Scoop: NRCC and NRSC call for FTC investigation in Google
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The House and Senate GOP campaign committees are calling on the FTC to investigate whether Google and Gmail suppress emails to conservative subscribers.
Why it matters: Their call marks a resumption of hostilities in a long-running war between the Republican Party and Big Tech.
- Since President Trump's election, there's been a bit of a detente, after top CEOs cut $1 million checks to his inauguration and appeared to embrace the MAGA mentality.
- But while other tech companies, like Meta, have made direct overtures to conservatives, there are signs the emerging MAGA-tech alliance may not be an enduring one.
Driving the news: Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), the chair of the NRSC, and Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), the chair of the NRCC, fired off a joint letter to FTC chairman Andrew Ferguson on Wednesday, detailing their concerns.
- "Google's speech suppression practices are detrimental to American democracy and should not be allowed to persist for another election cycle," they write in a letter Axios obtained.
- They are calling for the FTC to consider their complaints as part of their inquiry, announced in February, "technology platforms deny or degrade users' access to services based on the content of their speech or affiliations."
What they're saying: "The FEC (in a bipartisan decision) and a federal court looked into these old claims and found there was nothing there," said Jose Castaneda, a Google spokesperson.
- "Quite simply: Gmail spam filters are not politically biased. They look at a variety of signals – like whether a user marks an email as spam – and apply equally to all senders, regardless of political ideology."
- "Spam filters are important — they keep people safe and in control of their inboxes," he said.
Zoom out: Conservatives have long accused tech and social media companies of altering their algorithms to silence or sideline their views.
- In October 2022, the RNC filed suit against Google for "blatant bias" against Republicans. The following August, it was dismissed.
- During Trump's first term, Facebook conducted a nearly yearlong audit into claims of anti-conservative bias.
Zoom in: The lawmakers accuse Gmail, which they claim has 75% of the American market share, of sending more of their emails to spam and therefore hurting their fundraising.
- "In the 2024 election cycle, a mere 30 percent of NRSC emails were successfully delivered to the primary inboxes of Gmail users, with the vast majority directed into the intended recipients' spam folders where they would never be viewed," they write.
Editor's note: This story has been updated with a comment from Google.
