No one was sure what a Kamala Harris presidency would mean for Lina Khan, the controversial chairman of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) appointed by President Joe Biden. But with Harris also on the way out, and Republicans intent on taking the White House, we can probably say goodbye — and say goodbye — to Khan’s reign.

With Khan at the helm of the agency, the FTC has taken an aggressive stance against mergers and purchases, year aggressive attitude against great technology companies and a strange view of agency purpose and authority.

“Khan framed several regulatory issues in the dramatic terms of someone facing an emergency that does not await congressional action,” RECORDED Kevin Frazier, assistant professor at St. Thomas University College of Law, in a recent Reason piece. But “the FTC does not have emergency powers. Congressional inaction does not expand the FTC’s jurisdiction. Judicial opposition does not excuse the FTC’s experimentation with new enforcement theories. Even economic turmoil doesn’t change anything about when and how the FTC can perform. his term ended”.

That finite mandate was something Khan and her supporters seemed intent on consistently chipping away at.

Even before he was named chairman of the FTC, Khan was one of the leaders of a strange—and often annoying—school of thought on antitrust law. Known as neo-Brandeisians, new structuralists, or sometimes (by critics) as “hipster antitrust,” this school rejected. the idea that the goal of antitrust should be to protect consumer welfare. Instead, the neo-Brandeisians were concerned with an abstract promotion of competition—a fixation leading to the belief that business getting too bighis dominant success was in itself something to be feared and stopped.

The real harm to consumers has been proven; proving that the practices harmed a big business’s competitors was the new game. But under these rules, doing anything that successful businesses do—including innovating, bundling products for improved efficiency, and acquiring new products—could be considered part of an antitrust violation.

As you can imagine, this is a philosophy that could prove bad not only for business, but for consumers as well.

Also proven legally questionable. Under Khan’s leadership, the FTC engaged in a series of enforcement fiascos and amassed an impressive list of court losses. This was the foundation of Khan and her new ideas about antitrust law: they are often at odds with modern legal standards for how to interpret antitrust cases and current conceptions of the FTC’s proper role.

But that may have been short-lived, as Khan and the Biden administration began remaking rules and regulations (such as those surrounding mergers and acquisitions) to better fit their worldview. So the sooner Khan and other neo-Brandeisians lose power, the better for free markets and consumer welfare.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that Trump’s FTC picks will be any better. Today’s Republican Party actually has adopted some of the anti-free market ideas beloved by many Democrats, and almost no one embodies that trend better than incoming Vice President JD Vance. Vance has even complimented Khansaying last February that he considered her “one of the few people in the Biden administration who I think is doing a pretty good job.”

So it isn’t total inconceivable that the incoming Trump/Vance administration could keep Khan around. But that would give tacit credit to Biden, and I can’t see Trump agreeing to that. Nor is it that Trump will pass up an opportunity to install someone he perceives as his own loyalist.

Trump’s FTC pick will almost certainly come with its own problems, and some of those may even mirror Khan’s problems. The previous Trump administration was also hostile to tech companies, though not as aggressively in using antitrust law against them as the Biden administration was.

But for now, let’s enjoy the few political comforts we can and celebrate the fact that Khan — and her brand of antitrust hype — probably aren’t long for Washington.