With all eyes focused on the nominee for the Supreme Court by a Democratic president, many have not even noticed that the Democrats have been voting in other radically progressive leaders that Biden has nominated.
Vice President Kamala Harris cast a tie-breaking vote on Wednesday to approve Alvaro Bedoya to lead the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Harris had to break a Senate deadlock for this nominee from Biden, and Bedoya is now moving toward confirmation. He did not receive enough votes in the committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation to be recommended favorably because he did not get votes from Republicans.
That is the same story for Gigi Sohn, Biden’s nominee for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The president nominated this radical progressive for an FCC seat in October. Now, Chuck Schumer, the Senate Majority Leader from New York, is getting ready to use the same procedure that was used for Bedoya with Sohn. Democrats will use what is known as the discharge petition to bypass GOP opposition and move Sohn’s nomination to confirmation.
Both Bedoya and Sohn have made their far-left, progressive positions known on social media. The Republicans will put up a heavy backlash, but their hands will ultimately be tied. A Democratic majority will make their position firm in both the FTC and the FCC. GOP leaders are warning America that when these two are confirmed, there will be a radical in two of the nation’s regulatory bodies.
Dan Gainor, the vice president of Free Speech at the Media Research Center, warned that regulators are supposed to be neutral.
“Both of them are unable to be neutral. They are both radical. They post on Twitter. They tell us how radical they are,” Gainor said after noting that social media enables us to vividly see into both Sohn and Bedoya’s political beliefs.
In a post from Bedoya, he goes after former President Trump, “What ELSE does Trump have to say for the media to expressly call him a racist and white supremacist. 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,” Bedoya wrote in a January 2018 tweet.
After the January 6 Capitol riot, Bedoya called for GOP Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz to resign from their positions. He has lashed out at ICE calling them an “out-of-control domestic surveillance agency that peers into all our lives.” And he has called three Republican governors (Abbott of Texas, DeSantis of Florida, and Reeves of Mississippi) “death eaters” because of their stand on the pandemic.
Sohn has said on social media that Republicans and the possibility of a 2nd Trump presidency is a threat to “our Republic.” She accused Fox News of being responsible for “destroying democracy & electing autocrats.” And she has suggested that she might use the power of the FCC to keep opponents silent, including the media.
In October of 2018, Sohn tweeted, “This, and its lack of candor during the failed merger with Tribune, calls into question Sinclair’s fitness to be a broadcast licensee.” This was about a report that Sinclair Media ordered employees to air biased segments and feed favorable questions to Republicans. She went on to ask, “Will @FCC do anything when Sinclair’s licenses are up for renewal?”
Democrats are declaring that it is time to fill the vacant spots on the FCC and the FTC. But the people that are in line for confirmation will promote a radical position that is far from where the average American is comfortable.
