Megan Waiters can recite the stories of dozens of people she helped connect to the internet in west Alabama. A 7-year-old grandmother who couldn’t take online classes without a tablet and a 91-year-old grandmother who taught her how to check a health care portal on her smartphone.
“They need health care, but they don’t have the digital skills,” said Waiters, a digital navigator for an Alabama nonprofit. Her work included handing out computers and tablets, as well as teaching people how to use the Internet for personal needs such as work, banking and health. “It feels like a foreign space.”
The stories are bitter now.
Waiters is part of a national network of digital navigators whose work to bring others into the digital world has been supported, at least in part, by a $2.75 billion federal program that suddenly defunded this spring. The suspension came after President Donald Trump. Posted on Truth Social The platform declared that the Digital Equity Act was unconstitutional and promised “no more racially motivated handouts.”
act List exactly who it is The money should benefit people, including low-income households, elderly residents, some incarcerated people, rural Americans, veterans and members of racial or ethnic minority groups. Politicians, researchers, librarians and advocates say defunding this program, along with other changes to the federal broadband plan, jeopardize efforts to help rural and underserved populations participate in the modern economy and lead healthier lives.
“You could see lives changing,” said Sam Helmick, president of the American Library Association, recalling how he helped Iowa grandfathers check their prescriptions online or laid off factory workers fill out job applications.
The Digital Equity Act is part of a comprehensive 2021 infrastructure bill that includes $65 billion to build high-speed internet infrastructure and connect millions of people without access to the internet.
This year, Congress once again pushed for modern approaches to help Americans, mandating state leaders prioritize new technologies through the $50 billion Rural Health Innovation Program.
A KFF Health News analysis found that nearly 3 million people in the United States live in areas without access to modern telehealth services due to a lack of health care professionals and poor internet connectivity. The analysis found that in about 200 rural counties where dead zones persist, residents get sicker and die earlier on average than people in the rest of the country. High-speed internet access is one of many social factors, like food and safe housing, that help people lead healthier lives.
“The Internet provides this additional resilience,” said Christina Filipovic, research lead at the Institute for Business in the Global Context at Tufts University. “We provide it,” he said. research group Discovered in 2022 High-speed internet access has been correlated with fewer COVID-19 deaths, especially in metropolitan areas.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, federal lawmakers launched a grant program to be awarded under the Infrastructure Act. Called the Affordable Connectivity Program, it aimed to connect more people to jobs, schools and doctors. In 2024, Congress did not renew funding for the grant program, which enrolled about 23 million low-income households.
This year, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick revamped and postponed the Infrastructure Act’s construction initiative, known as the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program (BEAD), after announcing his next plan. Reduce regulatory burden. More than 40 states and territories have submitted final proposals to expand high-speed internet to underserved areas under new guidance from the administration, AFP said. Department of Commerce Dashboard.
In May, funding from the Digital Equity Act ended just days after Trump’s Truth Social post. Although many states have received funding to plan programs in 2022, most of the following funds designated for states and agencies to implement their plans have been awarded but not distributed.
Instead, federal regulators, including the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the federal agency that oversees enforcement of the Digital Equity Act — Notification Recipient They say the subsidy is ending. According to the letter, the grants were created and administered based on “unconstitutional racial preferences.”
Officials in Phoenix learned in January that the city was set to receive $11.8 million to increase internet access and teach digital literacy, but received an email on May 20 informing them that all grants had ended “except for grants to Indigenous organizations.” “It’s unfortunate,” said Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego, a Democrat. She said the money would have helped 37,000 residents get access to the internet.
Georgia Democratic Party leaders last July sent a letter Lutnick and then-acting NTIA Administrator Adam Cassady called for the money to be restored, noting that the federal cuts ignored congressional intent and violated public trust.
Senator Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who created the act, said: During an online press conference Last May, the 2024 Republican governor supported the law and funding when states touted their completion of required digital equity plans and requested resources.
“I can’t believe we don’t have a Republican governor who will join us in fighting this,” Murray said, adding, “The other way is through the courts.”
All 50 states developed digital equity plans after months of focus groups, surveys, and public comment periods. Angela Thi Bennett, director of NTIA Digital Equity, said in an August 2024 interview with KFF Health News that federal and state leaders’ “intentional community engagement” to bring broadband to underserved communities is “the largest demonstration of participatory democracy our country has ever seen.”
Thi Bennett could not be reached for comment for this article. NTIA spokesman Stephen Yusko did not respond to questions for this article, saying, “NTIA would not be able to accommodate a request for an interview with T. Bennett.”
Caroline Stratton, director of research at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, said the money in the bill would allow the state to operate staff offices. Identify existing high-speed Internet programs, including programs operated within other State agencies. And make a plan to fill the gap.
Stratton said this has led people to look to agencies in the state to see if they are already creating health improvement plans and see if broadband services can contribute and “actively help change things.”
The state grant application included goals. To promote access to healthcare. In Mississippi The plan consists of Stratton said of health improvement initiatives at the state’s universities and other institutions.
States were required to create programs that served specific target populations, but some states modified their language or added subcategories to include other populations. Colorado’s Plan This included immigrants and “individuals experiencing homelessness.”
“Every state is experiencing losses,” said Angela Siefer, executive director of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance. suspicious non-profit organization Approximately 26 million dollars It received no funding to work with organizations across the country, but on Oct. 7 it filed a lawsuit seeking to force Trump and the administration to distribute the money.
“The digital divide is far from over,” Siefer said.
The nonprofit’s grant is designed to support digital navigators, including waiters, in 11 states and territories. Her employer, a nonprofit community service program in West Alabama, expected to receive $1.4 million in grant funding.
For the past two years, waiters have spent hours driving the roads of rural Alabama to reach residents. She distributed 648 devices, including laptops, tablets and SIM cards, and helped hundreds of clients with 117 two-hour digital skills classes at libraries, senior centers and workplace development programs in Tuscaloosa, Alabama and surrounding areas.
People of “all races, all ages, all economic backgrounds” who “don’t fall into our typical minority categories” have benefited from her work, Waiters said. Trump and his administration need to know “what it’s really like for the people I serve,” she said.
KFF Health News is one of the core operating programs of KFF, a national newsroom producing in-depth journalism on health issues and an independent source of health policy research, opinion polling and journalism. Learn more Kff.
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