Q&A with Rep. Ken Buck, leading Republican behind House's bipartisan antitrust deal, on the new bills, FTC's Facebook case, the GOP caucus, Lina Khan, and more
a party doing real damage to the place I live. This shit is real to me, my family and my community. It's not a goddamned game. Glenn Greenwald / @ggreenwald : As House Republicans vocally denounce Big Tech in media appearances, many simultaneously use their power to impede legislative reform. I spoke with @RepKenBuck about what explains this disparity between their words and actions and what needs to be done. https://www.youtube.com/... Glenn Greenwald / @ggreenwald : @davidsirota David, he's the ranking member of the House antitrust subcommittee. There's zero chance of legislative reform to rein in the huge abuses of Big Tech without his support. Bernie-supporting liberals are a tiny portion of the Congress. You have to work with others to succeed. Modest Proposal / @modestproposal1 : the way that antitrust problems will go away for big tech is if the government loses a few lawsuits and also fails to pass new laws. there aren't internal actions that these companies will take where suddenly congress and the agencies are gonna be like oh ok we're cool again. David Sirota / @davidsirota : It's a problem when politics becomes a competition between a Wall Street-owned Dem Party & a Colorado Republican Party chair who champions massive tax cuts for tech billionaires and subsidies for oil/gas dereg, all while somehow being portrayed as an earnest anti-corporate voice https://twitter.com/... Glenn Greenwald / @ggreenwald : @davidsirota Good point. I sanctified him as a god and am currently working to enshrine him on the top of Mt. Rushmore. If you wait for nobody but the Squad to change society, you'll be waiting until you're 1,000 years old. I care about results, not partisan loyalty. https://twitter.com/... Glenn Greenwald / @ggreenwald : @davidsirota Has the Squad done anything to rein in Silicon Valley monopoly abuse? Is your argument that only politicians with pure motives should be heard from or praised when they do the right thing? If we don't work with Buck to usher in reform of tech giants, how do you get it done? https://twitter.com/... Glenn Greenwald / @ggreenwald : The politics of antitrust legislation to finally reform Silicon Valley monopoly power has been fascinating and confusing. Many Dems — who receive large funding from Big Tech — join with GOP lawmakers who still oppose government efforts. Meanwhile, a bipartisan coalition grows. https://twitter.com/... Jason Kint / @jason_kint : Congrats, @RepKenBuck. First Facebook and Google use their off record press access to debate you...then they work to paint you as a critic with an axe to grind who should be ignored. You've got their attention. https://www.theverge.com/... https://twitter.com/... Rep. Ken Buck / @repkenbuck : Congress must work together to update our 100-year-old antitrust laws and hold Big Tech accountable. https://www.theverge.com/... David Sirota / @davidsirota : @ggreenwald I don't believe in venerating monsters who happen to very belatedly be right on one issue. Glad Ken belatedly figured something out. Not glad to see him deified by people who should know better. David Sirota / @davidsirota : @ggreenwald When you slam Ken as the fascist he is, while also praising him for saying cool things about antitrust, I'll have respect. But I haven't seen that. It's like if Bolsonaro did one thing right — if I touted him for that without slamming him for other shit, you'd rightly hammer me. David Sirota / @davidsirota : @ggreenwald Fascist was a placeholder word in a tweet — but the point stands. If Bolsonaro did one thing right and I touted it without criticizing his other horribleness, you'd slam me, and rightly so. That's my point with Ken Buck. Just think on it. You don't need to respond with an insult. Nilay Patel / @reckless : Here's @kellymakena talking to GOP Rep. Ken Buck about his support for the big antitrust reform package. Really interesting how increasing competition in markets works for both parties as a mechanism to achieve all sorts of goals. https://www.theverge.com/... https://twitter.com/... Makena Kelly / @kellymakena : new, i spoke to @RepKenBuck last week about the house's big tech antitrust package, his relationship with rep. jim jordan, and his take on Lina Khan https://www.theverge.com/... Makena Kelly / @kellymakena : Buck on GOP efforts to include Section 230 reform in the antitrust package: https://www.theverge.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This Q&A sits at the high-water mark of the House antitrust effort: Rep. Ken Buck, the ranking member of the antitrust subcommittee, is the Republican lead on a package built with Rep. David Cicilline, whose bill would stop Apple from impeding removal of pre-installed apps. It lands amid open Republican infighting — some members co-sponsoring while others demand the bills address alleged bias — and after the 2020 hearing showed how sharply partisan priorities diverged even within shared anti-Big-Tech rhetoric.
The interview also captures Buck under personal pressure: per the relationships, Facebook and Google used off-record press access to shape perceptions of him, and House Republicans were simultaneously denouncing Big Tech publicly while impeding reform legislatively. What followed validates the stakes — the Open App Markets Act reached a Senate vote in early 2022, but the self-preferencing bill stalled against Senate Democrats worried about midterms, and by 2023 Buck himself conceded the GOP had no plans for tougher rules.
First-order effects
- Buck has to hold his caucus together in public: every co-sponsor who signs on strengthens Cicilline's package, while bias-first holdouts can sink it from inside the GOP — the interview is itself an argument aimed at his own party.
- Apple, Google, and Facebook face a concrete legislative threat for the first time rather than just hearings; Facebook additionally faces the FTC case Buck addresses, putting the company under simultaneous regulatory and legislative attack.
Second-order effects
- The platforms' reported use of off-record press access against Buck signals where the lobbying fight moves next — shaping individual legislators' reputations rather than only the bills — raising the cost for rank-and-file Republicans of staying co-sponsors.
- House passage shifts the decisive battleground to the Senate, where the same coalition proves brittle: the self-preferencing bill later loses Senate Democrats over midterm risk, showing the House deal cannot survive without Senate-specific vote-buying.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Big Tech antitrust is structurally hostage to unified government: legislation advanced under divided oversight in 2021 collapses once enforcement power sits with a Democratic administration, as Buck and Jim Jordan's reluctance to expand Biden's authority confirms.
- Section 230 riders attached by House Republicans function as a veto point inside the coalition — any durable future antitrust package must either decouple speech-policy demands or accept that they cap bipartisan reach.
The trend: Congressional Big Tech antitrust peaked as a bipartisan House project in 2021, then dissolved into whichever party controls the White House deciding whether enforcement expansion serves it.