Gigi Sohn, President Joe Biden’s nominee to fill the vacant fifth seat on the Federal Communications Commission, appeared Tuesday before the Senate Commerce Committee for the third time as Republicans dug in for another effort to scuttle her confirmation.
The Democrats’ pickup of one Senate seat this year gives them a committee majority that could advance Sohn to the floor, a contrast to last year, but Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., signaled his party’s determination to stop her, saying on the floor that she “is no more qualified to be installed on the FCC than she was back in 2021 or 2022.”
Sohn, a counselor at the FCC for three years, ending in 2016, was first nominated by Biden for an open FCC seat in 2021. She has faced stiff opposition from some industry groups and Republican lawmakers who accuse her of being a radical; being a leftist, because she labeled Fox News as a propaganda outlet; and engaging in unethical practices.
