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“There are no options left” until opening day, a GOP congressional aide said on Monday.
“I don’t think Trump has a lot of options,” said Rachel Bovard, senior director of policy at the Conservative Partnership Institute, a right-wing political advocacy group. “If he issues an executive order, he will simply be overthrown… and the same goes for Republicans. They have no significant power at the moment.
Responding to recent actions by tech companies is still the # 3 priority for Republicans right now, behind sorting out their reaction to the Capitol Hill riots and the brewery impeachment battle, a second aide to the brewery said. GOP Congress. But the aide said the party, traditionally opposed to regulatory burdens on business, lacks a clear consensus on how to move forward on the tech front.
“I don’t think anyone has gathered around a specific response,” the aide said.
It all adds up to a great loss of influence for a party whose lawmakers have fired CEOs from Silicon Valley for numerous hearings in recent years – and for the president whose appointees have filed two major antitrust lawsuits in the past. last fall against Google and Facebook. Washington’s power struggle with Silicon Valley remains alive and well, but the next Democratic Congress and President-elect Joe Biden will largely decide what next.
One of the only potential regulatory avenues left is a regulatory effort that the Federal Communications Communication announced in October, at Trump’s behest, that could restrict legal protections for the online industry. But the latest Trump-era FCC meeting is on Wednesday, and President Ajit Pai said last week he did not plan to talk about it.
Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro took a hit on Pai’s decision. “The ridges are missing in the DC swamp”, he tweeted during the weekend.
Some of the critics of the big tech companies have tried retaliation anyway. Parler filed an antitrust complaint on Monday against Amazon, which had canceled the platform’s web hosting service for what it called a failure to moderate violent rhetoric among its users. Trump supporters called for a protest on Monday morning outside Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco, although local reports said it drew a sparse crowd. An Internet provider in Idaho blocked access to Twitter and Facebook for what it called censorship.
Trump hinted that he might have other stuff up his sleeve. On Friday night, when Twitter permanently suspended his personal and campaign accounts, he said in a White House statement that he was weighing a range of responses, possibly including setting up “our own platform in one. near future”.
But for Republicans whose rule in Washington is ending, the main response has been to cry foul, with some calling on Congress or the executive to act.
“The decisions by Amazon, Google and Apple to block the downloading or use of Talking by their consumers are dangerous,” tweeted Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.). “This blatant monopolistic behavior is designed to end debate and silence the Conservatives.”
Barr added that he “called on the DOJ to open investigations into possible violations of antitrust laws by these tech giants.”
Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), One of the lawmakers leading bipartisan efforts in the House to update U.S. antitrust laws, said GOP officials should direct their anger at the business practices of the companies.
“Big tech companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple have used their monopoly power to censor speech,” he tweeted on Sunday. “Until Republicans understand that antitrust enforcement is the answer, these companies will continue to abuse their power.”
After Amazon announced his withdrawal from Speaking this weekend, Buck tweeted that he would “introduce legislation this Congress to hold Amazon accountable for its anti-competitive behavior.”
Some Republicans have also indicated that they plan to channel their fury into efforts to roll back or revise a crucial legal liability shield for the online industry, known as Section 230.It is the same law as Trump. unsuccessfully demanded last year that Congress repeal failed to gain traction even in the GOP-controlled Senate.
“I am more determined than ever to remove the protections from Section 230 of Big Tech (Twitter) that protect them from prosecution,” Senator Lindsey Graham (RS.C.) tweeted in response to Twitter banning Trump.
But with Democrats ready to lead these negotiations, GOP complaints about ideological biases will have much less influence. Instead, Democrats’ anger in Silicon Valley is primarily driven by issues like political lies, hate speech, and threats of online violence.
Trump’s own efforts to use executive branch powers to hammer down social media companies that allegedly censored Tories have all but ceased, before Republicans even lost the White House and Senate.
The president signed an executive order in May calling on federal agencies to reduce legal protections in Section 230, which protect online platforms from lawsuits regarding content posted by their users and give them ample leeway for it. remove. But neither the FCC nor the Federal Trade Commission took any meaningful action on the demand, and Democrats in Congress rejected the idea of repealing the law.
“I think it needs to be revised, but you can’t repeal it, otherwise you’ll destroy the protections for small businesses and growing entrepreneurs,” House of Commons Speaker Nancy Pelosi said at the meeting. ‘a press conference in December.
Trump’s calls for a complete repeal have also confused some Republicans in Congress, an aide said, as lawmakers on both sides have long pushed to change the law, but not to repeal it.
“The playbook is totally ripped” on section 230, said a congressional aide from the GOP.
The issue of bias is also not likely to be part of the wave of federal and state antitrust cases hitting tech giants – even though defenders of Trump and Parler say the decisions to put them out line are a clear example of silicon abuse. The domination of the Valley market.
For example, the antitrust lawsuit that the Justice Department and 11 states filed against Google in October did not include allegations of ideological discrimination, despite the hopes of some Republicans. In the meantime, state attorneys general have continued to investigate Google’s antitrust concerns with its Play Store – the same app store it launched last week in Talk.
But this multi-state investigation is bipartisan, led by attorneys general from Utah, New York, Tennessee and North Carolina, and states have sought to avoid politically tense aspects of their antitrust complaints. Democratic attorneys general are unlikely to support a lawsuit that makes the removal of Talk a key part of an antitrust case against Google.
One thing that may have to happen before the GOP can really impact the tech giants: Republicans need to agree on how they want to approach corporate behavior, Bovard said, adding that the party had long been divided between factions.
“I think their base is pissed off, quite frankly, they feel like they’ve wasted four years of chest beating, hearings and rhetoric, but no real action,” she said. declared. “So I think the time has come for Republicans to strengthen their political positions, so that the minute they reappear in a position of power, they have a political agenda that they are ready to adopt.
Leah Nylen contributed to this report.
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