Such regulations would have required AT&T, Comcast, Verizon and other internet providers to treat all web traffic equally. Sohn was a favorite of progressives and had served as a top adviser for Tom Wheeler, the Obama-era FCC chair who enacted net neutrality rules that were jettisoned during the Trump administration. In January, he renominated her to the post. When Congress failed to confirm Sohn during its last term, Biden didn’t give up. When the White House announced her nomination in October 2021, it hailed her trailblazing biography and called her a consumer advocate who would “defend and preserve the fundamental competition and innovation policies that have made broadband Internet access more ubiquitous.” If confirmed, Sohn would have been the FCC’s first openly LGBTQ+ commissioner. Sohn’s nomination was meant to be historic. Norman Ornstein, a senior fellow emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute, said such dark-money groups are growing so powerful that they can “hamstring or stymie an entire administration” by discouraging qualified people from accepting nominations. Just two of those organizations spent at least $420,000 on ads seeking to torpedo Sohn’s confirmation, a sum that is likely a fraction of the total spent. Joe Manchin of West Virginia announced his opposition to the nomination in March, the moderate Democrat cited Sohn’s “partisan activism, inflammatory statements online, and work with far-left groups.”Įven so, outside groups left nothing to chance. Moderate Democrats were going to have trouble justifying their support for a nominee who had assisted controversial liberal groups, seemed to endorse tweets critical of police and accused Fox News of being “state-sponsored propaganda.” Sohn was not likely to coast to confirmation. Sohn has been a vocal advocate of such regulations, which have been aggressively opposed by the telecom industry. Her confirmation would’ve ended a 2-2 split on the commission, enabling Biden’s administration to pursue its agenda of making communication networks more equitable.
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