Georgia reporter's unpaid, all-night coverage of vote tallying, backed by donors, shows the importance of local journalism

Robin Kemp at her home office in Forest Park, Ga. (Washington Post photo by Kevin Liles)

The same day Georgia's Clayton News laid off reporter Robin Kemp in April, the suburban Atlanta journalist started her own news website, The Clayton Crescent. That dedication to covering local news catapulted her into the international spotlight during the election and underscored the importance of local journalism, Reis Thebault reports for The Washington Post.

Kemp, 56, "was the only journalist to watch all 21 hours of Clayton County’s marathon tabulation of absentee votes, from about 9 a.m. Thursday to 5 a.m. Friday," Thebault reports. "During that span, a record number of absentee ballots helped Biden close the statewide gap with Trump. And it was votes from Clayton County — the heart of the late civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis’s old district — that pushed Biden into the lead" and helped him flip Georgia blue for the first time in nearly 30 years.

Through Twitter and Facebook Live, Kemp kept followers updated on ballot-counting and on Republican observers. People began to pay attention. "When she set out that morning, Kemp had just a couple hundred Twitter followers and less than $2,000 in a GoFundMe she started in April. By the next day, she was at well over 10,000 followers and dollars," Thebault reports.

Kemp’s all-night coverage, which Thebault calls "public service journalism in its purest form" is not an unusual workload for her. She "sometimes works 20 hours a day, as both writer and photographer, using a camera she bought used on eBay. She works alone, with no editor and no staff," Thebault reports. She has no savings and her only income is $300 a week in unemployment.

But Kemp keeps going with the Crescent because nobody else covers local issues. The Clayton News, hit hard by the pandemic, mostly publishes wire content now, Thebault reports, while the Crescent, "already has 38 pages of articles, including coverage of the coronavirus’s toll, crime and zoning issues. In an April 28 editorial, she promised Crescent readers three things: hyperlocal journalism, no survey walls to hurdle before reading her stories, and no clickbait."

The Crescent "is emblematic of the sort of journalism that is vanishing by the day," Thebault reports, citing research by University of North Carolina journalism professor Penny Abernathy. "The pandemic has only accelerated that dire trend," he notes. "In April and May alone, at least 30 papers closed or merged, dozens went online-only and thousands of journalists were furloughed or laid off."

Kemp has received nearly $18,000 in GoFundMe donations, but says she won't accept them until she finishes the paperwork to make the Crescent a non-profit. Donations are proof that people want more local journalism, according to Richard T. Griffiths, a former CNN vice president and president emeritus of the Georgia First Amendment Foundation, who is helping Kemp set up a board of directors.

Griffiths said Kemp's real challenge will be finding local donors to sustain the paper after her viral fame ebbs, though he is confident she can do it. "It is in every community’s interest to have a strong, healthy accountability-journalism operation going," he told Thebault.

Appeals court deals Mountain Valley Pipeline another blow

"The Mountain Valley Pipeline’s legal limbo continued Monday as a panel of federal judges granted a stay of construction of the pipeline across about 1,000 waterbodies in West Virginia and Virginia," Mike Tony reports for The Herald-Dispatch in Huntington, W.Va. "The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted the stay following oral arguments as it considered whether to grant a previous request by conservation groups for a longer stay barring construction of the pipeline across streams in West Virginia and Virginia. The court had granted a temporary administrative stay Oct. 16, and its Monday stay, via a brief order without explanation, will remain in effect until it decides whether to overturn water permitting from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for the project."

Pipeline developers recently pushed back the completion date and increased the price tag for the project, blaming legal and regulatory challenges from environmental groups, Tony reports. The pipeline was originally meant to launch in late 2018, but now that's been moved to late 2021. The estimated cost, meanwhile, has risen to at least $5.8 billion, over 50 percent higher than originally projected.

$4 billion in EU tariffs on jets, farm products etc. to hit Tue.

Starting Tuesday, the European Union will impose tariffs on $3.99 billion in U.S. good annually, including agricultural goods. The move, sanctioned last month by the World Trade Organization, is part of a long-running dispute over airplane subsidies for Boeing and Airbus jets, Laurence Norman and Daniel Michaels report for The Wall Street Journal.

"On Monday evening, the EU said the U.S. products to be targeted with the 25% duty would include tobacco, nuts and seeds, spirits, sauces, soups and syrups, self-propelled shovel loaders, tractors and proteins," Norman and Michaels report.

Racial, ethnic disparities persist in rural education levels

Educational attainment rates for racial and ethnic minorities have improved over the past two decades, but large gaps persist for rural nonwhites. Rural Hispanics, Blacks, Native Americans and Alaska Natives were only half as likely as their white counterparts to have a bachelor's degree or higher in 2018, the most recent year of data available. That's according to a newly published study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service.

Among all rural residents 25 and older, "the percentage who had completed a bachelor’s degree or higher rose from 15% in 2000 to 20% in 2018. Conversely, the share of that population without a high school degree or equivalent dropped from 24% in 2000 to 13% in 2018," Tracey Farrigan reports. "Among racial and ethnic groups in rural America, Hispanics continued to have the highest percentage (35 percent) without a high school degree, despite significant gains in high school and higher educational attainment rates between 2000 and 2018.

Meanwhile, African Americans "had the largest decrease (20 percentage points) of rural individuals without a high school degree," Farrigan writes. "This change eliminated the gap between the shares of Blacks/African Americans and Whites who had graduated from high school but had not completed a bachelor’s degree. Nevertheless, the share of Blacks without a high school degree remained nearly double that of whites in 2018."

Rural hospitals say they can't afford ultra-cold freezers needed to store Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine

Pfizer Inc. has a promising coronavirus vaccine, but most rural hospitals can't afford the ultra-cold freezers to store it, so rural residents may have a harder time getting it, Olivia Goldhill reports for Stat. That means some of them may have to wait for other vaccines that don't need special handling.

Pfizer's vaccine has to be stored at -94 F., -70 C. "Typical freezers don’t get that cold, making distribution of this vaccine a logistical nightmare," Goldhill reports. "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has advised state health departments against purchasing ultra-cold freezers — which cost $10,000 to $15,000 each — saying other vaccines with less demanding storage requirements will be available soon. Hospitals with money to spare are flouting this guidance. Four major health care systems, from North Carolina to Ohio, North Dakota, and California, told Stat they had bought additional ultra-cold freezers, while Jefferson Health in Philadelphia said it has leased five units."

"This purchase is out of reach for poorer hospitals, especially those in rural areas that can barely manage daily expenses," Goldhill writes, noting that nearly half of rural hospitals in the U.S. lost money in April, and the pandemic has continued to hurt their bottom lines, according to Alan Morgan, chief executive of the National Rural Health Association. But rural people need the shots the most, he said.

“Hundreds of rural, small towns all across the U.S. have a higher percentage of elderly, low-income [residents], a higher percentage of the community with multiple chronic health issues,” Morgan told Goldhill. “In this financial environment, you can imagine that there is simply no consideration of rural hospitals purchasing storage equipment for this ultra-cold distribution.”

Another problem is that Pfizer will ship the vaccine in dry-iced containers with at least 1,000 doses. Once the containers have been opened, the vaccines are good for more than 15 days, and only then with scrupulous attention to re-icing and limited box opening. "The time pressure is more intense in rural areas, where the longer delivery time eats into the number of days when the vaccine can be safely stored in their boxes upon arrival," Goldhill reports. "Regions with smaller populations will struggle to use the 1,000-dose supply in the necessary time period, creating a risk some of the vaccines will go to waste, though Pfizer plans to have smaller boxes available by early 2021. In contrast, the vaccine can be stored in ultra-cold freezers for six months."    

New rural coronavirus infections hit new high for seventh straight week; 80% of rural counties now federal 'red zones'

Coronavirus zones, Nov. 1-7. Daily Yonder map; click the image to enlarge it or click here to view the interactive version.

From Nov. 1 through 7, new coronavirus infections in rural counties grew 30 percent, setting a record for the seventh week in a row. "There were 144,043 new infections in rural counties last week, up from about 110,000 the week before," Tim Murphy and Tim Marema report for The Daily Yonder.

Also last week, 97 more rural counties were added to the red-zone list to bring the total to 1,599. That's four-fifths of all non-metropolitan counties, the Yonder notes. Red zones are defined by the White House Coronavirus Task Force as those with at least 1 new infection per 1,000 people in a week. 

"The current surge originated in rural areas two months ago and more recently has spread into metropolitan counties," Murphy and Marema report. "Previously, metropolitan counties had their worst new infection rates in July. But those counties surpassed those summer peaks for the past two weeks."

Click here for more data and analysis, including the latest county-level infection numbers.

Fact check: Trump makes false claims about vaccine

President Trump has made several false claims about a coronavirus vaccine from Pfizer Inc., Hope Yen, Lauran Neergaard and Linda A. Johnson report for The Associated Press. Here's a summary:

Trump falsely tried to take full credit for Pfizer's announcement that its vaccine might be 90 percent effective. In a tweet Tuesday, Trump quoted Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo to imply he should get credit for the vaccine. However, his suggestion "that he stood alone in saying a covid-19 vaccine was possible by year’s end is incorrect," AP reports. "Actually, top health experts said they considered that possible, though far from certain, and were more skeptical of Trump’s claim that a coronavirus vaccine would become available before the Nov. 3 election. The vaccine isn’t expected to become widely available to the general public before 2021."

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government's top infectious-diseases expert and head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, had previously said he was "cautiously optimistic" that a vaccine would be ready by late 2020 or early 2021. On Monday, he lauded Pfizer's news, but cautioned that it didn't mean an immediate cure-all for the coronavirus, AP notes.

Pfizer says it will apply to the Food and Drug Administration for "emergency use authorization" to allow limited distribution later this month, then seek approval for wider use, and neither request is guaranteed to be granted, AP reports. Fauci told CNN that there are still questions about the vaccine's effectiveness and durability; it requires two doses, 21 days apart, and must be kept at 94 below zero.

In several tweets, Trump also claimed that Pfizer and the FDA withheld vaccine information until after the election, implying that it was done to harm him politically. That's false, the AP reports: "The company itself learned of the interim results on Sunday, and the FDA was not involved in Pfizer’s decision to announce its early results."

All vaccine studies such as the one Pfizer is conducting are overseen by independent data and safety monitoring boards. DSMBs "include scientists and statisticians who have no ties to the vaccine makers," AP reports. "Before a study is complete, only the DSMB has the power to unlock the code of who got a real vaccine and who got a placebo, and to recommend if the shots are working well enough to stop testing early. Those boards take sneak peeks at predetermined times agreed to by the manufacturer and the FDA. It provided the first interim analysis for Pfizer on Sunday." Several Pfizer officials, including CEO Albert Bourla, have asserted that the announcement's timing had nothing to do with the election.

Vice President Mike Pence and Congressman-elect Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), Trump's former White House physician, sent tweets crediting the president for the vaccine; Trump retweeted them. However, Trump and Pence "are wrongly seeking full credit for forging the partnership that made the potential breakthrough possible. Pfizer notably did not accept government money to develop, test or expand manufacturing capacity under Trump’s Operation Warp Speed initiative to quickly find a vaccine and treatments for the disease sweeping the country," AP notes. "In fact, Pfizer partnered with the vaccine’s original developer, Germany’s BioNTech, in March," before Warp Speed was announced.

Though Pfizer hasn't accepted Warp Speed funding, it must follow the same vaccine-development requirements as competitors that did take government money. "The company says it has risked $2 billion of its own money on vaccine development and won’t get anything from Washington unless the effort is successful," the AP reports. But Pfizer signed an agreement with the U.S. government in July to supply 100 million doses for $1.95 billion if the vaccine works and gains FDA approval.

Rural-urban voting divide is greater than ever, analysis says

Trend line shows rural-urban divide: Democratic margin had a strong tendency to increase with population

An analysis by The Economist "suggests that the partisan divide between America’s dense cities and sparsely populated places is greater than ever," the magazine reports. Preliminary results from Decision Desk HQ, a provider of data, show that voters in most rural counties voted for President Trump by 35 percentage points, up from 32 points in 2016. "These are the bottom 20% of counties by population density," the magazine explains. "Counties with more than 10% Hispanics, who shifted to the right for reasons unrelated to density, have been excluded."

Voters in the most urbanized counties, the top 20 percent, went for Joe Biden by 29 points, "up from Hillary Clinton’s 25-point margin in 2016," The Economist reports, "More broadly, the greater the population density, the bigger the swing to the Democratic candidate (see chart). Even after controlling for other relevant demographic factors, such as the proportion of whites without college degrees or Hispanics in each county, the data suggest that urban and rural voters are more divided today than they were in 2016."

The Economist also observes, "Biden will win the national popular vote by about five percentage points. But his margin in the 'tipping-point' state that ultimately decided the election, Wisconsin, will be less than one point. That four-point advantage for the Republicans is the biggest in at least four decades. So long as Democrats continue to be the party of the cities, and Republicans the party of small-town and rural America, those biases will persist."

One other interesting point: Preliminary results show that Biden "gained most ground in counties that swung hardest toward Democrats between Barack Obama’s re-election in 2012 and Hillary Clinton’s failed bid for the White House in 2016," The Economist reports. "One possible explanation for this trend is the tendency for Democrats and Republicans to live among their own kind. Americans are increasingly sorting themselves into politically like-minded communities. For liberals, this means diverse, densely-populated cities; for conservatives it is places that are mostly white, working-class and sparse." For more on this phenomenon, see Bill Bishop's book, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart.

How Trump won over Latino voters in the Rio Grande Valley

While Joe Biden was competitive in Texas, President Trump was able to win over the heavily Latino, reliably Democratic counties in the Rio Grande Valley along the border, helping him carry the state. 

"The bluest of blue counties along the river, Zapata County, flipped to President Trump, who won 52.5 percent of the vote. It was the first time since Reconstruction that a Republican presidential candidate won Zapata County," Arelis Hernandez and Brittney Martin report for The Washington Post. That may seem odd to outsiders who may see voters as Latinos first and rural residents second, but rural conservatism is nothing new, said University of Texas-San Antonio political scientist Sharon Navarro.

The difference, she says, is that this year Republicans did the work to court these voters and tailor their message about the election around the economy and jobs. Republicans won those Rio Grande counties by "taking advantage of the habitual underinvestment and lack of infrastructure there, as well as neglect from the state and national Democratic parties," the Post reports. "The shift extended through the more than 1,200-mile border, from the populous lower delta of Brownsville and McAllen to the sparse ranchland near Laredo and the high desert of El Paso."

Biden won most of the valley counties, but by much smaller margins than Hillary Clinton did in 2016. "The story of Trump’s performance and Biden’s backslide along the Texas border, experts say, shows the importance of cultivating deeper relationships with a diverse Latino population that continues to claim a growing and dominant share of the Texas electorate," Hernandez and Martin write.

Courting the Latino vote, especially in Texas, is more important than ever. Latinos make up about 40% of the Texas population and about 30% of its voters, and that number is rising. Each year, more than 203,000 Latinos come of voting age in Texas, Rogelio Saenz, a UT-San Antonio demographer, told the Post, which reports: "While White migration to the state has slowed, Saenz said, there has been a significant increase in Latinos and African Americans moving to Texas in recent years."

Applications open for paid USDA summer internships for high school and up, virtual and in-person

Applications are now open for U.S. Department of Agriculture summer internships through the federal Pathways Program. The program offers a wide range of paid internships for students in high school through the graduate level with on-the-job experience, mentorship, and training tailored to each student's interests and needs.

The internships span a wide range of occupations, including veterinary science, engineering, natural resources management, finance and more. Positions are open in almost every state, and some are virtual. 

The deadline for summer 2021 internship applications is Nov. 16. Click here for more information.

Veterans Day, which has deep ties to rural areas, is a good time to make sure veterans feel connected to community

Wednesday is Veterans Day. It originally was a celebration of World War I's Nov. 11, 1918, armistice, and has long and closely held ties with rural Americans.

"According to the Defense Department, rural recruits — especially those with farm backgrounds — are likely to become good soldiers because these recruits — both males and females — tend to tolerate adversity well, possess many practical skills, are comfortable with the rigors of a demanding lifestyle, respond readily to training, and willingly choose military careers for at least part of lives," Mike Rosmann writes for the Yankton Daily Press & Dakotan. "Persons with urban backgrounds are less likely to pursue military lifestyles, even though many are highly qualified."

Moreover, "The Veterans Administration reported that 24 percent of all veterans choose to live their subsequent years in rural communities," Rosmann writes. And "11 percent of all U.S. farmers have served — or are serving — in the military even though only 2 percent of Americans are engaged in agriculture as their chosen way of life."

But veterans have relatively high rates of suicide and mental-health disorders, Military.com reports: "As of 2017, an average of 20 veterans and service members die by suicide every day. This represents a 7% increase in the rate of suicide among veterans in just over a decade. Some reports indicate that suicides among service members have increased as much as 20% this year, when compared to previous years."

So, Military.com encourages you, on this Veterans Day, to reach out to the veterans around you and make sure they know they're part of your community.

Colorado rural and urban hospitals collaborate to combat pandemic overcrowding; transfers can go both ways

Coronavirus rates are rising not just in rural areas across the nation, but in many urban areas too, filling up hospitals. That has meant trouble for critical rural patients, who would usually be transferred to larger, more well-equipped urban hospitals. But what about transferring less critical patients to rural areas to make room for them?

The Colorado Hospital Association has a new system to facilitate that, KCNC-TV in Denver reports. The system could be a model for other states. Its Combined Hospital Transfer Center "will be a centralized resource where hospitals can coordinate patient care, should one start nearing capacity or reach capacity," Karen Morfitt reports. "It will help rural areas in need of more critical care space and larger centers looking to release patients."

Less-critical urban patients can be moved to less-specialized rural hospitals so critical rural patients can be moved to the urban hospitals if necessary, CHA spokesperson Cara Welch explained: "We are all in this business for the same reason: We want to take care of patients and we have to work together to be able to do it. When you get to this level of volume, no one should be working on an island."

Rural county's entire health department staff resigns over lack of support from county government during pandemic

Pondera County, Montana
(Wikipedia map)

The Pondera County Health Department in Montana has four employees, and all of them have resigned in desperation, citing lack of support from the county commissioners during the pandemic, Liz Carey reports for The Daily Yonder. The move, effective Nov. 27, would leave a gaping hole in the local health-care system that would be hard to fill as coronavirus cases surge in the county of just over 6,000.

Nicki Sullivan, who was the department's director, wrote in her resignation letter that the decision was the hardest of her life, and that helping families brings her joy. But "Sullivan said she was most concerned with the commissioners’ lack of support for her and her department," Carey reports. "In her letter, she cited the lack of help doing contact tracing and being able to hire people to fill positions that would help with contact tracing.

The decision wasn't out of the blue: Sullivan sent the commissioners a letter Oct. 29 saying they needed to address issues that made her job impossible, and if they did, she would "consider staying." Otherwise, she implied that she would leave, and said it would be difficult for the next director to do a good job unless the commissioners address the problems, Carey reports.

Between Oct. 20 and Nov. 2, the other three employees resigned in solidarity, also effective Nov. 27, Carey reports.

What to know as ACA lawsuit is argued in Supreme Court

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday "in a case that, for the third time in eight years, could result in the justices striking down the Affordable Care Act," Julie Rovner reports for Kaiser Health News. However, initial reporting on the oral arguments indicates that the court is unlikely to do that.

"The case, California v. Texas, is the result of a change to the health law made by Congress in 2017. As part of a major tax bill, Congress reduced to zero the penalty for not having health insurance. But it was that penalty — a tax — that the high court ruled made the law constitutional in a 2012 decision, argues a group of Republican state attorneys general. Without the tax, they say in their suit, the rest of the law must fall, too."

The court could rule in a number of ways, Rovner notes: It could declare the whole law unconstitutional, refuse to decide the case on the grounds that the plaintiffs don't have the legal standing to sue; rule that, by eliminating the penalty but not the rest of the mandate, lawmakers didn't intend to coerce citizens, so there's no constitutional conflict; or that, without the tax, the requirement to have health insurance is unconstitutional but the rest of the law is legally sound.

Many rural conservatives dislike the ACA because they insist that the open-market premiums are too expensive. But some aspects are popular, including Medicaid expansion in many states and protections for pre-existing conditions and a requirement that insurers provide coverage to everyone who wants it. "But throughout the attempts to eliminate the ACA, politicians who oppose the law have promised that people with preexisting conditions will still be able to access health insurance if the law is overturned," Lauren Peace reports for Mountain State Spotlight. "But that’s easier said than done."

In West Virginia, for example, more than a third of the state's people under 65 have medical conditions that would have made it difficult to get affordable private insurance before the ACA, Peace reports. Patrick Morrisey one of the attorneys general pressing the case, won re-election last week over a Democratic challenger who supported preserving the ACA. Morrisey has not yet proposed a plan to replace the Medicaid money and other federal dollars the law brings into the state, but promised in a January 2020 interview with MetroNews that, should the ACA be overturned, "people will be protected if they have pre-existing conditions."

In essence, "The ACA offers three tiers of protections. Preventing the denial of coverage is just one," Peace reports. "But requiring insurance companies to cover everyone regardless of medical history doesn’t mean by itself that coverage will be affordable, or prevent insurers from charging some people more if they have conditions that are expensive to treat."

National Rural Health Day, Nov. 19, is a chance to spotlight inequalities and local health issues in rural areas

National Rural Health Day, coming up on Nov. 19, is an excellent opportunity to shed a spotlight on rural health inequalities and local health issues in rural areas. Newspapers could take the opportunity to produce special sections, spreads or pages underwritten by local health-care providers -- and insurers, since the observance falls in the open enrollment period for Medicare and Affordable Care Act plans.

It is the 10th annual observance, coordinated by the Health Resources & Services Administration's Office of Rural Health Policy. They say nearly 57 million Americans, or 17 percent of the population, live in rural areas; they frequently face problems getting health care and the best health outcomes, and as a whole they are older and sicker than the general population. That's especially noteworthy as the pandemic burns through rural areas.

The Payson Roundup in central Arizona did a good job of using the observance to focus attention on rural health. For resources and statistics that can help with coverage, visit the National Organization of State Offices of Rural Health website or the National Rural Health Day website.

HRSA will host a variety of events next week to call attention to rural health issues. All are open to the public, though registration is required for some. Click here for a list of webinars, recordings, and virtual workshops on topics such as HIV, coronavirus testing at rural health clinics, death-rate disparities in rural areas, telehealth, Native American health, a virtual job fair, and more.

Though rural Republican support increased in many areas, small blue shifts added up to help Biden win

Republican support increased in many areas in the Nov. 2020 election, but small shifts helped Joe Biden take the presidency from Donald Trump. 

Stacey Abrams, who lost the race for Georgia governor in 2018, arguably helped swing Georgia to Biden, Ryan Lizza reports for Politico. She created a non-profit dedicated to increasing voter turnout in the state and though most of her efforts netted urban and suburban voters, rural Black voters in the southeastern part of the state may have been listening.

Trump won rural voters 2 to 1 in Georgia, but Biden performed slightly better in rural areas than Hillary Clinton did in 2016. That helped him take the state, Tim Marema, Tim Murphy, and Bill Bishop report for The Daily Yonder.

"In the three 'Northern battlegrounds' that Biden flipped — Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — Trump boosted rural turnout, while Biden amped up his performance in the cities. But in many of those areas, each side managed to limit the other’s margins, canceling out any gains," Griff Witte reports for The Washington Post.

In Iowa, "the alignment of Democratic voters to Iowa’s urban centers and Republican voters to the state’s rural areas continued to sharpen in the 2020 election," Erin Murphy reports for the Sioux City Journal. "Iowa’s urban-rural divide has been in the works for a decade now, and it’s no longer a growing trend: It’s the new normal. Democrats own the five counties with the largest populations; Republicans own all but one of the rest."

In North Carolina, which Trump will win, the rural-urban political divide also persisted, Andrew Carter reports for the Raleigh News & Observer. Part of the divide falls along lines of poverty and education, but part of it is less easily quantifiable and more about conflicting worldviews.

Post-election fact check: President Trump and his allies make bogus claims of interference and fraud

Democrat Joe Biden has been elected, but President Trump has not conceded, and has continued to spread false claims of election interference and fraud, FactCheck.org reports. Here's some fact-checking on that and more.

In a Thursday appearance at the White House, Trump made baseless allegations of illegal voting in several swing states, D'Angelo Gore and Eugene Kiely report for FactCheck.org. He also falsely claimed that he won certain states "despite historic election interference from big media, big money, and big tech. . . . The U.S. intelligence community has publicly identified three actors that it warned were trying to interfere in the 2020 presidential election: Russia, China and Iran — not 'big media, big money and big tech,' as Trump falsely alleged," Gore and Kiely report.

At the same appearance, Trump also falsely said that Republicans didn't lose any House races and that the Republicans have held onto their Senate majority. Though Republicans had a net gain in House seats, some lost. And Senate control will likely be determined by runoff elections in Georgia in January, Gore and Kiely report.

The Washington Post reports, "Republicans have made claims of election irregularities in five states where President-elect Joe Biden leads in the vote count, alleging in lawsuits and public statements that election officials did not follow proper procedures while counting ballots in Tuesday’s election. So far, they have gone 0 for 5."

Analysts predict what's likely and possible for farming, mining and other industries under the Biden administration

With President-Elect Joe Biden set to take office in January, Bloomberg journalists and analysts have put together some predictions on how the new administration will affect U.S. sectors such as agriculture, manufacturing, retail, health care, and more. Here are some with rural resonance:

"Any Biden rollback of tariffs on Chinese goods could clear the way for more shipments of U.S. farm products to Asia," Kevin Miller and Melinda Grenier report. "But there’s concern a transition away from oil under Biden could erode demand for corn- and soy-based biofuels, which are mixed in with petroleum-based motor fuels. Some more left-leaning Democrats also may try to take a harder line against big agriculture companies. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker have said the U.S. response to coronavirus outbreaks at meat plants this year was 'feckless'."

Telecommunications giants such as AT&T and Verizon have enjoyed a friendly relationship with the Trump administration's Federal Communications Commission, led by former Verizon attorney Ajit Pai. Such companies lobby hard to win federal contracts to build out rural broadband, but often save money by installing cheaper, slower DSL broadband instead of fiber-optic cable. The Biden administration will likely reimpose net-neutrality regulations and work to expand high-quality internet service in rural areas, Bloomberg reports.

Biden has vowed to ban new hydraulic fracturing on public lands and help the U.S. energy sector transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. He may also tighten emissions standards, which could raise costs for the oil and gas industries.

Biden's win could hasten federal legalization of cannabis, allowing producers better access to electronic banking, tax deductions, and capital from lenders, Miller and Grenier report. 

Biden aims to expand coverage and subsidies under the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act, which will help more people afford it, and says he will roll back some Trump administration changes that weakened it.

For manufacturers, "Major watch items include perennial concerns such as taxes and regulation, as well as trade — especially whether Biden will seek to improve global ties after four years of tensions stoked by Trump," Miller and Grenier report.

Purina to launch pet food with protein from bugs, Asian carp

Nestle Purina PetCare is launching a new line of cat food and dog food made with larvae of black soldier flies, and plans to offer other lines soon based on Asian carp. It's all part of a push to find protein from cheaper, more sustainable sources.

The Beyond Nature's Protein line will hit stores in Switzerland this month, and the company plans to expand to other European markets, Jaclyn Diaz reports for NPR. Purina spokesperson Lorie Westhoff said the company will offer U.S. customers an insect-based dry dog food in January, sold online only, along with several other formulas using protein alternatives such as Asian carp, an invasive species.

Purina "is embracing what the company views as a growing trend among consumers seeking protein alternatives for their cats and dogs, company representatives told NPR," Diaz reports. "A desire to be more environmentally conscious drives the consumer change, as does a perceived health benefit from a diet that substitutes meat."

The United Nations has warned that it will be increasingly difficult to find cheap, reliable protein sources as the world's population grows and resources are stretched, and recommends insects as a meat alternative. That could help with global warming too, the UN says, since meat production is responsible for releasing large quantities of the greenhouse gas methane, Diaz reports.

Scientists have had their eyes on fly larvae for a while now. "That’s because of the black soldier fly larva’s remarkable ability to transform nearly any kind of organic waste — cafeteria refuse, manure, even toxic algae — into high-quality protein, all while leaving a smaller carbon footprint than it found," Christopher Ingraham reports for The Washington Post. "In one week, a soldier fly colony of modest size can turn a ton of waste into 100 pounds of protein and 400 pounds of compost . . . In one year, a single acre of black soldier fly larvae can produce more protein than 3,000 acres of cattle or 130 acres of soybeans."

Asian carp could be a promising source for pet-food protein too. State and federal agencies have spent more than $600 million since 2004 trying to halt the spread of the invasive species, but they're having a hard time figuring out what to do with all the fish. A pioneering public-private program in Kentucky pays anglers for carp and auctions the catches online, mostly to Chinese buyers.

Some farmworkers, with little or no financial security, must decide whether to keep working or risk dangerous infection

The Trump administration declared farm laborers "essential workers" in the spring, but hasn't provided much guidance on how to keep them from getting sick or spreading the infection to others, and that has forced some of them to make tough choices between working and risking infection, Frank Hernandez reports for the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting.

"While some people work from home during the covid-19 pandemic, agricultural workers pick and pack the fruits and vegetables Americans rely on," Hernandez writes. "They do so in potentially dangerous conditions — they often live in cramped housing, ride in crowded buses to job sites and work close to others — and without the federal government guaranteeing coronavirus protections," 

Some counties and "states such as Virginia, Oregon and Washington have created their own enforceable rules to control, prevent and mitigate the spread of the virus among farmworkers," Hernandez reports. "But federal mandates are necessary to ensure that employers are doing enough to protect workers, advocates said."

At least 16 farmworkers have died from covid-19, but there could be many more because of weak monitoring. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration doesn't keep track of covid-19 reports involving agricultural workers, who are mostly migrants with temporary H-2A visas. But OSHA does track such complaints from farm-labor contractors who hire such workers and transport them to job sites, Hernandez reports.

"As of Sept. 6, OSHA has closed nine complaints about covid-19 that involve farm-labor contractors," Hernandez reports. "Twelve complaints about farm-labor contractors remain open. There have also been two COVID-19 complaints related to migrant camps, where some workers live; one has been closed."

Among farmworkers, the virus has disproportionately hit Latinos, who make up more than 60 percent of farm labor. About three-quarters of the nation's 3 million farmworkers were foreign-born as of 2018, most  of them from Mexico, Hernandez reports.

The Mexican government says nearly 2,400 Mexican nationals had died from covid-19 in the United States as of Sept. 14, but didn't keep track of job descriptions for the deceased, Hernandez reports.

Ballot measure roundup: Coloradans approve restoration of gray wolves, paid family and medical leave

Colorado voters approved the restoration of gray wolves and mandated paid family and medical leave Tuesday, the first time any state has done such things in a referendum, on Tuesday.

Those were just two of 184 statewide ballot measures, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Here are a few others, courtesy of NCSL:

• Arizona, Montana, New Jersey and South Dakota approved efforts to legalize recreational marijuana, while voters in South Dakota and Mississippi approved medical marijuana programs.
• Oregonians decriminalized small amounts of certain controlled substances, such as heroin and cocaine, and the Beaver State also legalized psilocybin—become the first state ever to do so. The drug comes from mushrooms and is used in rituals by some Native American tribes.
• Ranked-choice voting, which was adopted in Maine recently, failed in Massachusetts and looks likely to fail in Alaska.
• Virginia voters adopted a redistricting commission, and that change means most states will now have a commission of some kind, though some are merely advisory, or only come into being if the legislature fails to pass maps.
• Voters approved taxes on tobacco and electronic-cigarette products in Colorado and Oregon. Washington will require public schools to provide comprehensive sex education beginning in 2022. 
• California voters rejected stricter parole and sentencing policies and stopped the legislature’s efforts to replace cash bail with pretrial risk assessments.
• Kentucky passed Marsy’s law, the crime victims’ bill of rights.
• Florida voters raised the minimum wage.
• An effort to overturn California’s affirmative action ban failed.
• Two “Stand Your Ground” Rights measures pass in Alabama.
• Mississippians approved the state’s new magnolia flag design, which was put before voters after the legislature decided to replace the previous flag feature the confederate battle emblem.

Updates are at NCSL’s State Elections 2020 webpage and statewide ballot measures database.

Election misinformation is widespread; local news media could help with fact-checking

Misinformation about the election has been running rampant on social media since the election, driven mainly by President Trump and his allies. "This is a critical time for local news organizations to call out misinformation about the election," said Al Cross, director of the University of Kentucky’s Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, which publishes The Rural Blog.

Karen Mahabir, the fact-check and misinformation editor for The Associated Press, said "It's been a really busy time for us." Much of the misinformation she and her team are seeing right now center on ballots and the voting process, AP reports. 

Mahabir said that, in the coming days, "I think we’re going to see a lot more claims that are focused on the states that are still counting the votes. We’ll see anecdotal situations that are probably going to be blown out of proportion. All of this is kind of typical. It’s taking reality and twisting it into something that it’s not, creating an impression of impropriety."

Trump and his allies are boosting the signal for false claims and conspiracy theories from others, Matthew Rosenberg, Jim Rutenberg and Nick Corasaniti report for The New York Times. They say Fox News and conservative talk radio have helped spread Trump claims.

Social media platforms have stepped up efforts to curb misinformation, Mahabir said, but it remains to be seen how much impact such efforts will have, the AP reports.

For a better understanding of how misinformation and disinformation are affecting this election, tune in at 5:30 p.m. ET Nov. 18 for a News Literacy Project webinar. Host Darragh Worland will moderate a panel discussion featuring Jane Lytvynenko of BuzzFeed News and Joan Donovan, research director at Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. Click here for more information about the webinar or to register.

In the meantime, here are some trustworthy fact-checking sources:

• Politifact
• Factcheck.org
• The Washington Post's Fact Checker
• Snopes (conservatives often claim it's liberal, but Snopes backs up its pronouncements with links to sources)
• Media Bias Fact Check (an excellent site for determining the trustworthiness of a source)

Drug distributors, J&J agree on $26 billion opioid settlement, but lawyer for W.Va. local governments says it's not enough

The nation's three major drug distributors and drugmaker Johnson & Johnson "are closing in on a $26 billion deal with state and local governments that would end thousands of lawsuits over the companies’ role in the opioid epidemic," reports Jan Hoffman of The New York Times. "The deal is $4 billion more than an offer made a year ago, that was rejected by many states and municipalities. A major difference in the latest offer is $2 billion earmarked for private lawyers who represent cities, counties, and some states."

But now those lawyers have to get their clients to accept the deal, and in West Virginia, probably the state most damaged by opioids, there is resistance. The state government settled its part of the case long ago, but local governments still have their own lawsuits in federal court, and one by the City of Huntington and Cabell County is set for a bench trial Jan. 4. "The lead lawyer, Paul T. Farrell Jr. has not agreed to the offer," the Times reports.

“West Virginia fully supports the national settlement on behalf of every other state,” Farrell told the Times. “It’s just not good enough for us.” Eric Eyre of Mountain State Spotlight notes, "The companies have made clear that they want a national deal that resolves all lawsuits against them, not a patchwork of settlements."

The proposed settlement involves four of the top defendants in the nationwide litigation: J&J, McKesson Corp., Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen. "Other drug manufacturers and the national pharmacy chains are still facing thousands of such cases," the Times notes. "Most of the money from the settlement deal is intended to help pay for treatment and prevention programs in communities ravaged by addiction and overdoses."

"West Virginia has the highest drug overdose death rate in the nation, and overdoses have increased this year amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to preliminary data from the state Office of Drug Control Policy," reports Eyre, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his opioid coverage and wrote a book about it, Death in Mud Lick.

Rural Democratic officeholders are effectively extinct in Oklahoma, probably in many other rural areas too

Shift in presidential margins, 2016-20; blue arrows show Democratic shift and red arrows Republican. Arrow length is strength of shift. New York Times map; click image to enlarge it or click here for interactive version with county-level data.

One thing the 2020 election has made clear: rural areas are becoming increasingly Republican.

In Oklahoma, for example, Democrats controlled the state legislature for nearly a century, mostly with lawmakers from rural areas (though it should be noted that "Democrat" has not always meant "liberal"). But "on Tuesday the party transition in Oklahoma became complete when the last Democrat from a rural district lost his reelection bid while the GOP picked up five more House seats to extend its advantage over Democrats to 82-19," Sean Murphy reports for The Associated Press.

Matt Meredith, a two-term state representative who lost his seat to a Republican challenger by more than 10 points, said he was swept up in the tide of Oklahomans voting for national politics. "There were mailers sent out with me and (House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi and me and (Senate Minority Leader) Chuck Schumer," Meredith told the AP. "I've never even met Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer."

Trump solidified Republicans' hold on rural Iowa, possibly helped by messaging about the economy. "The president dominated in rural counties that he took from the Democrats four years ago," Chris McGreal reports for The Guardian. "Opinion polls said that in recent weeks voters’ primary concern shifted from coronavirus to the economy which helped swing independent voters the president’s way to supplement his core support."

Though Iowa was not a critical state for Biden, "his failure to significantly reduce the size of Trump’s 2016 victory there is evidence that the Democrats failed to persuade swaths of rural America that the party had much to offer them or was even paying attention to their communities and concerns," McGreal reports.

Trump saw only weak rural gains from 2016 in crucial battlegrounds Michigan and Wisconsin, which helped flip those states blue, Tim Marema, Tim Murphy and Bill Bishop report for The Daily Yonder.

Quick hits: Rural coroners often have little training; fears about food are driving shortages of canning supplies

Here's a roundup of stories with rural resonance; if you do or see similar work that should be shared on The Rural Blog, email us at heather.chapman@uky.edu.

A rural woman's volunteer efforts to make masks have won her the Kansas Department of Agriculture's Ag Hero Award. Read more here.

In Washington state and others, many rural coroners have little to no training in forensic pathology, leading to questionable or shoddy work. Read more here.

Appalachians working to save wild ginseng from being overharvested. Read more here.

Urban and suburban fears about food-chain shortages are driving shortages of canning supplies, long a rural norm. Read more here.

A partnership between the Okeechobee County Public Library and the University of Florida Health Science Center Libraries aims to improve access to quality health information in rural areas through expanding the Little Free Library system. Read more here.

Mountain Valley Pipeline developers have once again pushed the project's completion date back and the estimated cost up. Read more here.

The Trump administration demoted Neil Chatterjee, the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, after he suggested taking action on climate change. Read more here.

New research suggests treating all aspects of opioid abusers' lives to help them beat addiction

University of Kentucky researchers are working on an innovative plan to treat opioid use disorder that, they say, could help greatly in rural areas. "The researchers hope to be able to curb opioid use disorder by providing patients at infectious disease clinics with access to mental health therapists, relapse prevention services, and medications," Liz Carey reports for The Daily Yonder. "The new opioid treatment is based on approaches spelled out in the groundbreaking HIV-treatment legislation called the Ryan White Care Act. That HIV treatment model provides not only medical care but mental health care, case management, social workers, and others."

Read more here.

Investigative journalists uncover public officials' racist or racially unbalanced actions in Alabama and Virginia

Two stories from the South illustrate the power of investigative local journalism to uncover questionable actions by public officials.

In Alabama, a Talladega police dog sent at least nine people to the hospital in a year spanning the summer of 2014 to 2015. A veteran police sergeant testified under oath that the police specifically wanted a dog that would attack Black residents, Challen Stephens reports for AL.com, in partnership with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system.

Brad Zinn of the Staunton News Leader in Virginia contrasted how two magistrates treated two defendants: a young Black man reportedly armed with a skateboard, and a middle-aged white man allegedly armed with two rifles and a handgun. Neither had a prior criminal record, 

Devin Turner, 22, was arrested after throwing his skateboard at a passing car. At his arraignment, one of the Augusta County magistrates ordered him held without bond at a nearby jail. He was eventually granted a $5,000 bond and released after spending the weekend in jail, Zinn reports.

Douglas Truslow, 57, aimed laser-sighted firearms at neighbors, including an elderly woman and a 5-year-old, and threatened to start shooting them. The sheriff's office and Charlottesville police responded. During the eight-hour standoff that followed, Truslow allegedly threatened to kill several officers. A different local magistrate gave him a $1,000 unsecured bond and he was immediately released. Truslow is the lone caregiver for his spouse, according to court records, Zinn reports.

When the News Leader asked the magistrate's office why the two suspects were treated so differently, Chief Magistrate Robyn Wilhelm said the magistrates stick to a rigid script when making bond decisions, and said neither the police nor the commonwealth attorney's office spoke up with concerns about either Truslow or Turner's bonds. Zinn reports.

Wilhelm said she couldn't comment on ongoing cases but told Zinn: "We're dealing with humans, so oftentimes there could be imperfections ... Certain judges will find people guilty of one thing but another judge ... could find someone innocent."

As covid-19 patients fill larger hospitals, small hospitals must care for critically ill patients, and that's not for the best

The coronavirus pandemic is disproportionately hitting rural areas, but cases are still rising in many metropolitan areas. That means trouble for many small, rural hospitals. 

Hemphill County, Texas
(Wikipedia map)

In Hemphill County, Texas, pop. 3,807, seriously ill patients are usually transferred from Hemphill County Hospital to a larger, better-equipped hospital in Amarillo, Lubbock or Dallas. But these days, many of those hospitals are full largely because of covid-19, so critically ill patients must remain at HCH, which lacks the staffing and equipment to fully care for them, writes Laurie Ezzell Brown, editor and publisher of The Canadian Record in the county seat of Canadian (named for the Canadian River).

Hospital Chief of Staff Tony Cook said the hospital tells covid-19 patients: "We will do what we can do . . . but you will not get the standard of care you may need." He speculated that non-covid patients may have died, and will continue to do so, because the hospital was swamped with covid patients.

Hospital staff are doing what they can to prepare for the worsening pandemic. They've improvised an covod ward by draping off a hallway with plastic curtains. "They have supplemented two old ventilators with new ones, which they hope to be trained to use next week," Brown reports. "They have also ordered high-flow nasal oxygen for use in treating covid patients." The hospital has also acquired four temporary nurses to provide relief to the exhausted staff. 

"I just don't think people understand how bad it really is," Cook told Brown. "This is a critical situation. . . . People are going to die. That is the bottom line."

Brown wonders why people don't understand the seriousness of the situation by now: "Maybe all they need to do is imagine being wheeled on a gurney through those plastic curtains into the improvised covid unit at Hemphill County Hospital, because there's nowhere else to go to get the care they need."

Food insecurity worse in rural America during pandemic

Projected rates of food insecurity in 2020 (Feeding America map; click the image to enlarge it.)

"Rural areas make up a disproportionate share of the counties where residents have high levels of food insecurity, according to a national hunger-relief organization," Liz Carey reports for The Daily Yonder. "Research from Feeding America shows that while 63% of the counties in the U.S. are rural, 87% of those counties had the highest rates of overall food insecurity."

The trend was improving in 2019, but it's getting worse again during the pandemic because of unique challenges rural areas face. "These challenges include an increased likelihood of food deserts with the nearest food pantry or food bank potentially hours away, job opportunities that are more concentrated in low-wage industries, and higher rates of unemployment and underemployment," said the report.

Rural voters appear to have stopped the 'blue wave' in 2020 election, though the final numbers are unclear

"The 2018 mid-term election saw a blue wave that strengthened Democratic control of the House. Despite pollster speculation that the wave would continue into 2020, the scenario did not play out, with the GOP holding some key, targeted Senate races and making gains in the House," John Herath reports for AgWeb.

It's unclear how much rural voters helped President Trump and down-ticket Republicans, but "an exit poll by Edison Research for the National Election Pool reported that 54 percent of small-city or rural residents voted for Trump while urban and suburban voters favored Democrat Joe Biden," Chuck Abbott reports for Successful Farming. But Trump appeared to have coattails in other races.

"Democrats were not able to hold on," Karla Thieman of The Russell Group, a bipartisan lobbying and consulting firm focused on food and agriculture, told Herath. "The 2018 wave that they were brought in on did not last this time. And the reason they weren't able to get re-elected is in large part, at least based on the data that I've seen, the number of rural voters who turned out for Donald Trump this time."

Thieman served as chief of staff to Deputy Agriculture Secretary Krysta Harden under President Obama, and served as senior staff in the Senate Agriculture Committee for more than five years.

Though the final vote tallies aren't in yet in several states, rural and small-town voters proved decisive for President Trump in Ohio and led to House Agriculture chair Collin Peterson's defeat in Minnesota. 

Tune in on Nov. 18 for rural health chat on Twitter, just ahead of National Rural Health Day

On Wednesday, Nov. 18, the Rural Health Information Hub and the National Organization of State Offices of Rural Health will co-host a Twitter chat with health experts from across the nation talking about social determinants of health in rural America. Social determinants of health are factors beyond medical care that affect health and well-being, such as education, discrimination, poverty, and more.

The Twitter chat will begin at 1 p.m. ET and will last about an hour. It's being held in conjunction with National Rural Health Day, which is Thursday, Nov. 19. 

The chat will use the hashtags #RuralHealthChat and #PowerofRural. Click here to register for the chat or for more information, including a list of participating guests and their Twitter handles. 

Strong rural support for Trump helped carry Ohio, led to defeat of House Agriculture chair Collin Peterson in Minn.

Though not all the election results are in, it seems clear that President Trump enjoyed broad rural support, sometimes enough to prove decisive in contentious races. 

Votes from small cities and rural areas helped Trump carry Ohio. He "won every category of county except the urban core counties of major- and medium-sized metropolitan areas, just as he did in 2016. He made up losses in core counties in large- and medium-sized metros with strong support in suburbs of those urban areas.Tim Marema and Tim Murphy report for The Daily Yonder. "His advantage of more than 2 to 1 with voters in small metros (less than 250,000 residents) and rural areas put him over the top. In small metros and rural areas, Trump ran up a 560,000-vote lead, and that margin gave him statewide lead of about 470,000 votes."

Another sign of how Trump has made rural America more Republican: House Agriculture Committee chair Collin Peterson, a Blue Dog Democrat from Minnesota, lost his seat after three decades in the House. The winner, Michelle Fischbach, is "a well-financed Republican and former Minnesota lieutenant governor endorsed by President Trump," Chuck Abbott reports for the Food & Environment Reporting Network. The result wasn't entirely unexpected; Peterson was said to be the most vulnerable incumbent in the House before the election, since his district is strongly conservative. But at a time when the top of the ticket increasingly drives voter choices, Trump probably made the difference.

It's unclear as of publication time whether Trump's rural edge will help him carry the battleground states that helped win him the election in 2016. By late Tuesday evening, "it became clear the high numbers of mail-in ballots in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin -- which collectively account for 46 electoral votes -- would likely decide the election. Trump carried those three states by close margins in 2016 predominately because of strong support in rural counties," Chris Clayton reports for DTN/The Progressive Farmer. "Among some states Democrats hoped to flip, Trump maintained strong support among rural county totals in general, which helped him hold on to Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas despite polls suggesting Democrats could take those states. Georgia and North Carolina were both leaning Trump's direction early Wednesday morning, but neither state had declared a winner."

Most rural counties lost jobs from Sept. 2019 to Sept. 2020, but metro counties did worse; see county-level data

Map shows percentage change of employment rate from September 2019 to September 2020, compared to the national average of 6.47% loss during the 12-month period. Daily Yonder map; click here for the interactive version.

Most U.S. counties had fewer people working in September 2020 than in September 2019, but rural counties lost a smaller percentage of jobs than the largest metropolitan counties, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics employment figures. That's likely because jobs in many rural areas, especially those that rely on agriculture instead of tourism, are somewhat insulated from nationwide employment trends. 

"In fact, rural counties are slowly adding jobs as the country’s major metro areas continue to struggle," Bill Bishop reports for The Daily Yonder. "Rural counties lost a little over 4% of the jobs they had in September 2019. In contrast, the metropolitan counties that contain the urban centers of cities of a million or more people have lost nearly 8% of the jobs they had a year ago. The nation as a whole lost 6.5% jobs over these 12 months."

In September 2019, the average unemployment rate in major metropolitan areas was at or below 3.5%, slightly lower than in rural counties. But in September 2020, the unemployment rate in rural counties was 6%, compared to 9.7% in the central counties of the largest cities, Bishop reports. Click here for more analysis, including an interactive map with the latest county-level data.

Difference in rural and urban mortality rates will be topic of Nov. 16 webinar

On Monday, Nov. 16, the Rural Health Information Hub will host a webinar with a panel of experts discussing National Center for Health Statistics research on rural-urban differences in mortality, including suicide, alcohol-related deaths, motor vehicle traffic deaths, and drug overdose deaths. the webinar will also feature insights from a program to reduce substance-use mortality in rural Pennsylvania.

The webinar will begin at 3 p.m. ET and will last about an hour. Admission is free, but registration is required. If you're unable to attend, a recording will be made available afterward. Click here for more information, including a list of featured speakers.

Upcoming reapportionment and redistricting make statehouse races even more important this year

The nation's attention is focused largely on the presidential and Senate races, but more than 5,000 state legislative races are arguably as important, collectively, Sabrina Tavernise writes for The New York Times. For one thing, this is a census year. In most states, that means that whoever wins control of a state's legislature in this election will be in charge of "redrawing state and national electoral maps next year, an exercise that can give one political party a deep and enduring advantage in lawmaking for years." 

After their electoral gains in 2010, Republicans used their power in statehouses to disproportionately empower rural voters in redistricting. Before legislatures redistrict, the census will determine how many seats in the U.S. House each state will get.

Tavernise notes that state legislatures will also decide critical issues relating to abortion, guns, police funding and accountability, schools, health care, and the pandemic.

Pandemic highlights need for better rural broadband

"Talk about pouring salt into an open wound. Even prior to covid-19, everyone knew the state of rural broadband was not good. What this pandemic did was not only expose how deep the digital divide truly is between rural residents and their city cousins but also widened it by a country mile," Steve Cubbage writes for AgWeb. Cubbage is a consultant who helps farmers implement tech solutions. "As business, school and nearly all aspects of daily life for most Americans went virtual and online, this shift put an unbelievable amount of strain on the communication infrastructure that we depend on to function as a modern society. Rural areas were much less prepared for this accelerated warp-speed digital transformation."

Cubbage shares some blunt illustrating numbers:

• Americans relied way more on broadband in 2020: Digital conference software Zoom's parent company saw a nearly 600% increase in its stock in 2020, online gaming activity increased nearly 115%, and Netflix usage jumped 40% during the pandemic, all of which require broadband.
• 60% of farmers say they don't have enough internet connectivity to run their business, and more than 50% said their farms can't implement the latest agricultural technology without better broadband. 
• According to the most conservative estimates, at least 21.3 million Americans, or 6.5% of the population, lacks broadband access. However, that's according to the Federal Communications Commission's maps, which are widely acknowledged to be faulty. Third-party research indicates the real numbers are at least twice as high.
• The new 5G network is supposed to operate 20 times faster than the current 4G LTE network, but 5G requires more relay stations and is much more expensive to implement. That could be a problem in cash-strapped rural areas.
• The federal government spent $47.3 billion on rural broadband improvement programs between 2009 and 2017, but rural areas still lag substantially in connectivity. 

Cubbage expresses doubt that the federal government is spending its money wisely on rural broadband, insinuating that major telecoms companies have not delivered on their contracts. 

Emboldened right-wing militias, with many rural adherents, are an increasing threat, Dept. of Homeland Security says

Emboldened far-right militias, many dominated by rural residents and some affiliated with white supremacy groups, are increasingly threatening racial-justice protests, intimidating voters and more.

"Throughout the West and beyond, in a summer marked by protests seeking racial justice, armed vigilantes also have shown up at Black Lives Matter events in small towns and big cities alike. Their presence in some places has the tacit support of law enforcement or even local elected officials," Erika Bolstad reports for Stateline. "Now, experts who monitor right-wing vigilantes and white nationalist organizations are on even higher alert for the possibility of violence at political rallies. They also fear vigilantes or armed groups might show up at ballot drop-off locations and outside of Nov. 3 polling places to intimidate voters and increase paramilitary activity afterward if election results are disputed or seen as illegitimate."

During a presidential debate, President Trump urged supporters to "go into the polls and watch very carefully" and told white nationalist group the Proud Boys to "stand back and stand by," which their leader interpreted as a call to intimidate voters, according to his social media posts, Stateline reports.

Election officials across the nation have stepped up training and strengthened ties with local law enforcement to prepare for possible violence or intimidation. Still, threats have persisted. Voter intimidation has been reported in several rural areas in Oregon, from individuals who were armed or blocking ballot dropboxes with vehicles, Lizzy Acker reports for The Oregonian. And in Georgia, a rally was canceled after threats of a large militia presence.

However, sometimes militias have tacit or explicit support from local officials. In Virginia, a few rural counties have officially recognized local militias as organizations that enhance public safety and security, Gregory Schneider reports for The Washington Post.

Federal authorities are paying attention, especially to militias affiliated with white supremacist ideology. "White supremacists represent the top and most lethal domestic terror threat to Americans, the Department of Homeland Security said Oct. 6, when it released its first-ever Homeland Threat Assessment," Bolstad reports.

It is easier for paramilitary groups to form and act in the U.S. than in other countries because of easier access to firearms, writes Vasabjit Banerjee for policy magazine Just Security. Banerjee, a political science professor at Mississippi State University, studies insurgencies in developing nations. The increase in militias and other paramilitary groups in the U.S. is cause for concern, he writes. 

Mask-mandate decision, punted to local Iowa officials by governor, causes political upheaval in at least one county

Dubuque County, Iowa (Wikipedia map)

The question of whether to wear masks in public has unexpectedly become a political issue in one Iowa county, and likely in others across the country, Dan Diamond reports for Politico.

The issue was politicized from the beginning, after President Trump expressed disdain for masking early on in the pandemic, even after leading scientists supported it, Diamond notes. In June, Vice President Mike Pence said each state could decide its masking policy. Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, refused to enforce a statewide policy, saying it was a "feel-good" measure that wouldn't save lives.

That left major debates on pandemic response with county and small-town officials, "who have little or no formal health training, may be working as volunteers or part-time and admit to scrounging the internet as they try to shape what experts portray as life-and-death choices," Diamond reports.

In Dubuque County, the all-volunteer health board has been urging the county supervisors to mandate masks since early August. Since then, the county's coronavirus infections have more than tripled and deaths have more than doubled, Diamond reports. But two of the three supervisors have sided with Wayne Kenniker, a local utility owner and small-town mayor who opposes such a mandate.

Now more than a dozen small-town mayors in the county "have banded together to cast doubt on the legal authority of a mask mandate and the health board's own procedures," Diamond reports. In an Aug. 26 letter to the supervisors, the mayors wrote that a mask mandate "would demonstrate a use of questionable authority and it would undermine the core values that define rural Iowa."

The masking debate "has animated the politics of a state that was thought to be in the bag for President Donald Trump but now appears to be a seesaw battle, with Trump making a last-minute visit to Dubuque on Sunday," Diamond reports. Kenniker "worried that a mask mandate would eventually lead to a vaccine mandate too. He also cast doubt on the county's official covid-19 data, claiming the figures were inflated to inspire fear and even make Trump look bad."

Rural counties break virus-case record for 6th straight week

New coronavirus infections by county, Oct. 25-31
Daily Yonder map; click the image to enlarge it or click here for the interactive version.

The coronavirus pandemic "continued its rapid spread in rural America last week, setting a record for new infections for the sixth consecutive week and placing three out of every four rural counties on the red-zone list," Tim Murphy and Tim Marema report for The Daily Yonder. New infections reached 110,130 for the week of Sunday to Saturday, October 25-31, an increase of 16% from the previous week. An additional 154 rural counties were added to the red-zone list last week, bringing the total to record high of 1,502."

The White House Coronavirus Task Force defines red-zone counties as those with at least 100 new infections per 100,000 people in a week.

"October has been the worst month so far for the spread of covid-19 in rural counties," Murphy and Marema report. "Covid-related deaths totaled 5,950 in rural counties during the month, an increase of 30 percent from September. During the same period, deaths in medium and large metropolitan areas declined by 11%."

Coronavirus-related deaths fell slightly last week from 1,558 to 1,535. A disproportionate number of those deaths, and new infections, are rural. "Although about 14% of the U.S. population lives in nonmetropolitan counties (which is the definition of rural this story is using), 20.5% of the new cases and 24.3% of the new deaths occurred in rural areas," Murphy and Marema report.

Click here for more data and insights, including an interactive map showing the latest county-level data.

Amazon reportedly planning new service for rural deliveries, cutting out U.S. Postal Service, which needs its money

Amazon may be looking to handle its own deliveries to rural areas rather than relying on the U.S. Postal Service, Kim Lyons reports for The Verge. "The e-commerce behemoth would rely on shipping hubs in rural areas under a plan called 'wagon wheel,' a reference to Amazon’s hub-and-spoke supply chain. In Amazon’s terminology, a wagon wheel station provides support for smaller shipping facilities."

It's unclear when or where the program would be launched, "but Amazon executives said on the company’s third quarter earnings call last week that it expects to continue putting money into its shipping and delivery infrastructure for years to come," Lyons reports.

The Postal Service received $3.9 billion in revenue from Amazon in fiscal 2019 for delivering 1.54 billion Amazon packages. That's about 30 percent of Amazon's total volume, Lyons reports. Amazon is more likely to rely on USPS for rural deliveries than its own couriers, since such deliveries are more time-consuming and thus less profitable. 

Drug overdoses on the rise in rural America

Drug-overdose deaths increased during the first months of the pandemic, especially in rural areas, according to preliminary numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The increase may not be correlated with the pandemic, since overdose deaths have been on the rise since before the pandemic. 

"The U.S. had record-high drug overdose deaths in 2019, according to CDC data, with opioids involved in 2 out of every 3 drug-related deaths," Noah Fish reports for the Duluth News Tribune. "If the trend shown in the most recent CDC study continues, the country will set a new record for drug overdose deaths again this year.

The biggest increase in fatal overdoses happened in rural South Dakota, where drug-related fatalities increased by nearly 50 percent," Fish reports. "There were over 19,000 fatal overdoses in the U.S. from January through March of this year, according to CDC data, which is close to 3,000 more deaths than the same time frame last year."