U.S. farmers worry about Trump trade policies as their share of total agricultural exports shrinks

Bloomberg Interactive map shows how other
countries are closing the gap with the U.S.

President Trump's "aggressive positions on U.S. trade relations threaten to worsen the relative decline of U.S. exports, as countries look elsewhere for agricultural products," Alan Bjerga, Blacki Migliozzi and Cindy Hoffman report for Bloomberg News. The main reason is that other countries, especially Brazil, have caught up with the U.S. in developing more farmland and improving their trade prospects.

"Proposed legislation introduced in Mexico’s parliament would block U.S. corn in favor of Argentinian and Brazilian products, and South American countries are trying to seize market share away from the U.S.," Bloomberg reports. "Adecoagro SA, an Argentine operator of farmland, made its first-ever rice sale to Mexico after betting that souring trade relations with the U.S. could boost South American producers."

"That could exacerbate a problem for the U.S. apparent in agricultural commodities data," Bloomberg reports. "A look at the U.S. share of bulk farm commodities shipped overseas—ranging from corn, soybeans and wheat to cotton, coffee and rubber—from the past 15 years shows the U.S. portion of global exports has fallen from 26 percent in 2000 to 18 percent in 2015. While U.S. exports have increased, Brazil and the Black Sea [Ukraine, Russia, etc.] have risen proportionally much faster, making the U.S. less central to agricultural trade."

Joe Glauber, a former chief economist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the lead farm negotiator during the Doha Round of global trade talks, "said a less-central U.S. has less control over its own destiny," Bloomberg reports. "Policies to limit overproduction become useless when other countries can replace acreage, and the U.S. is also more vulnerable to long-term export damage should it discourage trade, simply because rivals are now more able to take advantage of missteps." Glauber told Bloomberg, "If a trade war led to the U.S. being less able to sell its soybeans or wheat, you would find quickly that the rest of the world would say, 'thank you'."

New Mexico will require all law enforcement officers to carry opioid-overdose antidote kits

New Mexico has become the first state to require all state and local law enforcement agencies "to provide officers with antidote kits" to combat the opioid epidemic, Susan Montoya Bryan reports for The Associated Press. A 2014 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ranked New Mexico second nationally, behind West Virgini, in rates of opioid deaths, at 27.3 for every 100,000 people.

"Aside from outfitting first responders with anti-overdose kits, the legislation requires federally certified addiction treatment centers to provide patients with education plus two doses of naloxone and a prescription for the antidote," AP reports. "The state’s prisons and jails will be required to do the same for at-risk inmates upon their release as long as funding and supplies are available."

"While the bill does not include any new funding, public safety officials said each police force in New Mexico receives annual state funding per officer to help with training, equipment and supplies," AP reports. "A portion of that can be used to purchase naloxone kits, which cost roughly $70 each. It can be administered with a nasal spray or via injection. Grant funding will also be sought to fully implement expanded access." (Screenshot of interactive Kaiser Family Foundation map: Numbers of opioid deaths by state in 2014, highlighting New Mexico)

Coal industry seeing modest growth in jobs, but is it enough for a revival?

The coal industry, has been mechanizing, automating and losing jobs for decades, saw a modest gain recently, notes Justin Fox of Bloomberg News. The industry has gained 1,700 jobs since September, and added 100 jobs in March, growing to 50,300. While the numbers are positive, they aren't big enough to signal a resurgence of coal, Fox writes. (Bloomberg chart: Seasonally adjusted employment in coal mining)

President Trump has promised to revive coal. An increase in jobs is a good sign, but one problem is that Wyoming is the nation's leading state in coal production, "producing as much as the next seven added together," but is only third in employment, Fox writes. "That's because almost all of Wyoming's coal mining comes from surface mining, and surface mining is far less labor-intensive than underground mining. Overall, surface mines produced two-thirds of the nation's coal in 2015 but accounted for just 40 percent of coal mining employment."

Bloomberg graphic: Top coal producing states
 vs. states with most coal jobs 

Trump's decision to roll back Obama administration regulations "will have some positive effect on coal mining employment," Fox writes. "The question is how much, and whether it's worth it. The modest uptick in mining jobs since September of course predates the change, and seems to have a lot to do with a rebound in the price of metallurgical coal used in steelmaking, which is mined mainly in Appalachia. The vast majority of U.S. coal production goes to electricity production, and by far the largest share of that comes from Wyoming, where mining is much less labor-intensive."

Appalachia youth grow up without loyalty to coal, look for other opportunities for their future

Hindman, Ky. (Best Places map)

Teddy Martin, a former Eastern Kentucky coal miner who teaches at a vocational school in Hindman, is trying to teach Appalachian youth that there is a promising future in the region that does not revolve around coal, Zack Colman reports for The Christian Science Monitor. He "hopes that learning trades will allow his students to stay in Hindman after they graduate, and perhaps start businesses of their own right here. Many want to, but worry they can’t."

Colman makes a key point about the old, largely depleted Appalachian coalfield: "The old mind-set that the region needs a big jobs provider—like coal—is hard to break. Younger generations watch their parents endure unsteady employment and worry about their own prospects. Older generations can’t visualize a different way forward. One mistake outsiders make, many here say, is thinking all this is actually about coal. It’s not. It’s more about the life coal provided. Where else could you earn $80,000 a year with a high school education or less?"

Nevertheless, "Towns like Hindman, across a mining region that runs through the ancient folds of the Appalachian Mountains, from Pennsylvania to West Virginia to Tennessee, are beginning to see the opportunities—in fields such as tourism, agriculture, e-commerce, and environmental cleanup," Colman writes. And younger residents are "growing up without the deep-rooted loyalty to coal mining that their parents and grandparents harbored. They are looking to a different future. . . . Perhaps more than at any time in the past, the focus is on bootstrap ingenuity—encouraging a more entrepreneurial economy. The goal is not just to pump money into the region, but to help communities like Hindman foster the desire and have the tools to build a new future for themselves, one small business at a time."

Hindman is in Knott County, where the unemployment rate is 10 percent, twice the national average. The poverty rate is 33 percent and the county has one of the highest drug overdose rates in a state that is one of the nation's leaders in the dubious statistic, Colman writes.

What's good for Big Ag isn't always good for rural America, 'Food and Farm File' columnist opines

Farm, ranch, and commodity groups are no longer preaching or practicing unity, creating a farm-nonfarm divide in rural America, opines Alan Guebert in his "Food and Farm File" column: "That culture of togetherness hasn’t aged well in the age Big Ag and Big Agbiz. American farm and ranch groups, like urban and political America, are now less social and more tribal. Many tightly grip a 'we’re-right, you’re-wrong' view of farm and food technology, policy and their customers."

Guebert notes that the National Pork Producers Council moved its headquarters from rural America to Washington, D.C., and says major livestock and meatpacker groups have supported legislation that would hurt rural areas. For example, groups, such as the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture to withdraw proposed rule changes to the Farmer Fair Practice rules that "would ensure packers cannot retaliate against producers who show their contracts to legal counsel.”

Guebert writes, "Why would any livestock group oppose a sensible, necessary rule that allows American cattle and hog growers to 'show their (meatpacker) contracts to legal counsel' without fear of retaliation?" NCBA "said the rules would lead to meatpackers paying one price for all U.S. cattle." Guebert says "that’s an absurd and ridiculous claim with no factual basis—other than a study NPPC and NCBA bought and paid for—that went unchallenged by other commodity groups, unanswered by USDA, and uncommented on by any member of congressional ag committees."

Also, one of the biggest farm groups in the U.S., the American Farm Bureau Federation, quietly endorsed a House plan to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Guebert notes. "AFBF offered neither a replacement plan for the millions of Americans—many in rural America—who would lose insurance coverage under the repeal nor any suggestion to improve the ACA if it remained. Moreover, the AFBF announcement didn’t mention that several of its state affiliates own and operate regional, rural-focused insurance companies who might benefit, some handsomely, if the entire ACA was repealed and no federal replacement took its place."

"There was a time when what was good for rural America was good for farmers and farm groups," Guebert writes. "We’ve now flipped that to read: What’s good for farm groups might be good for farmers and rural America. That change, subtle as it seems, seems to change everything. Many farm and commodity groups are often viewed as anti-customer, anti-environment, and anti-neighbor bottom-line grubbers. Are they?"

Growing number of community college students, even in rural areas, are homeless

UCLA's Students 4 Students has sheltered eight

long-term students since October. (NYT photo)

A growing number of community college students, including those in rural areas, are homeless, Elizabeth Harris reports for The New York Times. The Wisconsin HOPE Lab at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, released a study last month of 70 community colleges in 24 states, finding that 14 percent of students are homeless. California State University released a similar study last year that found that 8 to 12 percent of community college students in California are homeless. Harris reports, "In 2015-16, 32,000 college applicants were identified as 'unaccompanied homeless youth' on federal student aid forms, a number widely considered to be a low count."

Sara Goldrick-Rab, founder of the HOPE Lab and a professor of higher education policy at Temple University in Philadelphia, said one the main reasons for student homelessness is an increase in low-income students that lack a safety net if they run into financial problems, Harris writes. If they lose their job, or get kicked out by roommates, they might lack the funds to find another place to live, while at the same time, their parents are unable to afford to help them out financially.

Other reasons are an aging student population—the average age for community college students is 29—and a lack of high-paying jobs for people without college degrees, Harris writes. The HOPE study found that only 11 percent of homeless students made more than $15 an hour.

Eloy Ortiz Oakley, chancellor of the California Community Colleges, told Harris, “This is not just happening in urban poor communities. It affects kids from working-class families across the state, in rural communities and in communities of color. Homelessness now affects working-class and formerly middle-class families.”

BLM changes its homepage from backpackers watching a sunset to a black wall of coal

The Bureau of Land Management’s homepage was transformed Thursday from a photo of two backpackers watching the sun set over a wide open range of fields and hills to a solid wall of coal, Daryl Fears reports for The Washington Post. "The photo speaks volumes about the way the Trump administration is prioritizing the land. BLM, under the Interior Department, controls more than half a billion acres, including national monuments and wilderness areas that humans visit and where a variety of animals roam, but the feature image is all about coal." (BLM homepage on Wednesday and Thursday)

"It follows President Trump’s campaign promise to bring back the coal industry and his recent executive order lifting a moratorium on new coal leases," Fears writes. "It also follows the issuance of a lease to mine 56 million tons of coal in Utah."

KFC to stop using chickens with antibiotics by 2018; farmers will need to raise more chickens

Kentucky Fried Chicken announced today that it will stop using chickens that contain antibiotics by the end of 2018, Zlati Meyer reports for USA Today. "Other quick-service chains, such as Chipotle, McDonald's, Burger King, Panera and Wendy's, have made similar pledges to eliminate antibiotics in their chicken. But KFC said it believes it is on the cutting edge in trying to go without antibiotics when it comes to on-the-bone chicken."

KFC, which works with more than 2,000 farms in a dozen states, said the change won't result in higher prices at its 4,200 U.S. outlets, but it will require growers to "raise more chickens in order to meet KFC's size demands without the antibiotics," Meyer writes. "KFC also recently pledged to eliminate artificial colors and flavors from all of its core products by the end of 2018 and to have 100 percent of the menu, except for drinks and third-party products, free of food dyes by the end of this year."

Study argues that human behavior is overarching reason for decline in bee populations

Bee Informed graphic

Humans are the biggest reason for the decline in honeybee populations, says Robert Owen, author of The Australian Beekeeping Manual, in a study published in the Journal of Economic Entomology. Other studies have blamed neonicotinoid-based pesticides, varroa mites, disease and poor nutrition for declining honeybee populations.

Owen writes, "Although the environmental and economic implications of honeybee decline may be mitigated by changes in human behavior and governments in some instances share the responsibility for implementing these changes, I would argue that most change should occur in the behavior of individual keepers."

Owen partly blames the decline of bees on overuse of pesticides and antibiotics. He also argues that "the global trade in honeybees and honeybee products has spread pathogens that might otherwise have remained localized" and "migratory beekeeping has spread pathogens within countries." Also, the lack of skill or dedication among hobbyist beekeepers lead them to inadequately inspect and manage colonies for disease.

As an example, he said that of the 2.66 million managed honeybee colonies in the U.S., "1.8 million were transported to the Central Valley of California in February 2016 to pollinate the almond crop." He writes, "It is likely that these colonies spread mites, beetles, viruses and other pathogens between colonies involved in almond pollination."

Invasive mussel boosts Great Lakes cisco (lake herring); one biologist fears boom and bust

Cisco caught in Lake Michigan (U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service photo by Katie Steiger-Meister)

The Great Lakes cisco, also known as lake herring, appears to be making a comeback, thanks to an invasive species, Steven Maier reports for the Great Lakes Echo, a project of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at Michigan State University. Matt Herbert, an aquatic ecologist with the Nature Conservancy, said invasive quagga mussels have depleted nutrients in the lakes. Since cisco do well in low-nutrient environments, they now have space to thrive.

Cisco, which typically grow about 12 to 15 inches long, but have been measured as long as 24 inches, "at one point supported one of the largest commercial fisheries in the region," Maier writes. The species disappeared in the 1950s, mainly because of overfishing, invasive species and habitat degradation. Herbert said "Lake Erie once boasted one of the largest cisco populations of the lakes, but those populations were hit especially hard and have since been lost entirely."

While work is being done to restore cisco to the Great Lakes, some experts worry that this could be a boom-and-bust story, Maier writes. Curt Karboski, a biologist with the Lower Great Lakes Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office in Amherst, N.Y., told Maier that recent "huge catches" are based on a few stocking years. "He would like to see the age distribution even out before he can feel comfortable that the cisco are on track," Maier writes.

May 3 webinar will show how to do fact checks

Lou Jacobson, a senior correspondent for PolitiFact, co-author of the Almanac of American Politics and a staff writer for the Tampa Bay Times, will conduct a webinar at 1 p.m. ET May 3 on how to write fact-checking stories. The course will concentrate on where journalists should start when working on a fact-check, how to best interact with expert sources, and how to write the article.

Also covered will be: Which claims are checkable and which ones aren’t; how to go about your research on the web; how to craft query emails to experts; and how PolitiFact and other fact-checkers come up with their truth ratings. The cost is $39. The webinar is presented by DigitalEd and MediaShift. For more information or to register click here.

Wisconsin Legislature will leave public notices alone; battles still going on in N.C. and other states

The Wisconsin Legislature's budget committee has dropped legislation that would have removed many paid public notices from newspapers in the state, the Wisconsin Newspaper Association reports.

"The Joint Finance Committee also removed the provision from the budget that would have eliminated the public notice of timber sales," WNA Executive Director Beth Bennett wrote in an email to me,bers. "There are many members of the legislature that must be thanked for their support of the newspaper industry. The WNA encourages each of you to thank your state representatives as soon as possible."

Bennett added, "Our readers should also be thanked for the hundreds of calls that were placed into legislative offices over the past several weeks; reader support made a big impact on the success of our effort to preserve public notice."

The battle in Wisconsin is one of several going on in state legislatures around the country. Two bills reducing notice have passed in Arkansas and a major battle in going on in North Carolina. For tracking of the issue, see the Public Notice Resource Center.

Low salaries lead to shortage of teachers of career and technical training in rural areas

High schools, especially in rural areas, lack qualified instructors to teach career and technical education (CTE) courses, according to a Stateline analysis of a 2016 report on teacher shortages by the U.S. Department of Education and its Office of Postsecondary Education. Stateline found that two-thirds of states report a CTE shortage, with states such as Maine, Maryland and New York having had shortages for almost 20 years, and Minnesota and South Dakota for a decade.

The main reason for the shortages is that "salaries are too low to compete with salaries in technical fields," Stateline's Sophie Quinton reports. "Too few young people are specializing in career and technical education in college. And it’s hard to attract teachers to isolated schools in rural areas." A study of 37 state directors by Advance CTE found that attempts to attract teachers with financial incentives have not been successful. (Stateline graphic: Reasons state directors say they can't fill CTE jobs)

That's creating problems, especially in rural areas where students are less likely to attend college and high schools can prepare them "to step into jobs that require some extra training but not a college degree, such as home health aides, a profession expected to grow by 38 percent over the next decade, or entry-level jobs in construction and the skilled trades," Quinton writes. "The construction sector, like health care, is expected to grow faster than the national average in the years to come."

Lawmakers in many states are trying to solve the problem, Quinton writes. "The Virginia Legislature and the boards of education in New York and South Dakota have adjusted CTE licensing requirements in recent years to make it easier for people to start teaching. Last year, North Carolina and Virginia created licenses that allow technical workers to teach part time. People from industry in Alabama, Florida, Kentucky and Ohio already have a similar option." Tennessee "allows people who have worked in industry to count their years of work experience as years of teaching experience."

Problems still persist in states like Minnesota, where a report from a state task force "found that across five in-demand specialties, a third of all CTE teachers had been hired on short-term special permission licenses," Quinton writes. "In some of those specialties the share was higher: nearly 40 percent for manufacturing, 50 percent for construction and 54 percent for medicine."

FDA nominee compares opioid epidemic to Ebola, Zika viruses; calls crisis 'most immediate priority'

The nation's opioid epidemic, which is especially problematic in Appalachia and other rural areas, is a “public-health emergency on the order of Ebola and Zika," President Trump's nominee to head the Food and Drug Administration said at his Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday. Scott Gottlieb, a physician and entrepreneur, said the crisis "requires dramatic action by the agency and the rest of government."

"Gottlieb described the FDA as 'complicit, even if unwittingly,' in helping to fuel the opioid epidemic, Laurie McGinley reports for The Washington Post. "Officials, he said, 'didn't fully recognize the scope of the emerging problem' several years ago and needed a new strategy to combat the issues involved. Developing that strategy, he added, would be his 'highest and most immediate priority' and would involve taking a hard look at the FDA's framework for approving painkillers and pressing for greater availability of nonaddictive painkillers."

"Gottlieb said he would take an 'all-of-the-above approach' in trying to find solutions to the opioid problem but also added that the issue has become too big for the FDA to solve on its own," McGinley writes. He said, “This is a staggering human tragedy that is going to require dramatic action on the part of the agency." Gottlieb, a high-ranking FDA official during the George W. Bush administration, is popular with Republicans and "his confirmation seems all but assured," McGinley reports.

30-50% of prescribed antibiotics not needed, CDC says; food giants vow to phase out use on poultry

At least 30 percent of antibiotics prescribed in 2014 in U.S. doctor's offices, hospital clinics and emergency departments were unnecessary, says a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The study found that "total inappropriate antibiotic use, inclusive of unnecessary use and inappropriate selection, dosing and duration, may approach 50 percent of all outpatient antibiotic use."

During the study year 266 million courses of antibiotics were dispensed to outpatients in U.S. community pharmacies, or five prescriptions for every six people, CDC says. (CDC map: Outpatient antibiotic prescriptions per 1,000 people in 2014)

Researchers from Australia's Bond University asked parents of children 12 and younger when it was appropriate to use antibiotics for common upper respiratory illnesses. They found that doctors often prescribe unnecessary antibiotics for children to placate worried parents of "just in case," reports Teresa Carr of Consumer Reports magazine. Doctors want high satisfaction ratings from patients, according to a 2014 survey of 155 doctors by researchers at the University of Wisconsin and Rogers Memorial Hospital in Oconomowoc, Wis. "Almost half the physicians believed that the pressure to obtain better scores prompted inappropriate prescribing, including unnecessary prescriptions for antibiotics," Carr writes.

There's another side to the issue that needs more attention – the misuse and overuse of antibiotics on livestock and poultry, Ben Chandler, president and CEO of the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky, writes for The Courier-Journal in Louisville. (Kentucky ranks first in per-capita antibiotic prescriptions.)

Chandler notes that 70 percent of antibiotics considered important to human medicine in the U.S. "are for use on food producing animals. Typically, the drugs are given to animals on a routine basis – even if they aren't sick – to promote growth and to compensate for crowded unsanitary conditions. That practice turns farms into breeding grounds for antibiotic-resistant bacteria that cab travel off the farms and into our communities."

Tyson Foods, the world's largest meat company by revenue, and Perdue Farms are transitioning away from antibiotic use in their branded chickens, Chandler notes. Fast-food industry leaders including "McDonald's, Subway, Chick-fil-A, Wendy's, Chipotle, and Taco Bell have made various commitments to phase out of the routine use of antibiotics from the chicken supply chain. Subway's commitment was for all meats."

Electric execs say Trump's moves for coal won't have much effect on their shift away from the fuel

Amid President Trump's promises to revive the coal industry, six coal-fired power plants have closed since November and more than 40 are set to close within the next four years, Coral Davenport reports for The New York Times. That includes Arizona's Navajo Generating Station, the largest coal-fired power plant in the West, which is expected to seize operations by 2019.

"Trump campaigned on a pledge to restore the limping American coal industry, vowing to bring jobs and production back to a sector that has been on a steady decline for over a decade," Davenport writes. "But to do that, he would have to revive demand for coal by electric utilities, which for decades have been the largest consumer of the heavily polluting fuel. Nearly all the coal mined in the U.S. generates electricity."

Electricity executives say Trump’s rollbacks of Obama administration regulations "make little difference to them," Davenport writes. "They still plan to retire coal plants—although perhaps at a slightly slower pace—and, more significant, they have no plans to build new ones." One reason is that electric utilities, like Southern Co., plan investments "on a 50-year horizon, the expected life span of a new power plant. Its planners do not see coal as economically viable in that time frame."

In 2005, 71 percent of American Electric Power's output was coal-fired, but is now 47 percent and is expected to keep going down, Davenport notes. At the same time its natural-gas share has increased from 20 percent to 27 percent. "Over the next three years, the company plans to invest about $1 billion in new wind and solar generation and $3 billion in new transmission lines to move that electricity."

"With or without the Clean Power Plan, power companies say, coal is simply no longer the fuel of choice for keeping the lights on in America—and they do not expect it to make a comeback," Davenport writes. "Cheaper natural gas and renewable sources like wind and solar power have replaced it. This decision is also driven by economics. Electric company executives are including in their long-term profit-and-loss calculations an expectation that the federal government will eventually tax or regulate carbon dioxide pollution."

Interior's inspector general says agency isn't ensuring coal reclamation projects get priority

A report by the inspector general at the Department of the Interior found that its Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement is failing to make sure states give coal reclamation projects priority over non-coal projects: "As a result, non-coal reclamation is completed while coal-related hazards persist."

The report said the agency is failing to crack down on five of the 25 states—Mississippi, Louisiana, Montana, Texas and Wyoming—"that get grants from the Abandoned Mine Land fund," Dylan Brown reports for Greenwire. "The fund comprises fees charged on every ton of U.S. coal for cleaning up mine sites abandoned by companies before the law was signed in 1977."

The five states keep getting grants though regulators have determined that all their eligible coal sites have been reclaimed. That leaves less money for states like Wyoming, the biggest coal state, which "has an inventory of $90 million in unfunded reclamation," Brown writes. But Wyoming is also part of the problem, he notes: "Its inventory is growing as the state spends on non-coal projects. From 2013 to 2016, Wyoming spent $214 million on non-coal projects and $166 million on reclamation."

Federal count of black-lung cases remains too low

Progressive massive fibrosis in underground miners 
 with more than 25 years experience (Coal Workers’ 
 Health Surveillance Program, Ky.,Va.,W.Va,1974–2015)

Cases of black-lung disease in Appalachia are still being grossly underreported, Jessica Lilly, Roxy Todd and Glynis Board report for West Virginia Public Broadcasting. Fewer than 100 cases have been officially reported in the past five years, but using data from 11 clinics in Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio, NPR's Howard Berkes found 962 cases in the past 10 years. Berkes found 186 cases in West Virginia at federally funded lung clinics since 2009, with numbers likely higher because some clinics reported only a few years' worth of data.

A 2016 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Berkes's investigation found that black-lung disease is surging among Appalachian coal miners. Lawmakers responded in December to the report and investigation by asking the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the U.S. Department of Labor Coal Mine Workers' Compensation Program and black-lung clinics funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration to work together do a better job obtaining counts of progressive massive fibrosis, the most progressive form of black lung.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act "included special provisions that make it easier for coal miners to get black lung benefits," West Virginia Public Broadcasting reports. "Republicans introduced an alternative plan to replace Obamacare, but the first attempt failed to get support. Still, this might not be the end of America’s health care story. In a recent visit to West Virginia, Vice President Mike Pence vowed to keep fighting to repeal the ACA. If the ACA is repealed, gaining black lung benefits could become much more difficult for miners, effectively harming a group of people President Trump promised to protect."

Student journalists in rural Kansas discover that principal lied about credentials, so she resigns

An investigative report by journalists at a high school in rural southeastern Kansas revealed that the school's new principal lied on her application, leading to her resignation, Samantha Schmidt reports for The Washington Post. When six journalists for The Booster Redux, the paper at Pittsburg High School, began investigating principal Amy Robertson, they found that the website for Corllins University, the private school where she said she got her master’s and doctorate degrees, didn’t work. They also found no evidence that it was an accredited university, and later learned it was a diploma mill.

Redux reporters Gina Mathew, Kali Poenitske,
Maddie Baden, Trina Paul, Connor Balthazor
and Patrick Sullivan (Photo by Emily Smith)

The students started "a weeks-long investigation that would result in an article published Friday questioning the legitimacy of the principal’s degrees and of her work as an education consultant," Schmidt writes. "On Tuesday night, Robertson resigned." Newspaper adviser Emily Smith told the Post, “Everybody kept telling them, ‘Stop poking your nose where it doesn’t belong.'" Smith, who said the students had the full support of the superintendent, "were at a loss that something that was so easy for them to see was waiting to be noticed by adults.”

The team of five juniors and a senior "revealed that Corllins had been portrayed in a number of articles as a diploma mill, a place where people can buy a degree, diploma or certificates," Schmidt writes. "Corllins is not accredited by the U.S. Department of Education, the students reported. The Better Business Bureau’s website says Corllins’s physical address is unknown and the school isn’t a BBB-accredited institution."

Best Places map

The students reported that during a conference, "Robertson 'presented incomplete answers, conflicting dates and inconsistencies in her responses,'" Schmidt writes. Robertson claimed she attended Corllins before it lost accreditation, but "she declined to comment directly on students’ questions about her credentials, 'because their concerns are not based on facts,' she said. In an emergency faculty meeting Tuesday, the superintendent said Robertson was unable to produce a transcript confirming her undergraduate degree from the University of Tulsa, Smith said."

"During the course of their reporting, the students spent weeks reaching out to educational institutions and accreditation agencies to corroborate Robertson’s background, some even working through spring break," Schmidt writes. "Smith, had to recuse herself from the story because she was on the committee that hired Robertson. So the students sought the help of Eric Thomas, executive director of the Kansas Scholastic Press Association, and other local and national journalists and experts. Under Kansas law, high school journalists are protected from administrative censorship."

Supt. Destry Brown told the Pittsburg Morning Sun, “I appreciate that our kids ask questions and don’t just accept something because somebody told them. And that would have been the easy thing to do. So I will always support our kids. The unfortunate thing is that internal in our office we were already working on a lot of that and eventually the chickens would have come to roost. They made it very public, which probably speeded that process. Things may have happened differently but maybe had the same result in the end. It would have been later, rather than earlier. I feel like they did a great job with the research they did. They shared that with me. We took some of that and followed up.”

More states get or seek federal waiver to let Medicaid pay for addiction treatment

To help combat the opioid epidemic among low-income residents, several states have been granted a waiver, or are seeking permission for a waiver, to "an obscure Medicaid rule that prohibits the use of federal dollars for addiction treatment provided in facilities with more than 16 beds," Christine Vestal reports for Stateline. California, Maryland, Massachusetts and New York have been granted waivers, while Arizona, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Utah and Virginia are seeking similar permission.

Of the estimated 22 million Americans who have a drug or alcohol addiction that needs treatment, only 10 million receive it, Vestal reports. The opioid epidemic killed 33,000 people in 2015, and the epidemic is especially problematic in rural areas and Appalachia. (Stateline map: Where Medicaid pays for longer addiction treatment or has been asked to)

Tom Price, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, said in March that he "would continue the Obama administration’s waiver policies for residential facilities with 16 or more beds," Vestal writes. "The 16-bed provision was originally intended to discourage investment in what the 1965 Medicaid law called 'institutions for mental disease,' and to instead promote the expansion of smaller, community-based mental health and substance abuse centers."

Eliminating the 16-bed prohibition "means millions in new federal Medicaid dollars will flow to treatment centers that now rely on limited state and local grants," Vestal writes. "In addition to offering inpatient treatment to patients who need it, state Medicaid addiction programs must include all available addiction medications, intensive outpatient therapy, recovery support services such as job training and housing, substance abuse prevention programs, case management and physical health services. States also must prove that adding more residential treatment slots to the list of Medicaid treatment options will cost no more than continuing to prohibit it."