Congress alone may grant such power

The question is not whether broadcast consolidation is wise policy — that is a debate for another forum — but whether an administrative agency may rewrite the terms of its own authority without Congress speaking plainly to the point. Article I vests all legislative power in Congress, and it does not migrate to an executive agency simply because Congress once delegated a portion of its regulatory jurisdiction over the airwaves. When an agency proposes to relax ownership ceilings in ways that materially reshape the media landscape, it is not executing a law — it is making one. The danger I warned against in Federalist No. 51 applies here: the accumulation of regulatory, quasi-legislative, and quasi-judicial power in a single body is precisely the arrangement a well-constructed government must prevent. Concentrated media ownership, achieved through an agency acting beyond its clear warrant, compounds the problem: it merges the hazard of unchecked administrative power with the hazard of a few voices dominating public discourse. Congress must speak first.

Strong federal agencies serve national order

A strong federal agency serves national order precisely when it holds the line against private consolidation that no single market actor will police itself. But here I must be careful: agency strength is not the same as agency license. The FCC's authority flows from Congress, and if Congress has not explicitly empowered the Commission to dismantle ownership limits, then the agency acts outside its charter — and that is not strength, it is usurpation wearing strength's costume. I built the Treasury's power on a broad but traceable constitutional grant; I did not invent authority from thin air and call it necessary. The genuine case for federal power here runs in the opposite direction from what the broadcasters want: a vigorous FCC should be defending the public's interest in diverse, competitive media, not engineering its own irrelevance by blessing concentrated ownership. Use the agency's strength to check private power, not to serve it. If broader authority is needed, let Congress grant it openly.

Consolidated media threatens liberty

The press, in any free republic, derives its value precisely from its multiplicity — a thousand voices speaking from a thousand independent minds, so that no single faction may monopolize the narrative that shapes public opinion. When an administrative agency, acting on its own interpretive authority rather than an explicit mandate from the people's representatives in Congress, moves to concentrate that multiplicity into the hands of a few large corporations, two dangers compound at once: the democratic danger of consolidated editorial power, and the constitutional danger of an executive body enlarging its own jurisdiction without legislative warrant. I distrust concentrated power on principle — whether it wears a crown, incorporates as a bank, or files as a media conglomerate — because power, left to consolidate, will always consolidate further. An educated citizenry cannot remain free when the channels through which it learns are owned and managed by a small cartel answerable to shareholders rather than to the public interest. Congress should speak plainly; the agency should wait.