{"id":382288,"date":"2026-07-22T11:41:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T11:41:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/382288\/"},"modified":"2026-07-22T11:41:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T11:41:11","slug":"texas-grants-to-elon-musks-starlink-face-scrutiny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/382288\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas grants to Elon Musk\u2019s Starlink face scrutiny"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>AUSTIN \u2014 After Texas lawmakers scrutinized $110 million in government grants made to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/topic\/elon-musk\/\" data-link=\"native\" class=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Elon Musk<\/a>\u2019s satellite internet company, Starlink, the state\u2019s top legislative leaders called for an audit of the program Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>A <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ltgov.texas.gov\/2026\/07\/21\/lt-gov-dan-patrick-and-speaker-dustin-burrows-issue-joint-statement-on-audit-of-broadband-development-office\/\" data-link=\"native\" class=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">joint statement<\/a> from House Speaker Dustin Burrows and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick underscored concerns about federal grants intended to expand broadband access in rural Texas. The federal government allocated about $3.3 billion for the effort, supplemented by $500 million from the state. Less than half of that funding has been spent.<\/p>\n<p>Burrows and Patrick said \u201cit is critical the office\u2019s performance and operations meet the expectations of the Texas Legislature and the people of this state,\u201d the joint statement said.<\/p>\n<p>Democratic Texas attorney general candidate Nathan Johnson, a Dallas state senator, recently <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/news\/politics\/article\/democratic-ag-candidate-targets-musk-grants-22339631.php\" data-link=\"native\" class=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">called for a Senate review<\/a> into awards made to Starlink.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The Texas Broadband Development Office chose the SpaceX subsidiary for roughly 99% of a certain portion of the grants, despite a competing proposal from Amazon that came in at one-third of the price.<\/p>\n<p>The comptroller\u2019s office, which oversees the broadband development office, did not immediately return a message seeking comment.<\/p>\n<p>Under questioning from Johnson at a June meeting of the Senate Business and Commerce Committee, director of the broadband office, Bryant Clayton, said Amazon\u2019s grant applications were deficient.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe gave an opportunity to another provider to cure the deficiencies, and they disregarded those instructions,\u201d Clayton said of the competing Amazon proposals at the meeting.<\/p>\n<p>Starlink, a SpaceX subsidiary, did not return an email seeking comment.<\/p>\n<p>The grant program appeared to be upended after President Donald Trump changed the rules to eliminate preferences for specific types of broadband connections, allowing Starlink to compete for grants on the same terms as fiber optic providers.<\/p>\n<p>Starlink currently dominates the market for low Earth orbit satellite internet service. Johnson argued the outsized award was steered to Musk because of his Republican political connections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AUSTIN \u2014 After Texas lawmakers scrutinized $110 million in government grants made to Elon Musk\u2019s satellite internet company,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":382289,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-382288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/382289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}