Trump to promote FTC Commissioner Andrew Ferguson to head of agency

President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday announced that he picked a current member of the Federal Trade Commission to head the agency, shifting the department from its current progressive leadership to one more aligned with the incoming president.

Mr. Trump also said he selected Rep. Dan. Bishop, North Carolina Republican, to serve as deputy director for budget at the Office of Management and Budget, making him the latest House member to join the incoming administration.

If confirmed, Mr. Ferguson will take over various antitrust lawsuits and investigations against the tech industry and other powerful sectors that began under Lina Khan, its current chair.

Ms. Kahn, a staunch progressive aggressively challenged Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of video game company Activision Blizzard and filed lawsuits to break up tech giants Amazon and Meta.

In a statement, Mr. Trump lauded Mr. Ferguson as the most “pro-innovation FTC chair in our company’s history.

“Andrew has a proven record of standing up to Big Tech censorship and protecting Freedom of Speech in our Great Country,” he said.

Mr. Ferguson can assume the role of FTC chair immediately upon Mr. Trump’s inauguration because he is already a commissioner. He was nominated in July 2023 and confirmed by voice vote this past March to a term that runs through Sept. 25, 2030.

In his current role, Mr. Ferguson has taken a hard line on tech platforms that he has accused of censoring Americans’ speech online.

“If platforms or advertisers are colluding to suppress free speech in violation of the antitrust laws, the FTC must prosecute them and break up those cartels,” he wrote in a statement earlier this month.

Those comments were shared on social media by Brendan Carr, whom Mr. Trump selected to lead the Federal Communications Commission.

Mr. Bishop will help set Mr. Trump’s cost-cutting agenda at the Office of Management and Budget.

“Dan has been a tireless fighter for our MAGA Movement in the House of Representatives on the Judiciary and Homeland Security Committees. Dan will implement my cost-cutting deregulatory agenda across agencies and root out the weaponized deep state,” Mr. Trump said in a statement.

Before election to Congress, Mr. Bishop served in North Carolina’s state House and Senate and had a 30-year career as a business lawyer.

Mr. Bishop is the fourth House Republican whom Mr. Trump has picked for his administration, whittling away the narrow majority his party will hold in the lower chamber. A fifth Republican, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, was initially chosen to serve as attorney general but withdrew himself from consideration amid sexual-misconduct allegations.