The stalemate has prevented Democrats from taking control of key committees since the chamber is operating under the rules of the last Congress, when the GOP was in charge, delaying consideration of attorney general nominee Merrick Garland, who is expected to receive bipartisan support.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, rejected a Democratic request on Monday to schedule Garland’s confirmation hearing on February 8, arguing that the Senate needs to focus on the impeachment trial of former president Donald Trump, which is set to start the following day.
The South Carolina Republican said in a letter that a “one-day hearing” was “insufficient,” and noted that previous attorney general nominees received two-day hearings.
“When the Senate’s focus is required to consider whether to bar a former president from being reelected, other business must stop,” Graham wrote. “Proceeding with the confirmation of an attorney general and the impeachment of a former president at the same time would give neither the attention required.”
Until Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer strike an agreement, Graham will continue to determine the panel’s schedule rather than Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin. The party leaders could finalize a deal as soon as Tuesday; Graham said he guessed he’d be Judiciary committee chairman for “another day or two.”
The negotiations were held up for more than a week over a disagreement about whether or not Democrats had to promise in writing that they wouldn’t blow up the filibuster. McConnell said he was done holding up that process after moderate Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, said they had no plans to vote to eliminate the filibuster anytime soon.
McConnell declined Tuesday to comment on the topic. Durbin said that the party leaders are haggling over a final few points before finalizing the power-sharing agreement that will officially allow Democrats to take their chairmanships of key Senate committees. Democrats will hold a majority in the 50-50 Senate because Vice President Kamala Harris has the power to break tie votes in the chamber.
Durbin blamed McConnell for the holdup and said he has “several options” to schedule Garland’s hearing. He declined to provide details.
“I don’t like any of them,” he said. “I think February 8 is the best, fairest way to do it.”
“Sorry to say that Judge Merrick Garland, who is a wonderful man, is going to retire the trophy for bad behavior by the United States Senate,” he added, referring to how Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court was ignored by the GOP Senate majority in 2016.
Some Senate Republicans have indicated they would vote to confirm Garland, including McConnell, according to The New York Times.
Texas Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said Tuesday he’s inclined to vote for Garland. He said he would support an “early” committee hearing and would “encourage” Graham to schedule one.
“I would support an early markup for Merrick Garland,” Cornyn said. “I think he’s not political, which is my number one criterion for the next attorney general.”
Graham said he also liked Garland.
“I’ll probably vote for him,” said the senator.
This story has been updated with additional developments Tuesday.
CNN’s Chandelis Duster and Ted Barrett contributed to this report.
A new lawsuit has accused Valve of abusing Steam’s market power to prevent price competition.
The Hollywood Reporter said that five gamers filed an antitrust class action in California that alleges Valve requires developers and publishers enter into a “Most Favoured Nation” clause.
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A Most Favoured Nation clause is a retail parity clause in which a supplier agrees to treat a particular customer no worse than all other customers. MFNs are under increased scrutiny from authorities across the world, including the European Commission.
The lawsuit alleges a developer or publisher must agree the price of a PC game on Steam will be the same price as on other PC platforms. Essentially, the lawsuit claims Steam does not allow developers to price their games lower on other platforms.
The suit, submitted by American law firm Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease LLP, says Valve’s MFN clause keeps prices of PC games high on other platforms, such as the Epic Games Store and the Microsoft Store.
“The Steam MFN also hinders innovation by creating an artificial barrier to entry for platforms,” reads the complaint.
“When a market, such as this one, is highly concentrated, a new entrant can benefit consumers by undercutting the incumbent’s prices. The ability to provide PC games to consumers at lower prices is one way a firm or new entrant could gain market share. If this market functioned properly – that is, if the Steam MFN did not exist and platforms were able to compete on price – platforms competing with Steam would be able to provide the same (or higher) margins to game developers while simultaneously providing lower prices to consumers.”
The lawsuit uses tweets from Epic boss Tim Sweeney to back up its case. In a January 2019 tweet, Sweeney said Steam “has veto power over prices”.
Steam has veto power over prices, so if a multi-store developer wishes to sell their game for a lower price on the Epic Games store than Steam, then: 1) Valve can simply say ?no? 2) Pricing disparity would likely anger Steam users, leading to review bombing, etc
— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) January 30, 2019
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Then, in a February tweet, Sweeney added:
“If the dominant store has a price parity clause, and takes a much higher revenue share than competitors, then the only way for creators to pass savings on to gamers is by avoiding the dominant store.
“That’s what this is ultimately about!”
Curiously, the lawsuit includes a raft of publishers as co-defendants: CD Projekt, Ubisoft, kChamp Games (the one-man indie developer behind ShellShock Live), Rust, LLC (the Los Angeles developer behind Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades), and Devolver Digital. The lawsuit alleges these companies agreed to the Steam MFN.
But why include only these publishers and developers and not the many others who release games on Steam? Why single out two indie developers in this case?
The suit alleges that if Steam MFN did not exist and platforms were able to compete on price, then platforms competing with Steam would be able to provide the same (or higher) margins to game developers while simultaneously providing lower prices to consumers. But does this play out in reality?
Ubisoft ditched Steam a while back to launch its PC games on the Epic Games Store. On Epic’s platform, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla costs £49.99. That’s the same price as Assassin’s Creed Odyssey costs on Steam. Despite the increased revenue share afforded to publishers and developers on the Epic Games Store and the fact Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is not on Steam, it doesn’t look like any saving has been passed on to customers.
And what about this Steam MVN upon which the lawsuit is based? According to the pricing section of Steamworks’ documentation, developers and publishers are responsible for setting and managing pricing for their products. However, the blurb confirms Valve will review initial pricing and proposed pricing adjustments (sales).
“Initial pricing as well as proposed pricing adjustments will be reviewed by Valve and are usually processed within one or two business days,” reads the documentation.
“We recommend pricing strategies based on our experience and we may suggest prices based on currency conversions and other factors.”
Steam’s pricing rules, according to public documentation.
Does this amount to an MVN clause? Tim Sweeney seems to think so. In a February 2019 tweet, the Epic boss said the “reviewed by Valve” line “shows developers don’t have autonomy to set prices for games”.
There is a clearer stipulation in the Steam keys section of the Steamworks documentation that reveals Valve expects price parity on Steam keys, specifically:
“Please note that Steam keys cannot be sold on other sites unless the product is also available for purchase on Steam at no higher a price than is offered on any other service or website.”
What’s going on here, then? Back in February 2019, Epic’s Tim Sweeney tweeted to suggest private agreements between Steam and developers is not usually known.
“The situation with price parity expectations on Steam is not transparent,” Sweeney said. “Valve’s public docs say temporary sales elsewhere are fine but they expect overall price parity on Steam keys. What each private Steam agreement with developers require is not generally know.”
Then, later from Sweeney on Twitter:
“We have been told by multiple developers that Valve has approval over price and that long-term price parity (excluding temporary sales) is expected. We are researching further. Because these agreements are private, any Valve clarification would be helpful.”
Valve is yet to comment on the lawsuit. Devolver has shrugged it off.
We started Rust Inc. to quietly steal Rust away from you.
— Devolver Digital (@devolverdigital) January 29, 2021
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The lawsuit wants a ruling that Steam’s supposed MFN clause “is anticompetitive and constitutes illegal monopolisation and monopoly maintenance”, an injunction, damages and legal costs.
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A new lawsuit filed by five gamers in California federal court accuses Valve of abusing its power to keep PC game prices high.As reported by THR, this lawsuit claims that Valve does not maintain its dominance over the PC market by offering better prices on Steam than other platforms, but does so by abusing its power to require developers to enter what is known as a ‘Most Favored Nations’ clause.
“Valve Corporation’s Steam platform is the dominant platform for game developers to distribute and sell PC games in the United States,” states the complaint being handled by attorneys at Vorys, Sater, Seymour, and Pease. “But the Steam platform does not maintain its dominance through better pricing than by rival platforms. Instead, Valve abuses the Steam platform’s market power by requiring game developers to enter into a ‘Most Favored Nations’ provision contained in the Steam Distribution Agreement whereby the game developers agree that the price of a PC game on the Steam platform will be the same price the game developers sell their PC games on other platforms.”
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The lawsuit also alleges that, because Valve requires developers to enter this ‘Most Favored Nations’ clause, it “hinders innovation by creating an artificial barrier to entry for platforms” and keeps prices high on other digital storefronts like the Epic Games Store and the Microsoft Store.
“The Steam MFN also hinders innovation by creating an artificial barrier to entry for platforms,” adds the complaint. “When a market, such as this one, is highly concentrated, a new entrant can benefit consumers by undercutting the incumbent’s prices. The ability to provide PC games to consumers at lower prices is one way a firm or new entrant could gain market share. If this market functioned properly—that is, if the Steam MFN did not exist and platforms were able to compete on price—platforms competing with Steam would be able to provide the same (or higher) margins to game developers while simultaneously providing lower prices to consumers.”
CD Projekt S.A., CD Projekt, Inc., Ubisoft Entertainment S.A., Ubisoft, Inc., Ubisoft L.A., Inc., kChamp Games, Inc., Rust, LLC, and Devolver Digital, Inc. are also included as defendants on the lawsuit, with the plaintiffs accusing these companies of agreeing with the Steam platform to the Steam MFN.This new class action lawsuit follows Valve, Capcom, Bandai Namco, Focus Home, Koch Media, and ZeniMax being fined $9.4 million by the European Commission over the practice of “geo-blocking.”
Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.
Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.
Senator Rob Portman, a Republican from Ohio, speaks to members of the media while walking through the Senate Subway at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, on Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2021.
Sarah Silbiger | Bloomberg | Getty Images
A group of power brokers in Ohio have been reaching out to business leaders across the state to try to recruit them to run for Republican Rob Portman’s Senate seat in 2022, in an effort to stop pro-Trump contenders from winning that contest, according to people familiar with the matter.
Some of those who have started engaging with potential candidates include donors and business types close to former Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich, these people said.
Kasich is one of the most prominent GOP critics of former President Donald Trump. He was one of a handful of Republicans who was featured at the Democratic National Convention over the summer to endorse Joe Biden.
The possibility of trying to win a Republican primary in what appears to be a divided party is leading some executives to opt against getting in. Those who have been approached on the Republican and Democratic sides include the CEO of a central Ohio business advocacy group, a venture capitalist and a digital marketing executive.
Several people are hesitant to get into the race because a Republican primary will involve a battle for the party’s base and likely an endorsement by Trump himself. If he endorses, Trump will likely support someone more aligned with his agenda as opposed to a more traditional Republican.
House Freedom Caucus member Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, will not be running for Portman’s seat, his office recently announced. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said in a statement yesterday that after meeting with Trump, the former president is “committed to helping elect Republicans in the House and Senate in 2022.”
GOP politicians with allegiances to Trump who are reportedly in the mix to possibly run include Rep. Steve Stivers and Ohio Republican Party chair Jane Timken.
Political strategists say they’re not surprised by the effort to find a business-minded candidate. It’s the latest signal the Republican primary for Portman’s seat is going to be expansive.
“Will likely be a huge field in the GOP primary, with choices of all ideological stripes,” Charlie Black, a former Kasich strategist, told CNBC. It’s “to be expected,” Black said about business leaders being recruited, “but there will be conservative candidates not wedded to Trump.”
Portman announced on Monday that he will not be seeking reelection in 2022 because it has “gotten harder and harder to break through the partisan gridlock and make progress on substantive policy,” he said. Portman was a Republican lawmaker who voted to uphold the results of the Electoral College confirming Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election.
Those executives with Republican ties who have already experienced attempts to corral them into the race include Alex Fischer, the president and CEO of The Columbus Partnership, and Mark Kvamme, a venture capitalist who has been in Ohio for over a decade, the people familiar said.
Another executive who has been floated as a contender on the Democratic side is Nancy Kramer, a founder of the Ohio-based digital marketing agency Resource/Ammirati, one of these people said. Kramer’s firm was acquired by IBM in 2016.
Fischer’s Columbus Partnership is a business advocacy group for the city of Columbus and central Ohio. Fischer was also publicly credited with helping keep the MLS soccer team, the Columbus Crew, in the city when they were considering moving to Texas.
Kvamme and Fischer told CNBC they are not interested in running for Senate, even though they have been approached. Kramer, who currently is at IBM iX in Columbus, did not return a request for comment.
“Yes, some folks have called me. I am flattered,” Kvamme told CNBC. “Maybe someday I will get into the political arena, but my time is better spent demonstrating to my friends in California that Ohio and the Midwest is the next great place to create and build tech companies.”
Fischer, who was once the deputy governor of Tennessee before he moved to Ohio, said he’s not interested in running despite discussion in political circles.
“No, I am not privately considering it or otherwise positioning. Obviously there is a lot of discussion in political circles,” Fischer told CNBC. “In my conversations, there is an increased frustration with the overall political environment, the inability to solve problems and to collaborate across political parties to work together. There is also a desire to see business leaders to get more actively involved,” he added.
On the Democratic side, Axios reported that Amy Acton, the former director of the Ohio Department of Health, could also be in the mix. Former Columbus Mayor Mike Coleman has said he is considering running. Rep. Tim Ryan, a former presidential candidate, has said he is “seriously looking” at running.
Estonia’s new prime minister has promised to restore the Baltic nation’s reputation, after two turbulent years in which a far-right party was part of the country’s government.
“We will again build our relations with our allies, our neighbours, and we will try to restore our name as a good country to invest in,” Kaja Kallas told Reuters in Tallinn on Tuesday, after taking her oath of office.
The 43-year-old Kallas becomes the country’s first female prime minister since Estonia regained independence in 1991. The Reform Party, which she leads, won the most votes in a 2019 general election, but was unable to form a government, as the rival Centre Party instead looked to the far-right EKRE and another right-wing party to form a controversial coalition, with Centre’s Juri Ratas as prime minister.
That coalition was always fragile, and was repeatedly rocked by far-right rhetoric used by EKRE government members. In 2019, EKRE MP Ruuben Kaalep told the Guardian that the party’s agenda was to fight against “native replacement”, “the LGBT agenda” and “leftist global ideological hegemony”.
In December that year, the Estonian president Kersti Kaljulaid apologised to Finland, after interior minister Mart Helme, the EKRE leader, mocked Finland’s newly elected prime minister Sanna Marin as a “sales girl”.
Last year, Kaljulaid convened the country’s security council to discuss remarks by Helme calling the then-US presidential nominee Joe Biden “corrupt”. She said the remarks could put Estonia’s alliances under threat.
In the end, the Ratas government was felled not by EKRE’s rhetoric but by a corruption scandal. He resigned earlier in January, and a new coalition was formed between the Centre and Reform parties, with seven cabinet posts each and Kallas as prime minister. The new cabinet will be in office for two years before a new election is due in spring 2023.
Kallas, a former lawyer and MEP, is the daughter of Sim Kallas, who founded the Reform Party and was prime minister in 2002-2003. She said gender balance was an important factor in the new cabinet, with numerous women appointed to key positions, including the finance and foreign ministers.
Estonia is now one of just a few countries where both the head of state and of government are women, though president Kaljulaid’s five-year term will come to an end this year, and she has not yet announced whether she will seek another term.
Donovan Mitchell and the Jazz are riding an 8-game win streak to begin the week.
It’s Week 6, the time where we hit the halfway mark of the first-half schedule (on Wednesday) and when 25% of the full, 1,080-game, 2020-21 schedule will have been played. That will be Friday, unless several more games are postponed.
The quarter pole is usually when teams can make a real determination of where they stand. But things are obviously different this season. Not only have there been postponements and extended absences due to the coronavirus, but this is the first season of the new play-in rules.
So instead of drawing just one line after the top eight teams in each conference, we have to imagine two lines: one that separates the top six from the rest of the group, and another for the play-in teams from seventh to 10th place. That makes everything more cloudy, especially in the East, where the defending conference champs currently sit in 13th place at 6-9. Only five East teams have winning records and those 13th-place Miami Heat are just a game and a half behind the sixth-place Cleveland Cavaliers.
The situation in the West is a little more clear and perhaps a lot more sobering for the 5-10, 14th-place New Orleans Pelicans. Where things are really interesting is at the top, where the LA Clippers, Los Angeles Lakers and Utah Jazz all have just four losses.
Those three teams lead this week’s rankings, with the champs remaining at the top for the sixth straight week after a big win in Milwaukee. They’ll play the other two teams at the top of the East standings this week, while the Jazz will have a few big games within the conference.
Plus-Minus Players of the Week
Teams of the Week
Make It Last Forever: Philadelphia (3-0) — The Sixers are 9-0 when they’ve had both Seth Curry and Joel Embiid available, and the Lakers are coming to town.
Something Just Ain’t Right: New Orleans (0-3) — The Pelicans lost two games to the red-hot Jazz, but they finished their six-game trip with a loss in Minnesota, trailing by as many as 18 points to a team that was 3-11 and missing its two former All-Stars.
East vs. West
Schedule Strength through Week 5
Toughest: 1. Charlotte, 2. Oklahoma City, 3. Memphis
Easiest: 1. Orlando, 2. Philadelphia, 3. Atlanta
Schedule strength is based on cumulative opponent record, and adjusted for home vs. away and days of rest before a game.
Movement in the Rankings
High jumps of the week: Denver (+6), Five teams (+5)
Free falls of the week: New Orleans (-9), Phoenix (-6), Three teams (-4)
Week 6 Team to Watch
Dallas — The ninth-place Mavs should be getting some bodies back this week as they face the most important stretch of their first-half schedule. They host the Nuggets on Monday before heading out for a pair of games in Utah on Wednesday and Friday. Then they’re back home for two games against the Suns on Saturday and next Monday.
Previous Power Rankings
Stats Key
Pace: Possessions per 48 minutes (League Rank) OffRtg: Points scored per 100 possessions (League Rank) DefRtg: Points allowed per 100 possessions (League Rank) NetRtg: Point differential per 100 possessions (League Rank)
The league has averaged 100.7 possessions (per team) per 48 minutes and 109.8 points scored per 100 possessions this season.
NBA.com’s Power Rankings, released every Monday during the season, are just one man’s opinion. If you have an issue with the rankings, or have a question or comment for John Schuhmann, send him an e-mail or contact him via Twitter.
