Last month, the Biden administration passed 500 days without seating a fully functional FCC. The president’s nominee to fill the fifth and final FCC commissioner’s spot, longtime public-interest advocate and former FCC adviser Gigi Sohn, has been in limbo awaiting Senate confirmation. That leaves the agency without the vote it needs to break partisan deadlocks on crucial policies that impact the ways Americans connect and communicate, say former FCC Commissioner Gloria Tristani and Free Press Action co-CEO Jessica González in an opinion piece in the New York Daily News.
The power to return the FCC to full strength rests with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), but so far he’s not used it, say Tristani and González. That’s harming millions of people, especially those trying to pay their rising monthly bills and those in Black, Latino and other communities “long underserved by the biggest phone and cable companies,” according to the advocates.
“The FCC’s job is to regulate the public airwaves that bring us broadcast TV and mobile-phone service, and the wires that bring the internet to our fingertips. Without a full slate of commissioners, the agency can’t move forward on meaningful votes to make internet access more affordable for everyone, curb runaway media consolidation or restore vital rules designed to protect the open internet,” they write.
Tristani and González say the phone, broadcast, and companies don’t want the FCC to function, so they’ve launched a smear campaign against Sohn, misrepresenting her record repeatedly and dispatching an army of lobbyists to disparage her. “Instead of confronting the dishonest attacks on their nominee, Democratic leaders have dithered and delayed,” they write in the New York Daily News.
The conservative opposition to Sohn is strong, reports Protocol. Many of the Senate Commerce Committee’s Republican members signaled their distaste with Sohn’s rhetoric during her two confirmation hearings and suggested she’s too biased to be one of the FCC’s five commissioners. If Sohn can’t attract any Republican support, she would need “yea” votes from every Senate Democrat to be confirmed.
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