Our top story: “They’re not going to know the four-and-a-half, three-and-a-half-hour standoff that happened. They’re not going to know the words that were used that night. They’re not going to know the things that I went through, nor my family went through. Like, nobody will.” https://www.texasobserver.org/mental-health-crisis-rural-texas/
The Texas Observer · 'This Town Has Nothing': Rural Texas' Mental Healthcare CrisisAgainst long odds, Sweetwater’s public hospital recruited counselors to help address a wave of mental health crises in rural Texas—yet struggles continue.
![Sub-heading and text:
Director of federal broadband program quits
The director of a massive Department of Commerce program to improve rural broadband access has quit the government over concerns that the agency would delay the initiative to lavish Starlink with federal funds. In a departure email last week, Evan Feinman, who led the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program, directed his ire at Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. “Stranding all or part of rural America with worse internet so that we can make the world’s richest man even richer is yet another in a long line of betrayals by Washington,” he wrote. Feinman urged the Trump administration against changing BEAD “to benefit [satellite] technology that delivers slower speeds at higher costs to the household paying the bill.”
Lutnick recently said he would overturn BEAD guidelines prioritizing wired internet providers over satellite providers. But the change, according to Feinman, will lead to complications for multiple states on the verge of starting their BEAD-funded projects. “These more-sweeping changes will only cause delays,” he wrote. “Shovels could already be in the ground in three states, and they could be in the ground in half the country by the summer without the proposed changes to project selection.”](https://assets.newsie.social/media_attachments/files/114/207/685/993/738/557/original/ce003ef6b7af87c9.png "Sub-heading and text:
Director of federal broadband program quits
The director of a massive Department of Commerce program to improve rural broadband access has quit the government over concerns that the agency would delay the initiative to lavish Starlink with federal funds. In a departure email last week, Evan Feinman, who led the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program, directed his ire at Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. “Stranding all or part of rural America with worse internet so that we can make the world’s richest man even richer is yet another in a long line of betrayals by Washington,” he wrote. Feinman urged the Trump administration against changing BEAD “to benefit [satellite] technology that delivers slower speeds at higher costs to the household paying the bill.”
Lutnick recently said he would overturn BEAD guidelines prioritizing wired internet providers over satellite providers. But the change, according to Feinman, will lead to complications for multiple states on the verge of starting their BEAD-funded projects. “These more-sweeping changes will only cause delays,” he wrote. “Shovels could already be in the ground in three states, and they could be in the ground in half the country by the summer without the proposed changes to project selection.”")
Canon EOS R6 Mark II, Canon RF 35mm f/1.8 MACRO IS STM 
35mm, f/8.0, 1/125s, ISO 160
