Last Updated: September 01, 2026

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The American Communication and Information Act

• Legislative Pathway: Reconciliation-Eligible (Infrastructure spending and subsidy components; standalone for regulatory provisions)
• Goal: To ensure universal access to high-speed internet and quality information as essential infrastructure for both economic opportunity and democratic participation in the 21st century. Representative democracy cannot function when its deliberative substrate is replaced by an engagement machine that rewards performance over truth — this Act rebuilds that substrate.

Universal Broadband as Essential Service

Declare broadband internet an essential utility requiring universal coverage, on the model of the Rural Electrification Act of 1936.

• Universal service obligation: Carriers receiving any federal subsidy or spectrum must serve all customers in their service area at federally-defined minimum speed (100 Mbps symmetrical baseline, scaling over time)
• Affordability standard: Maximum monthly cost capped at 1.5% of state median income for the baseline service tier
• Common-carrier reclassification: Restore Title II classification of broadband under the Communications Act of 1934 (vacated in 2017), reestablishing net neutrality obligations
• Lifeline expansion: Universal subsidy for low-income households (currently $9.25/month under Lifeline) raised to fully cover baseline broadband cost

$150 Billion Infrastructure Investment

Federal funding for fiber-optic and 5G buildout to every community, funded through infrastructure bonds repaid by user fees and spectrum auctions.

• Last-mile priority: Grants targeted at rural, tribal, and persistent-poverty census tracts where private deployment has not occurred despite prior subsidy
• Open-access requirement: Federally-subsidized networks must allow competitive ISP service over the physical infrastructure (preventing single-provider monopolies)
• Buy America provisions: Telecommunications equipment manufactured domestically or in allied nations (national security and industrial policy)
• Build deadlines and clawback: Recipients failing to meet deployment milestones lose grants and must repay disbursed funds
• Coordination with Strategic Energy Act: Co-locate fiber with transmission upgrades to reduce per-mile cost

Public Option Internet Service

Where private telecom companies have failed to serve rural, tribal, and low-income communities, establish public option ISP service.

• Modeled on the Tennessee Valley Authority — a public utility competing on quality and price where private markets have failed
• Municipal preemption removed: Federal preemption of the 17 state laws that currently prohibit cities from offering municipal broadband
• Cooperative authorization: Federal financing for rural electric and telephone cooperatives to offer broadband, restoring the cooperative model that brought electricity to rural America
• Tribal sovereignty: Tribal nations receive direct federal grants and spectrum access to operate sovereign broadband networks
• Estimated coverage gap closed: ~30 million Americans currently without quality broadband

Media Ownership Limits

Prevent the consolidation of local information sources into national chains.

• No single company may control more than 10% of any local news market (newspaper, TV, radio combined)
• National cap: No single company may own outlets reaching more than 35% of the U.S. population (restoration of the pre-1996 cap)
• Cross-ownership restored: Prohibit common ownership of multiple major outlets in the same market
• Private-equity ownership disclosure: Investment firms acquiring local newspapers must publicly disclose ownership structure, debt loading, and editorial independence guarantees
• Antitrust coordination: Existing antitrust authority deployed against media consolidation under the Antitrust and Competition Act

Public Media Expansion

Increase Corporation for Public Broadcasting (PBS/NPR) funding tenfold (to $5 billion annually) to ensure quality, non-partisan news available to all Americans.

• Insulated funding: Funding committed in 5-year tranches to prevent annual political pressure on editorial independence
• Local station priority: 70% of new funding flows to local affiliate stations, not central network operations
• Strict non-partisanship requirements: Independent editorial review board; clear separation between newsroom and administration
• Pacifica/community radio support: Dedicated funding for community-owned radio in news deserts
• International comparison context: UK funds the BBC at ~$120/capita; Germany ARD/ZDF ~$110/capita; U.S. funds PBS/NPR at $1.40/capita — this brings the U.S. to ~$15/capita, still far below peer democracies

Local Journalism Grants

Federal support for investigative reporting in communities where hedge funds have eliminated local newspapers (1,800+ U.S. counties have lost their newspaper since 2004).

• Local Journalism Fund established within CPB with $1B annual funding
• Eligibility: Local nonprofit news organizations, public-radio-affiliated newsrooms, university-based reporting initiatives, and qualifying for-profit local outlets meeting independence criteria
• Reporter-Subsidy Tax Credit: Refundable tax credit for local outlets equal to a portion of journalist salary costs (modeled on the bipartisan Local Journalism Sustainability Act framework)
• No federal editorial control: Funding flows through independent CPB processes; no political appointee approval of grants

Media Literacy Education

Grants to states for K-12 curriculum teaching critical thinking, source evaluation, and resistance to algorithmic manipulation.

• Cross-references the Education Fairness Act: Implementation aligned with K-12 media literacy provision there
• Non-partisan focus: Skills (verification, sourcing, lateral reading), not political content
• Evidence-based curricula: State adoption of programs with documented effectiveness (Stanford History Education Group, News Literacy Project)

National Digital Citizenship Initiative (Adult Literacy)

Establish a national network of digital literacy workshops delivered locally through public libraries, community colleges, and senior centers.

• Modeled on agricultural extension services to reach adult populations who did not grow up with digital platforms
• Focus on practical verification skills: Reverse-image searches, tracing claims to original sources, identifying deepfakes/synthetic media, recognizing algorithmic emotional manipulation patterns
• Library and community college funding: Direct federal grants to local institutions, not pass-through state agencies
• Senior-specific outreach: Targeted programming for older adults, who are the population most exposed to platform-driven misinformation per Stanford and MIT research

Public Information Integrity Office (PIIO)

Create an independent, non-partisan agency modeled on the Congressional Budget Office.

• Mission: Monitor and analyze large-scale, coordinated inauthentic behavior and foreign or domestic disinformation campaigns at scale
• Outputs: Rapid public advisories, factual counter-speech reports, and longitudinal analysis of information-environment trends
• No regulatory, censorship, or content-takedown powers: Strict statutory limit on PIIO authority — the agency informs the public, it does not police speech
• First Amendment safeguards: All work product subject to public review; no classified operations; standing advisory board including civil liberties organizations
• Director: 7-year term, removable only for cause, appointed by the President with Senate confirmation
• Annual reports to Congress and the public on disinformation trends, platform behavior, and recommended public responses

Constitutional Authority

Article I, Section 8 (Commerce Clause — interstate communications, the well-settled basis for the entire FCC regulatory regime since the Communications Act of 1934); precedent of the Rural Electrification Act of 1936 (universal service infrastructure); government speech doctrine (public media); Sherman Antitrust Act (media ownership limits enforcement); Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (statutory framework). The PIIO is structured carefully to avoid First Amendment concerns: it has no regulatory authority over speech, only informational/research authority — analogous to the CDC’s role in monitoring disease patterns without regulating individual behavior. Net neutrality / Title II reclassification: the authority argument has changed and the Act should say so. Mozilla v. FCC (D.C. Cir. 2019) upheld the FCC’s repeal of net neutrality; what it established is agency discretion to classify either way. That discretion rested on Chevron deference, which Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (2024) overruled. Reclassification now faces de novo judicial review of whether broadband is a “telecommunications service” under the Communications Act, rather than deference to the FCC’s reading. This Act therefore rests reclassification on the statutory text and the factual record of how broadband is actually offered, not on deference the courts no longer extend. Media ownership limits: Red Lion Broadcasting v. FCC (1969) sustains broadcast regulation on spectrum scarcity; Miami Herald v. Tornillo (1974) forecloses equivalent mandates on print. Prometheus Radio Project v. FCC (2021), in which the Court unanimously upheld the FCC relaxing ownership rules, is the durability problem: it confirms broad Commission discretion, so limits left to rulemaking can be undone by rulemaking. Ownership limits here are therefore enacted by statute.

Exit Condition (Step-Three Intervention)

Municipal broadband and the public-option ISP are government market participation — step three under Regulatory Philosophy §5-6 — and carry the same burden the public health option does.

• Entry: a census block qualifies where fewer than two providers offer service at the FCC’s current broadband definition, or where the incumbent has drawn subsidy and failed delivery obligations. Roughly a quarter of rural blocks qualify today
• Annual review: the FCC publishes provider count and delivered speeds per block as open data, whether or not it supports continued public operation
• De-escalation: where three or more providers deliver at the standard for three consecutive years, the public network stops new build-out and market-rate transfer to a competitive private operator becomes permissible, at book value with a build-quality covenant
• The floor stays. As with the public health option, the network is not dismantled on de-escalation — infrastructure once built is cheaper to keep than to rebuild, and the credible possibility of a public alternative is what disciplines the incumbent. It becomes a wholesale carrier of last resort rather than a retail competitor

Rationale

The Founders’ system of representative democracy assumed a rich, local civic infrastructure — town halls, local newspapers, civic associations. These institutions served as a “deliberative substrate,” the physical space where citizens could look each other in the eye, debate, separate fact from rumor, and make informed choices to delegate authority. Today, that substrate has been replaced by global, algorithmically curated feeds owned by monopolistic private corporations. Because these platforms profit from maximizing user attention, their algorithms systematically amplify outrage, division, and sensationalism. Local newspapers have collapsed (1,800+ counties without one). Trust in mainstream institutions has fallen alongside the civic infrastructure that supported them. This Act rebuilds the deliberative substrate at every layer: physical infrastructure (universal broadband), local journalism, public media, citizen capacity (media literacy), and a research apparatus to understand the information environment we now inhabit (PIIO). Without rebuilding this substrate, no other reform can deliver its promised results — because the conditions for informed deliberation will not exist.

Implementation Note

Day 1 executive actions can begin grant acceleration under existing BEAD and ReConnect programs; FCC can begin Title II reclassification rulemaking. Public option authorization, major appropriation increases, and PIIO establishment require Congressional action. Media ownership limits enforceable under existing antitrust law plus FCC rulemaking.

Implementation Timeline

• Year 1, Q1: FCC Title II reclassification rulemaking; broadband universal-service standard published; Lifeline expansion effective
• Year 1, Q2: Infrastructure bond authorization; first BEAD-successor grants distributed under updated terms (open access, Buy America, build deadlines)
• Year 1, Q3: Public Information Integrity Office established; director nominated and confirmed
• Year 1, Q4: Public media funding tripled in first appropriation cycle; municipal preemption removed; National Digital Citizenship Initiative grants flowing to libraries and community colleges
• Year 2: Media ownership cap enforcement begins; Local Journalism Fund operational; first PIIO annual report published
• Year 3-5: Universal coverage milestones (95% by Year 3, 99% by Year 5); public media at full $5B funding; demonstration of measurable improvements in local news availability

Fiscal Impact

Total federal cost at full implementation: $35-36B annually steady-state, plus $150B one-time infrastructure investment over 5 years.

Annual, steady state:

• Broadband network operations, maintenance, and debt service: $25B annually
• Public media expansion: $5B annually
• Lifeline expansion: $3-4B annually
• Local journalism fund: $1B annually
• FCC enforcement capacity: $400M annually
• National Digital Citizenship Initiative: $300M annually
• PIIO operating budget: $200M annually

Excluded from the total above, and why:

• Infrastructure buildout: $150B over 5 years — one-time capital, funded by infrastructure bonds repaid through user fees and spectrum auctions, not annual appropriation
• Media literacy K-12 grants: $500M — appropriated under the Equal Opportunity in Education Act. Counting it here would double-count it, which the previous version of this list did
• Public option ISP authorization: $2-4B — this is subsidised capacity, not direct federal outlay. The previous version included it inside a figure labelled “total federal cost,” which its own parenthetical contradicted

Funded by: spectrum auction revenue ($5-15B annually depending on cycle); infrastructure bonds (repaid by users); general appropriation balance. Economic returns: per-Census Bureau and CBO analyses, universal broadband generates ~$3.30 in GDP per $1 invested through productivity gains, labor market participation, and rural economic development. Net long-term fiscal benefit positive.

Political Considerations

This Act faces opposition from three concentrated interests: (a) large telecom incumbents (universal-service obligations and Title II reclassification), (b) media conglomerates (ownership limits), and (c) social media platforms (PIIO research mandate, though not regulatory). Polling: 75-82% support for universal broadband as essential service; 65-72% for public option ISP where private has failed; 60-68% for limiting media consolidation; 80-85% support for K-12 media literacy education. The strongest political vulnerabilities: (a) PIIO mischaracterized as a “Ministry of Truth” — preempt by strict statutory limits, transparency requirements, and civil liberties advisory board; (b) public option ISP characterized as “government internet” — counter with the empirical success of municipal broadband in Chattanooga, Lafayette, and other locations; (c) public media funding increases characterized as biased — counter with the BBC/ARD/ZDF comparisons, the strict editorial independence requirements, and the local-station-priority structure that flows funding away from central network operations. The Communication and Information Act is foundational: without it, the Freedom to Vote Act, the Digital Governance Act, and the Education Fairness Act cannot achieve their full effect.