Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez renewed her call to break up major technology firms, arguing that their growing influence threatens consumers and competition across the U.S. economy.
“The problem that we have is that these big companies, they think they are governments; they want to be governments,” the New York Democrat said in an interview with Fox News posted on Sunday.
“They want to have totally unchecked power,” she added. “And I believe that we need to pursue antitrust. We need to break up a lot of these companies that are far, far too big.”
Her remarks come after Apple CEO Tim Cook announced this month that the iPhone maker would raise prices on certain products, citing “huge” cost increases that have made the situation “unsustainable.”
“We also need to be instituting consumer protections for people,” Ocasio-Cortez said, as calls for tougher antitrust enforcement gain momentum amid the expanding reach of technology firms and their growing control over data, infrastructure and digital markets.
Ocasio-Cortez has previously advocated for breaking up big tech companies, aligning herself with a progressive wing of lawmakers pushing to revive antitrust tools used more aggressively in past decades.
In 2019, her first year in Congress, she called for taking a “fine-tooth comb” to Facebook, saying the company’s advertising and social media businesses should be split into separate subsidiaries.
She also targeted Amazon, arguing that its role as “both the marketplace, producer [and] seller” created “an antitrust issue.”
Major technology firms have pushed back on such proposals, arguing that their scale allows them to deliver lower prices, improved services and innovation that benefits consumers.
Executives at Google have warned that aggressive breakups or regulatory constraints could undermine America’s competitive edge over foreign rivals, such as China — which opened up its own antitrust probe into the company in 2025.
Still, concerns over market concentration have gained bipartisan traction, with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle expressing support for reigning in Silicon Valley.
Earlier this month, GOP Senator Chuck Grassley and Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar introduced a bill that they said would prevent “the world’s largest digital platforms from abusing their market power to stifle competition, undercut online businesses and raise prices for American consumers.”
The Trump administration, meanwhile, has signaled it may adopt a lighter approach. Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that a senior Justice Department official appointed by Trump told regulators he would prefer settling cases rather than taking them to trial.
A 2024 Pew Research Center survey found that 78 percent of Americans believe social media companies wield too much power in U.S. politics. In a 2021 survey by the same organization, 37 percent of respondents said breaking up big tech firms would be “mostly a good thing,” while 29 percent said it would be “mostly a bad thing.”
