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For Immediate Release
June, 26 2023, 04:06pm EDT
Contact:
Timothy Karr: 201-533-8838,,tkarr@freepress.net
White House Declares Broadband an Essential Utility, Pledges to End Digital Divide by 2030
During a White House event on Monday, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris provided important details about the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program, a $42.5-billion federal-funding initiative in support of affordable high-speed internet access.
The BEAD program, administered by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) in the Department of Commerce, is designed to fund deployment of robust broadband infrastructure in largely rural areas of the country that don’t have adequate high-speed internet service.
BEAD was created in 2021 under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Alongside the FCC’s Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), BEAD will cover some of the costs of making broadband available and affordable to unserved and underserved communities. BEAD money will be distributed in all 50 states and U.S. territories to locally available access providers.
Free Press Co-CEO Craig Aaron, who attended today’s White House event, said:
“Today’s funding announcement marks an important step toward fulfilling Congress’ commitment to close the digital divide — and makes it more likely that those new high-speed internet services will be more affordable. We applaud the White House and Congress for supporting universal access and are grateful this investment is going out the door. BEAD funding marks an important recognition that broadband should be treated as an essential utility that must be affordable to everyone in the United States.
“The NTIA recognized that deployment of fiber infrastructure is the best way to maximize this public investment. The NTIA also sent a strong message to states that restrict municipal broadband deployment, encouraging them to waive those limits. Letting communities determine their own path forward is a big part of guaranteeing the internet for all. The agency also requires recipients of BEAD money to provide affordable, low-cost options to subscribers they will serve.
“While there’s much to celebrate today, we can’t ignore the need for additional funding to support the FCC’s Affordable Connectivity Program, which was created under the same statute as the BEAD program. Close to 19 million households are enrolled in the FCC program right now, and enrollment numbers are only going up. If Congress fails to invest more funding in the ACP, millions of people could lose affordable access to high-speed internet services, including networks the BEAD program will fund.”
Free Press was created to give people a voice in the crucial decisions that shape our media. We believe that positive social change, racial justice and meaningful engagement in public life require equitable access to technology, diverse and independent ownership of media platforms, and journalism that holds leaders accountable and tells people what's actually happening in their communities.
(202) 265-1490LATEST NEWS
Calls for Justice After Israeli Occupation Forces Kill Palestinian-American Child in West Bank
"Our government's responsibility is to protect its citizens," said U.S. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib. "Instead, we're arming their murderers. Arms embargo now."
Apr 07, 2025
As U.S. President Donald Trump rolled out the White House red carpet for fugitive Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, Palestine defenders demanded justice after Israeli troops opened fire on a group of children in the illegally occupied West Bank, killing one Palestinian-American boy and wounding two others.
Fourteen-year-old Omar Mohammad Rabea and two other Palestinian-American boys, ages 14 and 15, were shot by Israeli occupation forces in Turmus Ayya, northeast of Ramallah.
"Two of them were transported by ambulance to a nearby medical center and then to the hospital," said Turmus Ayya Mayor Adeeb Lafi. "The army arrived at the scene and detained the third injured boy, who is 14 years old and holds U.S. citizenship."
Rabea's father said his son was shot six times—twice each in the face, chest, and shoulder.
The Palestinian National Authority's Foreign Ministry condemned Israeli forces' "use of live fire against three children," adding that "Israel's continued impunity as an illegal occupying power encourages it to commit further crimes."
The Israel Defense Forces claimed on social media that troops "identified three terrorists who were throwing rocks at a highway with civilian vehicles" and subsequently "fired at the terrorists who posed a danger to civilians, killing one of them and wounding the other two."
In the United States, the slain teen's relatives in New Jersey expressed anger over the killing. Rabea's father toldAgence France-Presse that the U.S. government habitually ignores or downplays Israeli crimes against Palestinians, including "assaults, killings, arson, and theft of Palestinian land."
"All of these things—the U.S. Embassy turns a blind eye to them," he said.
U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the only Palestinian-American member of Congress, said on the social media site X: "Our government's responsibility is to protect its citizens. Instead we're arming their murderers. Arms embargo now."
Rep. Chuy García (D-Ill.) also took to X, noting reporting that Rabea "was denied medical aid and left to die."
"This atrocity must be condemned and investigated," the congressman added. "We cannot turn a blind eye."
The Institute for Middle East Understanding said on the social media site Bluesky that "Israel must be held accountable for its killings of American citizens—from aid workers, journalists, and humanitarian observers to children and the elderly."
However, "instead of pursuing justice for its citizens, the U.S. government is backing Israel's impunity by arming its violence," IMEU continued.
"The U.S. government's refusal to demand accountability for Israel's endless killings of Palestinians‚ even when it kills U.S. citizens—has deadly consequences," the group added. "That impunity emboldens Israeli soldiers and settlers to keep brutally attacking Palestinian children and families. Enough."
Other American citizens killed by Israeli occupation forces in the West Bank include International Solidarity Movement (ISM) activist Rachel Corrie, age 23 (2003); Orwah Hamad, age 14 (2014); Mahmoud Shaalan, age 16 (2016); journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, age 51 (2022); Omar Assad, age 78 (2022); Tawfiq Hafez Tawfiq Ajaq, age 17 (2024); Mohammad Ahmed Mohammad Khdour, age 17 (2024); and Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, a 26-year-old ISM activist (2024).
Successive U.S. administrations have provided Israel with more than $300 billion in aid since the modern Jewish state's founding, largely through terrorism and ethnic cleansing, in 1948—far more than any other nation has received.
On Monday, Trump welcomed Netanyahu at the White House. The prime minister's flight from Hungary, where he met with far-right President Viktor Orbán, reportedly went out of its way to avoid the airspace of European nations that might enforce an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for the Israeli leader for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. Israel is also facing a genocide case brought by South Africa before the International Court of Justice.
Israel's 539-day genocidal assault continued Monday in Gaza, where more than 180,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded—including thousands of missing people who are presumed dead and buried beneath rubble—since October 2023, when Hamas led the deadliest-ever attack on Israel.
In the West Bank—which Israel has illegally occupied and colonized since 1967 and where more than 700,000 Jewish colonists have settled—United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk last week lamented Palestinians' "catastrophic suffering," calling the situation there "extremely alarming."
Türk noted that his office has verified that Israeli soldiers and settlers—sometimes working together—have killed at least 909 Palestinians across the West Bank including East Jerusalem since October 2023, including 191 children and five people with disabilities. Attacks by Palestinian militants have killed 51 Israelis including 15 women and 4 children over that same period.
Thousands of West Bank Palestinians have been
killed or wounded by IDF troops and Israeli settlers since October 2023. Last week, Roland Friedrich, who heads the West Bank division of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, said that the scale of forced displacement is unprecedented during the 58 years of Israeli occupation.
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Israeli Troops Blow Whistle on War Crimes in Gaza 'Kill Zone'
One IDF officer said that not only are Israeli troops killing military-age males, "we're killing their wives, their children, their cats, their dogs. We're destroying their houses and pissing on their graves."
Apr 07, 2025
An Israeli human rights group on Monday published a report in which Israel Defense Forces officers and soldiers who took part in the creation of a buffer zone along Gaza's border with Israel described alleged war crimes including indiscriminate killing, as well as the wholesale deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure in what multiple whistleblowers called a "kill zone."
The new report from Breaking the Silence (BTS) details how Israel—which for decades has dubiously relied upon defensive buffer zones in territories it conquers or controls—decided on a policy of "widespread, deliberate destruction" in order to create a security perimeter ranging between roughly half a mile and a mile in width on the Gaza side of the Israeli-Palestinian border.
"To create this area, Israel launched a major miltary engineering operation that, by means of wholesale destruction, entirely reshaped about 16% of the Gaza Strip... an area previously home to some 35% of Gaza's agricultural land," the report states. "The perimeter extends from the coast in the north to the Egyptian border in the south, all within the territory of the Gaza Strip and outside of Israel's internationally recognized borders."
"The mission given to soldiers in the field, as revealed in their testimonies, was to create an empty, completely flat expanse about a kilometer wide along the Gaza side of the border fence," the publication continues. "This space was to have no crops, structures, or people. Almost every object, infrastructure installation, and structure within the perimeter was demolished."
"Palestinians were denied entry into the area altogether, a ban which was enforced using live fire, including machine gun fire and tank shells. In this way, the military created a death zone of enormous proportions," the report adds. "Places where people had lived, farmed, and established industry were transformed into a vast wasteland, a strip of land eradicated in its entirety."
"The testimonies demonstrate that soldiers were given orders to deliberately, methodically, and systematically annihilate whatever was within the designated perimeter, including entire residential neighborhoods, public buildings, educational institutions, mosques, and cemeteries, with very few exceptions," the paper says. "Industrial zones and agricultural areas which served the entire population of Gaza were laid to waste, regardless of whether those areas had any connection whatsoever to the fighting."
"Places where people had lived, farmed, and established industry were transformed into a vast wasteland."
Palestinians who dared enter the perimeter, even accidentally were also targeted, including civilian men, women, children, and elders. The officers and soldiers interviewed by BTS struggled to explain whether noncombatants were informed of the no-go zone's limits, with one saying civilians knew to stay away when they saw that "enough people died or got injured" crossing the unmarked boundary.
Some people who entered the perimeter out of sheer desperation were targeted. Israel's blockade of Gaza has fueled widespread and sometimes deadly starvation, and Palestinians entered the "kill zone" to pick hubeiza, a nutritious wild plant, after the area's farmland was razed.
"The IDF really is fulfilling the public's wishes, which state: 'There are no innocents in Gaza. We'll show them,'" one reserve warrant officer explained. "People were incriminated for having bags in their hands. Guy showed up with a bag? Incriminated, terrorist. I believe they came to pick hubeiza, but... boom," tank shells were fired at him from half a mile away.
In a separate interview with The Guardian, that same officer said that at first, his attitude toward invading Gaza was, "I went there because they killed us and now we're going to kill them."
"And I found out that we're not only killing them—we're killing them, we're killing their wives, their children, their cats, their dogs," they added. "We're destroying their houses and pissing on their graves."
Another IDF reservist officer told BTS that he was briefed that "there is no civilian population" in the area, where Palestinians are "terrorists, all of them." Asked what the area looked like after the IDF clearing operation, the officer replied: "Hiroshima."
A captain in an armored division of the IDF reserves said "the borderline is a kill zone" where "there are no clear rules of engagement" or "proper combat procedure."
"Anyone who crosses a certain line, that we have defined, is considered a threat and is sentenced to death," the captain added.
The BTS report follows an investigation published last December by Haaretz, Israel's oldest newspaper, in which IDF soldiers and veterans described a "kill zone" in the Netzarim corridor in the heart of Gaza, where troops were ordered to shoot "anyone who enters."
"The forces in the field call it 'the line of dead bodies,'" one commander said. "After shootings, bodies are not collected, attracting packs of dogs who come to eat them. In Gaza, people know that wherever you see these dogs, that's where you must not go."
The new report comes as Israeli forces are carrying out an ethnic cleansing campaign in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are being forcibly expelled from areas of Gaza including the south and an expanded border perimeter. The Associated Pressreported Monday that Israel "now controls more than 50% of the territory and is squeezing Palestinians into shrinking wedges of land."
Israeli troops are moving to seize large tracts of the Gaza Strip for a so-called "security zone" and Jewish recolonization. Members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's far-right government have said the campaign is being coordinated with the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, who in February said that the United States would "take over" Gaza, remove all of its Palestinians, and transform the Mediterranean enclave into the "Riviera of the Middle East."
On Monday, Netanyahu arrived in Washington, D.C. from Hungary for talks with Trump and other U.S. officials regarding topics including a Gaza cease-fire, release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas, Iran policy, and tariffs. Netanyahu is a fugitive from the International Criminal Court, which last year issued arrest warrants for him and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including extermination and using starvation as a weapon of war.
Israel is also facing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its conduct in a war that has left more than 180,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing in Gaza and almost all of the strip's more than 2 million people forcibly displaced—often multiple times.
Israel's bombing and invasion of Gaza continued on Monday. An early morning IDF strike on a tent where numerous journalists were sleeping outside Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis killed Palestine Today reporter Hilmi al-Faqaawi and another man, who were burned alive as helpless witnesses were unable to douse the flames or rescue victims.
Nine others were reportedly wounded in the attack, which the IDF said targeted a Hamas member posing as a journalist. More than 230 journalists have been
killed by Israeli bombs and bullets since October 2023.
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Chief Justice Blocks Court Order Requiring Return of Man Sent to El Salvador Prison
"Justices regularly issue administrative stays so the full court can mull a request," one legal expert noted. "It is surely upsetting for Abrego Garcia, though."
Apr 07, 2025
Just hours before a midnight deadline, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts on Monday blocked District Judge Paula Xinis' order directing the Trump administration to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man mistakenly deported to a prison in El Salvador, to the United States.
Roberts—who is part of the U.S. Supreme Court's right-wing supermajority but has publicly criticized President Donald Trump's attacks on the federal judiciary and sometimes sided with the liberal justices against the administration—did not explain his decision to grant an administrative stay, which temporarily pauses Xinis' order until the high court makes another decision.
"I would not reach too much into Roberts' action," saidSlate's Mark Joseph Stern, who covers the court. "Justices regularly issue administrative stays so the full court can mull a request. Remember that Roberts also stayed Judge [Amir Ali's] order on foreign aid before the full court ultimately denied a stay. It is surely upsetting for Abrego Garcia, though."
Roberts ordered Abrego Garcia's attorneys to respond by 5:00 pm ET Tuesday. "BUT: Abrego Garcia's lawyers have—at roughly the same time, although Roberts' order appears first on the docket—already filed their response," notedLaw Dork's Chris Geidner.
"In short, the question is now back to the court," Geidner explained. "No reply is required in shadow docket requests, although it is often submitted. The court does not need to wait for a reply, so any reply should be submitted as quickly as a party thinks the court would need it/might act."
As Abrego Garcia's lawyers wrote to the high court:
The government knew about the court order prohibiting Abrego Garcia's removal to El Salvador, and admits that removing him in violation of that order was an "administrative error"... Abrego Garcia has never been charged with a crime, in any country. He is not wanted by the government of El Salvador. He sits in a foreign prison solely at the behest of the United States, as the product of a Kafka-esque mistake.
The government "can—and does—return wrongfully removed migrants as a matter of course"... The district court's order instructing the government to facilitate Abrego Garcia's return is routine... It does not implicate foreign policy or even domestic immigration policy in any case. The United States has never claimed that it is powerless to correct its error and before today, it did not contend that doing so would cause it any harm. That is because the only one harmed by the current state of affairs is Abrego Garcia.
The Trump administration had asked the Supreme Court to intervene earlier Monday, after Maryland-based Xinis doubled down on an order issued Friday and a panel from the Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit declined to grant a stay.
One of the appellate judges wrote: "The United States government has no legal authority to snatch a person who is lawfully present in the United States off the street and remove him from the country without due process. The government's contention otherwise, and its argument that the federal courts are powerless to intervene, are unconscionable."
Before the Trump administration sent Abrego Garcia to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in his native El Salvador, he lived in Maryland with his wife, Jennifer Stefania Vasquez Sura, a U.S. citizen; their autistic, nonverbal 5-year-old child; and two children from Vasquez Sura's previous relationship.
As CNNreported Monday, before Roberts' decision, Vasquez Sura had welcomed the appeals decision and renewed her call for Trump and Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, to bring her husband home.
“This decision gives me hope, and even more encouragement to keep fighting. My children, family, and I will continue praying and seeking justice. Now that the court has spoken, I ask again that both President Trump and President Bukele stop attempting any further delays," she said. "They need to follow the court's order NOW. My children are waiting to be reunited with their father tonight."
Congressional Democrats—including Reps. Joaquin Castro (Texas) and Pramila Jayapal (Wash.) on Monday—have also pressured the administration to return Abrego Garcia to his family. Castro also shared a warning from Joyce White Vance, a University of Alabama law professor and legal analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, that "if it can happen to Abrego Garcia, it can happen to any of us."
As Common Dreamsreported, Trump on Sunday expressed a desire to accept Bukele's offer to take prisoners who are U.S. citizens. "I love that," he said. "If we could take some of our 20-time wise guys that push people into subways and hit people over the back of the head and purposely run people over in cars, if he would take them, I would be honored to give them."
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