A digest of events, trends, issues, ideas and journalism from and about rural America, by the Institute for Rural Journalism, based at the University of Kentucky.
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The program designed to erase the digital divide has disappeared from the NTIA website. (Adobe photo)
Not long ago, rural hubs were burgeoning with plans and dollars directed at leveling the digital divide, but things have changed quickly. "Within days of President Donald Trump announcing on social media that he was ending the federal digital equity grant program, it looks to be consigned to history," reports Chris Teale of Route Fifty. The program's information has disappeared from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s website.
States are already seeing their funding cut. Aaron Wheeler, director of Washington state’s broadband office, said last week that "he had received a letter cancelling its $15.9 million grant award," Teale writes. During a press conference with Democratic U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, Wheeler said, “[Losing the funds] undermines our digital equity plan’s goals and perpetuates existing disparities that fall most heavily on our state's rural communities."
Maine had $35 million in grants canceled. The funds were intended "to help the state build digital skills and online safety, especially for rural and low-income residents, veterans and small businesses," Teale reports. "The state said 130,000 people would have been served by the three grants."
The State Educational Technology Directors Association said "at least 20 [states] have seen planning and capacity grant funding pulled by NTIA in light of the president’s order," Teale adds. Murray, "the architect of the Digital Equity Act, said during last week’s press conference that she wants her colleagues to step up, or else legal action could ensue."
Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins (USDA photo)
The Department of Agriculture extended the window for rural energy program grantees to resubmit their revised energy proposals. Although the grantees were already promised $10.8 billion in grants and loan subsidies, they were told to "resubmit their projects to align with President Donald Trump’s energy priorities," reports Julia Tilton of The Daily Yonder.
In late March, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced that REAP, New ERA, and PACE funding would be released to grantees; however, the announcement "also gave recipients 30 days to voluntarily resubmit proposals to refocus their projects on expanding American energy production," Tilton writes. Grantees were told to remove any Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility planning from their proposals before resubmission.
The deadline for resubmission was the end of April, but it was moved to the end of May. Tilton adds, "In the meantime, awardees express uncertainty around the future of their awards. . . .So far, most of the money from PACE, New ERA, and REAP has flowed or been awarded to Republican districts."
For farmers who have already completed their energy projects, resubmitting their proposals and waiting for payment can be particularly onerous. Maine farmer Kevin Leavitt installed "solar panels on his small farm in 2024 as part of a $140,000 project to generate efficient electricity," Tilton writes. "Leavitt was due to receive $48,000 in funding from REAP in January 2025. Leavitt’s check didn’t arrive until April."
Leavitt told Tilton, "Yeah, we got paid, but it cost me four months of talking to 30 different reporters and Congress members to get it to actually come back around." Tilton reports, "Blocking funding for USDA programs that have already been approved and appropriated by Congress is illegal."
Stopping to check the facts helps stem the spread of misinformation. (World Health Organization adaptation via The Converation)
People from all walks of life can get sucked into believing and sharing fake health information from the internet. In his article for The Conversation, global health communication scholar Angshuman K. Kashyap explains why false health data can be so believable and how people can combat it.
Fake health information is written to appeal to human nature. Whether it's a sensationalized problem, more juicy details on a controversial issue, or a simple answer to a complicated problem, many people will keep reading. Kashyap writes, "Fake health information often appears to be true because it mixes a grain of truth with misleading claims."
False health information often looks professional. "In 2019, an article with the false headline 'Ginger is 10,000x more effective at killing cancer than chemo' was shared more than 800,000 times on Facebook," Kashyap explains. "The article contained several factors that make people feel an urgency to react and share without checking the facts: compelling visuals, emotional stories, misleading graphs. . ."
Not only will individuals read and not question data from a fake health story, they will share it, which "has real-world consequences," Kashyap adds. "For example, studies have found that Covid-19-related fake information reduces people’s trust in the government and in health care systems, making people less likely to use or seek out health services."
To detect false health information, researchers and public health organizations have developed three strategies to help health consumers verify health information:
Double-check health claims with an additional search. Kashyap adds, "Never rely on a single source. Instead, enter the health claim into a reputable search engine like Google and see what trusted sources have to say. . . . Reliable fact-checking websites such as FactCheck.org and Snopes can also help root out fake information."
Research your information source. Look at a site's "About Us" page, search for information about the author and check dates on cited research and the date of the information's publication. Kashyap writes, "Information on the internet keeps circulating for years and may not be the most accurate or relevant."
Still don't know what's what? "Don’t share," Kashyap advises. "Forwarding unverified information can unintentionally contribute to the spread of misinformation and potentially cause harm, especially when it comes to health."
Eleven L&D units have closed in New Hampshire since 2002.
(NHPR map, from N.H. Peri. Collab. data)
Health care stakeholders, planners and employees in New Hampshire are working to repair and "fill gaps in a maternity care system that’s been eroding for years," reports PaulCuno-Booth of New Hampshire Public Radio. Part of their efforts are taking shape through the North Country Maternity Network, which is a "collaboration between hospitals, health workers, social service nonprofits and others," with supportive management through Dartmouth Health.
The network added additional training and drills for its doctors and staff, so they are prepared for stressful deliveries. Cuno-Booth writes, "More than a quarter of patients now live a half hour or more from the nearest birthing hospital – making it harder to access routine prenatal care and raising the risk of an unplanned birth at home or on the way to the hospital."
Ali Willard, a high-risk obstetrics nurse and care coordinator with Dartmouth Health, told Cuno-Booth, “If you were having a heart attack, would you want to have to drive three hours to receive medical care? No. And that's not a standard anywhere in our country to have to drive that far for that type of emergency. But obstetric emergencies are just as critical to somebody's life. But some women have to drive that far.”
The network's collaboration is also working to "give EMTs and ER doctors in the region more training on how to respond to obstetric emergencies, in case something happens far from the nearest birthing hospital," Cuno-Booth adds.
Natalie Valliere, who runs a labor and delivery unit in Coos County, is working with a team to address the many challenges North Country maternity services face. "[She] says there’s no single answer," Cuno-Booth reports. "But in a region where people and resources are spread out over a vast rural area. . . collaboration will be key."
As people "work to strengthen maternity care in the North Country, [many] say that mission is about more than supporting parents and newborns," Cuno-Booth writes. "It’s about whether communities here can survive and thrive." If a woman can't safely have children in a region, will a family want to move there?
Cynthia Main makes handmade brooms, Appalachian style. (Sunhouse Craft photo via the Yonder)
When a talented crafter with an entrepreneurial bent got busy making handmade brooms, a new sustainable business in Appalachia was born. "Rural arts programs helped Eastern Kentucky maker Cynthia Main develop Sunhouse Craft, a sustainable business with an Appalachian sense of place," reports Kim Kobersmith of The Daily Yonder. "Main is driven by sustainability and community. With larger revenues, she can pay her small staff a living wage and offer her restored historic storefront as a community gathering space, while moving closer to her goal of developing a 100% local supply chain."
Pioneering women of the 1800s spent grueling hours over a fire making soap every spring. Sounds horrible, but soap itself is somewhat of a miracle. "The discovery of soap dates back approximately 5,000 years, to the ancient city of Babylon in what is today the country of Iraq," writes Paul E. Richardson for The Conversation. "Although billions of people use soap every day, most don’t know how it works. As a professor of chemistry, I can explain the science of soap. . . Soap molecules come together and surround the grime on your hands. The water-loving heads of the soap molecules are on the surface, with the water-fearing tails inside the micelle. This structure traps the dirt, and running water washes it all away."
Philadelphia children eating a 'three-cent dinner' at school. (Science History Institute photo via Smithsonian)
Since the late 1800s, Americans have been arguing over kids' school lunches, but beyond the controversies, the topic offers an interesting look at the U.S. diet. "A new exhibition in Philadelphia spotlights the evolution of American nutritional health through a unique lens: the school cafeteria," reports Sonja Anderson for Smithsonian magazine. "Medical inspections revealed that schoolchildren were malnourished. Many had scurvy or rickets, diseases caused by vitamin deficiencies. . . . Philadelphia and Boston became two of the first cities to offer meals to public school students in 1894. According to a statement from the museum, the exhibition features a tiny aluminum token from 1909, which a Philadelphia child would have used to purchase a 'penny lunch' at school."
A California Zephyr trip is chockablock with scenic views. (Amtrak photo)
July's heat is surely coming, and for those of us with limited air conditioning options, planning where you will go to keep from baking -- beyond grocery store freezer aisles -- is a priority. One of the all-time favorite spots for escaping heat and humidity is movie theaters. AMC theaters must know they are part of some people's melting prevention plans because "beginning July 9, the movie theater chain will offer 50% off adult movie tickets on Wednesdays for those part of the AMC Stubs rewards program," reports Ramishah Maruf of CNN News.
Summer is also a time for great reads. It could be on a beach, by the pool, in the grass with your horse or any number of amazing places to chill out and read. Not sure which book to kick off your summer escape? Try one from this list of books that will be made or have already been released as 2025 movies. Wilson Wong of The New York Times writes, "Here are some of the thrillers, romances, sci-fi page turners and detective novels coming soon to a screen near you. This is a running list. Check back for more updates as the year goes on."
"The first novella in the Murderbot Diaries series, 'All Systems Red,'
follows a security android that secretly hacks its own operating system,
allowing it to think and act independently," Wong writes. "But when an expedition goes strangely awry, resulting in several
scientists’ deaths, the robot must help the humans in its own unit
unravel the mystery before a similar tragedy befalls them." Murderbot premiered on Apple TV+ on May 16.
As counties across the U.S. see many types of illicit drug deaths decrease, the country is left to grapple with the long trail of complex problems drug addictions cause, including their massive price tags.
A newly released in-depth analysis "concludes that it costs an average of nearly $700,000 to treat each affected person," reports Maya Goldman of Axios. "The cost burden falls unevenly, with states in a belt stretching through Appalachia to New England typically having bigger caseloads and a higher cost per case."
Although it's not possible to pin down the exact net dollars the country spent on opioid use disorder, the analysis from Avalere estimated 2024 costs at $4 trillion." The report's author, Margaret Scott, told Goldman, "While this is a cost to government, it's also a cost to private businesses, and the huge cost, of course, is to the individuals who have" opioid use disorder.
Comparing regional expenditures illustrates how extreme the costs for treatment can be. "The projected cost of opioid use disorder in 2024 ranged from $419,527 per case in Idaho to more than $2.4 million in D.C.," Goldman explains. "That covers lost productivity, health insurance costs, property lost to crime and other variables."
The economic losses from OUD are second only to the degree of human suffering individuals, families and friends have experienced by way of OUD trauma. Some of the sobering estimated and reported costs include:
Economic burden on patients, including years of life lost and reduced quality of life, exceeded $3 trillion in 2024.
Private businesses absorbed more than $467 billion in costs from lost productivity and health insurance costs.
The federal government bore about $118 billion in Medicare and other federal insurance costs, lost taxes and criminal justice expenses.
It cost state and local governments more than $94 billion, with about $42 billion going toward criminal justice costs.
The Trump administration in March released its own analysis that estimated illicit opioids cost the U.S. about $2.7 trillion in 2023.
One way to reduce opioid treatment costs is to offer individuals the most effective treatment combinations possible. "Behavioral therapy alongside long-acting injectable buprenorphine — a treatment that reduces the risk of future overdoses — generated an estimated $295,000 savings per case, the biggest cost-saver of the options Avalere analyzed," Goldman reports. "Behavioral therapy alone saves a project $144,000 per case."
To use Axios' interactive state map of costs, click here.
Ozark County Jail, Mo., transports and
temporarily holds detainees for ICE. (Photo by Jesse Bogan, Marshall Project)
Small, rural law enforcement offices hurting for money are signing up for Immigration and Customs Enforcement contracts, but the money to assist with national mass deportation efforts comes with added oversight and risks.
Sheriff Cass Martin from Ozark County, Missouri, "sees his prayers answered in a new contract with ICE that could boost his $1.1 million annual budget," reports Jesse Bogan of the Missouri Independent. "An enormous ramp-up in detention capacity is underway. New contracts are being negotiated. . . . Ozark County is already reaping the benefits by raising wages and hiring for new positions in law enforcement."
Martin saw the ICE contract as a possible answer to his budgeting shortfall. He told Bogan, “We were really hurting. The day after the inauguration, a federal inspector showed up here at the jail wanting to look at everything throughout the facility."
Ozark County is one example of how a small, rural law enforcement office can become an effective "arm" for ICE. "They’ve made 525-mile runs from Ozark County to the federal building in St. Louis, down to the Greene County Jail in southwest Missouri, then back home," Bogan adds. "They’ve picked up detainees 325 miles away in Oklahoma and taken them to the tarmac at Kansas City International Airport."
But the added work and money have strings attached. ICE "detention and transportation contracts come with much more scrutiny and oversight than typical jail work, especially in Missouri, which doesn’t have statewide jail standards," Bogan reports. "Still, ICE reported that eight detainees had died nationally while in custody this year, as of May 5, including one death in a rural Missouri jail."
At least in Ozark County, local input on ICE contracts has been minimal; however, local officials working on ICE details haven't broadcast their federal negotiations. "Just one [local resident] attended a recent county commissioner meeting," Bogan writes. "Two years’ worth of meeting minutes didn’t mention the ICE contract in detail. The county commissioner said he wanted to wait until federal money started coming in before listing projected revenue in the county’s $7 million annual budget."
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, VP-elect Harry S. Truman and VP Henry
Wallace led the U.S. before, during and after WWII. (Photo by Abbie Rowe, Truman Library via Barn Raiser)
As the United States ends many of its longstanding international food aid programs, reporter Joel Engleman provides a brief history of American farming as a backdrop for his discussion on the newly released book, Global Heartland: Cultivating the American Century on the Midwestern Farm, by historian Peter Simons. An edited version of Engelman's thoughts and Q&A with Simons are shared below.
The seeds of American "food for the world" were planted after World War I and continued growing through the start of the Cold War. "In that roughly 30-year span, American farmers faced a flu pandemic, a dust bowl, a two-decade-long farm depression and a second global war," Engleman writes. "It was also a time when the federal government took a more active role in rural communities."
U.S supply chains that were created during WWII to provide Europe with machinery and weapons helped "set the stage for larger-scale food processing after the war," Engleman explains. "Technological developments in mass communication, as well as letters from relatives fighting overseas, broadened horizons at home." The shifts made U.S. farmers think about their role in the world.
After World War II, U.S. farmers "demanded a reluctant government act to prevent postwar starvation," Engleman writes. "Conservative Cold Warriors in the Truman administration slowly recognized that addressing global needs could help improve both U.S. national security interests and global opinion. A Cold War consensus to 'feed the world' emerged as farmers were enlisted to demonstrate the values of American exceptionalism through their commodity exports."
Simons offers a fresh view on how U.S. farmers began "feeding the world." (Images via Barn Raiser)
Question (Engleman): Global Heartland charts this period when Americans in and around agriculture — farmers, farm interest groups like the Farm Bureau and Farmers Union, commodity trade groups and the USDA — are debating about whether to focus on domestic or international markets for their products. What was the nature of that debate?
Answer (Simons): "It’s only when the vast scope of [WWII] becomes clear, and the fact that the state is stepping in to guarantee farm profits, that farmers see an opportunity for trade overseas. After the war, humanitarianism is involved in the argument to stave off a famine in Europe, but there’s clearly a desire to prolong these markets.
"But you can’t just have changes in technology or the market. You also need people to reconceptualize a sense of national responsibility, or Christian responsibility, to the rest of the world. I see it as this complication sparked by World War II that ultimately creates the postwar world and reshapes the agricultural economy."
Q: You write about the international workers who came to work on U.S. farms during World War II. How did these migrant farm workers lay the groundwork for the agricultural system we have today?
A: "During World War II, [existing] networks become more formalized. The federal government sent trains down to Mexico City and, using the USDA and Department of Labor, got as many people as they could to work on farms.
"Ultimately, it's the Bracero program that formalizes predominantly Mexican immigrant work in American farm fields. That establishes a pattern for the way that agriculture works in the United States. It is a system that has lasted. . . until early 2025."
St. Ambrose and Mount Mercy are working to unite, so both can remain open. (Photo by M. Rundle, Hechinger Report)
Smaller religious colleges that offer rural students a place to pursue higher education are struggling to keep their doors open. To combat ongoing financial woes, many religiously affiliated colleges are creating ways to join forces with like-minded colleges.
"Rural students often have few options other than religious institutions fighting to survive," reports Jon Marcus for The Hechinger Report. "The heads of St. Ambrose and Mount Mercy, in Iowa, said they’ve watched as nearby religiously affiliated colleges, athletic rivals and institutions that employed their friends and former colleagues closed."
As the number of students graduating from high school shrinks, smaller colleges face dwindling enrollments and rocky financial futures. Marcus writes, "The threats to smaller religiously affiliated institutions in rural areas stem largely from the downturn in the already short supply of high school graduates choosing to enroll. The proportion of such students going straight to college has fallen even more sharply in many largely rural states."
The schools merging or working out unique collaborations with other colleges are striving to protect both institutions from closures or drastic reductions in majors or student services. "Ursuline College in Ohio, for instance, which has fewer than 1,000 students, has agreed to merge with larger Gannon University, 95 miles away. Both are Catholic," Marcus adds. "Bluffton University in Ohio, which is Mennonite, is looking for a new partner after a planned merger fell through in February and the president resigned."
Religiously affiliated institutions often serve more "rural areas where access to higher education is more limited than in urban and suburban places and is becoming less available still as public universities in rural states have merged or closed or cut dozens of majors," Marcus reports. St. Ambrose President Amy Novak told Marcus, “We serve the poor. We educate the poor. That is a risky financial proposition at the moment for small, regional institutions that are largely tuition-driven.”
For Hechinger’s list of all college closures since 2008, click here.
Despite being the most popular herbicide in the world, Roundup continues to be at the heart of thousands of lawsuits alleging the product's active ingredient, glyphosate, is linked to human cancers. Bayer, which owns Roundup, is working on resolving the lawsuits while "exploring a bankruptcy filing for its Monsanto agriculture business," report Andrew Scurria, Akiko Matsuda, Patrick Thomas and Alexander Gladstone of The Wall Street Journal.
Because Bayer has already attempted and failed to resolve much of its Roundup litigation, the "German drug and agriculture conglomerate is preparing a bankruptcy filing," intended to "cover the weedkiller’s U.S. manufacturer, Monsanto," the Journal reports. "A Chapter 11 filing by Monsanto would pause lawsuits against the division and open a path to settling its share of Roundup-related liability in bankruptcy court."
Roundup was developed by Monsanto and sold to U.S. farmers and gardeners beginning around 1974. The product was used for roughly 40 years before lawsuits against Monsanto began following a study published in 2013 that suggested glyphosate may cause human cancer. The Journal reports, "Lawsuits alleging a link between glyphosate — the key ingredient in Roundup — and cancer have dogged Bayer since its 2018 acquisition of Monsanto."
Roundup litigation, payouts and company stock slumps have cost Bayer billions and led the company to warn "farmers, suppliers and retailers that it may stop producing Roundup absent a resolution of the tort claims. . . . Bayer’s shares are down about 75% since it acquired Monsanto in 2018," according to the Wall Street Journal report. "The Roundup litigation has cost the company about $10 billion in legal payouts as part of the $16 billion it has so far set aside for settlements."
Nonetheless, the company said it "is committed to resolving its litigation headache in the next 12 to 18 months," the Journal reports. "About 67,000 cases alleging it caused plaintiffs’ cancer are pending. . . . U.S. farmers rely on Roundup to produce soybean, corn and cotton crops that are genetically modified to withstand the weedkiller."
To read how Bayer could use bankruptcy to carve out lawsuit resolutions, click here.
