Editorial Board

Seven years after launching its first Starlink internet satellite, SpaceX is preparing to go public and could command a sky-high valuation. One ironic beneficiary of Starlink’s success is telecom mogul Charlie Ergen, who has used regulatory arbitrage to save his failed broadband bet. This is a tale of dumb industrial policy that might end well despite government planners. The story starts in 2019 when the Trump Justice Department required T-Mobile and Sprint to sell spectrum and their prepaid phone business to Ergen’s Dish network as a condition for green-lighting their merger.

Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr is threatening broadcasters over slanted coverage of the war in Iran. He’s firing the wrong missile at the wrong target. He might want to tell President Trump that TikTok is a real national-security risk and a bigger source of fake news. Few Americans today get their news from the public airwaves. Social media now ranks as the top news source for most Americans, and it is a leading medium for adversaries to spread anti-American propaganda.

The Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission were designed to be independent stewards of the public interest — guardians against monopolies, fraud and the misuse of public airwaves. The Trump administration has ruined that independence. President Trump’s appointees have weaponized the agencies and transformed them into instruments of ideological enforcement.

Who would have expected that broadband spectrum would create an enormous logjam in Congress? Well, it has. But at long last Republicans have struck a deal to auction more government spectrum as part of the tax bill, which may be the closest thing there is to a free government lunch. The 2023 expiration of the Federal Communications Commission’s authority to sell government spectrum licenses has slowed plans to build out broadband networks and put existing airwaves to more productive use.

Congress is supposed to write the laws, but these days it often prefers to delegate to the executive branch, and then cheer or boo the results. Twice amid the New Deal, but not since, the Supreme Court struck down statutes as abdications of Congress’s lawmaking power. Yet the Court has another chance in the case that the Justices will consider Wednesday, FCC v. Consumers’ Research.

As students return for a new school year, artificial intelligence is beginning to seep into the classroom. The disruption of teaching by technology is, though, not universally welcomed. As in other fields, AI is in reality unlikely to replace teachers any time soon, and nor should it. Research suggests the best learning is social, involving interaction between teachers and students, and between students themselves.

The Biden regulatory blitz continues, but courts are beginning to do their job to stop the biggest legal overreaches. A Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals panel blocked the Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality rule, citing the Supreme Court’s major questions doctrine. Welcome to the post-Chevron world. “An agency may issue regulations only to the extent that Congress permits it,” the court writes.

How much power may Congress hand off to the Washington bureaucracy? That’s a live question, so grab the popcorn to read a decision by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. In a 9-7 en banc ruling, it invalidated a “universal service” surcharge added to cellphone bills.

More than 23 million households will lose affordable internet access as part of a pandemic-era federal program that provided low-income households with a credit of between $30 and $75 toward their monthly service bill.

Some 23 million households receive broadband subsidies through the Affordable Connectivity Program, which is more than the number on food stamps. Households qualify if they earn 200% or less than the poverty line or participate in other welfare programs such as Medicaid. This includes relatively affluent households with public-school students in localities like New York City that provide universal free school meals. Broadband providers have said in recent earnings calls that they don’t expect to lose many subscribers once the program ends.