Ajit Pai Is Regulating You Right Now

Ajit Pai has chutzpah. Even as he was gutting net neutrality regulations in December, he didn’t hide from the internet. The Federal Communications Commission chairman appeared in a silly YouTube video Instagramming junk food and wearing a Santa suit, a demonstration of things you’d still be able to do online “after these Obama-era regulations are repealed.”

The decision to end net neutrality has to withstand a court challenge, and Democrats in Congress will do their utmost to overturn it. Regardless of the outcome, the fight marks Pai as a brawler in bureaucrat’s guise. Says Kevin Werbach, a former FCC staffer who teaches at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School: “He’s going through, pretty systematically, to reverse rules put in place during the Obama administration.” Pai took a measured tone in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, saying he’s “simply trying to match our regulations to the realities of the modern marketplace.” But at the Conservative Political Action Conference last week, he was more confrontational. “I don’t play small ball,” he told an audience.