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house republicans
Big Tech’s Most Effective Lobbyist, Jim Jordan, Is Temporarily Constrained
The House Judiciary Committee under Jordan has not merely diverged from bipartisan concerns over corporate power, it has helped neutralize any meaningful legislative solutions by redefining the very nature of the threat.
Oct 12, 2025
A silver lining of the current government shutdown is that Rep. Jim Jordan can no longer use his position as chair of the House Judiciary Committee to waste taxpayer dollars lobbying for the most powerful technology corporations.
The most recent example of this waste was a nearly five-hour hearing in which Rep. Jordan (R-Ohio) gave the United Kingdom’s Nigel Farage a platform on Capitol Hill to attack Britain’s efforts to protect children online and the European Union's efforts to address the dominance of Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Booking, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft in European digital markets. Also discussed were European efforts to set ground rules for digital information ecosystems. The hearing produced fireworks and sound bites about “authoritarian” speech policing. It was a performative act dressed up as oversight.
Are these laws perfect? No. Do they apply in the United States? No. Should we be spending taxpayer dollars to lobby for trillion-dollar companies abroad? No. Yet, Jim Jordan has been traveling the world on our dime to lobby for Big Tech in the name of protecting “free speech.”
This shift from antitrust to anti-woke is a gift to Big Tech.
House Republicans keep promising a crusade against Big Tech’s power. If they were serious, they would likely find support from their Democratic colleagues.
The industry's greatest vulnerability lies in the economic arguments against the harms of market concentration—arguments supported by a growing body of evidence and bipartisan concern. The industry’s greatest strength, however, lies in its ability to reframe any regulatory effort as a politically charged battle over the First Amendment.
The House Judiciary Committee under Jim Jordan has not merely diverged from bipartisan concerns over corporate power and its harms to children. It has become the perfect rhetorical counteroffensive by helping neutralize any meaningful legislative solutions by redefining the very nature of the threat. Where most see a market failure requiring economic intervention, the House Judiciary Committee under Chairman Jim Jordan alleges political persecution requiring investigations into government "weaponization." This redefinition is the single most valuable outcome a regulated industry could hope for from its oversight body, transforming a legislative threat into a political shield.
Where is the House Judiciary Committee that conducted a landmark 16-month investigation into the market power of Apple, Amazon, Facebook (now Meta), and Google?
That bipartisan investigation—spanning seven hearings and nearly a million documents—produced broad consensus on the problems affecting these markets, and the need for more resources for antitrust enforcement.
That is the hard work of governing. What Jim Jordan has delivered instead is theater.
The result is that the real work of promoting open markets where everyone has a fair shot remains unfinished. Congress could pass legislation to address the monopoly power that allows Apple and Google to control our smartphones, Amazon to exploit small businesses and consumers, and Meta to operate with little regard for the welfare of our children.
None of this requires viral hearings. House Republicans keep promising a crusade against Big Tech’s power. If they were serious, they would likely find support from their Democratic colleagues. Few issues have managed to forge the kind of bipartisan consensus seen in the effort to rein in the monopolistic power of the largest corporations.
Unfortunately, that seems unlikely under the leadership of Jim Jordan.
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Speaker Johnson Calls Illegally Occupied West Bank 'Integral Part' of Israel
"International law is completely unambiguous on this question," said one critic. "What settlers call 'Judea and Samaria' is the legal property of the Palestinians—Israel has zero legal claim to the land."
Aug 04, 2025
House Speaker Mike Johnson on Monday led a high-level Republican delegation on a visit to the occupied West Bank, where the second-in-line to the U.S. presidency told a rapt audience in an illegal Jewish settler colony that they are the rightful owners of the Palestinian territory.
"The mountains of Judea and Samaria are the rightful property of the Jewish people," Johnson (R-La.) said in Ariel, using the biblical name for the West Bank, which includes East Jerusalem. Ariel was built on land stolen from the Palestinian towns of Salfit, Marda, and Iskaka after Israeli forces conquered the West Bank in a 1967 war waged on false pretense of an imminent threat of Egyptian and Syrian attack.
"Judea and Samaria are the front line of the state of Israel and must remain an integral part of it," Johnson added.
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry condemned Johnson's visit, calling his endorsement of Israeli annexation a "blatant violation of international law."
"All settlement activity is illegal and void," the ministry stressed, adding that Johnson's stance "undermines Arab and American efforts to stop the war and cycle of violence, while flagrantly contradicting the declared U.S. position on settlements and settler violence."
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, at least 1,013 Palestinians, including 214 children, have been killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers in the occupied West Bank since October 2023. Settlers, often protected and sometimes joined by Israeli troops, have launched numerous deadly pogroms and other attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank in what critics say is a bid to finish what Israel started in 1948—the total conquest of Palestine, the ethnic cleansing of its Arab population, and Israeli annexation.
Johnson, who is reportedly the highest-ranking American official to visit an Israeli settlement, was accompanied by U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee—who while running for president in 2008 denied the very existence of the Palestinian people—as well as Reps. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), Nathaniel Moran (R-Texas), Michael Cloud (R-Texas), and Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.).
Tenney leads the congressional Friends of Judea and Samaria Caucus, which supports Israeli annexation of what it calls the "biblical heartland of Israel."
Last month, all 15 Israeli government ministers from Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party urged the prime minister to annex the West Bank. On July 23, members of the Knesset, Israel's Parliament, voted 71-13 in favor of a symbolic measure declaring "Judea and Samaria" to be "an inseparable part of the Land of Israel, the historical, cultural, and spiritual homeland of the Jewish people" and asserting that "Israel has the natural, historical, and legal right to all of the territories of the Land of Israel."
Netanyahu has repeatedly displayed maps showing the Middle East without Palestine, all of whose territory is shown as part of Israel. Following U.S President Donald Trump's reelection last November, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a member of the far-right Religious Zionist party, said that "the year 2025 will be, with God's help, the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria."
The Israeli government has repeatedly approved construction and expansion of settlements in a bid to establish irreversible "facts on the ground" that will survive developments in international law and moves by an increasing number of nations to formally recognize Palestinian statehood.
Around 150 U.N. member states currently recognize or plan to recognize Palestine. Recently, France became the first Group of Seven member to announce it will officially recognize Palestine. Last week, Canada said it would also do so, with conditions attached, and the United Kingdom threatened recognition of Palestine if Israel does not take "substantive steps" to end its annihilation of Gaza, where Israeli forces have killed or wounded more than 200,000 people since October 2023.
Last year, the International Court of Justice—which is also weighing a Gaza genocide case against Israel—found that the occupation is an illegal form of apartheid that must end as soon as possible. Both Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and Article 8(2) the International Criminal Court Rome Statute prohibit settlement activity.
Construction of Ariel began in 1978, the same year the U.S. State Department first adopted the official position that Israeli settlements are "inconsistent with international law." That position stood until then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reversed it during the first Trump administration. Biden-era Secretary of State Antony Blinken restored the long-standing State Department position in 2024.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has signaled support for reverting to the first Trump administration's position, and the State Department has lifted sanctions imposed on some extremist settlers during the Biden administration. Last week, one of those settlers, Yinon Levy, allegedly murdered Palestinian peace activist Awda Hathaleen in Umm al-Kheir after the latter was denied entry into the United States to take part in an interfaith speaking tour.
Approximately 750,000 Israelis currently reside in more than 250 illegal settler colonies in the West Bank. While Israel grants every Jew in the world the right to settle in Israel, it has refused to allow the approximately five million Palestinian refugees—people ethnically cleansed from Palestine during the foundation of Israel in 1948 and their descendants—to exercise their legal right of return to their homeland.
The Republicans' visit to the West Bank followed last week's tour by Huckabee and Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff of a Gaza aid distribution center run by a U.S.-backed group condemned for its role in Israeli forces' massacres of desperate people seeking food and other lifesaving aid—a visit denounced by one critic as a "blatant theatrical display."
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'Performative Bullsh*t': 16 House Republicans Get Cold Feet Over Medicaid Cuts
However, one critic noted that the lawmakers "already voted for the largest cut to Medicaid in American history—and when the time comes, they'll cave... once again to give their billionaire donors a massive tax break."
Jun 24, 2025
Under pressure from millions of constituents who would be stripped of healthcare coverage under the GOP's slash-and-burn reconciliation package, more than a dozen House Republicans claimed Tuesday that they would not back the Senate's version of the legislation if it contains proposed cuts to the Medicaid provider tax.
"Protecting Medicaid is essential for the vulnerable constituents we were elected to represent. Therefore, we cannot support a final bill that threatens access to coverage or jeopardizes the stability of our hospitals and providers," wrote 16 House Republicans led by Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.)—whose largely rural Central Valley district has one of the highest concentration of Medicaid recipients in the nation—in a letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.).
"Throughout the budget process, we have consistently affirmed our commitment to ensuring that reductions in federal spending do not come at the expense of our most vulnerable constituents," the lawmakers' letter continues. "We write to reiterate that commitment to those we represent here in Washington."
"We support the Medicaid reforms in H.R. 1, which strengthen the program's ability to serve children, pregnant women, the elderly, and individuals with disabilities," the letter states, referring to provisions in the House version of the so-called "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" that would still slash federal Medicaid spending by billions of dollars, introduce work requirements for recipients, and impose other conditions that critics say would result in millions of vulnerable people losing their coverage in order to pay for a massive tax cut that would disproportionately benefit the wealthy and corporations.
The letter continues:
The Senate proposal also undermines the balanced approach taken to craft the Medicaid provisions in H.R. 1—particularly regarding provider taxes and state directed payments. The Senate version treats expansion and nonexpansion states unfairly, fails to preserve existing state programs, and imposes stricter limits that do not give hospitals sufficient time to adjust to new budgetary constraints or to identify alternative funding sources.
We are also concerned about rushed implementation timelines, penalties for expansion states, changes to the community engagement requirements for adults with dependents, and cuts to emergency Medicaid funding. These changes would place additional burdens on hospitals already stretched thin by legal and moral obligations to provide care.
"Protecting Medicaid is essential for the vulnerable constituents we were elected to represent," the lawmakers concluded. "Therefore, we cannot support a final bill that threatens access to coverage or jeopardizes the stability of our hospitals and providers."
Both chambers of Congress are scheduled to be on recess next week for the Independence Day holiday. Senators still have not voted on the package—and both chambers must pass identical versions of the megabill before it will reach President Donald Trump's desk.
Trump impatiently said on his Truth Social network Tuesday: "To my friends in the Senate, lock yourself in a room if you must, don't go home, and GET THE DEAL DONE THIS WEEK. Work with the House so they can pick it up, and pass it, IMMEDIATELY. NO ONE GOES ON VACATION UNTIL IT'S DONE."
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesperson Justin Chermol dismissed the 16 GOP lawmakers' letter as "performative bullshit."
"These so-called moderates already voted for the largest cut to Medicaid in American history—and when the time comes, they'll cave to their D.C. party bosses once again to give their billionaire donors a massive tax break," Chermol added.Keep ReadingShow Less
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