December 2023

By passing the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), the CHIPS and Science Act (CHIPS), and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the 117th Congress approved over a trillion dollars in immediate appropriations and nearly $600 billion more in authorizations to invest in infrastructure, clean energy, climate resilience, and industrial policy. Given the complex challenges that rural communities face to achieve and sustain prosperity, we examined the provisions of this legislation to identify where rural places are statutorily included or where funding objectives are exceptionally relevan

Schools across the country are under attack, increasingly held hostage to ransomware and other vicious online assaults costing more than $10 billion a year in downtime alone. Contracts, tax forms, and passports, along with social security numbers, birth dates, and addresses for students, parents, and staff are up for grabs on poorly secured networks that are easily taken hostage. This is why more than 1,100 school districts, along with nearly two dozen groups, signed a letter asking the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to react now.