Presidential elections have real impacts arriving quickly. I think the following changed policies and strategies will happen fast, because the glidepath is both well-lit and pre-planned.
1) Low Earth Orbiting carriers, like
Starlink, will qualify for universal service funding. The FCC, under new management, will ignore
any previous qualms about Starlink’s cost, bit rate, reliability, and other shortcomings
compared to terrestrial options. This means
Starlink will qualify for over $800 million in universal service funding
subsidies. Elon Musk is getting quite a
return on his presidential election investment.
2) The FCC has a playbook it will follow to
the letter. See https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_CHAPTER-28.pdf.
The Heritage Foundation has commissioned the generation of a comprehensive list
of deliverables that will be implemented quickly, regardless whether President
Trump has read any of Project 2025.
This executive delegates large portions of governance.
3) The author of the FCC chapter, Commissioner
Brendan Carr, will become Chairman. Just before the election, he claimed NBC
had violated the statutory obligation to provide “equal time” to candidate
Trump when Saturday Night Live had a skit that included a cameo appearance by Kamala
Harris.
Commissioner Carr seemed more intent on triggering headlines
rather than recommending measured compliance with the law. Even Fox News
reported that NBC quickly and fully performed its equal time notification and
offer requirements. See https://www.foxnews.com/media/nbc-files-equal-time-notice-harris-snl-cameo-following-backlash.
4) Public interest regulatory requirements
fade into the sunset. Expect the FCC to
remove “regulatory underbrush” that heretofore have established now minor
limits on national and local market dominance. Broadcasting becomes a toaster
with sound and pictures as suggested in 1981 by a former FCC Chairman, Mark
Fowler. See https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mark-Fowler.
5) Relaxed antitrust scrutiny, possibly
eliminating the FCC’s review of mergers and acquisition parallel to what the
Justice Department does.
6) I expect Executive Branch agencies,
including Defense, Homeland Security, NASA, Commerce, and the FAA, to lose the
upper hand in spectrum sharing and relinquishment negotiations.
7) Channeling former President Richar Nixon,
see https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2017/trumps-threat-to-yank-tv-licenses-looks-a-lot-like-a-nixon-move-heres-why/,
President Trump already has articulated the desire to sanction broadcast
networks for assorted sins. See https://www.brookings.edu/articles/donald-trump-has-threatened-to-shut-down-broadcasters-but-can-he/.
President Trump probably will not be
able to generate a passive and pliable news media by supporting a substantial deregulatory
agenda at the FCC, while preserving the chilling effect of potential regulatory
sanctions. However, this tension will generate
chaos that could extend to the issue of social network regulation and
government-imposed sanctions for conservative bias, notwithstanding the First
Amendment.
6) More Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt when
Congress does not provide legislative specificity as required by the Supreme
Court. The abandonment of judicial
deference to regulatory agency expertise, and the heightened expectation that
Congress provide explicit statutory mandates, will create a backlog even a Republican
managed legislature cannot avoid.
7) The Executive Branch will embrace artificial
intelligence in creepy ways. It is
possible that generative AI will be used to evaluate the past performance of individual
government employees in terms of “team player” affinity to the Project 2025 playbook.
8) While previously leery of cryptocurrency,
President Trump will reward his Silicon Valley benefactors with Executive
Branch endorsements.
9) Lastly, I expect Chicago School, libertarian
doctrine to become gospel truth. Even
though we know free does not mean without costs, the Chicago School mandarins
equate enhanced consumer welfare with reduced out of pocket costs. The Trump administration and like-minded
judges will ignore quite harmful impacts to individual and society that are not
readily quantified.
