Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

28. Federal Communications Commission · Notable

Fully fund the federal rip and replace program

Done

852 28. Federal Communications Commission

“A new Administration should ensure that the program is fully funded and should look first at repurposing and applying unused COVID-era emergency funds for this purpose.”

What has happened

  1. Done

    The Bureau's Seventh Report to Congress records the program running with "full funding" — the full amount of reasonable and supported cost estimates submitted by approved applicants — and a new completion deadline; $1,335,186,627.13 in reimbursement claims had been approved and disbursed or were being disbursed as of 2025-11-30.

  2. Done

    The Commission borrowed the full $3.08 billion authorized by section 5404(c) of the Spectrum and Secure Technology and Innovation Act of 2024 (P.L. 118-159, enacted 2024-12-23, which also raised the program's expenditure ceiling from $1.9 billion to $4.98 billion) and the Wireline Competition Bureau made the money available to recipients by Public Notice DA 25-342. That closes the roughly $3 billion shortfall the Quote names. The money came from Treasury borrowing repaid out of AWS-3 auction proceeds through a new Spectrum Auction Trust Fund, not from repurposed COVID-era emergency funds as the Quote suggested.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • The authorizing statute is P.L. 118-159, Title LIV (the Spectrum and Secure Technology and Innovation Act of 2024), §§ 5403-5405, read at govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-118publ159/html/PLAW-118publ159.htm. §5404(c) let the Commission borrow up to $3,080,000,000 from the Treasury within 90 days of enactment; §5405 struck “$1,900,000,000” from 47 U.S.C. 1603(k) and inserted “$4,980,000,000”; §5403 required the AWS-3 auction whose proceeds repay the borrowing through the new Spectrum Auction Trust Fund. It is not attached as Evidence because it was enacted on 2024-12-23, before the evidence window, and the gate rejects pre-window Evidence dates.
  • The authorizing statute predates the evidence window by four weeks, so the question was whether anything happened inside it. It did: the borrowing and the allocation to recipients are both in-window executive acts, and DA 25-342 is the document that actually put the money in reach of the carriers doing the removal work. pre_satisfied would be wrong here — the ask is that the program be fully funded, and on 2025-01-20 it was authorized but not funded.
  • The Quote’s preferred means (repurposing unused COVID-era emergency funds) was not used. Recorded in the note rather than as a discount on the Status: the object of the ask is full funding, and it was delivered.
  • The AWS-3 auction that repays the borrowing is Auction 113, run inside the window (competitive bidding rules 2025-14725, 2025-08-04; auction procedures 2025-23785, 2025-12-23).
  • No litigation touching the program appears in the Corpus’s bulk CourtListener dockets or opinions through 2026-06-30.
Action
expand
Object
Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program
ID
2204