In January of this year, Louisiana became the first state in the nation to secure federal approval for our plan to deploy over $1.3 billion in BEAD funding. This achievement is a testament to the bipartisan nature of Louisiana’s approach to universal connectivity and illustrates how we should all strive to treat broadband access in our states. The state began the BEAD application process under Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards. It completed its plan under Republican Governor Jeff Landry, who called this program ‘a generational investment that will create thousands of jobs, drive billions in economic growth, and transform Louisiana communities in all 64 parishes. However, after the Trump administration took office, just a week after Louisiana received approval for its final proposal, the Commerce Department withheld the funding that would have otherwise put shovels in the ground in just six weeks. Unfortunately, the Trump administration decided to overhaul the BEAD program, upending years of planning and forcing all states, including Louisiana, to scrap their work and start over. The administration’s program changes prioritize short-term cost savings and Elon Musk's business interests, namely Starlink, over the durable, future-proof connectivity of fiber optic cable. Millions of Americans will now receive second-tier internet coverage technologies, including in my district and many other areas across Louisiana. While the state’s new plan for BEAD-funded infrastructure deployment has finally been approved (again) under the Trump administration’s new rules, an estimated $800 million in BEAD funding allocated to Louisiana that the state plans to use for ‘non-deployment’ initiatives remains in limbo, awaiting federal approval. I agree with Governor Landry that states need guidance and quick approval of these remaining non-deployment funds, which will go towards vital initiatives in Louisiana such as improving rural telehealth and workforce development. Finally, I want to thank the Louisiana Office of Broadband Development and Connectivity (ConnectLA) and Executive Director Veneeth Iyengarfor partnering with me to make this funding a reality.

Following the Supreme Court’s ruling in May 2025 that the Universal Service Fund program is constitutional, Congress renewed its efforts to modernize the program. In August, the bipartisan, bicameral USF Working Group again invited public input through a request for comments on the future of USF funding structure and programs. The National Digital Inclusion Alliance submitted comments to the Congressional working group in September, informed by conversations with NDIA affiliates. NDIA's recommendations span a wide range of topics, but primarily focus on:

1. Broadband Affordability: We provided recommendations to Congress on why and how they should modernize USF to make broadband more affordable for low-income households. 
2. USF Should Support Digital Inclusion Programs: We argued that the modernized USF should support households in subscribing to the internet by supporting digital inclusion activities and programs.
3. Measuring Progress Towards Digital Equity: We provided recommendations on how the Federal Communications Commission could more effectively measure the progress of the USF programs toward achieving universal service.

The New Mexico Office of Broadband Access and Expansion announced it has awarded a $1.5 million Student Connect grant to Transworld Network L.L.C.to provide high-speed internet to rural students in the Lordsburg Municipal Schools District. The award means that 395 unserved and underserved student households within the school district will get broadband through fixed wireless service. “These Student Connect funds will change student lives in the Lordsburg area,” said Neala Krueger, OBAE’s State Grants Program Coordinator. “Hundreds of students who attend Lordsburg schools are on the far side of the digital divide when they leave school. That’s about to change.” Student Connect funds are targeting that problem by establishing fixed wireless broadband for the students who live in hard-to-reach parts of Lordsburg. The grant will be used to construct towers, build fixed wireless service, and provide receivers for the designated student homes.

America is in a race for global technology dominance in the development of artificial intelligence (AI), an important frontier of scientific discovery and economic growth. In this pivotal moment, the challenges we face require a historic national effort, comparable in urgency and ambition to the Manhattan Project that was instrumental to our victory in World War II and was a critical basis for the foundation of the Department of Energy (DOE) and its national laboratories. This order launches the “Genesis Mission” as a dedicated, coordinated national effort to unleash a new age of AI‑accelerated innovation and discovery that can solve the most challenging problems of this century.  The Genesis Mission will build an integrated AI platform to harness Federal scientific datasets — the world’s largest collection of such datasets, developed over decades of Federal investments — to train scientific foundation models and create AI agents to test new hypotheses, automate research workflows, and accelerate scientific breakthroughs.  The Genesis Mission will bring together our Nation’s research and development resources — combining the efforts of brilliant American scientists, including those at our national laboratories, with pioneering American businesses; world-renowned universities; and existing research infrastructure, data repositories, production plants, and national security sites — to achieve dramatic acceleration in AI development and utilization.  We will harness for the benefit of our Nation the revolution underway in computing, and build on decades of innovation in semiconductors and high-performance computing.  The Genesis Mission will dramatically accelerate scientific discovery, strengthen national security, secure energy dominance, enhance workforce productivity, and multiply the return on taxpayer investment into research and development, thereby furthering America’s technological dominance and global strategic leadership. This executive order:

• Establishes the Genesis Mission (Mission), a national effort to accelerate the application of AI for transformative scientific discovery focused on pressing national challenges.
• The Secretary of Energy shall establish and operate the American Science and Security Platform (Platform) to serve as the infrastructure for the Mission with the purpose of providing high-performance computing resources, AI modeling and analysis frameworks, computational tools, domain-specific foundation models, secure access to appropriate datasets, experimental and production tools to enable autonomous and AI-augmented experimentation and manufacturing in high-impact domains.
• Within 60 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Energy shall identify and submit to the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology (APST) a detailed list of at least 20 science and technology challenges of national importance that the Secretary assesses to have potential to be addressed through the Mission and that span priority domains. 
• The APST, through the National Science and Technology Council, and with support from the Federal Chief Data Officer Council and the Chief AI Officer Council, shall convene relevant and interested agencies.
• Within 1 year of the date of this order, and on an annual basis thereafter, the Secretary shall submit a report to the President, through the APST and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, describing the Platform’s operational status and capabilities.

KeyBanc Capital Markets analyst Brandon Nispel recently said that “There are reasons to believe that cable is permanently impaired.” By that, he believes that cable companies are going to continue to lose broadband customers as they compete with fiber and fixed wireless access. The problem that cable companies are experiencing stems largely from the time when they enjoyed a near-monopoly status in broadband markets across the country, when their only real competition was DSL provided over copper wires. The reason for the cable company decline today is that the monopoly is now over and cable companies suddenly have to compete with alternatives like fiber and FWA cellular. Using the term ‘permanently impaired’ makes it sound like cable companies have inferior broadband, but I don’t think that most of the households leaving cable companies are doing so. The cable companies are seeing customers leave because of the way they treated customers over the last decade.