On July 22, 2026, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO)—the audit and investigative arm of Congress—released a report describing what happened to money Congress appropriated in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act after the Trump administration ordered agencies to review that money against its own priorities. For broadband, the relevant agency is the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), the Commerce Department bureau that administers the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program and the other broadband programs created by the same law. This is the first GAO product to put numbers on NTIA's post-January 2025 grant review, including how many awards were flagged, on what basis, and who made the decisions.

State broadband offices will find the first public accounting of how much BEAD money had actually moved out the door as of mid-2025—and the answer is very little. Digital equity practitioners will find GAO's documentation of how the Digital Equity Act awards were terminated, including that many had already survived NTIA's own review. Congressional staff and researchers should note what GAO could not obtain: NTIA declined to provide the auditors with complete data for the final quarter of fiscal year 2025.

GAO's objectives were to "describe" agency budget authority, review processes, and review status. GAO makes no recommendations to any agency. The report establishes a record; it does not assess whether the reviews were lawful, whether they achieved anything, or whether grant recipients were harmed.

The report was requested by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA), who were joined by more than 100 House members. This summary covers only GAO's findings on NTIA, the sole broadband agency among the four GAO reviewed. GAO expects to report separately on the Department of Agriculture—which administers ReConnect—and the Department of Energy in September 2026.

What the Report Covers

GAO's review covers four federal agencies. Within the Department of Commerce, GAO selected NTIA because almost $48 billion of the roughly $51 billion the Infrastructure Act appropriated to the department went to NTIA programs. 

Three terms to understand here:

Obligation—a definite commitment creating a legal liability of the government to pay for goods or services ordered or received. Obligating funds does not mean spending them.

Disbursement—an actual payment made to liquidate an obligation, for example, reimbursing a grantee for the federal share of project costs.

GAO also uses cancellation as an umbrella term covering termination of an obligated award, rescission of funding by law, withdrawal of an announced but unobligated award, and discontinuance initiated by a recipient. When reading totals, a grant an agency terminated and a grant an awardee walked away from land in the same cancellation bucket.

The Numbers

The Infrastructure Act appropriated about $47.7 billion to NTIA for fiscal years 2022 through 2025. As of June 30, 2025, NTIA had obligated about $45.1 billion—roughly 95 percent of appropriations—and disbursed about $1.1 billion, about 2 percent of what it had obligated.

By program (dollars in billions):

GAO notes that the time it takes an agency to disburse funds after obligating them varies by agency and by award, and is often driven by actions the recipient takes. For example, an agency may reimburse a recipient in increments as its project advances. About 89 percent of NTIA's Infrastructure Act funding was for BEAD, and according to NTIA officials, most BEAD awards had not yet reached the project implementation phase—the phase at which NTIA disburses funds—as of June 30, 2025. GAO reports that the 2 percent figure was "likely due to the status of [NTIA's] programs." GAO also notes that in June 2025, NTIA published the BEAD Restructuring Policy Notice, which rescinded approvals of the final proposals submitted by eligible entities (the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and territories), modified BEAD requirements, and required them to submit new plans. GAO does not analyze what effect the restructuring had on obligation or disbursement timing in this report.

NTIA's Review Process

NTIA developed new processes to review all of its existing Infrastructure Act grant funding for consistency with executive orders issued since January 20, 2025. Under those processes, the Secretary of Commerce makes final decisions for each award under review. NTIA's Office of Internet Connectivity and Growth reviewed all Infrastructure Act awards twice, using similar methods.

The first review, January 2025.

On January 27, 2025, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued Memorandum M-25-13, directing agencies to temporarily pause obligation or disbursement of federal financial assistance pending an analysis of programs implicated by President Trump's executive orders. OMB provided a template directing agencies to evaluate awards against requirements in seven executive orders. Two days later, OMB rescinded M-25-13 in Memorandum M-25-14, but the underlying executive orders remained in effect, and the Office of Internet Connectivity and Growth continued reviewing awards after the rescission.

The method was keyword search. According to NTIA's own review documentation, the office searched award documents for terms including "racial," "climate change," "justice," "cultural," and "diversity, equity, inclusion" to identify awards that might be inconsistent with Trump administration priorities. GAO's analysis of that documentation found that NTIA reviewed 393 Infrastructure Act awards and identified 15 of them—about 4 percent—as containing language that could indicate a potential conflict with an executive order:

• Ten referred to ethnic, racial, or cultural groups and to environmental reviews. Because those references were required by law, NTIA recommended no specific action.
• Five referred to undocumented or underserved populations, "DEI," "cultural" groups, or "climate change." NTIA recommended modifying the scope or language of the awards as needed.

NTIA officials told GAO they did not have information on whether other offices or entities, inside or outside NTIA, conducted further review of these awards.

The second review, March 2025.

On March 11, 2025, the Commerce Department issued guidance directing each of its components to review grants in response to Executive Order 14222, Implementing the President's "Department of Government Efficiency" Cost Efficiency Initiative (90 Fed. Reg. 11095, Feb. 26, 2025). The guidance specified that each grant award must be reviewed and approved by politically appointed leadership or designees, and that awards over $100,000 required the Secretary of Commerce's approval.

NTIA reviewed 491 awards worth $45.4 billion. Over 80 percent were already obligated at the time of review; about 14 percent were applications the Office of Internet Connectivity and Growth had recommended for award, but for which funds had not yet been obligated. NTIA officials said the primary criteria used were each program's Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO)—the required public announcement of funding that includes eligibility and requirements. Officials also told GAO that NTIA will continue to use this review process to approve funding as it receives new applications.

Outcomes as of June 30, 2025:

Figures are as GAO reports them; GAO notes that award counts may not sum to totals.

One caution about these figures. GAO assessed the review-status data agencies gave it and found the data sufficiently reliable for describing the reported status of the reviews—but GAO could not check it against anything else. As GAO puts it, "[b]ecause we could not corroborate the accuracy of agencies' funding review status data against other available information, the status we report reflects the information agencies reported to us." 

In February 2026, NTIA told GAO it had ultimately withdrawn five of the eight pending awards and modified the scope of the remaining three—but, GAO writes, "it is not clear when NTIA took these actions."

In August 2025, NTIA officials told GAO that neither review process resulted in delayed obligations or disbursements of Infrastructure Act funding.

A note on what GAO was working with. NTIA gave GAO data through June 30, 2025, and, as of December 2025, declined to provide obligation, disbursement, or review-status data covering July 1 through September 30, 2025. NTIA later supplied some information covering that period, along with technical comments on GAO's draft, which GAO says it incorporated where relevant and appropriate. But NTIA did not provide obligation and disbursement data for those three months, and GAO reports none. Every dollar figure above is a June 30, 2025 snapshot—taken in the same month NTIA published the BEAD Restructuring Policy Notice, and before eligible entities submitted revised plans under it.

Digital Equity Act Awards

The Digital Equity Act was enacted as part of the Infrastructure Act and directed NTIA to fund state planning and capacity grants and a competitive grant program to help people get online and use broadband effectively.

All 120 of NTIA's canceled awards were Digital Equity Act awards, totaling about $1.4 billion. The breakdown:

• 58 previously obligated awards totaling $806.3 million were approved in March 2025 through NTIA's review process and were later terminated.
• 62 recommended but unobligated awards totaling $579.6 million were withdrawn.
• NTIA's review data included 182 Digital Equity Act awards in all; 62 had been closed out or transferred before the Secretary of Commerce terminated the program.

GAO reports that according to NTIA officials, the Secretary of Commerce terminated the Digital Equity Act grant programs on May 9, 2025, after President Trump determined that the program was unconstitutional—and not through NTIA's review process. GAO makes the same point in the body of the report: the awards "were terminated because the President determined that the program was not constitutional, and not as part of the review process." And "Nearly half of the Digital Equity Act awards had been obligated prior to NTIA's review and were approved through NTIA's [Infrastructure Act] funding review process before they were subsequently terminated." 

GAO sources the constitutional determination to the government's own court filing rather than to its own analysis. GAO cites the federal government's motion to dismiss in National Digital Inclusion Alliance v. Trump, No. 25-cv-3606 (D.D.C. Feb. 6, 2026), which explains that Commerce terminated the grants after the President and the Secretary determined the Digital Equity Act included unconstitutional racial preferences. GAO notes that the Digital Equity Act defines "covered populations" to include individuals who are members of a racial or ethnic minority group (47 U.S.C. § 1721(8)(G)), and that as of June 2026, the lawsuit was still pending. GAO notes that as of June 2026, the lawsuit was still pending. The case has since been partially decided: on July 15, 2026, the court ruled that the Digital Equity Act's race provision is unconstitutional but severable from the rest of the statute.

NTIA officials told GAO that following termination, recipients had 120 days to close out award activities and submit reimbursement requests for eligible expenses, after which the funding would be deobligated. NTIA declined to provide information on the status of those deobligations as of September 30, 2025.

What GAO's Report Settles, and What It Doesn't

Two comparisons put NTIA's numbers in context. Of the four agencies GAO reviewed, NTIA approved the largest share of the funding it examined—96 percent. That comparison carries a caveat: NTIA's review covered Infrastructure Act money only, while the reviews of the other three agencies included funds appropriated by a second statute, the Inflation Reduction Act, which Congress passed roughly nine months after the Infrastructure Act. NTIA received no Inflation Reduction Act funding. The second comparison needs no such qualifier. Across those four agencies, roughly 54 percent of obligated Infrastructure Act money had been disbursed; NTIA's figure was 2 percent. The first number suggests NTIA's review left the money largely intact. The second reflects where its programs stood: BEAD is a construction program, and most recipients had not reached the phase at which NTIA pays out.

What GAO does not establish is whether any of this reached the ground. GAO opens the report by noting that states, nonprofits, and other award recipients have publicly reported concerns that delays in distributing funds could affect their ability to implement their projects, but that framing covers all four agencies, and GAO gathered no evidence from broadband recipients specifically. NTIA told GAO in August 2025 that neither of its reviews delayed obligations or disbursements. GAO did not test that claim, and its data ended before the quarter when it could have.

Three things remain unanswered.

1. GAO asked NTIA what became of the five awards it had flagged for modification; NTIA did not provide the information.
2. GAO asked for the status of deobligations following the Digital Equity Act terminations; NTIA declined.
3. GAO does not report whether BEAD awards were among the 491 that NTIA reviewed—a question that determines whether a Secretary-level approval requirement now sits between eligible entities and $42 billion, or does not.

GAO's most current picture of NTIA's broadband spending is thirteen months old, and it is thirteen months old because NTIA declined to provide more information. Congress asked; the answer stops at June 30, 2025.

The report is GAO-26-108434, Funding Status: Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and Inflation Reduction Act.

The Benton Institute for Broadband & Society is a non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring that all people in the U.S. have access to competitive, High-Performance Broadband regardless of where they live or who they are. We believe communication policy - rooted in the values of access, equity, and diversity - has the power to deliver new opportunities and strengthen communities.

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