Disrupting communications is a military strategy that has been deployed during wars throughout history. It’s also what the federal government has done to rural Americans as part of its war on Elon Musk, a tech billionaire whose support of free speech has put him at odds with the Biden administration and other powerful Democrats.
The decision to cut rural Americans off from broadband communications had already been strongly criticized as harmful, politically motivated, and completely without merit even before Category 4 Hurricane Helene wrought destruction last week in some of the most remote areas of Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina.
Now the FCC’s war on Musk may have turned deadly. The death toll is already at 138 Americans across six states, with many hundreds still missing. Among the serious problems facing rural victims is an inability to communicate with potential rescuers as roads are washed out, telecommunications are down, electricity is out, and people are facing fatal flooding.
It didn’t have to be this way.
In 2020, the Federal Communications Commission awarded Musk’s Starlink an $885.5 million award to help get broadband access to 642,000 rural homes and businesses in 35 states. A subsidiary of SpaceX, Starlink is a satellite internet system delivering high-speed internet to anyone on the planet. The plan would work out to less than $1,400 per linkup, same-day delivery of the necessary hardware, and only a few hours to get up and running.
Some 19,552 households and businesses in North Carolina would have had access to Starlink if they desired. Of the 21 worst-hit counties in North Carolina, the FCC-funded Starlink program would have served all or part of 17 of them, according to multiple officials. The FCC suddenly canceled that grant in 2022, a few months before Joe Biden suggested that the federal government find ways to go after Musk, a former Democrat who began criticizing some of the Democrat Party’s support of censorship of and lawfare against political opponents. After a challenge from SpaceX, the FCC reaffirmed its decision to cancel the award in 2023.
Democrat FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel implausibly claimed to believe that Starlink couldn’t provide the service it had promised, a claim that didn’t pass the smell test for many industry observers at the time it was made. Starlink and its military counterpart were in wide use by other government programs. What’s more, at this moment Donald Trump and Elon Musk are rushing Starlink kits to remote North Carolina on their own. So are other Americans doing relief operations. And the White House is claiming it is also going to send Starlink kits to the area.
“The @FCC would rather Americans die, than approve a very inexpensive way to connect people in disaster areas. They should be ashamed,” Maye Musk, the mother of Elon Musk, said on X. “Biden, Harris and the FCC are also punishing people in disaster areas and rural areas. Shame on them,” she added.
Other agencies also joined Democrats’ anti-Musk efforts. As The Wall Street Journal reported, the Department of Justice pursued multiple attacks on Musk and his companies. The Federal Trade Commission began harassing X by making myriad questionable document demands, including requests for information on the journalists who worked on the project exposing how previous leaders of Twitter had colluded with the federal government to censor American speech and debate. The National Labor Relations Board went after Tesla over its dress code. The Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are also investigating Musk and his companies.
The FCC’s politically motivated cancellation of the contract in 2022 left rural Americans with no options.
The cancellation “is without legal justification,” FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, who voted against canceling the award, said at the time. “[I]t will leave rural Americans waiting on the wrong side of the digital divide.”
The FCC’s political action against Musk isn’t the only Biden administration action harming Americans who were ravaged by Helene.
Joe Biden named Kamala Harris the Broadband Czar in April 2021 and placed her in charge of a $100 billion slush fund for broadband projects. At the Commerce Department, a $42.5 billion subset of that program was launched in 2021, with guidance written to limit the ability of Starlink to compete for contracts. The Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program was supposed to fund programs in all 50 states. It has been a complete failure.
More than three years later, not a single rural American family or business has been connected to broadband through the program. At best the groundwork will begin four years after the launch and won’t finish until 2030 at the earliest. For that much taxpayer money, Starlink could be provided to 140 million people, and without the wait, observers noted.
The FCC’s anti-Musk efforts come at the same time that the Democrat-run agency fast-tracked a shocking application by a group backed by the Democrat Soros family to purchase more than 200 radio stations across the country.
Federal law requires applicants with significant foreign ownership, as the Soros group has, to go through significant paperwork and security reviews prior to receiving licenses for radio stations. They didn’t follow the law and yet the FCC fast-tracked the approval for the first time in its history.
“Your last name should not determine how the government treats you, and very clearly that’s what is happening here,” said Carr of the FCC’s politicized actions on behalf of the Soros group and against the Musk group.
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