At White House’s urging, Republican Senators launch anti-tech blitz ahead of election

Apparently, the Trump administration is pressuring Republican Senators to ratchet up scrutiny of social media companies it sees as biased against conservatives in the run-up to the Nov 2020 election. In recent weeks, the White House has pressed Senate Republican leaders on key committees to hold public hearings on the law that protects Facebook, Twitter and other internet companies from lawsuits over how they treat user posts. And action is following. Senate Commerce Chair Roger Wicker (R-MS) held a vote in his committee Sept 30 to issue subpoenas to the CEOs of Facebook, Twitter and Google to testify about how they police content on their platforms. That's after Democrats initially prevented the Mississippi Republican from pushing through subpoenas that could have compelled the CEOs to testify with only a few days' notice. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) recently introduced new legislation to address alleged bias on social media and the same day scheduled a markup of the bill — a move that would have made it the fastest any bill on tech's liability protections has moved from introduction to a markup on Capitol Hill in recent memory. Chairman Graham announced Sept 30 that consideration of the measure had been tabled.