Politics
Nearly 3 million Californians at risk of losing home internet service as subsidy expires
Four years ago, Claudia Aleman and her family had only one way to get online — through their cellphones. Without internet service on a computer, her youngest daughter couldn’t get homework assignments in on time, her parents couldn’t keep up with online doctor visits, and the English classes she wanted to sign up for were out of reach.
Then came a game-changer: The federal government started offering a subsidy that covered $30 of the family’s $80 monthly internet bill.
But while opening mail at her home in South Gate two months ago, Aleman came across a letter from the Federal Communications Commission announcing that the Affordable Connectivity Program they had come to rely on would end in May unless Congress approved more funding.
Claudia Aleman of South Gate said her family did not have a computer with internet service until the federal subsidy was created.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
“My husband is the only one who works, and everything is so expensive right now,” Aleman said. “Sometimes we don’t have $30 to spare.”
“The program made a significant difference in our lives,” she added. “Without it, life is going to be difficult, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way.”
The program, which was created after the pandemic forced many Americans to turn to the internet to connect with work and school, has 23 million enrollees nationwide — 1 in 6 U.S. households — including nearly 3 million in California.
Since 2021, it has provided a $30 monthly subsidy for low-income households and $75 for those on tribal lands. But the $14.2 billion funded through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act has run out.
April was the last month of full program benefits, but households could receive a partial discount in May.
In a letter to Congress this month, FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel warned that not funding the program would have widespread impact, especially for senior citizens, veterans, schoolchildren and residents of rural and tribal communities.
“Households across the country are now facing hard choices about what expenses they have to cut, including food and gas, to maintain their broadband access, with some households doubtful they can afford to keep their broadband service at all,” she wrote.
Internet service providers have their own programs for low-income households. People can enter their address on the FCC’s broadband map to find providers in their area. The California Public Utilities Commission also provides a list of providers with low-cost internet plans.
But finding a cheaper alternative can be difficult. Rural households sometimes have just one provider, and families who can’t afford it have little recourse.
Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Santa Barbara) is among 228 bipartisan co-sponsors of the Affordable Connectivity Program Extension Act of 2024, which would provide an additional $7 billion to keep the program afloat for another year. Among the co-sponsors are 22 Republicans, including Rep. Young Kim (R-Anaheim Hills).
“You’ve got to have your head in the sand to not understand the value of what this is doing to enhance our economy, enhance the skills and opportunities for so many Americans,” Carbajal said. Allowing the program to expire, he said, “will undo the progress we’ve made in closing the digital divide. It would take us back to the dark ages.”
Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Santa Barbara) has sponsored legislation to fund the internet subsidy for another year.
(House Television via AP)
But the bill hasn’t been brought for a standalone floor vote in the GOP-led House amid criticism from some Republicans who say the program subsidizes households that already had internet service. They also pointed to findings from the FCC’s internal watchdog last year that providers failed to comply with the program’s rules and improperly claimed funds.
In a statement last year, Sens. John Thune (R-S.D.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said the program was “subject to massive waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer dollars.”
In an FCC survey of 5,300 households conducted in December, more than two-thirds of respondents said they had inconsistent or no internet before joining the federal program, the majority citing affordability. About one-third of respondents said they had both mobile and home internet service.
In October, the Biden administration sent Congress a supplemental request for $6 billion to keep the program running, but it didn’t pass.
Letting the program lapse, even if it could be restarted later, would require additional spending on outreach and re-enrollment, Carbajal said. He also worries that people who benefit from it will feel a sense of whiplash and lose trust in the federal government.
California recently dedicated $70 million in federal funding toward affordable internet service, devices and training. Carbajal said he’s glad to see his state acting, but it’s not enough.
“We can’t look at it from a parochial standpoint,” he said. “I’m not just looking out for the Central Coast and my state — I’m looking out for the entire nation.”
Still, Carbajal said he’s optimistic something will take hold before May 1. Similar circumstances have played out favorably at the last minute, he said.
In Los Angeles, the federal program has played an important role in the county’s effort to close the digital divide, which was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Through local promotion, enrollment in Los Angeles grew to nearly 1 million households.
County officials partnered with the nonprofit EveryoneOn to get the word out. Chief Executive Norma Fernandez worries families will be confused when they see their internet bill go up and won’t understand why the program ended.
“We tried so hard and provided tons of hands-on support to get people connected and then we’re going to pull it away from them,” she said. “It’s going to cause hopelessness.”
Claudia Aleman’s family has benefited from subsidized internet service through the Affordable Connectivity Program that is running out of funds.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
For Aleman’s family, the pandemic changed everything. When schools first shut down, they relied on a Los Angeles County Unified School District program that offered free internet to eligible students.
But the service was unreliable — access would frequently drop or freeze up. So Aleman started leaving her daughter Miranda, now 11, with her sister and neighbors who had reliable internet access so that she could attend online classes and do her homework.
“I think my daughter lost an entire school year,” she said.
Their need for internet access at home hasn’t changed since schools reopened. Most of Miranda’s assignments are still online.
Life improved almost immediately after they enrolled in the federal subsidy program in 2022 and got internet access through AT&T. Miranda started turning in assignments on time. Aleman’s older daughters, 17 and 21, could do their schoolwork at home instead of at the library or relatives’ homes.
It also made a difference for her parents. Her father, who is diabetic, takes nutrition courses online, and her mother, who is asthmatic, needs regular video checkups with her doctor. And Aleman could finally stay in regular contact with family in Mexico.
Since learning that the program would end, Aleman said she has been applying for jobs to help her husband cover bills. In May, her husband will pay the internet bill, possibly with credit cards.
Beyond that, she said, “there’s always the library.”
The Biden administration declassified one last piece of information about how it has helped Ukraine: an account of its once-secret support for the country’s military drone industry.
U.S. officials said on Thursday that they had made big investments that helped Ukraine start and expand its production of drones as it battled Russia’s larger and better-equipped army.
Much of the U.S. assistance to the Ukrainian military, including billions of dollars in missiles, air defense systems, tanks, artillery and training, has been announced to the public. But other support has largely gone on in the shadows.
That included helping Ukraine develop a new generation of drones and revolutionize how wars are fought, according to U.S. officials.
The innovations in Ukraine’s drone industry have been hailed as transformative, but the U.S. support has been less well understood. In addition to technical support, the U.S. has spent significant money, including $1.5 billion sent last September, to boost Ukraine’s drone production, officials said.
Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, said the support had “a real strategic impact” on the war.
“We saw how UAVs were becoming increasingly central to the fight in Ukraine and will be central to all future fights,” Mr. Sullivan said in a statement on Thursday, referring to unmanned aerial vehicles.
The U.S. effort included money to support drone makers and to purchase parts. The United States also sent intelligence officials to Ukraine to help build its program, according to people who know about the effort.
In an interview this week, the C.I.A. director, William J. Burns, referred indirectly to his agency’s support for the drone program in Ukraine.
“I think our intelligence support has helped the Ukrainians to defend themselves,” Mr. Burns said. “Not just in the sharing of intelligence, but support for some of the systems that have been so effective.”
The White House declassified information about Russia’s plans to attack Ukraine ahead of the invasion. During the war, officials have regularly declassified information about Iranian and North Korean arms shipments to Russia.
Mr. Sullivan said the drone effort began after the Ukrainians’ first counteroffensive in the fall of 2022 as the limits of Ukraine’s conventional capabilities became clear.
The efforts accelerated, Mr. Sullivan said, in the preparation for Ukraine’s second counteroffensive. That push, in 2023, was ultimately less successful. Ukraine did not gain as much ground as it had wanted, in part because of Russia’s use of drones.
That 2023 counteroffensive was a hard lesson, U.S. officials said. Russian drones attacked U.S.- and European-provided tanks and armored vehicles as they tried to navigate minefields.
After the counteroffensive, U.S. officials said they rapidly increased support to Ukrainian drone makers, building on Kyiv’s efforts to grow its own industry. In addition to financial aid, the Biden administration worked to build ties between American technology companies and Ukrainian drone makers.
Last fall, the Pentagon allocated $800 million to Ukraine’s drone production, which was used to purchase drone components and finance drone makers. When President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine visited the White House in September, President Biden said another $1.5 billion would be directed to Ukraine’s drone industry.
American officials said on Thursday that they believe the investments have made Ukraine’s drones more effective and deadly. They noted that Ukraine’s sea drones had destroyed a quarter of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, and that drones deployed on the front lines had helped slow Russia’s advances in eastern Ukraine.
Mr. Sullivan said the drive to build Ukraine’s drone industry had provided “invaluable lessons” that the Biden administration had started to integrate into America’s own defense industry.
Politics
DeSantis' chosen Rubio replacement Moody wants to tackle inflation, spending, border: 'Audit the Fed!'
Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, who is slated to become a U.S. senator, is calling for an audit of the Federal Reserve, pledging to vocally oppose government spending, and declaring that she will fight to bolster the border and remove individuals who enter the U.S. illegally.
With Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., poised to soon leave office to serve as Secretary of State in the new Trump administration, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Moody as his pick to replace Rubio in the U.S. Senate.
And with even some Democrats planning to support confirmation, Rubio is likely to sail through the confirmation vote.
“Here’s a priority of mine in the Senate: our inflation has been fueled by the Federal Reserve. We must audit the Fed!” Moody declared in a post on X.
DESANTIS ANNOUNCES CHOICE FOR SENATE APPOINTMENT AFTER RUBIO’S EXPECTED RESIGNATION
“As Florida’s next U.S. Senator, I will work tirelessly to reduce the bloat of Washington and speak out loudly against government spending,” she noted in another post. “Like we’ve done in Florida, this country needs to cut spending and get fiscally responsible. I look forward to working with DOGE, and I will work hard to leave the next generation of our country on a much stronger financial footing.”
When discussing her role in confirming judges and justices, she specifically mentioned Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
“As a former judge, I will take my role confirming judges and justices seriously to ensure that, like Justices Thomas and Alito, they share the values and concepts of law as our Founding Fathers understood them,” she said in a tweet. “I will work through the Senate confirmation process to ensure those who get confirmed are strong nominees and know that it is their duty to interpret the Constitution as it is written.”
WHO IS ASHLEY MOODY? MEET THE SENATE’S NEWEST MEMBER FROM FLORIDA
Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody responds to cheering supporters after Gov. Ron DeSantis, left, announced her appointment as U.S. senator to replace Marco Rubio, during a news conference at the Rosen Plaza Hotel in Orlando, Fla., on Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
Sharing Moody’s post, DeSantis called Alito and Thomas “the gold standard.”
“In the U.S. Senate, I will support President @realDonaldTrump and fight for legislation that strengthens the border, builds the wall, and removes those who entered unlawfully,” Moody noted in a tweet.
DESANTIS TOUTS FLORIDA’S ‘FUTURE WAY OF THINKING,’ VOWS STATE WILL ‘DO OUR DUTY’ TO HELP INCOMING TRUMP ADMIN
DeSantis responded, declaring, “Make Illegal Immigration Illegal Again.”
WASHINGTON — A historic uptick in migration during Joe Biden’s presidency led to attacks as he ran for reelection, with Donald Trump and fellow Republicans blaming Democrats for the swelling number of people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.
Now, after campaigning on promises to secure the border and deport undocumented immigrants, President-elect Trump is poised to take office Monday amid a steep drop in border crossings.
Here are five key facts about migration across the U.S.-Mexico border over the last several years.
1. Arrivals at the border are the lowest they’ve been since Trump left office
When Trump left office in January 2021, people were stopped at the southern border more than 78,000 times that month, according to figures from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. That’s compared with roughly 96,000 stops last month. The highest monthly total during the Biden administration was nearly 302,000 in December 2023, and Trump’s highest total was just over 144,000 in May 2019.
These figures include arrivals at land ports of entry, where asylum seekers wait for appointments to enter legally, as well as those caught crossing illegally elsewhere along the border. Figures from November and December showed, for the first time, more migrants being processed through ports of entry than those who were arrested after entering the U.S. illegally.
In June, the Biden administration began effectively blocking migrants from seeking asylum along the U.S. border with Mexico. The restrictions don’t apply to those who enter at official ports of entry or use other legal means.
For parts of last year, San Diego became the top destination for illegal crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border for the first time in decades. The change reflects how smuggling routes, which used to be consistent for many years, have begun to shift every few months since 2021. That’s in part because of the post-pandemic increase in global migration to the U.S.
The San Diego region saw 10,117 border arrests in December — the second-highest after the Rio Grande Valley in Texas — though that’s down by 70% from a year earlier.
2. There hasn’t been much of an increase in border arrivals ahead of Trump’s inauguration
In the weeks leading up to Trump’s inauguration, most regions across the border have seen little change in arrivals of migrants. But Chief Border Patrol Agent Gloria Chavez of the Rio Grande Valley Sector in south Texas, who posts local arrest numbers on social media every week, reported 1,206 migrant stops over the final weekend of December, and 1,276 the weekend before. That’s double the number in recent weeks of fewer than 600 arrests.
“It is the first quantitative indicator of an increase in migration since the U.S. election, which raised expectations — so far unmet — that many migrants might rush to enter the United States before Election Day,” Adam Isacson, director of defense oversight at the advocacy organization the Washington Office on Latin America, wrote in a recent newsletter.
That trend appeared to have waned in the new year, with Chavez reporting 669 arrests the weekend that ended Jan. 5 and 699 arrests the weekend that ended Jan. 12.
Isacson noted that in 2016, asylum seekers rushed to enter the U.S. before Trump began his first term. But border policies are different now, with Biden administration rules already preventing most people who enter illegally from qualifying for asylum.
“Their only hope is to not be apprehended,” he said. “Some people might be trying, and if they’re successful they won’t show up in the numbers.”
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow with the left-leaning American Immigration Council, said tens of thousands of migrants are waiting in Mexico.
“Today it is harder for migrants to make it to the border and seek asylum than at any point in modern U.S. history,” he said. “Despite this massively increased infrastructure at the border, the U.S. continues to remain, in the eyes of people around the world, a place of safety and security.”
3. The U.S. border used to draw mostly Mexican and Central American migrants. Now people from all over the world flock here
The U.S. has historically drawn migrants from its southern neighbor. Although Mexicans still make up the highest proportion of those seeking entry, arrivals of people from other countries have shot up over time. During Trump’s first term, people from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador flocked to the U.S. border due to instability in their home countries.
That started to change around 2019. Throughout Biden’s presidency, greater numbers of people began to arrive from Venezuela, Cuba and Colombia. People also came from farther away — Afghanistan, Ukraine and China.
The San Diego region has what is considered the most international border, drawing people from all over the world.
Chinese migrants in search of jobs and freedom from the repressive government there started arriving in record numbers — increasing from just 949 arrests in fiscal year 2022 to more than 37,000 last fiscal year. Republicans seized on the increase, painting it as a national security issue.
Numbers began to decrease last year after the Biden administration imposed asylum restrictions and Ecuador began requiring Chinese nationals to have a visa to fly there.
4. Immigrant detention has ramped back up since COVID-19 decreases
The government’s operation for detaining people who violate immigration laws has seen wild swings in recent years. During Trump’s first term, the population detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement reached historic highs of more than 55,000 people.
As COVID-19 spread through lockups, killing detainees, courts ordered some immigrant detention centers to reduce their populations. The detention population reached a low of about 13,000 people in February 2021, the month after Biden took office. (The Adelanto ICE Detention Facility east of Los Angeles has remained under a COVID-era court order that prevented new detainees, dwindling the population of the nearly 2,000-bed facility to just two people.)
As of Dec. 29, more than 39,000 people (most of whom have no criminal record) are being held in civil immigrant detention facilities, according to TRAC, a nonpartisan data research organization. That number has remained fairly steady for the last year, generally fluctuating between 35,000 and just under 40,000 since late 2023.
Numbers are widely expected to increase again after Trump takes office, as he works to make good on his promise of mass deportations.
5. Historic arrivals under the Biden administration added to the already enormous backlog in immigration court
Immigrants placed in deportation proceedings can plead their case before an immigration judge. With historic arrivals of migrants under the Biden administration, the immigration court backlog now has more than 3.7 million pending cases, according to TRAC.
Biden inherited an already backlogged immigration court system with 1.3 million cases. When Trump assumed office in 2017, just over 542,000 cases were pending.
In fiscal year 2024, immigration courts closed more than 900,000 cases — the most of any single year. New cases have fallen sharply as fewer immigrants are processed at the border.
Los Angeles County has nearly 115,000 cases, the second-highest after Miami-Dade County. Experts say the backlog can’t be eliminated without funding hundreds more immigration judges and support staff, as well as systemic reforms.
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