 Well, after 16 months of no progress towards her confirmation and hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dollars in law being spent against her, Biden's FCC nominee, G.G. Sohn, has announced that she is withdrawing her nomination. This means that for the foreseeable future, the FCC will remain deadlocked and net neutrality will not be restored anytime soon. The Washington Post explains G.G. Sohn, a longtime public interest advocate and former Democratic FCC official who was first nominated by the White House in October of 2021, said her decision to withdraw follows unrelenting dishonest and cruel attacks ceded by cable and media industry lobbyists. The opposition to Sohn catapulted the relatively low-profile position to the center of an unprecedented fight which involved three Senate confirmation hearings, a series of ads, and a billboard criticizing Sohn as extreme and partisan amid dissection of her social media posts. It is a sad day for our country and our democracy when dominant industries with assistance from unlimited dark money get to choose their regulators. Sohn said in a statement shared exclusively with the Washington Post and with the help of their friends in the Senate, the powerful cable and media companies have done just that. And she is absolutely correct about this. The question is, why after six months give up? You've put up with the partisan attacks for all this time. Why quit now? Well, for those of you unaware, she had her third confirmation hearing a couple of weeks ago and one senator finally made his position clear. He's going to be voting against G. D. Sohn, which means that her confirmation is essentially dead. That's why she chose to withdraw. Now take a guess as to which senator, a Democrat mind you, chose to kill this confirmation? Of course, it was none other than Joe Manchin. The Washington Post continues, shortly before Sohn announced her decision to withdraw, Senator Joe Manchin dealt a critical blow, announcing he would vote against her, accusing her of holding partisan alliances with far left groups that's such bullshit. Especially now, the FCC must remain above the toxic partisanship that Americans are sick and tired of, and Ms. Sohn has clearly shown she is not the person to do that Manchin said in a statement. Now the irony is that she was the individual subjected to cruel partisan attacks. But yet Manchin is flipping it and saying she's the one who is the partisan. Now regardless of the excuse that Manchin uses, this is the result of intense lobbying. We're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars spent specifically against G. D. Sohn. And do you want to know who one of their primary targets were? Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Let's look at some of the lobbying against G. D. Sohn, former Democratic senator turned lobbyist Heidi Heitkamp's non-profit spent $250,000 on a social media campaign targeting three senators, one of them being Joe Manchin. Politico reported in April of last year that West Virginia was a main target of anti-Sone lobbying ahead of the midterm elections. The American Accountability Foundation, a lobbying group, spent $229,000 attacking G. G. Sohn and telecom giants overall spent a record-breaking $117 million in 2022 with Comcast, one of the biggest opponents to net neutrality, which G. G. Sohn supports, spending $14 million alone on lobbying. And to just say that a lot of money was spent against Sohn and lobbying doesn't give you the full story. Telecom giants used lobbyists to plant stories with the media to purposefully smear her. For example, as Common Dreams explains, in addition to one country project's efforts, this is Heitkamp's group by the way, and the League of United Latin American Citizens, LULAC, which has long partnered with AT&T, also a photo net neutrality by the way, published an op-ed in the Arizona Daily Star earlier this month, accusing Sohn of having a deeply problematic track record on media diversity issues. That was last year, but this year in February, the Los Angeles Times reported about a coordinated smear campaign astroturfed by, you guessed it, lobbyists back in late January. Quote, in their attacks, all published on January 26 and 27, Fox News, Breitbart and the Daily Mail used almost identical headlines stating that Sohn sits on the board of EFF. All tried to link her with Danielle Blunt, a professional dominatrix who has been in the forefront of organized opposition to FOSTA and CESTA, and support for the rights of sex workers and who received an award from EFF in 2020 for her efforts to fight online censorship. And to give you a little bit more context, because Gigi Sohn sits on the board of EFF, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and they gave an award to a dominatrix who was against FOSTA and CESTA, because this is an online privacy and online rights group, while they tried to accuse her of supporting human trafficking. And they say that because that was the rationale behind FOSTA and CESTA. So we're not going to get into that story. I did a video on this last month, I want to say. It's really complex, but essentially, this was a homophobic smear attack on Gigi Sohn. So all of this was done, a coordinated smear campaign, hundreds of thousands of dollars in lobbying, all to stop one FCC commissioner. And it paid off, because they got exactly what they wanted. Now in her letter to Biden announcing that she's withdrawing her nomination, she correctly and very bluntly explained what this means for consumers. Quote, unfortunately, the American people are the real losers here. The FCC deadlock, now over two years long, will remain so for a long time. As someone who has advocated for my entire career for affordable, accessible broadband for every American, it is ironic that the two-to-FCC will remain sidelined at the most consequential opportunity for broadband in our lifetimes. This means that your broadband will be more expensive for lack of competition, minority and underrepresented voices will be marginalized, and your private information will continue to be used and sold at the whim of your broadband provider. It means that the FCC will not have a majority to adopt strong rules which ensure that everyone has nondiscriminatory access to broadband regardless of who they are or where they live, and that low-income students will continue to be forced to do their schoolwork sitting outside of Taco Bell because universal service funds can't be used for broadband in their homes. And it means that many rural Americans will continue the long way for broadband because the FCC can't fix its universal service programs. And she is absolutely correct. This is not just sour grapes. She's one commissioner of an entire agency that would have given them the majority that they needed to undo a Jeep Pies harmful legacy and implement new regulations so that way your internet service provider can't sell your data to online marketing companies. It's just, this was a pro-consumer person, but the telecom agency planted stories in the media covertly to smear her as some sort of an SJW or authoritarian who hates Fox News. And it worked because in response to news that she'd be withdrawing, if you look to the Twitter replies to Washington Post sharing this article, there's a lot of conservatives that are bizarrely celebrating and misgendering GG zone. For example, here's a couple of them. Good, he is too leftist and I wish him luck. I mean, these are normal Republicans who are buying the bullshit from propagandists. So congratulations, idiots. You'll continue to pay more for broadband since there are monopolies everywhere. You will continue to be forced to have your internet service provider sell your data. But at least the woke GG zone was defeated. I mean, this shows you how powerful propaganda is and how effective lobbyists are at what they do. So there you have it. The dream of restoring that neutrality is probably dead. I can't imagine that the Senate will confirm any nomination that Biden puts forward unless they're going to be a complete plant for the telecom industry. Because when you try to put forward somebody who is genuinely progressive, who is looking out for the consumer and wanting to protect them from these predatory companies, well, that's what happens. Lots of money is spent lobbying against them. So who's Biden going to nominate next at this point in time? They haven't announced who they're going to choose. But if there's somebody who's actually good, odds are the lobbying campaign isn't going to let up anytime soon. And I guarantee you that just normal people are going to fall for it because when you have so much money being spent to brainwash people, well, it works, unfortunately.