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Top Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee threatened to fracture a bipartisan investigation into Big Tech.

In a letter Monday, Reps. Doug Collins, R-Ga., the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, and Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wisc., the ranking member on the Antitrust Subcommittee, told Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., they "will not participate in an investigation with pre-conceived conclusions that America's large tech companies are inherently bad, cannot be allowed to exist in society, and must be broken up."

The letter followed comments Nadler made at a fundraising event Sunday. In a video from the event posted by Matt Stoller, a fellow at the Open Markets Institute and advocate for stronger antitrust enforcement, Nadler can be heard talking about "changing the distribution of power" and "breaking up all the large companies."

Politico reported that Nadler did not call specifically to break up the tech companies, but instead was speaking broadly about changes necessary to tackle the issue of concentrated market power.

Nadler retweeted the video on his Twitter account, saying, "Concentrated economic power is a threat to both our democracy and our free and open markets," adding that it's important Congress "act where appropriate to address this concern."

Nadler's statements raised alarms for Collins and Sensenbrenner, who said in the letter they "have warned from the start of the Subcommittee's work that this investigation must avoid pre-conceived conclusions. The conclusions you articulated this past weekend have only aggravated our concerns."

"America's leaders should not punish tech companies simply because those companies have succeeded that will hurt consumers and stifle innovation. Our online ecosystem is thriving and breaking up large tech companies simply because of their size isn't the answer," they wrote.

Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., chairman of the Antitrust Subcommittee, who is leading the investigation of Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple, has said he hopes the effort will remain bipartisan as it enters the legislative phase. Unlike the investigations by the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department, the House panel's probe will result in legislative proposals to reform the digital marketplace broadly, rather than impose an enforcement action.

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Top Republicans on House Judiciary Committee threaten to fracture investigation into Big Tech - CNBC

Its the type of move that might have prompted a backlash from within his own party not too long ago, and several senators said they would not have done it. But after three weeks of the impeachment trial and with Trumps firm grip over the party, there was little blowback from his colleagues on Tuesday.

I was glad we didnt put the chief justice in a bad situation, said Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), a member of the GOP leadership. I have some sympathy for [Pauls] view on this. The whistleblower law should protect the whistleblowers job and future opportunity and not necessarily hide who the whistleblower is.

Its fine, said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.). Had there been a vote on it, I probably would have voted to override the chief justice.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who has long touted his reputation protecting whistleblowers, said simply: If its the same name everybody else used, then its kind of out there.

Trump has repeatedly attacked the whistleblower on social media and in recent remarks. And in using the person's name on the Senate floor, Paul went further than any other House or Senate Republican. When Paul sought to have Roberts read his question during a two-day round of inquiries during the trial Roberts refused, saying, "The presiding officer declines to read the question."

Under the Constitution, Pauls own speech is protected on the Senate floor. That means he can do whatever he wants on the floor, said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas).

But some Republicans did seek to gently put distance between themselves and Paul, a longtime troublemaker within the Senate GOP who has single handedly caused brief shutdowns of the government and the Patriot Act in his two terms in the Senate.

I still believe in whistleblower protection. I think the fact that the chief justice wouldnt read it is an indicator of the sensitivity of it, said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.). So I probably wouldnt have done that.

I wouldnt have done it, agreed Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), who said he would have voted down Paul if he had contested Roberts on the Senate floor. I would have said that weve asked the chief justice by constitutional directive to oversee this and Im going to respect his wishes.

Paul said Tuesday that he supports protections against reprisal for whistleblowers but not necessarily anonymity.

"In the first month of [Trump's] office, in January of 2017, they were already plotting the impeachment," he alleged. "And you say 'Well, we should protect the whistleblower, and the whistleblower deserves anonymity.' The law does not preserve anonymity. His boss is not supposed to say anything about him, he's not supposed to be fired. I'm for that."

The whistleblower filed a complaint in August with an intelligence community watchdog, Inspector General Michael Atkinson. The complaint, which cited widespread concerns inside the Trump administration, alleged that Trump appeared to pressure Ukraine's president to launch politically motivated investigations of his Democratic rivals.

Atkinson indicated that the whistleblower showed "some indicia of an arguable political bias" but after reviewing the complaint and deemed it "urgent" and credible, triggering a requirement to transmit the complaint to Congress. The director of national intelligence, though, instead forwarded the complaint to the Justice Department, which overruled Atkinson's judgment and blocked the complaint from reaching the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.

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Rand Paul reads alleged whistleblower's name and Republicans 'fine' with it - POLITICO

On Wednesday, the Senate will most likely vote to acquit President Trump. The vote should send shock waves through our democracy. It is not so much that the Senate is absolving him of all charges of obstruction of Congress and abuse of power; the shock waves should emanate from how his Republican allies go about it. By rejecting a conviction, the party will demonstrate that it believes anything goes in winning elections.

Most Republican senators have insisted that in pressuring Ukraine to investigate the Bidens, Mr. Trump did nothing wrong. A few say he crossed a line, but they have never explained why his actions fall short of conviction, or what it would take for them to consider a conviction.

Rather than reining in a president who clearly abused his power for personal gain, most Republicans have conceded to Mr. Trumps overarching defense: that his re-election would serve the public interest. That argument was enough, for his Senate allies, to override campaign finance laws and the norms of governance that have prevailed in our country until this presidency.

This defense is a natural outgrowth of the unitary executive theory, a legal doctrine advanced by apologists for the imperial presidency, including Attorney General William Barr. It was Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard law professor representing Mr. Trump, who gave this idea its most outrageous frame: Every public official that I know believes that his election is in the public interest, he said. And if a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.

If this were simply verbiage in service of his client, one might almost forgive Mr. Dershowitz for his claim. But Republican senators and other party leaders have embraced this theory as if our Constitution was in fact a pact to establish a monarchy. Roy Blunt of Missouri, a close ally of the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, declared that Mr. Dershowitz had said the presidents actions were not impeachable, and I dont disagree with that.

In other words, the core message from Senate Republicans is this: No matter how dangerous or incompetent any president might be, he or she has only to think that remaining in office serves our nation to justify any act to stay there.

This is a five-alarm fire for democracy. The Republican Party has aggressively sought to rig elections in its favor, including voter purging, vote suppression and gerrymandering. Paul Weyrich, co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, the American Legislative Exchange Council and the Moral Majority, explained his support for vote suppression at an evangelical Christian campaign rally for Ronald Reagan in 1980. Many of our Christians have what I call the goo goo syndrome good government, he said. They want everybody to vote. I dont want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people.

That statement has been the foundation of the Republican approach to elections ensure that only the people you want to vote can vote, and if you cant win even with vote suppression, look the other way when Russians intervene. Mr. Trumps defense in the Senate is in keeping with this no-holds-barred approach. Anything in service of victory is permissible.

This impeachment is as much about what happens in November as it is about Mr. Trumps actions. With the Republicans in thrall to a demagogic leader, will it accept the results if Mr. Trump loses the election? Will Mr. Trump vacate the White House next Jan. 20, or will he claim that the election was a fraud?

Or even more likely, will allies in swing states like Florida, Ohio and Arizona contest results in favor of Mr. Trumps opponent? We have already seen how Floridas Republican governor and Legislature have thwarted the will of the voters, who last year approved a ballot initiative to allow former felons to vote: They enacted the equivalent of a poll tax, in defiance of the Constitution.

The time for those who believe in our Constitution and our democracy to act is now. We must prepare in every possible way to counter efforts by the Republicans and Mr. Trump to rig the coming election and to nullify it if they lose. While the statements during impeachment and the lock-step way the Republicans follow Mr. Trump might look like the temporary aberration of a party in the grip of a cult of personality, the roots of this anti-democratic impulse are much deeper. What Mr. Trump has laid bare is the true emptiness of the Republican Partys commitment to fair elections and its antagonism to the rules of democracy.

If we dont work now to prepare the public and the machinery of voting around the country for an end-run around our representative form of government, we shall be akin to nations like Russia, where elections are just cover for autocracy.

Caroline Fredrickson (@crfredrickson) is the author of The Democracy Fix: How to Win the Fight for Fair Rules, Fair Courts and Fair Elections and a senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice.

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After Acquittal, Its Anything Goes for the Republicans - The New York Times

The truth is that Mr. Obama was only sort of techie. More important, his administration did not challenge the industry in any significant way. In the Obama years, Silicon Valley consolidated its influence and centralized its power without oversight. In addition, the idea took hold that the tech industry was full of liberals, when in fact it is more libertarian-lite with a strong proclivity for an unusual combination of live-and-let-live social mores and dont regulate my innovation or tax me business attitude.

In fact, from the start of the internet age in the 1990s, the right has been more clever than its rivals in exploiting ever-morphing tech to influence vast numbers of people with targeted messages.

While its hard to forget in the age of Fox News ubiquity, a couple of decades ago most of the truly powerful media outlets were centrist (or slightly left of center), and mass-media broadcast technology was not readily available to the emerging conservative movement.

Thus, these outsiders latched on to the web, which in many cases meant they were among the first to effectively use highly targeted email and search ads. Back in the early 2000s, people like the evangelical political strategist Ralph Reed showed us what was coming: campaigns that are fought and won online, and power shifting to those who know how to move the tech levers.

Right now thats people like Mr. Parscale, whose tactic is to use the entire arsenal of weapons that companies like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have provided in the most creative and sometimes nefarious of ways. And, as loath as I am to say this, why shouldnt he create a raging digital fire of confusion and propaganda and microtargeted lies and truths if no one is making rules to stop him? It is not meant as a compliment, but right now being the best tech arsonist is what rates.

Meanwhile, as it all burns, the Democrats in Iowa are fiddling away on an app that cant tally what is a relatively simple set of data. Long ago, during a debate about the Obamacare site mess and what it meant for eventual online voting, I suggested to a panel of Washington power players that maybe we get a start-up like Tinder to run the voting system, since it did complex matching calculations in real time.

My comment was greeted by looks of horror, with one panel member asking me why our democracy should rely on dating app technology.

The answer was simple: because it works.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. Wed like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And heres our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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Sorry, Republicans Rule the Internet - The New York Times

David A. Graham: Mitch McConnells Potemkin trial

Trump still doesnt inspire the same level of cultish devotion among Republican officeholders as he does among Republican voters. Time and again during his political career, he has said or done something that has appalled, mortified, or scandalized GOP politicians: There was the Access Hollywood tape in October 2016. There was the week in May 2017 when he fired FBI Director James Comey, then shared classified material with Russian leaders. There was his obsequious appearance with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki in July 2018. Each time, the initial reaction has been horror and even condemnation from Republican officials, followedwithin a few short daysby acquiescence and acceptance.

This happened twice during the impeachment drama. In the early stages of the scandal, Republicans criticized Trumps call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Senator Lindsey Graham said hed be very disturbed if Trump had engaged in a quid pro quo. But eventually the GOP settled down, and Graham now says the quid pro quo is perfectly fine.

The second example arrived this week. After news of former National Security Adviser John Boltons book, which confirmed the factual case alleged by House Democrats, Republican senators seemed to be reeling. Senator Angus King, a Maine independent who caucuses with the Democrats, and is apparently very naive, predicted that as many as 10 Republicans would vote to hear witnesses. Reports said that McConnell didnt have the votes to block witnesses. Now, of course, it seems obvious that witnesses are out, leaving things right where they were before the Bolton revelations.

Why is it that these moments bend but never break Republican support? This is politics, and the simplest answer is probably political. Vulnerable senators like Cory Gardner of Colorado and Martha McSally of Arizona are risking their seats by lining up behind Trump. Both face tough races in November. Gardner will likely run against the popular former governor John Hickenlooper. McSally lost an election last November, was appointed to fill another Senate seat, and is struggling against the Democratic challenger, Mark Kelly.

Yet its not clear that going against Trump would help either Gardner or McSally, and the opposite is more likely. Candidates occasionally try to run away from presidents of their own party who are unpopular in their state, and it almost never works. Such a maneuver is unlikely to win over Democrats and moderates who dislike Trumpespecially for first-termers like Gardner and McSally, who dont have a long-standing relationship with voterswhile it might alienate Republican voters the senators desperately need to hold.

In 2010, for example, some moderate Democrats attempted to distance themselves from Barack Obama, and they were almost entirely swept out of office. Then again, other Democrats tried to stay close to Obama, and many of them were swept out of office too.

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Republicans Are Prepared to Go Down With Trump - The Atlantic