At 9PM ET on the night of May 28th, a Blue Origin New Glenn rocket sat on the launchpad at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The craft was in the middle of a hot-fire test awaiting the arrival of Amazon Leo satellites, the first of 24 batches to be shuttled into low Earth orbit for an ambitious satellite internet venture. The effort was backed by hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, leveraging a Biden-era law meant to address America’s digital divide.

But before the satellites even reached the launch site, Jeff Bezos’ rocket exploded into a massive fireball, its wreckage left smoldering on the ground. It was an unintentionally perfect metaphor for a once-in-a-generation attempt to fix the creaky US broadband system, now a flaming mess melting into a slush fund for billionaires.

Bezos — along with newly minted trillionaire Elon Musk — has become one of the biggest beneficiaries of Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD), a $42.45 billion broadband expansion program passed as part of President Joe Biden’s 2021 “Build Back Better” initiative. BEAD was intended to give long-underserved communities billions of dollars for high-quality, future-proof fiber networks.

But under President Donald Trump and a coalition of MAGA-allied tech moguls, Build Back Better has been transformed into “tear down quickly,” leaving states mired in bureaucracy and delays. Five years later, only a handful of the millions of Americans slated for an internet access upgrade actually got one, and there’s little accountability in sight.

Established in November 2021, BEAD was the flagship program addressing a rare bipartisan congressional goal: Identify broadband coverage gaps, then deploy affordable, next-generation internet access across the US by 2030. The program worked in tandem with the $2.75 billion Digital Equity Act to boost digital skills training and the $14 billion Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) that subsidized internet access for low-income households.

Even the nation’s Republican governors were initially ecstatic about BEAD. Then-governor of Arkansas Asa Hutchinson hailed the plan as a “historic investment [that] will help fund states and territories’ core infrastructure priorities.”

The massive program, however, had a slow start. States and the federal government spent the first few years figuring out how to adhere to Congress’ demand to address the country’s historically awful broadband maps, then ensure that taxpayer-funded broadband was deployed equitably in a country with a long history of digital discrimination. For much of the 2024 election season, the newswires were filled with Republican complaints that BEAD deployment was taking too long and had become a classic government boondoggle.

Meanwhile, congressional Republicans — most of whom voted against the infrastructure bill and its companion American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) — sought to undercut BEAD and similar programs. In April 2023, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and a dozen GOP lawmakers sent a letter to former National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) boss Alan Davidson, whose agency administered the program, with a laundry list of complaints.

Republicans deemed the Digital Equity Act, designed to remove discriminatory barriers to widespread internet adoption, too “woke.” And the Republican-controlled Congress severed funding for the ACP, which provided a $30 discount off of monthly internet bills for 23 million low-income households, purportedly to save the public money. (Subsequent studies showed the ACP generated billions more in taxpayer benefits than it cost.)

Ignored by critics was the fact that completely remapping the entirety of US internet access took significant time, and was something private monopolies and Republicans had long opposed because it risked highlighting monopoly domination and a lack of competition. Critics of government delays also ignored that the ARPA had been quickly deploying affordable next-generation fiber to more than 20 million Americans with a focus on affordability and little bureaucracy, something Republicans who voted against it were happy to take credit for.

Still, the election-season campaigning against BEAD succeeded in painting Biden-era broadband expansion efforts as wasteful government bureaucracy. A Trump presidency, the public was told, would fix everything.

When Trump took office for the second time in 2025, MAGA billionaire Howard Lutnick was confirmed as commerce secretary and set about overhauling BEAD — proclaiming that the program “has not connected a single person to the internet and is in dire need of a readjustment.” That readjustment included a BEAD Restructuring Policy Notice that eliminated “woke” program affordability and equity requirements and lowered quality control standards for new networks. Perhaps most consequentially, it undermined one of Congress’ central goals: improving American fiber.

The infrastructure law’s text didn’t mandate construction of specific network technologies, but it explicitly called for BEAD to prioritize terrestrial fiber networks over wireless or cable broadband. Congress recognized that it would be foolish to spend thousands of dollars per home every five to 10 years to deliver obsolete connections like coaxial cable-based broadband or settle for congested “good enough” satellite networks.

Lutnick, however, demanded state proposals be “technology neutral.” He insisted the changes would “turbocharge speed and savings,” dubbing them “the benefit of the bargain.” In reality, the changes turned BEAD’s focus toward nascent satellite internet companies run by tech moguls. It redirected $738.8 million into the already deeply subsidized pockets of Elon Musk, President Trump’s biggest campaign donor, with another $311 million for Bezos’ Amazon Leo. Billions more in subsidies for both billionaires — for networks that already exist or would have been deployed anyway — are waiting in the wings.

The NTIA did not respond to a request for comment on BEAD. SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment. Amazon would not comment on the record.

Since many states had already submitted BEAD proposals under the old guidelines, the Trump administration’s se shifts effectively set their progress back to zero, forcing them to dramatically retool their plans. Maine Connectivity Authority President Andrew Butcher characterized it as having to do “two years of work in two months.” Many other states began to kick back against the costly and time-consuming changes and lowered standards.

“Fiber is a gold standard for future-proof technology that will grow with consumers’ data needs over time,” Rep. Doris Matsui (D-CA) said at the INCOMPAS Policy Summit in March 2025. “So forgive me if I’m suspicious of the Trump administration’s focus on freezing BEAD in the name of bringing in so-called technology-neutral rules.”

By the summer of 2025, a bipartisan coalition of state governors urged Lutnick — and newly appointed NTIA boss Arielle Roth — to award “funding as quickly as possible,” warning that his BEAD revamp could cause further delays and increase costs for states and tribes. Ignoring the governors, Lutnick and Roth barreled forward.

While their revisions would certainly trim BEAD’s budget substantially, the “savings” generated by the “benefit of the bargain” changes came with real-world consequences that would soon become clear.

Louisiana, home to Speaker of the House and Trump loyalist Mike Johnson, became the first state to receive its first tranche of BEAD money in November 2025. The state’s original BEAD plan, approved by the NTIA before Lutnick’s revamp, had directed more than 90 percent of new network funding toward future-proof fiber. But under the revised plan, that figure dropped to 78 percent. The money arrived a year later than initially expected, and only after state leaders agreed to significant new subsidies for Musk.

The changes would prove devastating for a long-promised fiber network in Lake Providence — an East Carroll Parish community of about 3,500 in one of the most economically disadvantaged parts of the state.

Under the original BEAD proposal, the ISP initially chosen by the state to build out fiber in Lake Providence, Conexon, was supposed to receive $6.2 million. But when the “benefit of the bargain” revamp forced the state to redo its plans, those Lake Providence residences were deemed ineligible for funding for fiber connections. That taxpayer money was instead funneled directly to Elon Musk and Starlink — in exchange for satellite service that had been available there for years already.
While Starlink is useful for remote locations with no other broadband options, the service is generally considered too expensive for lower-income families dealing with soaring consumer costs. Data has also shown that Musk’s LEO space constellation is plagued by congestion that makes it ill suited to addressing the US digital divide at significant scale.

Nathanael Wills is a lead organizer for Delta Interfaith, a nonprofit coalition of local churches in northeast Louisiana, where he has been pushing for better broadband in East Carroll Parish for the past six years. He says the elimination of affordability and equity provisions, and the downgrade from future-proof fiber, will result in few if any real-world improvements.

“The most frustrating part is that it was a zero dollar investment in infrastructure,” Wills told The Verge. “Nothing fundamentally changed. People with Starlink are going to just get mailed a box and many won’t be able to install it. And we still won’t have anybody really served,” leaving the community with “no growth in our economic potential.”

“No money will stay here,” he said. “No jobs will be created from this — no installation jobs, zero construction jobs, or even any small stimulus.”

Other states, including Virginia, have balked at settling for Starlink instead of faster and higher-capacity fiber. But Musk has leveraged his political power within the Trump administration to try and have state broadband plans blocked, filing comments with the state that anything other than the prioritization of Starlink poses “a massive waste of federal taxpayer money.”

By the end of 2025, 33 of the 56 states and territories promised fast funding had not even received confirmation of their grant awards — nearly 60 percent short of Lutnick’s promised goal of delivering 100 percent fund approval by the end of 2025.

Endless program changes later, less than a few hundred homes in Nebraska and Louisiana have actually been connected to the internet under BEAD as of June 2026 — via fixed wireless connections much slower than fiber. $19.94 billion in state funding has been approved, but very little of that funding has been received or spent, and the Trump administration has made it clear those allocations can shift on a dime if states aren’t dutifully obedient, Bezos- and Musk-friendly, and appropriately “anti-woke.”

Meanwhile, Bezos’ Blue Origin has yet to successfully deploy an operational commercial LEO satellite constellation into its target orbit, and there are currently no active customers. It may take until the end of the year for launch facilities to be fully repaired and launches to resume.

Back on Earth in Nebraska, the chaos and confusion sown by the “benefit of the bargain” changes has been enough to convince three BEAD grant winners in the Cornhusker State to walk away from the program and abandon their plans entirely, as a recent expose by the Nebraska Examiner uncovered.

“It’s disheartening to see ISPs in Nebraska returning their BEAD awards, and I’m afraid that we are going to see more of this, and later, defaults in the program,” says Gigi Sohn, a former FCC official who now runs the American Association for Public Broadband, an organization that advocates for direct local ownership and control of essential telecom infrastructure.

“This administration’s hyper-focus on cost, particularly in the most rural parts of the country, coupled with rising prices thanks to the war and tariffs ... will result in more and more communities being left behind,” Sohn told The Verge.

As states are forced to retool their plans for fiber networks they may no longer be able to afford, Bezos and Musk potentially stand to see billions in additional subsidies for network access that already exists or they already intended to deploy. As in Louisiana, this will also mean communities don’t reap the local economic benefits of building out fiber.

Having blown through the “end of 2025” promise, the Trump administration threw another monkey wrench into the process at the tail end of last year. The administration threatened to illegally withhold an estimated $21 billion in BEAD “nondeployment” funds, or monies left over after states finished their internet access deployments. These funds were specifically slated for digital skill training, devices, and improving service in apartment buildings that house an overwhelming number of the Americans left behind in the digital economy. But if states held telecom companies accountable for high prices, empty promises, and inequitable deployment efforts, or even tried to regulate AI, the administration said, they could be clawed back.

The threat prompted a gold rush to grab funds for other purposes. Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), for instance, introduced a bill to amend the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to claw back the nondeployment funds to instead reduce the federal deficit.

The opportunistic scurrying to hijack funds even angered many Republicans, resulting in a bipartisan group of 14 senators writing a letter to the NTIA late last year calling for the agency to follow the law as Congress intended.

As of this writing, final guidance from the NTIA on the nondeployment funds has still not been issued, despite the NTIA having missed multiple internal deadlines to release it.

The midterms loom large over a Trump administration facing increasingly terrible polling, which could shift the political winds around BEAD. “If the Democrats take either or both houses, there will be far more oversight,” former FCC official Blair Levin told The Verge. Either way, telecom experts say lawmakers should start pressing much harder about the program’s significant delays and shortcomings. “Now would be a very good time for an oversight hearing to give Secretary Lutnick and Administrator Roth an opportunity to explain when the nondeployment guidance will come, and how they plan to deal with returned BEAD awards and defaults,” Sohn suggested.

But it seems unlikely that Lutnick, Roth, or Republicans will face real consequences for undermining a historic broadband expansion opportunity and frustrating a broad bipartisan coalition of states. “I have many policy disagreements with what Roth and NTIA have done, but I know of no facts or circumstances that would cause me to think she has any civil or criminal liability for her actions,” Levin said.

Meanwhile, many states appear afraid to candidly critique administration behavior for risk of losing out on a generational influx of broadband cash.

“We are withholding judgment until we hear about the nondeployment funds,” Christine Hallquist, executive director of the Vermont Community Broadband Board, told The Verge. “We are going to be angry, happy, or somewhere in between. If given the freedom [with nondeployment funds], we will be happy.”

Despite ample political lip service paid to affordability, equitable internet access tends to take a back seat in press and policy circles in the AI hype era. The 2028 presidential election could usher forth an NTIA leadership change and some useful reforms, though two and a half years may prove too long a wait for states looking for competent federal guidance.

While many taxpayers may still see improved internet access regardless, the program remains a faint echo of its initial ambitions. BEAD was originally designed to improve affordable connectivity for all Americans, whether marginalized communities in Detroit or red state rural Trump supporters. Now, community leaders see an unrecognizable crony capitalist bureaucracy.

“We’re fed up,” Wills says. “The BEAD program has failed us here. We’re not happy, and there’s a great need.”