Associated Press

The recent Georgia school shooting was every parent’s worst nightmare, and one that highlights potential downsides to efforts among states, school districts, and federal lawmakers to ban or restrict access to cellphones in classrooms. The moves to restrict phone use in schools have been driven by concerns about the impact screen time has on children’s mental health and complaints from teachers that cellphones have become a constant distraction in the classroom.

The Biden administration is moving to blunt the loss of an expired broadband subsidy program that helped more than 23 million families afford internet access by using money from an existing program that helps libraries and schools provide WiFi hotspots to students and patrons.

Recently participants gathered in a home movie theater on Matthew Rantanen’s ranch in Southern California to shine a beam of light through more than 55,000 feet (17 kilometers) of fiber optic cable coiled up in the corner. The demonstration took place during a hands-on broadband training for tribal nations where participants handled fiber made up of strands of glass as thin as human hair that transmit energy through pulses of light. The session was part of an initiative founded in 2021 by Rantanen and his business partner, Christopher Mitchell, to help shore up historic disparities in conne

President Joe Biden traveled in January to North Carolina to promote his goal of affordable internet access for all Americans, but the promise for 23 million families across the US is on shaky ground. That’s because the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), which provides $30 a month for qualifying families in most places and $75 on tribal lands, will run out of money by the end of April if Congress doesn’t extend it further. The program is key to the Biden administration’s plans to make the internet available to everyone, which the president has touted repeatedly as he has ramped up his r