WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris cast the tie-breaking vote Wednesday to break a deadlock in the Senate over yet another radically progressive Biden nominee.
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) nominee Alvaro Bedoya can now head to a confirmation vote after Harris broke the 50-50 tie in the senate, though he did not receive enough votes in the committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation to be recommended favorably, lacking support from Republicans.
Neither did Gigi Sohn, Biden’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) nominee, who Biden nominated for an FCC seat in October. But Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is expected to use the same procedural process, the discharge petition, to again bypass Republican opposition and advance Sohn’s nomination.
Both Bedoya and Sohn are likely to face heavy backlash from Republicans for their far-Left policy stances — stances that Bedoya and Sohn have made clear on social media.
If Bedoya is confirmed to the FTC and Sohn to the FCC, a Democratic majority would be cemented at these agencies. And conservatives warn that confirming either nominee would place radicals on two of the nation’s most important regulatory bodies.
“Regulators are supposed to be neutral,” Dan Gainor, vice president of Free Speech America at the Media Research Center warned The Daily Wire in a Wednesday phone interview.
“Both of them are unable to be neutral,” he said, referring to Sohn and Bedoya and noting that modern day social media gives a vivid glimpse into the political beliefs of nominees. “They are both radical. They post on Twitter. They tell us how radical they are.”
Neither Schumer nor the White House responded to requests for comment from The Daily Wire for this story.
I'm so deeply honored to be nominated by @POTUS to serve as @FCC Commissioner. If confirmed, I'll work to fulfill his goal of ensuring that every household in the US has robust broadband Internet. Congratulations to @JRosenworcel on her ascension to Chair – well deserved!
— Gigi Sohn (@gigibsohn) October 26, 2021
Bedoya has repeatedly and publicly criticized conservative figures like former President Donald Trump.
“What ELSE does Trump have to say for the media to expressly call him a racist and white supremacist,” asked Bedoya in a January 2018 tweet. “Does he literally have to say ‘white people are better than black people’? Does he have to say the N word? At some point, it’s not a ‘racist comment.’ It’s just a racist.”
In a tweet following the January 6 Capitol Riot, Bedoya called for Republican senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz to resign from their positions.
He also called ICE an “out-of-control domestic surveillance agency that peers into all our lives” and retweeted an August 2021 tweet calling Republican governors Ron DeSantis of Florida, Greg Abbott of Texas, and Tate Reeves of Mississippi “death eaters” over the coronavirus containment policies.
Several Republicans criticized Bedoya for these comments in March.
“I remain concerned by the frequency with which he has publicly expressed divisive views on policy matters rather than using a more measured and unifying tone,” said Republican Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker, the ranking Republican on the Commerce Committee.
Bedoya did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Daily Wire.
Hawley and Cruz must resign. https://t.co/1zNCctjC5G
— Alvaro Bedoya (@alvarombedoya) January 8, 2021
Sohn, too, has publicly used her platform to attack conservatives and Republicans.
She characterized Republicans and a second Trump presidency as a threat to “our Republic” and accused Fox News of playing a role in “destroying democracy & electing autocrats.”
She has also suggested that she would use the power of the FCC to silence opponents — including in media.
“This, and its lack of candor during the failed merger with Tribune, calls into question Sinclair’s fitness to be a broadcast licensee,” she tweeted in October 2018 regarding a report that Sinclair Media ordered employees to air biased segments and feed favorable questions to Republicans.
“Will @FCC do anything when Sinclair’s licenses are up for renewal?” she asked.
Katie McAuliffe, federal affairs manager at Americans for Tax Reform and executive director of Digital Liberty, said in a Wednesday evening phone interview that though the FCC has the ability to extend or terminate a broadcaster’s licensing, it has “never ever before been implied that that would ever be done based off of view point.”
“Unless there’s some egregiously violative nature, then most people tend to keep their licenses,” she said. “But for [Sohn] to imply that she would like to see certain news organizations or certain companies no longer have access to those licenses…is a very real problem.”
Sohn did not respond to requests for comment from The Daily Wire.
When the Biden FCC nominee sits down with senators during her confirmation process and is asked about such points, MRC’s Gainor predicted, she will “of course” say that she would be neutral.
“What else do you expect them to say?” he asked. “They really act like we are that stupid.”
The senate is not expected to vote on confirming Bedoya until after the Senate’s Easter break, and Schumer has said that he wishes to spend the upcoming week focused on Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Both the FCC and the FTC have been busy doing their business without getting bogged down in politics, McAuliffe said, but that could change if “firebrands” like Sohn and Bedoya are confirmed.
“People are looking at having their information stolen,” she said, “how they resolve these claims, how they are made whole, they are worried about their data security, and the FTC should really be focused on those kinds of things that are actual consumer harms rather than going after successful companies just because you have some kind of political priority.”
But Democrats say it is time to fill the vacant spots on the FCC and the FTC.
“The FTC Is the security guard for America’s consumers,” Democratic Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell said in a March statement. “The FTC needs to be able to protect all Americans, and to accomplish that we need to have a commission that is not deadlocked, but has somebody like Mr. Bedoya who can help us move ahead on these issues.”