Incoming FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson wants to throw trans people under the bus. KOSA would help him do that.

Andrew Ferguson, current FTC commissioner, has been announced as the Trump nominee for the chair of the FTC, to replace Lina Khan. This news comes after a leaked memo circulated to push for his nomination explicitly named that given the position, he would use his power to “fight back against the trans agenda.” 

For so long, the organizations and communities opposed to KOSA have been a broken record. This coalition has warned Congress of exactly this scenario: what a Trump FTC could do with the powers over online speech that KOSA would give the agency, and how in the wrong hands, content vital to LGBTQ communities, abortion seekers, and other marginalized groups would be on the chopping block. The duty of care employed in KOSA incentivizes social media companies to take down content that could be politically targeted, especially given that the current nominee for FTC chair is being positioned as a tool in the incoming administration’s anti-trans agenda. 

Passing KOSA in this moment, knowing the hands it falls into, and the sweeping threats that trans people will face during the incoming Trump administration is a betrayal to the LGBTQ community and a slap in the face to the parents of trans kids who have advocated against this bill and the hundreds of thousands of youth, many of them queer or trans, who have been loud about KOSA’s threat to their communities for years. Even as this memo was leaked, detailing how a Trump FTC will be positioned under Ferguson, members of Congress are pushing to attach KOSA to must-pass end of the year legislation. 

“It is unbelievably insulting that after years of this conversation about KOSA, young queer and trans people are still being gaslit about the harms that this legislation poses to their online communities, especially when an incoming Trump administration has explicitly said they intend to use their power to suppress, criminalize, and target trans people,” said Sarah Philips (she/they), campaigner at Fight for the Future said. “In case anyone is confused about what their goals are, rightwing actors simply wrote it down for all of us in Project 2025, and now this leaked Andrew Ferguson memo. I highly recommend that members of Congress give both of those a read sometime. Not only acting like this is business as usual, but giving even more power to Ferguson to wield against our communities, is mind-boggling. These people have shown us who they are. We should believe them.”