Politico
Commentary: A Pork Tenderloin, a State Fair and Democrats’ Best Shot at Iowa in Decades
August 26, 2026

• Democrats have their best shot at Iowa’s governorship in two decades in state auditor Rob Sand, running as an independent-minded outsider courting the rural and Trump voters his party has lost, writes Jonathan Martin, Politico’s senior political columnist.

• Sand, the last statewide Democrat in once-competitive Iowa, is betting on a favorable climate: stagnant income growth, soaring cancer rates, water quality fears and a decade of one-party Republican control. He keeps national Democrats at arm’s length, declining help from Joe Biden or Kamala Harris.

• He breaks with his party on issues like girls’ sports and food aid while backing clean water and public lands, arguing rural voters reward candidates who seem authentic rather than typical politicians.

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The Conversation
US midterm elections: Democrats gain ground as Trump faces growing voter discontent
August 27, 2026

• Democrats are heading into the November midterms with momentum as discontent with Trump grows, including among rural voters squeezed by rising fuel and fertilizer costs and tariffs on farm exports, writes Richard Hargy, a politics lecturer at Ulster University and Queen’s University Belfast.

• Democrats held a six-point generic-ballot lead after the August primaries, and a Reuters/Ipsos poll found voters preferring their economic approach for the first time in nearly a decade. Trump’s endorsement has also weakened, with his picks losing primaries in several states.

• Among rural voters, a Fox News analysis found Trump’s net approval fell from +20 in early 2025 to -14 by May 2026, though many disaffected Republicans may stay home rather than back Democrats. GOP-friendly redistricting in several states still clouds the outcome.

Kentucky Lantern
Could Trump’s diminished popularity in Kentucky affect how this year’s midterm races are run?
August 31, 2026

• Trump’s slipping popularity in Kentucky, amid the Iran war and rising gas and grocery prices, could reshape the Lexington-area 6th District race as the GOP nominee distances himself from the president. The strain appears sharpest in the surrounding rural counties squeezed by costs and farm tariffs.

• Republican Ralph Alvarado has scrubbed Trump’s photo and “America First” branding from his campaign site, NBC News reported. A Democratic poll shows him tied with Democrat Zach Dembo, and the DCCC has made the seat a “Red to Blue” priority.

• A YouGov/Economist projection put Trump’s Kentucky approval at -13, though state GOP officials note he carried the state by 30-plus points. Even Kentucky Republicans Andy Barr and James Comer have criticized his push for tariff-free foreign beef, which the Kentucky Cattlemen’s Association opposes.

Bloomberg
Opinion: Trump keeps testing rural America’s loyalty
August 28, 2026

• Trump keeps pushing policies that fall hardest on rural Americans, one of the GOP’s most loyal blocs, from mail-voting limits to trade wars and Medicaid cuts, eroding his standing there, argues Erika D. Smith, a politics and policy columnist for Bloomberg Opinion.

• Rural voters have shifted 13 points toward Democrats since Trump’s return, per FiftyPlusOne, and a Fox News analysis put his net rural approval at -14 by May 2026, down from +20 in early 2025. He won them 64% to 34% in 2024.

• Smith points to beef and Canada tariffs squeezing ranchers, Medicaid cuts closing small-town hospitals and public-lands rollbacks angering hunters. A new order curbing mail voting could hit rural residents who live far from polls hardest, while city voters adapt more easily.

WNDU
Rural Kosciusko County voting centers saved from closure after community pushback
August 25, 2026

• Kosciusko County, Indiana, will keep two rural vote centers open for November after community pushback halted proposed closures, sparing residents who lack transportation or face mobility barriers. The move reflects broader strain on rural voting access as counties weigh cutting low-turnout sites.

• The election board kept the Sidney and Etna Green sites open, while officials search for a new home for a third in Winona Lake. The three lowest-turnout of the county’s 21 vote centers had been eyed for cost-saving closures.

• Local leaders said closing the sites would strand house-bound and elderly voters unwilling to drive to Warsaw. The Winona Lake senior-center site still faces parking concerns, and the county is recruiting poll workers ahead of the Nov. 3 election.

The Washington Post
This Appalachian memoir author is running as a Democratic contrast to JD Vance
August 29, 2026

• Beth Macy, the Appalachian journalist behind “Dopesick,” is running as a Democrat against Republican Rep. Ben Cline in Virginia’s deep-red 6th District, casting herself as an anti-JD Vance who ties rural hardship to policy, not personal failure. Her long-shot bid tests whether that message can win back rural voters.

• Macy blames opioid makers and NAFTA-driven offshoring for the region’s decline, and backs Medicare-for-all, humane immigration, ending tariffs to aid farmers and taxing billionaires. She’s out-raised Cline, $1.7 million to $1.4 million, mostly from individuals.

• Still, the district hasn’t backed a Democrat in generations. Cline won re-election in 2024 by 28 points, outrunning Trump. Voters who admire Macy say party labels and culture-war fights make backing a Democrat unlikely.

Politico
MAHA has arrived in Iowa — and Big Ag is reeling
August 31, 2026

• Republican gubernatorial nominee Zach Lahn has built his campaign on blaming agrochemical giants for Iowa’s soaring cancer rates and water pollution, splitting the GOP between Make America Healthy Again activists and the farm interests that fund it. The race now centers on rural Iowans’ health and clean water.

• Lahn, who upset Trump’s pick in the June primary and later won his endorsement, wants to sue Corteva, Bayer and Syngenta and break up their “monopolies.” Backed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., he’s refused corporate agribusiness donations.

• Iowa has the nation’s second-fastest-growing cancer rate, with about 21,700 new diagnoses projected in 2026, linked to fertilizer nitrates and glyphosate. The Farm Bureau and corporate PACs have sat out the race, and Democrat Rob Sand is also running hard on water pollution.

CHILDREN AND FAMILIES

InvestigateWest
Kids in Oregon’s rural counties more likely to spend time in foster care
August 27, 2026

• Children in Oregon’s rural counties enter foster care at nearly double the rate of those in urban areas, an InvestigateWest analysis found, a gap advocates tie to rural families’ limited access to health care and safety-net services rather than greater need.

• Some southeastern counties see rates triple Portland’s Multnomah County; remote Malheur County had the state’s highest, about one in 35 children. Most removals, 56%, stem from alleged neglect, which is closely linked to poverty though not caused by it alone.

• New prevention and financial-aid programs from a 2024 child-welfare settlement remain concentrated along the Interstate 5 corridor, leaving rural families to drive hours, sometimes into Idaho, for scarce treatment. State officials acknowledge they must do more amid budget strains.

South Dakota Searchlight
State readjusts childcare assistance after complaints about rate change, but concerns remain
August 30, 2026

• South Dakota’s new flat-rate childcare aid model sharply cut assistance for some working families before the state partly reversed it for urban after-school programs. Rural and suburban providers, left out of that fix, may still face the lower rates.

• The department switched from paying by hours attended to three flat weekly tiers. One family’s aid would have fallen from $950 a month to $185; after complaints, the state lifted part-time and limited urban rates to $101.25 a week.

• Providers say the model still doesn’t cover staffing and overhead and needs a full revamp. The dispute has entered the governor’s race, with Democrat Dan Ahlers calling the fix insufficient and Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden defending the state’s response.

FOOD AND HUNGER

Politico
USDA cyclospora research projects shelved amid funding cuts and relocations
August 30, 2026

• The Trump administration is winding down nearly all USDA research on cyclospora, a foodborne parasite that has sickened more than 17,000 people this summer, as funding cuts and staff departures gut the program. Rural produce growers and the food supply are likely left more exposed to future outbreaks.

• Congress zeroed out two of the three main projects at Maryland’s Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, and the third is moving to Iowa this fall. Every parasite scientist has declined to relocate, USDA employees said.

• Private labs and other agencies rely on USDA for specimens and expertise that take decades to rebuild, said Joelle Mosso of the Western Growers Association. Unions expect up to a quarter of USDA staff to quit rather than move.

HEALTH CARE, PHARMACIES AND RURAL HEALTH

Ohio Capital Journal
Ohio’s already seen the biggest ACA drop. Premiums are about to go up by another 15%
August 31, 2026

• Ohio has lost more Affordable Care Act marketplace enrollees than any state, nearly a third of about 500,000, since Republicans let enhanced subsidies expire. The 11 remaining insurers now propose raising premiums 14.7% on average for 2027, deepening an affordability crunch.

• Premiums had already more than doubled when the subsidies lapsed, and 161,000 Ohioans dropped coverage, leaving a sicker pool. Congress renewed 2017 tax cuts worth $1 trillion to the top 1% while cutting over $1 trillion from Medicaid and food aid.

• The Congressional Budget Office projects 16 million more uninsured Americans by 2034. Rural and poor-neighborhood emergency rooms expect more patients who can’t pay, threatening hospital closures that the law’s rural health fund is unlikely to prevent.

The Texas Tribune
Texas hospitals expect to lose $27 million a day in Medicaid funding starting Tuesday
August 31, 2026

• Texas hospitals expect to lose about $27 million a day starting Sept. 1 as the Trump administration withholds roughly $9.8 billion in supplemental Medicaid funding, a cutoff hospitals say will force service cuts. Rural clinics and safety-net providers are among the most exposed.

• The funds, mostly from the Comprehensive Hospital Increase Reimbursement Program, cover the gap between Medicaid rates and hospitals’ real costs. The holdup centers on how Texas taxes hospitals, which Gov. Greg Abbott calls an economic “gun to the head.”

• Texas thought it was shielded as a non-expansion state, but the One Big Beautiful Bill froze its hospital taxes while cutting Medicaid $900 billion nationally through 2034. Those cuts dwarf the law’s rural health aid, and no state money can fill the gap.

LIVESTOCK, DAIRY AND MEATPACKING

Investigate Midwest
Milk production is up despite decades-long decline in US dairy farms
August 26, 2026

• US milk output keeps rising even as more than 2,100 dairy farms close each year, as consolidation squeezes out small, family-run operations across rural America.

• Just 3.5% of dairy farms, industrial operations with 2,500-plus cows, make about 45% of milk sales, USDA’s 2022 census shows.

• Rising feed, fertilizer and labor costs, plus Trump’s tariffs and the Iran war, deepen the pressure, leaving younger farmers facing “get big or get out.”

PARKS, FORESTS, AND PUBLIC LANDS

NOTUS
Trump’s quietly working to give part of Yosemite to a private developer
August 28, 2026

• The Trump administration is pressing the National Park Service to hand a quarter-mile strip of Yosemite to a private developer, breaking with 150 years of precedent against carving up national parks, NOTUS has found. Privatizing protected land could echo across the rural West.

• Interior’s leadership is pushing a land exchange to let Nevada-based Kingsbarn Realty Capital build a private road into the park, reaching an 83-acre plot it bought last year. The Park Service rejected the same request for two decades, and courts struck it down.

• Kingsbarn’s CEO began donating to Trump and the GOP in late 2024 and has business ties to figures in Trump’s orbit, records show. California’s senators and a key appropriator oppose the deal, and conservation groups are expected to sue if it advances.

POLLUTION

Inside Climate News
How North Carolina wasted the chance to fix hog pollution
August 30, 2026

• A landmark 2000 pact between North Carolina and Smithfield Foods meant to end hog-waste pollution “failed miserably,” as the company never adopted proven cleaner technology. Rural, mostly Black and low-income communities near the state’s hog CAFOs still breathe fumes and aerosolized manure (CAFOs commonly spray aerosolized manure into the air as a way of emptying the hog waste lagoons).

• Scientists developed systems that cut odors, pathogens and ammonia by 99%, but Smithfield called them too costly, judging them against its cheap old lagoons, not its profits. Now part of China’s WH Group, the company reported a record $1.3 billion operating profit last year.

• Neighbors won $550 million in nuisance verdicts, later capped at $98 million before Smithfield settled. A 2018 civil rights settlement went unenforced and was repealed this year, and grant funding has stalled since 2023, leaving communities to launch their own air monitoring.

RENEWABLE ENERGY

High Country News
Solar and wind continue to push coal off the West’s grid
August 27, 2026

• Solar, wind and storage keep pushing coal off the West’s grid, outpacing the Trump administration’s push to prop up fossil fuels, with rural farmers leasing water-strapped land to solar developers to stay afloat.

• In May, solar supplied 51% of California’s utility-scale power and 44% of Nevada’s, and wind and solar together provided 63% in New Mexico. Coal has fallen to 16% of Colorado’s output, with renewables topping half.

• The West’s coal generation fell from 225 million megawatt-hours in 2007 to 90 million last year, offset almost entirely by solar and wind. New projects, like New Mexico’s 3.65-gigawatt SunZia wind farm, keep coming online.

REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS, PREGNANCY AND CHILDBIRTH

The Daily Yonder
Proposed Medicaid cuts could cost maternal and children’s health care billions
August 31, 2026

• A proposed federal rule capping State Directed Payments would cut Medicaid by roughly $241 billion through 2034, threatening rural hospitals and children’s and maternity care. Layered on the One Big Beautiful Bill’s Medicaid cuts, the losses likely dwarf what that law’s rural health fund can offset.

• In Texas alone, about $19.7 billion is at stake. Medicaid covers nearly 3 million children and pays for 53% of births, and 27 hospitals already face imminent closure. Labor and delivery are often the first services cut when rural hospitals lose funding.

• The rule, which exceeds the cuts in last year’s H.R. 1, would cap many payments at lower Medicare rates ill-suited to Medicaid patients. Thirty-one states use these payments, with Tennessee, South Carolina and Mississippi among the hardest hit relative to their Medicaid budgets.

TARIFFS

Politico
Farm vehicles left out of Trump’s tariff relief, industry says
August 31, 2026

• Farmers and ranchers still pay steep metals tariffs on the all-terrain and utility terrain vehicles they rely on, even as the Trump administration works to ease growers’ tariff costs, industry representatives say. The gap likely raises costs for rural operations already squeezed by trade policy.

• A June proclamation from President Donald Trump cut metals tariffs on some farm machinery, including ATVs, but utility terrain vehicles still face the full 25 percent rate. With no exclusions process this term, industries can’t easily flag which products serve farm uses.

• The vehicles haul tools, fertilizer and seed across rough terrain and aren’t luxury items, said Todd Cranney of Save America’s Working Vehicles. His coalition, formed after the June order, wants exemptions and a relief process.

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Politico
Trump’s Cabinet is fanning out to help juice the base. It’s not going as planned.
August 28, 2026

• Trump’s Cabinet is barnstorming to rally the base before the midterms but keeps getting knocked off message by angry farmers and ranchers. The beef backlash points to eroding support among rural voters the GOP long counted on.

• Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins, sent to Iowa to court farmers, instead had to defend Trump’s move to import 300,000 metric tons of discounted beef, enraging ranchers. She kept her distance, neither disowning nor embracing it.

• EPA’s Lee Zeldin is making it harder to oppose data centers just as bipartisan rural pushback grows, and Trump’s approval nears record lows.

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Barn Raiser
Can a Black veteran farmer win in rural Georgia?
August 29, 2026

• Shawn Harris, a Black retired brigadier general and cattle farmer, is the Democrat in Georgia’s deep-red, 88% white 14th District, betting biography and small-dollar money can flip a rural seat. Rural pain, from $4 gas to ACA coverage lost under the 2025 megabill, could shrink GOP margins.

• The seat opened when Marjorie Taylor Greene quit. Harris led March’s special but lost April’s runoff to Republican Clay Fuller, 56-44. In Paulding County he lost by 273 votes, a 9-point gain, forcing a November rematch; Fuller has Trump’s backing.

• Snubbed by the DCCC, Harris raised $8.1 million, four times Fuller’s total, almost all small gifts; Fuller leans on PACs and dark money. He runs as a moderate on clinics, grocery prices, broadband and the farm bill, strong in blue areas but blocked in red.

The Associated Press
In rural Nebraska, data center concerns cross political lines
August 26, 2026

• In rural eastern Nebraska, opposition to data centers powering the AI boom has united conservative farmers and the Sierra Club across party lines. Rural communities absorb the land, water and power costs while big tech profits.

• In Murdock, Cass County passed a 12-month moratorium that could freeze Tenaska’s 1,300-acre plan and a CyrusOne site. Farmland near $10,000 an acre has drawn offers of four times that, tempting squeezed growers.

• The backlash spans Nebraska to New Mexico, where a court paused wells for a $165 billion complex amid drought. A July Fox News poll found most voters, 60% of Republicans among them, oppose nearby data centers, pushing both parties to act before the midterms.

CHILD CARE

WECT
Rural child care crisis: How one Bladen County native is fighting the ‘daycare desert’
August 26, 2026

• In rural Bladen County, N.C., educator Jennifer Smith is opening Halle’s Haven, a 24-hour center for children up to age 6, to ease a child care shortage. These deserts hit rural, shift-working families hardest, filling a gap policy has left.

• Nearly half of U.S. young children live in a licensed child care desert, with rural rates higher. Smith, back home after an education career, will run it around the clock for shift-working parents.

• Smith won the college’s Pitch It Bladen County contest and will compete for $30,000. The county has struggled to attract daycares. It’s set to open in 2027.

DATA CENTERS, CRYPTOCURRENCY, AND AI

The New Republic
Trump’s EPA moves to give data centers a pass
August 25, 2026

• The Trump EPA has proposed ending the Clean Air Act rule that makes data centers disclose their air pollution. In rural areas courting these plants, residents could lose the right to know what they’re breathing, or to sue.

• With many state and local governments holding deals with data-center firms, voluntary disclosure would likely end most pollution reporting and blunt oversight, a former EPA official said.

• Data centers already draw opposition over power use, pollution and few jobs. Trump calls towns that reject them mistaken. The comment period is closed; the rule may face suits if finalized.

DRUGS AND ADDICTION

Georgia Southern University
Georgia Southern launches rural library initiative, expanding access to opioid harm reduction resources statewide
August 26, 2026

• Georgia Southern’s health institute is launching a program making rural public libraries opioid harm-reduction sites, funded by the state’s opioid settlement trust. That libraries now anchor this work underscores how thin rural treatment access is.

• The program equips library staff to offer naloxone, information and recovery referrals. A pilot with the Ocmulgee Regional Library System in central Georgia launches in mid-September.

• Staff train first with harm-reduction experts and people who’ve used opioids. A toolkit will then be shared via the Georgia Public Library Service for use statewide.

HEALTH CARE, PHARMACIES AND RURAL HEALTH

Marketplace
States bet big on rural health startups, with a Silicon Valley twist
August 28, 2026

• Several states are funneling part of the $50 billion federal rural health fund into unproven health-tech startups, VC-style, rather than propping up closing hospitals. The fund offsets little of the law’s $900 billion in Medicaid cuts.

• Louisiana set aside $20 million a year, drew 200-plus firms and will take equity stakes in winners. Delaware, Georgia, Nebraska and more are launching similar funds, capped at 10% of each award.

• The fast-fail approach worries analysts, who note CMS guidance sets no patient-protection standards and want guardrails. States risk clawbacks if they miss goals.

JOBS AND WAGES

The 19th
In rural Alaska, the teenage girls behind a $25 minimum wage fight
August 27, 2026

• Six young women in Nome, one of the priciest U.S. towns, are pushing a $25 minimum wage measure for the November ballot. In high-cost rural Alaska, a higher floor could be among the few things letting families stay.

• Nome’s floor is $14, but living costs run 69% above the U.S. average. The measure reaches $25 by 2029 for large firms, 2032 for small; organizers need 108 signatures by month’s end.

• Top employer Norton Sound Health already pays $25, so the raise would hit only about 15% of workers. The effort joins a national wage push; backers hope gains could lift pay in harsher nearby villages.

JOURNALISM AND BROADCASTING

Current
How state grants are expanding public media’s role in rural Kansas
August 28, 2026

• Kansas has awarded $500,000 to five public broadcasters to make rural programming on digital literacy, jobs and innovation. They help stations fill gaps from last year’s federal public-media cuts, sustaining rural information access.

• Each station gets $100,000 under the GOP-backed WorKS program. Recipients in Wichita, Lawrence, Topeka and Garden City will make shows, teach courses and promote careers.

• Projects include podcasting classes in rural libraries and workforce TV specials. Stations say it helps offset the federal rescission. Work ends by June 2027; no second year is funded yet.

Politico
Stars and Stripes journalists facing firing get one-week reprieve
August 28, 2026

• Three Stars and Stripes journalists the Pentagon moved to fire for flagging threats to its editorial independence won a one-week reprieve. The government-funded paper is an easily accessible independent news source in rural military areas.

• Reporter Lara Korte, editor Erik Slavin and publisher Max Lederer sued, calling them First Amendment retaliation. They say the real trigger was their story on sailors’ mental health on an Iran-war carrier.

• Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee, was skeptical, hinting the CBS remarks could be official, unprotected speech. The Pentagon won’t act before a Sept. 4 hearing.

LIVESTOCK AND MEATPACKING

Politico
Trump looks to ease beef processing regulations
August 28, 2026

• Trump says he’ll let farmers and ranchers process their own meat, targeting the Big Four packers. For rural producers squeezed by consolidation, looser rules could add independence, but critics cite food-safety risks.

• It follows this week’s move to lift beef imports to cut prices before the midterms. Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins promised more next week on labeling, small-processor funding and deregulation.

• Much needs Congress. The bipartisan PRIME Act would let small slaughterhouses sell directly without USDA inspection but has stalled amid industry lobbying. Origin labels need lawmakers too.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT

Bridge Michigan
As crisis looms for Michigan rural townships, bills to help sit idle in Lansing
August 28, 2026

• Michigan’s 1,240 townships, which run elections and collect taxes, are struggling to fill posts and stay solvent while relief bills sit idle in Lansing. The neglect risks basic local governance in rural Michigan.

• Over 75% report trouble filling mandatory elected posts, a UMich survey found, worst in rural areas. Some have no clerk candidate; early-voting mandates have pushed part-time clerks out.

• A bipartisan $3.5 million back-office bill has sat unheard since 2025; a clerk-vacancy bill passed the House but stalled. Advocates urge mergers; the association resists, saying the system works.

MENTAL HEALTH

Mississippi Today
In rural Mississippi, crisis text services help fill mental healthcare gaps
August 26, 2026

• Rural Mississippi has the nation’s third-highest rate of texting crisis lines for mental health, a new Crisis Text Line report finds. The reliance shows how thin rural care is, a gap more provider funding could ease.

• The report covers nearly 2 million U.S. texts to 741741 from 2019 to 2024; 53% of Mississippi contacts were rural, behind only Wyoming and Vermont. Most texters were female, under 25, citing depression.

• Rural areas often lack hospitals, clinics and transit, and gas deters repeat trips; anonymity helps in small towns. Officials noted a 140% rise in texts from fiscal 2025 to 2026.

REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS, PREGNANCY AND CHILDBIRTH

Stateline
More rural hospital closures would mean long drives for pregnant women seeking obstetric care
August 28, 2026

• Rural closures driven by the 2025 law’s Medicaid cuts could force many pregnant patients to drive an hour-plus to deliver, KFF finds. Longer trips raise the odds of dangerous births, and the law’s rural fund likely won’t offset them.

• In 14 states, losing the closest rural hospital or its obstetric unit would leave many Medicaid patients an hour or more from maternity care. The cuts curb hospital payments and Medicaid enrollment.

• Rural obstetrics is shrinking: 238 units closed from 2010 to 2022 while just 26 opened; by 2023 nearly half of rural counties had none. The lead researcher warns thin-margin hospitals could fold, deepening a maternal death rate among the worst in wealthy nations.

KFF
Availability of rural hospitals providing inpatient maternity care in Medicaid
August 26, 2026

• Rural hospitals provide 39% of the hospital-based maternity care Medicaid pays for, yet sit far from backups, KFF finds. Medicaid cuts in the 2025 reconciliation law could force more closures, pushing births further out of reach where maternal risk is already high.

• In 2023, 943 rural hospitals offered such care to Medicaid enrollees. The typical one is 43 minutes from the nearest in-state maternity hospital, versus 13 for urban; for 1 in 4, an hour or more.

• In 14 states the drive tops an hour, led by Alaska, Nevada and North Dakota. Medicaid funds nearly half of rural births, so the law’s cuts threaten access. Its $50 billion rural fund isn’t all for hospitals and likely won’t offset them.

RURAL ORGANIZING

Barn Raiser
Commentary: Do rural residents have the power to say no?
August 27, 2026

• Rural communities can still say no to data centers if they organize before preemption laws lock in, unlike the CAFO era, write Raj Patel, a food-policy scholar at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, and Jim Goodman, a retired Wisconsin dairy farmer with Family Farm Defenders.

• Two-thirds of 1,500-plus proposed centers are rural, Pew finds, yet just 14% in a June poll want one. The poorest tracts resist five times as often as the richest, and towns from Michigan to San Marcos, Texas, have blocked major projects.

• Firms borrow the CAFO playbook, using preemption and ALEC bills to strip local control; a $100 million suit killed a Texas county’s moratorium. But politics is shifting: Texas and Florida GOP governors moved to shield rural areas, and New York enacted the first statewide one-year ban.

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We opened with a clip of a Florida cattle producer asking the president to lower the price of oil. John called it a Jenga tower, and pointed out that Trump cannot lower tariffs without hurting the producers he already hurt with the Iran war, cannot import Argentine beef without enraging cattle country, and cannot leave prices alone without enraging everyone who buys groceries. On top of that, Corn and soybean markets have been pure chaos, which is why so many producers need beef prices to hold.

John’s read on the electoral map is that Senate control is roughly a coin toss, which was nowhere close to true six months ago. Maine, Alaska, Texas, and North Carolina are live, with Iowa and Ohio in the conversation.

We also talked about Trump calling data centers liquid gold and talking down to anyone who does not want one, while Abbott, Patrick, and Paxton run ads in Texas claiming they support a moratorium after more than 400 data centers were built or permitted under Abbott.

Joe pointed out that the moratorium they are pitching has Google, Meta, and Musk behind it, which tells you what it is worth.

And Ronan Farrow is digging into Georgia handing out hundreds of millions in incentives for something like $47 million back..

We ended the conversation with Joe, who is watching the $400 million Trump plans to spend from his super PAC on ads about himself. And as we look to next week, John is watching strong Republican support collapse into weak support under the hood, which is what precedes a real drop.

Here at RuralOrganizing.org, I am watching local engagement, which is the highest I have seen. September through November is when it counts, so sign up with a campaign, knock some doors, and talk to your neighbors in real life.

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The Rural Margin follows U.S. House races where rural voters make up enough of the electorate to decide the winner. So we’ll keep track of how the incumbents for those seats are voting, what they say back home, and who’s running against them.

BY THE DISTRICT

Eli Crane, AZ-2

Democrats test Crane’s rural seat as spending climbs: National groups are pouring money into AZ-02, where Crane won reelection by nearly 10 points in 2024 and faces a rematch with Democrat and former Navajo Nation president Jonathan Nez. Cook Political Report still rates the race “likely” Republican and calls it a reach for Democrats.

Crane has doubled his war chest and taken in more than $800,000 from House GOP leaders, while Nez has quadrupled his 2024 haul. Democratic-aligned groups have already spent more than $750,000 on attack ads, several hitting Crane over clean-energy tax credits he opposed.

Nez tied Crane to the One Big Beautiful Bill and the Iran war as the national debt passed $40 trillion, arguing the law’s SNAP and Medicaid cuts hit working families while millionaires like Crane pocket the tax breaks. Sen. Ruben Gallego named Crane among Arizonans responsible for coverage losses.

Crane co-sponsored a bill requiring a warrant before federal agents query Flock license-plate data, after reporting found officers misusing the cameras to track relatives.

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Juan Ciscomani, AZ-06

Challenger JoAnna Mendoza outraises Ciscomani by over $1 million: Democrats brought out the mobile billboards in Ciscomani’s district for his One Big Beautiful Bill vote, which imposed SNAP work requirements projected to cut $187 billion from food aid by 2034. At a Tucson health center event, residents with disabilities described losing care under the law's Medicaid cuts, projected to drop 46,000 Arizonans from coverage. Ciscomani didn't respond to requests for comment.

He built his profile on his own immigration story but skipped a June DACA vote shielding recipients from deportation, and has declined five times to say whether he backs a citizenship path for Dreamers. He also secured $1.7 million for flood work in Duncan, one of 20 Community Project Funding requests he directed to the district.

AZ-06 is rated a toss-up by Cook Political Report. Challenger JoAnna Mendoza, a retired Marine, has out-raised him by about $1.1 million.

David Valadao, CA-22

Valadao's Medi-Cal vote drove a Bakersfield forum on hospital closures: At an Aug. 25 Bakersfield forum, officials warned that Kern Medical and rural hospitals in Tehachapi, Delano, and the Kern River Valley could close as Valadao's One Big Beautiful Bill vote takes hold. Its Medi-Cal work requirements take effect in January 2027. His district has the highest Medicaid enrollment of any Republican-held seat, about 64%, and roughly 70,000 residents could lose coverage. Valadao's office didn't respond to requests for comment. He's said the law protected Medicaid for the most vulnerable and that its work requirements are reasonable.

He introduced a bipartisan flood-resilience bill with Virginia Democrat Don Beyer to fund flood-risk mapping and mitigation grants. Central Valley gas is running about $1 a gallon higher than a year ago as the Iran war passes six months, a cost his challenger is pressing.

CA-22 is rated a toss-up by Cook Political Report and lean Democratic by Sabato's Crystal Ball. Challenger Randy Villegas, backed by HRC and the nurses' unions, has made the healthcare vote his central issue.

Gabe Evans, CO-08

Evans distances himself from Trump on ICE and beef imports: The Democrats’ mobile billboard came to Evans’s district on Aug. 26 tying his One Big Beautiful Bill vote to the $187 billion it cut from SNAP, as the Weld County Food Bank cut rations amid rising demand. Nearly 28,000 Coloradans have lost food aid. Evans’s office didn’t respond. He’s refused to say how many of the roughly 91,000 SNAP recipients in his district could lose benefits, pivoting to blame past Democratic governors.

CO-08, which Evans won by about 2,500 votes, is among the nation’s most competitive. He faces Democratic state Rep. Manny Rutinel.

Speaker Johnson campaigned for him in the district last week. Evans said he doesn’t “march in lockstep” with Trump, citing his opposition to Argentine beef imports and to ICE entering homes without warrants. He’s stood by the tax law, once taking “100%” credit for its passage. He still won’t say whether he’ll return $5,000 from a PAC tied to Max Miller, the Ohio Republican facing domestic-violence allegations. Only one of the 16 Republicans who took Miller’s money has given it back.

Mariannette Miller-Meeks, IA-1

Democrat challenger presses IA-01 rematch: MercyOne Clinton Medical Center announced it will end obstetrics, labor and delivery services in 2026, citing rising costs, staffing shortages, inadequate reimbursement, and Medicaid policy changes. Christina Bohannan, making her third run at Miller-Meeks, campaigned in Louisa County, a county she skipped before the 2024 election. Miller-Meeks declined an interview and called Bohannan a “radical progressive.”

American Action Network launched more than $1 million in ads across IA-01 and IA-03 boosting Miller-Meeks and Zach Nunn on their One Big Beautiful Bill tax-cut votes, part of a $22 million summer buy. The ad references the $209 million “Healthy Hometowns” award from the Rural Health Transformation Program.

She joined a seniors scam-awareness event in Bettendorf with the Iowa Attorney General, part of the state’s “Stop the Scammers” roadshow, where she said the number of people being scammed has increased. A mid-July Bullfinch poll showed Bohannan at 40, Miller-Meeks at 35, and independent Michael Bridgford at 11.

Iowa-02

Seniors’ group ties Medicaid cuts to the seat: A national senior-advocacy PAC endorsed Democrat Lindsay James this week, touting the open district as key to a “pro-senior majority.” Its statement claims the One Big Beautiful Bill cut roughly $1 trillion from Medicaid and battered rural hospitals. It notes more than 190,000 IA-02 residents draw Social Security.

Both candidates campaigned across the district Aug. 24 with dueling economic pitches. Republican Joe Mitchell touted a U.S. Chamber of Commerce endorsement in Cedar Rapids and backed a targeted approach to tariffs. James ran a rural healthcare and affordability roundtable in Tama (one of eight stops). She’s pledged to reverse the law’s Affordable Care Act cuts.

Zach Nunn, IA-03

Outside money floods IA-03: American Action Network launched more than $1 million in ads across IA-03 and IA-01 boosting Nunn on his One Big Beautiful Bill tax-cut votes, part of a $22 million summer buy. The spot backing Nunn, “Hard to Get Ahead,” urges viewers to tell him to keep cutting taxes for Iowans. Sarah Trone Garriott’s campaign countered that Iowa lost thousands of manufacturing jobs last year and ranked 48th in economic growth, and criticized the law’s Medicaid cuts.

Nunn dropped a new ad hitting Trone Garriott on transgender athletes, saying she voted against legislation to protect girls’ sports and spaces and is now misrepresenting her position. The spot, “Stand Up For Us,” features an Iowa athlete and followed Trone Garriott’s own recent ad by about two weeks.

The National Federation of Independent Business endorsed Nunn for reelection. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce also backed him earlier in the week.

Maine-02

Trump’s deputies parade through the district: Vice President JD Vance rallied about 200 people at a Brewer defense-tech firm Monday, casting the midterms as a fight against socialism and pressing the case for Republican Paul LePage. It came a week after House Speaker Johnson campaigned with LePage in Auburn and warned of a “road to communism.”

Vance saved his sharpest lines for Democrat Matt Dunlap, accusing him of failing to guard taxpayer money from fraud. He cited Dunlap’s 2021 removal as state auditor for missing a certification deadline. (Dunlap passed the exams and was reinstated the next year.) Dunlap called the visit a bailout for a struggling campaign. He tied LePage to Trump policies he says are driving up costs: a trade war with Canada, Medicaid cuts, closed maternity wards, and shipbuilding jobs moving overseas.

Forecasters at Cook and Sabato rate the open seat Likely Republican. LePage carried the 2nd District even while losing the 2022 governor’s race.

Bill Huizenga, MI-4

Huizenga defends his record as Democrats send in backup: Rep. Bill Huizenga spent Tuesday with small business owners in Kalamazoo at a roundtable hosted by crypto-industry advocates. Pressed on health care, he defended his voting record. He claimed credit for an 11% drop in premiums and cited prescription prices at what he called a 60-year low. He dismissed “Medicaid for all” as unaffordable and crippling to the system.

Democratic state Sen. Sean McCann worked the same district with two sitting House Democrats, Reps. Hillary Scholten of Grand Rapids and Jamie Raskin of Maryland. They hit Trump’s tariffs and what they called an erosion of the middle class. McCann criticized Huizenga’s vote against extending Affordable Care Act tax credits. He said the One Big Beautiful Bill would strip Medicaid from families to fund tax cuts for the wealthy.

Both cited gas prices and the war with Iran. Cook rates the seat Lean Republican, shifted from Likely this summer.

Tom Barrett, MI-07

Barrett recasts himself as a data-center foe: In a new ad, Barrett says he “stood up to my own party” and voted against handing tax dollars to data centers, framing Michigan’s water, land, and future as belonging to Michiganders. His record cuts the other way. He voted for the data-center tax breaks in the One Big Beautiful Bill, whose extended corporate benefits handed six AI-related firms $83 billion last year. He also backed the SPEED Act, a permitting bill that would weaken federal environmental reviews for such projects.

His donors include Big Tech and data-center investors: Elon Musk, whose super PAC spent more than $869,000 to elect him in 2024; Peter Thiel, who maxed out this cycle; and Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, whose firm holds $150 billion in data-center investments and who maxed out in 2024 and 2026. Corporate PACs for Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Oracle have given too. Oracle is behind the contested data-center project in Saline.

A Working Families Party spokesperson said Barrett left Michiganders holding the bag after voting to give developers billions in breaks. The group backs Democratic nominee Will Lawrence, who’s campaigned against Barrett on data centers since last year.

Mike Lawler, NY-17

Lawler leans on a health-care vote his own party’s bill cut against: Fresh coverage of the Hudson Valley race and an Aug. 19 candidate forum kept affordability, healthcare, and data centers at the center. Rep. Mike Lawler is running a fall ad touting that he crossed party lines to extend the enhanced ACA premium tax credits. That extension failed in Congress.

Lawler also voted for the One Big Beautiful Bill. Democrats say its changes will strip Medicaid and ACA coverage from thousands in the district. The enhanced subsidies lapsed at the end of 2025.

Lawler and Cait Conley have settled on two televised debates, on News 12 (Sept. 28) and PIX11 (Oct. 14). Early voting starts Oct. 24.

Ryan Mackenzie, PA-07

Speaker stumps for Mackenzie: Speaker Johnson made stops in Allentown and Wilkes-Barre Wednesday to campaign for Mackenzie and Rob Bresnahan, both in tight reelection races that Democrats are targeting to flip control of the House. Standing alongside Mackenzie, Johnson framed November as a “contrast election.”

Rob Bresnahan, PA-08

Constituent files ethics complaint over campaign video: A Lackawanna County constituent filed a complaint with the Office of Congressional Conduct alleging Bresnahan broke federal law and House rules by using a taxpayer-funded congressional video as campaign material. His office aired the video in July to promote his Local Farmers Feeding Our Communities Act, and it showed up in Google’s political ad database under his campaign account, “Rob for PA.”

Franking rules bar electioneering in official communications. His campaign blamed a “clerical error” by a vendor and Google during account verification, called the complaint politically motivated, and said the mislabeling was fixed. The constituent, who has donated to Paige Cognetti, is proceeding anyway. Cognetti’s campaign called Bresnahan a “poster child of corruption.” A pre-election blackout period makes any action before November unlikely.

House Speaker Johnson stumped for Bresnahan in Wilkes-Barre Wednesday.

The complaint lands atop the stock-trading questions that have dogged him all cycle. He made more than 650 individual trades in 2025 before he stopped.

Jen Kiggans, VA-02

Kiggans backs the Iran war in a Navy district turning against it: The New York Times found Virginia Beach voters, including lifelong Republicans and military families, souring on Kiggans over her support for the six-month Iran war as gas ran $3.98 to $4.89 a gallon. Her VA-02 leans heavily on the Atlantic Fleet. She’s voted seven times against resolutions directing Trump to end the war or seek authorization for it. She declined the Times’ interview requests.

She echoed Trump in dismissing reports of food shortages aboard the carrier Abraham Lincoln, returning to San Diego after nearly nine months deployed, writing that the media should stop “spreading the democrat lies and misinformation about our great Navy.” Speaker Johnson campaigned with her in Virginia Beach, calling the race a choice between “communism” and “common sense.”

She visited Bon Secours Southampton Memorial Hospital in Franklin, touting her nursing background, weeks after voting for the One Big Beautiful Bill’s Medicaid cuts.

VA-02 is a toss-up rematch against former Rep. Elaine Luria, whom Kiggans unseated in 2022. Luria is a retired Navy commander who transited the Strait of Hormuz on carriers.

Derrick Van Orden, WI-03

Van Orden posts AI deepfakes of his opponent: Van Orden raised $7.5 million to Rebecca Cooke’s $8.6 million as of the July deadline. He’s been posting AI-generated deepfake videos of his Democratic opponent, manipulating her image to make her appear to say things she didn’t. The clips are tagged “Made with Grok Imagine” but carry no AI disclaimer.

Wisconsin is one of 31 states regulating political deepfakes, and its law requires a label on certain manipulated content. Whether his videos fall under it isn’t clear. Cooke called them “slop” and character defamation that should be illegal.

He declined a town hall invitation in La Crosse and Eau Claire, and his communications director accused organizers of “Derrick Derangement Syndrome.” Outside groups aired ads pressing him on a national abortion ban and on a vote shielding pesticide makers from liability.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business endorsed him. He headlined the Grant County Fair, hosted a sportsmen’s gun-rights event, and briefed the La Crosse Chamber on workforce and gas prices.

The Washington Post
Opinion: Republicans in America’s reddest state just sent their party a message
August 26, 2026

• Wyoming’s overwhelmingly rural, deeply Republican voters rejected Freedom Caucus austerity candidates, a result suggesting rural constituencies value public institutions like their state university more than deep spending cuts, argues Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

• The Freedom Caucus, which won state House control in 2025 and pushed a budget cutting University of Wyoming spending by nearly 11 percent, lost every statewide primary. Thirteen incumbents fell, leaving the caucus on track to hold barely more seats than Democrats.

• Olsen ties the outcome to earlier revolts in Alaska and Kansas, where Republican voters rejected steep spending cuts and budget-straining tax cuts, concluding the party’s cuts-only approach to the federal deficit, including ideas like restructuring Medicare, won’t survive contact with its own base.

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The Portland Press Herald
Opinion: Maine’s rural hospitals cannot survive another Susan Collins term
July 27, 2026

• Maine’s rural hospitals can’t survive the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s Medicaid cuts, and its $50 billion rural health fund is a bait and switch that won’t offset the damage, argues Paul Richardson, a Yarmouth resident who faults Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine.

• The law cuts about $1.02 trillion from Medicaid over a decade and triggers an estimated $490 billion in Medicare cuts, making the $50 billion a drop in the bucket.

• Nearly 44 percent of rural hospitals already run negative margins and more than 300 face imminent closure. Medicare and Medicaid cover 60 to 80 percent of their reimbursement.

The New York Times
Supreme Court ruling on mail-in voting could add to election confusion
August 26, 2026

• The Supreme Court has cleared the Trump administration to advance restrictions on mail-in voting, sowing confusion before the midterms. Rural voters, who often depend on mail ballots given long distances to polling places, could face outsized disruption.

• The executive order directs agencies to compile “state citizenship lists” of eligible voters, which the Postal Service could use to refuse ballots to unlisted people. Officials doubt the rules can take effect by November, and several states plan to sue.

• Every state offers mail or absentee voting, and the first absentee ballots go out Sept. 4. Officials warn budget-strained localities could waste tax dollars replacing ballot envelopes. The ruling deepens election litigation as control of Congress hangs on a few seats.

Red River Radio
Texas Ag commissioner predicts some rural Republican backlash against GOP
August 26, 2026

• Outgoing Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, a Republican, predicts rural voter anger could cost some Texas Republicans in November, a sign discontent over data centers and vouchers is straining the GOP’s rural base.

• Miller, who lost his primary to Nate Sheets, said some rural Republicans may leave ballots blank rather than vote Democratic, citing transmission lines, license-plate cameras and THC rules.

• A longtime Trump ally, Miller also faulted Trump’s plan to temporarily cut tariffs on up to 300,000 metric tons of imported ground beef, warning it would bankrupt more Texas ranchers.

The Associated Press
Here’s all the ways that data center controversies have transformed the midterm elections
August 25, 2026

• Opposition to data centers has reshaped the midterm landscape, complicating tech giants’ expansion plans and prompting Trump to defend an industry many communities are fighting. Rural areas, where developers seek cheap land and water, likely bear the heaviest strain.

• In New Mexico, the $165 billion Project Jupiter has united conservative ranchers with environmental groups over dwindling water in a drought-stricken state, where advocates challenged well-drilling permits allowing millions of gallons to supply the complex.

• Governors are toughening rules: Texas Republican Greg Abbott ordered regulators to shield ratepayers and pledged to strip a tax break, while New York Democrat Kathy Hochul imposed a one-year ban. AI’s energy demand is spurring a natural gas construction boom.

The Washington Post
A rift over a weed killer is dividing a pro-Trump alliance
August 26, 2026

• A pro-Trump alliance is splintering over glyphosate, a weed killer central to farming, as activists in Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s health movement accuse the administration of siding with industry. Rural farm families likely have the most at stake.

• The dispute centers on Heidi Overton, Trump’s pick to lead the Food and Drug Administration. Make America Healthy Again activists fear she won’t confront corporate interests, though the White House says she has advanced the movement’s priorities.

• Overton also faces resistance from Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana), who has cited strong concerns over her role in an executive order to cut recommended childhood vaccines. Some activists warn “MAHA moms” may skip the midterms, testing the coalition’s durability.

AGRICULTURE AND THE USDA

KFGO
Former farm leaders warn of crisis in rural America
August 26, 2026

• Former farm leaders in a nonpartisan group called Restore American Agriculture warn that trade, budget and regulatory policies are pushing rural America into crisis, with many farmers now afraid to speak out against the administration.

• It launched a site for farmers to report how policies hit them. Former National Corn Growers Association CEO Jon Doggett said commodity groups may fear retaliation.

• Farmers want markets, not handouts, said former Renewable Fuels Association head Bob Dinneen, who called ad hoc aid unsustainable. Iowa farmer Pam Johnson cited high costs and no profit for two years.

BALLOT INITIATIVES AND LEGISLATION

Colorado Newsline
Coloradans to vote on ballot measure to increase funding for conservation, wildfire mitigation
August 25, 2026

• Colorado voters will decide in November on Initiative 308, which would raise up to $175 million a year for conservation and wildfire mitigation. Rural mountain communities, where the work far outpaces funding, stand to gain most.

• Backed by The Nature Conservancy, it would exempt sporting goods sales tax revenue from Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR) limits. It wouldn’t raise taxes but could shrink refunds in surplus years.

• Funds would split between Great Outdoors Colorado and state wildfire programs. The Forest Service says 10 percent of Colorado’s 24 million forest acres need urgent work.

DATA CENTERS, CRYPTOCURRENCY, AND AI

The Washington Post
In a divided America, the left and right unite to oppose artificial intelligence data centers
August 26, 2026

• Opposition to data centers is uniting conservative farmers with environmentalists across party lines ahead of the midterms. Rural areas fear losing farmland, water and power to warehouses owned elsewhere.

• In Nebraska’s Cass County, a 12-month moratorium could freeze development near Murdock, population 275. Landowners are offered up to $40,000 an acre as farming costs climb amid Trump’s China tariffs.

• In drought-stricken New Mexico, the state Supreme Court halted well-drilling for the $165 billion Project Jupiter. A July Fox News poll found 60 percent of Republicans oppose local data centers.

The Washington Post
Texas poll shows solid bipartisan opposition to data centers
August 26, 2026

• A new poll shows 57 percent of Texas voters oppose data centers in their community, with rural Texans, long a GOP stronghold, opposed at 60 percent. The issue is scrambling Republican orthodoxy before the midterms.

• The University of Texas/Texas Politics Project poll found 74 percent of Democrats, 54 percent of independents and 43 percent of Republicans opposed. In battleground suburbs, 44 percent strongly opposed.

• Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and GOP Senate nominee Ken Paxton released data center plans this month as their races tightened. The poll surveyed 1,200 voters Aug. 5 to 13.

Wall Street Journal
Opinion: Give leery towns a slice of the data center pie
August 26, 2026

• Rural communities asked to host data centers should receive ownership equity, not just jobs and tax revenue, so residents share in the wealth rather than hosting absentee-owned capital that enriches outsiders, argues John Schooler Jones, who worked with stock-ownership-plan pioneer Louis Kelso on 1974 legislation.

• He points to a proposed Nodaway County, Missouri, data center that would deliver billions in capital but only 130 on-site jobs plus a tax share, with the asset owned elsewhere, echoing what absentee ownership did to his hometown of Tarkio.

• His fix draws on Kelso’s consumer stock ownership plan: structuring financing so residents become part-owners, paying for shares out of the capital’s own earnings. In Tarkio, with fewer than 700 households, nearly every family could take part, turning rented consent into earned buy-in.

HEALTH CARE, PHARMACIES AND RURAL HEALTH

Stateline
Cheaper health insurance changed their lives. Then it went away.
August 25, 2026

• Enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies, which Congress let lapse at the end of 2025, have expired, stripping coverage from hundreds of thousands in Mississippi. Rural towns like Edwards, with long drives to care and high diabetes rates, are hit hardest.

• State marketplace enrollment has fallen nearly two-thirds in eight months, to about 134,000. Many who dropped coverage have diabetes; one resident’s meds jumped from $15 to $200 a month.

• Mississippi, the poorest state, hasn’t expanded Medicaid and sits in the CDC’s diabetes belt. Hospitals warn Trump’s tax law will deepen uncompensated care.

Charlottesville Tomorrow
Rural Virginia communities face real and lingering consequences from labor and delivery unit closures
August 25, 2026

• Rural labor and delivery closures are doing lasting harm to Virginia families, from longer, higher-risk drives to a maternal mental health crisis low-income, Medicaid-reliant areas can least weather.

• Centra Southside Community Hospital in Farmville closed its obstetric unit in December, one of at least 140 rural units shut since 2020 amid staffing shortages, low birth rates and low reimbursement.

• Rural women are 21 percent more likely to face perinatal depression, yet only a third of counties have full obstetric care. Virginia’s Momnibus law expands screening, but workforce gaps limit it.

The Daily Yonder
Researchers work to address Alzheimer’s and dementia in rural communities
August 25, 2026

• University of Minnesota researchers are studying how rural communities innovate dementia and Alzheimer’s care, work suggesting community-based approaches could narrow the disparities rural and tribal areas face.

• Rural residents have higher rates of risk factors like hypertension, diabetes and hearing loss, plus diagnosis delays and transportation barriers. Up to 45 percent of cases are preventable.

• A pilot giving rural Minnesotans exercise bikes cut anxiety and depression with 85 percent attendance. Indigenous elders’ strong social bonds may also lower dementia risk, researchers find.

IMMIGRATION

Caló News
How ICE has upended rural towns
August 26, 2026

• A briefing warned that deportations, self-deportations and the rollback of Temporary Protected Status are depopulating rural America, threatening the workforce and tax base small towns rely on.

• Since January 2025, over 675,000 people have been deported and 2.2 million have self-deported, the first negative net migration in about 50 years. Trump has ended or moved to end 13 of 17 TPS designations.

• About 200 rural counties that grew since 2020 did so only through international arrivals, and one in four rural residents is non-white. A former Iowa police chief said fear keeps people from work.

INFRASTRUCTURE

Arizona Public Media
A new online tool maps border wall projects, using photos from the people who live nearby
August 25, 2026

• The Border Chronicle has launched Wall Watch, a crowdsourced map documenting border wall construction along the U.S.-Mexico line, giving rural and Native communities a voice as federal projects reshape their land with little input.

• Residents submit verified photos, coordinates and dates. It comes as the Trump administration ramps up work, from a buoy wall in Eagle Pass to a bollard fence through the Tohono O’odham Nation.

• Co-founder Melissa del Bosque says the government’s map lacks detail. Texas border judges and Republican Sen. John Cornyn have urged officials to coordinate with locals.

REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS, PREGNANCY AND CHILDBIRTH

The Dallas Morning News
Maternal healthcare gap has widened between urban and rural Texas, data shows
August 25, 2026

• Texas’s rural-urban maternal care gap keeps widening: desert counties rose to 129 from 2022 to 2024, and more than half of counties have no birthing site or delivery clinician. Those who can’t make long drives risk going without.

• Rural hospitals are squeezed by funding shortfalls, shrinking populations and strict Medicaid rules. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s $50 billion rural fund falls far short of its $911 billion in Medicaid cuts.

• The 2022 abortion ban may worsen OB-GYN shortages, with counties lacking one up from 152 to 162 since 2019. Advocates urge rural residencies and loan aid.

RIGHT TO REPAIR

The Daily Yonder
Commentary: Congress needs to codify farmers’ right-to-repair
August 25, 2026

• A July Federal Trade Commission settlement with John Deere expands farmers’ right to repair their equipment, but only Congress can make it permanent, easing a monopoly that falls hardest on rural farmers, writes Skylar Baker-Jordan, editor of Montana’s Glasgow Courier.

• The deal requires Deere, which controls 53 percent of large tractors and 60 percent of combines, to give farmers and independent shops the resources dealers get.

• Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, has a bill to make the right permanent. In sparse areas, a breakdown can mean driving hundreds of miles for a part.

SAFETY NET PROGRAMS

The Washington Post
Opinion: How Medicaid work requirements could backfire
August 26, 2026

• New Medicaid work requirements could strip coverage from people who still qualify by adding paperwork hurdles, undermining the self-sufficiency they claim to promote, argues Hannah Wesolowski, chief advocacy officer of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. The stakes run high in rural areas, where Medicaid covers a large share of residents and providers depend on it.

• Beyond the “medically frail” exclusion, the Trump administration also requires people to prove their condition substantially impairs their ability to work. Someone managing mental illness well because Medicaid covers their care wouldn’t qualify, yet must file complex paperwork if they deteriorate.

• Temporary coverage loss can cascade to emergency rooms, hospitals and law enforcement. A NAMI-Ipsos poll found 77 percent of Americans oppose denying Medicaid to people with mental illness who can’t work, and 81 percent back protecting those with disabilities from losing coverage.

WATER

Nevada Current
Nevada sues feds over Colorado River cuts
August 24, 2026

• Nevada has filed the first lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s Colorado River plan, which imposes mandatory cuts only on Lower Basin states. As shortages worsen across the drought-stricken Southwest, rural farms basinwide likely face rising pressure on water.

• The plan makes Nevada cut about 17 percent over two years, up to 71 percent in dry years. Upper Basin states Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming and Utah are exempt.

• Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo called it a matter of survival for Southern Nevada. The suit says the plan breaks federal environmental law and the Law of the River.

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USA Today
Democrats panned Trump’s signature law. Now they’re touting one part
August 24, 2026

• Democratic governors who fought Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill now tout rural health grants it funds. The money comes nowhere near offsetting the law’s Medicaid and safety-net cuts, which fall hardest on rural areas.

• The law’s $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program sent first-year grants to all 50 states. Maryland is spending $80 million on rural primary, mental health and dental care.

• KFF estimates rural Medicaid spending will drop about $137 billion, so the $50 billion covers only a third. New work requirements begin in 2027.

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Colorado Politics
Democratic candidate in Colorado’s 4th CD urges long-term water planning
August 21, 2026

• Eileen Laubacher, a Democrat challenging Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert in Colorado’s 4th District, wants long-term federal water planning, saying rural areas can’t shoulder drought and compliance costs alone.

• She cited shrinking snowpack and drought, and urged federal money for irrigation upgrades and soil health so farmers aren’t left to adapt alone.

• She said small towns shouldn’t get unfunded federal water mandates. A 2018 settlement requires Colorado to fallow 25,000 acres under the interstate Republican River compact by 2030.

MLive
Clerk in rural township near Ann Arbor challenges state rule to delete voter pollbooks
August 24, 2026

• A clerk in rural Bridgewater Township, near Ann Arbor, is suing Michigan over a rule requiring officials to delete electronic voter pollbooks soon after certification. Small rural offices with little legal support can face conflicting record rules.

• In an August 12 Court of Claims complaint, Clerk Michelle McQueer argues the rule conflicts with federal and state law and could penalize her either way.

• She named Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, Elections Director Jonathan Brater and the state as defendants; they have asked the judge to dismiss it.

AGRICULTURE AND THE USDA

Investigate Midwest
USDA wants to revive the cotton industry. Experts aren’t sure that’s possible.
August 19, 2026

• The USDA has rolled out a “Great American Cotton Plan” to revive US cotton and bring textile jobs home, through crop insurance and mill funding. Experts doubt it can reverse an 80-year decline, while rural growers lose markets to Trump’s tariffs.

• The plan mostly repackages existing laws rather than making new policy. US cotton mills have fallen from about 900 in the late 1800s to roughly 100 today.

• Trump’s tariffs cut cotton exports to China 84% from 2024 to 2025. Brazil passed the US as the top cotton exporter in 2023 and has widened its lead.

BROADBAND AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS

Broadband Breakfast
NTIA begins process to revive Digital Equity Grant Program
August 25, 2026

• The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) began reviving the $1.25 billion Digital Equity Competitive Grant Program, which funds efforts to help people get and use broadband. Rural areas, where gaps run deepest, stand to gain.

• NTIA opened a 60-day public comment period on the new round’s application rules. Comments are due October 26.

• It follows Commerce’s goal of reopening the program by December, after canceling 120 awards worth about $1.4 billion. A court ruling let it proceed without a race-based funding provision.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Brownfield Ag News
Rural leaders to explore solutions to childcare, housing, and healthcare challenges
August 21, 2026

• Childcare tops the list of challenges facing rural communities, followed closely by housing and healthcare, according to research by ag lender Compeer Financial. The overlapping shortages reflect underinvestment that makes it harder to keep working families in these areas.

• Leah Thiele, Compeer’s director of rural capital solutions, says rural areas lack not just energy and broadband but housing and childcare capacity.

• Possible solutions will be discussed next month at the firm’s Rooted and Rising: Rural Forum in Owatonna, Minnesota.

FIRST RESPONDERS

CU Anschutz Newsroom
EMS programs face many challenges. In rural Colorado, the hurdles are even higher.
August 24, 2026

• A University of Colorado Anschutz program is helping shore up the state’s stretched rural emergency medical services (EMS), often volunteer-run and underfunded, with long response times that leave rural patients exposed.

• Faculty led by Dr. Andra Farcas direct 19 agencies statewide and have trained 500+ students since 2023, mixing online classes with a simulation trailer that tours small towns.

• A new state law recognized EMS as an essential service on August 12. In one town of about 60 people, an all-volunteer squad of six covers 911 calls.

HEALTH CARE, PHARMACIES AND RURAL HEALTH

South Dakota Public Broadcasting
Town hall events scheduled over concern of rural healthcare dollars
August 24, 2026

• South Dakota is set to get $90 million from the federal Rural Health Transformation Program, but a community group is holding town halls, warning the money may go to tech firms instead of patients. It does nothing to undo the Medicaid cuts in the same law hitting rural care.

• Organizers say the funds may shore up hospitals’ finances but won’t help anyone see a doctor or therapist or afford medications.

• The program was created by the One Big Beautiful Bill. Town halls are set for Tuesday in the Sioux Falls area, with an online option Thursday.

INFECTIOUS DISEASES AND VACCINES

NNY360
New York urges measles vaccinations as cases rise in rural areas
August 24, 2026

• New York health officials have urged residents to check their measles vaccination status as cases climb in rural upstate areas. Rural communities, with lower vaccination rates and fewer providers, are often more exposed when outbreaks spread.

• The state has recorded 29 cases this year, six in New York City and 23 elsewhere, tied to local spread and travel, the Health Department said.

• Officials are tracing contacts with counties and offering measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccines. One dose is 93% effective against measles, two doses 97%.

JOURNALISM AND BROADCASTING

Eugene Weekly
Another rural Oregon newspaper announces plans to close
August 24, 2026

• The Highway 58 Herald, a rural nonprofit newspaper along Oregon’s Highway 58 corridor, will close September 15, leaving the Oakridge area without a watchdog again. When the town lost its last paper in 2020, residents saw oversight slip at City Hall.

• Pulitzer winner Doug Bates founded the Herald in 2021 after Oakridge’s weekly folded. But the town’s 3,300 residents and thin ad market made it hard to sustain.

• It’s the area’s second lost paper in six years, after this month’s closure of The Chronicle. The board hopes someone will step in.

LIVESTOCK AND MEATPACKING

Brownfield Ag News
Transportation costs eroding profitability for cattle producers
August 25, 2026

• Soaring diesel prices are eroding thin margins for cattle producers, a major Missouri sale barn owner says. With eastern beef plants closing, ranchers haul livestock farther, and consolidation leaves rural producers eating the freight.

• Jackie Moore of Joplin Regional Stockyards says trucking now runs $5.75 a mile, up from $4.75 a month ago. Hauling them 1,000 miles to Midwest plants adds about $5,000 a load, or $10 per hundredweight.

• Diesel averages $5.61 a gallon nationally, up nearly $2 from a year ago, with crude near $80 a barrel.

SAFETY NET PROGRAMS

Steamboat Pilot & Today
‘Completely overwhelming’: Colorado mountain town leaders worry Medicaid, SNAP changes are breaking down rural safety nets
August 24, 2026

• Colorado’s rural mountain counties are on the front lines of the One Big Beautiful Bill’s Medicaid and food-aid cuts, which local leaders say are dismantling the rural safety net.

• Starting in January, adults 19-64 must log 80 hours a month of work or study to keep Medicaid; over 370,000 Coloradans are affected. Nearly 34,000 fewer are getting food assistance since the law passed.

• Shifting food-aid costs could top $180 million a year statewide, with counties covering up to 40%. Rural offices may struggle to staff the heavier caseloads.

The Washington Post
Some Texas conservatives are breaking ranks and pledging to vote Democratic
August 24, 2026

• Frustration over data centers, water, and electricity is pushing some lifelong Texas Republicans to back Democrat Gina Hinojosa for governor over Greg Abbott, a revolt rooted largely in rural and exurban communities bearing the noise, strain, and resource costs of unchecked development.

• Voters have adopted a “Break Rank” slogan, with one organizer’s group drawing about 100 people. A retired Granbury businessman fighting a data center and bitcoin mine said no Republican in office during that fight will get his vote. A recent Fox News poll put Hinojosa within a point of Abbott.

• A Democrat hasn’t won statewide in Texas since 1994, and analysts doubt Hinojosa can win without James Talarico topping the ticket in the Senate race. Hinojosa argues a Democratic governor would block further GOP congressional gerrymandering.

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The New York Times
The data center backlash bursts into the midterms
August 24, 2026

• Public anger over data centers has become a defining midterm issue, scrambling party lines as candidates in both parties race to oppose the server farms blamed for rising electricity bills, heavy water use, and lost farmland. The issue is giving Democrats a rare opening in rural, Republican-leaning areas.

• A Gallup poll in March found 71% oppose local data center construction, and opposition in one Annenberg survey rose 12 points since early 2026. A National Republican Senatorial Committee memo called the issue an anchor around Ohio Sen. Jon Husted, urging the industry to fund ads.

• Republicans including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Florida’s Byron Donalds, and Wisconsin’s Tom Tiffany have pivoted to skepticism despite Trump’s AI boosterism. Michigan Senate candidate Mike Rogers backs a one-year moratorium; Democratic strategists say the issue defies easy partisan coding.

Texas Public Radio
Ag Commissioner Sid Miller: Some Texas Republicans will lose in November due to rural voter outrage
August 24, 2026

• Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller warns that rural Republican anger over data centers, transmission lines, and other state policies could cost the GOP statewide races in November, a striking admission from a longtime Trump ally that the party has misjudged its own rural base.

• Miller said he can’t support certain unnamed Republican candidates and hears from GOP voters planning to leave some races blank. He also cited backlash over Flock license-plate cameras, school vouchers, hemp and THC policy, and weak property-tax relief.

• He broke with Trump on the plan to ease tariffs on 300,000 metric tons of imported beef, warning it would squeeze ranchers without rebuilding a herd at a 75-year low. Miller also urged halting proposed 765-kilovolt transmission lines serving data centers.

The New York Times
Is Andy Beshear of Kentucky the next Bill Clinton?
August 22, 2026

• Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear has won twice in a deep-red state by concentrating on jobs and plain-spoken pragmatism, a model the columnist argues could help Democrats recover the rural and working-class voters they’ve lost, writes Nicholas Kristof, New York Times opinion columnist.

• Beshear holds the highest approval of any Democratic governor despite representing a state Trump carried by nearly 31 points in 2024. He frames liberal positions on transgender rights and abortion in the language of faith, casting protection of trans youth as a religious conviction.

• He points to teacher pay raises, universal pre-K, and strong pandemic-era school recovery, and faulted JD Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy” as demeaning to Appalachians. Beshear says he’ll decide on a 2028 run after November; a book arrives next month.

The New York Times
Angry Ohio voters could turn their state purple again
August 24, 2026

• Soaring costs for groceries, utilities, and farm inputs, along with backlash against data centers, have Ohio voters furious across every region and party, discontent that runs deep in rural and farm communities and could tip tight races for governor, Senate, and the House.

• Polls show dead heats in the governor’s and Senate races. In the Senate contest, Democrat Sherrod Brown has branded GOP incumbent Jon Husted the face of Ohio data centers; a National Republican Senatorial Committee memo warned the attack is landing because it works.

• Rural anger centers on a sense that outsiders decide local matters without consent, from data centers to solar farms on farmland. In the governor’s race, Republican Vivek Ramaswamy defends the party in power while Democrat Amy Acton carries baggage from her pandemic-era health role.

AGRICULTURE AND THE USDA

The New York Times
Farmers struggle to get basic services from depleted Agriculture Dept.
August 24, 2026

• Deep staffing cuts under the Trump administration have hollowed out USDA offices that farmers and rural residents depend on for loans, grants, and conservation aid, undercutting the administration’s stated priority of delivering for farmers and likely hitting the most remote, poorest communities hardest.

• More than 20,000 of over 110,000 workers left USDA in the first half of 2025. The Farm Service Agency now has no staff in dozens of counties, and Rural Development lost over a third of its workforce, leaving grants and loans delayed for months.

• The conservation service has lost nearly a fourth of its staff, pushing farmers toward costly private consultants, and Rural Development financed far fewer loans and grants this year. Sen. Peter Welch, Democrat of Vermont, called the losses a demolition of services that worked well and cost-efficiently.

BROADBAND AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS

Broadband Breakfast
ISPs want to continue to discontinue copper service
August 21, 2026

• AT&T, Verizon, and Fidium are pressing the FCC to retire aging copper networks across dozens of states, a shift consumer advocates warn could leave rural areas dependent on less reliable wireless replacements or with no service at all.

• Verizon won automatic approval Friday to drop copper at 4.5 million locations in eight states, where just 140,000 subscribed. Nebraska and Minnesota regulators had pushed back, doubting the FCC coverage maps used to verify fiber and wireless alternatives.

• Under Chairman Brendan Carr, the FCC has eased the retirement process and treated mobile coverage as adequate replacement. AT&T also wants to preempt California’s stricter carrier-of-last-resort rules, which require sturdier backups that advocates say matter in emergencies.

Broadband Breakfast
Broadband adoption slipping, researchers warn Pennsylvania lawmakers
August 21, 2026

• Broadband adoption is already falling in Pennsylvania, and cuts under the One Big Beautiful Bill could sever roughly 233,000 low-income connections, a hit likely to fall hardest on rural counties where affordable service is scarcest and few competitors exist.

• The state’s wireline subscription rate slipped from 76.2% in 2022 to 75.5% in 2024, dropping below the national average. The poorest fifth of households stand to lose about $1,200 a year as Medicaid, SNAP, and ACA subsidies shrink.

• Witnesses urged state-mandated low-cost tiers, removing barriers to municipal broadband, and fighting to reclaim over $450 million in federal funds Pennsylvania left on the table. The hearing met in Indiana County, where 22% of locations lacked broadband in 2024.

DATA CENTERS, CRYPTOCURRENCY, AND AI

NewsNation
‘We need economic activity’: Farmer says he’d sell his land for data centers
August 20, 2026

• As rural northwest Missouri residents fight data center construction, farmer Blake Hurst breaks with neighbors, saying he’d sell his land to developers for the jobs, tax revenue, and economic activity he argues struggling farm communities badly need, a rare pro-development voice amid widespread rural backlash.

• Hurst, who farms in Atchison County, said his county has lost 40% of its population, while nearby Nodaway County, where planned data-center construction was recently halted amid pushback, has lost about 13% in three years. He pointed to shuttered businesses and empty small-town housing.

• He disputed common concerns about strained resources, arguing electricity supply can expand through new generating plants and that Missouri’s rainy climate leaves ample water. Hurst first made the case in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.

EDUCATION

The Hechinger Report and The Washington Post
Trump’s school voucher program could become a public school cash machine
August 24, 2026

• A new federal tax-credit program created by the One Big Beautiful Bill lets donors steer up to $1,700 from their federal taxes to nonprofits funding public schools, a revenue stream that could disproportionately reward districts with wealthy donor pools while rural and low-income areas struggle to raise the same money.

• Taxpayers get a dollar-for-dollar credit for giving to scholarship-granting organizations, which pass money to private or home-school families or to districts for costs like tutoring and transportation. Thirty states have opted in; experts say districts could gain funding worth about 3% of their budgets.

• Critics, including teachers unions, call it a Trojan horse for vouchers. FutureEd’s Thomas Toch argues including public schools was a strategy to sell school choice in blue states. Districts could enroll their own employees through payroll to raise roughly $200 per student.

FARM BILL

The Daily Yonder
Commentary: As Farm Bill stalls, new legislation emerges tackling unfair markets in agriculture
August 24, 2026

• The Farm Bill is stalled three years past due, but new bills outside that process take aim at corporate power across food and agriculture, potentially giving rural farmers more leverage, writes Ben Lilliston of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

• One bill would rein in the four firms controlling 85% of beef, capping concentration and barring meatpackers from operating across beef, pork, and poultry. The Fair Seeds for Farmers Act would curb patents held by a few dominant seed companies.

• Additional measures address dairy consolidation, which has erased nearly 75% of small and midsize dairy farms since 2000, speculative farmland investors, and food-worker exploitation. Advocates hope the bills form the basis for a future Competition Title in the Farm Bill.

HOUSING

Politico
Manufactured housing’s affordability problem
August 23, 2026

• Congress’s new bipartisan housing law aims to make factory-built homes cheaper, but it leaves untouched the near double-digit interest rates on the personal property loans many buyers use, a gap that could keep manufactured housing out of reach in rural areas where it’s often the main affordable option.

• These loans, used by 44% of manufactured-home buyers per Pew, can’t be bundled and sold to investors like regular mortgages, so lenders charge rates several points higher. Buyers who rent their land or face restrictive state laws often can’t qualify for conventional mortgages.

• Democratic Sens. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, John Hickenlooper, and Peter Welch introduced a June bill setting a 30-month deadline for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to absorb some loan risk. Trump’s March executive order also directed regulators toward a fix, but past pilot efforts have repeatedly stalled.

IMMIGRATION

The Washington Post
Trump administration proposes $103,000 fee for H-1B visas after legal setback
August 24, 2026

• The Trump administration proposed a $103,265 fee on employers hiring skilled foreign workers through the H-1B program, reviving an effort a judge struck down in June, a cost that could deepen shortages of physicians, nurses, and teachers that rural areas especially rely on foreign professionals to fill.

• Revenue, estimated at $8.8 billion a year, would fund immigration courts and ICE. Unlike last year’s blocked version, the rule would apply to many workers already in the U.S., not just those petitioning from abroad, and exempts most universities and affiliated nonprofit hospitals.

• The administration says the fee makes hiring Americans more attractive; critics call it an illegal tax bypassing Congress. Amazon, Tata, Infosys, Apple, and Microsoft are top program users. The public has 30 days to comment after Tuesday’s Federal Register publication.

LIVESTOCK AND MEATPACKING

NewsNation
Farmers oppose Trump’s plan to import beef. Here’s why
August 24, 2026

• Trump’s plan to import 300,000 metric tons of below-market beef tariff-free is drawing fire from cattle producers and GOP farm-state lawmakers, who warn it undercuts ranchers just as beef finally delivered stable, profitable prices to rural producers after years of drought and losses.

• The 90-day move, meant to ease record beef prices nearing $7 per pound for ground beef, would let imports sell 25% below market value. The U.S. entered 2026 with about 86.2 million cattle, the smallest herd since the early 1950s.

• The United States Cattlemen’s Association, representing over 175,000 producers, and National Black Farmers Association member John Boyd Jr. both condemned the plan. GOP Sens. Deb Fischer of Nebraska and Tom Cotton of Arkansas, plus Rep. Ashley Hinson of Iowa, urged Trump to reconsider.

SENIORS AND NURSING HOMES

Legis1
Report finds thousands of senior centers rely on patchwork of federal funding
August 24, 2026

• Senior centers cobble together funding from multiple federal agencies rather than one reliable stream, a new Congressional Research Service report finds, a fragility that likely hits rural centers hardest given thinner local budgets and greater isolation.

• Only about 61% of the 9,572 senior centers states reported in fiscal 2024 received Older Americans Act funding, leaving roughly 39% operating without it. Centers draw on HUD, Transportation, and Health and Human Services programs to fill gaps.

• The report is a resource guide, not an adequacy assessment, meant to help congressional offices connect centers to grants. House appropriators proposed over $1 billion for senior nutrition and $55.2 million for Medicare counseling in fiscal 2026.

WATER

ICT
Tribes push back on federal plan for Colorado River water cuts
August 21, 2026

• The Interior Department finalized steep Colorado River cuts for three lower-basin states, and two Southwest tribes say they were sidelined from decisions that don’t reflect their water rights, a fight that could reshape how scarce water is divided among rural farms, cities, and tribal communities across the drought-stricken West.

• The Colorado River Indian Tribes holds rights to over 23% of Arizona’s river allocation, among the most legally secure claims.

• Lower-basin states face collective cuts of 1.25 million acre-feet annually for the next two years amid a 26-year drought that pushed Lake Mead to a record low. The river sustains over 40 million people, 30 tribes, and 5.5 million acres of farmland.

WILDLIFE AND HUNTING

Newsweek
Wild horses map shows roundups across US as advocates warn of slaughter
August 24, 2026

• Federal roundups are removing thousands of wild horses across rural Western rangelands, and advocates warn some end up in the slaughter pipeline despite legal protections, raising questions about how the government balances land health against animal welfare on public lands rural communities share.

• The Bureau of Land Management cites overpopulation damaging fragile ecosystems and plans gathers in Utah, Nevada, Idaho, and Wyoming. A recent New York Times investigation found some horses sold as “unadoptable” were resold through intermediaries and shipped to Canadian slaughter plants.

• Interior’s fiscal 2027 budget would cut the Wild Horse and Burro Program from nearly $142 million to about $106.8 million and omits longstanding language barring slaughter sales. Critics urge expanded fertility control over large-scale removals; over 60,000 horses remain in holding.

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Yard signs placed at homes and small businesses help break that isolation, signaling shared values and creating openings for conversation. Our field experiments in Ohio and Montana show that each sign generates 4-6 conversations among neighbors, friends, and family members.

That’s why, this year, we’ve been working on a yard sign program across Iowa, engaging with trusted community leaders to distribute 2,000 signs that illuminate the choice Iowans face this November. Healthcare for Iowa, or tax cuts for billionaires. In small towns across Iowa, folks are using our signs to start conversations with the neighbors about the urgency of this election. There’s a lot left to do, but we’re proud of an organizing effort that began just months after the 2024 election and continues to grow stronger.

A few weeks before the passage of the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” Iowans joined RuralOrganizing.org to rally for healthcare outside MercyOne hospital in Newton. Like so many rural hospitals in Iowa, MercyOne Newton had already cut services; residents worried that President Trump’s signature bill would mean even fewer options in their community. The labor and delivery center had already closed, and I asked a woman named Cindy in Newton what it meant to her that there was nowhere left to give birth in Jasper County. She explained that “the sheriff… he’s delivering babies on the side of the road, on the way to Grinnell.”

Since then, more communities across Iowa have learned what it means to lack basic services. Fort Madison, Clinton, Council Bluffs, and Iowa Falls have all lost labor and delivery services. When the MercyOne clinic in Ottumwa closed, many patients were redirected to Centerville, only for Centerville to close a few weeks later. Even for Iowans who still have hospitals and clinics operating nearby, insurance costs have gone up and closures around the state have made it harder to find an appointment.

RuralOrganizing.org did not stop our efforts once the OBBBA passed. Last November, before many national groups were focused on Iowa, we held a rural organizers summit, bringing in many of the same folks who had organized with us months earlier. We trained vocal locals on how to have persuasive conversations, utilize front facing video for social media communications, and we learned from experts about the impact the bill and the end of ACA subsidies would have on Iowa.

What we’re seeing now is that Iowans and rural people across the country continue to be concerned about healthcare coverage.

When our allies at Working America began canvassing in central Iowa, they initially planned to focus on housing affordability. Instead, what they found is that the overwhelming majority of working-class voters they spoke to listed healthcare as their top affordability concern. Erika, our sign distribution volunteer in Marshalltown and a canvasser for Working America, told me she hears about healthcare almost every time she knocks a door. Nathan Sage, a former US Senate candidate helping to distribute signs in Knoxville, told me healthcare affordability has become one of the key issues in his community.

This concern about health care is magnified in the state by the closure of several rural hospitals - a crisis for communities across the country. That’s a direct result of the OBBBA. But one other disturbing factor is hitting us hard: Iowa now has the second-highest cancer rate in the country - and we are one of the only states where cancer rates are on the rise.

At Rural Organizing, our work in Iowa is showing again that rural voters want to be heard. And they want their neighbors to join them to fight for better lives. Yard signs is just one way of doing that. But it’s a way that is helping us find community and allies.

- Written by Adam Zabner, Iowa

FiftyPlusOne
Rural and suburban voters haven’t looked this Democratic since 2018
August 21, 2026

• An average of generic ballot polls shows rural voters have shifted 13 points toward Democrats since Trump’s inauguration, outpacing urban and suburban movement and marking the party’s strongest standing with these Republican-leaning voters since the 2018 blue wave.

• Democrats now hold a 6-point edge in the suburbs, which would be their first suburban lead in over a decade, and a 27-point advantage in cities. Republicans still lead rural voters by 13 points, near their 2018 margin.

• Analysts tie rural frustration to tariffs, inflation and an unfinished farm bill, and polling shows many rural voters feel betrayed by their own party. The authors caution that crosstab data is noisy and urge treating the shift with uncertainty.

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The Washington Post
Seeking to flip Senate, Democrats are running ads to criticize their own
August 21, 2026

• Democrats running for Senate in Republican-leaning states are distancing themselves from their own party in ads, casting themselves as independent and bipartisan as they try to flip the chamber in November. The pitch leans on rural-resonant themes like guns, resource development and the farm bill.

• In North Carolina, Roy Cooper touts opposing “defunding the police”; Iowa’s Josh Turek advertises voting with Republicans 700 times; and Alaska’s Mary Peltola vows to take on anyone, including Democrats, who misunderstands hunting and resource development.

• The party is barely more popular than Trump in some target states, making the strategy risky, and similar 2018 pitches by Democrats in Missouri and Indiana failed. Republicans dismiss the bipartisan branding as cover for what they call a “toxic” party agenda.

The Associated Press
Governors’ races are being increasingly buffeted by the toxic politics of data centers
August 18, 2026

• Governors are moving to rein in AI data centers as a public backlash reshapes 2026 races, a shift echoing loudly in rural areas, where residents fear losing farmland, water and open space to the sprawling, energy-hungry warehouses.

• Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro imposed what he called the nation’s strictest guardrails, requiring projects to cover their own power costs, curb water use and win local approval first. In Texas, Greg Abbott, once a data center booster, ordered regulators to shield ratepayers.

• The politics cut both ways. Arizona, New York and Illinois governors have curbed tax breaks or paused projects, and Democratic challengers are running rural ads attacking Republicans. But in Wisconsin, a candidate who centered a construction moratorium lost the Democratic primary.

AGRICULTURE AND THE USDA

USDA Rural Development
Glen Smith sworn in as under secretary for rural development
August 21, 2026

• Glen R. Smith, a longtime Iowa farmer, was sworn in as USDA under secretary for rural development, the agency said, putting him atop the office that steers federal loans and grants for rural housing, broadband, water and utilities. Its direction matters for rural communities, especially as the administration pushes to cut federal spending.

• Smith, of Atlantic, Iowa, has farmed for more than 50 years, growing corn, soybeans and hay, and founded an ag services firm handling farm management, land appraisal and brokerage. He chaired the Farm Credit Administration board from 2019 to 2022 after Trump appointed him.

• Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins administered the oath at the Iowa State Fair. Iowa Republicans, including Sens. Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst and Gov. Kim Reynolds, praised the pick, citing Smith’s decades working with farmers and rural lenders.

BROADBAND AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS

Pennsylvania Capital-Star
Rural communities in Pa. and elsewhere wait after mixed ruling on digital equity dollars
August 21, 2026

• A federal judge blocked Trump’s move to unilaterally kill the $2.75 billion Digital Equity Act but let the administration strip race as a funding factor, leaving rural communities that rely on the grants for internet skills and access waiting in limbo.

• Congress created the 2021 program to expand digital skills for groups including rural Americans, older adults and veterans. After Trump called it a “woke handout,” the government froze the grants; Judge John D. Bates ruled he can’t cancel laws over a policy disagreement.

• The freeze forced nonprofits to cut navigator programs, including ones teaching rural Ohio seniors to pay bills and reach healthcare online. Rural areas lag in home internet, Pew found. Democratic sponsor Sen. Patty Murray vowed oversight; Republicans like Sen. Ted Cruz opposed the race-based criteria.

WJAC
‘A slow slog:’ how limited broadband access impacts rural Pennsylvania students & schools
August 21, 2026

• Many students in rural Pennsylvania school districts still lack reliable home internet, forcing schools to improvise so they aren’t left behind, local educators say. The gap likely widens rural learning inequities, as terrain and low density make providers reluctant to build where there’s little profit.

• In hilly districts like Tussey Mountain and Penns Valley, some mountain homes have no phone lines, let alone broadband. Schools send home hotspots, convert online work to paper packets, keep Wi-Fi on after hours, and some students do assignments in the parking lot.

• The Pennsylvania Broadband Development Authority cites deployment costs, permitting and utility pole access as barriers. A federally funded infrastructure program has reached more than 17,000 homes and businesses, with a goal of nearly 30,000 within a year.

CLIMATE CHANGE

The Washington Post
Why one highway exploded this summer — and why many more are at risk
August 20, 2026

• Record-breaking summer heat is causing roads, rail lines and bridges to buckle, twist and explode across the country, showing how infrastructure built for a cooler era is failing, with rural communities that lean on a few key highways likely to feel closures and detours most acutely.

• In Greenville, Texas, a stretch of U.S. 69 expanded until it burst into a two-foot ramp that launched a pickup into the air. Similar “blowups” closed interstates in Maryland and Louisiana, and a New Jersey bridge stuck shut four times this summer.

• Engineers are adapting with polymer-treated asphalt, reflective “cool pavement” and white-painted rails, and federal officials have urged designing for future climate rather than past records. But the Trump administration has revoked transportation rules meant to make agencies plan for a warming climate.

CONSERVATION

Politico’s Energy & Environment News
Cramer puts hold on Trump picks in feud over wetland policy
August 19, 2026

• North Dakota Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer has placed a blanket hold on all of Trump’s nominees to pressure the administration to loosen a wetland conservation program that has frustrated his state’s farmers, who want to plant closer to protected easements.

• The Fish and Wildlife Service recently dropped plans to ease the rule after more than 200,000 public comments and pushback from other Republicans and hunters, who warn that draining Prairie Pothole wetlands could sharply cut duck populations.

• Cramer’s hold could stall nominees across Interior, HHS, the National Science Foundation and other agencies, including Project 2025 author Dennis Kirk. The dispute splits North Dakota’s farmers and hunters over how the region’s federal easements are managed.

DATA CENTERS, CRYPTOCURRENCY, AND AI

NationofChange
Three-quarters of Americans would oppose a data center near their home, new polling finds
August 21, 2026

• Three-quarters of Americans say they’d oppose a data center near their home, and more than six in 10 strongly so, a Heatmap Pro poll found, with opposition spanning party and the rural-urban divide. Rural voters are 63 points against, a sign the AI buildout is alienating the communities often targeted for it.

• Opinion has swung 33 points against data centers in a year, Heatmap editor Robinson Meyer wrote, as the share strongly supporting one nearby fell from 13% to 4%. More than 530 counties and towns have restricted or banned the facilities.

• States are responding with moratorium bills, and New York’s governor paused hyperscale permits. A key driver is cost: a Union of Concerned Scientists analysis found $4.3 billion in PJM grid upgrades to connect data centers, over 95% of it billed to all ratepayers.

Inside Climate News
Proposed data centers could use more electricity than all Alabama homes combined, analysis shows. Who will pay?
August 19, 2026

• More than a dozen proposed data centers could collectively draw more power than all Alabama homes combined, an Inside Climate News analysis found, and residents fear the costs will fall on ratepayers already facing the nation’s highest bills, with several projects targeting rural, majority-Black communities.

• Alabama Power promises data centers will cover their full cost so household bills won’t rise, but a new state law, SB 270, leaves that guarantee dependent on how the three-member Public Service Commission enforces it. A contract the utility released was heavily redacted.

• Project Red Clay in rural Lowndes County would need 1,500 megawatts, enough for about a million homes, plus up to 100,000 gallons of water daily from a small rural utility. Data centers have become a flashpoint in the governor’s race between Republican Tommy Tuberville and Democrat Doug Jones.

The Daily Yonder
Q&A: Taylor Goldenstein on the unique politics of data centers in Texas
August 21, 2026

• Rural Texans are increasingly wary of the data center boom reshaping one of the nation’s fastest-growing markets, Texas Tribune reporter Taylor Goldenstein says in a Daily Yonder Q&A, and the pushback is scrambling the usual politics in ways worth watching nationally.

• More than half of Texas’s proposed data centers are headed to rural areas, where residents fear strains on water and power and higher electricity rates. With counties lacking zoning authority, some Republican local officials are breaking with small-government orthodoxy to demand more regulatory power.

• Big Tech money is flowing into Texas politics, favoring the party in power, though its influence is unclear. Gov. Greg Abbott has proposed curbing tax breaks and banning data centers in rural neighborhoods. Goldenstein calls the opposition a rare bipartisan, “unicorn” issue.

Hard Reset
Wisconsin versus (AI) Goliath
August 19, 2026

• Residents of Wisconsin Rapids, a small former mill city, are waging a cross-partisan fight to block a proposed AI data center at their shuttered paper mill, a battle that shows how small towns with strained budgets and limited zoning options struggle to resist big tech, writes JJ Lansing, a San Francisco-based writer with longtime family ties to Wisconsin.

• The group South Wood County Neighbors for Responsible Development says city officials have withheld basic information, including water use and whether an NDA exists. Members are skeptical of a proposed community benefit agreement and are recalling an alderman who pressured a business over yard signs.

• The Russian-founded PNK Group’s plan drew a visit from indicted former NYC Mayor Eric Adams, who backs it. Residents fear higher utility bills in a county where 40% are financially strained, few local jobs and contamination at the mill site. Wisconsin’s data center tax break, signed by Gov. Tony Evers, helped lure such projects.

DISASTERS

The Hill
Almost 4 in 10 say extreme weather damaged their communities in past year: Survey
August 18, 2026

• Nearly 4 in 10 Americans say extreme weather damaged their community in the past year, a Walton Family Foundation-Gallup poll found, with the heavily rural South reporting the most destruction and rural areas likely absorbing an outsized share of the harm.

• In the East South Central region, covering Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee, 58% reported damage, the highest of any region, followed by 47% in the West South Central region. The Mountain region was lowest at 26%.

• Affected residents felt less control over their futures, and 57% of Americans worry about more damage ahead. The findings land as the Trump administration overhauls FEMA, with new administrator Cameron Hamilton pledging to prioritize cost savings.

Politico
Flirting with disaster (aid)
August 18, 2026

• A bipartisan group of lawmakers is pushing a bill to bar presidents from weighing “political affiliation” when approving disaster aid, aiming to depoliticize FEMA relief, a fight with high stakes for rural communities that lean on federal help to recover from storms and wildfires.

• The effort follows a Politico investigation finding Trump approved disaster requests from Democratic-led states 23% of the time in his second term, versus 89% for Republican-led ones. Backers, led by GOP Sen. James Lankford, hope to attach it to the Senate defense bill.

• Republicans cite their own grievance, pointing to a FEMA supervisor fired after allegedly directing staff to skip Trump-supporting homes after Hurricane Milton. Critics say the bill lacks enforcement and wouldn’t curb the president’s power to grant or deny aid.

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

Psychology Today
How to help rural victims of domestic violence
August 19, 2026

• Domestic violence is harder to detect and address in rural areas, where isolation, scarce services and the near-impossibility of anonymity keep victims from coming forward, writes Wendy L. Patrick, a trial attorney and behavioral analyst, drawing on new Swedish research.

• A study of 38 social workers across 17 rural Swedish municipalities found intimate partner violence is rarely identified there, leaving staff inexperienced at risk assessment. Rural workers juggle more social problems with fewer resources and high turnover among the few who are trained.

• In small towns, victims may avoid local services for fear of being recognized, a barrier compounded by limited transportation and greater acceptance of abuse. Suggested fixes include seeking help in a neighboring town, remote reporting and online counseling.

EDUCATION

ProPublica
At “quasi-public” private schools, 100% of students get tuition vouchers. There’s almost no accountability.
August 17, 2026

• Private schools where every student’s tuition is covered by taxpayer-funded vouchers face almost none of the oversight required of public schools, a ProPublica investigation found. As voucher programs spread into rural areas, the same gaps could leave rural taxpayers funding unaccountable schools.

• In Wisconsin, 39 such “100% schools” enrolled 7,923 children and took in about $87 million in vouchers last year. Unlike public schools, they aren’t bound by open-records or open-meetings laws and needn’t serve all students with disabilities.

• At Milwaukee’s Atlas Preparatory Academy, which earned the state’s lowest rating, the board chair also worked as a paid administrator making over $150,000, and his firm held an $87,250 contract, arrangements that would be barred, sometimes as a felony, at public schools.

Education Week
How to nurture teacher retention in far-flung rural districts
August 21, 2026

• A new federal guide draws on Alaska’s largest rural district to help far-flung schools keep teachers, spotlighting that rural educators more often leave over working conditions than pay, a signal that retention money may be better spent on support than on salaries alone.

• The Lower Kuskokwim district teaches 4,100 students across an area the size of West Virginia, with schools in tiny, low-income villages reachable only by boat or plane. In 2022-23, 78 of its 350 teacher jobs went unfilled.

• Researchers found that setting realistic expectations and helping new teachers find housing and connect with Yup’ik communities were key levers. The Education Department guide urges districts to diagnose local root causes before copying standard recruiting fixes.

ENERGY AND UTILITIES

KJZZ
Arizona Corporation Commission approves regulatory process change for rural utilities powering large users
August 19, 2026

• Arizona regulators approved a new review process for rural electric cooperatives fielding data centers and other big power users, as AI-driven demand pushes these facilities into rural areas, where small co-ops worry about the strain and residents fear footing the bill.

• The Arizona Corporation Commission adopted a standardized checklist, sought by the Arizona Electric Power Cooperative and rural members, for reviewing service agreements with large users. Staff will weigh whether a deal serves the public interest and whether costs would shift to households.

• Data centers have long clustered in metro Phoenix, but developers are eyeing rural grids as urban zoning increasingly rejects them, said commission chair Nick Myers. Small co-ops can struggle to serve massive loads; the new process promises decisions within 90 days.

FOOD AND HUNGER

WBRC
Alabama food bank leaders warn of impact as 80,000 lose SNAP benefits
August 19, 2026

• More than 80,000 Alabamians are losing SNAP benefits under new federal work rules and tighter eligibility, and food bank leaders warn they can’t fill the gap, a shortfall likely to bite hardest in rural areas where more residents rely on the program and food access is thin.

• Nearly a million people in Alabama face food insecurity, 200,000 of them children. Michael Ledger of Feeding the Gulf Coast said SNAP provides nine meals for every one his food bank supplies, calling the program a dam holding back far more need.

• Food bank leaders urged Republican Sens. Tommy Tuberville and Katie Britt to add a two-year waiver to the farm bill so Alabama can fix the error rate behind $174 million in annual penalties. Britt’s office said she isn’t on the Agriculture Committee and can’t offer amendments until the bill reaches the floor.

HEALTH CARE, PHARMACIES AND RURAL HEALTH

The Daily Yonder
Non-profit pharmaceutical manufacturer delivers drug access to rural hospitals
August 20, 2026

• A new program from Civica Rx, the country’s only nonprofit drugmaker, aims to guarantee rural hospitals steady access to generic medicines during shortages at stable prices, easing a burden that hits small facilities hardest and could keep life-saving drugs stocked where options are thin.

• Backed by a $3.2 million Helmsley Charitable Trust grant, the pilot covers membership fees for eligible hospitals across nine states, from Hawaii to the Dakotas. It could reach about 225 rural hospitals and 6,750 beds, with access to Civica’s supply if a shortage hits.

• Rural hospitals often sit at the bottom of the supply chain, and 200 to 300 shortages are active nationwide at any time. The program waives minimum-purchase guarantees, aiming to cut costs and free pharmacy staff from hunting for scarce medications. Organizers hope to expand nationwide.

KGOU
AI use is growing in healthcare. An Oklahoma researcher found rural hospitals are slow to adopt it
August 19, 2026

• Rural hospitals are adopting predictive AI far more slowly than urban ones, new Oklahoma State University research found, a gap that could widen rural-urban health disparities as cash-strapped facilities lack the money to evaluate and use the tools safely.

• Reviewing 2023 data from 2,319 hospitals, economist Brian Whitacre found 51% of rural hospitals had adopted predictive AI versus 81% of urban ones. Rural facilities lean on tools built into their electronic health records and often use AI for billing and flagging high-risk outpatients.

• Critical access, for-profit and government-owned hospitals were less likely to adopt, deterred by high costs and thin staffing. Whitacre urges a “HITECH 2.0,” echoing the 2009 federal push that helped hospitals adopt electronic records, to keep rural facilities from falling behind.

WFTV
Rural America’s healthcare crisis: The 10 most vulnerable states
August 21, 2026

• An analysis ranks Texas, Tennessee and Mississippi as the states where rural health care is failing most, weighing hospital finances, closures, missed Medicaid expansion and poor record-sharing. Texas alone has 50 rural hospitals at risk of closing, the most in the nation.

• Federal relief is flowing inversely to need. Under the $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program, Texas gets about $66 per rural resident, the lowest, while Rhode Island, with no vulnerable rural hospitals, gets $6,305. A flat $100 million floor per state shrank big states’ per-person share.

• The 2025 federal budget law cut roughly $1 trillion from Medicaid over a decade, and the American Hospital Association projects rural hospitals will lose about $50 billion. Six of the 10 hardest-hit states never expanded Medicaid, deepening years of losses.

HOUSING

Civic Media
HUD funding lags could hit rural WI hardest
August 18, 2026

• A delay in federal HUD fair housing funding could fall hardest on rural and small Wisconsin communities, the Metropolitan Milwaukee Fair Housing Council warns, noting rural areas face real discrimination, including against Hmong refugees and migrant workers, but have fewer resources to fight it.

• The council, the state’s only private fair housing group and its only one running discrimination tests, is still awaiting a third year of HUD grant money due in July; federal grants make up about 40% of its revenue. CEO Erika Sanders said the delay could hamper investigations.

• Sanders said groups that recently got enforcement grants were barred from reapplying, which she called a possible bid to weaken private civil rights enforcement. OMB said the rule changes ensure tax dollars serve the public.

IMMIGRATION

The Wall Street Journal
Revoking protected status for Haitian workers triggers labor crunch in Florida
August 17, 2026

• The end of Temporary Protected Status for Haitian immigrants on July 27 is squeezing South Florida employers, especially home care and nursing homes, and the direct-care labor shortage it deepens is one that thinly staffed rural facilities elsewhere are likely to feel too.

• Nearly half of the roughly 350,000 Haitian TPS holders live in Florida, about 93,000 in its workforce, immigrant-rights groups estimate. They make up 28% of the state’s immigrant direct-care workers; two Miami-area home-care agencies closed after each lost more than 80 of them.

• The fallout is reaching Massachusetts, Ohio and Georgia, with nursing beds going offline, aging-services providers say. The Supreme Court cleared the terminations in June. Critics of TPS argue the losses are small enough to absorb and could lift wages for American-born workers.

INFECTIOUS DISEASES AND VACCINATION

Kentucky Lantern
Kentucky has a measles outbreak, most cases in decades
August 18, 2026

• Kentucky is facing its largest measles outbreak since 1991, with 19 cases this year in people who are unvaccinated or of unknown vaccination status, state health officials said. The affected counties are largely rural, where lower vaccination rates and thinner health access could speed spread.

• Fifteen cases were confirmed in four days across Christian, Owen, Todd, Trigg and Washington counties, with Christian County accounting for 10. Most of this year’s cases are in children, and there have been two hospitalizations and no deaths.

• Vaccinations have declined recently as the U.S. faces its worst measles outbreak since the disease was declared eliminated in 2000. Dr. Steven Stack, the state’s health cabinet secretary, urged parents to make sure children have two MMR doses.

JOURNALISM AND BROADCASTING

The New York Times
Pentagon fires editor and publisher of independent military publication
August 21, 2026

• The Pentagon fired the editor in chief and publisher of Stars and Stripes, the government-funded outlet covering the U.S. military, raising fears about its editorial independence. The move could thin independent coverage for service members and their families, who are drawn heavily from rural America.

• Editor Erik Slavin said his notice cited insubordination and an unauthorized CBS interview in which he defended resisting censorship. The firings came about 10 days after the paper reported on hardships facing Navy sailors during the extended war in Iran.

• The Pentagon rescinded a decades-old rule guaranteeing the paper’s editorial integrity in January, barred it from running AP articles in March and fired its independent watchdog in April. Spokesman Sean Parnell said it should drop “woke distractions.”

LIVESTOCK AND MEATPACKING

The New Lede
North Carolina poultry industry grows as manure oversight lags, report finds
August 19, 2026

• North Carolina’s booming poultry industry is generating millions of tons of largely unregulated manure, a new Environmental Working Group report found, a gap that likely leaves rural Black communities near dense farm clusters exposed to water and air pollution.

• The state raised more than 421 million chickens and turkeys in 2024, a 3% jump since 2022, producing over 3.6 million tons of manure. Farms using dry litter don’t need water quality permits to spread waste on fields.

• Poultry manure can carry bacteria, nitrate and other contaminants into water, and North Carolina ranks among the worst states for nitrate-tainted drinking water. Democratic bills to require permits have stalled, and an EPA civil rights complaint was rejected.

MENTAL HEALTH

Minnesota Star Tribune
Opinion: A mental health counselor showed up at my door in rural Minnesota. It changed my life.
August 19, 2026

• Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics are essential in rural Minnesota, where clinical care is scarce and farmers face suicide rates 3.5 times the national average, making same-day, crisis-response mental health services a matter of life and death, writes Theresia Gillie, a Kittson County commissioner and longtime board member of Alluma, the clinic she credits with helping her after her husband died by suicide.

• CCBHCs like the nonprofit Alluma provide crisis response and same-day mental health and substance use care regardless of ability to pay. A counselor came to Gillie’s door the day after her husband’s death; the nearest facility was an 80-mile drive she couldn’t have made.

• Alluma’s clinic served more than 4,000 people across several counties in 2024. Gillie urges permanently authorizing and expanding the model through the bipartisan Ensuring Excellence in Mental Health Act, backed by Minnesota Democrats Rep. Angie Craig and Sen. Tina Smith.

MINING AND DRILLING

High Country News
The BLM may stop notifying landowners about drilling under private land. Ranchers are alarmed
August 21, 2026

• The BLM has proposed ending its requirement to notify ranchers when oil and gas drilling is planned beneath their land and cutting public comment from 90 days to 10, a change that would hit rural Western landowners hardest by stripping much of their say over development.

• The rule targets “split estate” land, where the federal government owns the minerals under privately held ranches and can grant companies surface access over an owner’s objection. Nearly 58 million acres nationwide are split estate, most of it in Montana and Wyoming.

• The BLM also wants to slash cleanup bonds for abandoned wells from $500,000 to $25,000 statewide, which it concedes could delay plugging orphaned wells. Ranching groups oppose the plan; industry says it helps small operators, and Interior frames it as cutting red tape.

PERSONAL FINANCE

The Conversation
Personal bankruptcy filings are soaring in 2026, signaling growing economic distress
August 19, 2026

• Personal bankruptcy filings are rising again, topping 500,000 in 2025 and up 12% in June 2026 from a year earlier, as wages lag inflation and credit card rates stay high, writes Jay L. Zagorsky, a Boston University business professor who studies bankruptcy. It’s a sign of financial strain that almost certainly bites hardest in lower-income rural areas, according to a 2022 report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

• Filings had fallen from about 1.5 million in 2010 to a low near 368,000 in 2022, buoyed by pandemic aid, before turning back up. Most filers use Chapter 7 liquidation; higher earners use Chapter 13, which repays creditors from income over three to five years.

• State laws sharply shape outcomes: Texas shields unlimited home equity, while Arkansas protects just $800 and Kentucky $5,000, so where a debtor lives can decide whether they keep their house. Zagorsky’s research found financial recovery can take 15 to 25 years.

POLLUTION

The Hill
Court upholds EPA rule forcing polluters to pay for ‘forever chemical’ pollution
August 18, 2026

• A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld an EPA rule designating two “forever chemicals” as hazardous substances, letting the agency force polluters to pay for cleanup and likely easing the cost burden on rural communities whose water supplies are contaminated.

• The rule labels PFOA and PFOS, two toxic PFAS compounds linked to cancer, as hazardous under the Superfund law, giving the EPA power to investigate contaminated sites and bill responsible companies. It was issued under Biden and backed by the Trump administration.

• Industry groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, sued, arguing the EPA ignored the costs of its action, and are weighing next steps. The unanimous D.C. Circuit panel, made up of one Obama and two Trump appointees, found the agency acted reasonably.

RELIGION

Des Moines Register
Is Iowa losing its religion? Church closures mount in rural communities
August 18, 2026

• Churches are closing across Iowa as rural congregations shrink, pastors grow scarce and money runs short, hollowing out institutions that anchor small-town life. With governments pulling back the safety net, the losses could leave rural Iowans with fewer places to turn for support.

• From 2010 to 2020, 285 Iowa churches closed and church membership fell 13%, even as the increasingly urban state’s population grew, the U.S. Religion Census found. Only three of Iowa’s 99 counties gained members. Mainline Protestant denominations fell about 30%.

• The decline tracks a national rise in “nones,” now 26% of Iowans, up from 21% in 2013, PRRI data shows. Divisions over LGBTQ rights are driving younger people away, while white evangelical churches, prominent in backing Trump, are also shrinking.

SAFETY NET PROGRAMS

ProPublica
The Trump administration aims to penalize disabled adults who live with their families
April 28, 2026

• The Trump administration is drafting a rule that would cut or end Supplemental Security Income for as many as 400,000 disabled and elderly people who live with relatives receiving SNAP, ProPublica found, a change likely to fall hard on low-income rural households that lean on both programs.

• The rule would count the value of a disabled adult’s bedroom and any family income as support, reducing SSI checks by up to a third even for families below the poverty line. It reverses a Biden-era policy that treated SNAP households as too poor to provide support.

• Initiated by White House and DOGE officials, it’s a second push to shrink disability programs after an earlier plan was dropped. An OMB spokesperson called the story “false” and “trash” without citing errors, and the SSA said the commissioner is committed to protecting benefits.

STUDENT DEBT RELIEF

Forbes
Education Department rescinds student loan forgiveness credit, but scope of rollback is unclear
August 18, 2026

• The Education Department confirmed it reversed some Public Service Loan Forgiveness credit, cutting borrowers’ qualifying payment counts and pushing their debt relief further off, a setback likely felt keenly by rural public servants like teachers and nurses, writes Adam Minsky, an attorney focused on student loans.

• The department first blamed a data error, then said some reversals were deliberate, meant to fix PSLF counter code errors it traced to 2024 changes under the Biden administration. It says it has notified most affected borrowers and resolved the issue.

• But some borrowers say they lost credit for months that clearly qualified, with no explanation and no word on restoration. The turmoil comes amid new PSLF rules, miscalculated payments and backlogs, prompting advocacy groups to call for a national payment pause.

  Thanks for reading RuralOrganizing! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

The Rural Margin follows U.S. House races where rural voters make up enough of the electorate to decide the winner. So we’ll keep track of how the incumbents for those seats are voting, what they say back home, and who’s running against them.

AUGUST 21, 2026

THE BIG PICTURE

Democrats won in Special Election in Trump +19 PA HD-12: This week, we saw the last special election of the cycle and it continued a promising pattern for Democrats. In Pennsylvania’s House District 12, Brandon Dukes was declared the winner by 97 votes, as of publication time. In 2024, Donald Trump won this district in historically Republican Butler County by 19 points and the previous Republican legislator won 65%-35%.

Special elections this cycle: Since January of 2025, Democrats have flipped 31 state legislative seats from Republicans while none have been flipped by Republicans.. At The Downballot, Daniel Donner wrote about the import of special elections as we head to November, “Across 110 special elections since January of 2025, Democrats have, on average, overperformed Harris by 12.5 points and Joe Biden by 8.4 points. Together, these figures suggest a calculated political environment in which Democrats would be favored by 12 points—slightly better, even, than what the same data was telling us in 2018.”

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BY THE DISTRICT

Eli Crane, AZ-2

Crane skips publicly funded debate: He’s among most Arizona House members turning down the state’s Clean Elections forums.

Crane declined an invitation to Arizona’s taxpayer-funded Clean Elections debate ahead of the Nov. 3 general election. All but two of the state’s sitting U.S. House members turned down the invites. Ciscomani plans to debate Democrat JoAnna Mendoza on Sept. 10.

He’s cosponsored the PRIVACY Act, which would require federal law enforcement to get a warrant before tapping license plate reader data from systems like Flock. The bill was introduced by Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas), and was co-sponsored by Crane and Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.)

Crane attended the Aug. 18 launch of the nation’s first MD-granting medical school branch on tribal land, a University of Arizona and Gila River Health Care partnership in Sacaton, appearing with other lawmakers.

Juan Ciscomani, AZ-06

Ciscomani campaigns on Trump’s bill as its costs hit home: The incumbent touts the law while a factory sheds 1,000 jobs.

Lucid Motors blamed the end of EV tax credits, cut in the bill Ciscomani voted for, for laying off more than 1,000 workers at its Casa Grande plant. He’d warned the cuts could hurt district jobs, then campaigned this month with Trump officials touting the law. His race is rated a pure toss-up.

He held a roundtable with a Tucson cardiology group and touts $2.7 million for Pima JTED (the county’s public vocational-training district). He became vice chair of a new veteran housing caucus. At his urging, the Pentagon picked Fort Huachuca for a Space Force mission.

A report this week identified him as still sponsoring the Bible studies of Ralph Drollinger, who said America brought Jan. 6 and COVID on itself. He’ll debate JoAnna Mendoza on Sept. 10, a rarity as most of the delegation skips.

David Valadao, CA-22

Valadao’s healthcare vote takes center stage as challenger rallies: Democrat challenger Randy Villegas rallied in Bakersfield with Rep. Ro Khanna, promising guaranteed healthcare and hitting Valadao’s vote for the bill that cut roughly $1 trillion from Medicaid. Most of Valadao’s district relies on Medi-Cal. His only prior loss, in 2018, followed his vote to repeal the ACA. Cook rates the race a toss-up at D+1, and three polls now show it even or leaning Democratic.

Meanwhile, Valadao joined a U.S. Chamber roundtable in Bakersfield on the surface transportation bill, pressing for rural road and freight funding. Also, the American Action Network launched a $22 million ad buy touting the GOP tax law’s tip and overtime provisions, with Valadao’s district among those targeted. It runs through Sept. 3.

Gabe Evans, CO-08

Evans embraces Trump in Colorado’s tightest district: Republican Rep. Gabe Evans says he doesn’t move in step with the administration on everything, but he’s stuck close to Trump since taking office and would likely welcome a Trump campaign visit. Evans voted for the tax law that cut Medicaid, then declined to say how many of the district’s roughly 91,000 SNAP recipients could lose benefits.

The vote sits badly with his constituents. New University of Maryland polling found 61% of the district’s Republicans want more Medicaid spending and 70% want Obamacare subsidies renewed.

Democrat Manny Rutinel, who grew up on the program, is hammering Evans on the cuts, while Republicans are attacking Rutinel over his past veganism in a beef-producing district. He says those views are years behind him.

Evans is also leaning into AI, proposing bills on data-center power costs and competition with China.

Speaker Mike Johnson visited to fundraise in the highly competitive district, ranking the race among the top five that will decide House control. Evans won in 2024 by less than a point, while Trump carried the district by 2.

Mariannette Miller-Meeks, IA-1

Miller-Meeks touts party-line bill as her health record draws fire: Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks appeared with HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at a Newton YMCA to promote the revived Presidential Fitness Test, now required in Iowa P.E. classes. Kennedy said schools discourage activity and are poisoning kids with unhealthy food.

The American Action Network launched a $1 million-plus ad buy in her district touting the tax law she voted for. In an op-ed, she defended her health record and pointed to a $35 insulin cap she backed, responding to attack ads from 314 Action. She visited a southeast Iowa farm to talk trade, the stalled farm bill and year-round E15.

Iowa-02

Open Iowa 2nd draws sharp cost-of-living contrast: Democratic state Rep. Lindsay James told fairgoers she’d reverse the Affordable Care Act cuts in the tax law, saying up to 27,000 district residents nearly lost coverage, a Traer clinic closed and 100-plus medical workers in Grinnell and Mason City were laid off. She’d redirect money from the Iran war back home.

James will debate Republican Joe Mitchell in two televised matchups. She calls his anti-corruption pitch “laughable,” citing his real-estate lobbying group; his campaign calls her a “Portland Liberal.” Independent Dave Bushaw and Libertarian Rick Stewart also qualified for the ballot.

Stewart, a Libertarian, used his soapbox to call for scrapping the income tax, replacing welfare programs with universal basic income and auctioning green cards to vetted immigrants. And Independent Dave Bushaw, a rural community organizer, farmer, and folk musician, pitched a lasting independent movement and knocked both parties as beholden to corporate money.

The seat is open as Republican Ashley Hinson runs for Senate.

Zach Nunn, IA-03

Nunn brings Hegseth to Iowa as toss-up rating lands: Republican Rep. Zach Nunn hosted Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at a state fair campaign fundraiser, where Hegseth urged Iowans to reelect Nunn and backed a $1.5 trillion defense budget, the largest request in U.S. history. Hegseth used an anti-trans slur on stage. Inside Elections just moved the race to toss-up.

Also at the fair, Nunn warned that Strait of Hormuz disruptions could cause “mass famine” without fertilizer access, touted year-round E15 and a stock-trading ban, and said he supports releasing the Epstein files. The American Action Network launched a $1 million-plus ad buy touting Nunn’s vote for the One Big Beautiful Bill tax law.

Democrat Sarah Trone Garriott says Nunn isn’t “tough on China,” citing $18,750 his PAC took from Syngenta and Smithfield and missed committee meetings. Nunn’s allies are hitting her over a 2006 “satanic wedding” she didn’t officiate.

Maine-02

Open Maine 2nd tightens as Dunlap lands national backing: The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee added Democrat Matt Dunlap, the state auditor, to its “Red to Blue” program, a sign national Democrats see the open seat as winnable. The committee had held off after Dunlap beat its preferred candidate in June’s primary. The Maine Education Association also endorsed Dunlap, faulting Republican Paul LePage’s schools record as governor.

LePage, the former governor, drew House Speaker Mike Johnson to Auburn, who called him one of the most qualified House candidates since 1789. Vice President JD Vance heads to Brewer on Monday to campaign for him. LePage also appeared with Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Sen. Susan Collins in Lincoln to tout a battery-storage plant at a shuttered mill, a project funded by a Biden-era infrastructure grant.

The seat is open as Democrat Jared Golden retires; Trump carried the district all three times.

Tom Barrett, MI-07

Barrett scrambles to catch up on data centers: Republican Rep. Tom Barrett introduced two bills Thursday to block federal agencies from overriding local data-center decisions and to bar members of Congress from signing data-center NDAs. A day earlier he released an ad saying “you should decide on data centers, not Washington.” He’d voted for the tax law giving AI firms billions in breaks, and his donors include Big Tech investors and data-center builders. A House Majority PAC poll put Democrat Will Lawrence ahead, 49% to 47%.

House Speaker Mike Johnson campaigned with Barrett in Lansing, calling himself “bullish” on GOP chances and a data-center moratorium “a dangerous prospect.” Lawrence, who built his campaign on opposing data centers, wants a federal moratorium and now points to Flock license-plate surveillance too.

Mike Lawler, NY-17

Lawler locks in first debate, demands James “do her job”: Rep. Mike Lawler (R) agreed to his first general-election debate, set for Sept. 28, in one of the nation’s most competitive House races.

A liberal group, Empire State Voices, ran ads and a mobile billboard this week saying Lawler’s votes have cost New Yorkers $4,500 more this year. It timed the push to a Westchester fundraiser he held with House Speaker Mike Johnson. His campaign touts $4,000 in tax relief from a bigger SALT deduction and no taxes on tips and overtime. His own $5 million ad campaign thanks him for those wins and for fixing “our broken hospital system.”

At an Aug. 17 law-enforcement endorsement event, he pressed his opponent to back repealing New York’s law limiting police cooperation with ICE. He also demanded state Attorney General Letitia James “do her f---ing job“ and prosecute antisemitic hate crimes after a synagogue attack, claiming most go unprosecuted. Immigration was the clearest divide at an Aug. 19 Dutchess County forum.

Ryan Mackenzie, PA-07

Mackenzie defends his record as Johnson stumps, Iran war dogs him: In an interview with a local paper, Rep. Ryan Mackenzie (R) touted the One Big Beautiful Bill’s tax cuts, a bipartisan housing law and constituent casework. That same bill cut Medicaid and SNAP. He called the tax cuts a “short-term win” and named healthcare affordability his top second-term priority, though he’s introduced no bill.

House Speaker Mike Johnson campaigned with him Wednesday, warning that a Democratic win would put the country on “a deadly road” to communism. In 2024, Mackenzie ran on “ending forever wars” and opposed bombing Iran. He’s since backed Trump’s war, which has pushed gas over $4 a gallon, and voted against war-powers resolutions. He’s said his red line is troops on the ground.

Democrats and the Green Party are suing to remove Green candidate Andrew Tupone, a registered Republican until February, calling him a spoiler. A Trump election lawyer who gave Mackenzie $250 now represents him.

The district is considered a toss-up race and was decided by about 4,000 votes in 2024.

Rob Bresnahan, PA-08

Bresnahan defends stock trades as Johnson stumps: Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R) is trying to hold a seat that could decide the House against Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti (D), who’s led narrowly in recent polls. She’s centered her campaign on his stock trading. He made about 640 trades worth $8.2 million in 2025. In 2026, he’s made five, all in bonds.

Bresnahan defended the trades Wednesday, saying his adviser handles them and he’s never traded individual positions himself. He voted in July for a bill restricting congressional stock trading. Pressed on whether Trump’s trading should face limits, he and House Speaker Mike Johnson didn’t answer, then ended the news conference. Trump made 21,000 trades in 2025, per an ABC News analysis.

Bresnahan visited an Olyphant pharmacy Tuesday, touting his work on drug-middleman reform as 600-plus Pennsylvania pharmacies have closed this year. An NRCC ad he approved features a local drag performer, who’s now raising money to get it pulled.

Rob Wittman, VA-01

Wittman outraises challenger 4-to-1 as coastal mining fight builds: Rep. Rob Wittman (R) holds four times as much campaign cash as challenger Shannon Taylor. A Virginia Commonwealth University analyst tied the edge to defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, saying they reliably get the votes they want from him.

Wittman wrote a recent law expanding mineral mining. Now Florida and Michigan companies want to mine 2,700 square miles off Virginia’s coast, a district he represents that’s full of Chesapeake Bay watermen. Local leaders in Accomack and Northampton counties oppose the leases, citing risks to fisheries and the clam industry. Over 1,300 public comments have come in, most against.

After a shooting injured five near Virginia State University early Saturday, Wittman called it horrifying and thanked law enforcement. And Wittman, the son and husband of teachers, thanked educators in an op-ed as the school year began.

Jen Kiggans, VA-02

Kiggans blames media for Navy reports as Trump calls them “fake news”: Rep. Jen Kiggans (R) is dead even in fundraising with Democrat Elaine Luria in a rematch for a district Trump won by two-tenths of a point in 2024. The seat has one of the country’s largest active-duty military populations and is heavily Navy.

After reports of deteriorating conditions on the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, deployed for Trump’s Iran war, Kiggans blamed the media for “democrat lies” hurting military families. Trump called the reports “fake news” and said the sailors were out “not nearly long enough.” Kiggans sits on the Armed Services Committee. In March, amid concerns about the Norfolk-based carrier Gerald R. Ford, she said, “This is not Carnival Cruise, this is the U.S. Navy.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson campaigned with her Monday, calling the district one that “will determine the fate of the country.”

Derrick Van Orden, WI-03

Van Orden posts AI deepfakes of his opponent: Van Orden posted AI deepfake videos that manipulate Democrat Rebecca Cooke’s image to make her seem to say things she didn’t. They carry no “generated by AI” disclaimer, though “Made with Grok Imagine” appears in the posts. Wisconsin law requires disclaimers on certain manipulated political images. Cooke called it “slop” and “character defamation.”

At a chamber forum, Van Orden said gas (now $4.07 a gallon) is “still too high” and accused oil companies of “profiteering.” His office touted a CMS rule bringing “historic” Medicaid funding to the state, a year after he voted for the One Big Beautiful Bill’s Medicaid cuts. A GOP group launched nearly $1 million in ads praising him and Rep. Bryan Steil (R), with more than $316,000 of it reserved in his district.

Cooke has outraised Van Orden by $1 million in a rematch of their 2024 race, which he won by 3 points. It’s Wisconsin’s most competitive House race.

It’s been a bad few weeks for big tech billionaires.

“Campaigns or party committees can not fix the toxic brand of an entire segment of the economy.”

That was the conclusion of a private memo from the National Republican Senatorial Committee sent to AI tech donors this month.

Ouch.

The memo goes on to state that Sherrod Brown has made data centers the centerpiece of the campaign against Sen. Jon Husted in Ohio, and it is working. A Fox News poll last week had Brown up 8.

Watch: Sherrod Brown blasts Sen. Jon Husted on data center development as the two prepare to face off this November

The problem data centers are having is that the more voters learn about them, especially the hyperscale campuses built for generative AI, the more they hate them. Gallup now finds 7 in 10 Americans oppose a data center in their own community.

In Florida this week, David Jolly won the Democratic gubernatorial primary. During the campaign, he pledged to halt new data center construction. His Republican opponent, Byron Donalds, is now running on a platform to make data centers leave the public grid. It’s a complete shift from his previous position.

This spring, the pro-AI super PAC Leading the Future pledged $5 million to Donalds’ campaign, saying in part, “Byron Donalds understands we’re on the cusp of a magical era of technological advancement that will unleash enormous economic benefits and protect Florida’s future.”

As with the Senate race in Ohio, some are now wondering whether data center backlash is putting the Florida governor’s race in play.

Democrats are rethinking their positions too. On Tuesday, Gov. Josh Shapiro signed what he described as the strictest data center guardrails in the country, and he is the same governor who spent years courting the buildout.

As I wrote previously in this series, the conventional wisdom in Washington last year was that data centers were a digital gold rush for rural America. This summer, we found out that assumption was a career-ending miscalculation for a number of politicians.

But it’s clear that the tech giants are not going down without a fight. And with the industry on the ropes, they’re now calling in the experts from big tobacco.

In 1993, the EPA classified secondhand smoke as a carcinogen, and Philip Morris hired a public affairs firm, APCO, to build the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition, an innocuous-sounding nonprofit whose job was to popularize the phrase “junk science.”

Today APCO sells data center advisory services. An investigation found that they paid for some of the ads run by Elevate New Mexico in support of Project Jupiter, the OpenAI and Oracle hyperscale campus in Doña Ana County, New Mexico.

APCO is not the only piece of tobacco infrastructure finding new life in this fight. The Consumer Choice Center, the group that built the tobacco industry’s third-party advocacy operation, has issued reports asking policymakers to “reduce regulatory friction” around grid upgrades for data centers. In other words, Consumer Choice Center wants to make it harder for local people to fight development and eminent domain in their own communities.

The “data center front group” strategy is everywhere now. Virginia Connects spent roughly $700,000 in one year on mailers and texts, and its tax filing lists the head of the Data Center Coalition, a group that actually calls itself “The Voice of the Data Center Industry,” as its principal officer. And nearly a dozen state-based front groups use their same website template and share a single Google Ads ID.

Meta put $34 million into American Edge, which now publishes briefs telling tax-starved counties that a data center is the biggest opportunity in a generation.

Right. And more doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette.

Industries hire front groups to manufacture support and write bogus reports when they cannot find any organically, and AI products this year have struggled this year to demonstrate any real value to the American public.

The New York Times recently reported that Spotify, LinkedIn, YouTube, Meta, and Google are scrambling to remove low-quality AI-generated content from their platforms. Spotify removed 75 million spam tracks. LinkedIn built a button so users can flag posts as slop. Google researchers found 50,000 clusters of coordinated accounts and removed them. TikTok says it has labeled more than three billion AI-generated videos.

Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta, and OpenAI are building most of the hyperscale AI capacity in this country, and they’re now drowning in slop generated by their own data centers.

Last October, during an earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg told shareholders that social media had entered a third phase. The first was content from friends, family, and accounts you followed. The second phase was creator content. And the third phase was AI-generated content. “We’re going to add yet another huge corpus of content,” he said.

Well, he got what he asked for, and users hate it.

For the last five years, we were told AI would change everything. Sure, the first few years of the 2020s were a real step up in advanced computing, and there is demand for advanced computing. But for everyday users (who also happen to be the voters), we have yet to see any real benefit.

I bet I use AI more than the average American, and if you made me choose between Claude and Wikipedia, I’d pick Wikipedia every time, and I am not alone. Only a small fraction of ChatGPT users actually pay for the service. Turns out an app that just repackages Reddit posts and invents facts out of thin air isn’t really worth a monthly subscription.

The paying customers have yet to show up, but even the ones who have don’t really see the value. MIT examined what companies actually got out of their AI projects and found that 95 percent produced no measurable results. It’s an undeniable trend that’s starting to shake confidence in the sector.

The lack of demand means AI companies are spending far more to build the technology than they collect from users. That’s why they want to leave taxpayers holding the bill.

Bain estimates that by 2030, the industry will come up about $800 billion short of what it needs each year. To fill a hole that size, JPMorgan figures you would have to charge about $35 per month to every person on Earth who owns an iPhone to turn a profit. That’s not just the iPhone owners who want AI, it’s all of them.

Even Dario Amodei, who runs Anthropic, has conceded the point on X, writing that “the most accurate criticism of AI companies, including Anthropic, is that we haven’t yet delivered on our big promises to benefit the world.”

This is a big reason why Rural America has been so skeptical of the claim that data centers will rebuild local communities. We have been asked to make bad industry bets before, and you can still see them across our landscapes. The abandoned mines, empty distribution warehouses, and brownfields that nobody locally has the money to clean up are all a constant reminder of the snake oil and silver bullets that were sold to communities in decline.

My family is from the Prairie Pothole region. I grew up a mile from the Big Sioux River outside Brookings, South Dakota. My mom is from outside Emmetsburg, Iowa, and my dad is from near Fort Dodge. All of these places got sold on industrial-scale cellulosic ethanol when I was a kid, and none of the prosperity we were promised ever materialized.

In these private-public partnerships, the money flowed in one direction, and the risk flowed the other. Taxpayers paid for the job training and the infrastructure. Farmers signed the contracts and bought the equipment. When it falls apart, the farmer still owes the note, but the executives have already been paid. And eventually everyone ultimately somehow forgets about all the jobs that were promised.

And AI data centers might be the riskiest bet for Rural America yet.

Let’s assume the best-case scenario for a community that hosts a hyperscale data center: the industry solves its math problem and finds enough paying customers to cover the cost of the technology and power. A massive campus gets built in your county, stays full, runs for thirty years, and generates a couple million dollars in local property taxes. Sure. It’s plausible. But your power bill still goes up. Your neighbors still get the substation or the transmission line.

That is the best case. But it’s not as likely as the industry suggests.

The more likely scenario, in today’s economy, is that the bubble bursts partway through construction, the buildings sit empty, and the taxpayers who took all the risk are left holding the bag. And ultimately, if the space is filled, the new company that purchased the abandoned lot fails to follow through on the promises made by the now-bankrupt initial developer.

Maybe that is why the only people still telling us data centers will rebuild our rural economies are the same people who told us cigarettes would cure our cough?

Next up in our Data Center Summer series: Rural Americans hate data centers and top-down, billionaire-driven development. So what are the other options for building a strong local economy in a small town? What do voters actually want? And who at our taxpayer-funded institutions is already building the playbook for homegrown rural prosperity? We’ll cover that next.

The Kansas City Star
Opinion: Think urban and rural Missouri is divided? Amendment 4 said otherwise
August 18, 2026

• Missouri’s rejection of Amendment 4 shows the supposed urban-rural divide is overstated, as voters across very different counties united against a measure that would have made citizen-led ballot initiatives far harder to pass. The threshold would have required approval in all eight congressional districts, effectively giving rural districts veto power while blocking the kind of measures rural and urban Missourians alike have used to expand Medicaid, raise the minimum wage, and protect abortion rights, writes Michele Hornish, co-founder and executive director of the Democratic political action committee Every State Blue.

• Statewide, 80% of voters rejected the amendment on August 4, with St. Louis posting the highest share of no votes and two dissimilar counties tying for second at 86%: urban, diverse Jackson County, which Kamala Harris won by 19 points in 2024, and rural Grundy County, which Trump carried by 64 points.

• Hornish argues the same concerns cut across county lines, from high prices and low wages to costly, hard-to-find healthcare and school funding worries, and that politicians and cable news amplify a city-country split because a divided electorate is easier to manipulate than a united one.

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Politico
‘We are not a bunch of woke Marxist liberals here’: Rural voters scramble Texas election
August 19, 2026

• Rural Texas conservatives are turning on Gov. Greg Abbott over data centers and a $33 billion transmission build-out, with some longtime Republicans weighing a vote for Democrat Gina Hinojosa. The revolt taps fears of lost rural identity and worry over water and power.

• Abbott’s rural approval fell from 63% in 2018 to 48% in 2026, and polls put him 1 point ahead of Hinojosa. His pause on data center approvals struck some as a ploy.

• Nationally, 51% of rural adults oppose data centers, to 32% in cities. Texas bars counties from banning them.

The New York Times
Rancher beats Trump-backed candidate in primary for governor of Wyoming
August 18, 2026

• Eric Barlow, a rancher and state senator, won Wyoming’s Republican gubernatorial primary, The Associated Press said, beating a Trump-endorsed rival and all but locking up the governorship in a state where Republicans hold every statewide office. His win shows the limits of Trump’s sway in a sparsely populated rural state where many voters decide by talking with candidates at barbecues, county fairs, and rodeos.

• Barlow ran on problem-solving and cooling Wyoming’s Republican infighting, contrasting with Trump-backed Megan Degenfelder, who promised to fill agencies with “bulldogs,” and far-right retired Marine colonel Brent Bien. He emphasized support for public lands, an issue uniting conservative hunters and liberal environmentalists across the West.

• Barlow is favored in November against Democrat Ken Casner. He and Degenfelder both backed continuing GOP policies, opposing abortion and vowing to support mining and energy while shoring up the state’s struggling rural health care systems.

The Washington Post
Trump’s ICE nominee helped lead one of the harshest immigration crackdowns in U.S.
August 19, 2026

• Lance Schroyer, Trump’s ICE pick, helped make Oklahoma a national leader in per capita immigration arrests by training all 700-plus troopers to enforce immigration law via traffic stops. In a state so rural that residents must use patrolled highways to reach work, that role is outsize.

• Oklahoma joined the 287(g) task force model early, letting troopers arrest immigrants on the streets. ICE logged over 3,000 arrests by March, and DHS awarded the state $47 million, second only to Florida.

• Schroyer, close to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, was deputized after a 40-hour online course critics call inadequate. His confirmation looks shaky, with no hearing scheduled and no ICE director confirmed in over a decade.

Gina Hinojosa for Texas Governor
New ad: Hinojosa releases data center ad targeting rural markets
August 18, 2026

• A campaign release says Democratic Texas gubernatorial nominee Gina Hinojosa launched a 30-second cable ad, “Abbott Intelligence,” a six-figure buy running in rural markets across the state. The rural targeting signals Democrats see data center growth and its energy and cost pressures as an opening with rural voters who’d bear much of the strain.

• The ad runs in El Paso, Lubbock, Odessa, Amarillo, Abilene, Wichita Falls, and San Angelo.

• The campaign says Gov. Greg Abbott took more than $20 million from donors with data center stakes and branded Texas the AI “epicenter” before what it calls a politically driven reversal on the industry.

AGRICULTURE AND THE USDA

High Country News
It’s a make-or-break year for Hood River’s pear farmers
August 18, 2026

• After a dismal 2025 season, Hood River, Oregon’s pear growers face a make-or-break harvest, and an economist warns many will cut acreage or go bankrupt. Their plight reflects Western fruit woes: flat prices, pests, and buyers who set the price.

• Growers lost up to $45 million last year after a psylla outbreak caused mold that ruined stored fruit. Oregon pear prices in 2025 matched 2008’s $473 a ton.

• Gov. Tina Kotek asked USDA for a disaster designation, but relief is uncertain: insurance needs early notice, and this loss surfaced late.

DATA CENTERS, CRYPTOCURRENCY, AND AI

Politico
Data center boom meets Rust Belt politics
August 19, 2026

• Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro enacted rules effectively halting new data centers that local officials oppose, a sharp turn for a Democrat who courted tech firms a year ago and now warns against “greedy developers.” The backlash reflects voter anger over rising electricity prices, a strain felt acutely in rural communities where residents already stretch to cover utility bills.

• Shapiro’s order bars permits unless developers cover their full electricity costs and agree to lose power first in a grid emergency, and it blocks nondisclosure agreements and fast-track approvals. He stopped short of the moratorium backed by New York’s Kathy Hochul and his GOP opponent Stacy Garrity.

• The issue crosses party lines: an NRSC memo obtained by Politico frets that data centers are a drag on Ohio Sen. Jon Husted, whose Democratic challenger Sherrod Brown has centered his campaign on opposing them.

Mississippi Clarion Ledger
Opinion: Battle over data centers is reminiscent of battle over electrification
August 18, 2026

• Today’s contentious data center fights echo the fierce rural opposition that electrification faced in the 1930s, and the battles are inevitable but the centers will keep coming anyway. The disputes over energy, water, and ratepayer costs land hardest on the rural communities where these facilities get sited, writes Mac Gordon, a retired Mississippi newspaperman and McComb native.

• He notes only about 3% of rural U.S. homes had electric power before Franklin Roosevelt established the Rural Electrification Administration in May 1935, and that farmers fought the effort hardest, distrusting the transmission easements and fearing the costs.

• Opposition has grown in Mississippi even after the state offered sales tax exemptions and other incentives, and nationally construction of 75 data centers worth an estimated $130 billion has stalled since January amid local pushback, including a fight over a SpaceX facility’s gas turbines in Southaven.

DISASTERS

The Conversation
Severe flooding raises deadly overdose risk in rural Appalachia, study finds, and the harm lasts for years
August 18, 2026

• Severe floods in rural Appalachia drive up opioid overdose deaths for up to a decade afterward, a new study finds, in a region both flood-prone and central to the overdose crisis. Floods wash out treatment and support residents struggle to reach.

• Over the decade after a flood, overdose deaths in struck counties ran 26% higher than in similar ones, or 2.6 more per 100,000. An estimated 1,368 deaths from 2000-2017 tie to floods.

• Distressed counties and the less educated were hit worst. In West Virginia, 18% of recovery houses are rural.

JOBS

WTVR (CBS 6 Richmond)
Remote work pushing Virginia families out of suburbs, into rural areas, experts say
August 19, 2026

• Remote work is drawing Virginia families past the suburbs into rural counties that had been losing residents for years, experts told the state Housing Commission. Those counties are now the state’s fastest-growing destination, though tight housing supply could cap the benefit.

• Statewide home sales are up about 5% from last year, but inventory stays tight, and officials urged leaders to build more homes.

• Virginia’s economy is growing slower than the nation’s, with federal contracting cuts costing over 4,000 jobs this year.

MANUFACTURING

The Washington Post
American manufacturers are hiring again. Could tariffs be the reason?
August 19, 2026

• Manufacturing hiring has ticked up, but the tariff-driven “golden age” Trump touts is overstated: the sector has lost about 62,000 jobs since he took office. For rural towns anchored by one plant, the gains offer little revival.

• Tariff-protected metal and transportation makers added over 41,000 jobs since January, while food, furniture, and plastics makers shed more than 32,000. Economists credit the AI and data center boom, not tariffs, as the driver.

• Firms reliant on imported steel report 12% to 15% price hikes and warn of layoffs.

NATIVE AMERICANS

Brookings
Underinvestment in Indian Country: How federal and philanthropic funding to Native Americans falls short, and how to fix it
August 11, 2026

• Federal funding for Native Americans has been slashed since 2025 after pandemic-era highs, widening gaps that Brookings says violate U.S. trust and treaty obligations. Tribal nations are largely rural, so the cuts hit some of the most remote areas.

• Just 0.88% of U.S. philanthropy goes to Native-serving causes, under the Native population share. The Indian Health Service gets $7.1 billion against a $73 billion need.

• Every $1 in Tribal colleges returns $1.60 in taxes and savings, the report says, urging Congress and donors to act.

POPULATION

The Daily Yonder
Panhandle geography
August 19, 2026

• America’s panhandles are generally more rural than the rest of their states, and the data bears that out with a few notable exceptions. Some of that reputation, though, is rooted more in classism than geography.

• By the Census definition, 35% of panhandle residents live outside urban areas, versus 19% of Americans. Texas and Oklahoma’s panhandles skew heavily rural, and all of Oklahoma’s is nonmetro.

• West Virginia is the lone exception, its panhandles less rural than its interior because they’re tied to the Pittsburgh and DC metros.

WATER

The Maine Monitor
Maine struggling to get homeowners to test and treat private wells for arsenic
August 17, 2026

• Low-income Mainers on private wells are least likely to test or treat their water for arsenic, and a state aid program has reached far fewer homes than hoped. The problem is heavily rural: over half of Maine homes rely on private wells, which fall outside the regulations governing public water systems, leaving testing and costly treatment to individual owners.

• Just 53% of Mainers on wells had tested for arsenic as of 2023, short of the state’s 65% goal, and the Maine CDC estimates 1 in 10 wells has excess arsenic, which is linked to harm to child development and later cancers.

• MaineHousing’s abatement program was projected to treat over 500 homes but reached just 57, as per-home costs rose to $4,000-$5,000, partly from tariff-driven material increases. A bill for a $1 million contamination fund died in the Legislature this spring.

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Cleveland.com
A simple idea may be easing political hostility in rural America
August 18, 2026

• A new study found rural residents grew less hostile toward the opposing party when neighbors tackled practical local projects together instead of debating politics, offering a possible model for rebuilding progressive trust in rural areas Democrats have largely written off.

• Colby College social scientist Nick Jacobs, co-author of “The Rural Voter,” designed the study. It compared six rural counties in Virginia and Georgia that had Community Works chapters with similar counties that didn’t, drawing on surveys taken before and after the program ran for two years in Virginia and one in Georgia.

• Community Works, run by the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative, organizes residents around nonpolitical service work like cleanups, food distribution and hurricane relief, aiming to build trust through shared needs rather than changing minds. It now has chapters in seven states.

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Oklahoma Voice
Mazzei, Drummond talk campaign spending, endorsements ahead of Oklahoma runoff
August 18, 2026

• Oklahoma’s two Republican gubernatorial candidates are locked in a dead heat days before the August 25 runoff, clashing over campaign spending and Trump’s endorsement, with Attorney General Gentner Drummond banking on rural voters swayed by his ranching roots and military service.

• Mike Mazzei, a Tulsa financial planner, has loaned his campaign a record $11.6 million and calls spending a free speech issue. Drummond, who’s loaned himself $3 million, wants limits, arguing self-funding shuts out qualified candidates who aren’t wealthy.

• Trump endorsed Mazzei, who says his economic plan best aligns with the president’s. Drummond contends the endorsement alone pushed Mazzei through the primary and played down its sway, saying only “the uninformed” see Trump as powerful.

KYUK
Native leaders demand action on rural election problems ahead of voting
August 18, 2026

• Alaska Native organizations say the state is shortchanging rural voters, pointing to understaffed precincts and a Nome early-voting office that opened late, which they warn puts rural residents’ constitutional right to vote at risk during the primary.

• The Alaska Federation of Natives and allied Native groups sent the Division of Elections a letter demanding an accounting of rural worker vacancies, contingency plans and language assistance. AFN’s Kendra Kloster called the unequal treatment a chronic, years-long problem.

• The groups fault Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy for vetoing a bipartisan bill that would have created a rural elections coordinator. The Division of Elections declined to comment on the letter but said most precincts in Nome’s region were open on election day, except two closed by typhoon flooding.

The Cap Times
Opinion: Unite behind Crowley, but learn from Hong
August 18, 2026

• Wisconsin Democrats should unite behind gubernatorial nominee David Crowley but learn from Francesca Hong’s grassroots primary run, especially her blunt opposition to data centers, to win back rural voters and beat Republican Tom Tiffany, writes Spencer Black, a former Wisconsin Assembly Democratic leader.

• Crowley, the Milwaukee County executive, edged Hong by under half a point in a chaotic primary that polls badly missed and Republicans spent heavily to shape. Hong rose from obscurity on volunteer-driven, face-to-face organizing and blunt messaging on data centers and economic inequality.

• Black warns Democrats not to underestimate Tiffany, a close Trump ally, citing his record on abortion, the environment, education and health coverage and his 2020 election denial. He says Democrats should hammer the unpopular AI data-center push, an issue that resonates with rural voters.

The American Prospect
Democrats’ 2028 primary schedule: a cold shoulder to their new activist base
August 18, 2026

• The Democrats’ new 2028 primary calendar, led by six smaller, less-urban states, gives a cold shoulder to the party’s increasingly metropolitan activist left, even as it forces candidates to prove they can win the smaller, more rural places Democrats badly need, writes Harold Meyerson, editor at large of The American Prospect.

• The lineup runs South Carolina, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Michigan, then Virginia. Meyerson notes South Carolina’s heavily Black electorate leads off, a choice he ties partly to the Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act. Big-city politics barely register until Michigan.

• Small early states keep campaigns cheap and give long-shots a chance, he writes, but now sideline urban voters, the party’s largest bloc and home to its new socialist left. A strong early showing by someone like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Meyerson says, would signal real strength.

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

Psychology Today
Barriers to reporting domestic violence in rural areas
August 18, 2026

• Domestic violence often stays hidden in rural and remote communities, where distance, scarce services and small-town familiarity keep victims from reporting, patterns that echo the thin safety net across rural America, writes Wendy L. Patrick, a trial attorney and behavioral analyst summarizing new research.

• The study, based on interviews with police and social workers in rural Sweden, found responders stretched thin across vast areas, with slow response times and few nearby shelters. Victims often seek help less, the researchers note, letting abuse grow more severe and prolonged.

• Cultural barriers run deep: confidentiality fears when providers know both victim and abuser, distrust of agencies, and patriarchal norms that normalize abuse. But the researchers found a bright spot, as close-knit communities and local role models can spur bystanders to step in and protect victims.

EDUCATION

The Washington Post
Some Pa. schools are cutting off charter students’ access to yellow buses after court ruling
August 17, 2026

• A January Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling lets districts replace yellow buses with public transit passes to cut charter students’ transportation costs. In rural and suburban areas with sparse transit, that risks leaving young children facing long, unsafe commutes or no workable ride.

• Districts near Pittsburgh and in the Lehigh Valley have already begun issuing transit cards instead of bus rides. The state reimburses only about half of busing costs but fully covers transit passes, and districts cite driver shortages and rising expenses.

• Charter advocates call the shift discriminatory and are weighing new lawsuits. Republican lawmakers, including state Sen. Dawn Keefer of York County, want to require the same transportation mode for younger charter students, but the bills remain stuck in committee.

ACCT Perspectives
What really works to support rural community colleges?
August 18, 2026

• Hard evidence on what boosts retention and completion at rural community colleges is scarce because most research happens in cities and suburbs, a gap a new federally funded center aims to close, writes Alyssa Ratledge of the research firm MDRC.

• The National Rural Higher Education Research Center, backed by the U.S. Education Department’s Institute of Education Sciences, spans 10 states and 25 colleges across the South and Mountain West, studying dual enrollment, career and technical training, college choice and rural nursing programs.

• Ratledge says the Center will preview findings at an October ACCT conference and weigh federal shifts like Workforce Pell, part of an effort to treat rural colleges as a research priority rather than an afterthought.

The Hechinger Report
Opinion: Why investing in rural education can bolster local economies and help students build a future close to home
August 17, 2026

• Rural community colleges are among the strongest engines of economic mobility in struggling small towns, helping residents build careers close to home, but they’ve long been neglected and need more support, write Meredith Archer Hatch of Achieving the Dream and MDRC’s Alyssa Ratledge.

• Only 29 percent of rural young adults enroll in college, versus 42 percent in suburbs and 48 percent in cities. Roughly 1,000 rural colleges face declining enrollment, deep student poverty and spotty broadband, straining what they can offer.

• The authors welcome a new National Rural Higher Education Research Center, a five-year effort to pin down what helps rural students finish credentials and land local jobs, as rural employers struggle to fill roles and communities keep losing graduates to cities.

Wisconsin Public Radio
2 rural school districts could consolidate as leaders feel the rest of the state is watching
August 18, 2026

• The rural Loyal and Greenwood districts in central Wisconsin will ask voters in November whether to consolidate, a survival move their leaders and peers across the state view as a test case for rural schools squeezed by falling enrollment and chronic underfunding.

• The towns sit 6 miles apart, carry no debt and share a bus service. November’s vote would advise the board, potentially leading to a binding referendum in 2027. Leaders pitch it as expanding student options while saving taxpayer money.

• More than 600 Wisconsin public schools have closed over two decades, nearly 40 percent in small rural counties, and one Dodge County district recently voted to dissolve. Enrollment keeps sliding as families shrink and students shift to homeschooling and virtual academies.

HEALTH CARE, PHARMACIES AND RURAL HEALTH

Governing
Rural Health Transformation Program rolls out in Texas, to excitement and confusion
August 17, 2026

• Texas is rolling out its share of the federal Rural Health Transformation Program, $1.4 billion over five years and the largest first-year award of any state, to shore up care in a state where 80% of counties are rural. But the money is meant to transform care, not replace the deeper Medicaid cuts it accompanies.

• Providers hope to use grants for staff recruitment, telehealth and equipment like MRI machines. But tight federal timelines, some hospitals had 30 days to apply, and rules barring the funds from covering debt or basic operating costs have complicated the rollout.

• Some grants reimburse organizations only after they spend their own money first, straining cash flow, and recipients must quickly report results to shape future awards. The reporting notes the fund falls short of the Medicaid losses rural providers face under Trump’s tax law.

Tulsa World
Clinic closures expose the fragile state of rural healthcare in Oklahoma
August 18, 2026

• The June 30 closure of a Pawhuska primary care clinic left hundreds scrambling for a doctor, a warning for the nearly half of Oklahomans who rely on rural hospitals and clinics now strained by physician shortages, thin margins and looming federal cuts.

• Oklahoma ranks 43rd nationally for primary care access, and the town’s one remaining clinic absorbed 400 new patients this summer. Woody Jenkins of the Oklahoma State Medical Association warns each closure strains the next provider, the same domino effect seen when rural hospitals fail.

• Federal Medicaid and Medicare cuts could cost Oklahoma hospitals $6.7 billion over the next decade, nearly $2 billion of it hitting rural providers, an Oklahoma Hospital Association study found. Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt pocket-vetoed a rural physician tax credit last year.

Live 5 News
Aid on wheels: Mobile office to assist rural families facing transit barriers
August 18, 2026

• East Cooper Community Outreach is rolling out a mobile office to bring services directly to rural residents in Awendaw and McClellanville, many of them older adults who struggle to reach the nonprofit’s Mount Pleasant campus for lack of transportation.

• Residents can enroll, complete assessments and access ECCO’s programs, from a food pantry and clothing boutique to medical, dental and behavioral health care and rent or utility help. It qualifies clients at 250 percent of the federal poverty line.

• The office starts in Awendaw next month, three days a month, with McClellanville to follow. Leaders say they created it after residents flagged transportation as a top barrier. ECCO has served the area 37 years, since Hurricane Hugo.

HOUSING

Arizona’s Family
Rental scams on the rise in rural Arizona, Yuma police warn
August 18, 2026

• Rental scams once concentrated in big cities are spreading into rural Arizona, Yuma police and realtors warn, with con artists posting fake, cheaply priced listings that prey especially on older adults and people moving in from out of state.

• Scammers copy real listings from sites like Zillow and repost them cheaply on Facebook and TikTok. One Yuma homeowner reported at least 10 people showing up with cash and checks to move in, some having already submitted background and credit checks.

• The surge began in spring. Officials flag warning signs like suspiciously low rents and landlords pushing for direct deposits or app payments before any in-person meeting, and urge victims who shared personal data to alert the Social Security Administration and credit bureaus.

JOURNALISM AND BROADCASTING

The Daily Yonder
The hollowing of the Appalachian press, from Pittsburgh to Birmingham
August 18, 2026

• Local newspapers are disappearing across Appalachia and rural America, and the resulting news deserts fall overwhelmingly on rural counties, stripping communities of anyone to cover local government, track federal dollars or hold power to account.

• The U.S. has lost nearly 40 percent of its papers since 2005, and reporters per capita are down about 80 percent since 2002. In rural Central Appalachia, a third of 249 counties have no full-time journalist, and depopulation and press decline keep feeding each other.

• Research ties vanished papers to higher municipal borrowing costs, roughly $1.1 billion a year in news deserts, and to more public corruption. Nonprofits like Mountain State Spotlight and the Kentucky Lantern fill some gaps but remain grant-dependent and capital-focused, while advocates push local buybacks and state tax credits.

WVXU
Oxford Free Press series to highlight how rural schools provide more than education
August 17, 2026

• The Oxford Free Press, a newspaper in Butler County in southwest Ohio, is launching a grant-funded series on how rural schools double as community hubs, offering clinics, food and services where stores and health care are far away. The project underscores how thin the safety net runs in isolated rural areas.

• Funded by a Rural News Network grant, the first of four stories focuses on rural schools in the Talawanda district outside Oxford and publishes later this month. Three more pieces will follow over nine months, alongside planned community listening tours.

• The effort also targets rural news deserts. Citing the Local News Index, the paper notes the U.S. has fewer than eight local reporters per 100,000 people, down from 40 around 2002, a roughly 75% drop that has hit rural communities hardest.

TARIFFS

Times Observer
Redding says ‘we’ve seen direct implications with trade’ over tariffs
August 18, 2026

• Pennsylvania’s agriculture secretary, Russell Redding, says Trump’s tariffs are already doing serious, direct damage to farm trade and could cost the state’s growers long-term market share, a warning for a rural farm economy that leans heavily on exports.

• Pennsylvania exports about $4 billion in farm goods, led by the nation’s largest hardwoods industry. Redding wouldn’t estimate the tariff hit but called it serious, and the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau warned the levies raise input costs for farms already struggling to stay afloat.

• Redding warned Brazil is rapidly expanding corn and soybean output and China has shifted purchases there, eroding a market the U.S. dominated for 50 years. Polls show 71 percent of Pennsylvanians say tariffs hurt them, and rural approval of Trump has slipped.

WILDFIRES

South Dakota Searchlight
South Dakota governor expands rural fire response amid drought
August 18, 2026

• Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden signed an executive order letting state wildland firefighting crews operate beyond the Black Hills, backing up the volunteer departments that cover most of rural South Dakota as drought drives a dangerous fire season.

• Most of the state faces abnormally dry to severe drought, with parts of the southwest in extreme drought. Wildfires have already scorched thousands of acres this year, including the roughly 9,000-acre Qury Fire in Custer County.

• Rhoden, a rancher and volunteer firefighter, also extended an order easing hours for hay haulers so ranchers can feed livestock on parched pastures, and in May activated a Drought Task Force to weigh impacts on agriculture, fire and water.

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The Wall Street Journal
Rural economic pain tests the GOP’s grip on a Trump stronghold
August 16, 2026

• Iowa, which Trump won by 13 points in 2024, has become an unexpected midterm battleground as rural economic pain, from tariffs, stagnant grain prices and high input costs, erodes GOP support. The strain suggests farm-country discontent could loosen Republicans’ hold on reliably red rural states.

• Republican gubernatorial nominee Zach Lahn trails Democratic state Auditor Rob Sand in every public poll, and the open Senate race between GOP Rep. Ashley Hinson and Democrat Josh Turek is tight. Some GOP candidates avoided mentioning Trump at the state fair.

• Democrats are pouring millions in, aided by open governor and Senate seats after Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds and Sen. Joni Ernst bowed out. Bipartisan anger over rural hospital closures and rising cancer rates, which Democrats tie to GOP health funding cuts, is adding fuel.

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ABC News
Democrats’ 2028 presidential calendar gives Black and Latino voters and union members an early say
August 15, 2026

• The Democratic National Committee approved a 2028 primary calendar that leads with South Carolina, Nevada and other diverse states, pushing candidates to win over Black, Latino and union voters early. Dropping Iowa from the top also sidelines a heavily rural, mostly white electorate, a shift Iowa Democrats warn cedes ground to Republicans.

• South Carolina votes first on January 22, 2028, followed by Nevada, then New Hampshire, New Mexico, Michigan and Virginia through February. Party leaders say the lineup mirrors the country better than Iowa and New Hampshire and yields battle-tested nominees.

• Strategists note the calendar still demands rural outreach, from Southern Black voters to Western ranching and mining regions. Iowa’s Democratic chair says bypassing the state silences important voices, while Republicans plan to keep Iowa atop their own calendar.

KRWG
Commentary: New Mexico made voting easier. Doña Ana County just proved it works.
August 17, 2026

• New Mexico’s recent moves to expand voting access, permanent absentee status and open primaries, drove a striking turnout jump in Doña Ana County’s 2026 primary, with rural areas among the biggest gainers, writes Daniel Gomez, a political science professor at New Mexico State University.

• Primary turnout in the county neared 25,000 votes, up from about 15,000 in 2024, a rare case of a midterm primary outpacing a presidential year. Unaffiliated voter participation and absentee use rose countywide, climbing most in rural areas far from polling places.

• Gomez credits local outreach by the League of Women Voters of Southern New Mexico for turning the reforms into votes, especially among rural residents. He contrasts New Mexico’s expansion with other states tightening voting rules and urges funding to sustain the gains.

Native News Online
Alaska Native groups raise concerns over rural election worker shortages ahead of primary
August 17, 2026

• The Alaska Federation of Natives, Cook Inlet Tribal Council and First Alaskans Institute warn that election-worker vacancies and delayed pay in rural communities threaten ballot access just before the August 18 primary. Understaffed precincts risk effectively disenfranchising Native voters.

• The groups cite the Nome early voting site, which failed to open at its advertised Saturday hours on August 15, and reports that some workers waited months for per diem pay after completing required training.

• They’re demanding public, precinct-level vacancy counts, contingency plans, prompt payment and guaranteed language assistance before Tuesday. Leaders framed reliable rural voting access as a matter of self-determination shaping health, housing and education funding.

AGRICULTURE AND THE USDA

DTN Progressive Farmer
USDA staffing shortages strain FSA and NRCS services across rural America
August 13, 2026

• Federal workforce cuts have left USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) and Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) understaffed, forcing rural offices to cut hours or share staff across counties. That likely erodes farmers’ access to conservation aid and crop programs they rely on.

• A 2025 reduction in force cut roughly 795 FSA and 2,657 NRCS positions, and USDA’s 2027 budget seeks $50 million less for NRCS and $19 million less for FSA. Some offices now open by appointment only or a few days a week.

• More than 1,300 counties saw net staffing reductions in 2025, with 144 losing all NRCS staff, a Prospect Partners analysis found. Farmers report conservation payments now delayed for months, forcing some to pay loan interest while they wait.

COURTS

Alabama Reflector
Rural, impoverished areas of Alabama lack access to attorneys
August 17, 2026

• Nearly two-thirds of Alabama’s counties are “legal deserts” with fewer than one attorney per 1,000 people, according to the nonprofit Harvesters of Hope. The shortage hits rural, low-income and majority-Black areas hardest, often leaving residents to face evictions and other proceedings without a lawyer.

• About 78% of the state’s attorneys are based in just seven counties, and existing rural lawyers are aging. In Coosa County, one of the worst-off, three attorneys serve 10,000 people, but only one will be under 70 by 2030.

• The pattern is national: roughly 20% of Americans live in rural areas, but only 2% of attorneys practice there, the Legal Services Corporation found. Proposed fixes include loan forgiveness, letting non-lawyers handle some tasks, and video-conferencing kiosks.

DATA CENTERS, CRYPTOCURRENCY, AND AI

The Houston Chronicle
Greg Abbott is cracking down on data centers. Some rural Republicans say they still don’t trust him.
August 11, 2026

• Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s summer crackdown on data centers, including a permitting pause and a push to end their tax breaks, hasn’t won over rural Republicans who distrust him heading into Texas’ midterms. The backlash threatens the rural firewall the GOP relies on.

• Abbott ordered an audit of pending projects, told regulators to shield ratepayers from new infrastructure costs, and urged lawmakers to repeal data centers’ sales tax breaks. Critics note his top donors are heavily invested in the boom.

• Anti-data center groups have sprouted statewide, some urging voters to abandon Republicans, and rural GOP county chairs sought a special session. State Rep. Gina Hinojosa, D-Austin, running against Abbott, backs a moratorium; Trump called the restrictions a mistake.

The Wall Street Journal
Opinion: If you’d like to build a data center, my farm is available
August 14, 2026

• Rural communities’ fierce opposition to data centers is misguided, and blocking them only sends the growth, jobs and tax revenue elsewhere while depopulation remains the real threat to northwest Missouri, argues Blake Hurst, a Missouri farmer, greenhouse grower and former Missouri Farm Bureau president.

• Hurst downplays the common objections: he says a proposed Nodaway County center’s closed-loop cooling would use water on par with a midsize factory, and that new on-site generation and a state consumer-protection law limit any hit to residents’ electric rates.

• He argues losing 500 acres of farmland is trivial against Nodaway’s roughly 380,000 acres and its 14% population loss since 2010, and projects the project would bring 130 families and more than $1 billion in tax revenue over 35 years.

The Wall Street Journal
The ‘country hicks’ who refused $26 million from an AI data center
August 14, 2026

• The rural backlash against AI data centers has produced unlikely folk heroes: landowners who refuse multimillion-dollar offers. Delsia Bare and her mother, Ida Huddleston, rejected $26 million for their 200-year-old Kentucky farmland once they learned it would host a hyperscale center, a stand highlighting how secretive projects are fracturing small towns.

• The women farm near Maysville (population 8,700), about 60 miles southeast of Cincinnati, where the developer’s identity was hidden behind nondisclosure agreements. Records tied to “Project Crisham” point to Meta, which says it hasn’t decided whether to build there.

• Backers promise 400 jobs, $110 million in land deals and a doubled town budget in a county where a quarter of residents live in poverty. Opponents sued, forced by state law to name their own neighbors as defendants, and Bare concedes her refusal may leave her living beside a data center with no payout.

FOOD AND HUNGER

Oregon Public Broadcasting
‘The Evergreen’: ‘I’m literally just trying to feed my kids’ — hunger in rural Oregon
August 17, 2026

• Federal SNAP cuts and high grocery prices are deepening hunger in rural Oregon and overwhelming food banks. The squeeze falls hard on rural families with fewer nearby assistance options.

• Two days before the month’s SNAP benefits reset, residents lined up for free food at the Dallas food bank, where the manager said freezers were running empty as demand climbs. Some parents described skipping meals so their children can eat.

• The scene reflects a broader statewide hunger crisis as recent federal SNAP reductions ripple through Oregon. Food assistance programs are stretched thin meeting rising demand, a strain felt acutely in countryside communities far from larger services.

HEALTH CARE, PHARMACIES AND RURAL HEALTH

NPR
States hope federal funds will help offset Medicaid cuts for rural hospitals
August 17, 2026

• A new $50 billion federal Rural Health Transformation Program is helping states like Iowa fund cancer scanners, telehealth and mobile care, but hospital leaders warn it won’t cover the far larger Medicaid cuts coming under Trump’s tax law. Rural facilities could end up worse off as the temporary grants expire.

• Even if Iowa draws its full $1 billion over five years, the state’s rural facilities face nearly $4 billion in Medicaid losses over a decade, KFF estimates. Iowa received $209 million in the fund’s first year.

• The grant money is one-time, while the Medicaid cuts are ongoing, the Iowa Hospital Association noted. States are racing to spend fast before unused funds are clawed back, and hospital leaders say much of it won’t reach hospitals directly.

Tennessee Lookout
Report: 12 Tennessee rural hospitals at ‘immediate risk’ for closure
August 17, 2026

• Twelve rural Tennessee hospitals are at “immediate risk” of closing, with 19 more at risk, according to the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform. Further closures would widen care gaps in a state that already has one of the nation’s highest hospital closure rates.

• Tennessee ranks sixth nationally for rural hospitals at imminent risk and has lost 10 since 2015, second only to Texas. Two more have already dropped inpatient services, and even hospitals that stay open may cut key services, the report said.

• The biggest driver is underpayment by private insurers, which pay less than the cost of care, the report found. Tennessee’s exposure is compounded by looming Medicaid cuts and its refusal to expand Medicaid to more low-income patients.

MINING AND DRILLING

The New York Times
Mining claims staked on land that Trump cut from monuments
August 14, 2026

• Weeks after Trump shrank Utah’s Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante monuments by more than 90%, companies have already staked at least nine mining claims on the newly opened land, records show. The rush signals looming extraction pressure on rural, archaeologically rich desert that tribes and conservationists want protected.

• Trump’s July 13 proclamations opened nearly 3 million acres to mining and drilling, citing critical minerals like uranium and copper. He’d also claimed recreation was impossible in Bears Ears, despite briefings showing hiking and off-roading were allowed there.

• Kimmerle Mining filed seven claims in former Bears Ears land a day after the proclamation, and another filer staked two in Grand Staircase, though regulators may reject them before claims are allowed September 11. Tribes and environmentalists plan a legal challenge; the Utah Mining Association says mining and land protection can coexist.

PHILANTHROPY

North Country Public Radio
Philanthropy in the Adirondacks aims to strengthen and sustain the rural region
August 17, 2026

• Community foundations are increasingly filling funding gaps that government dollars don’t reach in the rural Adirondacks, backing childcare, housing, schools and food programs. The reliance on private philanthropy underscores how thinly public resources stretch across isolated, high-poverty rural regions.

• The Adirondack Community Foundation holds about $135 million in assets and awarded roughly $10 million in grants last fiscal year, to recipients from a youth hockey league to rescue squads and a food co-op. It expects to pass $100 million in cumulative giving this year.

• Nationally, groups like the Trust for Civic Life are targeting rural areas underserved by philanthropy yet carrying some of the highest concentrations of persistent poverty. The trust has given about $19 million recently, including $700,000 to the Adirondack foundation.

WILDFIRES

The New York Times
Federal job cuts are making wildfires harder to fight
August 14, 2026

• Trump administration job cuts at the U.S. Forest Service are slowing the nation’s wildfire response during an intense, climate-driven season, former officials and the workers’ union say. With fewer experienced crews and logistics staff, rural and wildland communities face longer waits as fast-moving fires threaten homes.

• The administration has cut more than 5,800 Forest Service jobs, pushing out many who coordinate firefighting logistics. Elite teams able to handle the biggest fires have dropped to 38 from 44 two years ago, and Washington called in the National Guard and 250 active-duty soldiers near Spokane.

• In Utah, the Widemouth 2 fire grew past 100,000 acres as crews waited days for help, and two contract firefighters died in a helicopter crash. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz disputes any lost capacity, saying the agency exceeded hiring goals with 11,800 firefighters this summer.

NPR
As wildfires get worse, some states are struggling to pass fire protection rules
August 17, 2026

• As climate-driven wildfires grow more destructive, several Western states are struggling to enact rules requiring fire-resistant construction and vegetation clearing, often repealing them after public backlash. That patchwork leaves many fire-prone rural and wildland-edge communities without basic protections.

• Washington spent years developing home-hardening codes and defensible-space rules, but legislators rolled back the vegetation requirements in 2024 after pushback, including from conservation groups worried about tree canopy. New hazard maps are due in December.

• Wildfire rules fall to states and localities, unlike federally mapped flood risk, producing wide variation. Oregon repealed its rules last year amid insurance fears and misinformation, while California, Colorado and Utah have adopted codes, some after catastrophic fires.

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Fox News
Wisconsin Democratic candidate says her party ‘left behind’ rural America
August 14, 2026

• Wisconsin congressional candidate Rebecca Cooke, a Democrat running in the 3rd District, argued her party has abandoned rural and working-class voters and needs to rebuild trust with them, a pitch aimed squarely at the rural communities that have drifted from Democrats.

• On the “Politics War Room” podcast, Cooke described herself as a Blue Dog Democrat, fiscally conservative and socially liberal, and said Democrats need more working-class candidates. She grew up on a dairy farm and has waitressed since age 16.

• She said she wants to work across the aisle and would shake the hand of someone in a MAGA hat. Her campaign noted she backs a secure border, fully funding police and opposes universal student loan forgiveness.

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Politico
Opinion: Democrats got lucky in Wisconsin. They should learn from it.
August 12, 2026

• The near-miss is cast as a warning about how a fractured party can drift toward a nominee its own leaders doubt can win a general election, writes Jonathan Martin, Politico’s senior political columnist and politics bureau chief. Wisconsin Democrats narrowly avoided nominating a flawed left-wing candidate for governor, with rural vote margins proving decisive in the outcome.

• State Rep. Francesca Hong, whose past comments on police and prisons made her vulnerable, lost by under 4,000 votes to Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, who had dropped out and reentered.

• Crowley prevailed on a late endorsement from Gov. Tony Evers and support from pragmatic white voters and older Black voters. A crowded field, rivalries and silent party leaders nearly handed Hong the nomination.

BROADBAND AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS

Route Fifty
6,000 BEAD projects need 86K+ permits, report finds
August 14, 2026

• A new report finds permitting is a major obstacle to the $42 billion BEAD broadband rollout, with 6,933 planned terrestrial projects requiring more than 86,000 permits, a bottleneck that could delay service to the rural areas the program is meant to connect.

• More than half the projects need at least 10 permits and 1 in 7 need over 20 across federal, state, local and private levels; 95% require federal environmental review, and a typical build deals with eight separate entities.

• Federal rule changes cut program funding by an estimated $21 billion, leaving projects on tighter budgets and four-year timelines. Researchers warn under-resourced local offices could stall builds and suggest leftover BEAD money help staff permitting offices.

Broadband Breakfast
States can’t unilaterally alter BEAD contracts, NTIA says
August 14, 2026

• States can’t unilaterally cut the satellite awards they made under the BEAD broadband program, NTIA said, so any reduction now hinges on whether SpaceX or Amazon agree to amend contracts, a wrinkle that could slow efforts to shift money toward rural terrestrial service.

• NTIA had asked states last month to trim satellite awards, citing data showing existing terrestrial builds or misclassified buildings. But some already signed deals, and its updated FAQ says providers have a “reasonable reliance interest” in agreed terms.

• Five states signed with SpaceX, including Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas and Nebraska, with a combined 105,111 satellite locations; Virginia has signed too. New York Law School found the policy could cut BEAD-funded satellite locations nationally by 35 to 42 percent.

CHILD CARE

Education Week
What this rural Head Start program stands to lose with federal changes
August 14, 2026

• A Trump administration proposal to strip away many of Head Start’s federal quality standards threatens rural programs like Bradford-Tioga in north-central Pennsylvania, where the program is often the only early education option for low-income families.

• Announced August 6 by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the proposed rule would drop requirements on teacher-student ratios, staff qualifications, wages, health screenings and disability enrollment, and cap administrative costs at 5%, down from 15%. Officials say local leaders would decide.

• Administrators are skeptical, warning the changes could gut a highly qualified workforce, hurt children with disabilities and force cuts to services like transportation, which reaches 15 of the program’s 19 classrooms over remote back roads.

DATA CENTERS, CRYPTOCURRENCY, AND AI

Axios
Data center backlash echoes fossil-fuel politics
August 14, 2026

• Opposition to data centers is starting to mirror the last decade’s fights over pipelines and fracking, a mostly bipartisan backlash that has taken hold fast in rural communities wary of the strain on their water, power and land.

• Willie Nelson, who once protested the Keystone XL pipeline, now opposes data centers, and Nebraska anti-pipeline organizer Jane Kleeb is active in the decentralized fight. Analysts say tech firms have lost the public’s trust by touting economic benefits rather than listening to residents.

• The Data Center Coalition says it’s working to better show its commitment to community dialogue and fair water and power use. Analysts expect data centers to be a top midterm issue, with states weighing power and water rules and repeal of tax breaks.

Fierce Network
Some hyperscalers block fiber off-ramps, keeping rural America disconnected
August 14, 2026

• As hyperscalers lay fiber across the country to link their data centers, some are contractually barring off-ramps to the towns those lines pass through, keeping rural America disconnected even as high-capacity cable runs right by, experts said at a Denver conference.

• Some contracts prohibit fiber builders from tapping the conduit for spurs to communities or even laying spare “shadow conduit” that could later serve them, a lawyer said. Firms prize speed, cost and simplicity, wanting clean routes with no breakouts.

• Not all follow suit: Zayo said it has no such restrictions and seeks to connect underserved areas along its routes, including an 800-mile open-access build in Nevada. Verizon, which struck a $1 billion dark-fiber deal with Google, declined to discuss contract terms.

Politico’s Energy & Environment News
West Virginia seeks to blunt data center opposition with new plan
August 14, 2026

• West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey, R, unveiled a seven-point framework to court data centers even as public opinion sours on them, betting that routing tax revenue back to residents can win over rural communities wary of the sprawling facilities.

• Under a 2025 law that strips local control in favor of statewide standards, half the sector’s tax revenue would go toward cutting and possibly eliminating state income taxes; the rest splits among host counties, other counties and local infrastructure.

• The plan promises ratepayer and water protections and a local “voice” through a new advisory council. Yet no hyperscale centers exist in the state, and a proposed project near rural Tucker County has already spurred an opposition group.

Route Fifty
How a research paper helped spark Utah’s data center water law
August 11, 2026

• Utah became the first state to require data centers to disclose their water use, a transparency push that could matter for rural communities and a drought-stressed West where the facilities compete with farms and households for scarce water.

• The law, signed by Gov. Spencer Cox, R, in March, makes new data centers over 10,000 square feet using at least 75 acre-feet a year report water sources, uses and conservation to state regulators; aggregated data goes public. Nebraska has since copied it.

• The idea began with three Aspen Institute fellows researching Utah data centers as the Great Salt Lake hit record lows. A recent Gallup survey found 71% of Americans oppose data centers nearby, partly over water and power worries.

Inside Climate News
The data center industry’s PR blitz is backfiring
August 14, 2026

• An industry front group is spending heavily to sell rural North Carolina communities on data centers, but public opposition keeps rising, a sign that residents in less-populated areas targeted for these projects increasingly distrust promises they can’t independently verify.

• North Carolina Connects, running ads across TV, radio and social media, doesn’t disclose that it’s backed by the Data Center Coalition, a trade group whose members include Amazon, Microsoft and Google. Nationwide opposition hit 61 percent in a mid-summer Annenberg poll, up 12 points since late winter.

• Developers are now shifting toward lower-population counties in the Upper Midwest, Colorado, Wyoming and Alaska, where permitting is simpler and resistance is thinner. In rural Vance County, commissioners rezoned land for a possible data center near five neighborhoods, a school and a church despite objections, and residents say they’ve gotten nothing but secrecy.

The Texas Tribune
Texas will audit up to 300 projects, mostly data centers, after Gov. Greg Abbott’s order
August 14, 2026

• Texas will audit 250 to 300 grid-connection projects, most of them data centers, before any can connect to the state power grid, a response to public backlash that could give rural communities more leverage over facilities landing nearby.

• Ordered by Gov. Greg Abbott, R-Texas, the months-long review covers 200 gigawatts of future demand, more than twice ERCOT’s record peak, and must verify tax breaks, power and water use, community impacts and ownership.

• Also contested are proposed 765-kilovolt transmission lines to the Permian Basin, which landowners oppose but officials say are needed to avoid rolling blackouts.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

The Seattle Times
Opinion: How Port Angeles is pointing the way for rural America
August 12, 2026

• Washington’s North Olympic Peninsula timber towns, once written off for decline, are rebuilding their economies for an AI-driven job market, a turnaround offered as a model for rural America if it draws public and private investment, write Derek Kilmer, a former Democratic U.S. representative now at the Rockefeller Foundation, and Chris Sununu, the Republican former New Hampshire governor.

• The Port of Port Angeles turned a shuttered mill into a marine trades park and composites campus, Peninsula College trains workers, and the Makah Tribe’s sawmill turns hemlock into cross-laminated timber for tribal homes.

• Barriers remain: public land limits housing, industry and the tax base, and federal programs often shut out small towns, which the authors say want trust, capital and childcare.

ENERGY AND UTILITIES

The Hill
Trump cancels Biden-era bid to speed power line construction
August 13, 2026

• The Trump administration canceled a Biden-era program to speed power line construction across parts of Pennsylvania, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Nebraska and the Dakotas, a reversal that could stall grid upgrades many rural areas and five Native American reservations were counting on.

• The Energy Department won’t designate three regions as National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors, a status that would have let federal regulators permit lines when states stall or refuse. The agency called it part of the prior administration’s “Green New Scam agenda.”

• Energy Secretary Chris Wright said transmission policy shouldn’t serve a “climate-alarmist agenda.” Advocates countered that the lines lower costs and cancellation jeopardizes billions in investment and thousands of jobs.

HEALTH CARE, PHARMACIES AND RURAL HEALTH

Colorado Politics
Healthcare freefall: Once built on federal investment, rural hospitals today fight to survive
August 14, 2026

• Part of Colorado Politics’ “Healthcare Freefall” series, this piece traces how rural hospitals built by mid-century federal investment now fight to survive, with 75% of Colorado’s operating on unsustainable margins and some fearing closure.

• The 1946 Hill-Burton Act, passed with near-unanimous bipartisan support, helped build nearly 7,000 rural hospitals before Congress ended its funding in 1997; many hospitals remain bound to provide low-cost care under those old agreements.

• H.R. 1 sends Colorado’s rural hospitals about $200 million a year for a decade, but leaders say it won’t offset Medicaid cuts. One CEO said keeping his Cortez hospital open costs $213,000 a day regardless of patient volume.

Bangor Daily News
Maine to explore the role of AI in rural healthcare
August 14, 2026

• Maine plans to spend $200 million over five years exploring AI in rural healthcare as its aging population and workforce-strapped hospitals search for new ways to deliver care, though the proposal offers few specifics on which technologies it will pursue.

• The money comes from the $50 billion federal Rural Health Transformation Program, a Republican addition to Trump’s tax law meant to blunt its more than $900 billion in Medicaid cuts. Maine gets $190 million in year one and would build a Rural AI Hub with Duke University.

• Supporters say AI could ease administrative loads and flag high-risk patients at small practices. But providers warn of privacy risks, patient consent and the infrastructure AI demands, including broadband and data centers.

MINING AND DRILLING

West Virginia Watch
UMWA calls for ‘immediate’ enforcement of silica rule as black lung hits new high in Appalachia
August 14, 2026

• The United Mine Workers of America demanded immediate enforcement of a stalled federal silica dust rule after research shows black lung has hit a near-50-year high, hitting central Appalachia’s coalfields hardest.

• A third of miners there with 25-plus years underground now have it, a fourfold jump since 1999, and even 15-year miners are getting sick at rates unseen in decades.

• The 2024 rule capping silica exposure has been delayed repeatedly under Trump and stayed by an industry suit; the union wants it enforced and tougher oversight.

PARKS, FORESTS, AND PUBLIC LANDS

The Texas Tribune
Lawsuit seeks to stop Big Bend border wall construction
August 14, 2026

• A Lipan Apache nonprofit and a river-trip outfitter sued to block border wall construction in Big Bend National Park, a fight over a remote rural region whose economy leans on recreation and tourism.

• The suit, filed in San Antonio federal court, says work waived through a June order from Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin threatens irreplaceable archaeological and sacred sites.

• Pushback is bipartisan: 46 state House members urged Gov. Abbott to halt the work, and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, asked Mullin to meet residents first.

POPULATION

Axios
America has more majority-minority rural counties than urban and suburban ones
August 14, 2026

• Hundreds of rural U.S. counties are already majority-minority, an Axios analysis finds, a shift driven by immigration and mobility that is straining under-resourced local services as federal language-access protections narrow under the Trump administration.

• The review counts 221 rural majority-minority counties across 27 states, home to about 4.5 million people; nearly 93% have fewer than 50,000 residents. Texas leads with 57, all Hispanic, followed by Mississippi, New Mexico, Georgia and Alaska.

• Some counties tip because of Hispanic population growth in farm and meatpacking towns, others because white residents are leaving or dying off. Many lack interpreters, bilingual ballots or poll workers, and rigid Voting Rights Act thresholds leave dispersed communities unserved.

WATER

Yale Climate Connections
What you need to know about the water crisis in Puerto Rico
August 13, 2026

• An explainer breaks down Puerto Rico’s worst water crisis since 2015, as drought and rationing leave more than 500,000 people without water for 48 hours or more at a time, hitting a largely rural island whose farms and small communities can least absorb it.

• Rain has fallen, but 72% of the land is in drought; decades of failing infrastructure, sediment-choked reservoirs, extreme heat and mismanagement drive the shortage, with about 65% of drinking water lost to leaks or unbilled.

• Gov. Jenniffer González declared an emergency in late July and faces criticism over communication; FEMA is sending water trailers. The crisis could sharpen the stakes as Republicans court Puerto Rican voters ahead of November.

WILDFIRES

The Washington Post
Top Trump official asked for more aircraft to fight a small fire near his Idaho ranch
August 14, 2026

• A top Trump appointee overseeing the U.S. Forest Service pressed staff to send more aircraft to a small fire near his Idaho mega-ranch, an intervention six officials called far heavier than usual and one that risked pulling scarce resources from rural areas facing bigger fires.

• Agriculture Undersecretary Michael Boren, a tech billionaire who owns thousands of acres near the Sawtooth National Forest, called regional and Washington offices repeatedly, including at night, asking why more aircraft weren’t fighting the seven-acre Cabin Creek Fire.

• About nine aircraft, some diverted from other Idaho fires, responded at a cost near $115,000. A comparable 21-acre fire in June drew three aircraft for 13 minutes. The department denied Boren ordered resources or pressured staff.

Inside Climate News
Montana’s Sand Creek Fire burns through into beloved ski area
August 13, 2026

• A reminder of how worsening wildfires threaten rural economies built on tourism and recreation: the 27,736-acre Sand Creek Fire burned into Montana’s Maverick Mountain Ski Area, a small independent resort vital to the Grasshopper Valley economy.

• Crews saved the ski lodge and nearby Elkhorn Hot Springs, but the fire damaged a chairlift, burned parts of the ski runs and destroyed a structure atop the mountain.

• It follows a record-warm winter and thin snowpack; nationwide, acreage burned is 155 percent of the 10-year average.

Inside Climate News
California officials scrambled as spring wildfire neared former nuclear reactor site, emails show
August 12, 2026

• Internal emails show California officials struggled to stand up real-time radiation monitoring as May’s Sandy Fire burned within a quarter mile of a contaminated former nuclear site, underscoring how worsening wildfires leave communities near toxic legacy sites exposed when regulators can’t confirm what’s in the air.

• The 2,183-acre fire near Simi Valley forced more than 33,000 evacuations. State toxics regulators made urgent calls for monitoring on May 19, but federal radiological testing didn’t begin until two or three days after the blaze started, and Boeing’s own monitoring results won’t be released until the fourth quarter.

• The site suffered a 1959 partial meltdown that released more radiation than Three Mile Island and has never been fully cleaned up. After 2018’s Woolsey Fire, an independent study found traceable radioactive particles in nearby samples, fueling residents’ distrust of official assurances.

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The Rural Margin follows U.S. House races where rural voters make up enough of the electorate to decide the winner. So we’ll keep track of how the incumbents for those seats are voting, what they say back home, and who’s running against them.

THE BIG PICTURE

There’s been punditry aplenty about recent election results, but ​Paul Waldman at MS Now, makes a key point about the 2026 primary season: Democratic voter turnout is way up. That was evident again this week in Minnesota and Wisconsin, last week in Michigan and earlier this year in Texas and Georgia.

That continues the momentum from last November when general election turnout in Virginia and New Jersey surpassed the numbers from 2018’s blue wave. That’s on top of the 12.5% overperformances we’ve seen in special elections, per The Downballot. What that tells us? Democratic voters have their eyes on the prize and aren’t getting caught up in the chatter.

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BY THE DISTRICT

Juan Ciscomani, AZ-06

Ciscomani breaks with administration over tribal health closure: Ciscomani urged Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to halt the closure of Tucson’s Indian Health Service office, which serves nearly 28,000 members of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe and Tohono O’odham Nation. His Aug. 10 letter warned that shifting operations to Phoenix would force patients to travel more than 100 miles for care. He’s the first Republican to join Arizona Democrats, who’ve opposed the plan since June. The nonpartisan Mediators Foundation dubbed Ciscomani as Arizona’s most bipartisan member of Congress.

David Valadao, CA-22

Valadao ranks among Congress’s most bipartisan: David Valadao (R-CA-22) has the third-highest rate of cross-party cosponsorship in Congress, at 80.3%, a Legis1 analysis found, trailing only Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Thomas Kean Jr. Fitzpatrick has topped the Lugar Center’s “Most Bipartisan Member of Congress” ranking five years running.

Gabe Evans, CO-08

ICE detention center jolts Evans’s tossup race: The Big Horn immigration detention center, set to open as soon as next month on the edge of Gabe Evans’s district, has drawn packed protests to tiny Hudson and scrambled one of the country’s closest House races. Evans has voiced support for detention centers; Democratic challenger Manny Rutinel, a state lawmaker, is running to “stop ICE from terrorizing our communities.” The GEO Group holds a $529 million contract to run the 1,200-bed facility, which would nearly double Colorado’s detention capacity in a heavily Latino district.

Evans defended his record at a news conference with Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, where the two cast his votes to cut SNAP as targeting waste. A Democratic group launched a six-figure Spanish-language ad tying Evans to a budget law that could cost up to 150,000 Colorado families their Medicaid coverage.

Mariannette Miller-Meeks, IA-1

Miller-Meeks faces $750,000 healthcare ad blitz: 314 Action, a Democratic PAC backing candidates with science backgrounds, launched a $750,000 TV, digital, and mail campaign hitting Miller-Meeks over healthcare costs. The ads target her vote for Trump’s budget law, which Democrats say cut $1 trillion from Medicaid over a decade; Republicans call the savings work requirements and fraud reduction. The ads note Miller-Meeks, an ophthalmologist on the GOP Doctors Caucus, has taken nearly $262,000 from the pharmaceutical and health industry, citing OpenSecrets. She won reelection in 2024 by fewer than 800 votes and faces Democrat Christina Bohannan, who went up with a seven-figure ad about her father losing health insurance.

At a Pella event with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Miller-Meeks touted the tax law’s manufacturing benefits, though Vermeer’s CEO said tariffs cost the company $2.5 million a month and Iowa shed 4,300 manufacturing jobs over the past year.

Zach Nunn, IA-03

Nunn ranked among most bipartisan House members: Bridge Grades, a nonpartisan project of the Mediators Foundation, ranked Nunn the third most bipartisan member of the U.S. House, scoring him 99.4 out of 100 behind only Jimmy Panetta and Brian Fitzpatrick. He’s seeking a third term against Democrat Sarah Trone Garriott in a race rated a toss-up.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise campaigned for Nunn in Urbandale, linking Trone Garriott to “socialism” and “Marxism” though she isn’t affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America and would join the moderate New Democrats Caucus. The Trump administration is also deploying Cabinet officials to Iowa around the state fair, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and NATO Ambassador Matt Whitaker.

Bill Huizenga, MI-4

Huizenga’s tornado aid appeal denied: Huizenga co-signed a bipartisan letter urging Trump to reconsider FEMA’s denial of aid after the deadly March 6 tornadoes. FEMA upheld the denial in early August, finding the damage didn’t meet the threshold for a major disaster declaration.

After progressive Abdul El-Sayed won Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, Huizenga said the state’s Democrats had been “completely taken over by the radical socialist left,” tying El-Sayed to his own challenger, state Sen. Sean McCann. A June Democratic poll showed McCann leading Huizenga by three points in a district Huizenga won by nearly 12 in 2024.

Tom Barrett, MI-07

Barrett keeps donation from colleague accused of abuse: Barrett is holding onto a $2,500 contribution from the PAC of Ohio Rep. Max Miller, who’s been accused of holding a gun to his ex-wife’s head and burning her with hot water. The House Ethics Committee has opened an investigation and several GOP senators have called on Miller to step aside, but Barrett invoked “due process” and declined to return the money. His challenger, Democrat William Lawrence, called on him to give it back.

Barrett countered by calling Lawrence “a convicted felon,” referring to a since-expunged 2013 charge for chaining himself to construction equipment while protesting the Enbridge Line 5 pipeline. Their race is turning partly on data centers. Lawrence’s first ad ties Barrett to a proposed Mason project; Barrett says siting should be left to local communities. He also appeared with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who defended high gas prices as temporary.

Mike Lawler, NY-17

Lawler defends keeping donation from colleague accused of abuse: Pressed by CNN’s Dana Bash on why he wouldn’t return the $10,000 his campaign took from the PAC of Ohio Rep. Max Miller, who’s accused of abusing his ex-wife and their two-year-old daughter, Lawler declined. He called it “a private family matter” that should go to family court, said “there’s been nothing that has been corroborated,” and pivoted to attacking Democratic opponent Cait Conley for taking money from former Gov. Eliot Spitzer. Miller has denied the allegations and faces a House Ethics investigation.

More than 400,000 New Yorkers lost their low-cost Essential Plan coverage after funding cuts in Trump’s domestic policy law, which Lawler defended as reining in wasteful programs; his spokesman blamed Hochul for building an unsustainable plan. Lawler’s campaign also launched a 30-second ad, part of a $5 million buy, touting the law’s tax provisions, including lifting the SALT deduction cap from $10,000 to $40,000.

Ryan Mackenzie, PA-07

Mackenzie returns a pardoned donor’s check: Mackenzie returned a $2,600 contribution from Adam Kidan, a Republican megadonor convicted in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, after reporting showed Trump pardoned Kidan on July 3, three days after Kidan’s June 30 check to his leadership PAC. Trump had campaigned in the district a week earlier. Mackenzie’s office said he returned the money to avoid “even an appearance of impropriety.”

Rob Bresnahan, PA-08

Bresnahan praised on stock trading in $9M ad push: An issue group, Choose Freedom Inc., is running $9 million in ads across nearly 20 districts lauding Republicans, including Bresnahan, for backing July’s Stop Insider Trading Act. Democrats called singling out Bresnahan “despicable,” pointing to his roughly 650 trades since January 2025 after he’d backed a trading ban. Critics note the bill lets members keep pre-owned stocks and exempts the president.

All four forecasters rate the 8th a toss-up; Bresnahan won by 1.6 points in 2024 as Trump carried the district by more than 8.

Scott Perry, PA-10

Perry’s the only Pennsylvanian to vote no on housing: Scott Perry (R-York) was the only Pennsylvania House member to vote against the 21st Century Road to Housing Act, a bipartisan bill that passed by lopsided margins and became law without Trump’s signature. One provision drops a cost-cutting requirement that manufactured homes have a steel chassis. Perry said he didn’t support the final bill because of digital-currency language and Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s amendments.

Rob Wittman, VA-01

Virginia braces for a defense windfall: As Trump pushes a $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget, Virginia stands to gain more than almost any state, ranking among the top three in defense dollars every year since 2020 and leading the nation per capita. Installations and contractors pour hundreds of millions to billions into local economies, concentrated in the counties that host them. Rob Wittman (R-Va.) sits on the Armed Services committee.

Wittman also surfaced this week on a list of Republicans honored by the 60 Plus Association, a Koch-seeded group that backs Social Security privatization and Medicare vouchers. He faces Democrat Shannon Taylor, who won the Aug. 4 primary, in a race forecasters see as one of Virginia’s likeliest Democratic pickups.

Jen Kiggans, VA-02

Coastal issues frame the Kiggans race: New reporting casts offshore wind, seabed mining, and worsening flooding as central to Jen Kiggans’ (R-Va.) tossup rematch with former Rep. Elaine Luria in the Hampton Roads-based 2nd. In the district, 51% back local wind farms and two-thirds say climate change affects their utility bills, a George Mason and Yale survey found.

Kiggans has backed the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, set to power 660,000 homes, and earlier opposed Trump’s move to pause it. But she holds an 11% lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters and hasn’t criticized Trump’s coastal mining plans.

Derrick Van Orden, WI-03

Van Orden loses his “straw man” in the governor’s primary: Rebecca Cooke won the August 11 Democratic primary in Wisconsin’s 3rd, setting a rematch with Van Orden, who beat her by under 3 points in 2024. He’d planned to tie Cooke to democratic socialist Francesca Hong, calling Cooke a “cocktail communist.” But Hong lost the governor’s primary to David Crowley, taking away the target. A UW-Eau Claire analyst said Hong’s defeat makes every Wisconsin Republican’s race harder.

Van Orden announced a jump in Wisconsin’s Medicaid provider reimbursement rate from 1.8% to 6% and $203 million for the state’s rural hospitals. Both flow from the same law he voted for, which KFF projects will cost Wisconsin $7 billion in Medicaid cuts over a decade.

Last Spring, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson published a book called Abundance. It was a New York Times bestseller about the lack of progress on ambitious projects in the United States and how technology will usher in a new era of prosperity if we can fix the regulatory landscape. It took the Beltway by storm. Members of Congress even launched a caucus to support the “abundance movement.”

The book opens with a picture of the year 2050.

You wake up in a city. You’re in a house running on solar panels overhead and clean power piped in from wind, small nuclear, and geothermal sources. You turn on the tap and out comes desalinated ocean water. The apples and tomatoes in your refrigerator were grown on tiered shelves under LED lights in a tall greenhouse a few miles away.

The beef was grown in a lab. Outside, an autonomous drone is delivering someone’s medication, synthesized in an automated factory in low Earth orbit. Your friend texts on the way to the airport. He will be in London in two hours.

According to Klein and Thompson, in this future, field agriculture is gone. So is livestock. The authors note that a quarter of the world’s land was once used to raise animals for food, and that this is unimaginable now. As they put it, “Much of that land has rewilded.”

What?!? Rewilded?

It’s no wonder that Rural Americans have spent the summer revolting against the data centers that are so critical to this vision of “progress” and reshaping the political landscape of Rural America in the process.

Data Center Watch, an industry tracker, counts forty-two activist groups campaigning against data centers in Virginia alone. There is a Coalition for Responsible Data Center Development in Minnesota, a volunteer nonprofit with no paid staff, founded by a Farmington resident. There is a Coalition to Protect Prince William County in Virginia that began with one woman getting her neighbors together. There is SWMO Citizens Against Data Centers in Missouri and North Beaver Township Residents United in Pennsylvania.

These unpaid, local organizers are getting dozens, if not hundreds, of counties across the country to issue a moratorium on data center development while local leaders work to better understand the costs and benefits. The list of counties with data center moratoriums spans the entire political spectrum and now includes Sioux County, Iowa, where 85% of the county voted for Donald Trump in 2024.

It’s a shift that many politicians, especially Donald Trump, didn’t see coming, as the President seems to be one of the politicians most out of step with rural voters on data centers.

“I don’t think they’re unsightly,” President Trump said recently. “I mean, I’m looking at some of these data centers — the most incredible buildings I’ve ever seen. They go for two-and-a-half, three miles.”

I’m sure he would feel differently if they were building one next to Mar-A-Lago.

But many Democrats have struggled to capitalize on Trump’s political miscalculation in small towns in rural communities, as they too have found themselves out of step with public opinion on data centers.

So how did we get here?

What Donald Trump and some Democrats are missing is that there is a long history of rural people getting screwed by developers. In fact, it’s almost a whole genre within country music.

Ernie Carpenter is my favorite example. He was a fiddler from Braxton County, West Virginia. In 1938, Congress authorized a dam that would flood his family property. He stayed as long as he could and spent years fighting it. His neighbors left, but he didn’t. The work crews blocked the roads, and he found other ways onto his property until those were closed off too. He said he was the last one to leave.

Ultimately, he got the Army Corps of Engineers to raise what they paid him; then he tore the old house down, hauled the lumber up the hill, and built part of it into a new one. He wrote a tune about it. What came out is called “Elk River Blues.” It is slow and sad, and is now a standard that old-time country players still learn all over the country.

Watch: “Elk River Blues,” written by Ernie Carpenter and performed by The McMillan’s Camp Boys

This is just one Country ballad about life in a sacrifice zone. Johnny Cash sang one. And so did Old Crow Medicine Show. But of course, Rural America isn’t the only one being asked to sacrifice in the name of someone else’s progress.

In 1970, Gil Scott-Heron recorded “Whitey on the Moon.” It’s a poem about living in poverty while watching the first man walk on the moon.

Watch: “Whitey on the Moon” by Gil Scott-Heron

Gil Scott-Heron was not making an argument against space travel. He was making an argument about who gets to define progress and benefit from it. It’s a question that tends to unite working people in small towns, rural communities, and big cities, as well as across traditional lines of partisan division. And that’s what is happening this summer.

The people defining progress in 2026 are the ones who benefit from the AI buildout. They tell us the moment is urgent, that we cannot fall behind China, that the future of the country depends on how fast we can put these buildings in the ground. We keep hearing that technology will solve our problems and that AI data centers are an important source of revenue for local communities, but all we see is that with each new technological innovation, the gap between the rich and the poor only continues to grow.

Sure, there are a handful of examples where communities have leveraged data centers in the past for local benefits. And some places do have the conditions that can make these projects work. We will look closely at some of them later in this series. But even in the absolute best cases, community members are just tolerating these data centers.

On March 12, Third Way, an advocacy group that supports the current data center build-out, published an influential memo for Democratic campaigns titled Do Americans Believe Banning Data Centers Will Lower Electricity Prices?. In the survey they conducted, data centers came back at 30 percent favorability, lower than every institution they tested, including the President, both political parties, and utilities. Asked whether they would support a data center if developers reimbursed the community for water and electricity, support rose to 43 percent, while opposition rose to 41 percent.

In June, Third Way conducted focus groups with a hundred swing voters and told them hypothetical projects would use no water and pass no costs to ratepayers. A slight majority was still opposed. People were handed the best version of the deal and still turned it down.

One participant pointed out that data centers bring a wave of construction jobs and very few permanent ones. He is right. Operating headcount at one of these facilities runs in the dozens. He did the math and got the right answer. But, oddly, the memo filed his response under a section about building trust.

Another watched Sam Altman testify to Congress about the benefits of AI and said Altman is selling his own medicine. That is a reasonable person discounting a witness with a financial stake. His comments were also filed under trust.

Third Way’s conclusion in their memo was that data centers need to focus on building local trust. But that’s not what voters were telling them. Voters looked at the evidence, did the math, and drew their own conclusions: the costs don’t outweigh the benefits.

Democratic candidates who followed the advice in Third Way’s campaign memo likely didn’t realize that the group’s goal is to build support for data centers, not necessarily win elections. That’s why so many Democratic candidates followed Third Way’s pro-data center talking points that Democratic voters opposed by more than 10 points.

Half of Americans struggle to meet even their most basic needs in this economy. And it takes years for data centers to generate any revenue for rural communities. Voters are looking for a solution now, and building an affordability platform around bringing good paying jobs years down the road is a horrible political strategy.

The Marquette Law School Poll has been tracking public opinion on data centers for a year. In October 2025, 55 percent said the benefits don’t outweigh the costs. By February, it was 70 percent, and by July, it was 76 percent. Nationally, the Annenberg Public Policy Center found opposition rising from 49 percent to 61 percent over four months, while support fell from 21 percent to 14 percent.

While many politicians misjudged the data center outrage, some candidates, both Republicans and Democrats, have figured out how to leverage the local backlash.

Tom Tiffany won the Wisconsin Republican governor primary with 95 percent of the vote and the endorsement of the President and the state party. His campaign catchphrase is “We are America’s Dairyland, not America’s Dataland.” He says data centers should not raise residential electricity bills and must include local community input before construction begins. He has pledged to repeal the subsidies, keep the facilities off farmland, and eliminate the nondisclosure agreements that conceal these deals from the public.

In Minnesota, Lisa Demuth won the Republican nomination with 45.1 percent, beating both the candidate the President endorsed and the candidate the state convention endorsed. As House Speaker, she had agreed to repeal the electricity sales tax exemption for data centers, thereby raising costs for those companies. At the time, it was written up as attack fodder from her tax-averse fellow Republicans.

She took the hit for making data centers pay more in the Republican primary, and beat a Trump endorsement anyway.

There was a similar dynamic at play in the Wisconsin Democratic governor primary. Francesca Hong raised a green thumbs-up at a June debate when six Democrats were asked about a one-year moratorium on data centers. Every other candidate raised a red thumbs-down. Eight weeks later she was the front-runner.

Then two candidates dropped out, David Crowley re-entered with the governor’s endorsement, and a fractured field became a two-candidate race. Hong lost by just a fraction of a point, but she wasn’t even a top candidate before the moratorium fight.

And data center politics were dominant in Wisconsin’s Third District as well. Rebecca Cooke declined the moratorium at a forum in mid-July. Her opponent called on her publicly to join it. Three weeks later Cooke went up with an ad calling for a one-year pause. She won by fifteen points. Three weeks—that is how fast the conventional wisdom shifted. But, in retrospect, it looks like the conventional wisdom was wrong from the beginning.

I have talked with thousands of rural voters over the last decade. When you ask them what they want their community to look like in twenty years, almost all of them say the same thing.

“Like it does now.”

It does not matter where you ask. New subdivisions in wealthy exurbs. Distressed coal towns in Appalachia. Farm counties in the upper Midwest. The answer comes back the same. People want the place they live in to remain recognizable to them.

For many of us in Rural America, change is the threat. The “bad change” is obvious, because more unemployment and more addiction and more crime take a wrecking ball to quality of life. But we’re skeptical of “good change” too. Ask anybody who watched their kid get priced out of the town or neighborhood they grew up in once good things started to happen.

Most of the folks I talk to actually like the dive bar. They like the empty lot across the street where the neighborhood kids play football, and they would prefer for it to stay empty rather than someone build a fancy condo there. But more importantly, especially in this economy, they would like health care, child care, and elder care to cost less, the school to stay open, and their grandkids to be able to afford a house in town.

In Rural America, we’re taught to protect what we have. Preserve what works. And be suspicious of anybody who shows up with a vision of the future we did not ask for. But for the big tech-funded think tanks in Washington, D.C., growth and innovation are taken as gospel.

Progress and innovation are beautiful things for those who will benefit, and Ezra Klein isn’t being asked to sacrifice anything in his 2050 vision of a techno-utopia in which Rural America has been “rewilded” and rendered obsolete.

I worry “big thinkers” in the big city, especially those with Abundance-Brain, don’t realize that in Rural America, we don’t see ourselves in Ezra Klein’s vision for the future. Our only representation in his future is hosting the data centers powering his AI robots, or being erased—rewilded—altogether.

Candidates do not have to agree with our rural perspective. But they cannot win if they don’t take it seriously.

Next up in our “Data Center Summer” series: Rural America is being told we should sacrifice our sense of place to power the next technological revolution, but it’s not even clear that this technology is profitable. Stay tuned as we dive into the AI investor hype and what the AI bubble could mean for Rural America.

WTTW
David Crowley’s razor-thin Wisconsin primary win sets up a match against a Trump pick
August 12, 2026

• Crowley, a moderate Democrat, narrowly beat democratic socialist Francesca Hong and now faces Rep. Tom Tiffany, who represents Wisconsin’s rural, conservative north woods and has voted with Trump 100% of the time.

• Crowley, Milwaukee County executive, cast Tiffany as a “MAGA extremist.” Tiffany tied Crowley to Hong, warning of higher taxes.

• Crowley, 40, is the first Black major-party nominee for Wisconsin governor, seeking to flip full state control as Trump’s approval sags.

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The New York Times
How Crowley eked out a win in the Wisconsin governor primary
August 12, 2026

• Crowley’s late surge came from Gov. Tony Evers, who pulled him back into the race and toured the state with him, swaying undecided voters who tuned in only in the final week.

• Crowley won by fewer than 4,000 votes, buoyed by Hong’s missteps over comments on Thanksgiving and abolishing police.

• Notably, Crowley won many rural counties and took 37% in liberal Dane County, Hong’s home base, showing broad cross-regional appeal.

Minnesota Public Radio
Fresh off her primary win, Peggy Flanagan takes aim at Trump, outlines Senate agenda
August 12, 2026

• Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, who beat Rep. Angie Craig in the Democratic Senate primary and faces Republican Michele Tafoya in November, laid out her agenda in a Q&A with MPR touching on health care, immigration and Trump.

• Flanagan said Medicare for All draws strong support in Greater Minnesota, where rural residents face fewer and costlier care options. She pointed to voters carrying $16,000 deductibles who are struggling to afford care.

• On immigration, she called for reform grounded in dignity rather than abolishing ICE, citing deaths in custody. She cast Tafoya as a Trump loyalist out of touch on gas prices and the Iran war.

AZPM
Gallego vows to push back on Medicaid cuts during rural Arizona tour
August 12, 2026

• U.S. Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., toured Graham County and pledged to fight Medicaid cuts that threaten rural care access, framing it as vital to the region’s survival. He said he hopes to restore some cuts after campaign season.

• Mt. Graham Regional Medical Center recently lost visiting oncology and cardiac providers, affecting about 1,600 patients who now face two-hour drives to Tucson for specialty care.

• Trump’s 2025 tax and spending law adds Medicaid work requirements and financing limits. Its $50 billion rural health fund may not cover small hospitals’ daily costs, the CEO said.

Iowa Capital Dispatch
Rob Sand proposes raising minimum wage, expanding farm income streams
August 12, 2026

• Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rob Sand released a farm and rural economy plan aimed at keeping young workers and families in Iowa’s struggling small towns as they leave for opportunities elsewhere.

• Sand, the state auditor, proposed raising the minimum wage from $7.25 to $12, ending privatized Medicaid, expanding rural broadband, and helping farms diversify through agritourism, value-added products, and manure-based renewable natural gas.

• He’d create an Office of Rural Prosperity and a rural housing task force, and tax out-of-state landowners. Republican rival Zach Lahn backs antitrust action against big ag.

Nebraska Examiner
Breaking down petition signatures for Nebraska Working People Party, America First Party
August 12, 2026

• Two new Nebraska parties cleared the signature threshold for the November ballot, with new state data showing the Working People Party drew more support from conservative rural areas like the Panhandle and Sandhills, while the America First Party leaned urban.

• The Working People Party, led by Democrat Robin Richards, validated signatures across 87 counties and pledges to serve rural communities, farmers, and ranchers. The America First Party, led by nonpartisan John Cartier, hit 63 counties.

• Both drew about 60-69% of signatures from the state’s most populous counties. Nebraska Democrats and Republicans are suing to block the parties.

Indiana Capital Chronicle
Paperwork snafu leaves Democrats without candidate for Indiana Senate seat
August 12, 2026

• A Democratic Party filing error left Vincennes’ four-term mayor off the November ballot, handing Republicans an unopposed win in a rural southwestern Indiana Senate district and costing Democrats a rare shot at an experienced rural candidate.

• District 8 party chair Dave Crooks said he misunderstood his duty to file the form within three days of the July 23 caucus that picked Mayor Joe Yochum for Senate District 39.

• Republican Jeff Ellington, Trump-endorsed, now runs unopposed to replace retiring GOP Sen. Eric Bassler. Yochum warned one-party rule leaves voters no meaningful choice.

BROADBAND AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS

Broadband Breakfast
States working on BEAD project costs, permits
August 11, 2026

• Rising equipment costs and complex permitting are emerging as hurdles as states launch federally funded rural broadband projects, threatening to stall builds meant to connect underserved rural areas. State offices are weighing waivers to keep projects alive.

• Inflation and AI-driven fiber demand have pushed costs up since bids landed a year ago. Some providers have refused awards, needing more than they bid. Minnesota plans to spend $379 million to reach nearly 75,000 locations.

• The median project needs about 11 permits from eight authorities, one analysis found. Officials stressed patience with understaffed rural county offices that may lack even a website.

CONSERVATION

The Daily Yonder
Balanced stewardship of the land to save the prairie
August 12, 2026

• A Colorado ranch shows how cattle grazing can help preserve endangered prairie rather than destroy it, keeping grassland from being plowed into monoculture farming that harms soil, water, and wildlife, writes Nhatt Nichols, a longtime vegan and former Forest Service worker.

• The Nature Conservancy’s Fox Ranch in Yuma County pairs conservation with a working herd. Rotational grazing has revived native grasses and helped restore greater prairie chickens, whose numbers fell partly from raptors perching on green-energy utility lines.

• Rancher Nathan Andrews swapped to costlier, beetle-safe cattle medication to protect soil health. Even feedlots, the author learns, help keep ranching economically viable enough to preserve grassland.

CYBERSECURITY

Route Fifty
New ‘Water Watch Center’ launched to help small utilities stop cyberattacks
August 10, 2026

• A new Water Watch Center will provide cyber mitigation support to water utilities serving under 10,000 people, most of the nation’s systems, as suspected Iran-linked intrusions hit rural-heavy water infrastructure across roughly a dozen states.

• The program, from the National Rural Water Association and a University of Chicago cyber project, launched at DEF CON with five cybersecurity firms. More than 30 Minnesota water systems were targeted late last month.

• The FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency are aiding response. Retired Gen. Paul Nakasone said the small computers running pumps and valves shouldn’t be exposed to the internet.

DATA CENTERS, CRYPTOCURRENCY, AND AI

RFD-TV
Rural data centers benefit economy not necessarily jobs
August 12, 2026

• Rural data centers can generate strong economic output but far fewer local jobs than manufacturing, since specialized workers and equipment often come from outside the community, a University of Arkansas analysis found.

• In a simulation of 100 direct jobs, data centers matched food manufacturing on statewide output but supported fewer added jobs in rural counties. Tax abatements and utility deals can also shrink what local governments collect.

• Large facilities strain rural water and energy systems. The researcher said the real question is how much long-term activity stays local, not the size of the investment.

WUKY
Rural Kentucky county passes two-year data center moratorium
August 12, 2026

• Residents’ activism led rural Bell County, Kentucky, to pass a two-year data center moratorium, as counties across the state scramble to regulate energy- and water-intensive facilities with no statewide framework in place.

• Kentucky has more than two dozen operating data centers and many more proposed. The Kentucky Resources Council offers a model zoning ordinance addressing noise, cooling-water pollution, and effects on ratepayers.

• In Simpson County, a data center was zoned under a code meant for laundromats and salons. Louisville is weighing size-based rules the Council’s director calls the wrong approach.

NBC 26
Village of Wrightstown voters say ‘no’ to data center development
August 12, 2026

• Voters in Wrightstown, Wisconsin, in the state’s 8th Congressional District, overwhelmingly rejected an advisory referendum on whether the village should support large-scale data center development, a clear signal from a rural community wary of how such projects reshape land and strain local resources.

• More than 87% voted no, 1,033 to 151. Residents said they didn’t want the rural area turned into a construction site. Many showed up mainly to weigh in on the question.

• Wrightstown has been at the center of the region’s data center debate. In May, executives from AI developer Cloverleaf fielded pointed questions from residents.

ENERGY AND UTILITIES

Canary Media
Trump’s DOE keeps forcing coal plants to stay open. Here’s the latest.
August 7, 2026

• The Trump administration has used emergency powers to force seven aging fossil-fuel plants to run past their retirement dates, sticking ratepayers with the cost of pricey coal power that grid operators had already deemed unnecessary.

• The stay-open orders total roughly $430 million as of Aug. 6, the Sierra Club tallies. Some plants are broken or idle; one Indiana plant could cost over $1 billion to repair and keep running.

• More than 20 coal units are slated to close by term’s end. Colorado’s Comanche and Minnesota’s Sherco, where the owner is building a large solar farm nearby, retire in December.

HEALTH CARE, PHARMACIES AND RURAL HEALTH

WCMU
Online pharmacies aid rural health care but threaten Michigan drugstores
August 12, 2026

• Mail-in prescription services fill a gap in rural Michigan pharmacy deserts, but state officials and independent pharmacists say the pharmacy benefit managers behind them are helping drive local drugstores out of business.

• These managers, including CVS Caremark, Express Scripts, and Optum Rx, handled about 80% of U.S. prescriptions in 2024, the FTC found. Michigan saw 272 pharmacies close that year, 91 of them independent.

• The companies deny causing closures. A 2026 federal law tightening oversight won’t fully take effect until 2028. Losing brick-and-mortar stores costs patients vaccinations and quick refills.

KFOR
Despite warnings even more OK rural hospitals set to close
August 12, 2026

• Most Oklahoma rural hospitals risk closing as Medicaid cuts loom, new data shows. Closures could force rural patients, including women in labor, to drive dozens of miles for care.

• Of 73 rural inpatient hospitals, 63 are at risk and 18 at immediate risk, the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform found. Pauls Valley recently lost its only hospital.

• The Big Beautiful Bill cuts an estimated $900 billion to $1 trillion from Medicaid over a decade, starting January 2028.

WAPT
More than half of Mississippi’s rural hospitals facing serious financial risk
August 12, 2026

• More than half of Mississippi’s rural hospitals are at risk of closure or financial distress, a 2026 analysis found, threatening care access for rural residents who would otherwise face long drives to Jackson or other cities.

• The analysis flagged 54% of the state’s rural hospitals as at risk, with 24 facing immediate pressure. Lackey Memorial in Forest, one of the state’s first critical access hospitals, said getting reimbursed by payers is its biggest challenge.

• Gov. Tate Reeves, R-Miss., said the state has more than $205 million available for rural health initiatives aimed at keeping care closer to home.

KNWA
Study finds nearly 70% of Arkansas’ rural hospitals at risk of closing
August 12, 2026

• Arkansas has the nation’s second-highest share of rural hospitals at risk of closing, threatening care access across the state’s rural communities, a Becker’s Hospital Review study found.

• 68% of Arkansas’ rural hospitals are at risk, 19% at immediate risk. The main driver is the cost of care outpacing insurer payments.

• Nationwide, a third of rural hospitals are at risk. Arkansas ranks 47th in healthcare, with 44% of counties maternity care deserts.

WDBJ
Target 7: Southwest Virginia medical school tackles rural healthcare crisis
August 10, 2026

• Virginia Tech’s VCOM in Blacksburg recruits students from rural areas and trains them to practice there, aiming to close a gap where rural America has five doctors per 10,000 people versus eight in urban areas.

• The school reports 45% of students come from towns under 30,000, and 59% of graduates work in states with medically underserved communities.

• Leaders say federal loan-repayment placements are temporary; students from an area are more likely to stay. VCOM graduates are practicing across Southwest Virginia.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT

Bridge Michigan
Rural Michigan in crisis: Too many governments that too few want to lead
August 7, 2026

• This is the third of a three-part series. Rural Michigan townships and villages increasingly can’t find residents to run for local office, leaving governments propped up by aging retirees and, without reform, at risk of being unable to collect taxes or run elections.

• More than three-quarters of townships and villages struggle to fill posts, a University of Michigan survey found. Pellston’s village president, 87, ran again only because no one else filed for the $14,000-a-year job.

• Growing workloads, low pay, and online harassment are driving officials out. Just 38% said they trust residents most of the time, down from 64% in 2020.

Bridge Michigan
Other states shrink local governments. Michigan law preserves archaic ‘mess’
August 7, 2026

• This is the second of a three-part series. Michigan assigns rural townships more duties than most states, from tax collection to running elections, yet law makes merging or dissolving nearly impossible, leaving tiny, aging communities struggling to staff local government.

• More than 75% of townships and villages report trouble filling mandatory elected posts, a University of Michigan survey found. In Houghton Township, population 72, about 1 in 8 residents holds an official role.

• Indiana, Iowa, and Illinois are cutting or consolidating townships. Michigan hasn’t erased one since 1983, and mergers, needing multiple votes, usually fail.

Bridge Michigan
Facing money woes, Michigan villages mull extreme solutions: ceasing to exist
August 7, 2026

• This is the third of a three-part series. A growing number of small, cash-strapped Michigan villages are voting on whether to dissolve, a sign of the deepening financial strain on the state’s smallest rural governments.

• Fife Lake, near Traverse City, narrowly rejected disincorporation this month, 93-85. It’s one of four villages facing such votes this year, with Lake Orion and Baroda voting in November. None has ever passed.

• Just 39% of village leaders called their finances healthy, down from 61% two years earlier. Michigan cut a $1.8 million rural grant-writing program that had returned about $13 for every dollar spent.

PARKS, FORESTS, AND PUBLIC LANDS

The Washington Post
Bulldozing begins at Big Bend National Park for border construction
August 12, 2026

• Federal contractors have begun bulldozing parts of Big Bend National Park for a border patrol road and barriers, reshaping remote wilderness in rural Far West Texas, a region with the lowest illegal-entry levels on the border.

• Trump’s tax law funds $46.5 billion for border infrastructure. DHS waived dozens of laws, including the Endangered Species Act, letting crews skip habitat reviews in designated critical habitat for a threatened bird.

• A bipartisan coalition is fighting the work through lawsuits and complaints. In Arizona, construction partly bulldozed an ancient Native American etching, and the Tohono O’odham Nation is suing.

REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS, PREGNANCY AND CHILDBIRTH

Becker’s Hospital Review
3 reasons the market can’t fix North Carolina’s maternity deserts — and what can be done
August 12, 2026

• North Carolina’s rural maternity deserts are a distribution problem markets can’t fix, and the state must fund rural obstetric access deliberately, argues Dr. James Whiteside, chief of service at ECU Health Medical Center in Greenville.

• Reimbursement rewards volume, not readiness; 28 rural counties have no local delivery care, while 10 counties hold 60% of the state’s obstetricians. Longer drives raise risks like preterm birth.

• Whiteside urges readiness payments for round-the-clock rural obstetric coverage, higher Medicaid rates, and workforce incentives to recruit and keep rural clinicians.

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Wisconsin Examiner
Rebecca Cooke wins 3rd CD primary to set up rematch against Derrick Van Orden
August 11, 2026

• Rebecca Cooke won the Democratic primary in Wisconsin’s rural 3rd District, setting up a rematch with Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden after her narrow 2024 loss. Democrats see the western Wisconsin seat as a top target to flip the House.

• Cooke beat former Eau Claire City Council President Emily Berge by a wide margin, closer than the 40-point lead her campaign’s spring polling claimed. AP called it at 9:21 p.m. with 64% counted.

• Cooke, named to the DCCC’s inaugural “Red to Blue” list in February, raised $8.6 million since early 2025, topping Van Orden’s $7.5 million. That national investment likely helped power her win, though the primary drained her cash, leaving her $1.8 million on hand to his $4.6 million.

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The New York Times
Opinion: He’s not a Democrat. Democrats love him anyway.
August 11, 2026

• Nebraska Democrats are backing independent Senate candidate Dan Osborn against Republican Pete Ricketts, a red-state strategy that could resonate with disaffected rural voters, argues Michelle Cottle, a New York Times Opinion writer on national politics.

• Osborn, a Navy veteran and union mechanic running on a populist economic platform, lost to Deb Fischer by seven points in 2024, an overperformance that convinced Democrats to go all in this cycle.

• Similar independent bids are underway in Montana, Idaho and South Dakota. The Nebraska Farmers Union, which backed Fischer in 2024, now supports Osborn, citing a farm crisis under Trump.

Midcoast Villager
Guns and the ballot in Maine’s Second District
August 11, 2026

• The NRA’s endorsement of Republican Paul LePage puts gun rights at the center of Maine’s rural 2nd District race, but Democrat Matt Dunlap’s own hunting and firearms credentials scramble the usual partisan divide as both seek to replace Rep. Jared Golden.

• LePage vowed no compromise on the Second Amendment, while Dunlap, a hunter and former Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine director, argues gun owners needn’t vote Republican and points voters toward health care and cost of living.

• Maine’s gun politics shifted after the 2023 Lewiston mass shooting that killed 18, which pushed Golden to back an assault weapons ban. The race tests whether the pro-gun rural Democrat can still win.

WWLP
Federal judge blocks USPS from enforcing Trump order restricting mail voting
August 11, 2026

• A federal judge temporarily blocked the Postal Service from enforcing part of Trump’s executive order restricting mail voting before the November midterms. The ruling protects rural voters, who often depend on mail ballots where polling places are distant.

• U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani found the executive branch has no authority to regulate elections and that the order caused irreparable harm by creating ballot confusion. The suit was brought by the League of Women Voters and other groups.

• The decision expands a June ruling that had covered only 23 mostly Democratic-led states, extending the block nationwide. The administration is expected to appeal.

AGRICULTURE AND THE USDA

The Daily Yonder
Commentary: Will the real USDA reorganization plan please stand up?
August 10, 2026

• A March 2025 USDA reorganization plan, made public only in July 2026 through a lawsuit, would sharply cut or eliminate rural housing and nutrition programs, though the department now says the plan doesn’t reflect its current thinking, leaving rural families uncertain. (No author named in the text provided.)

• The plan would slash Rural Development staff 47% and Food and Nutrition Service staff 46%, the deepest cuts among 18 subagencies, and overall eliminate or consolidate 41 programs and over 23,000 positions.

• It would convert the 76-year-old Section 502 direct home loan program, which has helped over two million rural families buy homes, into a guaranteed program and possibly shift Rural Development loans to HUD or the SBA.

CYBERSECURITY

Politico’s E&E News
‘Frightening’ cyberattacks on water utilities renew calls for regulations
August 10, 2026

• Coordinated cyberattacks have hit at least 30 water systems across 12 states since late July, reviving a push to mandate cybersecurity standards. Small rural utilities, which dominate the sector, are the most exposed and least equipped to respond.

• Democratic Sens. Adam Schiff of California and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota introduced a bill giving the EPA authority to require fixes. It revives an approach that Republican states and industry blocked three years ago.

• An industry-backed alternative from Rep. Rick Crawford, an Arkansas Republican, would set standards through an independent body but exempt systems serving under 3,300 people, the communities experts say are least prepared.

DATA CENTERS, CRYPTOCURRENCY, AND AI

The Washington Post
Rural Texas conservatives love free markets but not when it comes to data centers
August 11, 2026

• In deep-red rural Texas, lifelong Republican voters are mobilizing against data centers their pro-business GOP leaders first welcomed. Some say they’ll back a Democrat for the first time, a sign the backlash could reshape rural politics.

• In Leon County, where 88% chose Trump, commissioners say limited zoning authority leaves them nearly powerless to block Crusoe’s proposed $34 billion project. Nearly half of the state’s 248 proposed data centers target unincorporated rural areas.

• Facing pressure, Gov. Greg Abbott now requires grid audits and says centers must pay their own infrastructure costs. Critics call the moves vague pandering and demand a special session to pause development.

The Houston Chronicle
Greg Abbott is cracking down on data centers. Some rural Republicans say they still don’t trust him.
August 11, 2026

• Abbott has moved to curb data centers to calm a rural backlash ahead of the midterms, but many rural Republicans distrust him, noting his major donors are tied to the boom. How those voters react could shape a firewall the GOP needs.

• Some organizers are building anti-data center voting blocs and may back a Democrat, write in a candidate or stay home. GOP county chairs urged Abbott to call a special session; Democrat Gina Hinojosa wants a moratorium.

• Abbott ordered a permitting audit and told regulators centers can’t pass infrastructure costs to ratepayers. Meta and OpenAI agreed to comply, though Trump called the crackdown a mistake.

Kentucky Lantern
TeraWulf tells investors it could double the size of one of its KY data center projects
August 10, 2026

• TeraWulf told investors it may double its planned Muskie campus in eastern Kentucky to 2 gigawatts. The growth could raise bills for rural Kentucky Power customers, who already pay among the state’s highest.

• Combined with a 500-megawatt center in Hancock County, it would be Kentucky’s largest data center footprint. Both projects need state regulators to approve utility contracts.

• Kentucky Power parent AEP said it will buy a 710-megawatt West Virginia coal plant as residents worry about rising electric bills.

DISASTERS

Georgia Recorder
Lawmakers say data loss is keeping hurricane-harmed Georgia farmers from insurance payments
August 10, 2026

• Nearly two years after Hurricane Helene, some rural Georgia farmers still haven’t received federal wind-damage insurance payments they bought, leaving communities struggling amid the worst farm economy growers say they’ve seen.

• Lawmakers blame storm damage to NOAA equipment for faulty wind data that misplotted Helene’s path, disqualifying east Georgia counties. Ossoff’s office estimates up to 85 farmers were affected; unpaid claims could reach $10 million.

• A bipartisan bill from retiring Rep. Buddy Carter would let USDA use alternate data, but it’s stalled with little time left. The USDA says the policy pays only on sustained winds, not gusts, and all eligible farmers were paid.

EDUCATION

Cardinal News
Opinion: Spanberger booed in Galax. Then the online chatter bashed Southwest Virginia schools.
August 11, 2026

• After Gov. Abigail Spanberger was booed at Galax’s Old-Time Fiddlers Convention, online critics used it to smear rural Southwest Virginia as poor and poorly schooled, a portrayal the column pushes back on with data, writes Dwayne Yancey, Cardinal News founding editor.

• Galax had the state’s lowest median income from 2020 to 2024, and 13 of Virginia’s 20 poorest localities are in Southwest Virginia. But the region stopped hemorrhaging jobs two decades ago and now sees steady employment.

• On 2025 SOL tests, Southwest Virginia’s Region 7 ranked first in reading and writing and second in history and math, often matching wealthy Loudoun County despite lower school funding.

ENERGY AND UTILITIES

Politico
Amazon in Texas: It’s all about the gas
August 11, 2026

• Amazon confirmed plans for a West Texas AI hub tied to a gas plant that could be the nation’s single largest greenhouse gas source. It signals a broader industry pivot to building off-grid power rather than waiting in grid-connection queues.

• Rural Pecos County would host the 8,000-acre site, cleared by regulators to emit over 33 million tons of greenhouse gases yearly, more than the nation’s dirtiest power plant in 2024. Amazon says it will pay its own costs and won’t raise residents’ bills.

• Developers have announced 90 gigawatts of behind-the-meter gas projects since 2025. The trend could grow after Gov. Greg Abbott’s de facto halt on grid-connected data center approvals.

Inside Climate News
US Senate committee advances bill exempting Montana coal company from environmental standards
August 11, 2026

• A Senate committee advanced the Crow Revenue Act, a coal land swap backed by Montana’s Crow Tribe that would let Signal Peak Energy skip federal environmental review. It could reshape economies in rural Musselshell County and on the reservation.

• The bill gives the Crow coal reserves beneath their land while the Hope family gets federal reserves expected to be leased to Signal Peak, freeing the company’s permit from NEPA and a lawsuit that could shut it down.

• Democrats opposed the 6-5 party-line vote, citing missing appraisals and unclear benefits. Sen. Brian Schatz said lawmakers were approving a major land transfer without basic data.

FARM BILL

Broadband Breakfast
The Farm Bill fight that will shape rural broadband
August 11, 2026

• The stalled Farm Bill will decide the future of USDA’s ReConnect program, which funds broadband in remote rural areas. A Senate committee failed to advance its version August 6, leaving rural connectivity in limbo.

• ReConnect has provided over $4.4 billion since 2018. The House bill would make it permanent but set low speed floors critics say would lock rural areas into slower service; the Senate version sets higher speeds and broader eligibility.

• The bill deadlocked 10-11 as Democrats held together and two Republicans, Alabama’s Tommy Tuberville and Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell, were absent. A SNAP funding fight remains the biggest obstacle.

GROCERIES

Flatwater Free Press
The grocery cart divide: How rural and urban America sort themselves
August 11, 2026

• What people search for, eat and wear maps the rural-urban political split nearly as cleanly as voting does, suggesting rural culture is an identity to court on its own terms, not a problem to fix, writes David Schultz, a Hamline University political science professor.

• Testing 21 consumer measures against 2024 returns, 19 were significant. Tofu-versus-pork-rind searches alone explained 72% of the vote variation. Shelf-stable foods and Wranglers tracked rural, brie and Levis tracked urban.

• College-degree share was the strongest demographic predictor. Chains follow graduates into metros, leaving rural counties with dollar stores, a sorting that shapes campaign microtargeting and which businesses invest.

HEALTH CARE, PHARMACIES AND RURAL HEALTH

KFF Health News
Patients wary of governments, companies pushing AI as a rural healthcare solution
August 11, 2026

• Top health officials and states are steering some of the $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program toward AI tools, despite scant evidence AI improves rural access or outcomes. Many rural patients interviewed said they distrust it for personal care.

• The fund was added to Trump’s law to offset rural fallout from Medicaid cuts of more than $900 billion over a decade. States plan AI for charting, triage, diagnosis suggestions and patient chatbots.

• Tools tested in urban hospitals may not fit rural patients, researchers warn, and many facilities lack the IT staff, hardware or fast internet to run them. Few states plan to track patient outcomes.

Louisiana Illuminator
With Medicaid cuts ahead, Louisiana’s rural health providers battle over payments
August 10, 2026

• Louisiana boosted Medicaid rates for independent rural clinics just as federal cuts loom, sparking a fight with rural hospitals over a shrinking funding pool. The clash could reshape which providers survive in poor rural parishes.

• Act 859 raises independent clinic payments by $41.50 this year and again next year. Hospital owners say it gives those clinics an edge, while hospital-affiliated clinics already draw far higher Medicaid rates, up to $587 a visit.

• Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act brings Medicaid cuts expected to hit rural hospitals hardest. Louisiana has already dropped about 200,000 people from its rolls under Gov. Jeff Landry.

IMMIGRATION

Barn Raiser
Maine Dems tackle immigration after local ICE murder
August 8, 2026

• Maine Democrats have fused ICE’s conduct and migrant labor into one issue after an agent killed a work-authorized Colombian man in Biddeford, a fight that resonates in rural Aroostook County, where immigrant crews sustain logging, health care and food processing.

• Immigrants are just 4% of Maine’s population but concentrate in the aging state’s worst labor shortages, a third in education and health services. ICE raids left Portland hospitals short-staffed and uncleaned, advocates say.

• Senate nominee Troy Jackson, a fifth-generation Allagash logger, backs immigration and faults ICE killings. Maine passed a law barring local help with ICE, while critics target Sen. Susan Collins, who chairs Appropriations and funded the agency.

INFECTIOUS DISEASES AND VACCINATION

NOTUS
An antidote to the anti-vaccine movement lives in rural West Virginia
August 10, 2026

• In rural Summersville, West Virginia, a longtime pediatrician’s personal trust with families helps sustain some of the nation’s highest childhood vaccine rates. As such independent doctors retire and hospital chains take over, that backstop against vaccine misinformation is fading.

• West Virginia has always required all public school students to be vaccinated and built its own local pharmacy network to lead COVID-19 rollout. Gov. Patrick Morrisey, an RFK Jr. ally, has tried to weaken those mandates.

• Independent practices are closing fast; WVU Medicine and Vandalia now own 70% of the state’s hospitals, and 13 of 33 rural hospitals risk closing. Patients without a trusted provider more often believe vaccine myths.

JOBS

The Washington Post
Opinion: Telling the truth doesn’t win Markwayne Mullin MAGA brownie points
August 11, 2026

• DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin drew MAGA backlash for backing more work visas and immigration reform, a stance the columnist argues Trump should heed because labor shortages hit rural and red states hardest. (No author named in the text provided.)

• Mullin said the U.S. can fill labor gaps where participation lags. A North Dakota State University report found rural states would gain most from immigration-driven growth, with the Dakotas leading in job openings per unemployed worker.

• U.S. labor force participation is at its lowest since the pandemic, with health care and construction short-staffed. Mullin is still on track to meet Trump’s deportation goals, with over 350,000 removals since October.

LIVESTOCK AND MEATPACKING

Inside Climate News
A very American invention, pushed to an extreme
August 9, 2026

• Blackshirt Feeders is building the nation’s largest feedlot in rural Dundy County, Nebraska, for 200,000 cattle on a square mile of concrete. Ranchers there fear it will drain and pollute their groundwater amid deepening drought.

• The operation is already the district’s biggest water user, and the state cited it for nitrate violations this year, with monitoring wells showing levels two to three times the legal limit. Manure spread on nearby fields threatens drinking water.

• Nebraska has eased CAFO permitting under Gov. Jim Pillen, and federal law sets no size cap. Developers cited that regulatory certainty, plus cheap corn and nearby slaughterhouses, in choosing the site.

MINING AND DRILLING

Kentucky Lantern
Trump announces $180M for mining education as administration recommits to coal
August 10, 2026

• Trump announced $180 million in grants for mining schools to rebuild U.S. coal, a push that could revive jobs in rural coalfield communities but may lock them into a declining industry.

• The DOE will spread $100 million across 14 accredited mining schools, while $80 million from the DOD goes to three programs. The University of Kentucky joins a South Dakota-led workforce consortium.

• Trump said half the mining workforce will retire within three years, and U.S. schools graduate fewer than 170 mining engineers yearly versus China’s 3,000.

PIPELINES

Inside Climate News
Neighbors live in fear after pipeline leak in ‘Unleashing American Energy’ era
August 11, 2026

• An Energy Transfer pipeline leaked jet fuel into the drinking water wells of a suburban Philadelphia neighborhood, and federal regulators have stayed largely absent. Communities on private wells anywhere, common in rural areas, face the same gap since the Safe Drinking Water Act doesn’t cover them.

• Fuel components like benzene turned up in 28 homes since 2023. The EPA declined to step in, and PHMSA, which cut 17% of staff under Trump, took no enforcement action despite finding a probable violation.

• Energy Transfer gave $25 million to a Trump-aligned PAC weeks after the first federal notice, then negotiated a lighter consent agreement. Trump’s proposed rules would explicitly exclude groundwater from Clean Water Act protection.

POLLUTION

Inside Climate News
Permian Basin community seeks fix for radium in its drinking water
August 11, 2026

• The rural West Texas town of Imperial has water contaminated with naturally occurring radium, and many residents drive 30 miles to buy bottled water. Small rural systems often can’t afford treatment, an inequity that leaves poorer communities more exposed.

• In 2025, 29 Texas water systems serving over 22,000 people exceeded radionuclide limits. Pecos County Fresh Water has violated combined radium standards 19 times since 2020. Long-term exposure raises cancer risk.

• Treatment is complex and costly. Brady, population 5,000, reached compliance this year using $31.4 million in state funding, but officials say tiny towns like Imperial lack the money and help.

Politico’s Energy & Environment News
EPA moves to rescind Biden-era tribal water quality rule
August 10, 2026

• The Trump administration plans to rescind an EPA rule requiring states to weigh tribes’ rights to fish, hunt and gather when setting water quality standards. Rescinding it could weaken pollution protections for rivers and lakes across rural tribal lands.

• The Biden-era rule gave tribes a way to compel regulators to account for their consumption of traditional plants and animals when setting the standards that shield water bodies from pollution.

• The EPA is close to advancing the proposal, according to an Office of Management and Budget notice Friday. The administration argues the rule exceeded the agency’s authority.

REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS, PREGNANCY AND CHILDBIRTH

Stateline
More college students will have access to abortion medication
August 11, 2026

• Colorado became the fifth state requiring public colleges to provide or arrange abortion medication for students. Rural students, who often lack nearby clinics or transportation, could gain access they’d otherwise struggle to reach.

• Colorado’s law also covers private colleges, with exemptions for religious institutions or federal grant risks. It joins California, Illinois, Massachusetts and New York.

• California may extend its 2023 mandate to community colleges by 2029, though health center directors warn many lack the money and staff to comply.

Stateline
Anti-abortion groups urge attorney general to halt mailing of abortion pills
August 10, 2026

• Anti-abortion groups asked Attorney General Todd Blanche to enforce an 1873 anti-obscenity law against mailed abortion pills. A crackdown would hit rural patients hardest, since many rely on mail-order medication where clinics are distant or absent.

• The letter, led by Mike Pence’s Advancing American Freedom, wants the DOJ to reverse 2022 guidance that Comstock doesn’t bar mailing the drugs. Blanche has pledged to review it.

• Telehealth accounted for 27% of U.S. abortions in early 2025, over 162,000 cases. Advocates say they’d shift to misoprostol alone if mifepristone rules fall.

SAFETY NET PROGRAMS

Politico
Trump lets Medicare drug subsidy lapse before midterms
August 11, 2026

• The Trump administration is ending a Biden-era subsidy that lowered Medicare Part D premiums, just before midterms shaped by cost-of-living anger. Rural seniors, who lean heavily on Part D and vote at high rates, could feel the increase sharply.

• The change hits roughly 20 million people in standalone Part D plans without low-income subsidies. CMS chief Mehmet Oz estimates most will pay under $10 more monthly, with some seeing lower premiums.

• The administration says the pilot funneled billions to insurers, costing $6.2 billion in 2025. KFF found it did lower premiums and stabilize plans, and warns 2027 could bring broader increases.

WATER

High Country News
Opinion: Utah is killing the Great Salt Lake
August 11, 2026

• Utah’s overuse of water, driven by cheap rates and lawn irrigation, is drying up the Great Salt Lake and pushing it toward collapse, threatening a $1.9 billion economy and rural water-district finances, argues Wade Graham, a historian and Glen Canyon Institute trustee.

• Inflows are down 40% since the late 1980s and volume 64%, exposing nearly 1,000 square miles of toxic lakebed. Dust drives 2,480 to 8,000 premature deaths yearly, one 2020 study found.

• Utah is still pushing a Bear River pipeline to divert 200,000 more acre-feet for suburban lawns. A new law lets the state judge-shop to block lawsuits from groups like the Utah Rivers Council.

Politico
Dems work to protect a top House recruit in Wisconsin
August 10, 2026

• National Democrats are scrambling to shield top recruit Rebecca Cooke in Tuesday’s primary for a rural southwestern Wisconsin swing seat, as anti-establishment anger lifts her left-flank rival.

• Cooke, a DCCC “Red to Blue” pick who nearly beat GOP Rep. Derrick Van Orden in 2024, is airing Bernie Sanders ads and backing a data center moratorium.

• Challenger Emily Berge, a former Eau Claire council president running on Medicare for All, has made D.C.’s finger on the scale her rallying cry.

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Reuters
In rural Wisconsin, frustrations over Trump ag policies heat up House race
August 10, 2026

• Rising anger over Trump’s farm and fuel costs is heating up a rematch in rural southwestern Wisconsin, where Democrat Rebecca Cooke aims to unseat GOP Rep. Derrick Van Orden.

• Cooke, a dairy farmer’s daughter and part-time waitress favored in Tuesday’s primary, says Trump’s Medicaid, SNAP and tariff moves have left rural voters behind.

• Van Orden defends the agenda, including the Iran war that raised fuel and fertilizer prices. Trump’s rural approval has slid from 60% to 51%.

AFFORDABILITY

The New York Times
Opinion: Meet the Americans who can’t afford haircuts or toilet paper
August 1, 2026

• A trip through four Southern and Plains states finds deep poverty worsened by Trump’s cuts to food stamps and Medicaid, writes NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof; such cuts likely fall hardest on rural communities.

• He profiles people cut off from aid, from an Oklahoma City woman selling plasma with $3.78 in the bank to a working Arkansas mother of six now behind on rent.

• About 1.5 million children have lost food stamps this year, and Kristof faults both parties for neglecting Americans left behind.

BUSINESS AND INDUSTRY

RFD-TV
Cash flow pressure reshapes rural small business borrowing
August 10, 2026

• Cash flow now rivals inflation as a top worry for small businesses, pushing rural firms to borrow defensively just to cover routine costs, Dun & Bradstreet reports.

• The strain hits firms tied to farm income, from equipment dealers to truckers and restaurants, as producers delay purchases and stretch payments.

• Access to credit is uneven, with longer approvals and surprise credit issues; the advice is to watch cash flow early before routine borrowing becomes emergency financing.

CHILD CARE

Kentucky Lantern
Beshear expands Pre-K pilot program to another KY school district
August 6, 2026

• Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear is expanding Kentucky’s “Pre-K for All” pilot to Dawson Springs, enrolling about 160 children in a tornado-hit rural town with few early-learning options.

• The pilot now covers five districts, most of them rural: Dawson Springs, Franklin County, Glasgow, Rockcastle County and Robertson County.

• A 2025 executive order created an advisory panel that urged phasing in expanded pre-K statewide; its report found only about 48% of Kentucky children are ready for kindergarten.

CYBERSECURITY

Cybersecurity Dive
Civil-society initiative will pay cybersecurity vendors to protect rural water systems
August 10, 2026

• A volunteer cyber group and the rural water association will pay firms to give free threat monitoring to small water utilities, the tiny rural systems most exposed to hackers.

• The DEF CON Franklin project will cover five vendors’ services for systems serving under 10,000 people, over 90% of U.S. water utilities, after recent Iran-linked attacks.

• Backed by philanthropy, including Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, organizers say Washington must step in via the Farm Bill to fund it at scale.

DATA CENTERS, CRYPTOCURRENCY, AND AI

Politico
Plugged in, powered up, pissed off
August 7, 2026

• Data center power lines are sparking backlash nationwide, with rural landowners and ratepayers increasingly bearing the burden of a buildout driven by Big Tech.

• Wisconsin regulators revoked a $1.4 billion line for a Stargate data center after too many route changes muddied public review.

• In Texas, ranchers and Republican lawmakers are fighting 1,200 miles of high-voltage lines to the Permian Basin; Maryland says PJM billed its customers $2 billion for lines serving Virginia data centers.

Politico’s Energy & Environment News
Virginia to offload more grid costs onto data centers
August 6, 2026

• Virginia regulators ordered Dominion Energy to bill data centers directly for grid costs now paid by all ratepayers, relief for rural households that help foot the bill.

• The order could shift hundreds of millions in transmission costs off the public through up-front charges for substations and lines serving data centers.

• Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger pushed regulators as energy costs shape the midterms. Industry says it will pay in full, but fights loom over regional lines and gas plants.

Maryland Matters
Counties scramble to respond to data centers, setting moratoriums, a ban
August 10, 2026

• Thirteen Maryland counties have paused data centers and Harford became the state’s first to ban them, a rural-rooted revolt over noise, power costs and gas plants that crosses party lines.

• Harford’s executive cited too little electricity to run the centers and expects others to follow. Montgomery extended its pause to 18 months; Frederick froze new permits.

• Counties await a state impact study due to Gov. Wes Moore by Sept. 1. Advocates warn the pauses may only delay projects residents don’t want.

Pennsylvania Capital-Star
More data center proposals keep coming to Pennsylvania. So does the outcry.
August 10, 2026

• Opposition to data centers is surging across Pennsylvania, a backlash likely sharpest in the rural and exurban towns now targeted for new projects.

• A Quinnipiac poll found 74% of voters oppose a data center in their community. A “Data Center Resistance” Facebook group has topped 41,000 members since January.

• Lawmakers filed 30-plus bills, from a three-year moratorium to faster permitting, but the $50.8 billion budget only made large centers report energy and water use.

Kentucky Lantern
The data center fight in Kentucky is about democracy
August 10, 2026

• Kentucky’s data center revolt is really a fight for democracy: development on residents’ terms, not whatever outsiders offer, writes Jason Bailey of the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy.

• At least 30 counties have passed limits or moratoriums, some officials lost May primaries, and Gov. Beshear declined to praise a $100 billion Paducah project.

• He warns Kentuckians, already paying more via PJM and burned by flops like AppHarvest, against 50-year tax breaks for an unproven, debt-fueled AI boom.

Colorado Newsline
Local governments in Colorado enact moratoriums on data center development
August 10, 2026

• Colorado communities from Denver to rural towns are pausing new data centers over water, energy and pollution worries, a revolt crossing partisan and geographic lines.

• At least eight local governments have moratoriums, including a five-year pause in tiny Lochbuie, the longest in the state. Denver’s council voted unanimously for a one-year halt.

• The moratoriums follow lawmakers’ failure to pass two data center bills. A Gallup poll found 70% of Americans oppose data centers in their town.

DRUGS AND ADDICTION

University of Iowa
Mobile clinic expands addiction care in rural Iowa
August 10, 2026

• A University of Iowa mobile clinic brings addiction medication and care to rural Iowans who often live hours from a specialist, treating substance use disorders on the spot.

• On the road twice a week across six counties and funded by opioid-settlement money, the van has served 100-plus patients and adds help like Medicaid and housing.

• Rather than create dependence on the van, staff train local clinicians, as at Vinton’s critical-access hospital, to build lasting rural capacity and cut stigma.

EDUCATION

The Daily Yonder
‘This is the model’: A $40 million program for workforce training in Virginia
August 10, 2026

• Virginia’s FastForward pays two-thirds of short-term job-training costs, a model rural college leaders call a game changer that has grown from $4 million to $40 million in a decade.

• Nearly 40% of students attend the state’s 14 rural colleges; graduates see wages rise about $14,869, and electric co-ops often cover a student’s share for jobs like powerline work.

• Backers say its short courses beat the new federal Workforce Pell, which requires longer programs and FAFSA, though credential-completion tracking remains a hurdle.

FOOD AND HUNGER

EdNC
Meeting families where they are: How one rural school district delivers summer meals to doorsteps
August 10, 2026

• A rural western N.C. district delivers free hot summer meals to 200-plus children’s doorsteps daily, a rare model reaching ultra-rural families cut off by distance and transport.

• Transylvania County runs three routes Mon.-Thu. under a 2022 federal to-go option that helped N.C. sponsors grow from 7 to 60 since 2023 and serve 5.3M meals in 2025.

• Born of pandemic and Hurricane Helene relief, it leans on federal per-meal funds; advocates say more districts could copy it with better funding.

MILITARY AND VETERANS

WCTV
Madison Veterans Services launches networking event to support vets in rural communities
August 10, 2026

• A north Florida veterans office is launching a one-stop-shop networking forum to help rural vets navigate benefits and resources many struggle to find on their own.

• Officer Kaysona Golden, a Navy veteran, says housing and transportation, especially to out-of-town medical appointments, are major hurdles for rural vets.

• The forum is set for Friday, Aug. 14, at 6 p.m. at Madison’s 701 Brewery, bringing community partners and veterans together.

MINING AND DRILLING

Kentucky Lantern
Appalachia’s black lung rates highest in nearly 50 years as miners’ protections stall
August 5, 2026

• NIOSH data show veteran underground miners in central Appalachia have black lung at the highest rates since 1978, a toll on rural coal communities that hold little clout to demand action.

• Researchers blame toxic silica dust from cutting more rock as big coal seams run out. Of 280 miners screened in five years, 91 tested positive; over 1,700 died from 2020-2023.

• A 2024 rule tightening silica limits stalled after industry sued, and Trump officials haven’t fought the delay while spending to boost coal.

REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS, PREGNANCY AND CHILDBIRTH

Stateline
‘I wanted the pregnancy. It was just so scary.’
August 7, 2026

• Crisis pregnancy centers have drawn hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars with scant oversight, filling gaps in ban states with shuttered rural clinics and maternity wards.

• Their stories vary: an Idaho mother of twins called her accredited center a godsend; a Florida woman felt pressured on religion and hounded by calls after birth.

• Former staff raised alarms, including a Kentucky nurse who found expired disinfectant on ultrasound probes and an Illinois director who quit the movement.

National Governors Association
Reimagining rural maternal and child health
August 6, 2026

• States are tapping a new $50 billion rural health fund to bolster maternal and child care, an NGA report says, as the U.S. logs high maternal deaths and worsening preterm rates.

• Plans span three fronts: growing the rural workforce (Delaware’s first medical school); telehealth and regional hubs (Alabama’s telerobotic ultrasound); and integrated care.

• Nearly half the U.S. faces maternal-care shortages, and the push is bipartisan, with governors from Arkansas to Maryland urging collaboration.

WILDFIRES

Stateline
Wildfire veterans fear federal tactics, extreme fires could put crews at risk
August 4, 2026

• Wildfire veterans warn that Trump officials’ full-suppression orders, paired with extreme fires, are endangering crews across the rural West.

• The Agriculture and Interior secretaries ordered aggressive initial attack this season, which critics call a return to a failed strategy that abandons letting some fires safely burn.

• A June blaze killed four firefighters in Colorado, and Spokane’s worst-ever fire razed 600 structures. Foresters cite drought plus federal staff cuts and turmoil.

Inside Climate News
Wildfire smoke is now a bigger prenatal threat than human sources of air pollution
August 7, 2026

• Wildfire smoke has become a bigger prenatal threat than cars and industry, a new study finds, erasing Clean Air Act gains and hitting rural, low-income and Native families hardest.

• Tracking 65 million U.S. births from 2003 to 2019, University of Maryland researchers found human-source pollution fell 37% while wildfire exposure doubled.

• Prenatal smoke raises risk of preterm and low-birthweight babies and lifelong illness, yet the hardest-hit rural communities often have the least neonatal care.

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