WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, Texas Republican Ted Cruz, has finalized his list of Ranking Members for the seven subcommittees within the powerful legislative body, which has oversight of the FCC in the upper chamber of Congress.
The man appointed as Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Communications, Media and Broadband? An individual many are familiar with, and who, like Cruz, is outspoken in his opposition to the White House’s nominee for the fifth seat on the FCC, Gigi Sohn.
The role is being taken by Sen. John Thune (R-South Dakota).
That’s the Senator who in March 2021 reintroduced the bipartisan Platform Accountability and Transparency (PACT) Act, something the Republican leader believed “would go a long way toward making social media platforms more accountable to consumers and increasing transparency around the content moderation process.”
He called the PACT Act “a serious, bipartisan approach to the issue of Section 230 reform.”
It never advanced out of the Senate Commerce Committee.
In the 116th Congress, Thune was Chairman of what was then-known as the Senate Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, Innovation, and the Internet. He had to take the role because Thune was tapped to serve as the Majority Whip for that Congressional session, preventing him from continuing in his role as Senate Commerce Committee Chairman.
This put Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) in the leadership role today held by Cruz.
This week, Thune attracted attention for his steadfast opposition to Sohn, who sat for 2 hours and 45 minutes at her third FCC Nomination Hearing on Tuesday.
“Americans deserve an FCC nominee who can do his or her job impartially, regardless of the matter before the commission,” said Thune. “In each of her nomination hearings, Gigi Sohn has misled the Commerce Committee, and her long record of virulent partisanship and bad judgment make her unfit to serve on the FCC. Should her nomination come for a vote before the Commerce Committee, I will oppose it and urge my colleagues to do the same.”
Thune questioned Sohn during a Senate Commerce Committee hearing about her extreme position on net neutrality and her role in leaking information that led to “the collapse,” as Thune sees it, of a bipartisan broadband deal when working at the FCC.
“Right now, the FCC is two-two,” Thune said during the Tuesday hearing. “It’s functioning in a perfectly normal way, they’re getting things done, and putting her on the FCC would add partisanship, make it increasingly difficult, I think, for the FCC to do its job in the way the American people expect it.”
