Michael O'Rielly

Education Commissioner O'Rielly received his B.A. from the University of Rochester. a proposal that would overturn state laws that prevent Internet service providers from competition from municipal broadband providers, a proposal to change the technical definition of "broadband Internet" from at least 4 Mbps to at least 25 Mbps, a proposal to use the LifeLine phone service subsidy program to subsidize broadband access to poor people, and a 2015 ruling that expanded consumer protections against Robodialers.

O'Rielly had reportedly expressed to Trump that he "had deep reservations" about the President's attempt to use his executive powers to order the FCC to limit the ability of online platforms to determine what they allowed on their platform, specifically his request that Section 230 legal protections be withdrawn from platforms that label or remove content shared by users which was deemed misleading, or otherwise violated their terms of service. The White House had drafted the Executive Order in May, after Twitter had applied fact-checking labels to two of the President's tweets where he alleged widespread voter fraud by the Democratic Party.

O'Rielly later clarified his position in a speech, stating, "the First Amendment protects us from limits on speech imposed by the government—not private actors—and we should all reject demands, in the name of the First Amendment, for private actors to curate or publish speech in a certain way. Like it or not, the First Amendment's protections apply to corporate entities..." Five days after the speech, without offering any additional information or a documented reason, Trump announced that he rescinded O'Rielly's nomination. O'Rielly's tenure had officially expired in 2019, though he was permitted to serve through the end of 2020, or be reconfirmed for the position for another five years. Trump chose to instead nominate Simington, who shared Trump's views on the matter. As a lawyer for the Commerce Department, Simington had helped write the petition to the FCC, which asked them to enforce Trump's executive order, and limit the legal protections of those online platforms which the White House deemed to be limiting the speech of conservative figures, even though such limitation on purely political speech has always been anecdotal.