One of President Donald Trump’s top regulators is raising the temperature on Silicon Valley.
Makan Delrahim, who heads the Justice Department’s antitrust division, has spent months laying out a case for greater scrutiny of the country’s powerful technology industry, making the argument in speeches from Chicago to Rome.
He faces an early test Tuesday when a federal judge rules on his first big action, a lawsuit to block the $85 billion merger between AT&T and Time Warner. The Trump administration’s argument, that the deal could stifle competition and raise prices for consumers, is a departure from the traditional GOP hands-off approach to business — and Delrahim is making it clear that the tech industry’s practices are under his microscope as well.