How conservative anger at Big Tech pushed the GOP into Bernie Sanders’ corner By Evan Halper, Los Angeles Times
Published: May 9, 2021, 2:45pm
Share: Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., chair of the Senate Budget Committee, pauses for reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, April 29, 2021, the day after President Joe Biden addressed Congress on his first 100 days in office. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
WASHINGTON – During most of Donald Trump’s time in the White House, Silicon Valley could regard the legal threats Republicans hurled its way as a sideshow: unfocused, unserious, untenable.
But a campaign launched in a cauldron of conservative grievance over censorship allegations, complaints of “woke” corporate values and the power wielded by a few Bay Area billionaires has, in former President Trump’s absence, morphed into something far more worrisome to big business.
Facebookâs âsupreme courtâ on Wednesday approved the ban that blocked former President Donald J. Trump from using Facebook and Instagram after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol â but said the social media giant should define how long the penalty will last.
Readmitting Trump would have provided the former president with expanded social media connections to his supporters. Denying Trump will not silence him online â he already has a new website â but it does make it harder for him to have an extensive Web presence since he also is banned from using a Twitter account, a situation not involved in todayâs announcement.
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During most of Donald Trump’s time in the White House, Silicon Valley could regard the legal threats Republicans hurled its way as a sideshow: unfocused, unserious, untenable.
But a campaign launched in a cauldron of conservative grievance over censorship allegations, complaints of “woke” corporate values and the power wielded by a few Bay Area billionaires has, in former President Trump’s absence, morphed into something far more worrisome to big business.
The GOP push to break up, or at least punish, Big Tech is now an unexpectedly disciplined movement that is causing corporate concern far beyond the boardrooms of Silicon Valley, as the party’s identity is increasingly focused around reining in the power of large companies.
Howard Ball is what s known in Yiddish as a
kochleffel literally, a pot stirrer. He spent years fighting for civil rights and racial equality in the South and getting himself into what the late U.S. representative John Lewis called good trouble. Now 83, Ball has written 37 books, including several since his 2002 retirement from the University of Vermont, where he is professor emeritus of political science and a former dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. His latest book,
Taking the Fight South: Chronicle of a Jew s Battle for Civil Rights in Mississippi, is a memoir of 1976 to 1982, when Ball; his wife, Carol; and their three young daughters lived in Starksville, Miss. Ball s family and friends were flabbergasted by his decision to teach at Mississippi State University. He writes that his mother called him