from the idiot-king dept
Last week we noted how Trump illegally declared he was killing the $2.75 billion Digital Equity Act. The law, passed as part of the infrastructure bill, was slated to bring millions in new broadband grants and digital literacy tools to Americans of all kinds long stuck on the wrong side of the digital divide.
The bill helped everybody (including Trump-supporting rural veterans), but because Trump’s team assumed that the word equity meant “exclusively help minorities,” the program has become the latest victim of our mad, incoherent, con man king and his army of mindless earlobe nibblers.
It hasn’t taken long for the decision to have ripple effects in the real world. South Dakota, for example, says it’s cancelling $5 million in broadband investment because of the uncertain future of the grants that were going to be funding the plan:
“In South Dakota, the funds would have helped bring accessible and affordable internet access and technology to rural, aging and low-income South Dakotans, as well as tribal communities. Infrastructure like 5G towers and fiber-optic lines needs to be added to neighborhoods.”
Uniformly helping people access the internet: how utterly, diabolically woke! And how “populist” of King Trump to illegally end a beneficial law passed by Congress.
South Dakota Rep. Erik Muckey doesn’t mince words in explaining how the Trump administration has no idea what they’re destroying:
“This crusade to eliminate any funding that has anything to do with even the word equity, even if the word equity has nothing to do with Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, that it’s purely about actually helping basic infrastructure get to rural communities and native nations, it’s just a farce.”
This will be repeated across numerous states like Vermont, which is also cancelling planned broadband investment. Thanks to Trump’s incoherent zealotry, dozens of states are having to cancel plans to expand fiber access to rural communities, or kill off digital literacy programs designed to help rural locals get online in order to access employment, education, and health care opportunities.
This isn’t about “saving money,” especially coming from a country whose new king is throwing $45 million ego parades. It’s not about serving any constituents (these programs were broadly popular). It’s about a pathological need to be cruel.
It’s quite a policy coup from Republicans and Libertarian “free market” think tank guys, who repeatedly threw a hissy fit for years, falsely claiming that some modest net neutrality rules would “stifle broadband investment” (but are now quiet as little church mice for some reason).
If you read the actual Digital Equity Act, race is barely mentioned. It’s basically just a bare bones effort to try and ensure that everybody has access to decent broadband. That’s important in a country where congressional corruption has resulted in telecom market failure at the hands of shitty regional monopolies, whose lack of competition and oversight results in expensive, spotty, slow, and low-quality access.
Making U.S. broadband shittier and more expensive is a central policy platform of a Republican party that has, over the last few years, obliterated all telecom oversight, dismantled efforts to protect broadband consumer privacy, destroyed popular programs helping low-income Americans afford broadband, and even recently made it harder for poor kids to do their homework online.
When people complain about substandard access, the follow up Republican policy is to shovel them toward Elon Musk’s Starlink, ignoring that the increasingly congested satellite service lacks the capacity to scale to handle U.S. coverage gaps, is too expensive for the rural Americans who need it most, harms scientific research and the ozone layer, and is run by an erratic, conspiratorial bigot.
Democrats certainly have their failures on telecom policy (see: their corrupt inability to support the Gigi Sohn FCC nomination), but a lot of the legislation passed in 2021 (specifically ARPA) was primarily the result of Democratic initiatives, and is genuinely helping to drive affordable, super fast fiber into areas that have never seen access before.
But when the corporate U.S. press writes about broadband policy and market failures, the fact that unpopular Republican policies are specifically and cruelly designed to stall progress and make our digital divide worse (especially for their own constituents) is either downplayed or not mentioned at all.
Great stuff! Very innovative!
Filed Under: broadband, digital equity, donald trump, erik muckey, grants, high speed internet, impoundment, infrastructure, telecom
