Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) commended sponsors of the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) today, as he rescued the derided media bailout bill from the jaws of legislative death.
“Let me commend the authors of this bill for the hard work they put in on an important issue,” said Sen. Cruz, who went on to praise the legislation as a blow against the corporate power of Big Tech, even though it will deepen the corrupt relationship between Silicon Valley and the media.
The core of the bill, as is now widely known, is to allow media companies to form a legal cartel in the U.S., for the sole purpose of pressuring tech companies for special favors.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, speaks during the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Thursday, Oct. 15, 2020, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Greg Nash/Pool via AP)
At the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the bill today, Cruz said he worked closely with the lead Democrat sponsor of the bill, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (R-MN) to get his amendment through. Thanks to Cruz’s efforts, the media bailout bill was voted out of committee and may now face a floor vote.
“I’ve had extensive conversations with Senator Klobuchar, and sat down and heard her concerns, and we worked together on this amendment,” said Cruz.
Many Republican senators voted against the bill. At the hearing, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) gave a lengthy argument against the bill, voting in favor of Cruz’s amendment but voting against passing the bill out of committee.
“I am a little bit confused by the sponsors’ support for the amendment,” said Sen. Lee. “I applaud anything that restricts censorship by Big Tech, [but] I don’t think it does what the sponsors think it does.”
“The bill retains the fundamental flaw of attempting to improve competition by sanctioning the formation of cartels, something that our antitrust laws go out of their way to prohibit.”
“Moreover, this bill ends up favoring large conglomerate publishers over smaller, local publishers,” continued Lee.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) also voted against the bill.
Sen. Blackburn has long maintained that the bill makes it easier for Big Tech and the media establishment to collude, while Sen. Hawley opposes antitrust exemptions on principle.
Republican concerns with the bill are so great that Sen. Rand Paul, one of the bill’s original sponsors, ditched his support for the JCPA earlier this month.
Despite this, which added to opposition from the GOP leader in the House Kevin McCarthy, as well as opposition from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), and a wide range of bipartisan experts, the bill has been rescued from oblivion again.
Inexplicably, the man responsible for bailing out the corporate legacy media — one of the most disliked institutions in the country, particularly among Republicans — is a man who has presented himself to the public as a conservative firebrand: Ted Cruz.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.
