For instance, how do you know the FCC, the FTC, and the SEC are part of the Administrative State? Do you know what other agencies are part of it?
>> how do you know the FCC, the FTC, and the SEC are part of the Administrative State? Do you know what other agencies are part of it? <<
I’ve been following the FCC since 1954, when I got my first radio license. So I do know quite a bit about the Commission.
The FCC used to have seven members, all appointed by the POTUS with concurrance by the U. S. Senate. But the number of Commissioners was reduced to five in about 1980.
According to the Communications Act, first passed in 1934 and revised in 1996, POTUS may appoint a maximum of three FCC Commissioners from his own political party. The other two Commissioners may be independents, or they may be members of a party different from the POTUS.
All Commissioners serve fixed terms of five years. The POTUS is not given the power to remove them, so probably the only way to get rid of a Commissioner would be for the House to impeach him and for the Senate to find him guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors.
From among the five Commissioners, the POTUS designates one as Chairman. The Chairman then has power to appoint and remove the various staff civil servants who do 99% of the Commission’s technical and legal work. So for all practical purposes, the Chairman can control the day-to-day operations of the Commission.
Presumably, the Chairman will try to follow the policy preferences of the POTUS. But legally speaking, he is under no obligation to do so.
I guess the POTUS could designate another Commissioner to become Chairman if he didn’t like the way the current Chairman was behaving. But I don’t recall that such an event has ever occurred.
Also, the other four Commissioners theoretically could vote to repeal or change some internal policy or personnel appointment made by the Chairman. But it’s extremely unlikely, given that two of the other Commissioners are from the same political party as the Chairman.
The precise way the FCC makes the “laws” (more properly called “rules”) governing telecommunications is spelled out under the congressionally passed Administrative Procedure Act (APA). This act also covers the rulemaking powers and responsibilities of most other Federal independent agencies, as well as rulemaking by the cabinet departments of the Executive Branch. The rules enacted under the APA are subject to review by the Federal Courts of Appeal, where those rules often get overturned — either on constitutional or statutory grounds.
As for other administrative agencies that (like the FCC) operate independently of the Executive Branch, I can recall only the FTC, the SEC, the CFTC and the BOG of the Fed. There used to be the ICC and the CAB. Thankfully, the latter two were abolished during the anti-regulatory wave that began under Carter and came to full fruition under Reagan. There are still a few other regulartory agencies that operate like the FCC, with independent Commissioners, but my memory fails.
Last but not least, to get back to the original subject of this thread, the FCC does not get involved in mergers unless at least one of the merging companies is also a telecommunications carrier, and it does not get involved in international trade other than its very minor role in “type acceptance” of imported devices that might emit even tiny amounts of RF energy. So it’s very hard to imagine how they would have anything to do with the proposed purchase of Qualcomm by Broadcomm.