If the government is going to spend your hard earned dollars, it must ensure that they go only to living and lawful Americans.
— Brendan Carr (@BrendanCarrFCC) January 27, 2026
Seems obvious, but …
1. A new Inspector General advisory found that providers took nearly $5 million in federal dollars to provide phone and… pic.twitter.com/GUTe7hjrA4
If the government is going to spend your hard earned dollars, it must ensure that they go only to living and lawful Americans.
Seems obvious, but …
1. A new Inspector General advisory found that providers took nearly $5 million in federal dollars to provide phone and Internet service to over 116,000 dead people. And this IG advisory looked at just three states.
2. Gavin Newsom’s California was by far the worst offender of these opt-out states. On Governor Newsom’s watch, California allowed over 94,000 dead people to be used to obtain federal dollars for phone and Internet service. The FCC recently revoked California’s authority to run its own verification process.
3. The FCC’s federal Lifeline program, which spends nearly $1 billion every year, does not have adequate checks in place to ensure that only lawful beneficiaries obtain those subsidies. There has been a recent rise in non-citizens fraudulently obtaining social security numbers. And the current verification process does not do a good enough job at preventing duplicative subscriptions and similar abuse.
So today I circulated to my FCC colleagues a proposal to strengthen the integrity of the federal Lifeline program.The Commission will be voting on this proposal in 3 weeks.
Replies