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U.S. Rep. Ken Buck found himself in an unusual place this week, defending his work with Democrats to rein in some of the wealthiest corporations in world history and standing opposite many friends and fellow conservatives in Congress.

The House Judiciary Committee spent much of the week debating and passing a suite of legislation that, taken together, constitutes the largest anti-monopoly effort by Congress in a generation. The legislation is aimed at breaking up four tech giants Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon worth $6 trillion.

This legislation represents a scalpel, not a chainsaw, to deal with the most important aspects of antitrust reform, Buck told the committee Wednesday. Were giving the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission the tools they need to restore the free market, incentivize innovation and give small businesses a fair shot against oligarchs like Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg.

No Republican in Congress has done more this year to label Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon monopolies and to construct a roadmap for breaking them up a crackdown on big businesses more commonly favored by liberals. Buck, who represents the Eastern Plains, has had mixed success convincing his fellow conservatives that helping the government crack down on corporations is best.

Do I like not getting sleep? No. Do I like arguing with my friends? No, Buck said in an interview after two long days of Judiciary Committee hearings, which ended with his bills passing. But do I think this is the right way to do it and do I think that this is really important legislation? I do.

The Houses subcommittee on antitrust (the area of law focused on monopolies) is chaired by Rep. David Cicilline, a Rhode Island Democrat, and Buck is the panels top Republican. After a 16-month investigation by the subcommittee found the four tech giants act like monopolies, to the detriment of small businesses and consumers, Cicilline and Buck introduced six bills to push back.

You cant find two people who are more different than David Cicilline and Ken Buck. If you look at our voting records, I bet we have a similar vote maybe 10% of the time, Buck said.

TheMerger Filing Fee Modernization Act, which Buck is cosponsoring, was introduced in tandem with a fellow Coloradan, Democratic Rep. Joe Neguse of Lafayette. It would force large corporations to pay higher fees when they merge or acquire new companies. That would mean more money forthe Justice Departments Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade Commission.

An earlier version of the bill passed the Senate unanimously, so its the likeliest of the six bills to become law. Its also the least impactful providing more funding without changing the rules of antitrust.

This bill is a clarion call to our regulators, to our enforcement agencies mainly the FTC to step up and do what is necessary to protect our small businesses, to protect innovation, to protect consumers and ultimately, to protect our economy, Neguse said during a House hearing Wednesday.

Some of the other bills go much farther and will require more legislative finesse to turn into law. The Ending Platform Monopolies Act would allow the Justice Department and FTC to break up tech companies that sell their products on platforms they operate, such as Amazon, which sells its products on Amazons marketplace. Another controversial bill, the Platform Competition and Opportunity Act, would prevent the tech giants from acquiring some top competitors.

Another bill would allow users to keep the data they generate on a website, such as Facebook, and take it with them when they close their account, similar to how cell phone numbers are transferable.

By working with Democrats and against big businesses, Buck has found himself on an island with few Republican friends. The loudest critic of the anti-monopoly bills is Rep. Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican and conservative stalwart that Buck calls a political hero of his. The two cofounded the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus and have campaigned together but dont see eye to eye on tech.

Big Tech censors conservatives. These bills dont fix that problem, they make it worse. They dont break up Big Tech. They dont stop censorship, Jordan told the committee Wednesday.

As the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, Jordan holds considerable sway among conservatives and has been putting tremendous pressure on Republicans to oppose the six bills, according to Mike Davis, founder of the Internet Accountability Project, a conservative group critical of Big Tech.

Buck was one of only three Republicans to vote for the American Choice and Innovation Online Act, making it illegal for tech companies to highlight their products over others online, such as Google placing its own websites over competitors when people search on Google.

Buck was one of only two Republicans joined by Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida to support the Ending Platform Monopolies Act on Thursday. The bill passed by the narrowest of margins, 21-20.

Several Republicans said they dont want to give the government more power over businesses. Others defended the Big Tech giants, saying they deserve to dominate their respective marketplaces.

Amazon is gargantuan because consumers have voted, with their dollars every day, that the services provided by Amazon are better than the other alternatives that they have in the marketplace, Rep. Tom McClintock of California said. The moment they decide otherwise, Amazon will shrink and competitors will begin to emerge to fill those gaps. No business can survive by displeasing consumers.

When you have products and services, said Rep. Darrell Issa, also of California, that are becoming less expensive, more pervasive, without government intervention, the market at least is working. We often talk about competition as though competition is inherently good. The consumer getting a better product and a better service and a better deal is the reason we promote competition.

Bucks Republican colleagues in Colorado, Reps. Lauren Boebert and Doug Lamborn, did not respond to requests for comment asking whether they support his bills. They are not members of the Judiciary Committee, so they have not voted on the bills yet.

The legislation will undergo changes over the summer before going to the full House for a vote, which Buck anticipates will occur in September. From there, the bills that have not yet been passed by the Senate will be considered in the upper chamber. Buck and Davis are optimistic.

The era of antitrust amnesty is over, Davis said, and Congressman Ken Buck is the driving force.

Originally posted here:
Ken Buck is staring down Big Tech companies. And powerful people in his political party - The Denver Post

Former Georgia state House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams. AP Photo/Brynn Anderson, File

Trump said that the GOP "might have been better" with Democrat Stacey Abrams as Georgia's governor.

The former president continues to take digs at Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp.

Last year, Kemp rejected Trump's entreaties to overturn President Biden's win in Georgia.

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Former President Donald Trump still has Georgia on his mind.

After Joe Biden narrowly won the state in last year's presidential race, Trump prodded Republican Gov. Brian Kemp to convene the conservative-led state legislature in order to overturn the results and pressured GOP Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find" additional votes to ensure a statewide win.

Trump's entreaties were rejected, but he has continued to attack both men for what he says was an unfair election process in the state, withholding an endorsement of Kemp in his 2022 reelection campaign and backing Rep. Jody Hice in a Republican secretary of state primary over Raffensperger.

Read more: How Trump could use his relationship with Putin and Russia to skirt prosecution back in the USA

In 2018, Kemp's Democratic opponent was former state House Minority Leader and voting-rights activist Stacey Abrams.

The race was highly competitive, with Kemp edging out Abrams, by 1.4 percentage points, 50.2%-48.8%, the smallest margin in a Georgia governor's race since 1966.

Trump was a staunch supporter of Kemp in his first race, but that goodwill has since dried up.

During his first post-presidential rally in Ohio on Saturday, the former president suggested that Abrams might have been a more preferable choice for the GOP than Kemp.

"By the way, we might have been better if she did win for governor of Georgia, if you want to know the truth," Trump said. "We might have had a better governor if she did win."

Trump has not endorsed any of the lesser-known candidates running against Kemp in the GOP gubernatorial primary, but the former president could play a decisive role in the immediate future of the state party.

Read the original article on Business Insider

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Trump suggests that Republicans might have been better off if Democrat Stacey Abrams was Georgia's governor instead of Brian Kemp - Yahoo News

So I was reading along through Andy Shers Times-Free Press story about the ACLU helping a couple of Tennessee business owners sue to stop the implementation of the anti-trans bathroom law (which we also covered on Friday). I was thinking, Oh hey, nice, Bob Bernstein is in on this, and, Yep, thats some bigoted stuff coming from the state, when I get to this part:

Rep. Tim Rudd, R-Murfreesboro, the House sponsor, said in a statement, "The law also does not alter, limit or affect a business or a person's free speech. The law does not require property owners to guard the entrance to a restroom, ascertain whether or not someone is transgender, nor prohibit anyone from entering or using restroom facilities. The law is in fact very limited in scope. It simply requires a warning sign to be placed at the entrance of a restroom that allows the opposite biological sex to enter that has multiple stalls and allows multiple people in at the same time. Nothing more than that. Women and parents of a female child have a right to know if a man could be waiting on them in a restroom. They also have a right to know if a property owner's policies could give cover to sexual predators waiting to pray upon women and children."

What the hell kind of men does Tim Rudd know? Seriously. As the daughter of a man and the sister of some men and the aunt of some men and boys, and as someone who has peed in the same bathroom at the same time as cis men, trans men and drag queens, I have never once observed them or their friends waiting in the bathroom to sexually assault anyone. Maybe the real issue here is that Tim Rudd needs better friends.

Im sure someone somewhere once did wait in a restroom to try to assault a stranger, but its very, very rare. Most people are sexually assaulted by someone they know perhaps a trusted basketball coach, or a teacher, or a minister, or their dads friend, or their friend or their dad. And Im not sure what sign is going to fix that problem.

And if men's bathrooms are such a danger if rapists just skulk around bathrooms waiting to assault people why arent there more bathroom rapes in mens bathrooms? Men are so horny and daring that theyll prey on women and children in a public restroom, but not so dangerous that other men have to be concerned? I find that very hard to believe.

These signs are just about forcing bigoted speech on business owners and not actually about protecting women and children. Its easy to see if you just swap out the wording. Imagine this:

I have no doubt people would have liked signs like this being posted in public restrooms at the end of segregation. Its still wrong. People are different than you. Its fine. Literally no one is being hurt by transgender people peeing in Fidos.

Heres who is being hurt. Say youre a father traveling with your small daughter. She has to pee. Its an emergency. You pull into a rest area. Which bathroom do you take her into? Or say that youre the female caregiver of a man with multiple sclerosis. Can you not go into the mens bathroom with him without causing a Republican scandal in this state? The men I have most often seen in womens bathrooms are of an age where I feel very confident that their prostates had decided they couldnt wait for the mens room to open up. Judging by the age of a lot of our legislators, this is a problem they will face. And we could choose to just be compassionate and mind our own business.

If you need to be warned before you pee in public that people who are different than you exist and sometimes also need to pee, maybe you should just stay home instead of making the rest of us wish you had.

Go here to read the rest:
Tennessee Republicans' Ongoing Bathroom Bigotry | Pith in the Wind | nashvillescene.com - Nashville Scene

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Just a few days after the polls closed in Floridas 2018 general election, Rick Scott, then the states governor, held a press conference outside the governors mansion and made a stunning accusation.

Scott was running for a US Senate seat, and as more votes were counted, his lead was dwindling. Targeting two of the states most Democratic-leaning counties, Scott said there was rampant fraud.

Every person in Florida knows exactly what is happening. Their goal is to mysteriously keep finding more votes until the election turns out the way they want, he said, directing the states law enforcement agency to investigate. I will not sit idly by while unethical liberals try to steal this election from the great people of Florida.

Scott eventually won the election, and his comments eventually faded. But the episode offered an alarming glimpse of the direction the Republican party was turning.

A little over two years later, fanned repeatedly by Donald Trump throughout 2020, the myth of a stolen American election has shifted from a fringe idea to one being embraced by the Republican party. The so-called big lie the idea that the election was stolen from Trump - has transformed from a tactical strategy to a guiding ideology.

For years, civil rights groups and academics have raised alarm at the way Republican officials have deployed false claims of voter fraud as a political strategy to justify laws that restrict access to the ballot. But the way Republicans have embraced the myth of a stolen election since Trumps loss in November, is new, they say, marking a dangerous turn from generalized allegations of fraud to refusing to accept the legitimacy of elections.

Supporting the idea of a stolen election has become a new kind of litmus test for Republican officeholders.

Republican election officials in Georgia and Nevada who have stood up for the integrity of the 2020 election results have been denounced by fellow Republicans. Republican lawmakers across the US have made pilgrimages to visit and champion an unprecedented inquiry into ballots in Arizona, which experts see as a thinly veiled effort to undermine confidence in the election. One hundred and forty-seven Republicans in the US House voted to overturn the results of the November election absent any evidence of voter fraud and after government officials said the 2020 election was the most secure in American history.

Voter suppression is not new, the battle lines have been drawn over that for quite some time. But this new concern about election subversion is really worrisome, said Richard Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, who studies election rules.

The willingness to deny election results comes amid heightened concern that Republicans are maneuvering to take over offices that would empower them to block the winners of elections from being seated. Several Republicans who have embraced the idea that the election was stolen are running to serve as secretaries of state, the chief election official in many places, a perch from which they would exert enormous power over elections, including the power to hold up certifying races.

I do think its a relatively new phenomenon, unfortunately, and disturbing, said Edward Foley, a law professor at the Ohio State University who has written extensively about the history of contested elections in the US. Weve had disputed elections in the past, but weve never had the denial of the basic mathematical reality of counting votes.

The effort to undermine the election results appears to be working. A majority of Republicans, and a quarter of all Americans, believe Trump is the true president, according to a May Reuters/Ipsos poll. Sixty-one per cent of Republicans believe the election was stolen from Trump, the same poll showed.

Rohn Bishop, the chairman of the local Republican party in Fond du Lac county in Wisconsin, said it was damaging to have such widespread uncertainty about the results of elections and was generally supportive of efforts to restore confidence. But he noted his dismay that Republicans continued to push lies about the election. He noted that the Republican party of Waukesha county, a bastion of GOP voters, recently hosted a screening of a film backed by Mike Lindell, a Trump ally and prominent election conspiracist, that pushed false claims of fraud.

We need to win back those suburban Republican voters that Waukesha county used to turn out, not keep poking them in the eye by forcing down their throat more of this election stuff, Trump stuff they dont want to hear, he said. I dont know why its so hard for Republican elected officials to tell the base the truth. That would help.

Alexander Keyssar, a Harvard historian who studies elections, noted that there was a long history in America of using fraud as an excuse to push back on gains in enfranchisement among Black and other minority voters. White voters are becoming a smaller share of the US electorate, data shows. There are definitely echoes of this now, he said. There has always been an inclination to see new voters of different ethnicities or appearance as agents, or unwitting agents of fraud.

Mac Stipanovich, a longtime Republican operative in Florida who is now retired, said the lies about the election provided a kind of cover for those unable to concede they were a shrinking minority in the population.

In the past, party elders, party leaders exploited the crazies in order to win elections and then largely ignored them after the elections, he said. What has happened since then is that Trump opened Pandoras box and let them out. He not only let them out, he affirmed them and provoked them. And so now theyre running wild and they are legitimatizing these delusions.

While there have been other nastily contested elections in US history President Rutherford B Hayes was labeled Rutherfraud and His Fraudulency after the contested election in 1876 both Keyssar and Foley said it was difficult to find a comparison to what was happening now.

Weve never had that. Weve never had McCarthyism-style fabrication of a conspiracy theory applied to the process of counting votes I would say its especially dangerous when its the electoral process, Foley said. Because its the electoral process that ultimately allows for self-government. When the mechanisms of self-government kind of get taken over by a kind of McCarthyism, thats very troubling.

Read more:
How Republicans came to embrace the big lie of a stolen election - The Guardian

Boeing Co.s political action committee resumed giving to federal candidates and committees in May after a three-month pause, including donations to members who opposed certifying the 2020 election results for President Joe Biden.

The aerospace giant joined dozens of other companies on Jan. 13 in announcing that they would suspend and review their political action committee donations in the wake of the Jan. 6 riot by supporters of Donald Trump.

But beginning on May 3, Boeing gave out nearly $900,000 to political committees and candidates, according to its latest filing with the Federal Election Commission.

Among sitting lawmakers who received $5,000, the maximum amount a PAC can give per election, were House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California, Minority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Representative Vicky Hartzler of Missouri. Representative Jack Bergman, a Michigan Republican who also voted against certification, got $2,500.

All four were among the 147 Republicans who voted against certifying Electoral College votes for Biden in alignment with Trumps false claim that the 2020 presidential election was rigged. Five people were killed as a result of the mob storming the Capitol.

More from Election

Earlier: Wall Street Looks to Quietly Reopen Wallets for Politicians

We will continue to carefully evaluate our giving to ensure that we support candidates who support our business and policy priorities, said Boeing spokeswoman Chris Singley. She said the company also takes into account the interests of its customers, its diverse workforce and the communities in which it operates when considering its political contributions.

Boeings PAC also gave $25,000 to the Republican Attorneys General Association. An affiliate of the group, the Rule of Law Defense Fund, helped organize protests on Jan. 6 that preceded the riot, paying for robocalls urging Trump supporters to attend the Stop the Steal rally.

The PACs biggest donations went to the Republican Governors Association, which got $200,000, and the Senate and House arms of the Democratic and Republican parties, each of which got $105,000 -- the maximum that a PAC can give to a party committee per year.

Democratic politicians also received contributions. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Whip Jim Clyburn each got $5,000 for their primary campaigns, while Majority Leader Steny Hoyer got $5,000 for his primary race and $5,000 for the general election.

Boeings PAC and employees were the 77th largest source of campaign contributions in the 2020 election cycle according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which studies political donations. The Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, was the biggest recipient with $790,000. Biden was second, receiving $726,148 followed by Trump, who got $602,962.

(Updates with Boeing statement, in sixth paragraph.)

Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg Terminal.

Excerpt from:
Boeing PAC Resumes Giving to Republicans Who Opposed Certifying Election - Bloomberg