01 October 2020
The Senate Commerce Committee has voted to authorize subpoenas compelling Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Google CEO Sundar Pichai to testify before the panel.
Why it matters: The tech giants are yet again facing a potential grilling on Capitol Hill sometime before the end of the year, at a time when tech is being used as a punching bag from both the left and right.
Context: With Republicans centering their tech criticisms around claims that digital platforms stack the deck against conservatives, Democrats were expected to boycott today's subpoena vote. They did not.
- Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) said she was supporting the subpoena authorization after committee chairman Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) agreed to add the topics of privacy and "media domination" to the list of topics to ask tech executives about.
Be smart: Partisan lines remain. Democrats supported the subpoena, but urged Congress not to create a "chilling effect" on tech to remove misinformation from their platforms and dismissed the allegations of anti-conservative bias. They also pushed for votes on their own bills on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which immunizes platforms from liability for material their users post.
What they're saying: "This feels like an attempt to work the refs five weeks out from the election," said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii). When conservatives bring up claims of bias, "that's when this conversation goes off a cliff," he said.
What's next: The subpoena will have to actually be sent to the executives and a hearing date will have to be set.
Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times
Section2Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.
Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.
The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.
- The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.
What the transcripts say:
- Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
- The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
- Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."
Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.