Democrats launching congressional investigations into SpaceXAI, META and Apple

herodoturtle

Paywall for me. Link anyone? Curious to read this. Thanks.

behole

https://archive.is/BRasv

howunfortunate

The pivot from "we just want single payer healthcare" sure happened a lot quicker than I expected. https://x.com/search?q=Subpeonas&src=typed_query

gamblor956

"If Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) becomes the House minority leader, he may bring his reputation for partisan oversight to proceedings to counter Democratic machinations." Good luck with that Mr. Jordan. The House minority leader doesn't have the power to issue congressional summons, and there is a 0% chance that the Democrats will allow him to take any committee assignment that would put him in such a position (and even his own party didn't trust him enough to put him in charge of anything important after it was revealed that as a coach at OSU he knew about the sexual abuse of minors and student athletes for decades and did nothing about it).

xqcgrek2

Long overdue.

freeone3000

Prosecute the one accepting the bribes, not the one giving it. Working with law enforcement is... uh, not a crime, definitionally. So you've got to make it so that law enforcement cannot be criminal. Own goals all over.

ajuc

Good. Either the state controls the oligarchs or oligarchs control the state.

swingboy

No Palantir?

georgemcbay

Good. Congress has to start working for the people it represents again, so I really hope the Democrats start pushing lots of legislation that addresses the real needs of the people. Even if every bill gets vetoed, make sure Trump and the Republicans around him own the lack of progress in a very visible way to ensure 2028 is an easy-mode Democratic win. But... they also have to undo the damage to the rule of law that has been supercharged by the Trump administration. Letting bygones be bygones and trying to move back to the old status quo without addressing actual wrongdoing is how you end up with Trump getting reelected even after January 6th. If you spend years (correctly) telling people the current cronyism and open corruption is destroying our democracy, you have to act like it really was when you regain power and that means investigating and punishing those who took advantage of it, where just and applicable.

ks2048

Arresting Tim Cook for bribery would send a message. Why else would Apple Pay for an inauguration ceremony or for a white house ballroom or a golden plaque gift?

AlexandrB

> Lawmakers are also eyeing Apple over its hosting of tracking apps used by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement This is bizarre. ICE is an (enforcement) arm of the government. So the government is investigating Apple for hosting tracking apps used by the government?

carabiner

This is kind of insane when you realize 80% of their employees are democrats even if their executives pal around with trump. I am crying tears of joy for this overall.

grvdrm

I just hope that the congressional panelists do their homework. Especially in the televised bits in which C-suite reps testify in front of Congress. Every time I come away thinking that the investigators themselves have not spend much (or any) time understanding the basics of these businesses. And so they resort to what they know: speeches/lectures to let their constituents hear and see them on the record standing for anything.

pupppet

Did these guys think Republicans would be in power forever?

insane_dreamer

they'd better keep it laser focused on stuff like bribery that is easy to demonstrate, and not stuff like "enabled ICE by hosting apps" etc. which is much less understood by the American people and harder to nail down as a crime

Teever

I'm pretty skeptical that the political and legal system in America is capable of the kind of radical change needed to stave off the control of the big tech oligarchs that have aligned themselves with the Republican party. There's a lot of entrenched powers in the Democratic party who lack the foresight and desire to make the kinds of moves necessary to do so and are mostly just riding it out until they can retire and/or die. But on the other hand I'm really surprised by the lack of foresight and intention displayed by big tech oligarchs and to be honest I'm troubled by it. Like there's a lot of seemingly unforced errors from these guys and I'm not sure why. For instance Sam Altman didn't have that stupid thing that he recently said about the allocation of RAM and Elon Musk doesn't have to say the stupid stuff that he says all the time in social media, so what makes them say these things? These are small things, admittedly, but they are also kind of big things, or hint at big things, you know? Is it simply a lack of immediate negative consequences for their actions that slowly reshapes their brain into not being able to foresee negative consequences in general? Or is there some deeper plan there? It doesn't seem like it. And if that's the case, that there is no deeper plan, how are the organizations that these people command able to continue functioning, are the CEOs really so unnecessary that the people around them just smile, nod, tell them what they want to hear and work around whatever damage they cause when they spout off some hare-brained ideas? Like who is running the show here?

RickJWagner

I hope they find time to address healthcare and Social Security once their new majorities are sworn in. If they make good faith efforts to solve these ( not partisan pork filled non-starter efforts ) I will be deeply grateful. The Republicans had a chance and failed to even act. If the Democrats do the same I’ll be deeply disappointed.