Trump Cancels Digital Equity Program Created by Congress

The “so-called ‘Digital Equity Act’ is totally UNCONSTITUTIONAL,” Trump wrote. “No more woke handouts based on race! The Digital Equity Program is a RACIST and ILLEGAL $2.5 BILLION DOLLAR giveaway. I am ending this IMMEDIATELY, and saving Taxpayers BILLIONS OF DOLLARS!” The New York Times described Trump's statement as “one of the starkest examples yet of his slash-and-burn approach to dismantling the legacy of his immediate predecessor in this term in office.”

The DEA provided $60 million to states and territories to develop ways to improve access to technology, with an additional $2.5 billion to put those plans in place. Most projects that had been funded were still being cleared by NTIA, industry officials said.

If Republicans thought the program illegal and unconstitutional, “the remedy would be to challenge the law in the courts,” New Street’s Blair Levin told us. They didn’t do that, he said. Trump could also “bring an action in the courts today to have the courts declare it so,” Levin said: That’s not going to happen, “but I guess we should not be surprised that a president who doesn’t know if he has to follow the Constitution would not care that it is the court’s job to decide on the illegality of such laws.” During an interview on NBC last weekend, Trump said he didn’t know if he has to uphold the U.S. Constitution as president.

“This is a statute,” emailed Andrew Schwartzman, senior counselor for the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society. “NTIA is directed to make these grants,” he said: “Unless and until there is a recission approved by Congress, it remains obligated to distribute the funds.” Schwartzman added that “NTIA can almost certainly fiddle around, reexamine, etc., but at least as to the grants that have gone through the whole process, there is only so much stalling it can do without transgressing the mandate.”

As with many Trump actions, this one will be appealed, said a lawyer with wireless and wireline clients. “An originalist-leaning judiciary, some of which was appointed by Trump, could very well roll back actions … [that] judges view as executive branch overreach,” the lawyer said: “That precedent is likely to have long-term effects regardless of which party inhabits the White House.”

“Without digital literacy skills and practical online tools, simply connecting a home doesn’t truly connect people to opportunity,” FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez said in an emailed statement. The DEA “recognized this,” she said: “It empowers states to deliver digital literacy training to all communities -- regardless of party affiliation. It’s a shame the Administration is prioritizing culture wars over real progress for everyday Americans.”

Joe Kane, director-broadband and spectrum policy at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, also said he expects litigation, adding that Trump may have a “misapprehension” about how the fund works. DEA monies are “targeted at major causes of the digital divide, lack of adoption, and initiatives they fund would benefit Americans broadly.”

The next step should be to focus on how the much larger $42.5 billion BEAD program can be “retooled to address adoption and affordability barriers,” Kane said: “The initial magnitude of DEA versus BEAD already demonstrates a mismatch between the small problem of completing universal deployment and the much bigger problems of broadband affordability and adoption.”

Free State Foundation President Randolph May defended the action. The DEA program is “unlawful to the extent the Biden administration used race as a factor in considering distribution of grants,” May emailed: “The DEA statute itself includes members of a 'racial minority group’ in the covered populations intended to be beneficiaries of the federal funds. If NTIA has considered race in its decisionmaking, that’s wrong and unlawful.” May said a “properly run, efficient and effective” digital literacy program could be “salvageable.”

More Opposition

Numerous groups slammed the president's statement.

Trump is weaponizing the word equity, said Alisa Valentin, Public Knowledge's broadband policy director. His “claim that the ‘Digital Equity Act’ is ‘racist’ reflects his pattern of inverting the meaning of such terms, labeling efforts to address racial inequity as discriminatory themselves,” Valentin said.

Canceling the DEA means “abandoning … the more than 24 million people who lack access to quality broadband in the United States, including veterans, people who live in rural areas and on tribal lands, communities of color, and low-income individuals,” said Alejandra Montoya-Boyer, senior director of the Leadership Conference’s Center for Civil Rights and Technology.

“By cutting this funding, Trump is going back on a decision made by Republicans and Democrats that would have ensured internet access for all Americans,” said California Assemblymember Tasha Boerner (D). “Families across the country will be left behind without access to the internet, with states being forced to find a solution,” she said, adding that she introduced AB-353, the Affordable Home Internet Act, to ensure that ISPs “do their part by offering affordable broadband plans to low-income Californians.” Lawmakers there passed Boerner's bill in a committee meeting last week (see 2505010040).

The Trump administration is "spiking plans states spent years developing to help their own residents," said Free Press co-CEO Craig Aaron. Should Trump succeed in ending DEA funding, "we will have squandered an unprecedented opportunity to improve people's lives and close the digital divide once and for all."