Jails, especially in rural areas, struggle to fulfill their increasing role as opioid detoxification centers

As opioid addiction has spread in the past decade, county jails have struggled with their increasing role as de facto detox centers. "The problem is particularly hard for jails in more rural and semi-rural counties, which often have limited access to medications, to physicians who will administer it, and to follow-up programs that inmates can tap into upon release," reports Eric Westervelt of NPR. Between half to two-thirds of today's jail population has a drug problem, and in some counties it's higher.

"To get a handle on the problem, more jails are adding some form of medication-assisted treatment, or MAT, to help inmates safely detox from opioids and stay clean behind bars and after release," NPR reports. "But there are deep concerns about potential abuse of the treatment drugs, as well as worries about the efficacy and costs of programs that jails just weren't designed or built for."

States with the biggest opioid problems, including several Ohio Valley states, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts, are expanding jail MAT programs the fastest, but only 10% to 12% of the nation's 4,000 jails offer it. Though a few jails offer long-term addiction "maintenance" drugs buprenorphine and methadone to inmates, "the majority of jail-based medication-assisted treatment programs today are limited to injectable naltrexone, given upon an inmate's release," Westervelt reports.

Jails could soon be under greater pressure to expand treatment, since a federal appeals court in Boston ruled that a rural jail in Maine must provide an inmate MAT for her opioid-use disorder. The inmate had been taking buprenorphine twice a day for five years, but the Aroostook County Jail didn't want to give her the meds, arguing that the drug is often trafficked among inmates. The inmate's attorneys argued successfully that withholding treatment violated the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, Willis Arnold reports for NPR.

Farmers seem to be sticking with President Trump in trade war with China, but they want him to win it soon

Farmer Tim Bardole sticks with Trump. (Photo by Zach Boyden-
Holmes of the Des Moines Register, via The Associated Press)

Though his fight with China over trade "has been devastating to an already-struggling agriculture industry, there's little indication [President] Trump is paying a political price," report Sarah Burnett and Scott McFetridge of The Associated Press. "There's a big potential upside if he can get a better deal — and little downside if he continues to get credit for trying for the farmers caught in the middle. It's a calculation Trump recognizes heading into a reelection bid where he needs to hold on to farm states like Iowa and Wisconsin and is looking to flip others, like Minnesota."

The story's example is Iowa farmer Tim Bardole, who "survived years of low crop prices and rising costs by cutting back on fertilizer and herbicides and fixing broken-down equipment rather than buying new." When Trump "made a miserable situation worse, Bardole used up any equity his operation had and started investing in hogs in hopes they'll do better than crops. A year later, the dispute is still raging and soybeans hit a 10-year-low. But Bardole says he supports his president more today than he did when he cast a ballot for Trump in 2016, skeptical he would follow through on his promises."

"He does really seem to be fighting for us," Bardole says, "even if it feels like the two sides are throwing punches and we're in the middle, taking most of the hits."

After citing March polling, the story notes, "Many farmers are lifelong Republicans who like other things Trump has done, such as reining in the EPA and tackling illegal immigration, and believe he's better for their interests than most Democrats even on his worst day. They give him credit for doing something previous presidents of both parties mostly talked about. And now that they've struggled for this long, they want to see him finish the job — and soon."

"We are the frontline soldiers getting killed as this trade war goes on," Paul Jeschke, who grows corn and soybeans in northern Illinois, told AP. "I'm unhappy and I think most of us are unhappy with the situation. But most of us understand the merits. And it's not like anyone else would be better. The smooth-talking presidents we've had recently -- they certainly didn't get anything done."

When newspapers move printing elsewhere, it gives them a chance to relocate; southwestern Ky. daily goes downtown

Left to right: Landlord Hal McCoy, Editor Zirconia Alleyne and Publisher Brandon Cox in front of the building in downtown Hopkinsville, Ky., that will be the new home of the Kentucky New Era, a small daily newspaper. (Photo by Tony Kirves)

All over the country, small daily newspapers no longer need the real estate and buildings they once did, mainly because they have moved their printing to another location, usually in the same ownership group, to save personnel and equipment-maintenance costs.

That happened when Paducah-based Paxton Media Inc. bought the Kentucky New Era in Hopkinsville and moved the printing to Owensboro. The company didn't buy the newspaper's real estate, so it's moving to a downtown building that once housed a J.C. Penney & Co. store and is directly across the street from City Hall. The paper moved from downtown in 1971.

"Publisher Brandon Cox likes the idea of getting closer to the action," writes Jennifer P. Brown, an online news entrepreneur and former New Era editor whom the paper hired to write the story of the move. Cox told her, “From an editorial perspective, we support what’s going on in downtown Hopkinsville, and we think we should put our money where our mouth is.” That took some finagling.

Brown writes, "There was only one available building with a loading dock to handle distribution of the papers when they arrive on trucks around 2:30 a.m. on the New Era’s five publication days. Hopkinsville businessman Hal McCoy made a deal to buy the former J.C. Penney building and will renovate two vacant bays on the main floor. One bay will be for McCoy, who owns and manages several residential and commercial properties in Hopkinsville. The other bay will house the New Era. . . . The news staff will have a view of Main Street through the building’s storefront window."

“It’s so important, I think, for the local news to be intimately ingrained and connected to the heart of the community it serves,” Cox told Brown. “There’s no better way to do that than to be a part of the downtown.”

InsideClimate News reporting project with 14 Midwest newsrooms includes stories on farmers, rural energy use

Reporters in 14 newsrooms across the Midwest teamed up with InsideClimate News to explore local solutions to climate change, and the result is a package of stories called "Middle America's Low-Hanging Carbon," implicitly arguing that there are many relatively simple steps to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases in a politically pivotal region vulnerable to a warming world.

"Summers will warm faster in the Midwest than in any other American region, according to the National Climate Assessment," John J. Cushman of ICN notes. "​And these states form the hinge of the nation's intensifying political debate over climate change. Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, devoted to saving coal and hostile to the Paris climate accord, succeeded in swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Iowa—all won by Barack Obama in 2012. Two years after Trump's victory, in the 2018 midterms, lots of upper Midwest congressional districts and governorships flipped the other way, putting in place new leaders with high climate ambitions."

The package includes stories about a beef-cattle farmer in Illinois offsetting his climate footprint, a small dairy farm in Iowa doing likewise, Wisconsin dairies wary of investing in digesters to make energy from manure, and stories about energy use in Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Kentucky, Indiana and other states.

Trump and Democrats ignore farmers' biggest issue, five years of low crop prices, agricultural policy experts write

President Trump and his Democratic challengers are ignoring "the critical issue facing the agricultural sector: low farm income brought on by five years of falling crop prices," Harwood D. Schaffer and Daryll E. Ray of the University of Tennessee write for The Daily Yonder.

"While there are alternate policies preferred by different farmers and farm organizations, there is virtually no dissension on identifying the problem," they write. "At the same time, farmers from left, right, and center agree that the current low prices are disastrous. Some see echoes of the 1980s in the rising level of farm bankruptcies."

Trump and the Democrats need to visit "rural, agricultural areas and listen and learn," write Ray and Schaffer, of UT's Agricultural Policy Research Center. "The candidates need to understand that the current low-price situation is no anomaly; agriculture is characterized by long periods of low prices punctuated by single years and short periods of higher prices."

And what should the politicians do? "From the perspective of social stability and humanitarian concerns, the objective should be to cultivate and maintain an agricultural sector in which productive capacity always exceeds current demand. To do otherwise would be ethically unacceptable." And what are political leaders doing to accomplish that? "From our perspective: not much."

"The Democrats have been silent" on such issues, the Trump administration wants the government to pay a smaller share of crop insurance, and the 2018 Farm Bill "does little to address the current price/income problems," with no new policies, they write, and existing programs "are simply inadequate to address the multi-year price problem that farmers are facing."

Editor of daily bought by GateHouse, suffering cuts in staff, reduces editorials to one per month; what do you think?

Should newspaper editorial pages go the way of Xacto knives and wax? Jeremy McBain, executive editor of the Petoskey News-Review in northern Michigan, wrestled with the question and decided that the daily, bought in February by GateHouse Media, needed to cut way back on its editorials.

Jeremy McBain

"Our staff has been cut. Reporters and editors have more duties on their plates. I have to start looking at areas to cut. Areas that will have the least impact on readers," McBain wrote May 17.

"We will not be cutting the columnists, the letters to the editor or the kudos on the opinion page. Those will remain. What you will see are fewer editorials. We are going to write only one of these a month, starting this month. However, we reserve the option to write more if a rare situation calls for it. It is hoped this will give the reporters on the editorial board more time each week to focus on our priority — unbiased, factual, news stories. And it is hoped this will give our editors more time to work with reporters on improving stories."

McBain concluded, "Let’s face it, you don’t read this newspaper to learn what our opinion on a community issue is on the opinion page. You read this newspaper to find out what is going on, how it impacts you and what you can about it. That is our priority. That is what we do best."

Earlier in his piece, McBain said of opinion pages, "Are they really needed anymore? In today’s digital media world, you can find and you can express opinion in thousands of different places. . . . But, where can you go to get solid facts today? Where can you get information that is not spun to get you to believe someone’s viewpoint? That seems to be getting harder and harder today when it comes to the digital world or television." McBain said his surveys in the past had shown that older readers said the opinion page was still valuable. Younger readers saw no use for it."

Readers of The Rural Blog are invited to comment on this item.

Longest-serving exec of a state press group wins award for public service through community journalism by Kentuckian

David Thompson

The longest-serving executive of any U.S. newspaper association, Kentucky Press Association Executive Director David Thompson, is the 2019 winner of the Al Smith Award for public service through community journalism by a Kentuckian.

Thompson will receive the award Sept. 26, the 36th anniversary of taking the job. No other current member of the Newspaper Association Managers, which serves groups in the U.S. and Canada, has served so long as chief executive of an association.

“It’s been a real honor to serve alongside him,” said NAM Clerk Layne Bruce, executive director of the Mississippi Press Association and former editor of the Glasgow Daily Times in Kentucky. "David is a dedicated, hard-working advocate for community journalism and freedom of information.”

In the last session of the General Assembly, Thompson led successful efforts to defeat bills that would have substantially weakened the Kentucky Open Records Act. In 1992, he coordinated the last major revision of the act, which was passed in 1976.

"David has been a tireless advocate for good journalism in Kentucky," said Tom Eblen, president of the Bluegrass Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. "He has not just supported Kentucky's newspapers. He has worked hard for their readers to make sure Kentucky's open-records and open-meetings laws are protected and enforced in the public's interest."

The SPJ chapter and the University of Kentucky’s Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues present the award, which is named for Albert P. Smith Jr., who published newspapers in rural Kentucky and Tennessee, was federal co-chair of the Appalachian Regional Commission and the driving force for creation of the institute, which publishes The Rural Blog.

Thompson's work has sometimes meant legislative battles with groups such as the Kentucky League of Cities, over public-notice ads, but it was the league that nominated him for the award.

“KPA and KLC have sometimes been on opposite sides of a legislative issue,” KLC Deputy Executive Director J.D. Chaney wrote in his nomination. “Nonetheless, we have great respect for David’s integrity in all areas of his work. He is a fierce and respected advocate for journalism in Kentucky.” He added, “We can think of no one who has shown more journalistic leadership in serving the communities of Kentucky. . . . He has represented Kentucky’s small, local newspapers above all else.”

All but two of Kentucky’s 120 counties, many of them small, have a newspaper. The prevalence of small papers has helped give the KPA the largest board of directors of any U.S. press group. “It can be a challenge to work with such a large board, represent all valid interests and keep your eyes on the prize,” said Institute Director Al Cross, who has served on the board as a journalism-education representative. “David understands the newspapers of Kentucky better than anyone.”

Thompson, who lives in Georgetown with his wife Teresa, is a journalism graduate of the University of Kentucky and an Army veteran. He was a sportswriter for the Lexington Herald, where his father Billy also covered sports, and was publisher and editor of the Georgetown News and Times when he joined KPA. He was inducted into the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame in 2006.

At KPA, Thompson has overseen many innovations, including an open-government hotline for legal advice, a legal defense fund, an internship program for college students, a statewide open-records audit, a news bureau and story-sharing service, a move to a new headquarters funded by KPA’s business activities, and a website for public notices, better known as “legal ads.” His tenure also allowed him to manage both the 125th and 150th anniversaries of the association.

“David Thompson has invested his life working in, with, and for community newspapers,” KPA President Jay Nolan said. He wrote in seconding the nomination, “I cannot think of another journalist in the state who has consistently contributed so much to so many for so long.”

Sharon Burton, winner of the 2016 Al Smith Award, wrote in her seconding letter, “David may not have penned a local newspaper article since he accepted the role of KPA executive director in 1983, but he has certainly been a part of every community newspaper across Kentucky for the past 36 years.”

John Nelson, executive editor of Landmark Community Newspapers and the 2013 Smith Award winner, said, "As past KPA presidents, many of us have been given credit for initiatives to hold government accountable, to advance efforts to expand transparency, and to support the First Amendment — all foundations in the practice of community journalism. Behind every one of those efforts for the past 36 years has been David Thompson, without whose imagination, support, encouragement and influence there would have been little success. David’s fingerprints are all over community journalism in Kentucky, his public service hidden between the lines of our newspaper columns."

Former print journalist's rural Iowa talk radio show puts local officials in the 'Danger Zone'

Sheri Melvold in the control room at KMAQ. (Daily Yonder photo by Julianne Couch)

If you want to see what great rural broadcast journalism can look like, look no farther than Maquoketa, Iowa. The town of 6,000 is home to KMAQ AM/FM, one of the state's few locally owned and operated radio stations. The rural Jackson County station plays a mix of music, a call-in auction, live reading of obituaries, bingo, and more. But one of its most distinctive offerings is "Just Talk", an interview and call-in show focused on local news, Julianne Couch reports for The Daily Yonder.

Though KMAQ already had a long-running talk show, local owner Dennis Voy decided in 1996 that he wanted a show from a female perspective. He and his wife Nancy immediately thought of Sheri Melvold to head up the show. "An Arizona native, she’d worked for newspapers such as the Phoenix Gazette and the Arizona Republic. Her then husband, Doug Melvold, was a journalist, too, and a Maquoketa native," Couch reports. "When he returned to take over the family-run Maquoketa Sentinel Press, she accompanied him and worked for the paper. Even after the couple divorced, she continued working there for several more years. She also contributed to other area newspapers on occasion and became well known in the community. Her local knowledge and journalism chops meant she was an obvious choice to take on a live interview and call-in show, even though she had never worked in radio before."

Sperling's Best Places map

Melvold signaled from the beginning that she was no pushover. She chose the Kenny Loggins hit "Danger Zone" as her show's theme song to remind any politicians who might drop in that they shouldn't get too comfortable. "Melvold knows her show isn’t a hard-hitting political news program. She tries not to press too much. But she does run the ship and reminds certain guests that it isn’t her job to present only the positive side of community stories," Couch reports.

Melvold covers plenty of non-political local goings-in, and reads local newspapers to make sure she has her finger on the community's pulse. Though the station's audience is aging, they're loyal. And Melvold believes KMAQ holds a unique place in the community as a rapid-response news source.

Registration open for Society of Environmental Journalists' 29th annual conference, to be held from Oct. 9-13

Registration is open for the Society of Environmental Journalists' 29th annual conference, which will be held from Oct. 9-13 at Colorado State University in Fort Collins.

"This year’s conference focuses on climate change, energy development, water scarcity and politics, public lands management, agriculture and social justice (and injustice)," write conference co-chairs Susan Moran and Joshua Zaffos. Click here for more information or to register.

U.S. bans Chinese telecom tech popular with rural carriers

"President Trump signed an executive order Wednesday designed to bar U.S. telecommunications networks from using equipment from foreign suppliers, a move apparently targeting Chinese telecom giant Huawei," Richard Gonzales reports for NPR.

The move could stymie rural broadband buildout, since many rural telecoms use Huawei's relatively low-cost equipment. Though such hardware makes up less than 1% of U.S. telecom networks, many small rural carriers use it.

The order says that "foreign adversaries" are increasingly committing economic and industrial espionage through telecommunications technology and services, and declares this a national emergency. The order instructs Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to create rules restricting the purchase of telecoms tech from companies linked to or controlled by foreign adversaries.

Though no specific countries or companies are named in the order, the Commerce Department said Wednesday it's adding Huawei to a list that prevents it from buying components from U.S. companies without government approval. The administration has complained that the Chinese government could use Huawei tech to spy or snoop on Americans. In 2012 Congress banned the federal government from doing business with Huawei or another Chinese telecom firm, ZTE, Gonzales reports.

Maine, the most rural state, to end religious exemptions for vaccines; bill sparks passionate debate on freedom, safety

Maine, the nation's most rural state, will soon no longer allow philosophical or religious exemptions to its school vaccination law. The state Senate passed a repeal bill Tuesday on an 18-17 vote, with most Democrats in favor and most Republicans opposed.

Democratic Gov. Janet Mills supports the repeal and is expected to sign it into law. If she does, "Maine would be the fourth state – following California, Mississippi and West Virginia – to ban all non-medical exemptions that allow parents to forgo school-required vaccines for their children," Scott Thistle reports for the Portland Press Herald.

The bill comes as measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases are making a major comeback in the U.S. because of low vaccination rates. "Maine has one of the worst vaccination rates for children entering kindergarten in the nation, and the country’s highest rate of pertussis," commonly called whooping cough, Thistle reports. "In the 2018-19 school year, 5.6 percent of Maine children entering kindergarten had non-medical exemptions for immunizations, state statistics show."

The bill sparked passionate debate on both sides. Opponents of the measure said ending religious and philosophical exemptions wouldn't improve public health and would drive thousands of families away from the state, or prevent religious families from moving to Maine. Many also said it decreased religious freedom and parental rights. But supporters said such exemptions put others' health at risk, such as children who are immunocompromised, Thistle reports.

It's unclear how much ending the exemptions will help increase vaccination rates. In California, vaccination rates increased from 92.8% to 95.1% within two years, but medical exemptions also increased dramatically in regions that once had high rates of philosophical exemptions, suggesting that some parents simply pressed doctors for a different excuse, Thistle reports.

Illinois editor resigns from GateHouse paper to spare layoffs

Angie Muhs

The editor of The State Journal-Register in Springfield, Illinois, resigned Friday in hopes of preventing more layoffs. When the general manager escorted Angie Muhs from the building Monday, staff writers accompanied her as a show of respect. Muhs had been at the paper since 2014 and became the president of the Associated Press Media Editors last year.

According to Journal-Register staff writer Dean Olsen, Muhs hoped to save money on staff salaries in hopes that owner GateHouse Media would not make any more newsroom reductions. "Olsen said the newspaper had about 35 reporters when the union formed in 2012. Today, the newspaper has 15 editorial staffers, including part-timers, and three managers," John O'Connor reports for The Associated Press. The paper's sports editor was laid off in March, the photo editor was laid off this month, and many beats like city hall and education do not have full-time reporters, according to Olsen.

GateHouse got the paper in 2007 as part of its $380 million purchase of Copley Press's Midwest holdings. The largest owner of newspapers in the U.S., GateHouse has been frequently criticized for buying papers and laying off staff. Though it didn't respond to O'Connor's requests for comment, the company "in the past has rejected the notion that its motivations are strictly financial and has pointed to measures it’s taken to keep news flowing at newspapers across the U.S.," O'Connor reports.

Olsen said Muhs was an asset to the paper and would be missed. "It’s sad she felt she had to do this because GateHouse says its focus is local news," Olsen told O'Connor. "We’re waiting for them to show us how they’re going to fulfill that mission."

Fact-checking Trump on 'false or misleading' trade tweets

Glenn Kessler offers a blistering review of President Trump's recent tweets on international trade and trade policy in The Washington Post's "Fact Checker" column.

"As we have noted for years, President Trump appears to have little understanding of trade and trade policy, even though it is an animating element of his presidency. As the trade war with China has heated up, the president’s itchy Twitter finger has been busy with a fusillade of false or misleading tweets," Kessler writes. "Whether the president knows these claims are untrue is unclear, but the overall effect is to create a distinct winner-takes-all narrative for his trade policy. Here’s a quick tour through some of the major themes." Read more here.

Life in Rural America Symposium, with reporter Ken Ward Jr. and author Sarah Smarsh, to livestream May 21

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation will livestream its Life in Rural America Symposium in Charleston, W.Va., from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. on May 21. 

The event will feature experts and community leaders from across the nation discussing how to solve rural challenges, the latest data on rural health and economic experiences, how to use research and data to bring change, and examples of rural communities and regions where important change is happening. The symposium will also premiere new data about the economic, social and health experiences of people living in rural and tribal communities. 

The keynote speakers will be Sarah Smarsh, author of the New York Times bestseller Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth, and Ken Ward Jr., investigative journalist for the Charleston Gazette-Mail and recipient of the 2018 MacArthur "Genius" Award. Click here for more details about the symposium and how to tune in.

Radio stations in hurricane-devastated Fla. Panhandle to play Trump speech snippets every hour until 2020 election

"Two days after President Trump rallied his base in Florida’s Panhandle, vowing hundreds of millions of dollars in aid for the hurricane-devastated region, three local radio stations said they would air Trump speeches daily until the 2020 election," Tiffini Theisen reports for the Orlando Sentinel. "The stations will broadcast two-minute snippets of Trump speeches every hour of every day -- perhaps sometimes twice an hour -- until the end of the presidential race, owner Samuel Rogatinsky said."

Rogatinsky, a Fort Lauderdale-based attorney who owns Gulf Coast Media, bought three Panhandle FM stations late last year from Powell Broadcasting Co. Powell sold the stations after Hurricane Michael damaged facilities so badly that the stations were off air for several months, Theisen reports. 

Rogatinsky told Theisen he ran the notion of airing Trump speeches regularly by several locals and none objected because "It's Republican territory." He said Panhandle residents have felt forgotten in the seven months since the storm, and said the speeches could be uplifting. "Really, we just want to have inspirational type things because the community is so down," he told Thiesen. "Nobody else is really promising or doing anything. They want to hear what he has to say."

He told MSN that he would give equal airtime to other candidates if any requested it, to comply with Federal Communications Commission guidelines.

States get ranked for their health emergency preparedness; how does yours stack up?

Map by the National Health Security Preparedness Index; click the image to enlarge it.

The nation's overall ability to manage health emergencies has improved significantly over the past six years, though some regions lag behind, according to a nationwide study.

The 2019 National Health Security Preparedness Index, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, analyzes 129 measures for each state and for the nation as a whole, such as the number of paramedics and whether bridges are in good condition. Such measures help determine how well states could respond to and recover from a health emergency caused by infectious diseases, terrorism, extreme weather, and more.

The index offers granular data for each state, including trends over time and how states stack up against others in measures that affect their preparedness, such as health security surveillance and incident and information management. Click here to see how your state stacks up.

Republican senators feeling the heat from constituents over trade war, but Rubio says U.S. must hang tough

"Senate Republicans expressed growing concern Tuesday that President Trump’s escalating trade war with China is hurting their constituents in rural America, ratcheting up tension between the White House and Congress on a signature issue," Damian Paletta, Erica Werner and Taylor Telford report for The Washington Post.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said "I'm not sure if you talk to him face to face, he hears everything you say," the Post reports. Grassley is one of Trump's main critics on trade, and has previously clashed with the president on the Renewable Fuels Standard.

The president has been unclear about what he believes will happen next. "On Tuesday, Trump offered conflicting forecasts of what would happen next, predicting that a deal could be reached in a few weeks but also saying the showdown could last much longer," the Post reports. "The resulting impression was that trade policy was sharply zigzagging between calls for a return to the table and more negotiation, and preparation for further tariff pain."

Meanwhile, Senate Republicans are being tested in their public support for Trump after last week's tariff increase prompted angry calls from constituents who complain they're being hurt by the trade war. "Faced with the prospect that Trump will continue with his adversarial approach, Republican lawmakers are also looking for ways to provide a taxpayer bailout to farmers, perhaps adding billions of dollars to a disaster bill that has languished in Congress for weeks," the Post reports.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said the trade war was more the fault of corporations who made bad deals with China than Trump's tariffs. "Rubio acknowledges that the trade war with China is harmful to the American economy in the short term and that the tariffs increase costs for U.S. consumers. But he says he believes it’s worth it," the Post's James Hohmann reports. 

"Surrendering to China will be devastating,” Rubio told Hohmann. "It will fundamentally alter our place in the world and the very nature of our economy for two generations or more."

The Post's Philip Bump, however, argues that the trade war is too expensive for America to maintain, and that American consumers are essentially subsidizing farmers, part of Trump's key political base: "A soybean farmer I spoke with last August in Pennsylvania described the tariff fight as 'a small loss for a big-time gain.' Whether that optimism holds nine months later — and whether it will last for another year — is unclear."

Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., told reporters this week that farmers' patience with the trade war was wearing thin, the Post reports. "I'm very hopeful we can get back to the table," Roberts said. "There's too much at stake."

Montana Gov. Steve Bullock enters Democratic presidential race, touts his red-state and rural bona fides

Steve Bullock

Montana Gov. Steve Bullock has entered the Democratic race for president, making him arguably the most rural candidate in the crowded field.

Bullock "has made his political calling card that of a Democrat who has flourished in the rural West: He has been elected statewide three times, once for attorney general and twice in his bids for governor, each time in a year that his party’s presidential nominee was losing Montana," Jonathan Martin reports for The New York Times.

Of particular note — and he notes it often — Bullock was elected in 2016 in a state that President Trump carried, making him the only Democratic governor to do so. He hopes that will position him as a candidate who can sway Republican and independent voters, Martin reports.

However, "with little name recognition beyond his native Montana, he’s got a climb as tall as Granite Peak ahead of him. Joe Biden, who leads in early polls, seems to have a firm grip on the White Moderate Dude role," Eric Lutz reports for Vanity Fair. "How Bullock, an obscure figure with a pretty cookie-cutter message to give everyone a “fair shot,” can make it where [Elizabeth] Warren, Kamala Harris, and others haven’t so far isn’t clear. But that hasn’t stopped a host of other long-shots from making their move — and it certainly isn’t stopping him.

Fentanyl, an added ingredient, drives increases in deaths from cocaine and methamphetamine overdoses

The same drug that is driving opioid-overdose deaths is also causing a surge in deaths from cocaine and overdoses of psychostimulants such as methamphetamine and legal drugs like Adderall.

"That’s according to a new analysis of death certificate data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, showing that fentanyl — a cheap synthetic opioid that is a hundred times more potent than morphine — and other opioids were involved in nearly three-fourths of all cocaine overdose deaths and an increasing number of methamphetamine deaths," Christine Vestal reports for Stateline, the nonprofit, nonpartisan reporting arm of the Pew Charitable Trusts. Dealers are adding fentanyl to cocaine and meth.

Death rates from cocaine and psychostimulants increased from 2016 to 2017 in both rural and urban areas, and the most rural counties showed the biggest relative rate increase, the CDC study says. Efforts to fight the overdose epidemic have mostly focused on opioids, which have killed more than 700,000 Americans since 1999, but CDC officials say states and localities need to be more aware of emerging threats like fentanyl, Vestal reports.

Christopher Jones, strategy director at the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, told Vestal: "Broader awareness of emerging drug threats and how they intersect with the opioid-overdose crisis will help public health officials and the health care community better tailor their prevention and response efforts for all the substances and combinations of substances people are using in their community."

Four months in, Illinois Capitol coverage project is booming

Illinois newspapers were so understaffed that most of the state capitol press corps disappeared, so the Illinois Press Foundation launched a collaboration to help papers team up to share coverage and content. Four months later, Capitol News Illinois is doing well: "Nearly 300 papers around Illinois have already reprinted its content, and several editors say its coverage has become an invaluable fixture in their papers," Mari Cohen reports for Columbia Journalism Review.

The program's success "suggests that in the face of existential threats to the news industry, turning to collaboration—and away from traditional notions of competition—can pay off for local news," Cohen writes.

It is also a hopeful sign for political journalism. A Pew Research Center study found that Illinois went from 12 full-time statehouse reporters in 2009 to five in 2014, the sharpest such decline in the nation. That was especially troublesome in a state known for political corruption. The lack of reputable coverage was compounded when partisan and ideologically driven outlets tried to fill the void and provide coverage to Illinois papers. "Capitol News aims to offer a rigorous nonpartisan option," Cohen reports.

CNI, which has three reporters and a full-time intern, "roughly doubled the number of full-time print newspaper reporters working at the statehouse," Cohen reports. The project receives funding from the Chicago-based McCormick Foundation and the Illinois Press Association, parent of the foundation. All CNI content is free to IPA members.