defend their rights and safety.” – VP Fact Sheet, March 28th, 2024

Trump: “We will repeal Joe Biden’s dangerous Executive Order that hinders AI Innovation, and imposes extremist Leftwing ideas on the improvement of this technology. In its place, Republicans support AI improvement rooted in Free Speech and Human Flourishing.” – 2024 Republican organization platform

The president can compose executive orders laying out guidance for the government’s usage of AI, requiring national agencies to set standards for artificially generated content, among another things.

If Harris is elected, it’s likely that the White House’s AI policy will stay consistent with that of Biden’s, who has worked with major companies to limit bad behaviour without actually putting hard policies in place. Harris’ allies have told The New York Times that her stance toward tech regulation will likely be akin to what we’ve seen over the past 4 years. Trump, on the another hand, plans to revoke Biden’s executive order on artificial intelligence, which lays out regulations around generative AI. He may issue AI-related orders of his own, any of which have already been drafted by his allies.

As the commander in chief, the president besides directs the military, which is increasingly reliant on AI-powered defence tech. The America First Policy Institute, led by respective Trump-era administration officials, reportedly wrote an executive order to launch a series of “Manhattan Projects” for fresh military technologies and make “industry-led” agencies to measure AI models. 1 section of the framework is titled “Make America First in AI.” According to The Washington Post, which reviewed the documents, these policies will likely benefit tech companies that already have contracts with the Pentagon, including Anduril, Scale, and the data-mining firm Palantir.

In 2019, Trump signed the “Maintaining American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence” executive order. The order called for a “concerted effort” to advance AI and a “sustained investment” in AI investigation and improvement initiatives, but critics noted that it didn’t allocate any national backing toward these initiatives. A separate executive order issued in 2020 established guidance for national agency adoption of AI.

Trump’s budget plan for fiscal 2021 boosted backing for nondefense AI investigation and development. Shortly before Trump’s word ended in January 2021, the White home Office of discipline and Technology Policy established a National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Office.

The Biden-Harris administration has balanced AI adoption with regulation. The administration has required national agencies to hire chief AI officers, and in 2023, the National discipline Foundation and 10 another national agencies partnered with AI developers focused on democratizing access to research. Earlier this year, Biden and Harris met with CEOs of respective companies — including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google — to discuss AI. The conversation reportedly focused on energy usage, the capacities of grids and data centers, and semiconductor manufacturing.

Harris: “We request to deal with the owner, and we have national safety concerns about the owner of TikTok, but we have no intention to ban TikTok.” – interview on This Week on ABC, March 24th, 2024

Trump: “For all of those that want to save TikTok in America, vote for Trump! The another side’s closing it up. But I’m now a large star on TikTok. We even have TikTok check, and we’re setting records. We’re not doing anything with TikTok, but the another side’s gonna close it up, so if you like TikTok, go out and vote for Trump.” – video on fact Social, September 4th, 2024

It’s not actually clear what anyone can do here, due to the fact that we’re inactive waiting for a key court decision. Thanks to a law signed by Biden earlier this year, TikTok could be just months distant from a ban if its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, doesn’t sale it. But an appeals court is presently deliberating on whether this violates the First Amendment rights of ByteDance and TikTok users. If it does, the odds of anyone meaningfully banning TikTok — or issuing another hugely punitive measures to encourage a ByteDance spinoff — are low.

If US courts uphold the law, ByteDance will be on the hook for either a sale or a ban, but the incoming administration will have options to form that process. The president is liable for determining what counts as a successful divestiture, and the lawyer general can enforce civilian penalties against American platforms that let TikTok to operate if it’s banned. The bill besides allows for pursuing action against another large social networks owned by abroad adversaries — although the category is clearly designed to mainly include TikTok.

The TikTok ban is actually Trump’s idea, from back in 2020. As president, he attempted to block TikTok from the US via a series of executive orders, targeting not only TikTok but besides WeChat and another Chinese apps. His efforts were mostly stymied by courts, however, and the orders were immediately reversed by Biden. He’s warmed to TikTok since then (possibly due to the fact that he’s learned he’s popular on it), but given his overall focus on limiting China’s power, it’s not clear whether that’s a lasting change.

The Biden administration, conversely, ended Trump’s ban effort but later supported a divest-or-ban law. For now, Harris herself is among the various politicians who have utilized TikTok for campaigning while expressing national safety concerns about it. She joined TikTok in July.

Harris: “I applaud the legislature for passing the Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act today. This bipartisan government will aid defend children’s intellectual health, safety, and privacy online.” – tweet, July 30th, 2024

Trump: “If large Tech persists, in coordination with the mainstream media, we must immediately strip them of their Section 230 protections. erstwhile government granted these protections, they created a monster!” – speech at a rally in Greenville, North Carolina, October 15th, 2020

Regulating how kids can usage social media and changing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act — 2 of the biggest fresh speech issues on the table — depend on legislature passing legislation. The Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act’s (KOSPA) tortured legislative past is evidence that that’s not easy. On top of that, courts are dealing with a slew of lawsuits that could render parts of KOSPA unconstitutional, and the First Amendment is set up to make speech regulation very difficult to implement.

The White home and national agencies can apply more subtle pressures, however. An administration can contact social network operators privately or publically to propose certain moderation decisions, and the president can direct agencies (primarily the Justice Department and national Trade Commission) to analyse companies’ behaviour — although they’re barred from outright punishing companies for speech they dislike, which would constitute jawboning. Presidents besides appoint the judges who decide complicated speech lawsuits.

Trump signed FOSTA-SESTA, the first Section 230 carveout in decades, aimed at restricting sex work content. (On top of direct negative effects for sex workers, you can thank it for the demise of Craigslist personals.) He made an abortive effort to hollow out Section 230 further via executive order, but it was quickly revoked by Biden. He frequently accused tech companies of anti-conservative bias in areas like content moderation, implicitly threatening antitrust investigations as payback for perceived slights. erstwhile it comes to broader free speech issues, he’s called to strip broadcast licenses from tv stations over stories he disliked, and he’s attempted to do drastic things like deploy the military on protestors.

Harris has been a longtime proponent of limiting Section 230, part of a long-running focus on “online predators” like sex traffickers. She was 1 of FOSTA-SESTA’s numerous cosponsors while in the Senate, and she was among a group of attorneys general who asked Congress for a carveout like it back in 2013. (The amendment was expected to facilitate taking down Backpage.com, which Harris would play an instrumental role in shuttering.) Harris later said she supported decriminalizing sex work — a position she may or may not inactive hold. But she’s gone on to support bills like the gain IT Act, so her support for Section 230 limits may not have waned.

Beyond 230, the Biden administration was accused of social media jawboning in the case Murthy v. Missouri, which went all the way to the ultimate Court before Biden scored a victory. Harris, however, wasn’t a central player in this saga.

Additional reporting from Jasmine Arielle Ting