With President-elect Joe Biden reportedly leaning toward nominating a former Google and Amazon attorney to head the Justice Department’s antitrust division, a coalition of dozens of progressive advocacy groups representing millions of Americans is pressuring the incoming president to immediately change course and embrace the growing push to dramatically reduce the power of monopolistic corporations.

“As you prepare to take office, we urge you to avoid appointing to key antitrust enforcement positions individuals who have served as lawyers, lobbyists, or consultants for Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google,” reads a letter (pdf) dated January 18 and signed by Public Citizen, the American Economic Liberties Project, Accountable Tech, and 37 other organizations.

“Instead, we encourage you to appoint experienced litigators or public servants who have recognized the dangers of, rather than helped to exacerbate, these corporations’ market power,” the letter continues. “American democracy is in crisis, and it is in some ways a result of social media corporations who have killed local newspapers, and structured their business models to engage, radicalize, and addict users so they can monopolize ad markets.”

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While the progressive groups’ Monday letter does not name either Hesse or Arteaga, the organizations make clear that they oppose potential nominees with “ties to dominant corporations in the industries they will be tasked with overseeing—particularly in regard to the technology sector.”

Zephyr Teachout, an associate professor of law at Fordham University and a prominent critic of tech monopolies, echoed that message in an interview with The Prospect.

“Bringing in anybody from Big Tech to a leadership role in antitrust is a political, policy, and managerial disaster,” Teachout said. “We know how the revolving door works. The ideology of big companies shapes the ideology of government… Nobody out there thinks Obama’s administration was strong on antitrust. There’s no need to go back to a weak, ineffective regime.”