ANTITRUST PETITION CHARGES AHEAD — The petition led by Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) to discharge H.R. H.R. 3460 (117), the State Antitrust Enforcement Venue Act of 2021, has received 95 Republican signatures as of Monday — double what it had just last week. It also won the endorsement of the House Freedom Caucus, marking the first time that this ultra-conservative group has come out in favor of antitrust legislation. The goal isn't necessarily to get to 218 signatures, the amount needed to force Speaker Nancy Pelosi to bring the petition to the floor. Rather, it's a signal from Republicans highlighting how much bipartisan support there could be for reining in tech — and their support is particularly important now, since moderate Democrats and some in the California delegation have indicated they would not support the antitrust legislation that the House Judiciary Committee approved last year. Pelosi has not said when she plans to bring those bills to the floor, and it's unclear so far if the bills would have enough votes from Democrats if they got a vote now. "Now that we've demonstrated the support needed to move this bill, I'm hopeful to see floor action within the month," Buck said in a statement to MT on Monday. What Buck's thinking: Buck, the top Republican on the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee, said his goal is to show House leadership that "most Republicans are in favor of this." The bill would ensure that tech companies cannot move antitrust cases to friendlier courts, which Republicans have framed as a state sovereignty issue. "I just have to show them how we think we can get there," Buck told MT earlier this month. "It's a leverage point to try to get both sides to work together." He recalled an immigration fight in 2018, when centrist Republicans filed a discharge petition to try to force a vote on legislation to codify the policy shielding undocumented immigrants from deportation known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. (Ultimately, that effort failed.) "I've been killing myself" trying to gin up support for the bill, Buck said. It's the narrowest bill of the antitrust package that passed out of the House Judiciary Committee last year. The rest of the package, including bills that would make it easier to break up companies like Facebook and Amazon, would still be in limbo even if H.R. 3460 (117) passed. Democrats shrug: Antitrust subcommittee Chair David Cicilline (D-R.I.) told MT that he doesn't think the discharge petition is "necessary," but that Buck is "using it as a way to demonstrate strong bipartisan support for the [antitrust] package, which is fine." Cicilline said he's optimistic the bills will come to the floor this Congress, possibly before fall. WHY MEKKI IS MAKING WAVES — DOJ removed the "acting" from Doha Mekki's title late last week, making her the permanent No. 2 official at the antitrust division. As principal deputy to Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter, Mekki will be the point person for any cases where Kanter is recused — potentially making her the decision-maker on the antitrust probes into Google and Apple. A DOJ attorney for the past seven years, Mekki has been at the forefront of the agency's work on competition in labor markets. She worked on its first case challenging a "no-poach" agreement between companies and testified before Congress on the issue. "Doha is one of the hardest working and most talented attorneys I have worked with and was one of my most trusted colleagues," Makan Delrahim, former President Donald Trump's top antitrust official, told MT. "She was never shy about telling me what she believed and even less frequently suffered fools. The antitrust division is lucky to have her as a leader." Mekki also brings much-needed diversity to the DOJ's front office, which has historically been filled with white men. She will be the third Black person to serve as an antitrust deputy, after Charles James and Leslie Overton, who served in the George H.W. Bush and Obama administrations, respectively, according to the antitrust pub FTC:Watch. TODAY: COURT TO HEAR SPAT OVER AUTO AIRWAVES — The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear today from automotive trade groups trying to overturn the FCC's Trump-era carve-up of the 5.9 GHz automotive safety airwaves. The case marks the latest showcase of the spectrum turf wars that have divided agencies in especially messy ways, starting in the Trump era and continuing into the Biden administration ( the recent 5G kerfuffle involving aviation safety being one prime example). — The FCC move under scrutiny today is a 2020 order that sought to expand the types of transportation safety technologies that could use the 5.9 GHz spectrum. It also reserved a slice of the airwaves for Wi-Fi use — a long-sought victory for cable and tech companies but one that enraged many transportation industry leaders. Count DOT among the unhappy: Trump-era Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao had warned the FCC of the "fatally flawed" premises of the FCC order ahead of the commission's vote on it. Months after that vote, Biden's Transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, told lawmakers he's concerned too. But despite this DOT grousing, the executive branch never broadly embraced these critiques or challenged the FCC order through the National Telecommunications and Information Administration — and the Justice Department has, in fact, joined the FCC's defense. Early this month, the court asked the parties to be prepared to discuss the significance of the fact that DOJ is "representing" the FCC and not DOT. "The Justice Department represents the United States," DOJ's Bryan Leitch countered, saying the department "joined the FCC's brief in this matter after assessing the merits of these cases and considering all relevant federal interests, including the Commission's policy judgments and the views of executive-branch agencies that participated before the Commission." DOJ told the court on Jan. 14 that the department will have counsel available to discuss interagency issues. — Expect the FCC to stand firm: In its November brief , FCC lawyers said that DOT never challenged the independent agency's traditional authority over the airwaves and argued that "it is the Commission (not the [Transportation] Secretary) that has always allocated spectrum, adopted service rules, and issued licenses for vehicular communications." FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel has for years sided with the push to free some of these airwaves up for Wi-Fi, although as a commissioner, she had criticized the the FCC's sparring with DOT at the end of the Trump years, nodding to similar concerns from Senate Commerce Chair Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.). — A hint for reading the tea leaves: GOP Commissioner Brendan Carr recently praised a D.C. Circuit ruling in a different case ( upholding a Trump-era order freeing 6 GHz airwaves for Wi-Fi) for underscoring "the FCC's role as the nation's lead spectrum regulator." One of the same judges who participated in that decision — the Trump-appointed judge Justin Walker — will hear today's case. (Others on today's panel are Cornelia Pillard and Laurence Silberman, appointed by the Obama and Reagan administrations, respectively.) CHINA BILL INCOMING — House lawmakers could release their highly anticipated bill to strengthen competition with China as soon as today, two Capitol Hill officials with knowledge of the negotiations told POLITICO's Gavin Bade. TECH QUOTE DU JOUR: "Big tech uses surveillance advertising to fuel their business model, keeping us in our filter bubbles and spreading misinformation as they silently profit off of our data," tweeted former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, promoting a petition from tech advocacy group Accountable Tech, which is run by Clinton's former foreign policy spokesperson, Jesse Lehrich. NEXT STEPS FOR CHIPS: The Commerce Department began accepting public comment Monday on how to design programs aimed at supporting a strong domestic semiconductor industry. The department is asking for input that will help the government invest in semiconductor manufacturing.
| 
Comments
Post a Comment