Letter

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of more than 240 national civil and human rights advocacy organizations, and the undersigned civil rights and civil society organizations write to you regarding the need for civil rights protections to be the foundation of any comprehensive artificial intelligence (AI) legislation.

I write to request that you extend the comment period for the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) proposed rule, Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance, and that you meaningfully address stakeholder feedback on the rule and the impacts it is likely to have on small and rural communities and scientific and biomedical research. The proposed rule would make extensive changes to the Guidance for Federal Financial Assistance (‘Uniform Guidance’), the government-wide framework for administering grants, cooperative agreements, and other forms of assistance.

Uniti submitted its second quarterly report regarding the status of its Rural Digital Opportunity Fund milestone compliance for locations in several states. The company reported on how many new locations in each state were reached with service in the second quarter of 2026:

Safelink Internet submitted a quarterly report regarding its progress toward the 20 percent interim service milestone for its Rural Digital Opportunity Fund authorization in Nevada, Study Area Code 559032. Safelink has deployed and verified qualifying voice and broadband service to 296 locations in its Nevada RDOF service area, approximately 10.86 percent of the locations required by the milestone. Safelink’s broader Nevada fiber construction program, which began in 2021 and reached substantial completion in 2026, covered approximately 14,500 locations in the state.

Skylark Broadband submitted its First Quarterly Compliance Report as subject to Tier 4 non-compliance status under the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund program for SAC 499029 in the state of New Mexico. Skylark has no newly deployed, geocoded broadband locations to report. Skylark’s total obligation under RDOF for SAC 499029 is 940 broadband serviceable locations, with a 40 percent interim milestone requiring certification of 376 deployed locations by March 1, 2026. Zero locations have been certified as deployed. 

Conexon Connect submitted compliance reports for Rural Digital Opportunity Fund locations in Mississippi, Florida, Missouri, Louisiana, Kentucky, Colorado, Arizona, Tennessee, and Illinois. Conexon Connect delayed its RDOF buildout in some states until state broadband offices finalized Broadband, Equity, Access & Deployment (BEAD) Program funding decisions. This delay, the company believes, was prudent because Conexon Connect’s network would require modification to account for any new BEAD-funded areas.

Continental Divide Electric Cooperative (CDEC) submitted an interim build-out shortfall notification dated Jan. 5, 2026. In accordance with Federal Communications Commission rules and CDEC’s Tier 3 compliance gap status, the Company submitted its first quarterly report regarding progress towards complying with its Rural Digital Opportunity Fund obligations in New Mexico. CDEC reports that, since Dec.

The Government Accountability Office highlighted three areas where open recommendations to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration should be given high priority:

As the Federal Communications Commission considers adopting its Nineteenth Section 706 Report, the Fiber Broadband Association submitted  updated market statistics to facilitate a data-driven assessment:

We, the undersigned executives and technical leaders from across the United States, write to you to ask you to lift the export control directives on Anthropic’s Fable and Mythos large language models and commit to an open, scientific and transparent process of handling AI risk assessments in the future. Not all of us agree that AI regulation is the right way forward. But if this Administration’s laudable goal of securing our nation’s critical infrastructure is going to include models being regulated, then the regulations should be: