The massive federal effort to expand internet access to every home in the U.S. took a major step forward on Friday with the announcement of $930 million in grants to shore up connections in remote parts of Alaska, rural Texas and dozens of other places where significant gaps in connectivity persist.

The so-called middle mile grants, announced by the Department of Commerce, are meant to create large-scale networks that will enable retail broadband providers to link subscribers to the internet. Department officials likened the role of the middle mile — the midsection of the infrastructure necessary to enable internet access, composed of high-capacity fiber lines carrying huge amounts of data at very high speeds — to how the interstate highway system forged connections between communities.

"These networks are the workhorses carrying large amounts of data over very long distances," said Mitch Landrieu, the White House’s infrastructure coordinator, in a media Zoom call. "They’re the ones that are bridging the gap between the larger networks and the last mile connections, from tribal lands to underserved rural and remote areas to essential institutions like hospitals, schools, libraries and major businesses."

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The grants were awarded to a cross-section of state government agencies, tribal governments and telephone and electric cooperatives. They are intended to trigger the laying of 12,000 miles of new fiber through 35 states and Puerto Rico.

The largest grant, of nearly $89 million, was awarded to an Alaska-based telecommunications company that hopes to build a fiber network through a remote section of the state where an estimated 55% of people lack access to basic internet.

The expansion is one of several initiatives pushed through Congress by President Joe Biden's administration to expand high-speed internet connectivity to the entire country.

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"The Middle Mile program is a force multiplier in our efforts to connect everyone in America," Commerce Assistant Secretary Alan Davidson said. "These grants will help build the foundation of networks that will in turn connect every home in the country to affordable, reliable, high-speed Internet service."

The grants were set in motion by the $65 billion allocated by Congress for broadband as part of the $1 trillion infrastructure measure Biden, a Democrat, signed into law in 2021. Most of that money, $42.5 billion, will be distributed to states as part of the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment, or BEAD, program partly based on new federal maps identifying areas that aren’t connected.

States’ allotments from BEAD are expected to be announced at the end of this month. States will then run their own programs to identify recipients that would then build out last mile networks to unserved communities.

Winners of the middle mile grants announced Friday will have up to five years to complete their projects once they receive those funds, though a one-year extension may be requested under certain conditions.

Irish Green Party Sen. Pauline O'Reilly defended a controversial bill that could jail citizens for merely possessing material that criticizes gender identity.

The Irish Criminal Justice Bill purportedly targets "hate speech," but some critics have compared it to the concept of punishing people for "thought crime," a term popularized by George Orwell's dystopian novel "1984." 

The text of the "Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill 2022," notes that a person can be imprisoned if they "prepare or possess" material that is "likely to incite violence or hatred against a person or a group of persons on account of their protected characteristics," one of which being "gender" identity. 

The Catholic Herald observed in past months that the legislation could lead to criminalization of Catholic teaching and religious expression in general, "The Catholic Church has long-standing objective positions on issues, which, if they are to be uttered in public (and that may include the pulpit), may cause the priest or other adherent to be made subject to prosecution."

O'Reilly defended the bill in a speech on Tuesday as she debated its merits with her peers, even as she condemned some of their rhetoric on "gender or sexual identities." After suggesting social media has "fueled hatred" and revealed the "dirty, filthy, underbelly of hatred in Irish society," O'Reilly argued that hate speech legislation is merely another necessary law to restrict freedom for the "common good."

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"When one thinks about it, all law and all legislation is about the restriction of freedom. This is exactly what we are doing here," O’Reilly argued. "We are restricting freedom but we are doing it for the common good."

She then suggested that people should not be free to disagree with people’s identities, warning this "discomfort" is a severe hazard.

She continued, "If a person's views on other people's identities make their lives unsafe and insecure, and cause them such deep discomfort that they cannot live in peace, our job as legislators is to restrict those freedoms for the common good."

"One cannot do and say whatever one likes in our society, which is a society governed by laws," she added. "This is very fundamental to a legislative system. It should be one of the very fundamentals for any legislators who sit in this Chamber that they understand what we do is restrict freedoms."

The senator also addressed "gender" directly, claiming that young people in society "are absolutely shocked that we are even having any kind of conversation about what other people's gender is." She claimed that society has had an issue "down through generations," where people "have been fearful about walking outside their door because they are attacked verbally," a process she said that "restricts their freedoms."

She framed the debate about this legislation instead as a debate over "whether we can move forward toward a kinder society."

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Earlier in the debate, Sen. Rónán Mullen noted the hazards of punishing people for questioning something as hotly debated as gender ideology.

"There are about 105 genders listed on the Internet, including agender, acegender, androgyne, apogender, astronomique, cookie gender, gendercat, fluid queer, one that I cannot politely render here, hyperfluid, etc," he noted. "All of this is now being landed in the middle of a criminal law bill where somebody could be attacked for being a hater for stating in robust, but necessarily robust, terms that not only is this nonsense but it is dangerous nonsense that puts children at risk when it is imported into the curriculum of schools."

He followed by listing a series of scenarios that possibly could land a person afoul of the potential law.

"Will mocking memes be tolerated? Will robust campaigning by parents against inappropriate school curricula be allowed?" he asked. "Will carrying a placard stating ‘Men cannot breastfeed’ warrant a hate speech investigation or up to five years' imprisonment, a lifelong label as a criminal hater and all of the stigma and life limitation that goes with that? Nobody actually knows."