Countering the Politics of Deservingness in the Fight for Digital Equity

The denial of equitable access has been a defining feature throughout American history. From the enactment of poll taxes to the implementation of housing redlining to the draining of public swimming pools, all have served as methods to preserve and expand systems of dominance. Today, the Trump administration is reactivating this playbook through attempts to reshape US institutions, distort historical truth, and reinforce racial and economic inequality.

One of the increasingly visible parts of this effort is the attack on digital equity, which threatens to further entrench the digital divide and deny communities access to tools needed to fully participate in modern society. More insidiously, these attacks reflect a deeper ideology that is being steadily normalized by the long-standing politics of “deservingness,” which reinforces racial inequities through public narratives, policy design, and policy implementation. Policymakers and policy advocates must challenge and dismantle this ideology by unapologetically reimagining the narratives and policies that will shape a more equitable future.

Gatekeeping access

At the center of many American policy debates is the question of not just what deserves public investment, but also who is considered worthy of receiving said investments. This is shaped by the concept of “deservingness,” which is the idea that individuals must earn the right to be seen, heard, and granted access to resources and opportunities. The deservingness framework creates permission structures for bias to take root and allows for people from specific backgrounds to automatically be seen as more “deserving” than others because of their race, gender, age, or immigration status. It also shifts the blame away from systems that perpetuate inequities towards individuals for their circumstances.

Under the Trump administration and among many Republican leaders in Congress, the politics of deservingness are being used to justify everything from cuts to government programs to the dismissals of high-level government positions held by people of color. This framework not only reinforces existing power structures but it also reshapes who is allowed to lead, thrive, and even belong.

The current policy landscape

In November 2024, Senator Rafael Edward ‘Ted’ Cruz (R-TX), the first Latino to represent Texas in the US Senate, sent a letter to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) recommending a pause to Digital Equity Act grants because he objected to the inclusion of “members of a racial or ethnic minority group” as a covered population. Interestingly enough, this move took place a few months before Senator Cruz introduced legislation with Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA.) to establish a Smithsonian museum that recognizes the accomplishments of Latinos. Though this is a worthwhile endeavor, it contradicts Sen. Cruz's reluctance to create policy pathways that empower marginalized communities, such as through the funding for broadband affordability and broadband adoption initiatives that the Digital Equity Act provides.

Sen. Cruz’s objection was later echoed in May after President Trump’s rampage on social media where he claimed that the Digital Equity Act was “racist” and “unconstitutional,” which is unequivocally false. Shortly after, the NTIA sent termination letters to states and digital inclusion organizations rescinding funding that was promised to them. The goals of the Digital Equity Act have bipartisan support; however, present-day opponents are exploiting the political climate to advance policies that dismiss historical and present injustices experienced by people of color to imply they do not deserve the benefits of broadband.

By way of background, the Digital Equity Act is part of the bipartisan 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and aims to close the digital divide by addressing the long-debunked myth of “if we build it, they will come,” which suggests that the deployment of broadband infrastructure is sufficient on its own. This myth ignores other systemic problems that prevent people from being able to gain the benefits of high-speed internet, including barriers like affordability and digital skills.

The Digital Equity Act allocated $2.75 billion to remedy those issues through grants that would make broadband infrastructure investments more efficient, such as through ensuring people have access to affordable devices, workforce development programs, basic-to-advanced digital skills training, and expansion of public access computing centers. Covered populations to receive these grants include groups like low-income households, aging individuals, veterans, members of racial and ethnic minority groups, rural communities, people with disabilities, and low-literacy individuals. Those populations are included in statute where members of Congress on both sides of the aisle concluded that digital exclusion “carries a high societal and economic cost; materially harms the opportunity of an individual with respect to the economic success, educational achievement, positive health outcomes, social inclusion, and civic engagement of that individual; and exacerbates existing wealth and income gaps, especially those experienced by covered populations.”

In a similar effort to dismantle progress made on the broadband adoption front, President Trump’s NTIA announced several changes to the $42.45 billion Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program in June. First, the administration shifted to a supposed “technology-neutral” approach, which could pave the way for increased profits for technology that is currently not as scalable or reliable as fiber. This has drawn a lot of skepticism from public interest groups and labor unions, but there are other changes to BEAD that could also hamper the goals of ensuring unserved and underserved people can adopt reliable, affordable broadband.

For example, the NTIA’s June policy notice states that BEAD funds are now only reimbursable for broadband deployment and can no longer be used to support digital equity efforts, workforce training, planning, or coordination activities. This move appears to be an attempt to reverse the Biden administration’s Notice of Funding Opportunity, which, at the instruction of the statute, allowed states to allocate funds for broadband adoption purposes to allow for cybersecurity training, remote learning, digital navigators, and direct subsidies for use toward broadband subscriptions. The policy notice introduced uncertainty to states and stakeholders depending on these funds to ensure their communities experience meaningful connectivity, however, the NTIA also stated the following:

This document does not and is not intended to supersede, modify, or otherwise alter applicable statutory or regulatory requirements. In all cases, statutory and regulatory mandates shall prevail over any inconsistencies contained in this document.

As policy experts have argued, states and territories “should not abandon their broadband adoption efforts and instead use the full arsenal of tools Congress provided to them to close the digital divide.” Congress understood when it created the BEAD program that each state has unique needs to fully close the digital divide and states should have the flexibility to reach everyone with non-deployment needs. BEAD envisions meeting each state’s unique needs, not a narrow view of who deserves broadband.

Additionally, President Trump’s NTIA removed what it deemed were “burdensome labor and employment requirements.” The NTIA further claimed that “diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) edicts disadvantage both workers and providers, drive up costs, and undermine broadband buildout, especially in rural communities the [BEAD] program is intended to help.” Similarly, the agency announced it will remove “time-consuming, DEI-driven coordination requirements” including consultations with “representatives from demographic and identity-based organizations.” President Trump’s administration is working to weaponize and incorrectly equate “diversity, equity, and inclusion” with “less-skilled, inefficient, and wasteful.”

This stands in contrast to the Biden administration’s evidence-based approach that recognized equity as essential to economic and societal progress. Former President Biden’s NTIA called on eligible entities to prioritize a “highly-skilled workforce capable of carrying out work in a manner that is safe and effective.” The Biden administration “encouraged” eligible entities to “consider” workforce development goals when selecting subgrantees and gave examples of how states and territories could establish such goals. The agency further stated that subgrantees could prioritize:

...hiring local workers and have robust and specific plans to recruit historically underrepresented populations facing labor market barriers and ensure that they have reasonable access to the job opportunities created by subgrantees. Such populations may include communities of color, women, and other groups (such as persons with disabilities, LGBTQI+ people, disconnected youth, individuals in recovery, individuals with past criminal records, including justice-impacted and reentry participants, serving trainees participating in the SNAP, TANF, and WIC, and veterans and military spouses).

Similar to the treatment of covered populations under the Digital Equity Act, the designation of “historically underrepresented populations” is incredibly broad and comprehensive. The proposals introduced by the previous administration’s NTIA were shaped by feedback solicited in response to the agency’s call for comments in February 2022, which invited input from civil society and industry. In response to those comments, the NTIA issued recommendations to states on how to develop this highly skilled workforce in recognition that labor shortages could impact broadband deployment in these unserved and underserved communities. Even if no longer “required” under the current policy direction, states and industry leaders should continue to prioritize a diverse, inclusive, skilled workforce because that is an investment in sustainable broadband deployment in unserved and underserved communities.

These rollbacks by the Trump administration are not mere policy tweaks. They are calculated attempts to undermine racial and economic progress under the guise of fiscal responsibility and through distorted meanings of words like “discrimination” and “racism.” As Trey Walk of Human Rights Watch has argued, this appears to be part of a broader strategy that aims to give political leaders an opportunity to “foreclose the possibility of confronting ongoing and future injustices.” Further, this deliberate obstruction, if successful, will undermine the national progress toward meeting true universal access and the economic, educational, health, and democratic benefits that all Americans deserve.

A path forward

While the Trump administration focuses on undoing progress by wasting time and resources that states, nonprofit organizations, and industry have already invested through drastic changes to the BEAD program and illegally cancelling the Digital Equity Act funds, it must be underscored that the fight for digital inclusion and broader issues of equity are far from over.

On Friday, the Supreme Court ruled to uphold the constitutionality of the Universal Service Fund, which supports communications services for high-cost areas, low-income communities, rural health care, and in schools and libraries. Now that the Supreme Court has issued its decision, it is clear that meaningful reform is needed both on the contribution side and the distribution side. In June, Senators Deb Fischer (R-NE), Chair of the Senate Telecommunications and Media Subcommittee, and Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) who serves as the Ranking Member, announced the reconstitution of the Universal Service Fund Working Group. The goal of the USF Working Group when it was established in 2023 was to “evaluate and propose potential reforms to the USF with the goal of developing a forum to guide education, awareness, and policymaking.” And today, the working group plans to expand on those efforts by working toward “solutions that support sustained access to universal connectivity while improving interagency coordination and eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse.”

In order to reach the ultimate goal of universal service, policymakers and policy influencers must confront the aforementioned politics of “deservingness” being posited by this administration. Congress must introduce legislative fixes that address broadband policy failures that disproportionately impact low-income communities, communities of color, and rural communities simultaneously. To achieve this goal, there must be a clear rejection of permission structures that weaken inclusive policy responses aimed at addressing systemic barriers that prevent communities of color from thriving in the digital era. If policymakers fail here, they risk reinforcing and deepening a digital underclass which will ultimately lead to broader economic harms for the US.

Second, a reformed Universal Service Fund must include a permanent broadband subsidy modeled after the very successful Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) with a path for this subsidy program to be adjusted for inflation over time to meet the future needs of consumers. Next, with the unlawful cancellation of Digital Equity Act funds threatening the nation’s progress in gaining digital skills, device accessibility, and workforce development, we must reinforce the importance of such work by allocating funding to these efforts through a reformed Universal Service Fund. This should also not foreclose other mechanisms available to sustain the digital inclusion ecosystem, such as using a portion of spectrum auctions for digital equity needs or the design of Tribal licensing windows through spectrum auctions. Lastly, it is critical to enable the Commission to promote greater network reliability and resiliency in a reformed USF by providing sustainable funding for upgrades that help networks withstand disasters, cover post-disaster repairs, and reduce the risk of wildfire and hurricane damages.

It is clearer than ever that our digital future should not be shaped by the politics of deservingness. This is not just about access to high-speed internet; it is about ensuring everyone can participate in the US economy, and in democracy.