In the News

Conservative claims of political bias by social media platforms and increased bipartisan concerns about the oversize clout of big tech firms are fueling a new initiative by the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ).

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Wednesday introduced a Senate bill — the "Stop BEZOS Act" — that would require large employers such as Amazon.com and Walmart to pay the government for food stamps, public housing, Medicaid and other federal assistance received by their workers.

The bill's name is a dig at Amazon chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos and stands for "Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies Act." It would establish a 100 percent tax on government benefits received by workers at companies with at least 500 employees, the former presidential candidate said Wednesday.

Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna said it would be a bad idea for President Donald Trump to get into a fight with Google after the president said the company treated him unfairly.

Khanna, whose district includes Silicon Valley, told Time it is a "dumb fight to pick."

"The thing about Google, Facebook and Twitter is that everyone needs them including Trump," Khanna said.

Khanna's remarks come after Trump tweeted criticism of the search engine on Tuesday, saying it was programmed to return "only the viewing/reporting of Fake New Media."

Two Democratic members of Congress are urging California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) to put a cap on any new fossil fuel projects and set a timeline for a hard stop on oil and gas extraction throughout the state.

In a letter sent to Brown on Wednesday, Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) asked him to end all fossil fuel production in the Golden State as part of the governor's commitment to "driving transformational change."

Here's the bad news: We can't trust Silicon Valley to police itself. That has become abundantly clear from the many scandals involving Russian disinformation campaigns, Cambridge Analytica, Twitter bots, secret data breaches, Google geo-tracking and the like.

Here's the other bad news: We can't trust Washington politicians to police it, either.

The expansive Luddite Caucus has no idea how 21st-century technology actually works, nor any apparent motivation to learn.

Listen: Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) sits down with Chuck Todd to talk about the "Internet Bill of Rights" his trip to rural America, and why he sometimes has a kind word for President Trump

Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat from Silicon Valley, has introduced an ambitious new bill that would offer work to virtually any American struggling with a long spate of unemployment—but whatever you do, don't call his plan a job guarantee.

Even with record low unemployment and corporate profits increasing, workers are not feeling the love. Nearly three quarters of American workers are making less money this year than last, inflation adjusted median incomes have declined over the last 50 years, and housing prices have skyrocketed. Toss robots and automation into the mix, and it creates a recipe for economic insecurity that raises fundamental questions about the long-term sustainability of pay.