U.S. Rep. Maggie Goodlander used her mic time during a subcommittee hearing last week to praise the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program as “the lifeline for my state,” and bemoan the halt put on $191 million in federal funds for rural broadband in New Hampshire.
She entered a letter into the congressional record from the state’s all-Democrat delegation sent to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, attacking the Trump administration for “changes to this vital program that will threaten broadband access in New Hampshire, especially in rural and underserved communities that most need it.”
Goodlander Pushes for Progress Developing Broadband in New Hampshire (September 3, 2025)
What the first-term Democrat didn’t mention is that U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) has taken credit for “writing the broadband provisions that created the BEAD program.” Nor did she add that the program, which launched in 2021 at a cost $42 billion, has still not connected a single person to broadband.
Not in New Hampshire, and not anywhere else in America. Not one.
In their letter of complaint, Goodlander, Shaheen, Sen. Maggie Hassan, and Rep. Chris Pappas wrote to object to the Trump administration’s deregulating of the four-year program that has failed to deliver a single broadband customer.
“New guidelines released by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) on June 6, 2025, effectively remove the ability of state agencies to award BEAD funds to broadband providers who will best combine high-quality internet service with cost-efficient construction of broadband infrastructure,” they wrote.
Republicans argue that the real problem is overregulation. The Trump administration’s reforms remove labor quotas, climate assessments, and DEI mandates, which they say drove up costs while slowing deployment. The NTIA itself acknowledges that more than $250 million has already been spent on administrative costs and red tape.
“These central planning edicts disadvantaged both workers and providers, drove up costs, and undermined broadband buildout — especially in the rural communities the program was intended to help,” the NTIA said in its June policy notice.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz warned last year that BEAD had become a “bureaucratic quagmire” riddled with technology biases, rate regulation, and excessive costs. Even some liberals have echoed the critique. Journalist Ezra Klein called BEAD a “fourteen-stage process” that left states stuck in paperwork. “By the end of 2024, three states had gotten to the end of the process,” he said on a podcast earlier this year.
Supporters of Lutnick’s changes argue they give BEAD its best chance of finally delivering on its promise. “By letting fiber, fixed wireless, satellite, and other technologies compete on a level playing field, we’re giving states the freedom to find the best solutions for their unique challenges,” said Luke Hogg, technology policy director at the Foundation for American Innovation.
But Goodlander and her fellow New Hampshire Democrats object.
On the technological side, they want a return of the fiber mandate, arguing that even if it takes longer and costs far more to connect remote, rural homes to fiber, the increased reliability is worth it.
“The administration has now removed discretion from state and local communities, instead requiring that BEAD funds be allocated solely to the lowest-cost projects—even if those projects deliver extremely low-quality internet service to rural areas… These abrupt changes are set to potentially derail the disbursement of funds to states that have been expecting them.”
This was the Biden-Shaheen policy. Critics say it’s part of the reason nobody has been connected.
The Wall Street Journal noted that “satellite services like SpaceX’s Starlink and wireless carriers can expand coverage at lower cost. A Starlink terminal costs about $600 per home. Extending 5G to rural communities costs a couple of thousand dollars per connection. Building out fiber runs into the tens of thousands (per connection).
“But fiber will require more union labor to build. Commerce wants grant recipients to pay union-scale wages and not oppose union organizing.”
Then there are the political mandates the Trump administration has ended, such as DEI hiring requirements, climate policies, and embracing net neutrality.
“The Biden administration’s failure to turn even a single shovel’s worth of dirt with these dollars flows directly from its own choices,” said current FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr. “The administration chose to pursue DEI goals and climate change priorities and to add layers of Byzantine process that senators warned would delay internet builds.”
Does Goodlander support these political mandates, as well as the technological ones?
She declined to respond to a request for comment.
