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Welcome back to another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Chris Bedford, Senior Editor at the Federalists. I'm joined here by Congressman Kenbuck, Colorado.

Thank you for joining us. Absolutely my pleasure. There's been in the news last week or so after six months, hiatus from big tech legislation in the hill where they fought over every other thing that they possibly could. There's been a real flurry of activity with a specifically,

probably most newsworthy with a bill that you've proposed and got a number of bipartisan co-signers on to to try and bring to try and make it so that when somebody has a quam with big tech, a legal quam that that fight is not always fought in big tech backyard. Could you tell us a little bit about that and what's what's happened this week and why that's an important step.

Sure, so in 1913 the Clayton Act was passed one of the major pieces of anti-trust legislation and it gave the federal government the ability to sue in any district court in the United States.

State Attorney General's and private parties could sue in a particular court, but then the case was sent to a judicial panel to determine where the lawsuit should be heard.

And so the state attorney general asked me to run this bill that would put them in the same category and give them the same ability as the federal government so they will be able to pick a state, sue in that state and under the anti-trust laws and move forward.

So one of the interesting red herrings that's being thrown around is that well you have these activists attorney generals and they'll sue under the environmental laws and it doesn't affect environmental laws or any other law, just the law, just the cases brought under the Clayton Act from 1913.

Yeah, there's a lot of pushback I've heard from some of the some Republicans are more libertarian minded folks and say when you when you've got a bill that's got everyone from you to chiproid Jerry Nadelier to the speaker on it.

More people on the left that is going to end up looking like how the left wants it to look and they're going to use this push to push their own agenda. What how do you push back against against those accusations that this is going to be hijacked more by the left than by maybe common sense reform, so get big tech under control.

Well, the reality is that the Trump administration did more against big tech than any administration in probably 50 years and follow that by the attorney generals primarily from Texas Nebraska, some of the more conservative attorney general.

So this bill empowers states to bring actions to protect their consumers under the antitrust laws and that to me is exactly what we need to do to rain in big tech to make sure we have competition in the marketplace.

And so can a activist judge or can an activist attorney general in a state engage in in some bad behavior. Sure, that's why we have a court system, a court system, make sure that the law is followed.

How did how does big tech influence the court systems in his own backyard that's actually pushed for this to be something that needs to be looked at by the Smiu and by the state AGs. How does big another, you know, it's obviously the big employer has got to be a culture there, but what are some of the what are some of the outcomes that we've seen previously from cases that just go straight to California to be decided on.

And that's exactly what's happened. The judicial panel has determined that there is a an expertise that has developed in the northern district of California regarding high tech cases, big tech cases.

And so a lot of the cases were transferred there and not surprisingly the technology companies won those cases. And so the this this ability to have a Texas AG file is sued in Texas and haven't heard in Texas is really a major step.

And so the Texas case against Google was transferred to the Eastern District of New York, not not that friendly for an AG from Texas, but the company like Google can go and hire a local law firm and and make sure that they have every advantage possible.

And so some of the kind of lawsuits or cases being brought forward that that you've seen or then floated either by your office or by some of the offices that you're working on, the kind of things that could actually really potentially have an impact on the big tech issues right now that both left and right seem concerned about.

So one of the major issues that we're addressing in fact just today in the Senate Judiciary Committee, there was a markup on the non discrimination bill. And that's one of the issues that a lot of the attorney generals are rallying around to try to bring some attention to and have brought losses based on that.

And it is a case involving Amazon and the challenge is that Amazon self preferences its own products over those of a third party seller.

And so the ideas that Amazon has a platform that sees a product doing very well, it goes out, it copies that product, it then drops the third party seller to page three on the search, it makes its own product, the predominant seller or product that's listed on the platform.

And that's self-preferencing then of a lot of instances is but those third party companies out of business. So it's not just it's not just constraints to social media and the shadow manning, it's also about some of the anti competitive practices and I competitive practices from Facebook from Google from Amazon and Apple absolutely.

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