Less than 24 hours after President Trump threatened to terminate Elon Musk's government contracts, his Commerce Department published a notice that could shift tens of billions of dollars in federal funding to Musk's Starlink internet service.
Starlink is projected to receive as much as $20 billion in Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program money under the new rules -- up from the $4.1 billion it was slated to get previously, according to a Wall Street Journal report published in March.
"This is a huge gift to Starlink," Drew Garner, director of policy at the Benton Institute for Broadband and Society, told CNET. "To me, this looks like another instance of TACO Trump chickening out and handing over the money. He's letting his Secretary give Musk billions of dollars on the day Musk is calling for his impeachment."
The BEAD program was signed into law as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021. It's the largest investment the government has ever made in expanding internet access -- a once-in-a-lifetime pool of money that was supposed to provide every American with an option for high-speed internet at their home.
Critics like to point out that it's been over three years since the program was created, and still no homes have been connected by BEAD. However, it's largely on track with the timeline laid out in the original law. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has repeatedly cited the need for faster and cheaper BEAD deployment, but industry observers were already telling me before the election that a Trump victory would shift billions of dollars in BEAD money toward Starlink.
