Senate Republicans are rushing to confirm President Donald Trump’s nominee to the Federal Communications Commission in order to create a 2-2 deadlock for the Biden FCC.

In a 14-12 party-line vote today, the Senate Commerce Committee approved Trump’s nomination of Nathan Simington. If Simington is confirmed by the full Senate, the FCC would be deadlocked at two Republicans and two Democrats after the upcoming departures of Chairman Ajit Pai and Michael O’Rielly. To get a 3-2 majority on the FCC, President-elect Joe Biden would have to nominate a Democrat after taking office and hope that the Senate confirms the nomination.

Senate Democrats said today that Simington is not qualified to be an FCC commissioner and that he misrepresented his work in the Trump administration during the committee’s confirmation process.

“I will continue this fight on the Senate floor,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said. “I will continue to do everything I can to hold this nomination and to oppose it because I think Mr. Simington lacks the qualifications and independence that are required of an FCC commissioner.”

Approving Simington would create “a deadlock at the commission in the middle of a national crisis,” Blumenthal also said. “Perhaps the telecommunications and media companies want that kind of deadlock. They may wish for an FCC that is absent and neutralized. But we face right now a national emergency, both a pandemic and economic crisis that requires this independent agency to be more active than ever in protecting consumers and our telecommunications. The fact is, Mr. Simington has failed to provide this committee with an assurance that he will have the candor and independence that is required.”

Nominee backs Trump “assault on First Amendment”

No Republican senators offered any justification for confirming Simington at today’s meeting, which covered three nominations, including Simington’s, and lasted less than 15 minutes. Blumenthal and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) pointed out that Simington was nominated only after Trump pulled the renomination of O’Rielly, who did not support Trump’s attempted crackdown on Twitter and Facebook for alleged anti-conservative bias.

“It would seem that Mr. Simington was nominated for just one purpose: to support the president’s indefensible assault on the First Amendment,” Blumenthal said. “It appears in fact to be his sole qualification—his reason for replacing Commissioner O’Rielly.”

As Cantwell said, O’Rielly’s “nomination was reportedly pulled as retaliation for Mr. O’Rielly speaking his mind about problems with the FCC trying to issue rules related to section 230 at the president’s behest.” The process “raises real questions about why the White House chose Mr. Simington, particularly given his lack of experience with the FCC, its statutory responsibilities, and many of the key issues at the agency,” she said.

Simington is a senior adviser at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), which petitioned the FCC for a new interpretation of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to limit social media platforms’ legal protections for hosting third-party content when platforms take down or modify content they consider objectionable. Simington played a role in drafting and promoting that plan.

Blumenthal said he asked Simington to recuse himself from the FCC’s Section 230 proceeding, but Simington has not committed to do so.

Simington lobbied Fox News

Newly revealed emails showed that Simington “reached out to Fox News this summer in an attempt at ‘engaging’ host Laura Ingraham to support President Donald Trump’s quest to make it easier to sue social media companies like Facebook and Twitter,” Politico reported last week. “Simington… wrote that the popular Fox News host could help sway the FCC to act on Trump’s proposal before Election Day.”

Blumenthal and Cantwell said the emails proved that Simington downplayed his role in the Trump administration’s Section 230 proposal. Simington reportedly claimed during his nomination hearing that he had only a “minor role” in the NTIA’s petition to the FCC.

“We have learned he sought to enlist Fox News to ‘help get the FCC on board more quickly and thereby ensure a freer and fair social media landscape going into the elections this fall,'” Blumenthal said today, quoting from Simington’s email to a Fox News staffer. “He then described restraining social media companies as a concern both to the presidency and down ballot. He failed to disclose this to the committee, he failed to tell us about it, Mr. Chairman. So I asked Mr. Simington again and received a nonanswer.”

Nominee “misrepresented his involvement”

Blumenthal also said that Simington’s answers to questions from both Democratic and Republican senators were “inadequate, incomplete, and evasive.”

Cantwell said there are “real questions… about Mr. Simington’s candor with the committee during this confirmation process. We now know based on his own emails that he misrepresented his involvement in pushing the FCC to do the president’s bidding on Section 230.”

“The FCC and NTIA simply cannot be permitted to be an instrument of political bullying,” Blumenthal said. “It is an assault on the integrity and independence of the FCC, and this committee must take this threat seriously.”

FCC nominations have in some cases been approved in pairs, with one Democrat and one Republican joining the commission simultaneously. That’s what happened in August 2017 when Republican Brendan Carr and Democrat Jessica Rosenworcel were confirmed on the same day. Before that, Rosenworcel had to leave the commission for about seven months because the Republican-led Senate refused to reconfirm her, a move that gave Trump a 2-1 FCC majority when he took office.

“She had to leave the commission to ensure that President Trump could appoint an accompanying [Republican] FCC nominee, and we should hold this nomination as well,” Blumenthal said.

“Zero qualifications”

The sole purpose of Simington’s nomination is “obstructing the incoming Biden administration and its FCC appointees,” said Matt Wood, VP of policy and general counsel of media-advocacy group Free Press.

“Nathan Simington has zero qualifications for this position,” Wood said. “He’s here only as a result of strong-arm political tactics to reward his loyalty to Trump. Hand-picked and then forced on the Senate by a now-defeated president, Simington was not chosen for his expertise or ability, but for his apparent willingness to improperly cast a vote on the unlawful, unconstitutional, and just plain bad Section 230 petition that he helped write.”

Fight for the Future, an advocacy group, warned that Simington’s nomination is an attempt to prevent the restoration of net neutrality rules and urged people to contact their senators to oppose it.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1727116