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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Since last July when the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the Purdue Pharma opioid bankruptcy agreement, negotiation has continued. The latest offer from the Sackler family may have enough support from stakeholders to stick.
"OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma’s latest plan to settle thousands of lawsuits over the toll of opioids could soon move forward after every U.S. state involved agreed to it," reports Geoff Mulvihill of The Associated Press. U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Sean Lane "is being asked to clear the way for local governments and individual victims to vote on it next."
If Lane moves the agreement forward, impacted parties have until Sept. 30 to vote "on whether to accept the deal, which calls for members of the Sackler family who own the company to pay up to $7 billion over 15 years," Mulvihill explains. Roughly $6.5 billion of the settlement will be taken from the Sackler's wealth, and "potentially more than $850 million would go directly to individual victims."
The biggest change the reworked plan offers is that it does not guard Sackler family members from civil liability suits related to the opioid crisis. Groups that reject this settlement can continue litigation against Sackler family members. Mulvihill adds, "Under the plan, the Sackler family members would give up ownership of Purdue."
The $7 billion the Sacklers have put on the table pales in comparison to their exposure. Mulvihill reports, "The settlement is a way to avoid trials with claims from states alone that total more than $2 trillion in damages. Thousands of local governments and other groups have also sued Purdue."
While the settlement is an attempt to hold the Sackler family accountable for its part in the prescription drug crisis, the family will remain exceptionally wealthy and will continue to run its global pharmaceutical company, Mundipharma, which operates in the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany and Singapore.
A seasonal migrant worker carries fruit in Michigan. (Photo via The Conversation, CC)
In an abrupt about-face from last week's guidance that paused Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids on farms, restaurants and meatpacking facilities, Trump officials reissued their call for ICE to enter any business where undocumented migrant workers might be found.
"Officials from ICE, including its Homeland Security Investigations division, told agency leaders in a call Monday that agents must continue conducting immigration raids at agricultural businesses, hotels and restaurants," report Carol D. Leonnig, Natalie Allison, Marianne LeVine, and Lauren Kaori Gurley of The Washington Post.
The see-sawing instructions reflect the tough reality of supporting American farmers and service workers all the while pushing ICE to arrest thousands of undocumented workers a day. Leonnig writes, "Some immigration experts say ICE would need to ramp up worksite enforcement to meet the administration’s ambitious arrest quotas. Past raids at meatpacking plants, for instance, have led to hundreds of arrests at once."
Even among President Trump's officials, the two sides pull against each other. "White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said last month that the administration wants ICE to make a minimum of 3,000 arrests a day," the Post reports. "Brooke Rollins, the agriculture secretary, meanwhile was on the opposite side of the issue, stressing to Trump the concerns that those in the farming industry had raised about losing workers."
On Sunday evening, Trump pulled away from his farming and service worker exemption stance and "made a post on his Truth Social account that he said amounted to an order for ICE officials 'to do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History,'" Leonnig adds, "which he said would require them to 'expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities.'"
On Monday, Tricia McLaughlin, an assistant secretary for DHS, told reporters, “There will be no safe spaces for industries who harbor violent criminals or purposely try to undermine ICE’s effort. Worksite enforcement remains a cornerstone of our efforts to safeguard public safety, national security and economic stability.”
At a time when U.S. consumers are getting squeezed from all sides, the idea that average Americans may pay higher electric bills so mega-companies such as Google and Meta can get special discounts for their energy-guzzling data centers may sound unfair, but it could be true, write Ari Peskoe and Eliza Martin in their story for The Conversation.
"In our paper Extracting Profits from the Public, we explain how utilities are forcing regular ratepayers to pay for the discounts enjoyed by some of the nation’s largest companies," they write. “And [we] identify ways policymakers can limit the costs to the public."
While most utilities are sanctioned monopolies, their foundation lies in shared costs. "Splitting the utility’s costs among all consumers made perfect sense when population growth and economic development across the economy stimulated the need for new infrastructure," Peskoe and Martin write. "But today, in many utility service territories, most of the projected growth in electricity demand is due to new data centers.
When data centers are the impetus for a utility having to build more supporting infrastructure, the normal way power utilities pay for their expansion no longer works. They explain, "If state regulators allow utilities to follow the standard approach of splitting the costs of new infrastructure among all consumers, the public will end up paying to supply data centers with all that power."
A Meta data center in Louisiana provides a good example. "By our calculations, [the center will use] twice as much energy as the city of New Orleans," Peskoe and Martin add. "Entergy, the regional monopoly utility, is proposing to build more than $3 billion worth of new gas-fired power plants to meet the data center’s energy demand. … Entergy is proposing to include the costs in rates paid by all customers."
Instead of billing Meta $3 billion for its infrastructure needs, Entergy is working on a separate contract with Meta, with rates the general public won't see. Peskoe and Martin write, "Entergy has asked state regulators to keep key terms of the contract secret, and only a redacted version of its application is available online."
The fact that there are many secret deals isn't much of a secret; however, what's in the deals remains protected. "Our research, reviewing nearly 50 public utility commission proceedings about data centers’ power needs across 10 states, uncovered dozens of secretive contracts between utilities and data centers," Peskoe and Martin explain. "Unlike Louisiana, most states require utilities to submit to the public utility commission their one-off deals with data centers, but they allow utilities to conceal the pricing terms from the public."
Is anything being done to address the issue? "Many state legislatures are noticing these problems and working to figure out how to address them," they add. "Severalrecentbills would set new terms and conditions for future data center deals that could help protect the public from data center energy costs."
Green and blue colors will be harder for the company to recreate. (Kraft Heinz image)
After decades of use, Kraft Heinz is "ditching artificial dyes," reports Jesse Newman of The Wall Street Journal. "The move comes as the Trump administration is pushing to strip artificial dyes from the U.S. food supply." Kraft Heinz aims to remove the dyes from products including Crystal Light, Heinz relish, Kool-Aid, Jell-O and Jet-Puffed products before the end of 2027.
Although the U.S. has been monitoring color additives in commercial products since the 1880s, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "has blamed artificial colors and other food additives for a litany of health problems, and said that they are poisoning American children," Newman writes. And while many food conglomerates have defended dyes as safe, "some are working to phase out or limit their use of dyes, including PepsiCo and cereal maker WK Kellogg."
Switching to natural dyes will be relatively easy in some Kraft Heinz products, but recreating greens and blues will be more difficult. "The company said it would replace those with other colors," Newman explains. "In products where color isn’t critical, Kraft Heinz will remove them entirely."
Pedro Navio, who heads the company's North American sector, told the Journal, "The vast majority of our products use natural or no colors, and we’ve been on a journey to reduce our use of [artificial] colors across the remainder of our portfolio."
The Food and Drug Administration, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, said this spring "that it aimed to work with the food industry to remove six synthetic dyes by the end of next year," Newman adds. "Kraft Heinz also said it would no longer use artificial colors in new products in the U.S."
The Star Wars franchise might begin and end in "a galaxy far, far away," but its newest series 'Andor' serves up some close-to-home conflicts. "Migrant farm workers sweating visa status amid amped-up immigration enforcement. Aggressive strip mining of the land without consideration of local communities. … Rising disregard for due process and human rights," writes Adam B. Giorgi for The Daily Yonder. "Various installments in the franchise have been associated with or said to draw inspiration from then-contemporary concerns, including the Vietnam War, the Cold War, and the American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. But it’s arguably never been more timely or effective than it is in 'Andor.'"
Keen moved part of its production back to the U.S. (Keen photo via BBC North America)
High tariffs are one tool the Trump administration has put in place to try to stimulate American manufacturing growth, but even as those costs hit the U.S. market, the question remains, "How can the U.S. reinvent its manufacturing sector in today's global economy?" While U.S. factories look different now than they did in the 1970s, it can be done. Family-owned Keen Footwear located outside of Louisville, Ky., is showing the way, reports Michelle Fleury of BBC North America. "With just 24 employees on site, the factory relies heavily on automation — sophisticated robots that fuse soles and trim materials — underscoring a transformation in how goods are made today."
If it feels like life needs a reset or even an "undo" button, heading outside may be the answer. "Nature can save us from a world gone mad," writes Dana Milbank of The Washington Post. "I hiked the Appalachian Trail, and it fixed my brain. … I wandered happily along the trail spotting the colors of the forest in spring: the red columbine, the lavender wild geranium, the lacy maple-leaf viburnum. … I found myself talking back to the birds that seemed to be following us."
Pharmacist Jan Brandenburg shares her Appalachian roots in her new cookbook.
Sometimes sharing recipes from home is the best way to showcase what your region is all about. For Jan Brandenburg of Kentucky, home is Appalachia, where she learned to love cooking, baking and science. "Today, after nearly 40 years as a practicing pharmacist, Brandenburg has published The Modern Mountain Cookbook: A Plant-Based Celebration of Appalachia, a tribute to her Eastern Kentucky roots and a vibrant exploration of how food — like medicine — can nourish, heal and connect," report Dana Cox and Rosa Mejia-Cruz for UKnow. "Brandenburg often finds herself offering guidance to patients … not just on medications, but on food choices, too. And she's just as happy to share recipes."
Seeing and smelling my mom's homemade yeast rolls rising in a warm oven, getting a nose-full of Grandma's mildewy basement where I used to fetch canned tomatoes, hearing the old Gordon Lightfoot song my dad played until everyone had it memorized. Those are all distinct experiences with memories and feelings attached to them. According to social psychologist and researcher Chelsea Reid, that feeling — nostalgia — is good for us. Reid explains in her story for The Conversation, that "sentimental longing for treasured moments in our personal pasts is linked to our well-being and feelings of connection with others … triggered by sensory stimuli such as music, scents and foods, nostalgia has the power to mentally transport us back in time."
A line of ARC-supported firefighters head off to battle a blaze. (ARC photo via Civil Eats)
When people think of firefighters, they don't also think about prisoners, but that's what some firefighters are, and just like non-incarcerated firefighters, they need care, too. "As hurricane-force winds caused wildfires to raze entire neighborhoods in Los Angeles County, more than 7,500 firefighters risked their lives. … Among them were an estimated 1,100 inmates from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation," reports Nadra Nittle of Civil Eats. "Sam Lewis of the Anti-Recidivism Coalition discusses why good meals, better pay, and post-release support could transform the future for incarcerated firefighters — and why society should see their humanity."
Strawberry pickers in Plant City, FL. (Adobe Stock photo)
Some immigrants who have continued work at farms, restaurants, hotels and meatpacking plants have been swept up during Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, report Ted Hesson and Marisa Taylor of Reuters. A senior Trump official familiar with the situation said President Donald Trump "was not aware of the extent of the enforcement push and 'once it hit him, he pulled it back.'"
"Trump's administration has directed immigration officials to largely pause raids," Hesson and Taylor write. "The order to scale back came from Trump himself … and appears to rein in a late-May demand by top White House aide Stephen Miller for more aggressive sweeps."
Last week's instructions limiting raids "still allows for investigations into serious crimes such as human trafficking," Reuters reports. Democrats called on the White House to pull back on ICE's "aggressive tactics. … Some Republican lawmakers have called on the administration to focus on criminal offenders."
Most American agriculture, including dairy and farm animal care, is supported by migrant workers. Hesson and Taylor add, "U.S. farm industry groups have long wanted Trump to spare their sector from mass deportations, which could upend a food supply chain dependent on immigrants."
The United Farm Workers union remains "skeptical the new directive will help workers without legal status," Reuters reports. "The group said it had calls from members about immigration arrests even after the new directive was issued."
On Friday, UFW issued a stern response to Trump's Thursday order to pause farm raids: "Many companies stayed closed today due to the presence of roving federal agents, especially Border Patrol. … As long as Border Patrol and ICE are allowed to sweep through farm worker communities making chaotic arrests … they are still hunting down farm workers."
Reporting on Addiction, a collaborative movement staffed by media professionals working to address addiction, is extending its deadline to apply for 2025 microgrants for journalists reporting on opioid settlement funds in Kentucky, Maine, New Jersey or New York.
As billions in opioid settlement funds enter the U.S. economy, how that money will be spent is unclear. Especially for individuals, families and communities touched by the opioid and fentanyl crisis, having journalists who use their investigative skills to follow who spends the money and on what is of vital importance. Watchdog reporters are needed as a primary, trustworthy source for people who want to hold public officials accountable for how these funds are used to address the addiction crisis.
To support this vital journalistic effort, Open Society Foundations is partnering with Reporting on Addiction to offer four microgrants ($500–$1,000 each) for journalists reporting in Kentucky, Maine, New Jersey and New York to investigate how opioid settlement funds are being allocated and spent.
Grants will support long-term reporting that help your audience understand the opioid settlements and show them where and how funds are being spent. Priority will be given to submissions focused on:
Spending (or a lack of spending) related to evidence-based prevention, addiction, harm reduction, treatment and/or recovery.
Issues with waste, fraud, abuse, or mismanagement of opioid settlement funds.
Incorporating the perspectives of impacted community members.
Helping communities understand the spending decision-making process (or lack of process).
Story pitch requirements: Pitches can be for any platform, print, digital, radio, television, podcast, etc. Freelancer submissions are welcome, but must have a letter of support from a publisher.
Grant awardees will receive free training: Awardees must agree to attend two virtual Reporting on Addiction trainings, share their final story, and have a commitment from a newsroom editor to publish their reporting by Feb. 1, 2026. Freelancers should secure a publication commitment before applying and supply supporting documentation.
USFS Chief Tom Schultz talk with Region 4 employees in Utah. (USFS photo via Route Fifty)
Despite shedding 5,000 employees in early 2025, the United States Forest Service leadership feels sufficiently staffed for this year's wildfire season, which started near the beginning of June, peaks in mid-summer and trickles down in late October. "USFS says it’s ready for fire season after asking separated employees to come back," reports Eric Katz for Route Fifty. "But employees say the losses have been 'crippling.'"
U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz admitted that staffing cuts and retirements had left shortages "though he said efforts to bring some of those employees back to work and shift others around to fill 'critical positions' will ensure its readiness," Katz explains. At a Senate Appropriations Committee meeting, Schultz reassured lawmakers that USFS is prepared.
While 2025 USFS staffing levels for firefighters and some deployment teams are comparable to those from 2024, they are just two parts of the operation. An entire team of fire experts, or "red card" holders, support firefighters behind the scenes, and both firefighters and red card holders "depend on support personnel who have left the agency in large numbers," Katz reports. USFS employees who actively fight fires rely on support staff for paychecks, supply purchases and contract management.
Schultz told Senate members that 1,400 [red card] employees will return for the upcoming fire season. He added that the USFS had "reassigned between 600 and 700 employees to move laterally to serve in critical areas," Katz writes. Schultz didn't comment on which areas would supply staff for the lateral move.
Even with the return of experienced key personnel, some active USFS firefighters don't think it will be enough. One firefighter told Katz, "We are not ready. The institutional knowledge of older people who left and the numbers of skilled people who left from all disciplines is crippling.”
Steve Guitierrez, a long-time federal firefighter who represents his colleagues through the National Federation of Federal Employees, told Katz, "I find it difficult to make that without all those employees that we will be fully staffed for this fire season. We were already low on numbers to begin with.”
A hose may be the cheapest way to cool off this summer. (Photo by J. Tyson, Unsplash)
Summer sun and heat might be good for beachgoers, but climbing summer temperatures will mean spiking power bills for U.S. consumers. Reasons for ballooning energy costs include higher natural gas prices, grid upgrade costs passed on to utility customers and increased domestic demand.
"Electricity prices across the country have increased 4.5% in the past year, topping the 2.2% jump in the price of groceries," reports Jennifer Hiller of The Wall Street Journal. "Consumer prices rose 2.4% in May from a year earlier."
Whether U.S. consumers flip on fans or crank the air, most will pay roughly 4% more "because of a jump in natural gas prices, the largest source of power generation," Hiller explains. "Natural gas deliveries to power plants will cost about 50% more from June through September than last year."
That's painful. "The higher bills are putting a strain on the wallets of consumers who are already stretched thin by rising costs for food, shelter and insurance," Hiller writes. "The average household power bill will reach $784 for the combined period from June to September."
Many Americans started the summer months already behind on their electrical bills. "Mark Wolfe, the executive director at the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, said one of every six U.S. households is behind on their electricity or natural gas bills," Hiller reports. "Customers owed gas and electric utilities more than $24 billion in late payments as of March."
Despite the pinch consumers are bound to feel, several utility companies are asking regulators to approve rate increases. "In Florida, NextEra Energy’s Florida Power & Light is asking regulators to let it increase rates between 1% and 5% a year through 2029," Hiller adds. "About $9.3 billion in additional electricity costs will begin trickling down to customers in the PJM Interconnection, the country’s largest grid operator and wholesale electricity market."
In some markets, AI data centers are "stressing the grid." In other places, increased demand is partially driven by electric vehicles. "Across the U.S., the growing pains are sparking fights over how to pay for upgrades and costs," Hiller reports. "The power industry also warns that a rollback of the clean-energy tax credits offered under the Inflation Reduction Act would push electricity prices higher, too."
Paige Pence, middle, with her parents Brent and Christine (Photo by Matthew J. Grassi, Farm Journal)
Some people were born to be wild, some were born to run, and others were born to farm. Paige Pence from New Carlisle, Ohio, falls in the latter category.
This summer the Western Illinois graduate will get an "entirely new learning experience," reports Matthew J. Grassi for Farm Journal. Her parents plan to "turn her loose" on their 4,500-acre farm to see what managing agriculture is all about.
Pence, 22, just graduated with a bachelor's degree in agricultural science partnered with a minor in animal science, which gives her a leg up on farming book smarts. But at her family's farm, she'll be hands-on. "Paige [will] get her feet wet running the farm’s fleet of equipment and pitching in wherever she can leave her mark," Grassi writes. "She’ll be shouldering a healthy load of farm duties, with her parents guiding her along the way."
While some farm families struggle to find a way to keep their farms in the family, the Pences have a plan. "Meeting with the family, you can tell right from the jump Brent and Christine are thrilled to get their daughter back," Grassi adds. "Through sheer perseverance and with some help from friends, neighbors and family, they've built an impressive operation to one day pass down to their only child."
As Paige finished her final year at college, she felt ready to head back to the farm. She told Grassi, "During my senior year it started to hit me that I was ready to go home … and start making the changes that were going to help our family.”
Even though Brent and Christine aren't planning to retire anytime soon, Paige is content to be on the farm learning how to manage it. She told Grassi, “I have always grown up around farming, so I don’t see myself ever leaving. There are always different things that need to be done, and aside from showing [livestock] over the last decade, I’ve always been around helping out. I don’t see myself moving anywhere else. I feel like everything I need is right here.”
