BEAD: No NOFO Fo Sho - Episode 650 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast

Christopher Mitchell (00:11):
Welcome to another episode of the Community Broadband Bits podcast. I'm Christopher Mitchell at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in St. Paul Minnesota, and today I'm speaking with Gigi Sohn once again, who is Benton Senior Fellow and Public Advocate at the wonderful [00:00:30] Benton Institute for Broadband & Society. Welcome back, Gigi.

Gigi Sohn (00:35):
It's great to be here. Chris, I love your podcast.

Christopher Mitchell (00:38):
Well, I appreciate every time you're willing to come on. And here we have a hot topic. We're just recording this straight. We're not going to do any editing unless I really go off the rails, I guess. And we're going to talk about, we're talking hours after Secretary of Commerce Lutnick testified on the hill in front of the Senate, and [00:01:00] we're going to talk about that. You had a quick writeup on LinkedIn, seemed a bit hot under the collar, and I love Gigi hot under the collar, so I wanted to bring you on, do a quick reaction.

Gigi Sohn (01:13):
Yeah, so the good news is there was a lot of talk about the BEAD program and even about the Digital Equity Act program, even though this was about the commerce department's budget and people talked about lobsters [00:01:30] and Noah and tariffs obviously. So there,

Christopher Mitchell (01:34):
But CHIPS Act quite a bit.

Gigi Sohn (01:35):
CHIPS Act quite a bit. Yeah. So there was a broad array of topics that one could have talked about, but there were, I'd say at least a five, a half a dozen senators who raised the BEAD program and what everybody was waiting for was, okay, would Secretary of Commerce Lutnick actually give some guidance about where NTIA [00:02:00] was going to go with the BEAD program? I just want to remind people, it's been 135 days since Trump took office and 135 days is on the Trump BEAD clock at this juncture. So people were very, very eager to hear where things were going. So if you'll indulge me, I'll tell you what we learned from

Christopher Mitchell (02:24):
I will, I will. But hold on. I wanted to make sure people understood the BEAD was paused [00:02:30] at a time in which the checks were ready to be written. Contractors had hired people in multiple states and were ready. We would actually probably have had connections to fiber networks. By now we have seen plans in which we now know that almost all the states have figured out how to connect all the states that have gone through with their plans, which is half of them or more have figured out how to, within the budget, do a really great job of getting people connected. So we've learned a lot in this time and in the meantime, [00:03:00] we are just waiting for no reason. And as we'll discuss, there is no logical justification for what is actually happening, I suspect is where you'll come down. But first we'll talk about what actually we learned that was new today.

Gigi Sohn (03:14):
Yeah, I now agree with you. There were three states that literally were ready to put the shovels in the ground on January one and they were being withheld a very, very simple approval from the National Institute for Standards and Technology or NIST and [00:03:30] yes, and then Secretary Lutnick put a 90 day pause on the program really I think for no good reason. But let me talk about what was revealed today, and I can't say it was heavy on substance, but I think it's giving us a sense of the direction that at least the Department of Commerce wants to go. So the Secretary Lutnick talked about there being a new notice of funding opportunity soon and [00:04:00] that it would require the state's funding programs to be tech agnostic or tech neutral. I kind of use those terms interchangeably. I also use the terms and to be the cheapest or most cost efficient use of the money. So those are actually two different things, but those that he used and also what cheapest, cheapest could also be kind of massaged. [00:04:30] What he said was when this NOFO comes out, and I'll talk about the NOFO in a second, the states will have 90 days to submit, I assume a new final proposal. He wasn't specific about that and that NTIA would take 90 days to review all 56 final proposals and that he promised

Christopher Mitchell (04:57):
Your reaction to that is predicated on the idea [00:05:00] that we have a sense of what it takes to review this stuff. And that is a pretty short period of time to not just review, but to go back and forth and to clarify and this and that, presumably,

Gigi Sohn (05:09):
Well also the 90 days to submit a new proposal, find a proposal, some of the states have laws, state laws that are guiding this funding. So that takes time. And if in fact some of the states or maybe even all the states are going [00:05:30] to have to redo their process entirely, including possibly their mapping process. So they might have to do their mapping process over again. They may also have to do their grant process, their bidding process all over again. You can't do that in 90 days. It's not possible.

Christopher Mitchell (05:46):
So I just wanted to get a sense of why you were chuckling, but let's wrap up before I distract us again.

Gigi Sohn (05:52):
So I'm chuckling because those timelines are really fantasy as is the promise, which he made several times [00:06:00] that the money would come out by the end of this year. So that is less than seven months away, but he repeated that numerous times. So let's just talk about this notice of funding opportunity because many of us, I'm sure including you, Chris scratched your head when you said you going to do a new notice of funding opportunity again, that took six months for the Biden administration to do and you're going to rip it up and start again. Well, I'm [00:06:30] told by a very reliable source that that's not actually what's going to happen is that they're going to issue new guidance. Now that could be a good thing even despite all this tech agnostic, cheap, what have you, because if the new guidance deviates too much from the original nofo, then you've got something to hang your hat on if you want to go to court.

Christopher Mitchell (06:58):
Yes. So they did mention litigation [00:07:00] at one point that that could delay things. I do want to say before we get too far into this, that my dream title for this show is No NOFO FO SO.

Gigi Sohn (07:12):
Said it didn't make, I've been talking about this with a number of people. It just didn't make sense that they would start all the way from the very, very beginning. We know that there are some things that this administration wants to throw by the wayside. So the low cost [00:07:30] mandate, and I want to emphasize it, is a mandate, but they could loosen it to such an extent that it's meaningless. There are fair labor practice requirements, there are climate resiliency requirements. What Evan Feinman, I think not particularly politically, politically called the woke requirements, they're going to want to kick those to the curb. We also don't know, he kept talking about it is got to be about infrastructure and deployment, infrastructure and deployment. [00:08:00] So does that mean that all the great plans, for example, that West Virginia had to get everybody, all low income households, devices goes by the wayside Because if you spend your money wisely and efficiently and you have money left over, and again this is in the law, you are allowed to use it for other things including digital equity and inclusion.

(08:21):
I know those are dirty words, but that's what the law says. But he kept emphasizing, no, it is just got to be about access. It's got to be about infrastructure. [00:08:30] So does that mean they're going to try to take back the non deployment money? I think that's, again, he wasn't crystal clear about that. What he was crystal clear about was the timeline and B, that it has to be tech agnostic, tech neutral and cheap or the cheapest or the most cost efficient. Again, that depending on how the guidance comes out, that may require just about every [00:09:00] state to redo their entire process and that ain't going to happen in 90 days.

Christopher Mitchell (09:03):
Right. So there's so many different directions to go, but I want to back up what you're saying and try to explain that to folks. First of all, the idea that it should be affordable. Yes. However, the way that they're going about it is really counterproductive. So they think the states will be able to turn this around in three months after getting some new guidance, let's say. [00:09:30] And the state's new guidance will basically be like you have to put a lot more money into satellite. Well, so you have a company in Louisiana that submitted a plan that said, we will build to these areas with these number of premises for this amount of money. And now the state is going to say, alright, what if we take a bunch of these premises out? Well, the economics of the entire build have just changed and they're going to have to go through that and there's going to be areas that are now not economic and there's a whole balancing.

(09:59):
So that's [00:10:00] what happens is because you're not just necessarily going to be like, okay, we're going to take everyone in this project area and give them a low earth orbit satellite. Well, that would be a terrible idea because then you're going to end up not being able to, you're going to be over capacity for lower earth orbit satellite there. So you're going to have to take probably a number of the homes that are in existing areas and you're going to take project areas and depopulate them. Maybe none of these are economic anymore. I mean it's going to be a mess. That's why it's so crazy to think [00:10:30] that this could be done in three months.

Gigi Sohn (10:31):
Yeah, exactly right. I mean I don't think that a whole lot of thought has really been given to what the downstream negative consequences would be of something like this. And the other thing, and I believe that a reporter asked Secretary Lutnick afterwards, is there going to be a price per location requirement? And I've heard wild numbers, everything from $20,000 a location, which probably [00:11:00] would be generally pretty good to as low as 1500. 1200

Christopher Mitchell (11:05):
ITIF just wrote on the Hill $1,200.

Gigi Sohn (11:10):
Yeah. Well, we can talk about that proposal. That is a nut bar proposal that will never happen. Okay, I appreciate Joe Cain's passion about it, but if he thinks that Congress is going to give all the remainder of money that's saved by having a $1,200 cost per location to affordability, he's smoking [00:11:30] crack. I mean,

Christopher Mitchell (11:32):
But let's be clear about the thing that kills me about this. Let's not lose sight of the fact, I know you haven't. Listeners might have states have come in under budget. This is reaction that we are seeing from Secretary Lutnick. I think they thought this would be easier because a lot of states wouldn't be able to meet the budget, but Congress set up a pool of funds and said, we think states can get it done for that. States have figured out how to get it done for that, and Secretary Lutnick is pulling the carpet [00:12:00] out from under them. Having said, well now we're going to change all the rules on you. And that's what's happening here. It's not that fiber is too expensive. The states figured it out and the federal government is changing the rules on them

Gigi Sohn (12:13):
And possibly to favor Musk, although who knows, he's persona grata.

Christopher Mitchell (12:19):
I wanted to ask you about that. So we'll come back to that.

Gigi Sohn (12:21):
Yeah, but I mean the great irony here, although nothing's ironic with this administration, I [00:12:30] tell people all the time, do not think of this administration as a typical Republican administration because it isn't because in a typical Republican administration, you'd want the states to take the lead as Congress demanded and you wouldn't want the federal government to do command and control. That's the exact opposite of what's happening here. It's like the federal government wants to tell the states what to do. So it is supremely ironic, but unfortunately that's what's happening. Let me make one other point, [00:13:00] Chris. I think it's important. There is a provision in, there's a provision in the infrastructure about priority broadband projects, and those are projects that provides broadband service, that provides meet speed, latency, reliability, consistency and quality of service. And that the network that is built could easily scale [00:13:30] to speeds over time to meet the evolving connectivity needs of households and businesses and support the deployment of 5G successor wireless technologies and other advanced services.

(13:42):
So that's the definition. But the law also says that priority broadband projects have to take priority. That is a mandate in determining how to serve unserved and underserved areas and community anchor institutions. Priority [00:14:00] broadband projects go first. Okay. To me, there's one technology that meets the definition of priority broadband. It ain't satellite. We could argue whether fixed wireless would meet the bill, but it ain't satellite. That's for damn sure. So Secretary Lutnick has to be kind of careful about writing the priority broadband project mandate out of the law. And if you really make something that is tech [00:14:30] neutral and say, no, you cannot prioritize fiber ever, then you're writing it out of the law. And that's

Christopher Mitchell (14:39):
A quote that I wanted to bring up in which Secretary Lutnick said one of the reasons why we don't have broadband late in this country is because you require small contractors to have climate action plans. And I want to say that my suspicion is of all of the reasons, there's lots of reasons that BEAD has not connected [00:15:00] a home yet. Exactly zero of those reasons have to do with the Climate Action Plan. Now, I don't know that the climate action plan was necessary. I think we can argue about it, but I can tell you that nobody has lost sleep over it.

Gigi Sohn (15:13):
Look, there's a lot of sterman drawing over the affordable broadband service requirement. Although the states, there's a whole wide variety. NTIA was very, very flexible and you and I work with the communications union districts in Vermont who [00:15:30] were very concerned about having too low a requirement. But like I said, NTIA was flexible. It was working and you're absolutely right. Nobody was saying, I'm not going to apply for BEAD because I needed a climate action plan. In fact, the exact opposite, dozens of states wanted to move forward and they weren't already ready, wanted to move forward with their bidding process. Some of them have already gone ahead and did it anyway, even with the freezer. They were like, [00:16:00] what the heck? I'm just going to move forward. So no, I think you're absolutely right. I don't think it's stopped anybody. Those kind of requirements have stopped anybody from applying and the states are ready and the states were doing it and to just stop it at this juncture is a crime.

(16:15):
And look, I will not 100% defend the Biden NTIA inconceivable to me that on January 1st, 2024, they didn't wake up and say, okay, [00:16:30] we have got to get this money in state coffers by December 31st, 2024. And sometimes there were overly bureaucratic, overly lawyerly. So unfortunately, bureaucracy did get in the way, although I don't think it's a primary reason. Things took long. Things took long because Congress mandated about 10 steps. I love Ezra Klein and John Stewart having a yuck yuck about it, but I don't think they've ever read the, actually read the law, but that's beside [00:17:00] the point. To delay it even further is just criminal.

Christopher Mitchell (17:04):
There's a point where Senator Luhan asked, if the President asks you to cut an infrastructure program, will you cut the program? They go back and forth multiple times over this question. Howard Lutnick says, I work for him. I say it again, again, I work for the President of the United States, which it's a fine answer in some ways, but the thing that kills me is that the answer is clearly yes. He's saying yes. Why doesn't he just say, yes, I'm going to do what the President says. They have a vision [00:17:30] of extreme executive power, and what's fascinating to me is even as they enact it, they refuse to admit it.

Gigi Sohn (17:35):
Yeah, yeah. Well, I have to say, as I'm sure most people listen to this podcast, know I've testified many times, but two dozen times before Congress and I've probably triple the amount beyond that, and I've never seen anybody be so argumentative, particularly with senators, [00:18:00] and they just let it go. The only member who really gave him a hard time I commend him is Senator Peters from Michigan. And I know that's because his Michigan broadband office, they call it MiFi

Christopher Mitchell (18:15):
MIHI I think,

Gigi Sohn (18:16):
Excuse me, not MiFi, MIHI, they're terrific. And I'm sure they counseled him up the yin yang and he just did a terrific job and really pushed back. But many of the senators didn't. [00:18:30] And even some of the Republican senators Fisher Moran were a little bit up. Moran in particular said, I hope you think about what it will do to folks who already spent a lot of money applying for these grants to have to do it all over again. But he wasn't as strong as he could have been. Right. So it was amazing to me. I've never seen, I would compare him. He was comparable to Hegseth and Hegseth's confirmation hearing just kind [00:19:00] of the arrogance and the argumentativeness, and obviously not caring, not senators, the respect and deference that they deserve.

Christopher Mitchell (19:10):
For people who aren't familiar, when you said that about this is not the Republican party that you may remember from the past, the Trump administration has significantly changed it in that the senators and the representatives, the governors, the state, various parts of the Republican Party, all of them want to see [00:19:30] the BEAD program moving forward with the modifications that they would like to see in terms of some of the programs that relate to DEI perhaps, or certainly to the Climate Action Plan, labor requirements and things like that. These are things we've been arguing about as a country for a long time. That's not what's at issue here. And this is the thing that really burns me up is that if the issue as commissioner, as Secretary Lutnick would like to say [00:20:00] is that we have small contractors with climate action plans and that's slowing us down.

(20:04):
Well, on whatever day he was confirmed, he could have come in and said, Hey, Presto, we're going to do this a different way. Your Climate Action Plan is a checkbox. Yeah, we're going to think about the climate and that's your Climate Action Plan. They could have done that. And to the point, there's all of the things that they claim are the reasons they want to slow it down, don't make sense because they could have made those changes in February and Louisiana could be connecting people. Right Now [00:20:30] they didn't do that. Which leads to the question, what are they trying to do? And this is where I want to ask you about Musk, because Musk has just come out and really the President is upset with him. And Musk seems like he may or may not be willing to burn down all of his relationships with this administration out of his frustration with some other policies. But so much of this appears to be an effort of the Secretary of Commerce to figure out how to get more billions of dollars to Elon Musk regardless of whether it is best for the country, best for [00:21:00] people on the ground or whatever. But I really have to wonder what happens now with this relationship deteriorating.

Gigi Sohn (21:08):
That's what scares me. And you're absolutely right. If they just wanted to get rid of the climate resiliency and some of the labor stuff, although again, some of the labor things are mandates as well, and to weaken the affordable service requirement, they could have done that already. They could have done that at day one and we'd be gone. Now, I [00:21:30] worry even with all the pushback and there has been a lot of pushback, there's been a lot of silent pushback from Republican governors, but Benton pulled together a letter of 115, it's now 150 state legislators. Well, a third of them Republicans saying, just let the states decide. Industry has finally, it's taken them a little too long in my opinion, but a bunch of industry trade associations finally sent a letter and US Telecom had a very strong statement today finally starting to push back. [00:22:00] But I worry, the thing about politicians is he's going to want to show that he's done something more. It's not going to be enough just to get rid of the things he could have gotten rid of or weakened on day one. And that's what I worried about because that's where the most damage can be done.

Christopher Mitchell (22:20):
I think you can laugh at me. I think there's still a world in which, depending on how things go with Elon's relationship with President Trump, that [00:22:30] in a few weeks the Commerce Secretary just turns around and says, alright, we finished it up, we're going to move ahead and the states are going to fix all the problems and we're going to get the money out the door. And they say, President Trump is the greatest President and he's got this done and we're just going to move ahead with it.

Gigi Sohn (22:50):
Your mouth to God's ears. But that's one of the arguments that we've been making. It's like, look, Trump can have a victory here. I don't care who gets at this point. I just want the money [00:23:00] to get out and the networks to get built. Trump's not the guy I voted for, but I don't give a rat, right? It's just like, just get the money out, declare victory, say you're the king of all broadband and we can all sing Kumbaya. That's what I'd like to see. And that is the argument that's being made is look, if you're adding another 180 days to the or another seven months is more than that to the Trump beat clock, you don't look any better [00:23:30] than Joe Biden. So why not just get it out now and move ahead? And particularly again, there's no way if significant changes are made that it gets done in seven months, like the money flows and says it's not going to happen. Illinois, I think estimated the Illinois Broadband Office estimated that it would take two years, and I don't think that's overstating it, so why not take the W and we can all go home.

Christopher Mitchell (23:57):
Yes, there's so many other things [00:24:00] that I would we could follow up on, but I think we're hitting marginal returns. Is there any last messages on this as we aim to get out of here in a reasonable period of time?

Gigi Sohn (24:13):
Well, I don't think it's too late to weigh in, and I particularly urge my friends in industry to do so. So that Benton letter is still open and maybe you can send out a link to the folks that listen with it. [00:24:30] There's still room time for governors. Again, I don't expect Republican governors to go public and that's too bad. And I do really praise Shelly Moore Capito and Lisa Murkowski and now Susan Collins who's pushed back on the tweet that rescinded the Digital Equity Act grants. I think they deserve a lot of praise. Dan Sullivan, who was awful to me in my hearings, has also been good. So I [00:25:00] praise them for publicly pushing back particularly capital. She's been fantastic. Benton actually just posted, they got a copy of the West Virginia, the New West Virginia plan, and it is a disaster for that state if there is one state in the nation for which satellite just will not work.

(25:19):
It is West Virginia. And if you've ever been to that beautiful state and it is a beautiful state and tried to make a cell phone call, that's all you need to know. And their plan was every [00:25:30] single location getting fiber plus money leftover for devices and other digital equity things, and they want to throw that in the crapper. It makes no sense. It makes no sense. So my advice to anybody who cares is push back. My understanding is that our letter did have an impact, right? Well, we'll see when it comes out, but time's a wasting, so please say something and do it soon, [00:26:00] particularly if you're industry or you're Republican.

Christopher Mitchell (26:04):
Yes. And Andrew Cronenberg on your LinkedIn post actually did share that yesterday, the Western Governor Association, I assume responding to written testimony or something that they saw coming from the Commerce Secretary has responded. That's a lot of Republican governors there, and so we are seeing them reach out. So the last thing I wanted to mention is that we haven't heard anything about Arielle Roth, and I'm pretty surprised because [00:26:30] she was very enthusiastic to get into this. I know that who knows what's happening. There's a lot of things that can happen with changes in the family when you have a child, but there's been no news. I specifically looked for any news story in the past week or two weeks that had mentioned her name at all and she's just disappeared. And it's fascinating to me that these major changes are happening before she is in place.

Gigi Sohn (26:54):
Well, that's because she's not going to have any role. It is all coming from Lutnick and Secretary Lutnick [00:27:00] and Secretary Lutnick's staff. She never was going to have much of a role. I mean, she may be weighing in some small way. I mean she still is Senator Cruz's staffer, but I don't think she was ever going to have a major role. And look, the Republicans are starting to push some judges through. Right. Floor time is very precious, particularly when you've got this huge reconciliation. Bill. The third Republican or now it's going to be second Republican FCC Commissioner [00:27:30] hasn't been pushed through either. She's been sitting for a while and I just think it is priorities, and since she isn't going to have a major role in the new BEAD guidance, why prioritize her?

Christopher Mitchell (27:44):
One of the things that we have heard to buttress that I am sure that you've heard as well is that Secretary Lutnick is not taking a bunch of meetings to talk about this. He is deciding this. He's talking with President Trump about it and Elon Musk and no one else from what we can tell,

Gigi Sohn (28:00):
[00:28:00] That is absolutely correct. Some of the public interest folks talked to some of the lower downs at NTIA and said, who told them this is being decided by the secretary and don't bother to contact the secretary or his staff because you will not hear back. I mean, again, it's just public servant. What,

Christopher Mitchell (28:22):
One last thing while we're here is you just mentioned the Federal Communications Commission looks like it soon won't have a quorum, and [00:28:30] you just mentioned it doesn't look like they're rushing through to push anyone through. You have any thoughts or comments on it

Gigi Sohn (28:36):
To me now? So a couple of things. Number one, for a commissioner to give two days or three days notice and say, I'm out the door, just completely unheard of like crazy. Now, look, you insiders like me, kind of had heard through the grapevine for months now that Commissioner Simington wanted to leave, [00:29:00] but this is really, really precipitous. This is super fast. I do find very curious and still trying to figure out. He got a new chief of staff named Gavin Wax a couple of months ago, and Wax is a very much far right MAGA who is aligned with Nazis and doesn't seem Simington, just didn't seem like that type of guy. I've talked to him several times. [00:29:30] He's more like a nerd, sort of like a techie nerd. And yeah, he's conservative, but he's not that. So I thought it was a very, very odd that he became his Chief of Staff Wax.

(29:41):
The other thing I thought was really odd was that Wax andSimington co-wrote a couple of op-eds on some media issues. Number one, commissioner Simington has never expressed interest in media policy for 30 seconds, number one. Number two [00:30:00] is that doesn't happen that a staffer co-authors an article in an online platform or where have you with the principal. It just doesn't happen. So my suspicion is that the President may consider nominating Gavin Wax to replace Simington, and if that is the case, the Democrats better lay their bodies across the ground to stop it because hell, if I got [00:30:30] booted, I was an activist. This guy is like an activist type a hundred and doesn't know a damn thing about broadband. I mean, that's the thing, right? I'm an expert. He doesn't know anything. It is funny how activist was a dirty word when I got nominated, but now it seems to be perfectly fine. But this guy's beyond the pale, so hopefully that won't happen. I understand that there's some Republicans who don't necessarily favor him being nominated, and there's plenty of qualified folks who are just [00:31:00] not that crazy, but I do worry about that and I think people need to keep their eyes out for it.

Christopher Mitchell (31:07):
The last thing about that that I want to ask you about is something that I remember Blair Levin writing about, which is that to accomplish his goals on the commission, Brendan Carr really doesn't need a vote for most of the stuff he wants to do,

Gigi Sohn (31:19):
Right? I know there was a lot of hand wringing, oh, he's not going to have a quorum. He hasn't had a majority for six months and it hasn't stopped him from doing everything he wants to do. [00:31:30] Now, the one thing he cannot do without a quorum is delete, delete, delete a bunch of regulations. He can't do that. He can't do Rulemakings, he can't do major policies. Now, look, he already granted a merger, the Verizon Frontier merger at the bureau, at the bureau level, and I hate to remind people, unfortunately, that precedent was set by the previous chair, but we won't go there. [00:32:00] So he's doing a lot without a majority, and he'll do a lot without a quorum and a lot of damage. I might add he's just scaring the living daylights out of every regular tee who are bending the knee. I mean, Verizon, I guess I should blame them, but I don't. They got rid of all their DEI, everything, DEI, not just on their website, but in their policies. And they also had a special program where you get [00:32:30] a bonus if you brought diverse folks in, they got rid of all of it, and within 24 hours their merger with Frontier got approved. I mean, if that's not being held for Ransom, what is?

Christopher Mitchell (32:42):
Yeah, this is something that people might be the people who tuned in to hear are comments on it might be losing interest in, but I'll say, I think some of this stuff, I roll my eyes a bit. I think Verizon getting rid of all of its fake DEI that it was doing doesn't bother me at all. It was all stuff that they were doing for PR [00:33:00] and now they're not doing it. I feel the same way about Target. The question in my mind is, in several years, do we think Verizon, Target, Fortune 500 companies will be more or less controlled by, and I'll just say for instance, let's say heterosexual white men, and I think we'll continue to see more people promoted who have a variety of lifestyles, who have a variety of backgrounds, racial backgrounds, cultures, opinions [00:33:30] about things. I feel like corporate America is not doing it as fast as I would like it, but everybody who's obsessing with this that I will say doesn't bother me as much as the ones who are writing checks to political figures, political action groups, whoever's receiving it in order to get money into the pockets of elected officials in order to get these things through.

(33:53):
That for me is the really damaging thing that I worry about.

Gigi Sohn (33:57):
Yeah, it's interesting. I actually said, the person [00:34:00] at Verizon who told me about this, he was very apologetic. I said, look, I don't care about virtue signaling. I don't really give a darn what's on your website. I want to know who's in your C-suite. I wonder who's on your board so you can talk the talk all you want, but if you're not walking the walk, I don't give a crap. So I want to see these companies actually walk the walk and stop talking. So yeah, I'm with you. I'm with you on that. And yes, you [00:34:30] supporting folks that actively damage the diversity we have in this country. Efforts to include efforts to ensure equality. You're right, that is more dangerous. I also, frankly, am upset with some of the companies in our field who have pulled out of supporting Pride events. I'll name Comcast, my favorite cable company that pulled out of supporting World Pride, which is this work weekend. I mean, they're just running scared. And I think that's [00:35:00] for a very powerful company like that to not to continue to support the community that has been so supportive of it, I think is really a sad statement on what's going on today.

Christopher Mitchell (35:12):
I do recall Comcast standing up on things that the Trump administration was not thrilled about in the first Trump administration, and I thought that was powerful and a mark of the strength of Comcast, and I'm disappointed to hear that. That is where I do [00:35:30] think companies are responding to very real threats that are different, that are not the same sort of thing we had in the eighties and nineties when we still had lots of things to disagree about, but we weren't engaging in that sort of power struggle. But Gigi, I really appreciate you coming on. I appreciate the rapid response on the Secretary Lutnick and then diving into a couple of the other things that are happening right now. Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us.

Gigi Sohn (35:55):
My pleasure. And this was a day. [00:36:00] This was a day, and hopefully we will have not too many more of these, but I've heard that the guidance may come out as soon as Friday, so be prepared. You may want to have me on again.

Christopher Mitchell (36:14):
Yes, yes. I suspect we're going to be having a few more reaction shows before the month is out.

Ry Marcattilio (36:23):
We have transcripts for this and other podcasts available at muninetworks.org/broadbandbits. Email us @podcastmuninetworks.org [00:36:30] with your ideas for the show. Follow Chris on Twitter, his handles at @communitynets. Follow muninetworks.org stories on Twitter, that handles @muninetworks. Subscribe to this and other podcast from ILSR, including Building Local Power, Local Energy Rules, and the Composting for Community Podcast. You can access them anywhere you get your podcasts. You can catch the latest important research from all of our initiatives if you subscribe to our monthly newsletter @ilsr.org. [00:37:00] While you're there, please take a moment to donate your support in any amount. Keeps us going. Thank you to Arne Hughes. Be for the song Warm Duck Shuffle, licensed through creative comments. This was the Community Broadband Bits Podcast. Thanks for listening.