A look back at fracking, from a leading reporter on the beat; environmental questions remain as industry shifts

Mike Soraghan started out with Energy and Environment News, which was bought by Politico, so now he writes for both. His latest opus is a look back at the history of horizontal hydraulic fracturing of deep shale, better known as "fracking," which has had a big impact on parts of rural America. Soragahn has covered it for more than a decade.

Mike Soraghan (Politico photo)

"Shale promised riches, and in some instances, it delivered, saving farms," he writes for Politico Magazine. "Fracking birthed tales of instant 'shale-ionnaires' and oilfield strippers tucking four-figure handfuls of cash in their garter belts for a night’s work. And it also fundamentally changed the United States’ position in the global energy economy, in ways that have been on prominent display over the first half of 2026.

"But a lot of the people you’d expect to profit from fracking . . . were instead crushed by it. And drilling wells could wreak environmental havoc, triggering earthquakes, ruining farmland, polluting airways and contaminating household water to the point it could catch fire. In short: Fracking rewrote the book on American energy, globally and domestically. . . . Today, even if you walk everywhere or drive an electric vehicle, fracking is responsible for keeping your grocery and electric bills down."

But now, "That tumultuous chapter is coming to an end, just as a war-driven energy crisis offers — or threatens — to rewrite the script once again. The irony is that the U.S. is outdoing the petro-kingdoms of the Middle East — just as the world is accelerating its turn toward renewable energy. The easy oil is getting harder to find. Even as production continues to climb, the rate of growth is slowing. Automation is replacing oil workers the way it did coal miners. Environmental protests have moved on to data centers. America’s wildcatters are again starting to scan the horizon for new discoveries abroad. Even Michael Steele, the former Republican Party chair who coined the term, 'Drill, Baby, Drill,' thinks the phrase has outlived its usefulness."

Environmental questions remain, especially "the long-term impact of pumping chemicals from the nearly 2 million fracked wells — questions that may not be answered for years or decades," Soraghan writes. Environmentalists are mostly against fracking shale, but Christopher Knittel, the associate dean for Climate and Stability at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told Soraghan that greenhouse-gas emissions have been cut mainly by power plants’ switch from coal to natural gas. More broadly, Knittel worries that the U.S. backoff from electric vehicles means the American industry could be “islanded off” from the rest of the world. "Perhaps the model for the United States’ energy future isn’t Saudi Arabia, but an actual island," Soragahn concludes.

Developers of data centers target rural America but face widespread opposition, pushback among local residents

Massive high-impact data centers are threatening to invade rural America and 

developers are facing growing opposition from residents. (Geoffrey Moffett, Unsplash)

BURGIN, Ky. — Residents of this small Mercer County town are up in arms over their city council’s refusal to accept public comments against a proposed data center. Two Lexington television stations and social media posts from those in attendance report that the council ignored a raucous overflow crowd at the local school and approved the first reading of an ordinance annexing enough land to double the size of the city to accommodate the center. A second reading was scheduled to push through the annexation. Burgin has no planning and zoning laws, and the council can respond to annexation requests from property owners.

The Burgin controversy is among the most recent in rural America’s battles over the construction of data centers, the workhorses of the expanding digital age. Brookings reports that increased demand for the energy to operate artificial intelligence (AI) has rural communities “weighing promised economic gains against short-and long-term costs related to land-use change, water demand, electrical grids, and public services.”

In the Kansas Reflector, columnist Max McCoy shared the story of a late June public hearing in Emporia that also was heavily attended by opponents of a proposed center there. Activists petitioned the city to “adopt an ordinance banning high-impact data centers or to put the measure to a public vote.” The headline to his column urges politicians to “take heed” of a growing national coalition against the centers.

And in Triple Pundit Tina Casey says the issue is pitting the ultra-rich against ordinary Americans and is quickly becoming a midterm election issue. She cites a June Ipsos poll that claims only 14 percent of Americans would welcome a data center to their community.

8 rural-related stories win Sigma Delta Chi awards, including reports on ICE, inequalities, firefighters, environment, etc.

Illustration from ProPublica story about Hurricane Helene and Yancey County, North Carolina

Eight rural-related stories were among winners of Sigma Delta Chi Awards for 2025, announced Thursday night by the Society of Professional Journalists (formerly Sigma Delta Chi) and the SPJ Foundation.

Investigate TV+, a unit of Gray Television, and KFF Health News won the award for broadcast coverage of inequalities in society with a package of three stories called "Dead Zone," explaining that millions of Americans "live sicker, shorter lives in hundreds of rural counties where doctor shortages are the worst and poor internet connections mean little or no access to telehealth services."

The award for public-service radio reporting in small markets went to North Country Public Radio of upstate New York for its report on the ICE raid on a dairy farm, which led to the release of a motherf and three children who were in a detention center awating deportation. "This issue is one that's forcing dairy farmers to sell their herds," the judges wrote. Here's the summary of the coverage and reaction.

Jennifer Berry Hawes, Cassandra Garibay and Mollie Simon of ProPublica won for "Helene's Unheard Warnings" in the category of non-deadline reporting in a publication with a print circulation of more than 40,000 or an online-only piublication. Their package of stories spotlighted the lack of evacuation orders, the hurricane's devastation and survival stories in Yancey County, North Carolina.

Hannah Dreier of The New York Times won the Public Service in Journalism award for her stories on the suffering of firefighters sent into fires by the U.S. Forest Service without warnings of toxic smoke and gases, and with a ban on wearing masks.

Dave Biscobing of KNXV in Phoenix won the large-market TV feature reporting award for his investigation of the sheriff in Prescott, Ariz., pop. 46,000, and "one man’s fight to prove self-defense against a top small-town fire official," as the report describes it.

The award for TV feature in small markets went to Kevin Kelly of KLRT in Little Rock for his story about a family in Vilonia, Ark., who saw their home and classic-car collection devastated by a tornado that killed nine people and injured dozens more in the town of 4,500. They restored the four cars a second time.  

Elise Plunk of the Louisiana Illuminator, Eva Tesfaye of WWNO in New Orleans and Chas Sisk of the Mississippi River Basin Ag and Water Desk won an award for a story on how an accidental delta taught scientists how to rebuilt wetlands. They won in the category for science or environment reporting in a publication with a print circulation up to 40,000 or an affiliated website.

The broadcast award in that category also went to a Louisiana story, "The True Cost of Fertilizer,"
by Garrett Hazelwood and Eric Schmid of "Sea Change" at WRKF in Baton Rouge and WWNO, with support from the Mississippi River Basin Ag and Water Desk, based at the University of Missouri.

The awards program also included announcement of the top Mark of Excellence Award for College Journalism, which went to a rural story: "Broadband’s broken promise: How federal failures and funding fights keep Native and Black farmers offline," done by Melissa Dai of Northwestern University during her summer internship with Investgate Midwest. The story had won the MOE award for investigative reporting, then was judged to be the top piece of college journalism in 2025.

Rural areas lead decline in Obamacare policies' enrollment

As enrollment in Obamacare health-insurance policies declines nationwide, rural areas are leading the fleeing, Sarah Melotte reports for The Daily Yonder and its Rural Index.

The Affordable Care Act policies have become less affordable because Congress did not renew premium subsidies that were implemented during the Covid-19 pandemic and extended in the Biden administration.    "People who are no longer eligible for these subsidies have accounted for a disproportionate share of health insurance coverage drops, resulting in increases in monthly premiums for nearly all consumers." Melotte reports.

Melotte looked at the 30 states that used the national marketplace platform for Obamacare policies and found a 12 percent drop in rural counties, defined as those outside metropolitan areas, "representing 29,000 consumers," she writes. "Small metropolitan counties saw a drop of 11%, representing about 154,000 consumers, the next largest decrease in enrollment among all of the county types."

(Charts by Sarah Melotte, The Rural Index)

New study helps explain why rural Americans die younger: chronic ills, food deserts, health-care access, outmigration

Starting in the 1990s, life expectancy in rural areas fell below that in urban areas, and "The gap keeps growing . . . mainly among prime working-age adults (ages 25–54), which has important implications for rural health, productivity, and economic development," says a new study from the University of Illinois and the Agriculture Department, which tries to explain why. 

It "points to the structural, economic, and retail environments of the counties they live in," writes C.J. Miller of Hoosier Ag Today. The increasing rural death rate is increasingly driven by chronic illnesses such as "heart disease and diabetes, rather than external crises like suicides or drug overdoses. Crucially, the study found that these health disparities largely vanish when accounting for specific county-level characteristics, suggesting that the 'place' itself dictates survival. . . . when the researchers ran linear regression models that adjusted for the local environment—including the density of grocery stores, recreational facilities, local labor force participation, and per-capita income—the statistical significance of a person’s “rural” status virtually disappeared."

Past studies have usually pointed to personal choices; this one looks at the assets (or lack of them) in rural counties that contribute to health and wellness, as Miller describes:

• Food and retail deserts: Rural counties often feature a higher concentration of fast-food establishments relative to full-service grocery stores, making nutritional compliance a geographic challenge.
• Health care access: Decades of rural hospital closures and a persistent shortage of physicians mean chronic conditions like cardiovascular disease are frequently caught later and managed poorly.
• Socioeconomic stress: Lower personal income and suppressed labor force participation rates contribute to an elevated “allostatic load”—the medical term for the cumulative biological wear-and-tear caused by chronic stress.
• Digital divide: Modern health literacy increasingly relies on a robust information environment. A lack of high-speed broadband internet in rural areas limits access to telehealth services and health education.

"The study also touched on the complicated role of internal migration, noting that urban centers frequently attract healthier, upwardly mobile individuals from rural communities — a phenomenon known as the 'healthy migrant hypothesis,' leaving behind a rural population that is older, poorer, and less biologically equipped to withstand structural neglect," Miller reports.

The study was done by researchers at UI Urbana-Champaign and the USDA's Economic Research Service and published in the peer-reviewed journal Economics & Human Biology. It used "restricted-use files from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey spanning 1999 to March 2020. This allowed them to link individual health metrics, including objective laboratory indicators like blood-drawn cholesterol levels and glycohemoglobin (blood sugar tracking), with the specific federal county codes of the participants," Miller reports.

Opinion: Local newspapers' lawsuit against AI companies is a righteous battle against people stealing their work

Huge AI companies are stealing the work of others, especially news organizations, as they train their AI systems to make them more reliable -- and more valuable, Brier Dudley writes in an opinion piece for The Seattle Times. 

Dudley, who is editor of the Times' Free Press Initiative, writes: "It’s hard to keep track of everyone suing AI companies for stealing their work.Those gleaming AI platforms, the costliest computer systems ever built, are peddling more stolen goods than a seedy pawnshop."

But it's a June 24 lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft by a group of 35 publishers representing about 400 newspapers that has Dudley championing the need for journalists to stand up against these companies. This is just the latest lawsuit filed by news organizations against AI companies. The New York Times has spent nearly $30 million since 2023 on a copyright infringement lawsuit it filed. 

Dudley writes: "Even when AI companies began paying a few large papers and wire services, small papers were left out. Yet they are often providing their communities’ only local reporting, making their work valuable to companies purporting to be universal sources of current knowledge."

News organizations previously were hurt -- often unfairly -- by having their content taken by others in the digital world. Dudley hopes this time there will be a different result. 

He writes: "I’m glad to see these publishers fighting back. Perhaps they won’t get shafted like the previous generation was during the rise of search and social media."

Entries for Best in Rural Writing Contest can be submitted by Sept. 1; fiction and nonfiction entries are encouraged

Entries for the 2026 Best in Rural Writing Contest can be submitted by Sept. 1 for a chance to win up to $500 and be considered for publication in a future Best in Rural Writing anthology. 

Submissions can be entered in the fiction and nonfiction categories, and can be up to 7,000 words. 

Submission information is available through the The Milk House, a rural writing collective that features stories, essays and poems on rural subjects.

"Contest submissions may be previously published, and will also be read within 3-4 months of submitting with an eye towards publication on the site (themilkhouse.org), as well as the forthcoming Best in Rural Writing print anthologies," according to the website.

The first place winner will receive $500, and second place will receive $200. 

If you have questions about entering the contest, please contact Ryan Dennis at RyanDennis@themilkhouse.org.

Regenerative-ag farmers had to persuade Trump to sign order over opposition from Farm Bureau boss in Oval Office

Cattle farmer Will Harris shared this photo of the meeting by White House photographer Parick Witty.

"A group of farmers walked into the Oval Office last week expecting to smile as the president signed an executive order supporting the popular farming practice called regenerative agriculture, a method cheered by the Make America Healthy Again movement as an alternative to pesticides. Instead they were greeted by a virtual buzzsaw as President Donald Trump also brought in a top advocate who opposed the policy, prompting a live debate between top advisers, Cabinet secretaries and farmers," reports Politico's Cheyenne Haslett.

Zippy Duvall (Farm Bureau photo)

After an hour of back-and-forth between the farmers, the president, and American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall, Trump signed the executive order, "which directs government agencies to promote holistic farming practices that rely on natural land rehabilitation over chemicals," Haslett reports. Also in the room were Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, who supported the order.

“I thought the farmers … were going in there just for a photo opportunity,” Jonathan Lundgren, a former Agriculture Department scientist who runs a regenerative farm in South Dakota, told Haslett. He and two other farmers said Duvall told Trump "he was concerned that the order would insinuate a negative impact from pesticide use and said he would not be able to advocate for Trump on behalf of farmers if he signed it," Haslett reports.

A Farm Bureau spokesman denied that Duvall said he would forsake Trump. "Trump went back and forth with Duvall, asking him what he opposed, to which Duvall said he hadn’t been able to fully read the order, the three farmers said. Trump eventually told him he didn’t think the order posed a threat to farmers," Haslett reports.

Regenerative farmer Rick Clark of Indiana told Haslett, “President Trump was just making sure that he had everyone’s opinion and was given all the information before he signed that document,” Clark said. “Was there passion in the room? Yeah, most definitely passion.” Cattle farmer Will Harris of Georgia shared on his blog what he told Trump.

Earlier that day, the Supreme Court shielded Bayer, maker of the weedkiller Roundup, from "thousands of lawsuits that claim the company failed to warn people about the health risks associated with its products," Haslett notes. Lundgren told Trump that families were being “poisoned by these chemical companies and didn’t have recourse anymore.” He "found the president to be concerned," Haslett reports. "Trump turned to Rollins and Duvall, who explained the ruling to him, Lundgren said."

Kennedy and senior adviser Calley Means "framed the ruling as a black eye to MAHA, two of the farmers said, and Kennedy said the executive order on regenerative agriculture would be an important part of repairing relations with the MAHA supporters," Haslett reports.

Bats help farmers by controlling the insect population, but many bat species are in danger of extinction

                                                                              Photo by James Wainscoat for Unsplash

Despite fears many people have about bats, they provide a lot of benefits to society, especially farmers. 

“There was a study some years ago that estimated that insect pest control provided by bats, the economic value of that was over $8 billion,” Alex Silvis, the endangered species coordinator for the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources, told Eric Douglas for a report by West Virginia Public Broadcasting. “It is a significant benefit to have bats for just insect control alone” -- which protects many crops.

Bats are in serious danger, however. According to Douglas' report: "In North America, more than 50% of all bat species have a “moderate to very high risk of extinction” in the next 15 years" because of diseases, pesticides and climate change. 

Douglas reports: "To learn more about bat populations, researchers must first find their caves. Even when they live within earshot of a paved road, getting to their front porch takes some work."

Silvis is among those researchers, and he spends time hiking into hard-to-reach places to identify where the bats live and provide estimated counts of the population.  

“The ecosystem is incredibly linked to one another in very complex ways,” John Moredock,
of the West Virginia Department of Agriculture, told Douglas. “One small change has big implications across many different areas of an ecosystem, many that are hard to predict.

Rural hospital CEOs cite their biggest concerns -- staffing, ever-changing government policies and tech challenges

CEOs at rural hospitals say "fast-advancing technology, ever-changing government policies and staffing shortages top the list of concerns" they face today, according to a report by Jim Massey for Farm Progress. 

According to the article, rural hospitals "often struggle because they tend to care for an older population, and federal Medicare reimbursement doesn’t cover the actual cost of care."

In addition, it's hard to hire and retain enough nurses, and staffing shortages can lead to higher stress and burnout among existing employees. 

Massey reports, "Many rural hospitals operate on razor-thin margins, which has prompted some facilities to move away from services such as maternity care or dialysis. 

"A total of 146 rural hospitals closed or stopped providing inpatient services from 2005 to 2023 in the U.S., according to the Economic Research Service, requiring rural residents to drive farther for their basic healthcare needs."

According to Massey's report, "Rural hospital officials say there is considerable uncertainty when it comes to the future of their organizations, yet they remain optimistic." 

“With large health systems, you can get stuck in the mud, but in rural healthcare, we get things done,” said Dan Rohrbach, CEO of Southwest Health in Platteville, Wis. “We can see things change in real time. We get to see that happen every day.” 

Rural journalists can apply for funding to attend Radically Rural Summit; deadline is July 12

Journalists who work in rural newsrooms are can apply for funding to attend this year's Radically Rural Summit, scheduled for Oct. 6-8 in Keene, New Hampshire. 

The deadline to apply for funding, which includes lodging, admission to the summit and a stipend for travel expenses, is Sunday, July 12. The application is available here. 

Radically Rural identifies itself as a "grassroots movement founded in Keene, NH, that aims to amplify collective rural impact by connecting folks with each other and with ideas," including an annual summit. 

This year's summit includes a community journalism track of sessions on Oct. 7. 

If you have questions, please contact Cecily Weisburgh at cweisburgh@keenesentinel.com or Emily Lytle at lytle@opencampus.org. 

Ruralites worry most about data centers' impact on electric rates; urbanites join in concern about use of water and land

Results are from a national poll of 1,000 people.

Rural Americans are more concered than their urban and suburban neihbors about the proliferation of data centers needed for the computing for artificial intelligence, according to the latest Gardner Food and Agricultural Policy Survey by agricultural economists at the University of Illinois and Purdue University.

Rural residents' greatest worry is that data centers will raise the cost of electricity. More than half in the poll said they are very worred about it. They are also concerned about overuse of water (but slightly less than urban residents are) and data centers' use of agriculatural land (but only slightly more than urban residents).

For a larger version of any image, click on it.

The poll indicates that rural residents' "greatest concerns focus on the impacts that most directly affect their personal finances—particularly rising energy costs," the authors write. "While these individual-level concerns were significant, community leaders must take a broader perspective. In addition to the consumer impacts, they must also balance broader implications, including planning for future energy demand and infrastructure capacity, managing public finance and tax implications, evaluating opportunity costs relative to alternative land uses, and addressing land-use planning and zoning issues, among others. . . . Local leaders must better understand these potential issues so that they can make more informed decisions about siting data centers in their community and ask the right questions."

Data centers "can generate significant property tax revenue," but that can be reduced by tax incentives offered by state and local governments. "Not all data centers are the same, and the employment benefits of data centers vary, but the jobs impacts are often overstated," the authors write, citing recent research. "Many unknowns remain about the full impacts associated with data center growth and expansion.. . . In addition to the greater demands on energy generation and transmission, these developments will also impact water usage, wastewater discharge, and land use. Additionally, communities must also consider how these developments will affect air quality, noise pollution, and the economic trade-offs associated with data center development."

The Pew Research Center says 87 percent of data centers are in urban areas, "but 67 percent of planned facilities are slated for rural communities," the authors write. "Moreover, 39 percent of planned data centers are in counties that currently have none . As these developments become more rural, data centers will increasingly affect farmland, as well as rural electricity and water systems. 

Here's an earlier Rural Blog item with story ideas and resources for reporting on data centers. Penn State has a list of common questions for communities to ask.

A new way to hit the hay: Camp on a farm

There's a new form of agri-tourism: Farms are using their pastures and parking lots for commercial camping, Ashley Stimpson reports for Offrange, which bills it as "a new way to hit the hay."

Several start-ups specialize in connecting farms with people looking for campsites. One is Harvest Hosts, which also connects campers with vineyards and breweries. "In lieu of a site fee, guests are required to make a minimum purchase of $30 from the business where they’re bunking — a bottle of wine, a bag of apples, maybe a gunny sack of pecans," Stimpson reports. "The host can charge a small fee for electricity or water hook-ups." Other firms include Hipcamp, Harvest Hosts, The Dyrt and Farmstay.

The demand for campsites is increasing, Stimpson notes: "More than 53 percent of campers nationwide had trouble finding an available campsite in 2025. Five years earlier, that number was only 11 percent."

Chaffee County, Colorado, has the nation's first ordinance governing commercial camping on farmland, "crafted with input from groups like the Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Trust, the U.S. Forest Service, and local recreation outfitters," Stimpson reports. "When it was adopted at the end of 2024, more than 250 Chaffee County landowners became eligible to apply for a permit, and now stand to make anywhere from $5 thousand to $25 thousand in additional income, according to internal data provided by Hipcamp, which advocated for the legislation." So far, though, only a few ranchers have applied for or obtained permits.

Floods in places that have never had floodplain maps are latest evidence of how far FEMA's mapping needs to go

Recent floods in Northern Michigan surprised residents who didn't think they were at risk and didn't have insurance though rainfall amounts had been rising for many years. That's the latest example of outdated floodplain mapping by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, report Tammy Webber and M.C. Wildeman of The Associated Press.

"The federal government's mapping method is arguably outdated and does not account for actual risks as climate change increases the odds of more extreme weather," AP reports. FEMA "develops and updates maps that determine who's in a flood plain and must buy insurance, and to help communities plan. But it hasn’t developed maps in many less-populated areas, including some Michigan counties that experienced unprecedented flooding. . . . 

"Another issue: FEMA’s maps are based on risks of rivers, streams and other waterways overflowing their banks. But they don’t account for flooding caused strictly from increasingly heavy rainfall that overwhelms stormwater infrastructure in urban areas and inundates rural towns where there's nowhere for the water to go. First Street, a company that researches the financial implications of climate change, found more than twice the number of properties at significant flood risk nationwide after incorporating that rainfall data into its own models and by mapping the whole country, including smaller streams that FEMA does not."

FEMA, whose mapping has been criticized for years, wouldn't give AP an interview or respond to questions about whether it's updating its mapping methods and if this year’s flooding adds urgency to mapping less-populated areas, instead issuing a statement saying that 95% of the U.S. population lives in areas with floodplain maps, which are “snapshots in time.”

Chad Berginnis, executive director of the Association of State Floodplain Managers, said FEMA has made little progress creating new maps in rural areas where development could occur, despite a 2012 congressional mandate. He said the agency has prioritized places with the greatest population and risk, while leaving "about two-thirds of the country’s streams, rivers and coastlines unmapped," AP reports. "Some of those areas are unpopulated federal land that likely won't be mapped."

The state floodplain managers' group estimates that full mapping of the nation would cost $4 billion to $12 billion money FEMA has never had. The group worries that FEMA "could fall even further behind due to significant staffing losses under the Trump administration," AP reports.

Local journalism crisis may be more in quality than quantity

Map from Rebuild Local News Coalition shows the equivalent ranges of local journalists by county. 

Discussion of the crisis in local news has focused more on quantity than quality, perhaps because the number of newspapers is much easier to measure than the quality of coverage. But new research shows a serious quality problem when it comes to coverage of education, supposedly a staple of local news, and health, which is a bigger problem in rural areas than the rest of the nation.

The latest Local Journalist Index, an annual study by Rebuild Local News and the artifical-intelligence communications platform Muck Rack, and "finds a dramatic lack of education and health care coverage in most communities," reports RLN, which seeks public policies to strengthen community news. "There is shockingly little education and health coverage."

The research examined 4.2 million local-news articles, looking for education stories that mentioned a community by name, indicating a story was local. In 77% of counties in the first quarter of 2026, there were no such stories. The share without a local health story was virtually the same: 76%. The same pattern was seen in lack of stories about the environment (77%) and transportation (82%).

The number of local reporters continued to decline. "The national average now stands at 7.8 local journalist equivalents per 100,000 residents, an 81% decline from roughly 40 per 100,000 in 2002," RLN reports. "Last year, we found 8.2 LJEs per 100,000 residents. Approximately 70% of U.S. counties, home to an estimated 209 million people, fall below even the already-anemic national average. Only 33 counties match the average number of journalists from 2002."

Perhaps because covering crime is easier than education, health and some other topics, "When there are fewer journalists, the portion of coverage devoted to crime actually goes up," RLN reports. "In counties with fewer than five LJEs per 100,000 residents, nearly one in five local articles about crime and justice, roughly 50% more than in counties with higher journalist density."

The report also includes a ranking of reporting capacity by state; analysis of local news and loneliness levels, which can rise with a decline in local news; comparisons with the Civic Information Index; and an analysis of LJEs and municipal borrowing costs, which tend to rise when coverage of local governments decline. Muck Rack and RLN make the full dataset available to researchers and others interested in doing their own analyses.

“This report is difficult to stomach,” said Steven Waldman, founder and president of RLN. “The shortage of local reporters remains so severe that communities are being left in the dark as coverage of education, healthcare, and core civic issues thins out or disappears altogether.”

The Institute for Rural Journalism, which publishes The Rural Blog, is on the steering committee of the Rebuild Local News Coalition.

 

Trump loses support among rural voters; farm troubles cited

North Carolina farmer Michael McPherson says diesel-fuel
and fertilizer costs, and drought that halved his wheat
yield, "are really putting us into a bind." (W.Post photo)

President Trump is losing support among one of his stoutest groups of supporters, rural voters, and farmers' troubles appear to be the leading reason.

"Rural voters backed Trump’s economic policies by a 45 percent to 43 percent margin early last year but now disapprove of them 61 percent to 31 percent, according to a Reuters-Ipsos poll released this month," notes David Lynch of The Washington Post. Trump's overall approval among rural voters in the poll was 50 percent, down 10 points from the beginning of his second term. "A separate Purdue University-CME Group survey this month showed that agricultural producers in particular have grown more downbeat. From a high of 75 percent in December, the percentage of those surveyed saying the country is headed in the right direction fell to 52 percent in May."

"Trump’s February decision to join Israel in attacking Iran aggravated the farm economy’s struggles," Lynch reports. "Soybean growers, who were already suffering from the president’s tariffs, are expected to lose money in 2026 for the fourth straight year." Lynch notes that urea fertilizer now costs less than it did just before the war began, "but the financial damage has been done."

"More than 300 farms filed for bankruptcy last year — up 46 percent from the year before and the second year in a row that the number has climbed, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. The U.S. Department of Agriculture forecasts that total farm sector debt will rise to $624.7 billion this year — the highest on record — to weather current economic conditions, writes Matthew Choi of the Post. "The multiple crises in the agriculture sector have not yet translated to a massive conversion to Democrats, but they have energized some Democratic bids in rural areas and forced Republicans to defend their handling of rural issues. If farmers decide to stay home in November, that could have outsize consequences in a year when Republicans are fighting uphill to maintain control of Congress."

New World Screwworm enters the U.S.

NWS infestations were discovered just days apart on calves that grazed
roughly 5.6 miles from each another. (Photo via Hoosier Ag News) 

Despite ongoing efforts from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Mexican government and on-the-ground teams along the U.S.-Mexico border, last week the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) confirmed two cases of New World screwworm in Texas livestock, reports Jennifer Carrico of Progressive Farmer. In both cases, the flesh-eating blowfly larvae were discovered in young calves about 6 miles apart in Zavala County, Texas.

After the second case was confirmed, Texas Governor Greg Abbott "issued an updated statewide disaster declaration for the NWS infestation," Carrico writes. At a news conference, Abbott encouraged the use of "all state resources to combat the NWS." Additionally, the executive director of the Texas Animal Health Commission, Budd Dinges, reminded the public that NWS isn't a threat to consumer food safety but rather poses a threat to livestock production. 

In response to the infestations, APHIS has "deployed mobile response trailers, and sterile fly releases are underway with 2 million aerially and 4 million released on the ground per week," Farm Journal reports. "Movement control zones have been activated at a 20-kilometer (12.4-mile) radius around each site."

Both NWS cases were found in Zavala, Texas, 
in red above. (Wikipedia map)

The discovery prompted the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to place "temporary restrictions on livestock imports from Texas," reports C.J. Miller of Hoosier Ag Today. "Under the order, cattle, horses and other livestock that originated in Texas or were present in the state within 21 days before entering Canada will be denied entry."

Although the USDA intensified its battle to prevent the NWS from reentering the U.S. including banning Mexican livestock from entering the U.S. beginning in July 2025, some ranchers don't think the government's response was enough.

"On Friday, about 100 ranchers in mud-splattered boots and cowboy hats packed a small high school cafeteria for a Texas Animal Health Commission briefing on screwworm, peppering officials with questions and venting frustration over what they saw ​as a slow federal response,” reports Heather Schlitz of Reuters. 

Even as the USDA works to contain NWS infestations, they are likely to spread throughout the summer months, Miller reports. Prior to last week, the NWS hasn't been found in the U.S. for at least 60 years.

Major U.S. companies need more Americans to 'don tool belts'

Photo by David Cain, Unsplash

Beginning in the 1980s all the way through the early 2000s, Americans who chose to work in the skilled trades were portrayed as individuals who weren't suited for a college education and would agree to end up in a lesser paying and less-respected profession. That's no longer the case.

"Big employers such as Ford and philanthropies are ramping up programs to persuade more Americans to don tool belts," reports Te-Ping Chen of The Wall Street Journal. "New efforts announced just this year already total around $400 million."

Bloomberg Philanthropies recently announced a $90 million campaign aimed at recruiting graduating high school seniors to seek a career in the trades. Chen writes, "The effort includes a partnership with Ford in Detroit, where Bloomberg and the automaker are kicking in $2.5 million each, partly to fund new auto-repair bays for high-schoolers."

Part of the push for younger workers is the aging of Americas trade workers, which has some employers up at night wondering how they are going to refill their skilled worker pipeline. The CEO of Ford, Jim Farley, told the Journal, "Most of our technicians are older — it is a real dilemma. This year alone, the automaker says it is spending $300 million on efforts aimed at filling vital jobs."

Gen Z has consistently shown interest in "blue-collar jobs," Chen explains, "to the point where districts are revitalizing shop classes in some areas, and there is a rising tide of philanthropic spending aimed at aggressively accelerating that trend."

Some U.S. companies are also working to shift the national perception that success in America depends on earning a college degree. Lowe’s Foundation is "spending money on a three-part TV series to highlight stories of workers pursuing careers in the skilled trades, as well as those of their mentors," Chen adds.

Opinion: The battle over data centers -- what they take, where the profits go and how some states show a better path

Data center developers have zoned in on rural America as
the best place to build. (Photo by R. Starnes Sr., Unsplash)

It was sold to Americans as the "cloud." Fluffy, white -- and most importantly, floating harmlessly in the heavens -- never to touch or interfere with life on Earth. But for all its promise, some say it is a lie. 

Lurking behind the cloud are data storage and computation machines that will eat up an inexhaustible amount of energy and water wherever they are built, writes Lawrence Winnerman for Blue Amp Media.

Stepping back, as cloud and AI developments began to take off, data center developers ran into a problem: Where could they find the land and resources to build their mega-scale, profit-generating AI machines? It didn't take them long to find the answer. They pinpointed the rich land and water resources in rural America as the ideal location, writes Jim Branscome in his opinion on Substack. 

Rural Americans, particularly those in Appalachia, who think data center developers are targeting their wide, open land and deep aquifers for their profits, are right. "The Pew Research Center, drawing on Data Center Map figures in early 2026, found that for the first time most planned data centers in the country are being built in rural areas rather than metropolitan ones; the South alone counted some 754 planned facilities against 1,209 existing, a 62% increase," Branscome explains. So far, the coalfields of Northern Virginia have the most planned or in-progress data centers. 

Pew Research graph

From public reporting, Branscome provides a list of Appalachian data center developments: 

• In West Virginia, the Monarch campus in Mason County, the Fundamental Data complex in Tucker County, the TransGas project in Mingo County, a $4 billion campus in Berkeley County, and a multibillion-dollar Google campus in Putnam County 
• In Southwest Virginia, proposals in Wise, Wythe, Pulaski and Montgomery counties, and a Google project in Botetourt
• In Pennsylvania, the four-gigawatt Homer City complex rising on a dead coal plant’s bones in Indiana County

“Every extraction in this region’s history has followed it — timber, then coal, then the dam-and-power complex, and now the machine," Branscome explains. "Each arrived speaking of jobs and progress. Each was welcomed by men who held office. Each took something that could not be replaced and left a bill that the people are still paying. The data center is not a break from that history. It is the latest chapter of it. . ."

And while Appalachia is "being asked to supply the land, the electricity, the natural gas, the water, and the tax forgiveness," the profits will not belong to those communities, Branscome writes. Instead, those riches will "belong to corporations headquartered far from [the] mountains."

As some rural communities have pushed back against data center build-outs, they have sought the support and protective advocacy of their lawmakers. Branscome adds, "Lay the states side by side and the moral is unmistakable. Where lawmakers chose to protect their citizens, they could. Where they chose to protect the industry, that too was a choice."

West Virginia’s leaders, and to a "growing degree Kentucky’s, have decided that the way to compete is to promise the fewest protections and ask the fewest questions. . . . It is precisely the logic that governed the coalfields for a hundred years," Brascome writes. In the name of economic development, elected officials are "signing over the people’s signed objections. This is not a new story. It is the oldest story we have, told in silicon.“

How the battle ends is yet to be decided. Branscome writes, "Pennsylvania, Virginia and Ohio have shown, each in its imperfect way, that a state can make the industry pay its own way, protect the ratepayer, demand transparency, and leave the decision with the people who live there. The technology is not the enemy; the terms are.

"A data center built on a reclaimed mine, paying its full freight for power and water, bound by an enforceable agreement, leaving real money in the county, and sited only where the community has agreed to have it — that would be something genuinely new in the history of these mountains."

In N.C., the $50 billion federal Rural Health Transformation Program won't eliminate health care deserts

North Carolina plans to use its RHTP money on hospitals
and clinics that are open. (KFF photo)

The $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program Congress created in 2025 to ensure the passage of President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act may sound like it's made to help closed rural hospitals or hospitals on the brink of shuttering, but in reality, the act strictly limits the amount of RHTP grant money struggling hospitals can use to stay afloat.

The RHTP funding restrictions haven't stopped midterm-stumping politicians in North Carolina from touting the program as a salve for rural hospitals in financial straits, report Sarah Jane Tribble and Amanda Seitz of KFF Health News. "Republican candidates in competitive midterm elections are casting the fund as a lifeline that will shore up critical rural health services across America."

In Martin County, N.C., where lawmakers face competitive midterm elections, some residents believe RHTP funds will help reopen their shuttered hospital, Tribble and Seitz report. "Martin County won’t get direct relief from Trump’s rural health fund — because its hospital isn’t open." The state plans to use its $213 million in RHTP funds on "existing health and social service organizations."

Without rural hospitals, residents in states like North Carolina, where most citizens live in rural counties, are especially vulnerable. During a medical emergency, when every second counts, rural residents must survive the travel distance to get medical care. Some don't make it. Tribble and Seitz explain, "Martin County does not have paramedics on its ambulances, and it can be 20 miles or more to the closest — and often overcrowded — emergency rooms."

Brian Floyd, the chief operating officer for ECU Health, which operates out of Greenville, N.C., told KFF, "It’s a real healthcare crisis that has already proven itself to have lost lives that perhaps didn’t have to be lost. They just want to not die because there’s nowhere to go when you have an emergency."

Flora & Fauna: Sentinel gardens; bats do good work; beavers saving ecosystems; firefly delights; seashore reporting

Sentinel gardens help save North American trees.
(Photo by Sophia Simoes, Unsplash)

Planting "sentinel gardens" in different places around the globe helps scientists protect native North American trees. "Scientists have planted American trees in China, Korea and elsewhere to attract hungry insects, reports Sachi Kitajima Mulkey of The New York Times. "These gardens are plots of foreign trees that researchers closely monitor to figure out what local bugs and diseases can damage them. The goal is to learn as much as possible about these potential threats before they cross the ocean and become a problem at home."

For the many Americans who consider bats an animal oddity that flies like a bird but kind of looks like a mouse, they are selling the furry echolocation-using creatures short. Bats do tremendous work, helping U.S. farmers and the economy. "Bats pollinate plants, including many important food crops, when they stop by flowers to drink nectar," write Dale Manning, Anya Nakhmurina and Eli Fenichel for The Conversation. "Their guano is mined from caves for fertilizer. And they eat a lot of bugs – the kinds that bother people (think mosquitoes) and others that destroy crops that humans depend on for food." Read about the impacts of bat population decline on economic markets and how humans are trying to address bat health here.

Beavers to the rescue.
(Drawing by Adam Dixon, Offrange)

In Utah, beavers that trappers would have killed for their fur are being spared and relocated from areas where they are a nuisance to locations where they help local ecosystems recover. "To maximize on their potential to restore ecosystems, the Beaver Ecology & Relocation Collaborative (BERC) at Utah State University started offering trappers a $100 surrender fee to catch beavers alive to transport them to private lands in need of hydrological TLC," reports Karen Fischer for Offrange. "The success of the project could be replicated elsewhere, with sweeping ramifications throughout the American West."

They light up forest floors and the air with their bioluminescence beauty, casting sparkle and wonder all around. Fireflies are among nature's most delightful creatures, and some campers are fascinated. Great Smoky Mountains National Park is not only America’s most-visited national park, but it is also "home to 19 firefly species," reports Jacob Passy of The Wall Street Journal. "Photinus carolinus, also known as the Smokies synchronous firefly, produces dazzlingly coordinated displays that rival even the most extravagant Christmas light installation. . . .Their annual emergence in the Great Smoky Mountains has become so popular that campsites sell out months in advance."

A polluted farm in the United Kingdom "let nature back in," providing a stunning example of how nature can heal itself, reports Jasmin Sykes of CNN. The Knepp Estate is a place where turtle doves "seem to be bouncing back. A recently published, two-decade review of wildlife on the estate found that the number of singing males rose from just two in 2008, to 22 in 2024. Isabella Tree, who owns the 3,500-acre estate in West Sussex, told CNN, “We never thought that in 20 years we could have gone from being this depleted, polluted, dysfunctional post-industrial farmland, to being one of the most significant biodiversity hotspots in Britain."

The famous Assateague wild ponies offer great photos and stories that feature the 
wonders found on our national seashores. (Photo by Sara Cottle, Unsplash)

For reporters who live anywhere near the seashore, there's an ocean of stories to uncover and discuss. "If national parks are 'America’s best idea,' then our national seashores may be America’s best-kept secret," writes Joseph A. Davis for the Society of Environmental Journalists. "For summer getaways, they are a treasure. . . . For example, Assateague Island National Seashore, established in 1965, is a beautiful barrier island running between Ocean City, Maryland, and Chincoteague, Virginia. You can swim or surf or splash in clean waves. You can study how land is built by dune ecosystems. You can see the famous wild ponies. You can go into town and eat oysters." Davis provides a list of national seashores to visit along with story ideas here. 

New Medicaid work rules go into effect no later than Jan. 1, 2027. Federal guidance outlines exemptions.

CMS announced exemption guidance for Medicaid's 
new work requirements.

As the "One Big Beautiful Bill" continues to remake American safety net programs, guidance from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, released earlier this week, outlines "how states should carry out the work rules, including who would be exempt," reports Berkeley Lovelace Jr. of NBC News.

While the federal government will require states to roll out the new Medicaid work rules no later than Jan. 1, 2027, until now, states didn't know who could be considered for exemptions. Lovelace explains, "Pregnant women, parents of young children, veterans with disabilities and several other groups will be exempt from Medicaid’s new work requirements," according to CMS rules. "States will have discretion to determine which medical conditions qualify for exemptions."

The work rules do not require recipients to work full-time; instead, most adult Medicaid recipients must "work, attend school or volunteer for at least 80 hours a month to keep their coverage," Lovelace reports.

CMS will also allow exemptions for individuals who are considered too "medically frail" to work. The guidance also allows exemptions for people with "conditions that significantly limit their ability to work, such as cancer or substance use disorder," NBC reports. "The guidance doesn’t include an exemption for people who are homeless."

Before this week's announcement, Medicaid supporters worried that enrollees would lose their coverage while trying to prove their eligibility for an exemption; however, the guidance allows for that possibility. Lovelace reports, "During the first year, people will be allowed to attest — on their Medicaid applications or renewal forms — that they qualify for one of the exemptions rather than provide documentation."

The main thrust behind the work rules is to get more Americans to work. The National Bureau of Economic Research, a nonpartisan research group, found that Americans are working fewer hours than they did in previous decades, NBC reports. "The officials argued that government benefits reduce incentives to seek employment."

Texas lawmakers juggle angry voters, data center developers, Trump's AI push and a tech-first governor

65% of Americans don't want a data center built
in their community. (Photo by G. Moffet, Unsplash)

With its sprawling land and business-friendly politics, data center developers decided Texas was an ideal place to build AI infrastructure. They began having their proposals quietly approved, and construction started, with little input from communities near their builds.

Fast forward to today. As data center projects proliferate throughout the state, many Texas communities are pushing back on AI and calling on their political representatives to put up guardrails, reports Liz Carey for The Daily Yonder. But when it comes to putting limits on AI development, Texas lawmakers face competing interests.

"Data center construction is unpopular among locals, and a majority of the facilities are being proposed in red, rural counties," Carey explains. Republican state lawmakers now find themselves "caught between a zealous president, a governor bent on Texas becoming the next global data center hub, and outraged constituents."

According to a Texas Tribune analysis, at least "82 data centers, or nearly 60% of those that are either planned or under construction, are in state House districts that voted for President Donald Trump and elected a Republican state representative in 2024," Carey reports. "A March Quinnipiac poll found that 65% of Americans oppose the building of an AI data center in their community."

Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who leads the Texas Senate, have made data center development a priority. The Yonder reports, "Both directed their chambers to balance the economic development benefits of the facilities with their potential impact on Texas communities and their water and power infrastructure."

Meanwhile, Texas county officials, who have no power over where AI centers end up, spend their days trying to manage angry, frustrated residents. Republican county executive Matt Sebesta told Carey, "When folks look at me and say, ‘We don’t want this,’ I point them to our state reps and say, ‘Go talk to your state rep. Go talk to your senator,’ because they don’t trust us to make those decisions."

State legislators have even started to divide along rural-urban lines, with "rural lawmakers tending to raise more concerns about data centers while those from urban areas have generally been more supportive — or at least quieter," Carey adds.

In response, AI companies have begun running ad campaigns across the Lone Star State that "tout the benefits of the facilities," Carey explains. "Meanwhile, the tech industry is already lavishing donations across the capitol."

Gas prices are high, and inflation has continued to climb. How do Trump voters feel about his performance so far?

Many Americans say that gas prices may impact their
midterm election choices. (Photo by GG, Unsplash)

Campaigning for his second term in the White House, President Donald Trump pledged "no new wars" while he worked to "make America affordable again." A year and a half into his presidency, U.S. consumers face high inflation, hefty tariffs on imported food and goods, and bloated gas prices due to the war with Iran.

So how do those voters feel now? Tim Balk, Rachel Richardson and Sam Easter of The New York Times asked some Trump voters how they feel about their vote now and how their opinion of his leadership so far might influence their midterm election choices. Some edited selections of their opinions are shared below.

Adele Wilson, 30, of Ada Township, Mich., population 14,400
When asked about gas prices, Wilson told the Times, "Last time I filled up I was like, ‘Oh, this hurts.’" Wilson, a dental assistant, believes "Trump’s second term has been unsuccessful," the Times reports. "She called the war a 'horrible idea.' She was unsure how she would vote in the midterms, she said, but she had already ruled out voting for JD Vance or Marco Rubio in the 2028 presidential race."

Matt Yerkes, 74, of New Richmond, Ohio, population 2,730
Yerkes, who is retired, told the Times he thinks Americans' current economic strain is "temporary and needed.” Overall, he agrees with the war with Iran. The Times reports, "He said he disliked the president’s personality, but added, 'I agree with essentially everything he does from a policy standpoint.'"

Luke Stanley, 28, of Hermon, Maine, population 6,500
"Stanley, who owns a metal fabrication company, said he did not 'necessarily' support the war, and suggested he would like the president to change his approach," the Times reports. "But he said that business had been good for him overall during the president’s second term." He told the Times that continued high gas prices might sway his choice in the midterm elections.

Many farmers have a second job, and some have cashed in by sharing farm life across social media channels

                 Zoe Kent posts her farm life films on medial platforms like Instagram and YouTube.

As farm income has dipped over the last two decades, some farmers have built a second income by posting about their "life and times" on the farm, reports Amira McKee of The Wall Street Journal.

When the Welker family from Montana was facing some lean years, Nick Welker, his brother Scott, and their father, Bob, decided to share their ag adventures through short films and reels posted to social media. 

The three men started their online careers with "viral videos in the mid-2010s, followed by the restoration of a Big Bud tractor — a hulking machine with a cult following among tractor enthusiasts," McKee writes. The three Welkers have joined "a growing class of 'aginfluencers' monetizing farm life."

For the Welker family, their "social-media business now provides a six-figure annual income stream, generating about $5 for every $1 invested in equipment, cameras, and a video editor," McKee writes.

“It blows my mind how much they eat it up," Nick Welker told the Journal. "They just really like seeing us work.”

The group has amassed over a million social media followers, and their YouTube channel produces ad revenue, as does their equipment sponsorships. McKee adds, "Tractor brands like Case IH pay handsomely to have their machinery featured on the Welkers’ channel."

Zoe Kent is another successful aginfluencer. After she took over her family's farm in 2021, she began posting online about her life as an Ohio soy and corn farmer. McKee adds, "Last year, her social-media income was five times higher than her farm profits."

The Journal reports, "Eighty-six percent of family farms earned a majority of their household income from off-farm sources in 2024, according to the most recent U.S. Agriculture Department data."