Elon Musk’s Starlink is muscling in on Joe Biden’s rural internet initiative. “What rural internet initiative?” you might ask. Good question.

The Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program was introduced as part of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 to bring internet access to America’s unconnected households, 80 percent of which are in rural areas. Administration officials likened the program to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1936 Rural Electrification Act, a fundamental part of the New Deal that delivered electricity to rural America. Like the electrification program before it, BEAD’s purpose was to bridge critical infrastructure gaps through massive public investment and create good jobs in the process.

A major difference, however, is that Roosevelt was one of the most publicly visible presidents in American history, ceaselessly crisscrossing the country and famously using emerging media to promote, explain, and foster buy-in for New Deal policies. Biden, by contrast, was profoundly press averse. By his fourth year in office, Biden had given just 164 press conferences and interviews, compared to Barack Obama’s 570 and Donald Trump’s 468.