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... The Biden administration spent about three years developing rules and procedures for the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) fund and then evaluating plans submitted by each US state and territory. Republicans repeatedly alleged that Democrats should have distributed the grants more quickly, but the Trump administration halted progress after taking over.

"States are ready to put shovels in the ground and have been waiting for months to get started... Additional delays and onerous changes to the program at this stage threaten to further stall urgently needed deployment and leave communities behind," Senate Democrats wrote in a May 30 letter to President Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. The letter was sent by Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), and Sen. Ben Ray Lujn (D-N.M.).

Trump's Commerce Department reversed the Biden-era decision to prioritize the building of fiber networks in the BEAD program. The move to a "tech-neutral approach" is expected to result in much of the funding being distributed to Elon Musk's Starlink satellite program, even though fiber networks are faster and more reliable. ...