In the 'Trump economy,' this dairy farmer and his family still struggle to make ends meet

Dairy farmer Derek Orth owns Jersey cows. (Dairy Star photo)

Since President Donald Trump took office in early 2025, some Americans have thrived, while others have been pushed to downsize or put off purchases to pay for the basics. The Wall Street Journal interviewed six Americans, including rural dairy farmer Derek Orth from Lancaster, Wisconsin, to see how they are doing in the "Trump economy," reports Jeanne Whalen of The Wall Street Journal.

Smaller dairy farmers in Wisconsin have been struggling to compete with bigger, more consolidated operations since around 2004. "Orth says he hasn’t had a good financial year in a decade. But higher costs are making things even more challenging these days," Whalen writes.

"We have a $100,000 tractor that hasn’t moved in three or four months because we don’t know if we can afford to fix it,” Orth told the Journal.

He has also been hit by incremental increases in his farm insurance premiums. Whalen reports, "But the accumulation of big increases that snowballed from 2022 to 2024 nearly quadrupled his bill over 15 years, to about $41,000."

Orth, his wife, Charisse, and their four children live rent-free in the farmhouse that Orth's parents own. The couple uses Charisse's income to cover most expenses. Orth told Whalen, "A lot of the income I make goes back into the farm, and what my wife makes is what we use for family living."

Over the past several years, the couple hasn't been able to sock anything away for retirement. Whalen reports, "He said he hopes the Trump administration’s recent efforts to promote dairy products could boost his business, and he appreciates that gas prices are 'fairly reasonable.'"

Read all six interview's by the Journal here. 

U.S. grid needs operators to plan now with a blend of energies including batteries, gas and coal

North American Electric Reliability Corporation graph

Fueled by increased demand and shrinking power options, the U.S. electricity grid is headed toward a reliability crisis. "Tens of millions of people face a growing risk of blackouts over the next five years, according to an annual assessment by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, a nonprofit organization that works closely with federal regulators," reports Brad Plumer of The New York Times.

As AI data center builds have continued to demand more grid power, many "utilities are retiring older coal- and gas-burning plants and aren’t adding enough generation to dependably meet growing demand," Plumer explains. The report lists regions in Texas, the upper Midwest, the Mid-Atlantic region and the Pacific Northwest as most "at risk of electricity shortfalls."

How electricity is produced is at the heart of electricity reliability and a contentious point of national political debate. "President Trump has said that policies to fight climate change and promote wind and solar energy have weakened the reliability of electric grids, since wind turbines and solar panels can’t run at all hours," Plumer writes. But renewable energy advocates say that "Trump administration efforts to hinder wind and solar projects are depriving the grid of a fast-growing source of power."

Battery build-outs can help regional power operators create a more resilient grid that can meet demand even during extreme heat or cold snaps. "In MISO, a grid spanning 15 states in the Midwest and South, more than one-third of coal plants are set to retire by 2030," Plumer reports. "But the grid operator recently instituted a plan to speed up the connection of new gas plants and batteries over the next five years."

The report offers a list of recommendations for operators to start planning now, including "speeding up permitting processes for new power plants and transmission lines, and policies to ensure that large new sources of demand, such as data centers, don’t overwhelm the grid," Plumer adds. "It also suggests that utilities and grid operators should be careful about shutting down older coal and gas plants too quickly."

An interactive session about rural communities and AI data centers is scheduled for March 4

While many rural residents may know that a large AI data center can bring potential gains and losses to their communities, many details remain unclear. To address potential knowledge gaps and help rural residents stay informed, the Rural Assembly is offering a 90-minute interactive session, “What Rural Communities Need to Know about AI Data Centers,” that clarifies disputed issues about data mega builds and their potential impact on smaller communities.

Date & time: March 4, 2 p.m. EST
Register here.

The session will cover:

• Who pays for all the electricity a data center will need during construction and once the build is completed?
• What community agreements can and cannot secure.
• How federal and state politics and legislation on data center development are evolving.
• Tools communities can use to maintain local decision-making power, including zoning and permitting strategies, rate class separation, and transparency demands. 
• This online Zoom event will begin with hearing from attendees about what their community has already heard or experienced.

The session will wrap up with a small group discussion about concrete next steps. Whether you’re facing a proposal now or want to prepare before developers arrive, attendees will gain a clearer picture of how the AI boom can impact their neighborhoods and learn the leverage points available to rural communities.

Opinion: Rural Americans rely on immigrant physicians for care, but new restrictions will leave them with fewer doctors

Rural hospitals have relied on foreign-born doctors
to provide care for decades. (MedPage Today photo)

Rural communities already struggle to staff their hospitals and clinics with physicians of all types, from specialists to family practitioners. The Trump administration's failure to make progress on immigration changes and the newly established $100,000 fee for each new H-1B visa application, which has no exemption for health care workers, will leave rural Americans with far fewer doctors to treat them, writes Manav Midha in his opinion for MedPage Today.

The difference in the number of physicians and the availability of specialists between urban and rural locations is stark. Midha writes, "There are approximately 263 specialists for every 100,000 people in urban areas compared to 30 for every 100,000 people in rural areas, and 46% of counties (and 86% of rural counties) have not a single cardiologist."

For decades, rural communities have relied on immigrant doctors for their care. Midha explains, "Foreign-born physicians are uniquely willing to serve rural communities even when few others move there. Immigration restrictions risk cutting off one of the last remaining lifelines for rural healthcare access."

Immigrant doctors who came to the U.S. in the 1980s and 1990s were able to obtain J-1 visas, which "allow for a path to permanent residency if a doctor works for at least 3 years in an area with underserved healthcare needs," Midha adds. They cared for patients in "rural Indiana, deep Appalachia, coastal Louisiana, and parts of Texas, hours from the closest city," where few American graduates wanted to live.

Congress could expand the Conrad 30 program to add some physicians with J-1 waivers who can treat in rural communities. "The bipartisan Conrad State 30 and Physician Access Reauthorization Act would have expanded (albeit slightly) the number of spots and extended the program. It was initially introduced in Congress in 2023 and again in 2025 but has seen little movement," Midha writes.

In the face of the current shortage, some states are developing their own approaches to help rural communities secure access to doctors. Midha writes, "At least 18 states, led by Tennessee, have enacted laws permitting internationally-trained physicians with appropriate experience to practice medicine without having to repeat medical residency."

Meanwhile, some rural communities may face a more severe shortage of physicians, and residents will have to travel longer distances for care. Expanding and developing paths for immigrant physicians "is not merely a moral imperative -- it is an economic one," Midha adds. "And it is one that can address one of the greatest challenges to equitable care."

Measles is one of the most contagious diseases on the planet, and it's spreading in the U.S.

Measles is one of the most contagious diseases in the world. 
(koto_feja/iSotck via Getty Images Plus, CC)

With its spiking fevers, extreme fatigue, watery eyes, diarrhea, photo-sensitivity, and possible lifelong complications or death paired with its high contagion rate, measles has been likened to the "flu on steroids." Alla Katsnelson, the associate health editor for The Conversation, shares a brief on measles, reviews its renewed spread in the U.S. and discusses the measles vaccination.

As one of the world's most contagious diseases, measles is "far more contagious than more familiar infectious illnesses such as flu, Covid-19 and chickenpox," Katsnelson explains. Beyond its ability to spread, the disease can cause severe lung problems, pneumonia or brain swelling, which usually require a hospital inpatient stay. 

Since early last year, the U.S. has had an increasing number of measles cases. Katsnelson writes, "The measles outbreak in South Carolina reached 876 cases on Feb. 3. That number surpasses the 2025 outbreak in Texas and hits the unfortunate milestone of being the largest outbreak in the U.S. since 2000, when the disease was declared eliminated here."

Measles has spread more easily in communities with overall vaccination rates below 93 to 95%, which is considered the threshold for herd immunity. Katsnelson adds, "A striking – though unsurprising – feature of the South Carolina outbreak is that at least 800 of the reported cases occurred in people who weren’t vaccinated."

The vaccine mimics what catching measles does without the long-term risks. The vaccine, when given according to the recommended 2-dose regimen, is 97% effective in preventing measles infection. Daniel Pastula, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Colorado, told Katsnelson, "The immunity from a vaccine is effectively the same immunity you get from having measles itself – but vastly safer than encountering the wild virus unprotected."

Why have some parents refused to have their children vaccinated against measles? Few people, including medical providers, have ever known anyone with measles or treated someone with it. Many parents who have lived in the U.S., where there has been herd immunity for decades, "have decided that vaccinating their children, which does pose some amount of risk from rare complications, is the better choice," Katsnelson writes. However, when enough families decline vaccination, herd immunity no longer protects against the disease.

Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, recommended that Americans get the measles vaccine. He told Dana Bash of CNN, "Take the vaccine, please. We have a solution for our problem."