The legislation would bar federal agencies, state governments and businesses from requiring proof of vaccination.

Rep. Anthony Gonzalez is akin to a car that has been deemed a lemon.

That's according to Max Miller, the Republican who launched a primary challenge against Mr. Gonzalez after former President Trump called for the scalps of GOP lawmakers like Mr. Gonzalez who supported impeachment following the Jan. 6 ...

Republicans want to go after Big Tech. But they’re now openly clashing with each other over a bipartisan effort to do just that.

The House Judiciary Committee will consider a package of sweeping bills on Wednesday to crack down on the country’s largest tech companies, a proposal that’s won support from members of both parties after years of complaints from Congress about industry abuses.

But these efforts have also exposed deep divisions in the GOP over how best to rein in Silicon Valley’s power, with House Republicans sparring over the legislative push. Some GOP lawmakers have blamed leadership-aligned lobbyists for working behind the scenes to tank the measures, while others in the conference claim their colleagues went behind leaders’ backs to hash out a deal with Democrats.

The infighting, which has spilled out into public view in the run-up to the consequential committee vote, underscores that the politics of antitrust don’t cut neatly across ideological lines, despite widespread agreement over the need to curb the power of tech giants. And the schism among conservatives has created some particularly strange partnerships in the halls of Congress.

Look no further than progressive Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) linking arms on antitrust with GOP Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida and Ken Buck of Colorado, a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, or leading liberal Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) co-sponsoring a bill with stalwart Trump backer Rep. Lance Gooden (R-Texas). Such unlikely alliances also pit those very same Republicans against two powerful Trump allies: House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee.

“I have a ton of respect for Jim Jordan. He literally was the person I looked up to and wanted to run for Congress to be like,” Buck said in an interview. “And so, it’s disappointing in some ways that we don’t share the same views about this, but it’s not surprising.”

“I think this is just a family disagreement,” he added.

A handful of Republicans on the Judiciary panel could join Democrats in support of the antitrust bills even as Jordan rails against the measures, creating an unusual head-butting moment between a ranking member and the rank-and-file. Jordan’s team has been asking Republican offices for a heads-up if members plan to vote for the bills, according to a GOP source, but feels confident most of the Republican committee members will be on his side.

And Jordan has repeatedly labeled the antitrust effort as a group of “Democrat bills,” even though the package was drafted in part by one of his Judiciary subcommittee leaders — underscoring lingering intraparty tensions on the panel. That dynamic could snarl the antitrust package's path in the Senate.

The five antitrust bills, which would have far-reaching implications for the economy, are aimed at prohibiting Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google from exploiting their dominant position in the digital marketplace to elbow out competitors. Each of the bills takes on a separate part of the tech companies’ business models, making it easier for the government to penalize the Silicon Valley giants.

Some of the provisions might also affect Microsoft, a tech giant that has typically escaped scrutiny in Washington's most recent antitrust wars.

Buck is a co-sponsor of all of the bills, and several have support from GOP lawmakers including Reps. Burgess Owens (Utah), Madison Cawthorn (N.C.) and Gooden. Republican interest in the issue has heightened amid GOP accusations that social media platforms are censoring conservative voices.

Yet Republican critics of the antitrust bills say they do little to address their chief concern of conservative bias and may only exacerbate what they view as a problem. Some Republicans also feel like they’ve been misled about what the bills would actually do.

The bills' support from leading liberal Democrats has made them especially toxic in some corners of the Republican conference. Jordan has been publicly pushing against the bills, while McCarthy has said he’s planning to unveil his own tech reform agenda.

“We’ve got a beef with all Big Tech in the sense of the censorship they have of conservatives now," Jordan told Fox Business on Tuesday. Jordan added, however, that the antitrust bills coming to a vote are sponsored by "four impeachment managers" — questioning top Democrats' ability to write legislation that conservatives can favor.

Further complicating the debate is the tech industry's status as one of the biggest political spenders in Washington. While lobbying is commonplace on Capitol Hill, GOP proponents of the antitrust proposal have still blamed “the D.C. swamp” for tainting Republicans’ views on it. They say Big Tech's advocates have been aggressively seeking to influence their positions — including Jeff Miller, an independent lobbyist linked to McCarthy who represents several tech clients.

Miller has been seeking out lawmakers, catching them in person or pressing them over the phone, to lobby them to oppose the legislation, according to multiple sources. One Republican said Miller left a particularly aggressive voicemail on a lawmaker’s phone.

“I have heard a couple of instances of lobbyists leaving voice messages that were really, in my opinion, unprofessional. They were demonstrating tempers and language that is inappropriate,” Buck said, though he declined to single out lobbyists by name.

Gooden echoed that sentiment to The Wall Street Journal, telling the publication last week: “Industry lobbyists in Washington are going absolutely crazy. I have received text messages and calls, some friendly and some not, but all very much against these bills.”

Miller is a registered lobbyist for both Apple and Amazon, two companies that the antitrust overhaul would directly affect. Apple has paid Miller $600,000 since he registered to lobby for the company in 2019, a significant sum for a company with a smaller K Street footprint than its tech industry peers.

Amazon Web Services, Amazon’s cloud-computing arm, has paid Miller $440,000 since he registered on its behalf in 2019. Miller has also been paid $250,000 since registering as a lobbyist for California Business Roundtable in 2020. The Roundtable counts Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Apple CEO Tim Cook as members.

Since 2018, when McCarthy was the second-highest ranking House Republican, Miller has given $82,500 to PACs affiliated with McCarthy and $46,100 to the GOP campaign arm, the National Republican Congressional Committee, for a total of $128,600, according to federal campaign finance records.

Meanwhile, McCarthy has received tens of thousands of dollars from Google, Amazon and Facebook, as well as the Koch Industries PAC, in recent years. The Koch companies' powerful network of advocacy organizations and trade groups is also lobbying against the bills, saying they would create too much government intervention in the economy.

Miller, however, is more than just a lobbyist: He also acts as a political adviser to McCarthy and has a long-standing personal relationship with the California Republican. Miller travels with the House GOP leader and has been known to appear at politically focused off-campus conference meetings.

One GOP lawmaker, who said Miller is clearly trying to influence policy, said rank-and-file members aren’t sure whether crossing the lobbyist means they are also crossing McCarthy.

“I don’t think anyone really knows the answer to that," this lawmaker added, addressing Miller candidly on condition of anonymity. "I suspect that Jeff Miller’s influence is greater in Jeff Miller's mind than Kevin McCarthy’s mind."

McCarthy’s allies counter that he has consistently railed against Silicon Valley and conservative bias in recent years. They maintain that his opposition to the package of antitrust bills is based on legitimate policy qualms — not political concerns or connections to Miller.

But the McCarthy-Miller nexus is not the only GOP-Big Tech connection drawing conservative criticism. Mike Davis, who formerly worked as the chief counsel of nominations for then-Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), is among the Republicans accusing Jordan of carrying water for Google. Jordan has received over $43,000 in donations from Google since 2005, according to campaign finance records, and Google’s parent company Alphabet was one of the top contributors to his campaign in 2020 with a $10,000 donation.

Jordan earlier this week sent a letter criticizing Microsoft, one of Google’s major rivals. “In case anyone was wondering if Jim Jordan's talking points against the bipartisan antitrust legislation were being written by Google, this is a huge tell,” Yelp’s senior vice president of public policy, Luther Lowe, said about the letter.

Defenders of Jordan, who raised over $18 million last cycle, say the Google money is a drop in the bucket and doesn’t affect his business on Capitol Hill. Jordan’s camp is planning on putting forward his own package of ideas of how to tackle the power of Big Tech, according to a source familiar.

The internal friction in the GOP over the antitrust bills isn’t a one-sided affair. Critics of the antitrust legislation charge Buck with failing to keep Jordan in the loop about negotiations with Democrats, an allegation Buck dismisses.

There are divisions emerging among Democrats over the legislation as well. The New Democrat Coalition, including former Microsoft executive Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), has been asking the House Judiciary Committee to postpone the markup. And moderate Democrats on the panel, including Californians Zoe Lofgren and Lou Correa, have been raising concerns that the measures are too far-reaching. Lofgren, a powerful member of the committee, is concerned that the bills "go way, way farther than is necessary to get to the actual issues,” said a Democratic staffer.

Buck, who has fashioned himself into one of the most prominent antitrust crusaders in the GOP, said in an interview that he had to keep the bill text close to the vest to prevent leaks and maintain his working relationship with Democrats. Still, it’s unusual on the Hill to see the GOP head of a subcommittee work with Democrats over his own ranking member on such a broad effort.

In fact, the Coloradan plans to go further on antitrust, staying hopeful that he can win more Republican support as the issue gains more public attention.

“The big tech companies are afraid of these bills," Buck said. "They’re afraid of being held responsible and being held accountable."

Leah Nylen contributed to this report.

After months of build-up, Democrats are boxed in on their party’s signature election reform plan. And there’s no apparent escape route.

Senate Republicans blocked Democrats’ sweeping ethics and elections legislation on Tuesday, a filibuster that many in President Joe Biden’s party hoped would turbocharge the demise of the chamber’s 60-vote threshold for most bills. But Democratic moderates’ support of the filibuster has only hardened in recent days, culminating in an emphatic defense of the supermajority requirement by Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) on the eve of Tuesday’s vote.

Liberals eager to change the minds of Sinema, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and nearly a dozen other senators reluctant to eliminate or reform the filibuster had staked their success on a series of Republican blockades on former President Donald Trump’s impeachment, a Jan. 6 commission, equal pay standards and most notably, the elections bill dubbed “S1.”

In today’s 50-50 Senate, Democrats would need every single one of their members to vote in favor of any changes to the rules, and there is no sign that’s close to happening.

It gets worse for Biden’s party: Now that the GOP has rejected debating the legislation that would overhaul federal elections, Democrats are without a new strategy to show party activists some momentum before the 2022 midterms. At the moment, the party doesn't have a backup plan on elections and Democratic senators acknowledged their internal maneuvering over the filibuster has only begun after months of dominating their time in control of Washington.

“There doesn’t seem to be much of a path to getting any Republican votes on voting reforms. So what does that leave?” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). “It leaves a conversation in the caucus about whether you want to give Republicans the authority to continue to strip away from people the right to vote.”

Democratic leaders have told members that Tuesday’s vote is only the beginning of the discussion, not the end. And some Senate Democrats took it as a positive sign that all 50 members of the caucus — including Manchin — were united in Tuesday’s vote.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer did not detail next steps during Tuesday’s private caucus meeting, according to an attendee. But later on the floor, he said that Democrats will “have several, serious options for how to reconsider this issue" and "are going to explore every last one.”

Many in his caucus are desperate to find a path forward. “A body that won’t defend itself from an internal attack hardly deserves the name of a U.S. Senate,” said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.). “No consequences for Trump, no impeachment, no censure, no January 6 commission ... no agreement on voting rights.”

Potential backup plans after the filibuster include breaking up the elections bill into pieces to force more votes on the GOP or waiting until the fall to push a voting-rights-specific bill. Democrats could also put elections spending in a party-line budget reconciliation bill.

But on Tuesday evening success looked far off, even as Democrats vowed not to give up after Schumer promised that “failure is not an option.” Vice President Kamala Harris told reporters that “the fight is not over.”

In the meantime, the Senate is left with a handful of bipartisan gangs negotiating critical legislation on infrastructure and policing — and a lot of angry progressives who want to exercise their party’s power while they still have full control of Congress.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) was among those perplexed by Sinema’s latest defense of minority-party rights in the chamber. While Sinema said the “filibuster compels moderation,” Warren argues that “the filibuster as it’s currently used is giving Republicans a veto.”

“We’re talking about voting, which is a fundamental right, and the friction between rights and a rule that’s not even in the Constitution,” said Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.). “I would hope we would at least consider a rifle shot here of dealing specifically with voting rights and the fact that those should be inviolate.”

Progressives had long viewed the elections bill as the vehicle for Democrats to scrap the legislative filibuster. But Republicans didn’t block a bill this Congress until May 28, instead working with Democrats on water infrastructure, a new hate crimes law and competitiveness legislation. With that in mind, Democratic moderates on Tuesday suggested that despite the GOP blockade on elections legislation, they still aren’t prepared to kill the filibuster.

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) demurred when asked if his mind has changed, while Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) predicted that the conversation surrounding the filibuster “will pick up speed.”

"When you talk about something again and again and again in a hypothetical sense, it's never the same as when you're actually talking about it and the reality's upon you,” Hickenlooper said after the vote.

But with such stern opposition from Manchin and Sinema to touching the filibuster rules, it doesn’t appear there’s much incentive for other members of the Democratic caucus to begin calling for easing or elimination of the 60-vote requirement. Sinema has asked for a Senate debate on the legislative filibuster and members of the caucus say the party is likely to have one, albeit internally.

Some Democrats, Manchin included, aren’t going to give up on trying to round up Republican votes for elections legislation. Thus far, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) is endorsing a voting rights bill named for the late Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and said she supports expanding early and absentee voting as well.

Democrats are skeptical that much will come of that.

“Sen. Manchin and several other members of the caucus want to earnestly try to engage Republicans to say: Is there no way that we can work together on voting rights?” said Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), who is close to many Senate Republicans. “I do not see a serious interest or enthusiasm in improving access to the ballot among Republicans.”

Democrats need nine more Republicans to join Murkowski. And GOP leaders say their members are cool to doing so.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has panned a slimmed-down elections bill sought by Manchin. And even more modest reforms are likely to meet the same fate that Democrats’ sweeping bill met on Tuesday.

“I don’t think there’s anything I’ve seen yet that doesn’t fundamentally change the way states conduct elections. It’s sort of a line in the sand for most of our members,” said Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.).

Senate Rules Committee Chair Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) announced that her next step will include field hearings on elections laws, starting in Georgia. Schumer also vowed Tuesday that Democrats would bring up the issue for debate again.

“We will not let it go,” he said. “This voter suppression cannot stand. And we are going to work tirelessly to see that it does not stand.”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi plans to announce this week whether she will create a new committee to investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, weeks after Republicans blocked a bipartisan probe under pressure from former President Donald Trump.

Pelosi’s office clarified Tuesday night that she had not formally announced plans to form that committee, capping an hour of confusion after reports surfaced that she had done so at a closed-door meeting earlier that night. In that discussion, Pelosi seemed to suggest that she would move forward with creating the committee, according to a source in the room.

The speaker did not say exactly when she would formally announce her plans. A growing number of Democrats have been pushing for a select committee, which could take on the investigative work of the Sept. 11-style commission that Republicans rejected last month.

The caucus has been debating for weeks whether to launch a separate probe when several House committees, including the Homeland Security Committee, are already leading their own investigations into the violent riot.

If the speaker does opt for a select committee, they can consolidate their investigations into a single body but run the risk of being perceived as partisan. Republicans created a select committee to investigate the 2012 attacks in the Libyan city of Benghazi, for example, but the panel drew criticism from Democrats.

Some Democrats have also privately feared that a party-line probe could further fuel tensions across the aisle, with a small but vocal faction of the GOP downplaying the violence of the Jan. 6 attack.

“If Jim Jordan were in charge, it would be just like the Benghazi investigation. Luckily, he’s not in charge,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who led the impeachment charge against Trump for inciting that insurrection in January.

The House passed legislation last month to establish a bipartisan commission, but Senate Republicans blocked the bill, arguing existing committee-led and federal investigations made the commission “extraneous.” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has said he could bring the legislation up for another vote, but Pelosi’s announcement would appear to table any plans to force another vote.

Two Senate committees released their own bipartisan report on Jan. 6 security failures earlier this month, but Democrats took pains to say their reports were not a substitute for a broader investigation into the insurrection. The Senate committees’ reports only examined security, preparation and response to the attack rather than addressing bigger themes like the White House’s actions during the insurrection.

CLARIFICATION: This story was updated to reflect Pelosi’s decision-making from an earlier edition that cited sourcing which indicated she had announced that she decided to create the committee.