States expected to target Google in new antitrust probe

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A group of states led by Texas is expected to announce an investigation into Google on Monday to examine whether the Silicon Valley tech giant has gotten too big and effective at stomping or acquiring rivals.

The probe is the latest blow against big tech companies as antitrust investigations ramp up in the U.S. and around the world. A separate group of states announced an investigation into Facebook’s dominance on Friday. The Department of Justice , the Federal Trade Commission and Congress are also conducting probes.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has said only that the investigation will look at “whether large tech companies have engaged in anticompetitive behavior that stifled competition, restricted access, and harmed consumers.” Reports in The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal say Google will be the primary target.

Google expects state attorneys general will ask it about past similar investigations in the U.S. and internationally, senior vice president of global affairs Kent Walker wrote in a blog post Friday .

Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has a market value of more than $820 billion and controls so many aspects of the internet that it’s hard to imagine surfing the web for long without running into at least one of its services. Experts believe the antitrust probe could focus on at least one of three aspects of Google’s business that have caught regulators’ eyes.

An obvious first place to look could be online advertising. Google will control 31.1% of global digital ad dollars in 2019, according to eMarketer estimates, crushing a distant second place Facebook. And many smaller advertisers have argued that Google has such a stranglehold on the market that it becomes a system of whatever Google says, goes — because the alternative could be not reaching customers.

“There’s definitely concern on the part of the advertisers themselves that Google wields way too much power in setting rates and favoring their own services over others,” said Jen King, the director of privacy at Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society.

Critics often point to Google’s 2007 acquisition of online advertising company DoubleClick as pivotal to its advertising dominance.

Europe’s antitrust regulators slapped Google with a $1.7 billion fine in March unfairly inserting exclusivity clauses into contracts with advertisers, disadvantaging rivals in the online advertising business.

Another visibly huge piece of Google’s business is its search platform, often the starting point for millions of people when they go online. Google dwarfs other search competitors and has faced harsh criticism in the past for favoring its own products over competitors at the top of search results. European regulators have also investigated here — ultimately fining Google for promoting its own shopping service. Google is appealing the fine.

Google has long argued that although its businesses are large, they are useful and beneficial to consumers. But it appears regulators are growing more concerned not just with the effects on regular internet users, but on smaller companies as well.

“On the one hand, you could just say, ‘well Google is dominant because they’re good,’” King said. “But at the same time, it’s created an ecosystem where people’s whole internet experience is mediated through Google’s home page and Google’s other products.”

One outcome antitrust regulators might explore is forcing Google to spin off search as a separate company, she said.

Then there’s Google’s smartphone operating system, Android. Another acquisition of Google’s, the system is the most widely used in the world.

European regulators have also fined Google to the tune of $5 billion for tactics involving Android, finding that Google forced handset makers to install Google apps, thereby increasing its reach. Google has since allowed more options for alternative browser and search apps to European Android phones.

It’s also possible U.S. states won’t follow in Europe’s footsteps. They could, for instance, focus on areas such as Google’s popular video site YouTube, yet another acquisition Google made, that time in 2006.

Google executive Walker emphasized that the company’s products help people every day.

“Google is one of America’s top spenders on research and development, making investments that spur innovation: Things that were science fiction a few years ago are now free for everyone_translating any language instantaneously, learning about objects by pointing your phone, getting an answer to pretty much any question you might have,” he wrote.

Baby in the office? Providence mayor’s habit sparks debate

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — He has taken his baby to ribbon cuttings and held the child on his lap while testifying at the Statehouse. He balanced the boy at his side at news conferences and rolled him into a closed-door meeting with the governor in a stroller. He installed a bassinet and toy box in his office at City Hall.

Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza has not been shy about bringing his baby to work, and in doing so has ignited a debate about the role of children in the workplace and cast a spotlight on the struggles of balancing a career and child care.

To some, Elorza’s workday appearances with 1-year-old Omar set an example for how to juggle jobs and parenting at a time when many people are working long hours away from their children and paying skyrocketing costs for day care. His detractors say Elorza is using the child as a prop and benefiting from a double standard that would make it impossible for a working mother to do what the mayor is doing.

“I do think that if a female elected official was doing the same thing, the amount of pushback that we would be getting would be huge,” said City Council President Sabina Matos, a fellow Democrat and mom with two school-aged children, adding: “People would say that we’re not capable of doing both jobs.”

Elorza is not the first politician to bring their child to work. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern last year attended a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly with her infant daughter , who was still young enough to be breastfeeding. In Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser occasionally brings her daughter to events. Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth brought her 10-day-old baby to the Senate floor to cast a vote last year — but the chamber had to change its rules to allow it.

What’s new in Elorza’s case is that he has incorporated child care into his job in a way rarely seen in the American public sphere.

His tenure as mayor of Rhode Island’s largest city comes amid a growing movement to let parents bring their babies to work as an alternative to leaving infants at day care for long stretches while they’re still nursing. At least 250 employers have baby programs, including government offices in more than half a dozen states such as Arizona , Washington and Vermont , according to the Parenting in the Workplace Institute, which helps develop and track baby-friendly policies. California is considering a similar policy for state workers.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Elorza said bringing his child to work was a decision that he and his wife, Stephanie Gonzalez, made after assessing their busy, unpredictable schedules. He wants time with his son. And, he says, the cost of day care is too high for their budget.

He and Gonzalez, a law student, were floored by the $350 per week price tag for a day care they toured before Omar was born.

“We can’t afford that,” said the mayor, whose annual salary is $118,000. “I don’t see how most families in our city can afford that.”

Instead, they do what many parents do: Split up child care duties and lean on the baby’s grandmother to help out.

The mayor’s calendars for 2019, disclosed to the AP after a public records request, show that Elorza often spent his Wednesdays out of the office, dialing in to meetings or on Skype calls with department heads, such as the schools superintendent or public safety commissioner.

The mayor confirmed he had been home with the baby on Wednesdays but that now that his son is older and more mobile, working has become more difficult. Now, he spends one morning a week with Omar before handing him off to the boy’s grandmother.

The decision has put Elorza in the hot seat. The head of the teachers union — who is frequently at odds with the mayor — went after him on Twitter, pointing out that teachers don’t get the same opportunity.

Critics also have accused the mayor of being unprofessional and sometimes even inappropriate. It happened when Elorza testified about legislation to strengthen the right to an abortion while holding Omar in his lap. And again, when he brought Omar to a news conference about a shooting and the boy made goo goo noises and a fuss as the public safety commissioner spoke.

Elorza brushes off criticism that he can’t perform his mayoral duties and care for a child as “ridiculous.”

During a meeting with the governor and other mayors on high-stakes legislation one of Elorza’s senior staffers, Director of Communications Emily Crowell, left the room for a phone call, then ended up helping care for the baby outside. Crowell told the AP it was her choice and that she has never been asked to take the baby.

Elorza acknowledged his staff sometimes cares for the child while he works. He said no one had ever lost out on professional opportunities or had to put aside work obligations to do so. He said some staffers have become “like extensions of my family.”

As workplaces around the country try to accommodate working parents without going too far, the Parenting in the Workplace Institute suggests that “babies at work” policies end at six months of age, around the time when babies start to crawl.

Brad Harrington, who leads the Boston College Center for Work and Family and studies the changing role of fathers, said co-workers like to see children in the workplace, but it starts to wear thin if it becomes an everyday event.

Harrington said fathers are often praised more than mothers for being involved parents, but studies have shown that if men do “conspicuous caregiving,” such as saying they are leaving every day at 4:30 to pick up a child, they are marginalized at work.

Harrington, whose center works with Fortune 500 companies, added that depending on co-workers to care for a child is inappropriate.

Elorza said he has tried to support working parents, both in city policy and in his own office. He has put in place a program that offers $5 per week toward summer camps for Providence kids and says he allows people in his office to bring in a child “in a pinch.”

“It’s really brought home how difficult it is to raise a child and not sacrifice your career,” he said.

Plan for Taliban meeting latest bold Trump gamble to unravel

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s weekend tweet canceling secret meetings at Camp David with the Taliban and Afghan leaders just days before the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks is the latest example of a commander in chief willing to take a big risk in pursuit of a foreign policy victory only to see it dashed.

What had seemed like an imminent deal to end the war has unraveled, with Trump and the Taliban blaming each other for the collapse of nearly a year of U.S.-Taliban negotiations in Doha, Qatar.

The insurgents are promising more bloodshed. The Afghan government remains mostly on the sidelines of the U.S. effort to end America’s longest war. And as Trump’s reelection campaign heats up, his quest to withdraw the remaining 14,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan remains unfulfilled — so far.

Trump said he axed the Camp David meetings and called off negotiations because of a recent Taliban bombing near the U.S. Embassy in Kabul that killed a U.S. service member, even though nine other Americans have died since June 25 in Taliban-orchestrated violence. But the deal started unraveling days earlier after Afghan President Ashraf Ghani postponed his trip to Washington and the Taliban refused to travel to the U.S. before a deal was actually signed, according to a former senior Afghan official.

Trump’s secret plan for high-level meetings at the presidential retreat in Maryland resembled other bold, unorthodox foreign policy initiatives — with North Korea, China and Iran — that the president has pursued that have yet to bear fruit.

“When the Taliban tried to gain negotiating advantage by conducting terror attacks inside of the country, President Trump made the right decision to say that’s not going to work,” said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who appeared Sunday on five TV news shows.

Trump’s three high-profile meetings with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un — including the president’s recent brief footsteps onto North Korean soil — prompted deep unease from many quarters, including his conservative base in Congress.

And while the meetings produced the ready-for-television visuals that Trump is known to relish, negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang have been stalled for months with no tangible progress in getting the North to abandon its nuclear weapons.

Trump’s offers to hold talks with the Iranian leadership have similarly met with no result and Iran has moved ahead with actions that violate the 2015 nuclear deal that the president withdrew from last year.

With China, Trump has vigorously pursued a trade war, imposing billions of dollars in tariffs on Chinese imports that have yet to force a retreat by Beijing. So far, the discussions have unsettled financial markets and have resulted in retaliatory steps by both Beijing and Washington.

Pompeo defended Trump’s foreign policy, depicting it as tough diplomacy, rather than naivete or inexperience.

“He walked away in Hanoi from the North Koreans where they wouldn’t do a deal that made sense for America,” Pompeo said. “He’ll do that with the Iranians. When the Chinese moved away from the trade agreement that they had promised us they would make, he broke up those conversations, too.”

Democrats said Trump’s decision to nix a deal with the Taliban was evidence that he was moving too quickly to get one. Far from guaranteeing a cease-fire, the deal only included Taliban commitments to reduce violence in Kabul and neighboring Parwan province, where the U.S. has a military base.

New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said the talks were ill-conceived from the start because they haven’t yet involved the Afghan government.

The Taliban have refused to negotiate with the government its sees as illegitimate and a puppet of the West so the Trump administration tried another approach, negotiating with the Taliban first to get a deal that would lead to Taliban talks with Afghans inside and outside the government.

“It’s another example of the Trump administration’s foreign policy, which is a high-wire act that ultimately is focused on Trump as a persona but not in the strategic, methodical effort of creating peace,” Menendez said.

Criticism of the Camp David plan was not limited to Democrats or “Never Trump” Republicans.

“Camp David is where America’s leaders met to plan our response after al Qaeda, supported by the Taliban, killed 3000 Americans on 9/11,” tweeted Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo. “No member of the Taliban should set foot there. Ever.”

A U.S. official familiar with the Taliban negotiations said the “very closely held” idea of a Camp David meeting was first discussed up to a week and a half ago when Trump huddled with his national security team and other top advisers to talk about Afghanistan. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.

Some administration officials, including national security adviser John Bolton, did not back the agreement with the Taliban as it was written, the official said. They didn’t think the Taliban can be trusted. Bolton advised the president to draw down the U.S. force to 8,600 — enough to counter terror threats — and “let it be” until a better deal could be hammered out, the official said. Pompeo said he didn’t know if Trump will follow through on his pledge to reduce the number of U.S. troops there from 14,000 to 8,600.

U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad had recently announced that he had reached an agreement in principle with the Taliban. Under the deal, the U.S. would withdraw about 5,000 U.S. troops within 135 days of signing. In exchange, the insurgents agreed to reduce violence and prevent Afghanistan from being used as a launch pad for global terror attacks, including from local Islamic State affiliate and al-Qaida.

Pompeo said the Taliban agreed to break with al-Qaida — something that past administrations have failed to get the Taliban to do. The insurgent group had hosted al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden as he masterminded the 9/11 attacks. After the attacks, the U.S. ousted the Taliban, which had ruled Afghanistan with a harsh version of Islamic law from 1996 to 2000.

But problems quickly emerged. Even as Khalilzad explained the deal to the Afghan people during a nationally televised interview, the Taliban detonated a car bomb targeting a compound in Kabul where many foreign contactors lived. Then on Thursday, a second Taliban car bomb exploded near the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, killing 12 people including a U.S. service member. Khalilzad abruptly returned to Doha, Qatar for at least two days of negotiations with the Taliban, but has since been recalled to Washington.

It’s unclear if the talks will resume because the Taliban won’t trust future deals they negotiate with the U.S. if they think Trump might abruptly change course, according to the former senior Afghan official, who was not authorized to discuss the issue and spoke only on condition of anonymity. The official, who has had many discussions about the peace process with both U.S. and Afghan officials, said Khalilzad’s team was not aware of Trump’s plans to tweet the end of the talks Saturday evening.

Trump’s suspension of the negotiations “will harm America more than anyone else,” the Taliban said in a statement. “It will damage its reputation, unmask its anti-peace policy to the world even more, increase its loss of life and treasure and present its political interactions as erratic.”

The former official said the deal fell apart for two main reasons. First, the Taliban refused to sign an agreement that didn’t state the end date for a complete withdrawal of American forces. That date was to be either November 2020, the same month of the U.S. presidential election, or January 2021, he said.

The U.S.-Taliban agreement was to be followed by Taliban talks with Afghans inside and outside the government to chart a political future for the country. Ghani told Khalilzad that putting a withdrawal date in the agreement would undermine the all-Afghan discourse before it began; the Taliban would have leverage in those negotiations from the get-go because the U.S. troops would be on a timeline to permanently withdraw.

Secondly, the U.S. was unsuccessful in convincing Ghani to postpone the Afghan presidential election set for Sept. 28, the official said. The U.S. argued that if the elections were held and Ghani won, his opponents and other anti-Ghani factions would protest the results, creating a political crisis that would make the all-Afghan talks untenable. Other disagreements included why the deal did not address the Taliban’s linkages to Pakistan and prisoner-hostage exchanges, the official said.

___

Associated Press writers Cara Anna and Rahim Faiez in Kabul; Robert Burns and Jonathan Lemire in Washington; and Julie Walker with AP Radio contributed to this report.

Kamala Harris Cartoons

Corey Lewandowski to be first Trump associate to appear before House Judiciary Committee

FILE – In this April 28, 2018 file photo, President Donald Trump, left, watches as Corey Lewandowski, right, his former campaign manager for Trump’s presidential campaign, speaks during a campaign rally in Washington Township, Mich. Trump is throwing his support behind his former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, who is considering a run for Senate in his home state of New Hampshire. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File)

OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 2:30 PM PST – Sat. September 7, 2019

The president’s former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski is set to testify before the House Judiciary Committee in the coming weeks.
Reports Saturday said Lewandowski will appear before the panel to answer questions related to their probe into possible obstruction of justice by President Trump.
Specifically, lawmakers are looking into findings outlined in the special counsel’s report, which claims the president instructed Lewandowski to pressure former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, to curb the Russia probe.
The former campaign head has maintained that Democrats are on a political witch hunt. In an interview with OAN, lewandowski slammed Hillary Clinton and her so-called “cohorts,” who he claims kick-started the Russian collusion narrative.
Lewandowski’s upcoming testimony comes after the panel’s chairman Jerry Nadler issued subpoenas to two other administration officials to testify the same day.
However, only Lewandowski is expected to appear before the committee on the 17th.

GOP plans California comeback in 2020, Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale says at state convention

Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale insisted Saturday that the GOP hasn’t given up on California despite setbacks at the polls there in 2018.
“We have the potential to win back eight congressional seats, back to Republicans, here in California,” Parscale said at the state Republican Party’s fall convention in Indian Wells.

“We have the potential to win back eight congressional seats, back to Republicans, here in California.”
— Brad Parscale, Trump 2020 campaign manager

But Parscale acknowledged the job won’t be easy – and said the work would ultimately have to be done by the Golden State's Republicans, not national party leaders.
“You’re the California GOP,” he said, according to Politico. “There’s no trick I can do on my laptop that you can’t do yourselves. It takes hard work, and talking to your neighbors. And with a strong leader with President Trump at the helm, the sky’s the limit.”

"It takes hard work, and talking to your neighbors. And with a strong leader with President Trump at the helm, the sky’s the limit."
— Brad Parscale, Trump 2020 campaign manager

Democrats hammered California’s GOP at the polls last year, leaving Republicans with only seven of the state’s 53 seats in the U.S. House. Both California seats in the Senate also belong to Democrats.
The state’s Republicans were dealt another harsh blow just last month when the registrar of voters in Orange County – long a GOP stronghold in Southern California – reported that registered Democrats there now outnumbered registered Republicans for the first time since the Watergate era.
Nevertheless, Parscale told conventioneers Saturday that the Trump reelection campaign was planning a big effort in California, with as many as 50 paid staffers, making it one of “the largest Election Day operations” in state history, Politico reported.
In addition, the campaign plans to leverage artificial intelligence and other high-tech tools, in a bid to learn “who the voters are, where they live, how they consume information – and how to contact them,” he said.
“Many of you are worried that we have written you guys off – that California doesn’t matter,” Parscale said. To the contrary, he said, the Trump campaign views the nation’s most populous state as a key battleground in “the fight for the future of this country.”
Later this month, President Trump is scheduled to visit California, with events planned in the San Francisco Bay Area and San Diego, Sacramento’s FOX 40 reported.
Trump previously visited California in April, making stops in Los Angeles and at the state’s border with Mexico.
Fox News’ Andrew O’Reilly contributed to this story.

Trump family ‘dynasty’ will ‘last for decades,’ 2020 campaign chief says

President Trump and his family represent a political movement with the potential of transforming the Republican Party, according to Brad Parscale, manager of the president’s 2020 reelection campaign.
“I just think they’re a dynasty,” Parscale told reporters after delivering a speech Saturday at the fall convention of the California Republican Party.
“I think they’re all amazing people … with amazing capabilities,” he said, according to the Associated Press. “I think you see that from Don Jr. I think you see that from Ivanka. You see it from Jared. You see it from all.”

“I think they’re all amazing people … with amazing capabilities. I think you see that from Don Jr. I think you see that from Ivanka. You see it from Jared. You see it from all.”
— Brad Parscale, manager of President Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign.

Parscale was speaking at the end of a week that saw Ivanka Trump embark on a trip to Argentina, Colombia and Paraguay to promote the Women's Global Development and Prosperity Initiative; saw Republican political strategist Rick Wilson predict in a Daily Beast column that Donald Trump Jr. will seek and likely win the 2024 GOP presidential nomination; and saw Jared Kushner appoint a lieutenant in his role of crafting the president's Middle East policy, according to Politico.
Earlier Saturday, Parscale told the convention crowd in Indian Wells that the Trump family’s influence would likely “last for decades,” and propel the GOP “into a new party – one that will adapt to changing cultures.
“One must continue to adapt while keeping the conservative values that we believe in,” he added, though when speaking later with reporters he declined to speculate on whether any of the president’s family members would seek elected office, the AP reported.

Then-President-elect Donald Trump, center, is flanked by daughter Ivanka Trump and son Donald Trump Jr., at a news conference in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York City, Jan. 11, 2017. (Associated Press)

At the California GOP convention, party delegates sought to develop an election strategy in a heavily Democratic state that Trump lost by more than 4 million votes in 2016. Polls show the president remains widely unpopular there.
Parscale acknowledged that California was not a key focus of Trump's reelection plans. "This is not a swing state," he said, drawing laughs from the crowd.
But he noted California was the biggest source of the president's campaign donations.
The party's struggles in California are well known. Democrats control every statewide office and both chambers of the Legislature, while holding an edge of nearly 4 million in voter registrations. Both U.S. Senate seats are in Democratic hands, and the party has a 46-7 edge over Republicans in U.S. House seats in the state.
The last significant push by a Republican presidential candidate to win California was in 2000, when George W. Bush was backed by more than $15 million, then lost to Democrat Al Gore by 12 points.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.

Kamala Harris apologizes for laughing after audience member calls Trump 'mentally retarded'

Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., claimed Saturday that she didn't hear an audience member at a New Hampshire town hall Friday call President Trump "mentally retarded" and apologized for laughing after the comment.
"When my staff played the video from my town hall yesterday, it was upsetting," Harris tweeted Saturday. "I didn’t hear the words the man used in that moment, but if I had I would’ve stopped and corrected him. I’m sorry. That word and others like it aren’t acceptable. Ever."
Video of the incident includes the following exchange:
Audience member: "What are you going to do in the next one year to diminish the mentally retarded actions of this guy?"
Harris: "Well said." (Giggles.) "Well said. Well, I plan to win this election, I'll tell you that."
"I heard him talk about the other stuff and then that came later and it was not something that I really heard or processed or I in any way condone. That's for sure," Harris told CBS News on Saturday.
She added: "It's offensive and you would think that in the year 2019, people would have a better understanding of how hurtful a term like that can be; but also the history behind it, which is a history of really ignoring the needs and the realities and the capacity of our disability community."
Last month, Harris released a policy proposal geared at expanding economic opportunity for people with disabilities.
"Kamala believes in an America that is fully accessible and inclusive for everyone and her administration will fight to make this a reality across all parts of our society," the proposal read.
The document also contained a pledge to include people with disabilities in her policymaking processes. "As president, Kamala will have diverse leaders with disabilities developing all the policies her administration champions, including priorities that will lift up people with disabilities," the plan read.