Republicans are weaponizing antitrust in culture war — Democrats shouldn’t let them

The right has a new favorite weapon to punish companies for standing up to their discriminatory policies: antitrust legislation.

This past month, Republican members of Congress and conservative pundits have apparently teamed up to engage in a campaign against companies like Disney and Apple for speaking out against Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

Fox News host Laura Ingraham recently devoted a segment of her show to push the matter, stating that companies need to “stay in their lane,” specifically calling on the antitrust division of a future Republican Department of Justice to look into which American companies need to be “broken up” for opposing anti-LGBTQ laws.

Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) recently said in a now-deleted tweet that “antitrust is the best way to smash woke capital.”

In short, it seems Republicans are now transparently piggybacking on Democratic antitrust proposals as a means of punishing companies which speak out against discrimination. For the GOP, these statements betray a clear lack of understanding of how antitrust policy is an economic tool meant to increase competition for the benefit of consumers. For Democrats, it’s a dangerous statement of legislative intent that should be disavowed.

This isn’t the first time this has happened — a year ago this month, Republican Sen, Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) proposed antitrust legislation to punish “a small group of woke mega-corporations.” And Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) called for antitrust action against Major League Baseball after they pulled the All-Star game from Atlanta as a consequence of Georgia’s restrictive voting law.

Political commentator Michael Kinsley defined a “Washington gaffe” as when a politician accidentally says what they really believe. Republicans like Buck have now said the quiet part out loud: They seems to view antitrust action against leading tech companies as a way to punish American companies.

There is a place for antitrust regulation — which is to promote competition and protect consumers. But sullying antitrust with the MAGA culture war won’t help protect consumers, and it certainly doesn’t serve the stated goals of Democratic lawmakers like Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), who have made tech antitrust action their top priority in the past year.

Let’s be clear — corporate leadership against hate is a good thing. It helped stop HB-2, North Carolina’s infamously transphobic bathroom bill, when the NCAA pulled championship games from the state. And financial costs from loss of business pressured the state of South Carolina to pull the Confederate flag from the top of their statehouse.

That’s real progress. Companies should be applauded for taking a stand, not punished with new regulation and lawsuits as a result.

Now, Apple is mobilizing resources to lobby against bills that limit protections for trans and gay people in more than half a dozen states across the country. Many leading tech companies have signed statements opposing anti-LGBTQ state legislation. But it’s policy proposals led by Democrats in Congress that are being used as weapons against these companies as part of a Trumpian effort to penalize those with whom the alt-right disagrees.

Calling for the government to punish private actors for their cultural or political stances is authoritarian. It’s the kind of thing you’d expect from governments in China or Russia, not here. Government power should never be used punitively, and antitrust policy should be used to protect consumers, not politicians.

Companies should be allowed to publicly disavow discriminatory policies — this is the so-called marketplace of ideas Republicans claim to support.

If antitrust policy becomes a tool used by Republicans to punish companies, every boardroom decision will include a risk assessment of whether standing up to hate will cause the federal government to bring down the hammer. And there will be fewer companies willing to join a coalition against hate, fewer individuals willing to publicly advocate for social progress in public policy.

By any measure, that would be a loss for the progressive cause and the people we’re fighting for.

Adam Kovacevich is the founder of Chamber of Progress, a center-left tech industry policy coalition promoting technology’s progressive future; corporate partners for Chamber of Progress include Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook.