Antitrust Overhaul Passes Its First Tests. Now, the Hard Parts.

When the Judiciary Committee began approving a suite of bills on Wednesday, it exposed the fault lines that could make final passage difficult.

WASHINGTON — Capitol Hill politicians have groused for years about the power and influence of the country’s largest tech companies. But they took little action to match their rhetoric. That started to change on Wednesday, when House lawmakers took their first votes on a suite of bills that are meant to weaken the dominance of Big Tech. The bills, six in all, would bulk up antitrust agencies, make it harder to acquire potential rivals, and prevent platforms from selling or promoting their own products to disadvantage competitors. In a marathon session of debate and voting that ran into the early morning on Thursday, the Judiciary Committee advanced five of the six bills, a sign of the growing bipartisan agreement for taking on the tech companies. A handful of Republicans joined the widespread support among Democrats for the bills. The committee is expected to vote on the sixth bill after the discussions restart late Thursday morning.