While true, this is not the full story. As I'm sure you know, the FCC is split between Republican and Democratic nominations by design, and Pai was nominated as the Republican option. It was Trump who appointed him as Chair, thus giving him the authority to carry out his (de)regulatory agenda.
Right, but Obama still picked him out of the universe of republicans. It’s not like the RNC told Obama who to nominate. Lumping him together with Betsy DeVoss is a misleading attempt to paint him as outside the mainstream. Yes, he’s pro-deregulation, but hardly to an unusual degree. The whole developed world is in a two-decade trend of liberalizing their telecom markets. The EU, for example, doesn’t have any media ownership rules similar to the FCC’s, not do member countries like Sweden. Many countries have nothing like our ponderous (about $8 billion per year) universal service fund. To pick random examples: Sweden got rid of its universal service fund in the 2000s, Germany in theory has one but it’s never been invoked, and Denmark never extended it to broadband (like Obama did here).
