Press Releases

House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) today released a Democratic staff report titled, "The Delusion of Collusion: The Republican Effort to Weaponize Antitrust and Undermine Free Speech." The report highlights what Democratic members and staff have learned about Chairman Jordan's crusade to use taxpayer funds to accuse advertisers of "colluding" to set discuss brand safety concerns through trade groups like the Global Alliance for Responsible Media and hurt Twitter/X's profits.
 
In the forward to the Report, Ranking Member Nadler writes, in part: 
"Chairman Jordan’s so-called investigation culminated in a July 2024 “interim report” which used cherry picked documents and misleading transcript excerpts to suggest that the committee had uncovered evidence of “collusion” when in fact the very opposite is true. In fact, the complete and contextualized documents and testimony show that the Global Alliance for Responsible Media and its member companies were engaged in a pro-competitive effort to address the substantial brand risk that harmful online content poses to advertisers and to consumers."
 
The executive summary reads, in  part:
"The Majority argues that GARM and its members have conspired to suppress conservative viewpoints by withholding advertising from conservative-voiced websites and, in so doing, suggest a violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act. This theory is fundamentally flawed. Its many individual shortcomings—lack of agreement, presence of procompetitive justifications, and absence of competitive harm—severely undermines the claimed basis for antitrust concern against GARM. Collectively, they so thoroughly demolish it that the Majority’s basic credibility in leveling the accusations in the first place must be called into question. The investigation has shown that GARM responded to a genuine need from advertisers for greater transparency and accountability from platforms regarding where ads are placed and what kinds of content the ads are monetizing. Advertisers do not want their brands’ advertising content to be placed next to toxic content. Yet, under the Republicans’ theory, advertisers would seemingly be forced to run ads on platforms even if the platform disseminates such content. The Majority is engaging in a transparently political effort to use the antitrust laws to benefit their allies by conferring upon them outcomes that they could not otherwise achieve in the marketplace. This is not just a misuse of the antitrust laws, but fundamentally subverts the goals of those laws. The irony could not be greater. While spending most of this Congress attacking the Biden administration’s so-called weaponization of government, the Majority here is trying to weaponize the antitrust laws under a highly dubious theory to override legitimate market outcomes.

"Finally, the Majority bandies about words like censorship, in a misguided effort to evoke the First Amendment. But as the Majority well knows, the First Amendment only applies to government action. And in this case, the only governmental burdening of speech is the Majority’s onslaught against GARM and its members. It is an effort to bully the advertisers into subsidizing firms whose content moderation policies put brands and businesses at risk. It is an attempt to hijack free speech, as well as antitrust, for political purposes."
 
THE FULL REPORT CAN BE VIEWED HERE.