The American legislative system is bizarre.

To begin with, Congress is accorded very little power by the constitution, with most of it resting with "We the people" or the states.

This however, doesn't pattern match with the amount of power some people (typically progressives) _think_ the Congress or government _ought_ to have, or the amount of power Congress _wants_ to have (as much as possible), so we see BS things like the abuse of the Commerce Clause loophole to justify any Congressional intervention.

Now, you'd think that with all this power that they have loopholed their way into, they would actually exercise it, but that doesn't actually happen, because they are permanently gridlocked and can't pass any damn shit unless it's part of a giant 1000-page omnibus bill that has 100 unrelated things clubbed together based on whatever horse-trading they manage to do one day before the govt shutdown deadline.

So what actually happens is that the actual rule-making is done by the executive, in the form of these government agencies, which ideally should be enforcing things that the Congress has passed, but effectively are given pseudo-legal power through a variety of judicial interpretations (eg. the Chevron Doctrine) that can be overturned by the next Supreme Court as trivially as they were written in.

All in all, you get a massively dysfunctional system where regulatory agencies act as effectively unelected lawmakers, with the actual lawmakers doing jackshit, and the judiciary effectively supporting these shenanigans through capricious rulings.

And while doing all this, lawmakers can conveniently ramp on the rhetoric during campaigning because they know they don't actually need to do anything. They didn't even pass abortion-related legislation for 50 whole years, because they could use that division to reap votes every election cycle.

I'm a lawyer. Here's a summary from Perplexity.ai, which comports well with my general understanding:

The U.S. Supreme Court defines "arbitrary and capricious" in the context of administrative-agency action primarily through the standards set forth in the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). According to the APA, a court must invalidate agency actions that are found to be "arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law" 1 3 4.

The arbitrary and capricious standard is applied when reviewing an agency's decision-making process and involves several key considerations:

Consideration of Relevant Factors: An agency action is deemed arbitrary and capricious if the agency has relied on factors that Congress did not intend it to consider, failed to consider an important aspect of the problem, or offered an explanation for its decision that runs counter to the evidence before the agency 2 3.

Rational Connection: The agency must demonstrate a rational connection between the facts found and the choices made. This requires a satisfactory explanation for its action based on consideration of relevant data 6.

Consistency and Reasoning: The decision should not be based on seriously flawed reasoning or be inconsistent with prior actions unless adequately explained. The agency must also respond to relevant arguments or comments during the decision-making process 6.

Zone of Reasonableness: Recent interpretations by the Supreme Court have introduced the concept of a "zone of reasonableness," where agency actions are upheld if they fall within a reasonable range of decisions based on the agency's expertise 4.

That said, the cable companies could still work around this. The rules seems to still allow "saves," which could include them contacting you the next day to try and reverse your decision.

The save portion of the rule seems to be a loophole the telecommunications companies convinced the FTC to add for them, it sounded like originally those would be blocked.