Federal Communications Commission

We’re creeping closer to the one-year mark since the federal government axed the Affordable Connectivity Program due to lack of funding, which left over 23 million low-income households without affordable internet. But folks didn’t just lose the $30/month subsidy and a reliable broadband connection.

New York's law requiring Internet service providers to offer broadband for $15 or $20 a month has spurred legislative efforts in other states to guarantee affordable service for people with low incomes.

The U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) will hear oral arguments on March 26 in the case of FCC v. Consumers’ Research regarding the constitutionality of the Universal Service Fund (USF). The Court will be reviewing a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that said that the USF is unconstitutional. That ruling conflicted with rulings from two other appeal courts that largely blessed the Federal Communications Commission and USF. The case that drove this to the Supreme Court was filed by Consumers’ Research, a nonprofit activist group.

A federal appeals court’s rejection of the Federal Communications Commission’s decade-plus push for stronger oversight of the internet was a crushing defeat for “net neutrality” as it has been pursued since the Obama administration. But the ruling could also be seen as the latest indictment of the inability of Congress to regulate at anywhere near the speed of tech.

The Rural Digital Opportunity Fund was the biggest attempt at the time to solve the rural broadband gap. The Federal Communications Commission had originally slated $20.4 billion to award to internet service providers in a reverse auction, meaning the ISP willing to take the smallest subsidy for a given area won the funding. Winners were to collect the funding over 10 years and had up to seven years to build the promised networks. The program ran into problems in several dramatic ways.

Forty years ago, the Reagan administration told PBS to find ways to increase funding for public television outside of taxpayer dollars. It did. PBS’ response to the challenge was to enhance the way it acknowledged sponsors. Instead of merely running a company logo before its programming, PBS let corporate underwriters place messages that looked more like standard commercials. That process helped sustain such programs as “Nova,” “Masterpiece” and Ken Burns’ acclaimed documentaries.

With all the buzz around what will and won’t happen to the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program, it’s easy to forget the government’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) is chugging along – albeit on a road rife with defaults and rural areas left behind. As of 2025, internet service providers (ISPs) have defaulted on $3.3 billion of the $9.2 billion total in RDOF awards, according to a study from the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society.

It is the policy of my Administration to focus the executive branch’s limited enforcement resources on regulations squarely authorized by constitutional Federal statutes, and to commence the deconstruction of the overbearing and burdensome administrative state.

In the first hours of his presidency, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14149, “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.” The Order prohibits any “federal department, agency, entity, officer, employee, or agent” from acting “in a manner that advanced the Government’s preferred narrative about significant matters of public debate.” 

New economic analysis of the Affordable Connectivity Program—which offered monthly broadband service subsidies to low-income households—finds that the economic benefits generated by the program far outweigh its costs. Highlights include: