Rural Communities Lose Out With Shelving of Digital Equity Act

Continuing his crusade against diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, President Donald Trump announced he was shutting down the Digital Equity Act in May 2025. He took to his Truth Social social media platform to accuse the bipartisan legislation passed in 2021, designed to steer grant funding to organizations working to bridge digital divides, of giving out “woke handouts based on race.” It didn’t matter that the Digital Equity Act was set to pour investments into rural areas, where residents overwhelmingly voted for him; President Trump declared it “racist and illegal,” in all caps. Though the President claimed to save $2.5 billion in taxpayer dollars by scrapping the act (it was actually funded for $2.75 billion), it comes at the cost of hurting rural residents. Many of the projects that lost funding had a rural focus, including:

• Pennsylvania’s Department of Human Services was set to put portions of $10.8 million into distributing telehealth devices and reliable internet to the state’s most rural and underserved counties. 
• Louisiana’s Public Health Institute had $5 million earmarked in part for portable internet devices for rural farmers and agricultural workers.  
• Alabama’s Dannon Project wanted to use its $10.8 million on telemedicine stations for rural and isolated communities and virtual reality workforce training simulations for veterans and rural residents.