Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will be the sole witness to testify before the House Financial Services Committee on October 23 during a hearing on the company’s plans to launch its own cryptocurrency.
Members of the committee had been in talks over whether to allow Zuckerberg to skip the hearing and instead hear from Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, but several members pushed for the CEO to appear instead.
The hearing, titled “An Examination of Facebook and Its Impact on the Financial Services and Housing Sectors,” comes three months after Chair Maxine Waters and committee Democrats sent a letter to Facebook calling on the company to suspend plans to launch the cryptocurrency, Libra. The company is also working on a program called Calibra, which would function as a digital wallet for the cryptocurrency.
The committee held another hearing in July on the company’s plans to launch the cryptocurrency, which included discussion of a draft bill that would keep companies like Facebook from operating digital assets functioning as currency, and from being licensed or registered as financial institutions. Calibra CEO David Marcus testified at that hearing.
IT’S EVEN WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT.
What we’re seeing right now from Donald Trump is a full-on authoritarian takeover of the U.S. government.
This is not hyperbole.
Court orders are being ignored. MAGA loyalists have been put in charge of the military and federal law enforcement agencies. The Department of Government Efficiency has stripped Congress of its power of the purse. News outlets that challenge Trump have been banished or put under investigation.
Yet far too many are still covering Trump’s assault on democracy like politics as usual, with flattering headlines describing Trump as “unconventional,” “testing the boundaries,” and “aggressively flexing power.”
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IT’S BEEN A DEVASTATING year for journalism — the worst in modern U.S. history.
We have a president with utter contempt for truth aggressively using the government’s full powers to dismantle the free press. Corporate news outlets have cowered, becoming accessories in Trump’s project to create a post-truth America. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking.
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I’M BEN MUESSIG, The Intercept’s editor-in-chief. It’s been a devastating year for journalism — the worst in modern U.S. history.
We have a president with utter contempt for truth aggressively using the government’s full powers to dismantle the free press. Corporate news outlets have cowered, becoming accessories in Trump’s project to create a post-truth America. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking.
In this most perilous moment for democracy, The Intercept is fighting back. But to do so effectively, we need to grow.
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