WASHINGTON — The former leader of New York’s Young Republicans was endorsed Saturday by an outgoing member of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to fill his vacancy.
FCC commissioner Nathan Simington told The Post in a phone interview Saturday that Gavin Wax, 31, “would be a great” replacement and had been hearing “buzz” about a potential nomination from President Trump.
“I don’t want to get ahead of the president,” said Simington, who has served at the FCC since the Senate confirmed him as Trump’s pick in December 2020, before adding: “Trump has been very smart and creative with his picks in general. And he seems willing to look outside of, I guess, the establishment … or Beltway insiders.”
Simington, who previously served as an associate at law firms like Mayer Brown as well as in a senior advisory role at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, is departing the FCC after his term expired last year and he stayed on in the intervening months as a holdover.
Wax is currently serving under the Republican appointee as chief of staff and senior adviser at the FCC.
If confirmed, he would be the youngest-ever FCC commissioner since 1945, when Democrat Charles Denny was confirmed at age 32.
“I came in as someone whose experience was primarily on the international trading side of wireless finance, and so I’ve been reading a lot of telecom reg[ulations],” he explained. “Gavin and I have collaborated on a lot of writing, and I think the common thread of tying it together is a desire to take a fresh look at telecom.”
“Gavin has spent a lot of effort with me thinking through questions of 5G industrialization. … I would expect [him] to focus on what it means to get smart manufacturing up and running at high scale in the United States,” he added.
The two co-authored an op-ed in the conservative Daily Caller last month calling for “DOGE-style” reforms at the FCC to do away with “outdated practices that burden consumers, broadcasters, and taxpayers alike.”
Established as part of the Communications Act of 1934, the five-member FCC regulates TV, radio, internet, satellite and cable industries, approves licensing and auctions off the use of spectrum for services like 5G.
As for his work chairing the Young Republicans, Simington noted: “The commission is an organization of 1,600 people. … I have to say when I got Gavin’s resume, the line items about the sizes of the events that he had organized and put on … my response was, this guy can clearly do things that I would find very challenging.”
Wax hosted the group’s annual holiday gala in previous years. Trump was the keynote speaker for the event in 2023.
The FCC currently has two Republican commissioners including Simington and two Democratic commissioners.
Democratic Commissioner Geoffrey Starks announced that he was stepping down Friday, leaving another vacancy.
Olivia Trusty was previously nominated as the third Republican to serve on the panel of commissioners and is in the process of being confirmed by the Senate.
Chairman Brendan Carr, a Republican, has led a series of reforms at the agency since Trump returned to the White House, including targeting diversity practices at Verizon and hinting at broader changes to so-called “Section 230” protections for big tech companies.
The latter has been the subject of furious debate by Republicans due to the liability shield it provides the platforms, even as some Facebook admitted to taking advantage of the tool to censor Americans’ views online during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Neither the White House nor Wax immediately responded to requests for comment.
