WASHINGTON — As the nation endured the COVID-19 pandemic early in Joe Biden’s presidency, Congress created a series of programs to expand the reach of high-speed Internet, a vital tool in an era of social distancing and remote work.
In their most substantial move, lawmakers carved out $42.45 billion in a 2021 law for the most expansive of these programs — Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment, or BEAD — designed to “bridge the digital divide” and blanket pockets of America that lacked strong online connections coverage.
Five years later, next to none of that funding has led to internet hookups. The first connections in the program occurred this month in Nebraska and Louisiana.
Zero has flowed to projects in New Jersey, which was allocated about $264 million.
Rep. Frank Pallone (D-6th), the top Democrat on the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee, said the Trump administration has delayed the money from flowing at a “time when entire communities still lack dependable internet access.”
The holdup has Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill fuming at the Commerce Department, which under the Trump administration has revised aspects of a popular program that has bipartisan support.
Those changes have drawn worries from members of Congress, often from rural states, that the Trump administration will not spend money as the law specified.
‘Narrowing the gap’
At a February hearing, Jerry Moran, a Republican senator from Kansas, asked Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick about the sluggish rollout.
Addressing Lutnick, Moran said that “not a single BEAD-funded project has been completed, much less initiated, and not a single unserved or underserved American has connected to broadband service through the BEAD Program.”
At an appropriations hearing in April, lawmakers peppered Lutnick about the program status.
“We are narrowing the gap. We will make sure that we are covering all broadband access,” Lutnick said.
New Jersey has the best broadband service in the country in terms of coverage, speed and accessibility, according to 2025 data by BroadbandNow, a research group funded by the telecommunications industry. At the same time, 9% of white households lack access to a computer and internet, while the same is true in 14% of Black households and 13% of Latino households, according to the New Jersey State Policy Lab of Rutgers University. In Newark, Camden and Trenton, roughly 25% of households had no internet.
Before the Biden administration ended, every state had submitted plans to the U.S. government for how they would use money they were allocated.
In March 2025, Lutnick said the program was under “a rigorous review” by his department. Then in June the agency within Commerce handing the program, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, forced states to resubmit their proposals.
In December, the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities said the Trump administration had approved about $62 million for the state.
“This federal approval affirms New Jersey’s commitment to ensuring that every household— no matter its ZIP code— has a reliable and affordable connection to the digital economy,” Christine Guhl-Sadovy, president of the board, said at the time.
The telecommunications administration has approved 11,479 locations to be connected, according to the board. As of late May, though, those connections have not occurred.
Bipartisan support
The counties the state is considering to deploy this funding, once it arrives, include Atlantic, Bergen, Burlington, Camden, Cape May, Cumberland, Gloucester, Hudson, Hunterdon, Mercer, Middlesex, Monmouth, Morris, Ocean, Passaic, Salem, Somerset, Sussex and Warren, according to a spokesman for Gov. Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat in her first year in office.
Every member of the New Jersey congressional delegation voted for the law that established the program. Pallone, in a statement to NJ Spotlight News, said the state government has picked sites. Pallone’s committee oversees the Commerce Department, internet regulations and communications policy and programs.
“The good news is that New Jersey already has projects identified, providers selected, and communities ready to move forward,” Pallone said. “What we’re seeing is needless delays by the Trump administration at a time when entire communities still lack dependable internet access.”
Pallone added: “Broadband is basic infrastructure in 2026, and I’m not only concerned that these delays are putting critical investments unnecessarily on hold, but the Administration’s undermining of this program could potentially lead to higher prices for some consumers.”
Congress let lapse in 2024 a separate federal program it created during the pandemic, a Federal Communications Commission effort designed to connect low-income houses to the internet.
That program had enrolled more than 330,000 households in New Jersey and 23 million nationwide, records show.
The Republican-majority Senate voted 50-38 to rescind a separate FCC program, also borne of the COVID-19 pandemic, to provide schools and libraries to buy discount Wi-Fi hotspots for their students and patrons.
New Jersey’s senators, Democrats Cory Booker and Andy Kim, voted against that proposal, which Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz spearheaded. Cruz is the chairman of the Senate committee that oversees online technology.
