Trump halts U.S. effort to attain 'digital equity'

• 12% of Americans have no internet connection
• Post-pandemic laws sought universal connectivity
• Trump describes equity effort as 'racist'

WASHINGTON - The public library in Bethel, Alaska is the only place for miles around that provides free internet and computer use, and it was planning to lead the community into a new era of online access.

The staff of four had been offering popular one-on-one online assistance and was on the cusp of adding more employees to reach more residents.

But after President Donald Trump axed a key federal program in early May, those plans seem doomed.

The library was part of a tranche of projects approved in January, and the funding would have allowed additional digital experts and the means to stay open evenings and weekends.

"We were beyond excited," said Theresa Quiner, director of Bethel's Kuskokwim Consortium Library.

Internet access is limited and very expensive, and there are very low rates of digital literacy, she said.

“This is a very important and in-demand service, especially for elderly people and people with visual disabilities,” Quiner told Context/the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

In a May 8 social media post, Trump criticized the law that would have funded the expansion – the Digital Equity Act, an unprecedented $2.75 billion law passed under former President Joe Biden – as an unconstitutional “racist … giveaway.”

"No more woke handouts based on race!" he wrote.

The move comes amid a broad effort by the Trump administration to stamp out diversity, equity and inclusion programs across the government.

The following day, notices went out saying funding was immediately terminated.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration did not respond to a request for comment.

“If you take away the Digital Equity Act funding, far fewer people will be online,” said Gigi Sohn, executive director of the American Association for Public Broadband, which represents community-owned networks.

“You do your banking online, pay your speeding tickets online, go to school online. So if you don’t have robust, affordable access, you’re a second-class citizen.”

Expanding connections

About 12% of U.S. residents people lived in households without an internet connection in 2023, according to the NTIA, an improvement of 2% from the previous year.

Lower-income households and people of colour are considerably more likely to lack connections, the agency said.

The Digital Equity Act and the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) programme to connect all Americans to high-quality broadband service became law in the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The efforts were spurred in part by images of children doing schoolwork at home on computers, said Angela Siefer, executive director of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, which represents more than 2,000 local groups helping people use the internet.

"That was the ‘aha moment,’” she said. "The number of organizations and local communities doing this work just exploded."

BEAD focused on the physical infrastructure needed for connectivity, and the Digital Equity Act targeted softer barriers of digital skills and knowledge.

"Every state now has a digital equity plan, which is amazing. Now that's all a waste – the implementation funds are what got stopped," Siefer said.

The National Digital Inclusion Alliance had a grant of more than $25 million cancelled, part of which had been aimed at planning how to do its type of work without federal funding.

BEAD was paused in March for a review and another effort, the Affordable Connectivity Program that subsidized internet service for 23 million people, ended last year when lawmakers failed to extend it.

Vulnerable communities

When Sara Nichols worked in county government a decade ago in western North Carolina, she and colleagues estimated as many as 70% of residents lacked internet connections.

That finding spurred efforts to overcome technological and affordability constraints, and she has worked since 2018 to help connect more than 17,000 households as an economic development manager with the Land of Sky Regional Council.

The Council is an umbrella group of local governments that see broadband as a key economic development driver.

In September, the region was devastated by Hurricane Helene, which tore up the broadband infrastructure, and she handed out some 1,200 computers to stricken residents.

"We had to work to get them back online,” she said. “If you lost your house or job or business, there’s a good chance you lost your computer, too.”

With resources depleted, the Council’s partners were thankful to learn in January that they were approved for a $7.7 million Digital Equity Act grant to help veterans, rural households and seniors.

Among the plans was retrofitting a bus into a “computer lab on wheels” to travel the rural area, she said.

Now such plans are on hold, and Nichols warns neither local governments nor philanthropy can fill the gap.

“We feel really vulnerable right now,” she said. “Local organizations have lost a lot, and this would have been an opportunity to feel like we could get back on the right track.”

(Reporting by Carey L. Biron; Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst.)