Gov performance

In 1996, Congress directed the Federal Communications Commission to ensure that schools and libraries could obtain advanced telecommunications services at affordable rates. The FCC established the E-Rate program to carry out that mandate. Three decades later, E-Rate spends between $2 billion and $3 billion each year on subsidized internet service and network infrastructure—and has developed into a complex system with intermediary consultants who consume hundreds of millions of dollars annually to assist in accessing federal support for internet bills.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Development invested nearly $25 billion in loans and grants in fiscal year 2026. These investments are helping rural communities grow and maintain critical services that families, farmers, and businesses rely on every day. Rural Development invested $267 million (yes, 1% of the USDA's investment in rural America) to expand internet access to rural households, farms, businesses, and community institutions.

Governments spend billions of dollars to bring broadband to places that lack it. This report asks how much of the new service in the places six programs came from the subsidies, and how much would have arrived anyway. We compare the areas each program funded with similar areas it did not fund, track both over time, and call the difference the program’s effect. The main measure is access, whether a location can buy at least 100/20 Mbps from a wired or licensed wireless provider.

President Donald Trump announced that he would name four top administration officials to a “Super Intelligence Force” that will coordinate the federal government’s response to artificial intelligence. President Trump said Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton, Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson, Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor, and Emil Michael, undersecretary of war for research and engineering, will lead the task force.

On September 29, 2026, President Donald Trump took three significant steps shaping how the federal government will use, refer to, and oversee artificial intelligence (AI)—including a voluntary accord with six of the country's largest AI companies that signals the Administration's preference for industry self-governance over federal regulation. The three actions were:

Senators Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Susan Collins (R-ME) are calling on the U.S. Department of Commerce to immediately issue guidance regarding the use of Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program funds for non-deployment activities so that communities can get funding out the door to eligible projects.

Does federal money for rural broadband change the economies of the places that receive it? Any answer rests on a comparison between funded places and unfunded ones, and the unfunded side of that comparison is this paper’s subject.

Since 2020, Congress has steered tens of billions of dollars, including more than $50 billion from the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, through federal agencies to connect homes and businesses that lack high-speed internet access. Four agencies account for most of that money: the Federal Communications Commission, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Department of the Treasury.

If the character Edward Cullen of the ubiquitous Twilight saga taught us anything (aside from the fact that Robert Pattinson’s hair can do no wrong), it is that being a heretic can be cool. In the series, the Volturi—the Vampiric Council—operates as an authoritative government dictating the terms of vampire life: encouraging slaughter of humans, forbidding certain romance, and eventually seeking the destruction of Edward and Bella’s baby. Cullen went against these vampire norms to protect his loved ones, doing so in a way that made many hearts flutter.

The House overwhelmingly passed a stopgap bill to avert a government shutdown at the end of the month, sending it to President Trump’s desk and punting a spending fight until after the midterm elections. The legislation includes language temporarily blocking the White House budget office from carrying out a proposed rule that would allow the administration to cancel grants to recipients that do not conform to Trump’s political views and enable his team to steer significant funding to causes and organizations aligned with him.