Lina Khan

In November 2025, Khan was named as a co-chair of then-New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s (D) transition team. ^{6 7}  

Mamdani Transition Team

In November 2025, Lina Khan was named as a co-chair of then-New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s (D) transition team. Part of her duties reportedly included helping to form the administration’s economic plan in an effort to make New York City more affordable. Other co-chairs of the transition team included president of the United Way of New York City Grace Bonilla; president of the Charles H. Revson Foundation Maria Torres-Springer; and president of New York Foundling Melanie Hartzog. ^{8 9}

The executive director of Mamdani’s transition team was Elana Leopold, and Dean Fuleihan was named as the first deputy mayor. Both Leopold and Fuleihan worked for former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s (D) administration. ⁷

Mamdani was previously a member of the New York State Assembly from 2021 to 2025. He is a member of the Democratic Party and of the Working Families Party and is affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America. ^{10 11}

Federal Trade Commission (FTC)

Khan was the chair of the Federal Trade Commission during the Biden administration. Khan was the youngest person to be appointed as the chair of the FTC; at the time, she was 32 years old. She held the position from June 2021 to January 2025. ⁹  

Khan was chosen as the chair of the FTC in large part for her work in antitrust scholarship. She gained fame in 2017 in part due to her publishing an article arguing that “Amazon was an illegal monopoly,” according to The Intelligencer. ¹²

During her time at the FTC, she brought lawsuits against Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft. She challenged Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of the video game company Activision Blizzard as well as a proposed merger between the companies Kroger and Albertsons. ⁹

Policy Positions

As former Chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Lina Khan called for the regulation of artificial intelligence (AI) under the guise of promoting fair competition and protecting Americans from deceptive practices. She has also claimed that AI tools facilitate automated discrimination across the United States ¹³ and emphasized the importance of diversity for future FTC recruits in a memo to staff following her confirmation by the U.S. Senate. ¹⁴

Under Khan’s leadership, the FTC released a critical race theory-influenced equity action plan and established a Chief Diversity Officer position. FTC’s equity action plan includes equity in consumer protection enforcement, including addressing the concept of alleged algorithmic bias against minority groups. The plan also addresses so-called equity in antitrust enforcement, establishing equity in procurement and contracting, and hiring a Chief Diversity Officer to implement far-left equity principles at the agency. ¹⁵

Controversy

Lina Khan was criticized by a former FTC Commissioner Christine Wilson as having a disregard for the rule of law and due process. ¹⁶

During her time at the FTC, ¹⁷ She was accused of ignoring internal ethics recommendations to recuse herself from several cases such as asking for all communications related to technology entrepreneur Elon Musk’s acquisition of social networking service X (formerly Twitter), and opened an investigation into technology firm OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT. ¹⁸

In July 2023, Khan claimed that U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) attacked FTC career staff as a part of normal Congressional committee hearings, claiming that FTC participation was a targeted campaign of intimidation. ¹⁹

In response to losses in several technology lawsuits, Khan has filled 71 vacancies that have opened at the FTC since 2021 with like-minded lawyers and bureaucrats. ²

An article published by the Intelligencer in December 2023 entitled “Lina Khan’s Rough Year” documented various criticisms of Khan’s leadership style that, combined with struggling high-profile lawsuits against Microsoft and Meta, caused low levels of morale at the FTC. ¹²  

Academic and Policy Career

Khan was an associate professor at Columbia University Law School from 2020 to 2021 prior to joining the FTC. ²⁰ Khan returned to Columbia Law School as an associate professor of law upon her departure from the Federal Trade Commission. ⁴  

From 2019 to 2020, Khan was counsel for the U.S. House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law. In this role, she worked on a Congressional antitrust investigation of technology firms Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook. ²¹ The report, entitled “Investigation of Competition in the Digital Markets,” was widely celebrated and confirmed Khan’s status as “a preeminent voice of what’s been dubbed the ‘New Brandeis’ school of antitrust,” according to Columbia Law School. Khan has also worked as a legal advisor to Democratic Party FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra, ²² as legal director at the left-of-center Open Markets Institute, ^{23 24}  as an open markets program policy analyst at the left-of-center New America, and as a fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. ²⁰

Personal Information

Lina Khan was born in London, England, on March 3, 1989. She received a B.A. from Williams College in 2010 and a J.D. from Yale University Law School in 2017. ¹⁵ She resides in New York City. ²⁵