Sens. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) signaled this week they will be introducing an antitrust-centric bill, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, that would prevent tech platforms from favoring their own products or services, including by disadvantaging their rivals by biasing search results in favor of the dominant platform.

While no names were mentioned in the bill, Google, Amazon and Apple have all been the targets of criticism for favoring their own products and services. The bill is something of a break from the Facebook-centric aim of much of D.C. following the whistleblower revelations about that company in the past few weeks.

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Klobuchar, chair of the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee, has been calling for Congress and the Federal Trade Commission to tighten scrutiny of Big Tech deals, arguing as have others that some of the biggest companies appeared to have bought up to monopoly by scooping up potential competitors before the deals were large enough to trigger scrutiny under the 1976 Hart Scott Rodino antitrust bill.

Specifically, according to Grassley's office, the bill would:

1. “Prohibit dominant platforms from abusing their gatekeeper power by favoring their own products or services, disadvantaging rivals, or discriminating among businesses that use their platforms in a manner that would materially harm competition on the platform; and
a. “Prohibit specific forms of conduct that are harmful to small businesses, entrepreneurs, and consumers, but that do not have any pro-competitive benefit, including:
i. “Preventing another business’s product or service from interoperating with the dominant platform or another business;
ii. “Requiring a business to buy a dominant platform’s goods or services for preferred placement on its platform;
iii. “Misusing a business’s data to compete against them; and
iv. “Biasing search results in favor of the dominant firm.
 
2. “Give antitrust enforcers strong, flexible tools to deter violations and hold dominant platforms accountable when they cross the line into illegal behavior, including significant civil penalties, authority to seek broad injunctions, emergency interim relief, and potential forfeiture of executive compensation.
 
3. “Prevent self-preferencing and discriminatory conduct by the most economically significant online platforms with large U.S. user bases which function as 'critical trading partners' for online businesses. For such platforms, the rules target harmful conduct, allowing the platforms to innovate, do business, and engage in pro-consumer conduct, including protecting user privacy and safety, preventing unlawful behavior, and maintaining a secure online experience for users.”

Said Klobuchar: “As dominant digital platforms — some of the biggest companies our world has ever seen — increasingly give preference to their own products and services, we must put policies in place to ensure small businesses and entrepreneurs still have the opportunity to succeed in the digital marketplace.”

“Big Tech needs to be held accountable if they behave in a discriminatory manner,” Grassley said.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who supports the bill, said co-sponsores include Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), John Kennedy (R-La.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), and Mark Warner (D-Va). 

A similar bill was introduced in the House by Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman David  Cicilline (D-R.I.) and ranking member Ken Buck (R-Colo.), which has already been voted out of the House Judiciary Committee, according to Hawley.

In what is being billed as a bicameral effort (that would be both Houses of Congress rather than both parties), a group of Republican Senators and House members, including Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the powerful Judiciary Committee, have introduced a bill that takes aim at the Chevron deference accorded federal agency expertise.

“For too long, unelected bureaucrats have relied on Chevron to expand their own authority beyond what Congress ever intended.  This has weakened our system of checks and balances and created a recipe for regulatory overreach," said Grassley, of the Separation of Powers Restoration Act. "The Constitution’s separation of powers makes clear that it is the responsibility of Congress, as the People’s representative, to make the law. And it’s the job of the courts – not the bureaucracy – to interpret the law. This bill helps to reassert those clear lines between the branches. By doing so, it makes the government more accountable to the People and takes a strong step toward reining in the regulators,” Grassley said.

The bill would only tweak the language in the U.S. Code on judiciary review of agency actions, but it makes a bid difference.

The language currently reads: "To the extent necessary to decision and when presented, the reviewing court shall decide all relevant questions of law, interpret constitutional and statutory provisions, and determine the meaning or applicability of the terms of an agency action."

The bill would change "all relevant questions of law, interpret constitutional and statutory provisions" to "de novo all relevant questions of law, including the interpretation of constitutional and statutory provisions and rules."

"De novo" means deciding from the beginning, or starting over, rather than starting from a point of deference to am agency judgment. The idea of the bill, as Republicans see it, is to take an agency's thumb off the scale of justice.

In addition to Grassley, others introducing/backing the bill included Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), John Cornyn (R-Tex.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), and Ted Cruz (R-Tex.).

The issue of Chevron has often come up regarding how the FCC exercises its regulatory authority.

Chevron is the deference that has been accorded agencies—per Supreme Court precedent—to interpret vague statutes. New Supreme Court Justice (and Republican appointee) Neil Gorsuch, for one, has argued that while agencies should get deference for technical expertise in their subject areas, it should be up to the courts to do the clarifying of vague statues, and that giving federal agencies that power runs into equal protection and separation of powers issues. The issue was explored during Gorsuch's confirmation hearings, presided over by Grassley.

Democrats fear that weakening Chevron is a way to weaken the power of those agencies to protect air, water, privacy and much more—critics of the FCC's broadband regulation under former Democratic chairman Tom Wheeler, for example, argued that the commission was exceeding its authority in its interpretation of statute.

A Fox News Channel report  has prompted the powerful chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee to seek more information on federal investigations into the Rossyln, Va.-based University of Management and Technology.

Committee chair Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), in a letterto Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, cited almost a half dozen references to FNC's February report "Fox News Investigation: DOD-Funded School at Center of Federal Probes Over Suspected Chinese Military Ties," and reporters Catherine Herridge, Pamela K. Browne and Cyd Upson

Grassley is concerned, among other things, that thousands of records of service members enrolled at the school could be compromised.

"Questions have been raised as to whether the UMT personnel in the Beijing office remotely accessed and compromised the personal and military histories of U.S. service members from China," Grassley said.

"According to Fox News, Defense Secretary James Mattis has also voiced concerns with the situation," Grassley wrote. "Allegedly, Secretary Mattis said schools like UMT are attractive to the Chinese military because it could allow access to sensitive technology and insight into our capabilities."

Sens. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) have reintroduced a bill to allow cameras in federal courts, including the Supreme Court.

The Sunshine in the Courtroom Act gives the presiding judge in a federal court the discretion to allow cameras, protecting the identities of witnesses and jurors when ended. It does not allow those cameras to capture private conversations between clients and counsel, opposing counsels, and with the judge.

It would also need to be renewed after three years.

It has been a decades-long effort on the Hill to open the courts to cameras, always with the caveat that it be at the discretion of judges on a, literally, case-by-case basis.

C-SPAN has demonstrated the value of television in the political process and the ability to do it unobtrusively and Grassley cited the cable-backed public service networks in trying once more to get the rest of Congress to join in the effort.

Allowing cameras in the courts creates a window into our judicial process for those Americans who may never climb the courtroom steps," said Grassley Wednesday (march 15). "In much the same way that C-SPAN fostered a greater understanding of the legislative process and improved transparency in Congress, allowing cameras in federal courtrooms would contribute to a better understanding of, and appreciation for, the American judicial system,” Grassley said.

Grassley pointed out that all 50 states now have some form of audio and video coverage. Federal courts have some form as well, but usually only on special request or with a time delay rather than live coverage.

Grassley is also lead cosponsor of another bill requiring TV camera access to Supreme Court oral arguments.

The Sunshine in the Courtroom Act is being reintroduced in concert with Sunshine Week, which celebrates access to government information.

Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) has signaled he plans to hold a confirmation hearing before Inauguration Day on the nomination of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) as U.S. Attorney General atop the Justice Department, which routinely vets media mergers for antitrust issues.

Grassley on Tuesday (Nov. 29) met with Sessions, a senior Judiciary Committee member, and said that while he had not yet set a firm date date, the hearing would be before the President-elect is sworn in Jan. 20.

"“I was glad to have Sen. Sessions in my office today," Grassley said. "Members of the Judiciary Committee know him to be an honorable man, and a person of integrity.  He knows the Justice Department well, and cares deeply about the even-handed application of the law."

Given that some members of the Judiciary Committee have served with Sessions for a couple of decades, the committee won't have a big learning curve reviewing his nomination.

Republican FCC commissioner Ajit Pai, a leading contender for interim FCC chair and perhaps permanent chair, worked with Sessions on the Senate Judiciary Committee and has called him "a good man and a superb senator: honorable, thoughtful, devoted to the Constitution, and deeply committed to equal justice and the rule of law."

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee was not so happy with the Sessions pick, saying he would be a boon to big business and likening him to "the proverbial fox guarding the henhouse."

"Senator Sessions will receive the fair and thorough vetting process he deserves," Grassley said.

Judiciary Committee chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) called on the FBI to give the public a gander at the evidence it used to conclude no charges should be brought against Hillary Clinton for using her unsecure private e-mail server for State Department communications.

FBI director James Comey too the unusual step of calling a press conference Tuesday (July 5) to announce that its investigation of Clinton resulted in no information that would warrant a criminal indictment by the Justice Department, though he revealed conclusions usually passed on to Justice without public airing.

Just last week President Obama signed FOIA reform legislation drafted that came out of Grassley's committee meant to make government agencies more open, and Grassley appeared ready to test that new presumption of openness.

“While Director Comey made it clear that Secretary Clinton and her staff were ‘extremely careless’ in handling classified information, he also recommended no criminal prosecution even though ‘gross negligence’ regarding classified information is a crime," he said in a statement e-mailed to Multichannel News. "If it wants to avoid giving the impression that the FBI was pulling punches, because many people in a similar situation would face some sort of consequence, the agency must now be more transparent than ever in releasing information gathered during its investigation. Even Director Comey said there should be extraordinary transparency. 

"That means more than simply giving the public a brief summary of his view of the facts," Grassley continued, referring to Comey's announcement, carried by the major news networks Tuesday. "It should include the actual evidence so the public can make an educated decision on its own about the judgment and decision-making of all the senior officials involved. There are plenty of FOIA and congressional requests pending that have been on hold because of the ongoing nature of the investigation, so now the FBI should respond fully and completely to all of them.”

Comey said while Clinton's e-mail handling had been extremely careless, and included some communications she should have known were classified and should have been secured, there was no indictable offense and no evidence of obstruction of justice.

Also weighing in was former presidential candidate and Senate Commerce Committee member Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).

"Hillary Clinton's actions have sent the worst message to the millions of hard-working federal employees who hold security clearances and are expected to go to great lengths to secure sensitive government information and abide by the rules," Rubio said. "They don't take their oaths lightly, and we shouldn't expect any less of their leaders. Her actions were grossly negligent, damaged national security and put lives at risk."

Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa.) pulled an Electronic Communications Privacy Act update bill from the committee's markup agenda Thursday (June 9) after "poison pill" amendments threatened to expand the bill into areas that neither of its co-sponsors wanted it to go.

The baseline bill, which passed the House 419 to zero, would provide protections for cloud storage by requiring a probable cause warrant for accessing information in the cloud, and extending the protections for e-mails stored over 180 days (currently no warrant is required to access those).

It was scheduled to be marked up -- amended (or not) and voted out of committee --Thursday, but its co-sponsors. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), ranking member of the committee, requested it be pulled rather than allow it to be amended, which they argued would decrease privacy protections.

It was bumped from an earlier markup in hopes that a clean bill could emerge, but that did not happen. 

Leahy pointed out that their bill was both a bipartisan and bicameral compromise. He said if the poison pill amendments were added, he doubted the bill would pass the Senate and certainly would not pass the House, which would have to re-vote any changes to the bill it already passed unanimously.

Leahy helped write the original ECPA law, and said no one anticipated the way communications would be transmitted and stored. He said the bill would tank if controversial amendments were injected and he would hate to see that.

He said he would continue to work with his colleagues and said he hoped the bill could still be passed.

"I hope discussions continue to try to move forward with it," Grassley said. "It seems to me there are large areas of consensus, and it should be possible to reach a compromise that a large majority of the committee can support.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), author of one of the amendments identified as a poison pill, said he supports warrants for content, but defended his amendment -- on national security letters allowing the FBI to access content -- saying it was highly targeted and hardly a poison pill, given that it "enjoyed the support of the majority of the committee."

The Cornyn amendment was opposed by Google, Yahoo! and others, who said the amendment would unduly expand FBI surveillance powers.

“It’s disappointing that the important reforms contained in ECPA have been derailed by a handful of senators who are trying to use this vital legislation to undermine Americans’ privacy by expanding the FBI’s ability to access communications without a warrant," said Adam Brandon, CEO of FreedomWorks, a small government, free market group.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has held over consideration of legislation updating the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) after amendments were offered that could have undone a compromise approach.

Similar legislation, the E-Mail Privacy Act, passed unanimously in the House, and supporters were hoping for clean passage in the Senate as well.

The bill updates ECPA to require the government to get a probable cause criminal warrant to access e-mails, social media posts and other online content stored in the cloud by Internet service providers and other e-mail service providers, like Google. In a nod to the longevity of cloud storage, it eliminates the 180-day sunset on stored communications. Previously a warrant was not required for communications stored beyond 180 days.

During a business meeting to mark up a Senate version Thursday (May 26), committee chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) agreed to hold over the bill rather than press the issue with a vote, pointing out that the bill's sponsors had asked that it be held over.

Ranking member Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), one of those sponsors, thanked Grassley for the move.

But Grassley said there was broad consensus that the 1986 ECPA bill needed revising given the advances in technology. He said that most agree that given the way email is used and stored it hardly makes sense for its protection to hinge on whether it is 180 days old or whether it has been opened at all.

"The privacy of Americans should be protected," he said, and should not depend on [an] email's age at all."

Leahy, who wrote much of the original bill, said he agreed it needed to be updated.

"Digital files ought to be treated the same as the papers in our filing cabinets in our homes," Leahy said. He pointed to the House passage 419 to 0, adding that the Senate should "give some attention to that, given that there are those who thought that neither body could pass a unanimous resolution that the sun rises in the east."

Leahy pointed to the broad support, but also pointed to last-minute concerns, expressed in Republican amendments, and said he supported delaying moving the bill to the floor in the interests of preserving the broad coalition -- "from the right to the left" -- rather than see it "destroyed."

Not to pass the bill, he said, "would be an enormous mistake and turning our back on the tremendous work both parties did in the House..."

Several amendments had been proposed over the past few days by Republicans, including one by Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the International Communications Privacy Act (ICPA), that would have addressed government surveillance outside the U.S. by securing data privacy internationally.

ICPA would reign in what Hatch called the overreach of law enforcement's ability to access data worldwide.

"Currently, the U.S. government takes the position that it can compel a technology company to turn over data located anywhere in the world belonging to a citizen of any company so long as the data can be accessed by a company subject to U.S. jurisdiction.

Hatch did not introduce the amendment, but did introduce it as a standalone bill. Grassley said he was making no promises, but would see how that bill "fit into" the committee's agenda.

Judgments on President Obama's nomination of D.C. Appeals Court Chief Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court were handed down quickly from the Hill and elsewhere, including one by Judiciary Committee chairman Charles Grassley, who doubled down on his position that no hearing on a Supreme Court nominee would be held in an election year.

“Today the president has exercised his constitutional authority," Grassley said. "A majority of the Senate has decided to fulfill its constitutional role of advice and consent by withholding support for the nomination during a presidential election year, with millions of votes having been cast in highly charged [primary] contests."

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said it was the president's right to nominate a Justice, and the Senate's to act as a "check." That, in his view, means not holding court nominee hearings this year. McConnell said the choice of Judge Garland was not because the president thought he would be confirmed, but to politicize the process.

"With two decades of federal court experience, Garland is fully prepared for all of the responsibilities he will face as our next Supreme Court justice -- no matter how Senate Republicans try to spin it," said Democratic National Committee chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.).

Online activist group Demand Progress said it was disappointed the president didn't nominate a more progressive judge and was withholding judgment on Garland, but called on Republicans to hold a hearing.

"It's disappointing that President Obama missed the opportunity to solidify his legacy by appointing a true progressive to the Supreme Court," the group said. "As Demand Progress and other organizations determine whether we can support this nomination, one thing is clear: Senate Republicans must do their jobs under the constitution and move without delay to give Merrick Garland a fair hearing."

Brad Woodhouse, president of Americans United for Change, which has been pushing to fill the seat of the late Antonin Scalia this year, said: "President Obama has met his constitutional responsibility and has put forward a nominee for the Supreme Court with impeccable credentials and qualifications. The President has done his job; it's time for Senate Republicans to stop playing politics and do theirs and give Judge Garland fair consideration for a seat on the Supreme Court."

Wade Henderson, president of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said: “In choosing Chief Judge Garland to fill this vacancy, President Obama has demonstrated his commitment to the constitution and our democracy to make sure that the Supreme Court is fully equipped to serve our nation with its full complement of nine justices. Judge Garland is the most well-prepared Supreme Court nominee in generations."

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), ranking member of the Senate Communications Subcommittee, said: “Chief Judge Garland is widely respected by legal experts from across the political spectrum and has a real shot at earning bipartisan support in the Senate. It’s time to end the political gamesmanship and do the job that the American people elected us to do."