House Democrats are set to introduce a package of five bills as soon as this week that would prohibit tech giants like Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google from discriminating against rivals or buying potential competitors, two individuals familiar with the discussions told POLITICO -- the most serious effort yet to rein in Silicon Valley's power after years of complaints from Congress. From a report: The most controversial bill would let prosecutors sue to break up major tech companies by forcing the platforms to sell off lines of business if they represent a conflict of interest. POLITICO obtained drafts of all five bills. The legislation aims to enact the recommendations from a blockbuster House Judiciary Committee report last fall on competition in digital markets, which found that the four tech giants have monopolized various aspects of the online economy. It also represents a major test for Congress: Can the lawmakers of both parties who have condemned the tech companies as abusive monopolists come together to do something about it? Democrats on the House Judiciary antitrust panel circulated the draft bills to potential co-sponsors this week. They hope to lure at least some GOP members into supporting the bills, particularly Colorado Rep. Ken Buck, a critic of the large tech companies and the top Republican on the panel.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Intercept: Now that Jeff Bezos's space flight company Blue Origin has lost a multibillion contract to Elon Musk's SpaceX, Congress is prepping the ground for Bezos to win a contract anyway, ordering NASA to make not one but two awards. The order would come through the Endless Frontier Act, a bill to beef up resources for science and technology research that's being debated on the Senate floor this week. An amendment was added to that legislation by Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., to hand over $10 billion to NASA -- money that most likely would go to Blue Origin, a company that's headquartered in Cantwell's home state.

Cantwell's amendment is no sure bet though: Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., introduced a last-minute amendment Monday to eliminate the $10 billion. "It does not make a lot of sense to me that we would provide billions of dollars to a company owned by the wealthiest guy in America," Sanders told The Intercept Tuesday. Cantwell's measure wouldn't rescind the grant to SpaceX but would create an additional contract that Bezos's company would be in line to win. A third company, Dynetics, had also bid for the moonshot, but the author of the new amendment offers a strong suggestion of which company it's likely to benefit. The measure has been attached to the Endless Frontier Act as part of a manager's amendment and authorizes $10.032 billion through the year 2026 for the moon program. Authorization alone does not fund the program, and Congress would still need to appropriate the money, or the executive would need to find other appropriated funds.

A sweeping proposed piece of legislation with support from both Democrats and Republicans will ban law enforcement agencies from buying data from controversial firm Clearview AI, as well as force agencies to obtain a warrant before sourcing location data from brokers. From a report: The news presents significant action against two of the main avenues of law enforcement surveillance uncovered in recent years: the widespread proliferation of facial recognition technology using images scraped from social media, and the warrantless supply chain of location data from ordinary smartphone apps, through middlemen, and eventually to agencies. "The Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act is, in my view, a critically important bill that will prevent agencies from circumventing core constitutional protections by purchasing access to data they would otherwise need a warrant to obtain," Kate Ruane, senior legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), told Motherboard in a phone call. The ACLU and a host of civil, digital, and race activism groups have endorsed the bill, according to the office of Senator Ron Wyden, which has spearheaded the legislation. "I think it is a clear and good step for Congress to take, and I hope that the bill moves forward quickly,' Ruane added.

The Senate on Wednesday confirmed Gary Gensler to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission, putting in place a battle-tested Wall Street watchdog at a moment when Democrats are looking to rein in financial market risk. From a report: The Senate confirmed Gensler in a 53-45 vote. The MIT professor and former Goldman Sachs partner is returning to government after serving as a top regulator in the Obama administration, when he cracked down on big bank trading activities that fueled the 2008 global financial crisis. Gensler will lead work on sweeping new federal regulations that would require companies to disclose their contributions and exposure to climate change, which is poised to trigger a huge lobbying fight and is already stirring deep partisan tensions. The effort will be in focus next week when President Joe Biden holds an international climate summit. And following four years of light-touch regulation under Trump, Democrats are urging the SEC to step up oversight of major financial firms after a series of high-profile market snafus this year. In recent days, for example, international banks with operations in the U.S. suffered billions of dollars in losses after a little-known investment fund collapsed and sent shockwaves through the markets.

As the White House considers raising taxes on corporations for the first time in more than 25 years, the head of one of America's largest companies is backing such a plan. From a report: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said in a statement Tuesday that the company is "supportive of a rise in the corporate tax rate." Bezos said, "We support the Biden Administration's focus on making bold investments in American infrastructure. Both Democrats and Republicans have supported infrastructure in the past, and it's the right time to work together to make this happen. We recognize this investment will require concessions from all sides -- both on the specifics of what's included as well as how it gets paid for." The White House is laying the groundwork for lifting the corporate tax rate above its current level of 21% to help pay for an ambitious infrastructure package. Bezos' statement is a notable show of approval for the move given that many others in the business community have warned that it could threaten recovery from the pandemic.

The outgoing Amazon chief executive is, in some ways, a surprising advocate for a corporate tax hike. In 2019, the then-former Vice President Joe Biden called out Amazon for its history of using tax credits and deductions to reduce its corporate income tax bill. The company fired back, saying, "we pay every penny we owe," and that it had paid $2.6 billion in corporate taxes since 2016. And again last year, then-Presidential candidate Biden said Amazon should "start paying their taxes," as part of a broader critique of large, successful businesses. Amazon has repeatedly said that it follows all applicable tax laws. The company also recently sparred with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has advocated for raising taxes on big corporations. Last month Warren said in a tweet: "Giant corporations like Amazon report huge profits to their shareholders -- but they exploit loopholes and tax havens to pay close to nothing in taxes. That's just not right."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: More than five hours of questioning later, we have learned very little about the state of disinformation from today's marathon hearing with Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey and Sundar Pichai. Democrats pushed the CEOs to answer for their platforms' failing on vaccine misinformation and extremism. Republicans wanted to talk about child safety. Everyone wanted simple "yes" or "no" answers, though few were given. What is clear is that both sides are more than ready to impose new rules on Facebook, Twitter and Google.

The hearing was supposed to be about the platforms' handling of misinformation and extremism. The issue has taken on a new significance during the coronavirus pandemic and in the wake of the Jan. 6 riot at the US Capitol. [...] As with other recent hearings, the format made it nearly impossible to extract meaningful answers. Many lawmakers used their allotted five minutes to demand "yes or no" answers, which the executives were reluctant to give. In one particularly memorable exchange, Rep. Anna Eshoo of California was questioning Zuckerberg over Facebook's algorithms when she interrupted him to point out that "we don't do filibuster in the House." "I think it's irritating all of us and that is, no one seems to know the word yes or the word no, which one is it," she said. "Congresswoman, these are nuanced issues, " Zuckerberg said before he was cut off. "Okay, that's a no," she said.

As the hearing dragged on, lawmakers began to repeat themselves. Inevitably, when a new issue or angle was raised -- like when Rep. David McKinley showed Zuckerberg copies of Instagram posts selling prescription pills -- the executives had little time to respond in a meaningful way. The result is that the CEOs' opening statements provided more detail on the issues at hand than anything they were able to say in the five hours that came after them. This, of course, is nothing new. Over the last couple of years, Congress has convened a number of hearings featuring Big Tech executives, and most of them have played out in a similar fashion. But what's increasingly clear is that the both sides of the aisle are eager to impose new regulations on tech platforms.

The powerful Democrat overseeing antitrust legislation wants to hit Big Tech with the legislative equivalent of a swarm of drones rather than a single, hulking battleship that would be simpler to defeat. From a report: In an interview with Axios on Sunday, Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) said he didn't want to give the major technology companies and their armies of lobbyists the easy target of a massive antitrust bill. Instead, in his role running the House Judiciary Committee's antitrust panel, he plans to craft a series of smaller bills -- perhaps 10 or more -- that will be ready in May.

The way Cicilline sees it, this small-target strategy achieves two goals: He has a better chance of finding common ground between Democrats and Republicans on more narrowly targeted issues. And he makes it harder for Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Google to mobilize quickly against reforms they don't like. "If you look at the way these technology companies have staffed up with their lobbying and the money they're investing in Washington, it's designed ... to prevent any changes to the current ecosystem that benefits them enormously," Cicilline told Axios. "They have literally billions and billions and billions of reasons to try to protect the current system because it produces ... profits not seen on planet Earth." Recognizing this reality, Cicilline said his intention is to use this range of bills to advance all the recommendations in his panel's 450-page investigation into competition in the digital marketplace.

With the $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill signed into law, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is ready to tackle the next major challenge: President Joe Biden's call for a massive infrastructure bill. As part of that package, Schumer said he plans to include his ambitious proposal to get every American to swap their gas-guzzling car for an electric one. From a report: "It's a bold new plan designed to accelerate America's transition to all electric vehicles on the road, to developing a charging infrastructure, and to grow American jobs through clean manufacturing," Schumer told The Verge in a brief interview this week. "And the ultimate goal is to have every car manufactured in America be electric by 2030, and every car on the road be clean by 2040."

The top-line details of the "cash for clunkers"-style plan haven't changed much since Schumer first proposed it in an op-ed in The New York Times in late 2019. But the political landscape has certainly shifted in favor of the Democrats, breathing new life into the idea. Under the proposal, anyone who trades in their gas car for an electric one would get a "substantial" point-of-sale discount, Schumer says. He wouldn't say how much of a discount, only that it would be "deep." A spokesperson later confirmed they are eyeing rebates that are "more generous" than the current $7,500 federal EV tax credit. He also wants to provide direct incentives to auto manufacturers to phase out their production of internal combustion engine vehicles and tax breaks for property owners to install EV chargers at their homes or apartment buildings. Lastly, he proposes to send direct subsidies to local governments to improve and expand the nation's network of EV charging stations. Schumer would deploy $45 billion in grants to upgrade the nation's charging infrastructure and $17 billion to encourage manufacturers to retrofit their facilities for EV production.

Colorado and federal lawmakers want to put big money into more efforts to expand high-speed internet access. From a report: In Colorado, about 90,000 rural residents and 65,000 students across the state do not have access or adequate access, according to a recent Colorado Broadband Office report. A state-level stimulus measure unveiled this week proposes spending $50 million to $75 million to extend broadband to more parts of the state -- the third-largest item in the package. The money would essentially double what the state spends on the initiative now and help replace diminishing revenue from a 2018 law that fell well short of its goal. Congress also set aside $7 billion in funding for broadband in the December COVID-19 relief package. And now Democrats want to allocate another $94 billion and offer a $50 monthly discount on internet service for low-income Americans.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: US President Joe Biden is reportedly planning to nominate antitrust scholar Lina Khan to the Federal Trade Commission, a move that would indicate his administration is open to aggressive antitrust regulation not only generally but specifically against Amazon and other Big Tech firms. At present, Khan is an associate law professor at Columbia Law School. Khan vaulted directly to antitrust superstardom in 2017 while she was still a law student, when she published her blockbuster paper "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox" in the Yale Law Journal.

In "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox," Khan argued that using consumer pricing as the key benchmark for determining whether a company or a merger is anticompetitive is not sufficient and that Amazon's size and scale make it anticompetitive. "Specifically," she wrote in the abstract, "current doctrine underappreciates the risk of predatory pricing and how integration across distinct business lines may prove anticompetitive." Her work made an enormous splash. FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra, a Democrat, sought her as an advisor in 2018, when the commission was kicking off an antitrust enforcement review. "It's rare to come across a legal prodigy like Lina Khan," Chopra told The New York Times in 2018. "Nothing about her career is typical. You don't see many law students publish groundbreaking legal research, or research that had such a deep impact so quickly." Critics, on the other hand, dubbed her theories "hipster antitrust."

During 2019 and 2020, Khan served as one of the House subcommittee staffers who compiled a massive, blockbuster report digging into the antitrust implications of Big Tech. After 16 months of hearings, research, and analysis, the committee determined last fall that Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google were all in some way breaking competition law and needed to be reined in. The news comes only a few days after the Biden administration announced it was bringing on Tim Wu as special advisor on technology and competition policy. Wu is one of the most outspoken critics of Big Tech, arguing in his most recent book, 2018's The Curse of Bigness, that unchecked market concentration was leading to a new Gilded Age and all the problems that come with it.

President Biden on Friday named Tim Wu, a Columbia University law professor, to the National Economic Council on Friday as a special assistant to the president for technology and competition policy, putting one of the most outspoken critics of Big Tech's power into the administration. From a report: The appointment of Mr. Wu, 48, who is widely supported by progressive Democrats and antimonopoly groups, suggests that the administration plans to take on the size and influence of companies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google, including working with Congress on legislation to strengthen antitrust laws. During his campaign, Mr. Biden said he would be open to breaking up tech companies. That confrontational approach toward the tech industry would be a continuation of the one taken by the Trump administration. Late last year, federal and state regulators sued Facebook and Google, accusing them of antitrust violations. The regulators continue to investigate claims that Amazon and Apple unfairly squash competition.

Mr. Biden has also expressed skepticism toward social media companies and the legal shield known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. He told The New York Times editorial board in January 2020 that Section 230 "should be revoked, immediately." The tech companies have fought vigorously against new antitrust laws and regulations, building out some of the most potent lobbying forces in Washington to push back. Mr. Wu has warned about the consequences of too much power in the hands of a few companies and said the nation's economy resembled the Gilded Age of the late 1800s. "Extreme economic concentration yields gross inequality and material suffering, feeding the appetite for nationalistic and extremist leadership," Mr. Wu wrote in his 2018 book, "The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age." "Most visible in our daily lives is the great power of the tech platforms, especially Google, Facebook and Amazon," he added. Wu is best known for advocacy against powerful telecom companies and for coining the term "net neutrality," the regulatory philosophy that consumers should get equal access to all content on the internet.

With millions of Texans still without power in the wake of a winter storm and frigid temperatures, everyone is looking for someone to blame. From a report, shared by a reader: Many Democrats are blaming Gov. Greg Abbott (R) for failing to adequately prepare for the storm. Many conservatives are blaming the environmental movement -- insisting that frozen wind turbines show the limits of alternative energy sources. (This is a gross exaggeration.) But the primary fall guy is the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), an independent organization that operates Texas' power grid. "This was a total failure by ERCOT," said Abbott on Tuesday. "These are the experts. These are engineers in the power industry. These aren't bureaucrats or whatever the case may be. These are specialists, and government has to rely upon on these specialists to be able to deliver in these types of situations." The story, as you might guess, is actually slightly more complicated than that. It's rooted in Texans' views of their state as a quasi-independent country -- and a desire to have as little federal interference in their lives as possible. Yes, there are politics at the root of this. "Texas' secessionist inclinations have at least one modern outlet: the electric grid," wrote the Texas Tribune back in 2011.

To understand what is happening right now in Texas -- and who's to blame -- you have to go back to 1935, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Federal Power Act, which governed electricity sharing and sales between the states. Basically, it allowed the federal government to regulate states who brought power in from outside their state lines. Texas, never a fan of federal intrusion, set up its own power grid system -- split between northern and southern Texas -- to avoid any federal involvement. That led eventually to the formation of ERCOT in 1970 and this strange fact: There are three power grids in the United States -- the eastern power grid, the western power grid and, well, Texas. Yes, you read that right. Texas has its own power grid. Because it is Texas. And while being independent from the yoke of federal regulation has always been a point of pride for Texas, the limits of that strategy are being realized now. See, because Texas -- or at least 90% of the state -- is controlled by ERCOT, they can't simply borrow power from either the eastern or western power grids. That's never been a problem before because Texas has always been able to generate more power than its citizens need. But the reality is that Texas is an electricity island, which isn't a problem until the lights go out, and you don't have enough power in the state to turn them back on. Now, there's no question that ERCOT bears some blame here, too.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: On Thursday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the incoming Democrat head of the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee, introduced an omnibus bill signaling a pitched battle over the future of antitrust law. The law takes aim not just at big tech companies, but potentially all large companies. According to experts Motherboard spoke with, some parts of the bill offer ambitious changes to antitrust law, but others adhere to a framework that has undermined enforcing antitrust law for too long already.

At its core, the Competition and Antitrust Law Enforcement Reform Act essentially combines legislation Klobuchar has proposed over the past few years as well as some that Senate Democrats have been considering. It takes a harder stance on anticompetitive mergers and acquisitions, and also promises to empower the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department's antitrust division to aggressively enforce antitrust law. Some of the bill's key proposals concern amendments and provisions to the Clayton Act of 1914, an antitrust law that made certain anticompetitive practices such as price discrimination outright illegal. In her omnibus bill, one key proposal seeks to strengthen anticompetitive merger enforcement by amending the Clayton Act to outright ban mergers that "create an appreciable risk of materially lessening competition," as well as mergers that create monopsonies (buyers or employers who can suppress prices or wages via anti-competitive practices targeting other buyers or employers).

Klobuchar's merger prohibitions also shift the burden of proof to the merging companies, which would have to prove a deal would not be anticompetitive, or create a monopoly or monopsony. In part, this means deals where a merger (or acquisition) yielded over 50 percent market share, where a transaction is valued over $5 billion, or where an acquisition worth over $50 million by a company valued over $100 billion would be presumed illegal. This move won her some praise from experts who praised its clear presumptive bar on large mergers. Other key proposals, however, that have raised concerns among antitrust advocates who are seeking larger structural changes.

The CEO of online stock brokerage Robinhood is expected to testify before a House committee on Feb. 18 as lawmakers dig into the firm's role in the tumultuous trading of GameStop stock and other companies, people familiar with the matter said. Politico reports: The hearing before the House Financial Services Committee with Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev, which has not been formally announced, is primed to be a blockbuster. Share prices of GameStop and other struggling companies skyrocketed last week in part thanks to traders on the social media website Reddit targeting Wall Street hedge funds, which were betting heavily that the stock price would fall. Some of the investors betting against the companies subsequently suffered huge losses.
[...]
"I am concerned about whether or not Robinhood restricted the trading because there was collusion between Robinhood and some of the hedge funds that were involved with this," Waters said on MSNBC this weekend. It was not clear if Democrats would ask other financial institutions to testify. Democratic lawmakers are also examining the role of firms owned by billionaire Ken Griffin. The two companies -- the hedge fund Citadel and trading firm Citadel Securities -- denied responsibility for any broker's decision to suspend trading. Citadel bailed out a hedge fund that suffered from GameStop's stock increase and Citadel Securities pays Robinhood to execute its stock trades.

With Reddit's interest in sending some stocks soaring showing no sign of slowing down, the trading app Robinhood started restricting some transactions Thursday morning. Reddit wasn't happy -- and neither are some lawmakers. From a report:The incident apparently struck an unusual bipartisan chord, with Texas Republican Ted Cruz throwing his weight behind progressive Democrats who called out the company. Rep. Rashida Tlaib called Robinhood's decision "beyond absurd" and suggested that the House Financial Services Committee hold a hearing on what she deemed "market manipulation" from the personal finance startup. "They're blocking the ability to trade to protect Wall St. hedge funds, stealing millions of dollars from their users to protect people who've used the stock market as a casino for decades," Tlaib said. Her colleague Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez -- a member of that committee -- chimed in with support for a hearing on Robinhood, calling the situation an "unacceptable" step to prevent retail investors from trading. Seeing Cruz and Ocasio-Cortez line up on anything right now is unusual, to put it mildly. Silicon Valley Rep. Ro Khanna also flagged Robinhood's decision to stop some trades, slamming the startup for freezing out small investors while powerful hedge funds scramble to get control of the situation.

Last week the Democratic party took control of all three branches of the U.S. government — and the BBC's North America technology reporter notes they dislike Facebook even more now than during the Cambridge Analytica scandal: Since then, Democrats — Joe Biden included — have been appalled by what Facebook has allowed on its platform. Talking to a CNN anchor in late 2019 Joe Biden said, "You can't do what they can do on Facebook, and say anything at all, and not acknowledge when you know something is fundamentally not true. I just think it's all out of hand." When you're a billionaire, perhaps it doesn't matter that the president doesn't like you much. But what President Biden has a chance to do now is restructure Big Tech and reformulate the relationship that social media companies have with their users.

That could be devastating for Facebook.

Its most obvious problem is the potential repealing of Section 230... Joe Biden has said he wants it removed. In fact, in that same New York Times interview from a year ago he said he wanted it "revoked immediately". That could spell disaster for Zuckerberg. Suddenly all the things people post, all of the defamatory and fraudulent things people say — would be the responsibility of Facebook. It's hard to see how Facebook functions in its current form without Section 230.

And that's before we get into Facebook's anti-trust problems. It's currently being sued by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and 46 states for "illegally maintaining its monopoly position" by buying up the competition. The FTC has also said it's looking at "unwinding Facebook's prior acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp" — i.e. breaking the firm up. Facebook will, of course, fight that. But Biden seems a pretty willing ally to those who want to split up Big Tech. In 2019, he said that breaking up companies such as Facebook was "something we should take a really hard look at".

Jameel Jaffer, a media legal expert at Columbia University, told me: "I would expect the Biden administration to be pretty aggressive in enforcing the anti-trust laws. And to have the whole spectrum of harms in mind, not just the democratic harms, but harms relating to user privacy and consumer welfare."

President Biden is even reportedly thinking of creating an anti-trust tsar, designed specifically to restore competition in areas like Big Tech.

President Joe Biden has named Jessica Rosenworcel, the FCC's leading Democrat, as acting FCC chairwoman. She is replacing Ajit Pai, who concluded his four years as chairman yesterday. Engadget reports: Rosenworcel is known as defender of net neutrality policies, and as an advocate for closing the "homework gap," a reference to students who lack high-speed internet at home. As acting chair, Rosenworcel will lead the FCC until the Senate confirms a permanent replacement. With Pai's departure, there's currently one spot open at the FCC for Biden to fill.

A House majority, including several Republicans, on Wednesday voted to impeach President Trump for "incitement of insurrection." The New York Times reports: The House had enough votes on Wednesday to impeach President Trump for inciting a violent insurrection against the United States government, as more than a half-dozen members of the president's party joined Democrats to charge him with high crimes and misdemeanors for an unprecedented second time. Reconvening under the threat of continued violence and the protection of thousands of National Guard troops, the House was determined to hold Mr. Trump to account just one week before he was to leave office. At issue was his role in encouraging a mob that attacked the Capitol one week ago while Congress met to affirm President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s victory, forcing lawmakers to flee for their lives in a deadly rampage.

The House put forward and was on the brink of adopting a single article of impeachment, charging Mr. Trump with "inciting violence against the government of the United States" and requesting his immediate removal from office and disqualification from ever holding one again. [...] The vote, which was still underway, set the stage for the second Senate trial of Mr. Trump in a year, though senators appeared unlikely to convene to sit in judgment before Jan. 20, when Mr. Biden will take the oath of office. The last proceeding, over Mr. Trump's attempts to pressure Ukraine to smear Mr. Biden, was a partisan affair. [...]

This time, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, was said to support the effort as a means of purging his party of Mr. Trump, setting up a political and constitutional showdown that could shape the course of American politics when the nation remains dangerously divided. [McConnell said he would not agree to use emergency powers to bring the Senate back into session for a trial before Jan. 19.] The House's vote was historic. Only two other presidents have been impeached; none has been impeached twice, by such a large bipartisan margin, or so close to leaving office.

With 25 days until Joe Biden becomes America's next president, Politico writes that throughout the US government, "From lawmakers on Capitol Hill to antitrust enforcers at the Federal Trade Commission, Washington is training its sights on the world's largest social network like never before." Biden's antitrust enforcers will take ownership of a lawsuit the FTC filed this month threatening to dismantle the sprawling company. And his staff will negotiate legislative proposals with congressional leaders who have hammered Facebook for mishandling its users' personal data and spreading hate speech and dangerous falsehoods. It's a historic moment of legislative and regulatory upheaval with profound consequences for Facebook and its Silicon Valley brethren.

The Trump era opened the floodgates for Facebook detractors, who accused the world's largest social network of silencing conservatives on one side, and abetting disinformation about the U.S. election on the other. Now, under Biden, the company's critics see a prime opportunity to finally tame Facebook — for the sake of election integrity, privacy and fair play in the digital era... "It's just not a great business strategy to piss off the incoming president," said Sally Hubbard, the director of enforcement strategy at the Open Markets Institute, which has advocated for antitrust enforcement against Facebook, Google and other big tech firms. She and other tech critics are putting pressure on Biden to take a different approach than past administrations, and they already have several allies advising the transition as it prepares to take over next month...

The now-president-elect has called for the internet industry's sacred legal liability protections to be revoked, specifically citing Facebook's handling of election-related misinformation. He turned heads in January when he said bluntly, "I've never been a fan of Facebook," a company whose digital reach helped propel the Obama-Biden ticket to the White House in past elections... "[I]t's certainly possible that skepticism about Facebook from the Biden team could result in a greater likelihood of antitrust scrutiny by the Justice Department and the FTC," said Matt Perault, a former Facebook public policy director who now leads Duke University's Center on Science and Technology Policy. "And it's possible that a Biden White House could use their bully pulpit to try to force changes that they can't achieve through executive action or legislation...."

Republicans, too, have gripes about Facebook's handling of political speech, with some saying its lack of meaningful competition gives it the leverage to censor users' political views. After the FTC and state attorneys general announced their Facebook lawsuits this month, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle expressed support... But bipartisan frustration with tech has yet to mean lawmakers will set aside partisan differences. Both sides have been frustrated with how Facebook, Twitter and Google-owned YouTube police political content, for instance, but Democrats want more moderation and Republicans have called for less...

Even with such divisions, the general animosity toward Facebook could help the anti-Facebook advocates to gain traction with the new administration. And they're pushing their agenda hard ahead of the inauguration.

A user writes: MIT Electrical Engineering graduate and California Secretary of State Alex Padilla has been selected by California governor Gavin Newsom to replace Kamala Harris. He will join Steve Daines and Martin Heinrich as one of three U.S. Senators with engineering credentials currently serving in the Senate. "Padilla, 47, the son of Mexican immigrants, will be the first Latino from the state to hold the position," notes NPR. "Padilla has been California's secretary of state since 2015. Previously, he was a state senator and Los Angeles city councilman." Since Harris was first elected in 2016, Padilla will fill the seat by appointment until 2022 when an election will be held for the next full six-year term.