U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell made the announcement Friday alongside local and federal Kentucky officials and members of the U.S. military in Greenville, Kentucky.

During a press conference at the local VFW Post, McConnell identified trinitrotoluene – better known as TNT – as a critical explosive for Air Force weaponry, from hand grenades to aircraft bombs, and a key investment priority for the Army. That U.S. investment comes courtesy of a $435 million military contract for Repkon USA – an aerospace and defense manufacturer – to build and operate the first domestic source of the explosive chemical in the Bluegrass State.

McConnell said the future Muhlenberg County facility is part of a larger effort “to get America ready to prevent war by being strong.”

“If I had to describe where we are today, I would say it looks like before World War II,” the Republican leader said. “Let me tell you where we are: We’re up against a network, an actual network, of authoritarian regimes – North Korea, China, Russia, Iran. Iran and Iran’s proxies are all communicating with each other. They hate us, and they want to reform the world order in a way that benefits autocratic regimes.

“So a way to look at this is an impending conflict between authoritarian parts of the world and democratic parts of the world, and we have to be the lead.”

After the presentation, McConnell said that “it’s cheaper to prevent war than it is to have one” and referenced former President Ronald Reagan as he called for increased military defense spending by the U.S., calling the country’s current spending levels “nowhere near adequate.”

“We need to build up our defense industrial complex and spend more in order to avoid having to spend even more in a conflict. As Reagan said it, ‘You get peace through strength.’”

Maj. Gen. John G. Reim commands the Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey, which is home to 90% of the United States Army’s lethality. He spoke in Greenville about the Army’s need to expand production capacity when it comes to 155 mm artillery – a variable type of munition that’s become a critical component in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

Reim said he hopes for U.S. production of 155 mm artillery to hit 100,000 “shots” – finished rounds with a fuse, an explosively loaded steel projectile principally filled with TNT, a propelling charge and a primer – a month by 2026.

“This new TNT facility is a key part of our munitions production ramp up strategy giving us the added capacity to stay ahead of evolving threats and production requirements,” Reim said. “This history-making initiative underscores our commitment to strengthening our national security and reducing reliance on foreign sources for critical materials.”

Reim said that making TNT on American soil for the first time since 1986 is the best way to meet that commitment.

Repkon USA president Bryan Van Brunt said the facility will increase the resiliency of the United States by ensuring “critical capability for the U.S. military that packs explosive punch.”

“This unique facility will not be like the TNT plants of decades past,” he said. “This TNT facility is going to take advantage of state of the art automation and a novel waste neutralization process to make it one of the most high-tech, safe and environmentally friendly TNT plants ever constructed.”

The Environmental Protection Agency has identified trinitrotoluene as a possible human carcinogen. Guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention links the compound with adverse health impacts like blood disorders, abnormal liver function, spleen enlargement and anemia.

Scientists have strived to develop alternatives to TNT over the past decade because of the compound’s environmental properties and its explosive sensitivity.

When asked if Repkon had considered manufacturing alternatives like IMX-101 – which got Army approval in 2010 – or BOM, Van Brunt said this will be a safer TNT facility than those of the past.

“TNT is a proven explosive that’s been used in military munitions for decades and decades. The question is whether it can be produced safely in an environmentally friendly fashion – and it can be,” he said. “One issue with TNT over many years is it’s being produced in World War II-era plants. Back then, the methods of production were a bit different. We’re going to use … the same chemical process [but] it’s a different production method altogether. There won’t be any wastewater, and it will be done in a way to not put out the pollutants.”

Van Brunt said he expects to break ground on the factory in six months with the first batches of TNT coming off the line in around three years. The planned facility in Graham, an unincorporated community of Muhlenberg County, will create around 50 permanent jobs.

McConnell called the announcement an “absolutely spectacular development” for the western Kentucky area.

“This is a breath of fresh air for Muhlenberg County, and an opportunity to be involved in something that’s extremely important for our nation,” he added.

Local officials and veterans were also on hand to celebrate the military contractor coming to the community – which has a history of producing explosives through manufacturers like Dyno Nobel, also located in Graham.

“We’ve been actually at the mercy of other countries for this product that’s going to be built here,” said Muhlenberg County Judge-Executive Mack McGehee. “This is a great day for the United States, bringing this industry back.”

Retired U.S. Army Sgt. Joe Roney – a Vietnam veteran, the senior commander of the local VFW post and a native of Powderly in Muhlenberg County – was overjoyed at the announcement.

“We’ve had explosive plants out there anyway. I think this county is going to receive this very well,” he said. “I’m one of the biggest military supporters there is. I’m happy for it.”

Copyright 2024 WKMS

By Jaymie Baxley

When your house is flooded and all your soggy belongings are piled on the street in front of your home, having a cavity or a toothache might seem like a small problem. 

But it could become a bigger problem for residents of Avery County, where one of the primary dental clinics was inundated with floodwaters generated by the remnants of Hurricane Helene in late September.

More than a month after the storm, most stores and restaurants in Newland, the county seat, are still closed. Piles of ruined belongings sit waiting for collection in the yards of battered homes throughout the little town, which lies in a bowl surrounded by mountains and is bisected by the North Toe River. 

On a recent afternoon in the lobby of Avery Medical, a clinic near the center of Newland, two women shared stories about the devastation they’d witnessed. One told the other she would have been “assed out” if the floodwaters that surged through her home had risen just a few inches higher.

“I’m just blessed that we made it out alive,” she said.

A total of 102 Helene-related deaths have been confirmed in North Carolina as of Nov. 8. At least five people from Avery County perished in the storm.

Avery Medical is run by High Country Community Health, a nonprofit that provides affordable care to low-income patients who lack health insurance. Many people in this rural county, which has a population of about 17,500, depend on the organization.

Nearly 15 percent of Avery County’s residents live below the federal poverty line, and 14.6 percent are uninsured, according to data from the N.C. Rural Center. The median household income for the county is only $53,500, well below the statewide average of $70,800. 

Alice Salthouse, CEO of High Country, said seeing the storm’s toll on the struggling community has been “gut-wrenching.”

“Every day on my way to work, I drive past people’s homes — and everything they’ve owned is outside waiting for somebody to come take it all to the dump,” she said. “We’ve got older adults who have lived in their homes for years and years, and now their homes are gone. People’s lives have changed and will never be the same again.”

Care during a crisis

High Country moved quickly to help residents in the immediate aftermath of the storm.

Providers for the organization, which has nine locations in western North Carolina, deployed southeast of Avery to Hickory Regional Airport in Catawba County to care for patients who had been evacuated there from nursing homes and rehabilitation centers in Helene’s path. 

Staff members traveled hazard-strewn roads to deliver food, medicine and other essential items to people in the federally declared disaster area. Avery Medical became a distribution hub for supplies donated by local charities and churches.

But the organization did not emerge unscathed from what The Avery Journal-Times described as the “one of the greatest natural disasters” in the county’s 117-year history.

Avery Dental, a High Country-run clinic in Newland, suffered heavy flooding, with waters rising as high as four feet inside the facility. Salthouse said everything in the seven-chair clinic, from dental equipment to the insulation packed behind its sheetrock walls, was either destroyed or contaminated.

“We’ll have to put up new walls, put down new flooring and redo the electrical,” she said. “It’s almost like building a whole new place, only more complicated.”

High Country experienced an estimated $3.6 million in lost revenue and property damage in connection with Helene, with most of that tally tied to the ruination at Avery Dental. 

Salthouse said it will be months before the clinic reopens.

Dearth of dentists 

Avery Dental shares a plaza with a half-dozen other businesses, including the Times-Journal, in Newland’s commercial center near the North Toe River. Those businesses also flooded, but the loss of the clinic dealt an especially harsh blow to an area where access to dental services was already limited. 

According to data from the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, the average ratio of dentists to residents in North Carolina is 1-to-1,630. But in Avery County, there is just one dentist for every 2,200 residents.

Salthouse said the disparity was much worse before Avery Dental opened its doors in 2015. That year, there was only one dentist per 5,860 people.

While there are other dental offices in the community, the clinic is the only option for many residents because of its sliding-scale fee system. Patients are charged what they can afford to pay based on their income.

“They can come in and see the dentist for far, far less,” Salthouse said. “I mean, when was the last time you went to the dentist and got your teeth cleaned for $45?”

Avery Dental is also one of the only local providers that accepts Medicaid. Data from the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services show that more than 4,300 Avery County residents are currently enrolled in the program, with children accounting for about 43 percent of the county’s enrollees.

“You have a huge population of children that are on Medicaid,” Salthouse said. “Having a dentist in this county is crucial, but recruiting them to this county is difficult.” 

One barrier to recruitment, she said, is the area’s topography. The roads to Avery County cut through snow-prone mountains, making travel hazardous in the winter.

The mountainous terrain also amplified Helene’s impact on the county. Steep slopes and ravines funneled water from the swollen North Toe River and its tributaries into low-lying areas. 

Serving the underserved

Ashton Johanson joined the staff of Avery Dental less than two months before the clinic was flooded.

A disc golf enthusiast from Colorado, Johanson earned his degree in dental surgery from the Utah School of Dentistry and went on to work with low-income patients at public health clinics in the Salt Lake Valley. He had been thinking about moving to North Carolina when he learned about a job opening for a dentist in Newland.

“I had a few opportunities around the state, but this seemed like the best fit for me and my family,” he said. “We wanted to try something different, and this was an area with a population that really needed dentists. It seemed like a chance to serve the underserved, which is something I’m passionate about.”

Johanson, who began seeing patients at Avery Dental in August, was still adjusting to his new environment when the environment was upended by Helene.

Since early October, he has been working out of a van parked in front of High Country’s medical clinic about half a mile from the waterlogged dentist’s office. The vehicle was previously used as a mobile clinic for cleaning children’s teeth at local schools.

While it can’t accommodate all the same services as the dental clinic, the mobile unit has enough space and equipment for Johanson to provide emergency exams, tooth extractions and fillings.

“The first week we were open, we had a hard time getting patients in here,” he said. “Even if people had tooth pain or some other dental emergency, their houses were underwater and the roads weren’t drivable. They had bigger problems than coming in to see us.”

Business began to pick up once the waters receded. Johanson said more than 100 patients have visited the mobile unit over the past month, with about eight people stopping by each day.

In the meantime, High Country has contracted with a demolition crew to gut the flood-damaged interior of Avery Dental. After the facility has been stripped to its frame, air quality studies will be conducted to ensure that it is free of mold spores and disease-spreading bacteria. 

High Country is soliciting bids to rebuild the clinic at the same location and restock it with dental equipment. Salthouse estimates the project will cost between $500,000 and $750,000. 

“This is a very big deal for this county, for us to get this dental clinic back up and running,” she said.

The post In rural Avery County, Helene washed away one of the only dental clinics appeared first on North Carolina Health News.

Meadow Creek Dairy, located in Southwest Virginia where the edge of Grayson County and the city of Galax meet, has been laboring quietly to turn out the perfect artisanal cheeses for 25 years.

Locally, they’re not a flamboyant presence; no cheese festivals, no public tours of the facility, no gift shop where you can buy cute ceramic cows and cheese gift baskets, or cafe with pricey gourmet melts. It’s family-run, small, and they tend to business competently and with minimal fuss. 

They have, however, won a long list of awards, which last year included a Super Gold designation at the 35th annual World Cheese Awards in Trondheim, Norway, one of 100 such designations.

Only one out of 100 doesn’t sound stunning, until you realize they went up against 4,502 cheeses from 43 countries. Their winning entry was the Appalachian cheese, the first they ever made, with its white outer penicillium mold and mild, buttery flavor. 

Thanks to the Feete family and their employees, you’ll never be able to look at individually wrapped supermarket “cheese food” slices the same way again. 

The farm is at the end of an unpaved driveway and isn’t picturesque so much as utilitarian (though inside, it’s pleasantly full of natural light). Depending on when you pull up, it’s quiet, the cows out to pasture and the Feetes and their interns and employees attending to business in the office, the shipping area, the cheese room or the caves. 

Kat, daughter of the owners and founders, shows up to lead the way. Mild-mannered and friendly but not given to superlatives or gushing, she’s the one who OK’d a visit and is willing to explain things with teacherly patience. 

Through a series of seemingly alchemical processes — that aren’t magical at all, but measurable by basic science — milk is turned into cheese here. The kind of patience required for this transformation seems to mark everyone at Meadow Creek with a gentle good nature and a quiet sense of humor. 

Nobody’s lazy, but everyone’s relaxed. There’s no making things go faster, or at least not without compromising quality. And if at the end there’s a bad batch of product, no tantrum will undo the damage. Thus, everyone conveys through their attitudes, there’s no reason to get upset. 

You need that patience and endurance to be a cheesemaker: patience to wait out the process of turning curds into wheels and wedges, and endurance to withstand the almighty stink of the process.

Helen and Rick Feete, Kat’s parents, came to the area from Northern Virginia and Maryland; in their lives before Meadow Creek, she was an office worker and he was a carpenter. 

They decided to build their venture in Grayson County back in 1987, since land prices were good and they liked the local music. “My father’s thing is,” said Kat, “we bring in the New York dollars, but we spend them in Galax.”

She and her brother, Jim, were raised locally, but traveled across the world for cheese shows. Both now married, their lives still vacillate between international dairy events and the bucolic routines of the farm. 

The cows are milked outdoors, New-Zealand style, and driven to whichever meadow is to be their feed for the day; Meadow Creek practices rotational grazing, which means they mostly snack on a part of pasture for a few hours, then get milked and turned out to another bit of pasture. Their grassy diet is supplemented with some grain. 

To travel between most areas indoors at Meadow Creek requires a pair of Wellingtons and stepping into and out of shallow trays of “quat” (quaternary ammonia), to kill off any invasive bacteria that could enter from without and ruin the cheese. (For similar reasons, almost everyone wears head wraps to keep hair out of the way.)

Kat heads for the nearby cheese room, which is where the cooking, aka the first part of the alchemy, takes place. Raw milk stored in nearby tanks is pumped into one or both of the large steel Dutch vats via overhead pipes, she explains. The procedure is a little different for each of the cheeses, but generally, it’s warmed in the vats and starter bacteria is added.

Then rennet, a coagulant, is also added and the mixture is cooked in the vats. Then it’s drained, pressed to get rid of further whey, cut according to the type of cheese being made, put into hoops or forms and drained and pressed again. This continues with occasional flipping to even out the texture, depending on the type of cheese.

The next day it’s brined, then allowed to dry for a day, then moved to the cellar.

The cheese room’s temperature is maintained at a mild, humid 70 degrees Fahrenheit or so, by dint of fans and vents whose airflow keeps condensation from forming and possibly dripping onto the proceedings below. You’d think with raw dairy products, the space would smell, but it’s just faintly milky in a wholesome sort of way.

(It’s worth noting here that Meadow Creek has to date always passed rigorous inspection from both the USDA — which is over the farm — and the FDA — which is over the dairy.)

The vats, whose outsides are encased in a carefully temperature-controlled “water jacket,” sit at the far end of the room. A series of long, rotating blades revolve slowly through them, stirring the current mixture of milk and starter and rennet, which is curding up. 

The dairy employs young people from an internship program based out of Ohio State University; most though not all are from Central America. They start their education in their home countries and spend a year at Meadow Creek on a student visa, learning hands-on, then take the knowledge back with them. 

Two of them, Ana Arguello and James Longanecker, are now working the cheese room, cleaning up, getting ready for the curds to be moved from the vats to a container that looks like a long sink, but is properly called a drain vat, via a flexible hose. Once begun, the process takes a few minutes.

Once they’ve been moved, they stir the curds by hand with an oarlike paddle, separating them from the whey, which is drained from the vat and into buckets. Fresh, artisanal cheese curds, if you were wondering, look like a combination of a separated cream sauce, cottage cheese and foam insulation.

More work has to be done to push as much whey from the curds as possible. While they’re still in the drain vat, flat metal plates are placed on top of them. The plates are themselves topped with the heavy, whey-filled buckets. Using the weight of whey to extract more whey is both ingenious and somehow humorous. 

Plastic hoops and muslin cloths are readied; the curds are cut into portions, packed into the hoops, wrapped in the cloths and stacked in a hydraulic cheese press to further rid them of liquid. The labor of this, which even after hundreds of years relies heavily on the use of human effort and wits, underscores the concept of “artisanal” in a way that all the talk in the world cannot. 

Everything being done partakes of a long tradition — the gentle good humor of everyone involved, the faint watery swish of whey, the stacked wheels of what will develop into cheese. The cheesemaking could be happening today or five hundred years ago, in Grayson County or across the ocean in a land whose borders have long since shifted.

It’s almost enough to make you ask if you could join the farm and become an intern, calmly stirring the curds yourself, awash in the diffuse light and camaraderie.

This fantasy comes to a screeching halt when the work before you is done and Kat leads you to the “caves,” also called cellars, which are underground, industrially kept rooms where the cheese ages, routinely getting flipped to keep its texture consistent. 

Ammonia reams your nostrils out like a blade. The smell grips you and will not let go until you flee upstairs again. If being spiteful on purpose had a smell, it would be the odor of handmade cheese ripening. 

The cheese started upstairs gets washed in a morge (pronounced “morj”) of water, salt and bacteria that creates a rind. Or the Grayson and Mountaineer cheeses do; the Appalachian gets sprayed with penicillium mold on the outside, which develops into a white fuzz. People with penicillin allergies can usually eat it — Kat’s husband, who has the allergy, can — but they don’t recommend it.

“It’s the penicillin rind,” said Kat of the smell, “it’s producing the ammonia. It’s obnoxious, and we’re doing the best we can, but it’s just a natural byproduct.”

She continued, “It’s older, it’s getting aged about eight months or more. That’s why the rind looks all raggedy and shaggy.” (It does, far more than it does when you buy it out in the world.) “They’ve basically grown a second layer of penicillin on top of the penicillin at this point. We just let it age until we wrap it. The penicillin stays. Isn’t the kind you would be allergic to, it’s a different variety. It also will not cure you of your infections!” she laughs.

The Grayson is aged for about 60 days, the big rounds of Appalachian for 90, and the Mountaineer for six months, because it’s bigger, 14 or 15 pounds, as opposed to the others’ square-wheeled weights, at about seven to eight pounds. 

The caves are named for the Marx Brothers, by the way; Harpo has mostly Grayson, Groucho mostly Appalachian. “We’re making the most Appalahcian right now, so Groucho fills up,” said Kat. 

The caves are full of uniform cheeses that please the eye (if not always the nose) and promise a future full of deliciousness. Odd to think how ephemeral the whole of this is, but it is, which was proven by a global disaster.

“It’s a little precarious, you know, especially for smaller cheesemakers,” said Kat of the business in general. “But we had the restaurant market.”

Then, of course, 2020 rolled around and COVID struck.

“It was April when I saw the real nosedive,” said Kat. “We lost 97% of our business that month.”

They managed to recover to a degree; by the end of the next month it was up to 50%. “People were starting to pick up, the grocery stores were figuring out what they could do,” she said. “We were at 30% total [business loss] by the end of the year, and that’s not nothing.”

Most of the cheesemaking community took a hit. 

“And we were one of the lucky cheesemakers, because our cheeses are aged,” said Kat. Aged cheeses meant that possibly by the time some were ready, the worst of the pandemic might be over — though for Meadow Creek, that only got them so far.

“I did end up throwing out inventory,” Kat said. “But if you were making fresh cheeses, which especially a lot of the smaller cheesemakers do, and the ones making goat cheeses, it was a loss. You can only keep it for about 30 days. You have that one month to try and recover and sell stuff out. A lot of people took a hard hit.”

Meadow Creek Dairy spent 2020 dumping good milk, because nothing could be done with it, and cows, whether their product is going to market or into the ground, need to be milked daily; it’s what they’re bred for. 

Additionally, small farms didn’t qualify for government assistance. “There were programs in place, but they only applied to people who were selling into the commodity markets,” said Kat. “If you weren’t, you didn’t get any government money for the milk you dumped.” 

Commodity specifically refers to selling the milk as it is into the market where it’ll be turned into a product sold by a larger company. “It has to move into the corporate structure, basically,” like selling it to a Kraft factory, she said. Smaller farmstead and artisanal venues like Meadow Creek Dairy, who operate independently from these systems, got none of those financial protections. 

“So it was a hard year for us to get through, but we’re a little older and we have a little more of a money cushion,” Kat said. “And we were able to salvage a lot of our cheese because we are longer-aged.”

The crunch meant several cheesemakers went under.

“We lost people,” she said. “There weren’t a ton of people around for cheesemaking in Virginia. The South, there’s not a ton of cheesemakers and then, you know, Virginia’s got some tight regulations — that’s fine, we’ve always been able to work with them. But it’s a hard business to get into. Rick [Feete, her father] says when my parents moved here in ‘88, there were 80 or 90 dairies in Grayson County, and now there’s three. We’re one of them.”

And lately, they had to dump five days’ worth of milk — raw dairy being especially dangerous to leave sitting around — due to Hurricane Helene, but thankfully their generator was running and kept 50,000 pounds of existing cheese at the correct conditions.

“We didn’t have any major infrastructure damage that would set us back, either,” said Kat. “It was no fun, but in the end, for us, it was a blip.” Many farms and individuals in Grayson weren’t so lucky; she expressed gratitude to have been spared the worst of it.

Their herd came through it as well. They have a closed herd, meaning it’s comprised only of cows they’ve raised, of which there are 135, New Zealand Frisian-Jersey hybrids. 

“We call them ‘the French girls,’” she explained. “It contracted a little in 2020, that big ol’ chasm in everybody’s lives. We did have to sell off some of the herd, and we’re working on building it back to about 150 over the next two years.”

In order to live out here and spend your days making cheese, you have to find such things absorbing, and not everybody’s cut out for it, as some interns have found.

“We’ve had two people, one from Houston, the other guy was from New Jersey,” recalled Kat, “and it’s funny; both of them were like ‘We’re so excited to be out of the city!’ and both of them after they got here a few months said, ‘This is awful.’” She laughed. 

“I like it, but you’re gonna have to accept there’s no night clubs. There’s three restaurants. I’m a homebody. For people like us, it’s like ‘Yes! This is my happy place!’ but if you’re used to a more social life, it’s hard.”

What to console yourself with if you discover that farm life isn’t what you hoped for? Well, obviously, there’s always cheese.

Cheese Sex Death, the Instagram account you didn’t know you needed if you’re a cheese-intensive foodie, ran a picture over five years ago of a be-ringed, long-nailed female hand holding a thick, inviting wedge of pale yellow cheese, appealingly riddled with small holes and encased in a light orange-ish rind. 

Captioned, “How do you pair a cheese that smells like feet, feels like custard, tastes like beef, and has a rind that crunches like it’s coated with sugar? Grayson from @meadowcreekdairy,” the entry was more than enough to make you want to roll right out to the nearest cheese purveyor and bite into a piece of said stuff as if into an especially juicy burger. 

Back in the office, Kat brings out a tray of cheeses for tasting: extra-aged Appalachian, Galax and, yes, thank heavens, Grayson. As she points out, Appalachian is somewhat like Tomme de Savoie or Toma Piemontese; Grayson looks like Taleggio (and is often displayed alongside it in cheese cases); and Galax is described as a soft, mild cheese, sort of like an Edam or Havarti.

Grayson is aged 60 days, Appalachian for 90 days, Mountaineer (not in today’s roster) for six months and Galax for at least two. 

Everyone’s favorite, or at least the one you hear the most about, is the Grayson, the one “Cheese Sex Death” took a shine to. 

It’s far and away the most pungent, remarkable in a lineup already so strong. Galax’s Chapters Book Shop, which carries a range of delicacies in their food and wine section, keeps the Grayson in a separate small refrigerator. If it’s opened, everyone in that half of the store immediately knows. If it’s left open, everyone in the other half knows as well. 

Grayson is the stinky cheese lover’s dream come true, and, if you can get past the olfactory assault, like eating the world’s most unctuous fudge, but made of beef, almost steak-like in its fatty density. Take one bite and your entire sensorium is occupied with the experience. 

As Kat points out, its flavor, like that of all Meadow Creek’s cheeses, changes with the seasons, because the cows graze rotationally in the farm’s pastures and the quality of the grasses they eat change as well. It’s a neat example of the French concept of terroir, how the conditions and season and territory a foodstuff is produced in affect its flavor and quality. 

“They produce lots of milk after calving in March, so there’s tons of it, but it’s not necessarily as rich,” she said. “And then in fall, you’ve got this ridiculously dense milk. And that’s partly because of the stage of lactation and partly because the grass is drier and denser. And so the cheese, too, is fattier and richer.”

She continued, “In the case of Grayson it’s most notable. In the summer it’s pretty light, actually, and very smooth-textured and with some mushroomy flavors, but by fall it’s very earthy and much more rich in a way people associate with washed rind cheeses.”

Following its flavor from spring to fall is like drowsing in a meadow, casually taking note of how the light and shadows change as the sun moves slowly from one side of the sky to the other. Each shift affects the experience, never quite the same from moment to moment. If wine is bottled history, cheese, with its shorter lifespan, is an edible memory from a private, blissful season.

“Here’s a young Grayson,” Kat said, pointing to a small piece. “It’s not going to be too crazy on you. This is the spring Grayson. It’s not even all that smelly. It stays pretty calm this time of year. It’s a little earthy.”

You can tell what it’s going to turn into, if you’ve had a Grayson that’s further on in the season; it’s like a very light Morbier or a very young Forme d’Ambert. 

Kat nodded. “You have that edge of earthiness and that texture.”

The inside of the cheeses variously have eyes and crystals; eyes are little openings, like the holes in Swiss cheese and are caused by bacteria, and crystals are made up of either tyrosine or calcium lactate (you might forget to ask which is which as you’re moaning around a mouthful of artisanal dairy product). 

And, counterintuitively, the pandemic gave them the impetus to create new products.

“In 2021, because we had some spare milk and we were struggling to figure out where things were going to go, we tried two new cheeses,” said Kat. These turned out to be Mountain Laurel and Galax. However, Mountain Laurel, with an 18-month aging process, is a “sideline” as she puts it, so much so that by now it doesn’t appear regularly on the website. 

“Mountain Laurel probably isn’t going to expand that much at this point because it’s an 18-month cheese and it takes a really long time,” she said. “When you find out 18 months later what you did wrong — it’s hard.” (By now it seems to have permanently disappeared.)

Galax has entered the regular roster, though, and it’s proven to be a winner, with some up-front fussiness that can be left alone once it’s in the cellar. It’s sort of a Gouda analog, but less sweet. 

“It’s done really well,” Kat said. “It’s a washed-curd style, with a mixed rind, so there’s a lot of skill that goes into it from a cheesemaking end, but once it goes into the cellars, it just kind of rides.”

Galax is a good cheese for someone who’s intimidated by (or grossed out by the potential funkiness of) artisanal cheeses. “It’s very smooth, it’s very mild, it’s very approachable,” she said. “It’s just a great cooking cheese, and we have a lot of fun with it. So we’re happy.”

On average, local family tables are more apt to have grocery-store American cheddar than gourmet cheeses, but that doesn’t mean Meadow Creek never puts in an appearance: “It’s been selling well locally,” noted Kat. “People like having a cheese that’s named after the city, and we did want to honor Galax.”

She adds, “You know, this has always been a good town for us, and we’ve always had a lot of support here. We were trying to keep the price down on it, because our other cheeses, the prices have just inescapably climbed between labor and the feed in the dairy. Grain, grass, hay for winter — everything just goes up and up. We tried to keep the price of Galax low so we have something that’s approachable for folks.”

The Appalachian is a sort of happy medium between the assertive pungence of Grayson and the agreeable mildness of Galax. It’s a slow-change artist in terms of flavor. Regular Appalachian is buttery and somehow manages to integrate a citrusy brightness (more so when young) to a dark, mushroomy note (more so when older). 

“Until we did Galax, Appalachian was our most approachable cheese,” Kat observed.

Extra-aged Appalachian is a deeper, more concentrated version of the same, like the difference between reading an accomplished author’s early work versus a later opus — an odd way to describe a dairy product, but absolutely apt while you’re tasting it. It has a bready sort of smell and could be described as if Parmesan was a soft cheese.

“This is what Murray’s picked up, and what the cheese crowd really wants to taste,” said Kat. “And it’s almost at the edge of having crystals. You taste that, how there’s almost a crunch? So in certain ways the texture isn’t as appealing, but that kind of crunch is considered a big plus mark in the cheese world.”

Back in the day, they sold locally and then on the East Coast alone. Now they’ve been picked up by distributor Murray’s Cheese, based out of New York, so they have a wider range. Their cheeses pop up to favorable reception all the way out in the West Coast. The cheese section of your nearest Kroger, which is stocked partly by Murray’s, will often have a Meadow Creek Dairy product or two in stock. Wegman’s carried a few, such as Appalachian, before the pandemic. 

However, they still wrap and ship cheeses from here and stepped up in 2020, doing a steady retail business. “It’s only a chunk of our income but it’s nice. We can sell directly to people and have a direct connection,” she said. 

There’s a little more time to sit and savor the cheeses and conversation — a consummate pleasure afforded everyone here almost every day. “I frequently have a piece of cheese with fruit and milk for dinner, because I’m lazy,” Kat smiled. Her husband and 12-year-old daughter frequently do the same.

It’s this very pleasure that’s ultimately the point of the work. Kat dislikes most commercial American cheeses; they don’t taste good to her, and seem to be more about getting certain standard elements of nutrition into a diet than anything else. 

“We use [our cheese] all the time in the kitchen,” she said. “We do a staff lunch, so we do a cooked old-school dinner in the middle of the day, a full farmhouse meal, and we use the cheese constantly there.”

The other standard American belief, that too much fatty dairy in your diet, doesn’t seem to hold here. Everyone looks naturally robust, healthy, glowing. Artisanal cheese must be very good for the mind, as well, because everyone also seems very happy. Is that the case?

Kat’s only answer is to laugh, popping another savory, unctuous morsel of cheese in her mouth. 

Meadow Creek Dairy is located in Galax and does not offer tours or an on-site store, but their cheeses are available through direct mail purchase and via retail, including grocery stores that carry foods through Murray’s Cheese. They are on Facebook at www.facebook.com/meadowcreekdairy and can be found on the web at www.meadowcreekdairy.com/.

The post Meadow Creek Dairy puts Grayson County on the artisanal cheese map appeared first on Cardinal News.

BAIROIL—Audra Thornton knew every person who visited town hall on Tuesday to cast their vote in the election. But she still turned some folks away, instructing them to return with their IDs.

After all, rules are rules — even in Bairoil, a tiny and shrinking Sweetwater County community that only about 60 people call home.

“It doesn’t matter if we know them or not,” Thornton said. “We still have to see their identification. We just have to abide by the law.”

Following state and federal laws is of course a necessary part of administering any election in Wyoming. Poll workers and county staff, however, go to extraordinary lengths to pull off an election in the most rural reaches of the least populated state in the nation.

Bairoil’s just one example. The tallest task of every election in the former company town at the east edge of the Red Desert comes at the end of the night.

Thornton, a veteran election judge, phones in vote counts to election officials in Sweetwater County’s seat, Green River. Cindy Lane, the county clerk, classifies those as “official, unofficial” results. But the actual ballots still need to physically arrive in Green River to be fully certified. And 160 highway miles divide the two towns, which sit on opposite ends of the eighth largest county in the United States.

Bairoil’s three election judges, all women, contemplated the great journey those ballots must take. The locked bin enclosing the ballots crosses over the Continental Divide three times. That’s the hydrological feature that splits the country into two, determining whether water flows into the Atlantic or Pacific oceans.

Bairoil itself sits in the Great Divide Basin — essentially a gap in the Continental Divide, where water flows nowhere — and so the ballots first cross over while headed east of town. After a westward Interstate 80 turn at Rawlins, the ballots enter back into and then exit the Great Divide Basin, making for the triple crossing.

The ballots’ unusual every-other-year odyssey is one that many Bairoil residents hope keeps happening.

“They already closed our school,” election judge Adene Wuertley lamented. “They can leave our polling place alone.”

Bairoil, like many once-booming industry towns, is losing population and a shell of its former self. U.S. Census data shows that the population once surpassed 200 people in the 1990s. That tumbled to 68 by the 2020 Census — it’s the figure that appears on the sign coming into town. And it’s kept on slipping.

“We’re probably closer to 61 right now,” Wuertley said. “We’ve had several people move out.”

As the population has gone away, so have services and amenities. Nowadays, commercial services for the general public have essentially narrowed to a vending machine at town hall.

The track record helps explain why Bairoil residents want to keep what they have, even if it’s the ability to vote in person without having to leave town.

“This is a good thing that they’re here, it really is,” said Frankee Foley, one of the last residents to cast her ballot on Tuesday.

It’s a “heck of a lot better,” she said, than the long drive. The next closest Sweetwater County polling station is in Wamsutter, 78 miles away.

Thornton, the lead polling station judge, agreed. About 80% of Bairoil residents, she pointed out, are over the age of 65.

“It would be a hardship on a lot of people,” Thornton said. “I hope they don’t close it down.”

It’s been tried before. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, former Secretary of State Ed Buchanan encouraged clerks around Wyoming to consolidate polling stations, partly because it was a tough year to recruit polling station workers.

Bairoil’s residents who didn’t vote by mail traveled to Wamsutter that year, the judges recalled.

Keeping the polling station local in Bairoil gives voting day an especially small-town flair. As 5 p.m. approached, the election judges had tallied up 41 ballots — a good turnout, considering there were then 50 registered voters in town. In the last couple hours of the day, almost all of the missing voters trickled in.

Wuertley at one point even rang a neighbor to check in on someone who was sick, though it turned out they were too ill to vote.

Just after 7 p.m., Thornton declared the polls closed to those present: a reporter, her two fellow judges, and a Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Deputy Sean Snider, whose job that night entailed a 160-mile ballot box delivery to Green River. After a phone call to the clerk, certifying papers and fussing with cable locks, the ballots were on the road and soon after traveling 80 mph down I-80 across southern Wyoming.

A couple hours later, the box landed in Green River with Lane and her staff at the Sweetwater County Clerk’s Office. Keeping polling places like the Bairoil vote center going, the clerk said, takes work: Staff has to transport voting equipment the day before, and results on Election Day are delayed an hour or so.

It’s not the only far-flung polling site Sweetwater County administers. The Washum and McKinnon stations, Lane said, are every bit as small — one’s even located on an ADA-compliant family farm.

“They really enjoy their polling locations in those small communities,” Lane said, “and they hold on to what they have.”

People are spread out in rural Wyoming, she said, and it’s full of small mining communities where people work “7 to 7.”

“I like that they have options,” Lane said.

BEFORE YOU GO… If you learned something from this article, pay it forward and contribute to WyoFile. Our work is funded by readers like you who are committed to unbiased journalism that works for you, not for the algorithms.

The post Holding an election in remote Wyoming requires extraordinary measures. Just look at Bairoil. appeared first on WyoFile .

Donald Trump was elected the nation’s 47th president in the early morning hours after Election Day, returning to the White House with a decisive win in both the electoral college and the popular vote. Trump especially made inroads in urban and suburban areas, and increased his margins in rural America since 2020. For instance, in blue-collar Fayette County, Pennsylvania, outside Pittsburgh, Trump won nearly 70% of the vote, increasing his margins by almost 5% since 2020.

According to AP VoteCast, 62% of rural voters voted for Trump and 36% for Kamala Harris, about a 4% rightward shift compared to 2020. Harris underperformed Biden’s 2020 numbers in many rural counties across the nation, especially in swing states, and lost ground in Black rural counties in Georgia and North Carolina.

Down ballot, many races have yet to be decided. As of Wednesday, both the House and Senate Agriculture Committees will see changes to membership in the upcoming legislative session, with two incumbent committee members, New York Rep. Marcus Molinaro (R) and Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown (D), losing re-election.

The following is a roundup of key races and results from rural or rural-related districts, with incumbents whose districts are in predominately rural areas or are either on the Agriculture Committee or Agriculture Appropriations Committee. These committees are important in determining rural-related budgets and the still-stalled farm bill re-authorization process that is likely to be negotiated in the 119th Congress.

U.S. Senate

Nebraska

In one of the more surprising races this year, independent candidate Dan Osborn narrowly lost a tight battle for a U.S. Senate seat in Nebraska. Republican incumbent Deb Fischer, who has held the seat since 2013 and whose current candidacy backed out of a long-held campaign promise of a pledge to only serve two terms. Osborn, a former union organizer, ran a labor-backed campaign whose working-class message and critique of corporate infiltration in politics drew in voters across the red-solid Nebraska. “Our U.S. Senate is a country club,” Osborn told Barn Raiser in an interview. “It’s full of millionaires, business execs and lawyers. Working-class people just aren’t represented.” Other Fischer supported the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, and supports a national abortion ban without exceptions, and has sided with dominant meatpackers and the agribusiness lobby to deny relief for ranchers in the state.

Montana

Republican Tim Sheehy, a former Navy Seal from a wealthy suburban Minneapolis family, defeated Democratic Sen. Jon Tester, a rancher, 53% to 45%, with 96% of the vote counted.

Apparently Sheehy’s derogatory comments about Native people made little impression on Montana voters. The Char-Koosta News, the official news publication of the Flathead Indian Reservation, reported that in an audio recording of a November 6, 2023, fundraiser, Sheehy bragged “about roping and branding with members of the Crow Nation.” He said, “It’s a great way to bond with Indians—while they are drunk at 8 a.m.” Attendees can be heard laughing.

We checked in with Gilles Stockton, a third generation Montana rancher, from Grass Range, Montana, who is a former president of the Montana Cattleman’s Association and author of Feeding a Divided America: Reflections of a Western Rancher in the Era of Climate Change. We asked Stockton, why Montanans voted for Sheehy and decided not to return Tester to the Senate for a fourth term?

“You mean, what is wrong with my neighbors? Well, that’s a hard one isn’t it? Why did people have so much confidence in Trump? I think it’s that they are just opposed to Democrats.

“Tester ran an authentic, beautiful campaign at every level. Although all of his campaign ads featured ranchers who were supporting him, his stump speech didn’t bring up agriculture at all. It was about public lands and healthcare and schools.

“The attack ads against him were based on making shit up. What do voters think they are going to get with Sheehy? He is a proven—if not a liar—a dissembler.”

That last comment was a reference to an Afghan War injury that Sheehy invented. At the same time, Stockton credits his fellow Montanans for voting for a constitutional amendment to protect women’s reproductive rights that passed by a wide margin.

U.S. House

Alaska 1

Democratic incumbent Mary Peltola faces off against third-generation Alaskan Nick Begich III (R). As of Wednesday evening, Peltola was trailing Begich by around 10,000 votes, with 75% of votes reported. Peltola is the first Alaska Native to serve in Congress, and first won the seat after beating Begich and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin in a 2022 Special Election with the slogan “Fish, Family, Freedom.” Begich’s grandfather, Nick Begich Sr., previously held the seat in the 70s, but disappeared on a chartered plane en route to Juneau. The race is currently leaning towards Begich, but results may not be known until all ranked-choice tabulations are released later in the month. Ballot Measure 2, an effort to repeal Alaska’s ranked choice voting system, is on track to pass. 

While both candidates have expressed similar views in support of oil drilling in Alaska, Peltola is in favor of larger federal infrastructure projects, and Begich has associated himself with deficit hawks in the congressional Freedom Caucus.

California 13

Freshman congressman John Duarte (R) faced off in a rematch with Adam Gray (D), who he narrowly defeated in the 2022 midterm election. As of Wednesday evening, Duarte held a nearly 3-point lead with a little more than 50% of the vote counted. Duarte has campaigned as a moderate Republican focusing on economic issues like inflation and touting his differences from national Republican policies on immigration and abortion, though he has voiced his support for the Dobbs decision that reversed Roe v. Wade.

Gray has consistently portrayed himself as a centrist who worked with members across the aisle during his time in the California assembly. Both candidates have close ties to the Central Valley’s agriculture economy—Duarte’s family owns one of the largest crop nurseries in the country, while Gray grew up working in his family’s farm supply store. The race is currently leaning towards Duarte. 

California 22

About 60% of votes have been tallied as of Wednesday evening, and Republican incumbent David Valadao, a former dairy farmer, is currently leading by a 10-point margin. California’s 22nd is a largely rural district in the Central Valley. Rudy Salas, his Democrat opponent, is looking to win a rematch he lost in 2022. Salas, whose parents immigrated from the Azores, once worked as an underage farmworker in the Central Valley as part of his father’s crew. He is a centrist that is seen to largely represent farmworkers in the valley.

Valadao won this district in 2022, after redistricting. He previously served in the 21st congressional district and was one of the few Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump in the wake of January 6. As a representative, his career has largely been shaped by water politics, where protecting water access to the valley’s massive farms and dairy operations often clashes with concerns of drinking water contamination by agricultural runoff. Valadao has been criticized for voting against the Inflation Reduction Act because it allowed the federal government to negotiate the price of insulin.

Colorado 8

In a race that remains too close to call, freshman Democratic Rep. Yadira Caraveo has a lead of about 4,000 votes over Colorado state Rep. Gabe Evans (R).

Iowa 3

Rep. Zach Nunn, a first-term Republican incumbent, member of the House Agriculture Committee and Air Force Reserve member, defeated a formidable challenge from Democratic candidate Lanon Baccam, an Army veteran and former federal Agriculture Department official with deep roots in rural Iowa.

Nunn held off Baccam by a four-point margin in a congressional district that covers parts of the Des Moines metro area and parts of southern Iowa. Baccam ran on a platform of protecting public education, reproductive rights and fighting for expanding rural economic development. Nunn won on a message of strengthening the economy by reining in bureaucracy and strict immigration laws.

Maine 2

As of Wednesday evening, with over 90% of the votes reported, Democrat Jared Golden has held on to a slim lead in his incumbent bid for the U.S. House in Maine, the country’s most rural state. Golden, a third-term representative and one of five Democrats that voted for Trump in 2020, is holding off a challenge by Trump-backed Republican Austin Theriault, a state representative and former NASCAR driver. More than $21 million in outside spending has been invested in the campaign, which has largely focused on guns, abortion and the high cost of living.

Nebraska 2

With over 95% of votes reporting, Republican incumbent Don Bacon, a retired Air Force commander, once again is narrowly edging out Democrat state Sen. Tony Vargas, a former science teacher and first-generation immigrant of Peruvian parents. This was a rematch from 2022, which Bacon won by just 6,000 votes, in Nebraska’s 2nd congressional district, a primarily urban and suburban district that includes Omaha and surrounding suburban and rural areas. Bacon has served on the House Agriculture Committee since he won this seat in 2016.

New York 19

Democrat Josh Riley toppled House Republican Marc Molinaro, a House Agriculture Committee member, to win a crucial seat in upstate New York that covers parts of the Hudson Valley, New York’s Southern Tier and the Finger Lakes. The district is larger in landmass than the state of Massachusetts, but with nearly 800,000 people. Molinaro defeated Riley in 2022 by fewer than 2 points. He was seen as one of the most bipartisan members of Congress. Riley’s 2024 upset capitalized on Molinaro’s rightward leap this election cycle, railing him as a “career politician” without a vision for solving D.C. gridlock and a Trump sycophant with a dangerous anti-immigrant platform.

New Mexico 2

Democratic incumbent Rep. Gabe Vasquez defeated Republican Yvette Herrel, who in 2022 Vazquez ousted from Congress in a district that is larger in landmass than the state of Pennsylvania. Vasquez, a first generation Mexican American, was born in El Paso, Texas, and raised in Cuidad Juárez, Mexico. He sits on the Agriculture Committee, representing a rural district that has a landmass larger than Pennsylvania.

Herrel ran a campaign largely focused on border security and crime. Albuquerque, one quarter of which is in the 2nd district, has a rate of violent crime that is almost double the national average.

Conceding defeat, Herrel posted on X:

“The results tonight weren’t what we hoped for, but I’m so grateful to the incredible people of #NM02 for their support over the years. With [Donald Trump] back in the White House, our country’s future is bright. Let’s come together and Make America Great Again!”

North Carolina 1

Democratic Rep. Don Davis, a first-term Democrat and Air Force veteran, has prevailed against former defense contractor Laurie Buckhout in largely rural congressional district in northeast North Carolina. Buckhout has voiced support for the January 6 insurrectionists and identifies herself as: “Mom. Wife. Combat Commander. Business leader. America First Conservative Fighter.” Davis has built an image as a bipartisan congressman, becoming one of the House Democrats most likely to vote against his party. He has the distinction of being the lone Democrat in Congress to co-sponsor a GOP bill to limit Medicare’s ability to negotiate drug prices.

Oregon 5

Democratic state Rep. Janelle Bynum held on to a nearly 8,000 vote lead Wednesday evening against Republican incumbent Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer. Chavez-DeRemer, is outside her party’s mainstream, being one of only six Republican House members to sign a pledge to respect the results of the 2024 presidential election. Bynum, a member of the Oregon House who with her husband Mark owns several McDonald’s franchises in the Portland area, has twice gone up against Chavez-DeRemer in Oregon State House races, defeating her each time.

Washington 3

In Washington’s 3rd district, with 82% of the vote counted Wednesday evening, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez appears headed to a second term in the House, is leading the GOP’s Joe Kent, 52% to 48%. Gluesenkamp Perez defeated Kent in 2022, making national news by winning in a congressional district that Trump won by four points in 2020.

Joe Kent, an Army Special Forces veteran who worked for the CIA, claimed the Covid-19 vaccines are an “experimental gene therapy” and employed the consulting services of a Proud Boy member during his 2022 campaign. He was endorsed by Donald Trump.

At an election night celebration Gluesenkamp Perez spoke to her supporters. “It is possible to take a different path. Step away from the national talking points and the hyper-partisanship, and run a campaign based on respect for working people and the issues that directly impact us here at home,” she said. “Focusing on the issues at home is how we break the extremism and the gridlock and start to fix what is broken in our country.” She did not endorse Kamala Harris for president.

Wisconsin 3

In Wisconsin’s 3rd District, Derrick Van Orden, a Christian Nationalist, defeated Rebecca Cooke, 51% to 49%.

In a story published on December 9, 2022, the day the Barn Raiser website launched, Jim Goodman, a retired dairy farmer and board chair of the National Family Farm Coalition,  reported on his newly elected GOP congressman, Derrick Van Orden, a man he described as a “former Navy Seal, Trump-endorsed election denier and January 6 insurrection participant.” Goodman wrote:

He claimed to have a plan for Wisconsin farmers but never elaborated in any detail. My guess is his plan will be scripted by corporate interests. Outside money and endorsements by big agriculture groups always come with strings attached.

During his campaign Van Orden fueled the fires of the culture wars rather than addressing the needs of farmers. At a prayer breakfast in October, Van Orden said, “There are many God-fearing Christians who are Democrats. There’s not a single God-fearing Christian that is a leftist, because those two things are incompatible.”

When one claims to be a Christian as Van Orden does, it is hard to understand his hypocritical, un-Christian behavior, violent threats, homophobia, and particularly his bragging about the time in the military when he delighted in exposing a young lieutenant’s poison-oak-swollen genitals to “two cute girls” who were his fellow officers.

Barn Raiser turned to Jim Goodman, a retired dairy farmer and board chair of the National Family Farm Coalition, to explain how Orden won this time around.

“Incumbency has something to do with it. He was on the Ag Committee and being a rural district that was pretty important. He did send out a newsletter, so he had the illusion of keeping in touch with the farmers in the district. He didn’t talk about yelling at Senate page or the last insurrection he participated in. He tried to paint himself as a guy who was out there working for farmers, working on the farm bill and for more imports.”

Goodman was happy to see that Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin beat back a challenge from Eric Hovde, winning with 49.4% of the vote to his 48.5%.

“She is good at being a moderate on farm issues,” he says. “She is all about Wisconsin having more markets for dairy products. And the fact of her being openly gay and winning farmers over is quite an accomplishment. And she talked quite a bit about the right to repair farm machinery.”

Goodman worries that Kip Tom, who is one of Indiana’s largest farmers and who served as Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture, is on Trump’s short list for Secretary of Agriculture. “Again it is going to be ‘get big or get out,’ ” says Goodman. 

Ballot Measures and Referendums

In Missouri a measure to increase the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour and guarantee paid sick leave minimum wage results from deep-red Missouri, won in rural counties and passed statewide by nearly 60%.

Almost 75% of Nebraskans voted in favor of requiring employers to provide earned paid sick leave.

In Washington state, voters beat down a measure that would have rolled back the state’s long-term care program, which applies a 0.58% tax on the paychecks of workers in the state to provide a lifetime benefit of $36,500 for nursing home care and long-term care.

Abortion

Americans in 10 states voted on whether to enshrine the right to abortion into their state constitutions. Five of those states had the opportunity to overturn statewide abortion bans that were passed after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, which eliminated the federal right to an abortion. In other states like Colorado and New York, voters decided whether to boost abortion protections that already exist under state law, making them harder to roll back in the event conservatives take power.

In Arizona, a large majority of voters said “yes” to Proposition 139, a measure that enshrines the right to abortion until fetal viability, or about 24 weeks, in the state constitution. Abortion is currently banned in the state after 15 weeks.

In Colorado, more than 60% of voters went in favor of amending the state constitution to block the state government from denying, impeding or discriminating against individuals’ right to abortion. There is currently no gestational limit on the right to abortion in the state. It needed 55% of the vote to pass.

In Florida, a majority of voters approved a measure to overturn the state’s six-week ban, however the measure failed because it did not gain the 60% of the vote needed to pass. It would have added the right to an abortion up until viability to the state’s constitution.

Maryland’s measure passed overwhelmingly. Initiated by legislators rather than citizens, it amends the state constitution to confirm individuals’ “right to reproductive freedom, including but not limited to the ability to make and effectuate decisions to prevent, continue, or end the individual’s pregnancy.” There is currently no gestational limit on the right to abortion in the state.

In Missouri, 51% of voters denied an amendment to overturn the state’s current, near-total abortion ban and establish a constitutional guarantee to the “fundamental right to reproductive freedom,” including abortion care until fetal viability.

In Montana, nearly 60% of voters approved an amendment to the state constitution to explicitly include “a right to make and carry out decisions about one’s own pregnancy, including the right to abortion” up until fetal viability, or after viability to protect a patient’s life or health.

Nebraska is the only state where voters faced competing ballot measures. The measure that garners the most votes would take effect.

A narrow margin of Nebraska voters rejected Initiative 439, which would have enshrined the right to abortion up until viability into the state constitution.

A slightly larger margin of voters approved Nebraska Initiative 434, which keeps intact the state’s current 12-week ban.

Nevada voters overwhelmingly agreed to amend the state constitution to protect the right to abortionup until viability, or after viability in cases where a patient’s health or life may be threatened.

In New York, abortion is currently protected until fetal viability. A majority of voters approved Proposal 1, which, while it does not explicitly reference abortion, encompasses abortion protections by broadening the state’s anti-discrimination laws by adding, among other things, protections against discrimination on the basis of “sex, including sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes, and reproductive health.” It does not explicitly reference abortion, but advocates say its pregnancy-related language encompasses abortion protections.

South Dakota voters rejected a constitutional amendment that would protect the right to an abortion only in the first trimester of pregnancy.

Ranked Choice Voting

Voters in four states—Colorado, Idaho, Nevada and Oregon—rejected measures to allow ranked-choice voting (RCV) in their state. Two states—Maine and Alaska—have already adopted this nonpartisan measure for fairer results and voted for president this fall with RCV.

The post Rural America in the 2024 Election: Key Races and Ballot Measures appeared first on Barn Raiser.

Donald Trump reclaimed Pennsylvania and the presidency Tuesday when the urban coalition that gave Joe Biden his 2020 victory in the state failed to show up for Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump won the state by 171,000 votes, primarily by eroding Democratic turnout in the major metropolitan areas of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

Harris earned 89,000 fewer votes in these major metropolitan areas than Biden did in 2020. Trump, meanwhile, earned about 30,000 more votes this year than he did in 2020 in those same counties in and around Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. (The Daily Yonder defines major metropolitan areas as ones with 1 million or more residents.)

The difference was determinative in a state that both candidates needed to win the Electoral College vote.

On a percentage basis, Trump won in all categories of counties except in major metropolitan cities and suburbs. He lost the core counties of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh (major metro) by 39 points, but that was 2 percentage points better than he did in 2020. In the suburbs of these major cities, he lost by less than a point, which was 2 points better than he did in 2020.

Trump swept the board in all other types of counties, from small rural areas to medium sized cities. And he improved on his 2020 performance in doing so. He did about 1.5 points better in medium-sized metro areas; 0.9 points better in small metros; and 0.8 points better in rural (nonmetro) counties.

Rural counties saw the least shift to Trump from 2020 to 2024, but that’s partly because his margin was already so high. Trump won 73.4% of the rural Pennsylvania vote this year, compared to 72.5% in 2020.

Medium-Sized Metropolitan Areas

In medium-sized metro areas , Trump won 38,000 more votes than he did in 2020, while Harris got 19,000 fewer votes than Biden did in 2020.

Trump won both the core counties of these metros and their suburbs by about 11 points, about 1.5 points better than he performed in 2020.

Medium-sized metros have populations of 250,000 to under 1 million. These are the cities and surrounding counties of places like Allenton, Erie, Harrisburg, Lancaster, Reading, Scranton, and York.

Small Metros

Turnout was lower for both candidates in Pennsylvania’s small metropolitan areas, which have populations under 250,000. There are nine small metropolitan areas in the state, ranging from East Stroudsburg (Monroe County) in the east to Johnston (Cambria County) in the west.

In small metros, both Trump and Harris won from 25,000 to 30,000 fewer votes compared to the 2020 election.

Trump got nearly two-thirds of the votes in these counties, a slight improvement from 2020.

Rural Counties

Trump improved his percentage of the rural vote in Pennsylvania by less than a percentage point compared to 2020. Trump picked up about 17,000 additional votes compared to 2020, while Harris lost about 2,100 compared to Biden’s performance in 2020. The net change amounted to about 15,000 additional votes for Trump among rural voters.

Trump won rural counties by over 45 points.

Methodology. The Daily Yonder uses the 2013 Office of Management and Budget Metropolitan Statistical Areas to determine county categories.

The post In PA, Trump Improves Rural Margin Slightly, but Collapse of Urban Dem. Vote Gives Him the Win appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

What you need to know:

• Preliminary Mat-Su voting results show both a $36.4 million bond for 10 major road projects and a $58 million proposal to fund three new charter school buildings won voter approval. A fire service area change for Caswell and Willow also appeared to pass.
• All incumbents appeared to retain their seats in the Mat-Su Mayor, Assembly, and School Board races, according to preliminary results. Newcomer Andrew Shane ran unopposed for the School Board District 4 seat. 
• Unofficial preliminary results include only votes cast on Election Day and early votes cast by Friday. All other votes, including about 7,000 absentee and questioned ballots, have yet to be counted.

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A pair of major Matanuska-Susitna Borough funding packages appeared to win voter approval Tuesday, while incumbents appeared to keep their seats in every borough race, according to preliminary results available early Wednesday.

The bond packages provide $36.4 million for 10 major road projects across the borough and $58 million to fund the construction of three public charter school buildings. Combined, they would increase Mat-Su property taxes by up to $51 per $100,000 in assessed value, according to borough estimates. 

Road funding appeared to win approval by a wide margin, with a vote of 18,283 to 7,639, according to unofficial results that did not include all ballots. Funding for charter school construction also appeared to pass, with a vote of 13,325 to 12,682.

In the Mat-Su Assembly race, all incumbents appeared to retain their seats. In District 7, which includes Talkeetna, Ron Bernier led challenger Sheena Fort, 2,145 to 1,675, according to preliminary results. In District 3, which includes parts of Palmer and Wasilla, incumbent Dee McKee led challenger Luke Hyce, 2,559 to 924. In District 6, incumbent Dmitri Fonov ran unopposed.

Unofficial preliminary results include only votes cast on Election Day and early votes cast by Friday. All other votes, including about 7,000 absentee and questioned ballots, have yet to be counted. The Assembly is scheduled to certify the election on Nov. 19.

Tuesday’s election saw a 28.5% voter turnout among Mat-Su residents, according to preliminary results. That compares with a turnout of about 33% in 2020, the last year with a presidential race also on the ballot. In 2016, another presidential election year, turnout was about 28%.

Borough Mayor Edna DeVries appeared to secure a second consecutive term, winning 22,426 to 1,374 against write-in candidates. Those included Hillary Palmer, who ran as a write-in candidate after her name was removed from borough ballots following confusion over a missed financial filing deadline.

In school board races, incumbent Tom Bergey led challenger Ben Kolendo 3,059 to 1,437 in the District 1 race. Kolendo previously served on the board as a nonvoting student representative. District 1 includes Butte and Sutton.

Andrew Shane, a former member of the school district’s now-disbanded Library Citizens’ Advisory Committee, ran unopposed for the District 4 school board seat, which includes the city of Wasilla. That seat is currently held by Jubilee Underwood, who appeared to beat incumbent David Eastman for the District 27 state House seat with just over 51% of the vote, according to preliminary state results. Find all other state House results here and state Senate results here.

Incumbent school board member Brooks Pitcher ran unopposed for District 5, which includes Big Lake.

A ballot question before voters in Caswell and Willow to officially combine the fire service areas for those regions appeared to pass in both areas, with 481 to 411 votes in Willow and 181 to 113 in Caswell.

This week’s election ushered in two subtle but significant changes to local ballots approved by the Assembly early this year.

Candidates newly elected to full terms as mayor or to the borough assembly will serve four years, up from three. Candidates for mayor, assembly, and school board also appeared on the ballot with a political party affiliation, a first for local governments in the state.

— Contact Amy Bushatz at abushatz@matsusentinel.com

KENT—Kent voters rode Connecticut’s Blue Wave, but it was not enough to stall Donald Trump on his path toward victory Nov. 5. Townspeople voted early and strongly for Democratic candidates, […]

The post Kent helps send Democratic delegation back to Washington first appeared on Kent News, Inc.

Donald J. Trump will once again be president of the United States. 

The Associated Press called the race for Trump early Wednesday morning, ending one of the costliest and most turbulent campaign cycles in the nation’s history. The results promise to upend U.S. climate policy: In addition to returning a climate denier to the White House, voters also gave Republicans control of the Senate, laying the groundwork for attacks on everything from electric vehicles to clean energy funding and bolstering support for the fossil fuel industry.

“We have more liquid gold than any country in the world,” Trump said during his victory speech, referring to domestic oil and gas potential. The CEO of the American Petroleum Institute issued a statement saying that “energy was on the ballot, and voters sent a clear signal that they want choices, not mandates.”

The election results rattled climate policy experts and environmental advocates. The president-elect has called climate change “a hoax” and during his most recent campaign vowed to expand fossil fuel production, roll back environmental regulations, and eliminate federal support for clean energy. He has also said he would scuttle the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, which is the largest investment in climate action in U.S. history and a landmark legislative win for the Biden administration. Such steps would add billions of tons of additional greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and hasten the looming impacts of climate change.

“This is a dark day,” Ben Jealous, the executive director of the Sierra Club, said in a statement. “Donald Trump was a disaster for climate progress during his first term, and everything he’s said and done since suggests he’s eager to do even more damage this time.”

During his first stint in office, Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement, the 2016 international climate accord that guides the actions of more than 195 countries, rolled back 100-plus environmental rules, and opened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling. While President Joe Biden reversed many of those actions and made fighting climate change a centerpiece of his presidency, Trump has pledged to undo those efforts during his second term with potentially enormous implications — climate analysts at Carbon Brief predicted that another four years of Trump would lead to the nation emitting an additional 4 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide than it would under his opponent. That’s on par with the combined annual emissions of the European Union and Japan. 

One of president-elect Trump’s primary targets will be rolling back the IRA, which is poised to direct more than a trillion dollars into climate-friendly initiatives. Two years into that decade-long effort, money is flowing into myriad initiatives, ranging from building out the nation’s electric vehicle charging network to helping people go solar and weatherize their homes. In 2023 alone, some 3.4 million Americans claimed more $8 billion in tax credits the law provides for home energy improvements. But Trump could stymie, freeze, or even eliminate much of the law. 

“We will rescind all unspent funds,” Trump assured the audience in a September speech at the Economic Club of New York. Last month, he said it would be “an honor” to “immediately terminate” a law he called the “Green New Scam.” 

Such a move would, however, require congressional support. While many House races remain too close to call, Republicans have taken control of the Senate. That said, any attempt to roll back the IRA may prove unpopular, however, because as much as $165 billion in the funding it provides is flowing to Republican districts. 

Still, Trump can take unilateral steps to slow spending, and use federal regulatory powers to further hamper the rollout process. As Axios noted, “If Trump wants to shut off the IRA spigot, he’ll likely find ways to do it.” Looking beyond that seminal climate law, Trump has plenty of other levers he can also pull that will adversely affect the environment  — efforts that will be easier with a conservative Supreme Court that has already undermined federal climate action. 

Trump has also thrown his support behind expanded fossil fuel production. He has long pushed for the country to “drill, baby, drill” and, in April, offered industry executives tax and regulatory favors in exchange for $1 billion in campaign support. Though that astronomical sum never materialized, The New York Times found that oil and gas interests donated an estimated $75 million to Trump’s campaign, the Republican National Committee, and affiliated committees. Fossil fuels were already booming under Biden, with domestic oil production higher than ever before, and Vice President Kamala Harris said she would continue producing them if she won. But Trump could give the industry a considerable boost by, for instance, re-opening more of the Arctic to drilling. 

Any climate chaos that Trump sows is sure to extend beyond the United States. The president-elect could attempt to once again abandon the Paris Agreement, undermining global efforts to address the crisis. His threat to use tariffs to protect U.S. companies and restore American manufacturing could upend energy markets. The vast majority of solar panels and electric vehicle batteries, for example, are made overseas and the prices of those imports, as well as other clean-energy technology, could soar. U.S. liquified natural gas producers worry that retaliatory tariffs could hamper their business. 

The Trump administration could also take quieter steps to shape climate policy, from further divorcing federal research functions from their rulemaking capacities to guiding how the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studies and responds to health concerns. 

Trump is all but sure to wreak havoc on federal agencies central to understanding, and combatting, climate change. During his first term, his administration gutted funding for research, appointed climate skeptics and industry insiders, and eliminated several scientific advisory committees. It also censored scientific data on government websites and tried to undermine the findings of the National Climate Assessment, the government’s scientific report on the risks and impacts of climate change to the country. Project 2025, the sweeping blueprint developed by conservative groups and former Trump administration officials, advances a similar strategy, deprioritizing climate science and perhaps restructuring or eliminating federal agencies that advance it.

“The nation and world can expect the incoming Trump administration to take a wrecking ball to global climate diplomacy,” Rachel Cleetus, the policy director and lead economist for the Climate and Energy Program at the Union for Concerned Scientists, said in a statement. “The science on climate change is unforgiving, with every year of delay locking in more costs and more irreversible changes, and everyday people paying the steepest price.”

The president-elect’s supporters seem eager to begin their work. 

Mandy Gunasekara, a former chief of staff of the Environmental Protection Agency during Trump’s first term, told CNN before the election that this second administration would be far more prepared to enact its agenda, and would act quickly. One likely early target will be Biden-era tailpipe emissions rules that Trump has derided as an electric vehicle “mandate.”  

During his first term, Trump similarly tried to weaken Obama-era emissions regulations. But the auto industry made the point moot when it sidestepped the federal government and made a deal with states directly, a move that’s indicative of the approach that environmentalists might take during his second term. Even before the election, climate advocates had begun preparing for the possibility of a second Trump presidency and the nation’s abandoning the global diplomatic stage on this issue. Bloomberg reported that officials and former diplomats have been convening secret conversations, crisis simulations, and “political wargaming” aimed at maximizing climate progress under Trump — an effort that will surely start when COP29 kicks off next week in Baku, Azerbaijan.

“The result from this election will be seen as a major blow to global climate action,” Christiana Figueres, the United Nations climate chief from 2010 to 2016, in a statement. “[But] there is an antidote to doom and despair. It’s action on the ground, and it’s happening in all corners of the Earth“

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The massive consequences Trump’s re-election could have on climate change on Nov 6, 2024.

Reading Time: 4 minutes

An impassive portrait of George Washington watched Tuesday’s Election Day proceedings from his perch above the entrance of Westfield Town Hall.

Washington’s expression offered no hint that the Marquette County, Wisconsin, town was recovering from political tumult: fierce divisions on a three-member board that culminated in September when voters ousted their town chair in a recall election.

Westfield’s election inspector and chief election inspector soon resigned, along with its treasurer and a town supervisor. The same evening the board approved those resignations, the town clerk, that meeting’s notetaker, handed in her notice.

None of the resignees nor the former board chair, Sharon Galonski, responded to requests for comment for this story.

Several news outlets, including the Associated Press, reported the events, prompting questions about how the resignations might affect Westfield’s preparation for the general election.

But interim Town Clerk Courtney Trimble said the media blew the situation out of proportion. Volunteers immediately stepped forward following the poll workers’ resignations. Trimble said she had a list of 12 who offered their names.

“I’m confident in their ability,” she said Tuesday. “These elections always feel — I don’t want to say ‘pressure’ — there’s more training that you put in.”

‘Hopefully, tomorrow the commercials will stop!’

Westfield’s polling place occupies its white clapboard-clad town hall, surrounded by cornfields and conifers. The converted one-room schoolhouse dates to the mid-1800s, and chalkboards line its interior walls. Scotch-Irish settlers, attracted by the area’s fertile soil and nearby springs, founded the community.

Here, voters trend conservative. During the 2020 election, they handily handed then-incumbent President Donald Trump 333 votes — nearly two-thirds of ballots cast.

Election greeter Chris Vander Velde stood at the hall’s entrance Tuesday, directing voters to wait in the foyer. They shuffled to the registration table, where poll workers Frank Traina and Susan Porfilio sat. Those caught in the day’s periodic downpours squeaked on the hall’s wooden floors.

Such orderly proceedings were unlike the tempest 2024 presidential cycle, marked by the unexpected withdrawal of President Joe Biden, two assassination attempts against Trump and the rapid ascent of Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee.

“Hopefully, tomorrow the commercials will stop!” said one voter who arrived mid-morning in a white and black plaid shirt and sparkly flip-flops.

She and Vander Velde laughed.

Behind her librarian glasses, Porfilio instructed electors to sign the register before continuing to the four voting booths arranged along the room’s perimeter.

The morning hustle? Distinctly ordinary.

One voter forgot her photo identification but returned later with the card in tow. A smiling man’s registration incorrectly appended the suffix “Sr.” to his name.

“I have no idea why,” he told Porfilio.

Traina checked IDs and reminded people the ballot was double-sided with the school referendum on the back

“Thank you for working the polls,” a voter in a maroon windbreaker told him.

“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be,” Traina said. With every flick of his arm, his “In God we trust” tattoo peeked out from under his Harley-Davidson T-shirt.

Residents of all ages flocked to the polls.

“No ID?” Traina jokingly asked a curly-haired kid, waiting, as their family signed in.

The child mumbled, hands in pockets.

Later, a young woman in a red raincoat and glasses stepped before Porfilio.

“Have you ever voted here before?” Susan asked.

“No, it’s my first time voting in general,” the woman said.

By 10:30 a.m., over half the town’s electorate had cast ballots, including absentee and early voters.

Porfilio chatted with a man in a Lake Michigan shirt. She checked his voter number.

“And I’ll give you your license back,” Porfilio said.

“You heard my house burnt down, right?” he said.

“No!” she said. “When was that? Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Yeah,” he muttered.

‘Take our township back!’

Across the room, Chief Election Inspector Lacey Baumann supervised the Dominion ballot drop box, the last stop on the voters’ town hall circuit.

Baumann awoke at 3:30 a.m. to milk her 53 goats so she could be at the town hall by 6 a.m., an hour before the polls opened. What started as a COVID-19 pandemic pastime became a side hustle, where she and her family make soaps, lotions, laundry detergent, bath salts and lip balm.

“I just want to confirm that there are two initials on the backside box of your ballot,” she told a woman in sweatpants. “You’re gonna put it in the machine where the arrows are. When you hear the second ‘ding,’ you’ll be good to go.”

Lacey’s twin sister, Lindsay Baumann, won Westfield’s recall election in September. Her campaign pledged to “take our township back!” and she bested Galonski by 32 votes.

From the first meeting in 2023 when its members were sworn in, turmoil marked Westfield’s town board. Members sparred during meetings. Discussion routinely veered into accusations of malfeasance.

The recall petition charged Galonski with a litany of offenses, including initiating the termination of the volunteer fire department without considering citizen input and consulting the town board, spending taxpayer dollars in excess and denying a board supervisor access to town property.

At an August board meeting, Galonski defended her actions and rejected one attendee’s call to resign to spare the town the cost of a recall election.

“I haven’t done anything wrong — not a thing. Everything has been done according to the law and by vote of the board,” Galonski said. “The majority of the board has taken action on many of the things that you want to do a recall on.”

‘It’s our right. It’s our privilege’

Voters continued to stream into Westfield’s town hall for the rest of the day. The town reached another turnout milestone.

“That’s what it’s all about,” Vander Velde said. “It’s our right. It’s our privilege. It’s our responsibility.”

Vander Velde, who moved to Westfield more than three decades ago, enjoys chatting with fellow residents on Election Day, but another reason she enjoys working the polls is the chance to learn the rules and regulations. She calls herself a “law and order person.”

“Government is really of the people,” Vander Velde said. “The people in this township are really good, close people, and you expect your government to respond that way.”

As anxious Americans awaited news of the presidency’s fate, Baumann, the town’s newly elected chair, said she felt the political slugfest in her community was over.

“It seems like there’s a lot more happier people,” she said. “We’re getting somewhere.”

‘Nowhere else I’d rather be’: An ordinary Election Day follows town’s extraordinary turmoil is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.