“There are just no options left” before the inauguration day, one GOP assistant said on Monday.
“I do not think Trump has many options,” said Rachel Bovard, senior policy director at the Conservative Partnership Institute, a right-wing political advocacy group. “If he were to draft an executive order, it would only be reversed … and that applies to Republicans as well. They currently have no sense in any meaningful way. ”
The response to recent actions by technology companies is currently still the top priority for Republicans, behind sorting out their response to the riots on Capitol Hill and the fight against the indictment, a second assistant congressman said. But the assistant said the party, which is traditionally opposed to the burdens for business, has no clear consensus on how to proceed on the technological front.
“I don’t think anyone coincided around any particular reaction,” the assistant said.
It all adds up to a huge loss of influence for a party whose lawmakers have caught up with Silicon Valley executives for numerous hearings over the past few years – and for the president whose nominations last fall saw two major antitrust lawsuits against Google and Facebook submitted. Washington’s power struggle with Silicon Valley remains very much alive, but incoming Democratic Congress and Elected President Joe Biden will largely decide what it’s about.
One of the only possible regulatory options left is a regulatory effort announced by the Federal Communications Communications in October, at the request of Trump, that could narrow legal protection for the online industry. But the FCC’s last Trump-era meeting is on Wednesday, and chairman Ajit Pai said last week that he did not intend to discuss it.
Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro used Pai’s decision. “Spine in the DC swamp is missing,” did he tweet over the weekend.
Some critics of the big tech companies have taken revenge anyway. Parler on Monday filed an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon, which canceled the platform’s web hosting service due to a failure to moderate the violent rhetoric among users. Trump supporters protested outside Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco on Monday morning, although local news reports said it was attracting a sparse crowd. An Internet provider in Idaho has blocked access to Twitter and Facebook due to censorship.
Trump has hinted that he may have other tricks up his sleeve. On Friday night, when Twitter permanently suspended its personal accounts and campaign accounts, it said in a White House statement that it was weighing a variety of responses, including possibly setting up our own platform in the near future.
But for the Republicans whose government is in Washington, the biggest reaction was to cry foul, and some called for Congress or the executive to act.
“Amazon, Google and Apple’s decisions to block the downloading or use of Parler by their consumers are dangerous,” tweeted Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.). “This blatant monopolistic behavior is aimed at stopping debates and silencing conservatives.”
Barr added that he is appealing to the DOJ to investigate possible antitrust violations by these technology giants. ‘
Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), One of the lawmakers leading two-fold House of Representatives efforts to update U.S. antitrust laws, said GOP officials should focus their anger on businesses’ business practices.
“Big tech companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple have used their monopolistic 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 its removal from Parler over the weekend, Buck tweeted that he would “enact legislation in Congress to hold Amazon accountable for their competitive behavior.”
Some Republicans have also indicated that they intend to channel their anger in efforts to carry back or repair a major shield of legal liability for the online industry, known as Article 230. This is the same law that Trump unsuccessfully demanded last year that Congress repeal, a plea that could not get traction even in the GOP-controlled Senate.
“I am more determined than ever to remove Article 230 protection from Big Tech (Twitter) that makes them immune to lawsuits,” he said. Lindsey Graham (RS.C.) tweeted in response to Twitter banning Trump.
But with Democrats leading the negotiations, GOP complaints about ideological prejudice will fluctuate much less. Instead, Democrats’ anger over Silicon Valley is driven primarily by issues such as political lies, hate speech and threats of violence celebrated online.
Trump’s own efforts to use the powers of the executive to hammer social media companies for the alleged censorship of conservatives have basically waned, even before Republicans lost the White House and Senate.
The president signed an executive order in May asking federal agencies to enforce the legal protection of Article 230, which protects online platforms from lawsuits over content posted by their users, and gives them ample space to take it down. But neither the FCC nor the Federal Trade Commission has taken any significant steps on this request, and Democrats in Congress have rejected the idea of repealing the law.
“I think it needs to be reviewed, but you can not recall it, otherwise you are destroying the protection of small businesses and entrepreneurs who keep them busy,” Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House, said at a news conference in December.
According to one assistant, Trump’s calls for a full repeal have also caused confusion among some Republican Republicans, as lawmakers from both parties have long insisted on changing the law but not repealing the law.
“The playbook has been completely torn up” on section 230, said one GOP assistant.
The bias issue is also unlikely to affect the wave of antitrust cases from the federal and state governments that hit the tech giants – even though defenders of Trump and Parler say the decisions to beat them offline are a clear example of Silicon’s abuse. Valley’s market dominance.
For example, the antitrust case that the Department of Justice and 11 states filed against Google in October did not include allegations of ideological discrimination, despite hopes by some Republicans. Meanwhile, Attorneys General has continued to investigate Google’s antitrust issues related to its Play Store – the same app store that Parler launched last week.
But the multistate investigation is twofold, led by attorneys general from Utah, New York, Tennessee and North Carolina, and the states have tried to keep politically handicapped aspects of their antitrust complaints. The Democratic Attorneys General is unlikely to support a case that makes the removal of Parler an important part of an antitrust case against Google.
One thing that must happen before the GOP can really have consequences for the tech giants: Republicans must mutually agree on how they want to approach the behavior of the companies, Bovard said, adding that the party has long been splintered among the factions.
“I think their base is fiery that they feel like they’ve been wasting four years breastfeeding and hearings and rhetoric, but no actual action,” she said. “So I think it’s time for Republicans to build up their policy positions. The moment they get back in a position of power, they have a policy agenda that they can set.”
Leah Nylen contributed to this report.