In February, Trump administration officials announced, in Kentucky, a change in rules intended to help coal.

In March, solar came as close as it ever has to generating as much power nationwide as coal.

According to federal data compiled by Ember, an energy policy group that favors clean energy, solar generated nearly 11% of U.S. power last month. Coal generated 12%.

Coal last fell below 12% in early 2024, according to Ember’s electricity data explorer, which uses numbers from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The big difference is that two years ago, solar generated only 7% or 8% of U.S. electricity.

And according to Ember, there have been five months so far where wind generation has exceeded coal, including March 2026. If the current trend continues, solar could outpace coal in the next few months.

Despite the curtailment of federal tax credits favorable to the development of renewable energy, solar is forecast to grow at a fast pace this year and next.

Two decades ago, coal was the nation’s dominant fuel for electricity. Due to the increased production and lower costs of hydraulic fracturing, natural gas overtook coal in 2016.

In more recent years, wind and solar combined have topped coal for electricity nationwide.

The Trump White House has taken a number of steps to enhance coal’s role in the country’s energy mix.

It has directed coal plants in multiple states to remain on the grid past their scheduled retirement. It has opened up federal lands for new coal leases.

It has rolled back regulations, including tougher Mercury and Air Toxics power plant rules imposed during the Biden administrations.

David Fotouhi, deputy administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, announced that change at Louisville Gas & Electric’s Mill Creek plant in February.

“On day one, and every day since President Trump has shown his unwavering support for beautiful, clean coal,” he said. “Coal keeps the lights on, provides good, high paying jobs, delivers affordable and dependable energy to Americans and enhances our national security through American energy dominance.”

Coal generation is forecast to drop 7% in 2026, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

Kentucky, which for a time was the nation’s leading coal producer, has relied more on coal from other states every year since 2019, according to the state Energy and Environment Cabinet.

Kentucky coal production was up slightly in the last three months of 2025, according to state data. Still, the year ended with 400 fewer coal mine workers statewide than when it began.

The news has not improved since the beginning of this year. In February, 300 workers at Clintwood JOD LLC, based in Pike County, were terminated.

Clintwood filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last month. Days later, its workers sued, seeking 60 days of pay and benefits. The workers alleged that the company violated federal labor law and did not provide the required 60 days notice ahead of their termination.

LG&E and KU is a financial supporter of WEKU.

Copyright 2026 WEKU

A shipping container in Fort Davis is at the center of a new experiment in bringing telehealth to an aging rural population.

Perched in the Davis Mountains of West Texas, Jeff Davis County faces steep barriers to care. Nearly one in five residents lacks reliable broadband. The only doctor in Fort Davis, the county seat, is semi-retired, and most people make the 30-minute drive to Alpine for care. With a median age of 58, among the highest in the country, the need for consistent medical care is growing, even as access, both in-person and virtually, remains a challenge. 

The retrofitted 40-foot container houses the new Davis Mountain Clinic in Fort Davis, a telehealth hub created through a partnership between Texas A&M and Texas Tech universities to connect residents with remote medical and mental health professionals.

But for rural Texas, expanding telehealth for aging populations depends on more than video calls. It requires reliable broadband, digital literacy for older residents, trusted community health workers, and practical ways for clinicians to weave virtual visits into everyday care.

Since opening in October 2025, the Davis Mountain Clinic has added something many rural telehealth programs lack: a physical place with reliable connectivity and a local registered nurse, Carol Brewer, who can take vital signs, perform physical exams, and guide patients through virtual visits with providers who may be hundreds of miles away. 

Brewer, who is also the director of the clinic, said this approach creates a whole new world of access for the community, especially for older patients who may feel less comfortable navigating virtual appointments. 

“The majority of the patients I see are part of an older population,” Brewer said. “The advantage is, when they come here to see the doctor, I manage the technology on my end, they don’t have to deal with that at all…I’m the hands of the physician via telehealth. I have a stethoscope and an otoscope. So they can hear their lung sounds, heart sounds, bowel sounds, or look in their eyes, ears, nose. I facilitate that.”

Brewer’s hands-on approach highlights how telehealth can be tailored to the realities of an older, rural population, where technology alone isn’t enough, and personal guidance can make the difference between care received and care missed.

“People who live in rural areas are older, sicker, and poorer than people who live in urban areas. Because of that, there are absolutely practical applications for telehealth and its clinical applications,” said Billy U. Philips, PhD, the executive vice president of the The F. Marie Hall Institute for Rural and Community Health at Texas Tech University. “But when you overlay with age dimension, then the delivery of care is really going to depend on local and personal circumstances.” 

Brewer sees the importance of local connection and community in her work every day. 

“I had a patient that came and saw the doctor [virtually] yesterday. His wife had dropped him off, and I gave him a ride home afterwards, because his wife had to go down to Alpine,” Brewer said. “There are just things that we can do for the patients that they’re not going to get anywhere else.”

Brewer said that even though the county has just 1,200 residents, she often sees several patients each day. Some come for virtual appointments, while others need help managing aging-related care, navigating insurance, or even obtaining copies of their medical records.

“I had a patient whose daughter came by and said she didn’t think her mom looked well, and her vehicle was out of commission, so she couldn’t get her to the doctor. I went to their home and checked on her mom, and sure enough, her oxygen levels were low and she wasn’t wearing her oxygen,” Brewer said. “We got her back on [the oxygen] and stabilized her, and while I was there, I called to set up a doctor’s appointment. The daughter was arranging another way to get her mom to the doctor. It’s a small community, so if they can’t come to me, I go to them.”

This hybrid delivery of care offers hands-on support while also connecting a rural community to specialists and providers in different corners of the state. 

Technology Challenges

A 2025 report from the Texas Broadband Development Office found that Jeff Davis County faces significant broadband challenges due to its small, aging population, mountainous terrain, and high proportion of residents with disabilities or limited English proficiency. These factors make deploying reliable, affordable internet costly and complex, often requiring public subsidies to make broadband expansion feasible. 

But these hurdles aren’t unique to Jeff Davis County. 

In rural parts of Texas’s Coastal Bend, along the Texas Gulf Coast, available broadband is not equivalent to reliable broadband. 

“Even if you pay for the platinum packages, you may at best receive only so-so service,” said Amy Kiddy Villarreal, director of the Coastal Bend Aging and Disability Resource Center. “Internet availability and quality are among the biggest hurdles [to accessing telehealth].” 

Philips said that across rural Texas, broadband is often limited, unreliable, and costly, creating obstacles for telehealth and other digital services. While commercial expansion may improve access over the next decade, for now some residents rely on shared community spaces, like clinics, senior centers, and libraries, to get online. 

These hubs not only provide connectivity but can also offer guidance for older or less tech-savvy residents, helping them navigate the digital tools they need for healthcare and daily life.

Highlighting the practical challenges of expanding connectivity, Philips emphasized the need for flexible solutions that give rural residents real choice: “The question now is: how do we get things done in such a way that rural populations have choice and have competitive pricing, and have places where they can have access, even if it isn’t in their home?” he said.

This effort is underway in the Coast Bend region. 

“Coastal Bend Council of Governments’ new broadband planning effort is working to bring better, faster internet to the parts of the Coastal Bend that need it most and will make telehealth visits more available and dependable for older adults,” Villarreal said. “By identifying where service is lacking and collaborating with local healthcare providers and community leaders, this plan lays out the groundwork for more reliable telehealth at home and in trusted community spaces. Together, these improvements help ensure that people in rural areas can access the care they need, when they need it.

Digital Literacy Promotes Health

Across rural Texas, distance is more than a matter of miles, it can be the difference between receiving timely care or going without it. In the Permian Basin, a region in southwestern Texas, older adults can travel hours for a routine doctor’s visit. Limited broadband access, few primary care providers, and scarce public transportation create steep barriers.

Alma Montes, director of Area Agency on Aging of the Permian Basin, is tackling these issues head-on with a commitment to helping older people in rural Texas age in place.

“In these rural towns, they really are the best places to age. In all my years doing this work, smaller communities are where you want to be when you’re older. You can drive longer, there’s no traffic, and everything, from your house to the senior center, is just a few blocks away,” Montes said. “You feel empowered longer. You’re connected to a community where people check in on you, know your routine, and notice if something’s off. It’s just a shame primary care isn’t there for them, because it truly is a great place to grow old.”

In these Permian Basin communities, social cohesion is strong, but health infrastructure is thin. Residents lean on neighbors and family, yet often have to leave town for basic services. Montes found that older adults’ struggles with telehealth weren’t just about access to broadband or devices. 

Through a partnership with Aetna, her team distributed tablets and trained about 50 seniors to use email and access virtual care. The bigger barrier wasn’t connectivity, she said; it was unfamiliarity. Many older residents were wary of technology they haven’t used before, making ongoing support essential for the successful implementation of telehealth. 

Montes said that investing in these skills, tools, and community partnerships paid dividends beyond just telehealth access. 

“We want to improve their overall well-being. Even if we didn’t fully get them to telehealth, there were gains along the way. They can now email family, send and receive photos, connect on social media, even Skype with loved ones. And we know, especially after COVID, that social connection has a real impact on health,” Montes said. “So even if they’re not all doing telehealth visits, they’re using technology in ways that positively affect their health.”

Community Health Workers

In many rural communities, and particularly among immigrant families, concerns about privacy, scams, and surveillance shape how residents engage with new systems. That’s where trusted local resources, like community health workers, become essential.

Community health workers are trained, certified locals who help residents navigate care, connect to services and access basic health support.

“Out in these rural communities, part of the [telehealth implementation] has to do with trust and whether you know the person,” Philips said. “Some patients have heritages that make them potential targets for law enforcement operations or other authorities. So you need a trusted figure–a navigator or community health worker–that’s known to that community and trusted. We equip those individuals to serve as a bridge, helping people understand and use the technology available to them.”

Training programs across rural Texas aim to expand the pool of community health workers and equip them both to be a local resource and a facilitator to accessing more expansive care virtually. 

Practicing Telemedicine

For Dr. Ariel Santos, a trauma and acute care surgeon and director of the Texas Tech Telemedicine Program, telemedicine allows him to triage patients across rural West Texas, determining when situations demand air ambulances or when a patient can be treated locally. 

“As a trauma surgeon, I’d rather be consulted earlier when there’s a trauma patient,” Dr. Santos said. “Telemedicine can be used to triage patients…It can either expedite treatment, or it can help determine that a patient doesn’t need to be transferred.”

Dr. Santos said these calls can save tens of thousands of dollars in unnecessary medical transfers and also reduce the number of visits a patient has to make as they receive continuity of care. 

“I could use [telemedicine] to pre-op the patient, meaning to prepare them before seeing them in person,” Dr. Santos said. “And postoperatively, I could see the patient and check on the wound easily, without them needing to spend time and money traveling.” 

Dr. Santos also sees telemedicine’s potential beyond trauma. One key example is Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes), a virtual collaboration model designed to support rural providers in caring for complex patients. 

In rural Texas, caring for older adults with dementia often means working without nearby specialists. The Dementia Care ECHO program uses a hub-and-spoke structure, connecting geriatric experts at a central “hub” with local primary care teams, long-term care staff, and community providers, the “spokes,” through virtual sessions. Multidisciplinary teams, including doctors, dietitians, pharmacists, and social workers, guide providers through real patient cases, helping them deliver specialized care that might otherwise be out of reach.

“Through the ECHO program, we can leverage geriatricians’ speciality using technology,” Dr. Santos said. 

For patients and caregivers, it brings expert support closer to home, though limited broadband continues to challenge access in many communities.

The Future of Rural Telehealth

Telehealth offers an alternative pathway for delivering care for both patients and providers. However, experts warned that telehealth should not be seen as a replacement for in-person care, but rather a supplemental service that expands access, especially for rural populations. 

“Telehealth is not a substitute for good, high quality primary care,” said Brock Slabach, chief operations officer at the National Rural Health Association (NRHA). “So in my opinion, it should be delivered as a tool for primary care and for specialists to be able to enhance the care continuum and hopefully, in many cases, reduce the need for in-person visits.” 

The Davis Mountain Clinic offers one example of balancing telehealth with in-person care delivery. 

“I think it’s a great model for other rural communities,” Brewer said. “The physicians we work with are very supportive. They’re very helpful, and they are also invested beyond just the services that they’re providing. They’re wanting to help in the community, they’re asking for ways that they can serve the community.” 

As rural communities continue to innovate in healthcare, discovering new ways to better serve their patient populations, they also face threats from cuts to broadband, health care, and education funding. 

Philips said that without sustained investment, rural communities may struggle to maintain the trajectory of growing telehealth programs and broadband access, putting patients’ health and the progress made in digital care at risk.

“A lot of these opportunities to adopt and adapt technology were funded by federal resources that are now heavily constrained,” Philips. “As a country, we have to decide whether we value rural people enough to supply them with the healthcare and other kinds of essentials, including digital literacy, that will allow us to keep them healthy.”

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This article was written with the support of a journalism fellowship from The Gerontological Society of America, The Journalists Network on Generations, and The Commonwealth Fund.

The post Part 1: Hands-On Telehealth Helps Reach Rural Texas Communities  appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

On a sub-zero day in Willmar, Minnesota, fifteen residents gathered around a table at a restaurant in town. It was the middle of the usual lunch rush on a Saturday, but the group sat alone. The restaurant was closed because ICE was in town. 

Invited by the restaurant’s owner Willie Gonzalez, the residents pushed tables together and sat in a large circle. 

They were there to talk about what was happening in their town. Thousands of ICE agents had descended upon Minnesota in recent weeks at the orders of the Trump administration – largely in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, but also in places like Willmar, a small town enriched by its residents of Somali and Latino descent.

That morning, ICE agents had shot and killed U.S. citizen Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. As in urban hotspots, ICE presence was escalating in Willmar.

For his part, Gonzalez, a Mexican-American citizen, made sure to sit on the side of the table facing the window so he could watch the street for ICE. 

The residents around the table were high school students and business owners, children and parents, white neighbors witnessing the terror in their community and neighbors of color living it. Some preferred not to share their full names in this article.

Shedding many tears, passing many tissues, but still managing to find moments to smile and laugh, the residents told their stories. 

“It’s the faces”

Christina Vander Pol spoke first. “Willmar is a very diverse community,” she said. “It’s one of the reasons I want to live in Willmar, because it makes my life rich.”

“You can see how much Willmar supports immigrants,” a young woman at the table said. The year prior, she had spoken at her high school graduation about how proud she was to be the daughter of immigrants, and how almost everyone in Willmar comes from an immigrant family in some way. After the speech, she said, she had feared the audience would be quiet. But the room erupted into boisterous clapping and yelling. 

Home to people with roots all over the world, Willmar is a celebration of different foods and cultures. According to residents, there are nearly 20 ethnic-specific grocery stores in the town of just 21,000. 

Vander Pol turned to the people sitting next to her – Juan, who owns a Mexican grocery store in town, and Lizbeth, his daughter who works at the store – and recounted what happened when she picked up a cactus fruit in their grocery many years ago. Juan noticed Vander Pol looking at the fruit like she had never seen it before. He then walked over to her, sliced the fruit in half, and handed it to her to try. “That’s not something that happens at a Walmart,” Vander Pol said.

These days, Juan said, his store is much emptier than usual. Many regular patrons are afraid to leave their homes to buy groceries. “They’re just grabbing people now,” Juan said, his daughter translating from Spanish.

Many people around the table had witnessed ICE agents arrest their neighbors in recent weeks. 

Vander Pol was downtown when ICE agents violently arrested a 19-year-old Somali high schooler, in the country legally, dragging her out of her car, detaining her at the Whipple federal building in Minneapolis, and later releasing her in the freezing cold two hours from home.

“You see things in the news and you think, ‘that’s never going to happen here,’” said Myra, another resident who was at the scene. “And then you’re witnessing it firsthand.”

Gonzalez was eating lunch at El Tapatio, a Mexican restaurant in town, when he saw four ICE agents eating a couple tables away. He even talked to them, telling them plainly to “treat people with respect.” After they had finished dining, the agents returned to arrest the restaurant’s owners and dishwasher. “For [ICE] to do that, after they got fed and everything,” Gonzalez said. 

A man at the table who knew the restaurant staff personally said, “these are people who have been here in the community for years, in the process of getting their citizenship.” It was horrible to see, he said, “especially [to do this to] a working person that’s feeding the people here in town.”

Another incident that looked to be more abduction than arrest took place outside the local Goodwill. Residents Allen Clark, Brielle Barrett and her 15-year-old daughter Adyssey Barrett were there when they noticed six ICE vehicles outside, with two agents in each.

“It looked like it was an FBI raid,” said Gonzalez, who came to the scene later.

While Clark and Brielle ran inside the store to alert everyone that ICE was there, Adyssey remained outside, under her mom’s instructions to stay in the car. “I didn’t,” she said, laughing through tears. When Adyssey saw ICE agents violently arresting a man, she approached them, recording on her phone, and asked to see a judicial warrant, at which point agents threatened to arrest her. 

Clark, also watching and recording, said that ICE agents did not confirm the man’s identity, did not give him any time to show documentation, and did not even allow him to speak with the Spanish-speaking ICE agent on the scene. 

ICE also arrested the man’s wife, all while yelling out confused questions about who she was. “If you don’t know their name,” resident Steve Vossen added, “what makes you think they’re the ‘worst of the worst?,’” citing the catchphrase the Trump administration has employed to justify their operations.

“But they still cuffed her, and in the van she went,” Clark said.

“It’s the faces,” Clark, Brielle, and Adyssey said, that stick with them the most. The faces of a father and his children inside the store when they were told ICE was outside. The faces of the people who were taken.

“And now they’re gone, and we don’t know where they are,” said Jennifer Lindquist, another resident at the table. “We have [so many] people being taken from this country, and how are we supposed to find them?”

“That doesn’t feel like an American story to me”

Perla Ocampo, an 18-year-old college student, spoke up next. It wasn’t Ocampo’s first time speaking up that week. A few days prior, she took to the podium at the city council meeting, telling the room how ICE agents had followed her home from work on several occasions, even violently dragging her out of her car once. 

“I was born here in Willmar,” Ocampo said. “But my color’s brown, so they think, ‘oh, she’s illegal.’”

“We can’t even be out in our own community without thinking we’re going to get brutalized,” said an employee of Gonzalez’s restaurant.

Gonzalez said he too had been personally terrorized by ICE: agents following his car, circling his restaurant, trying to record video of him, and even knocking on his mother’s apartment door. 

“It’s like a cat and mouse now,” Gonzalez said. “It’s one of those strategic things to do for them to put fear in people.”

The feeling is familiar to Gonzalez, who was born and raised in a border town in Texas. Under perpetual surveillance by federal immigration officials, he said he grew up in a state of hypervigilance. He moved to Minnesota 20 years ago in part to get away from that. And now, he said, “to see it up north, it’s absurd.”

As a car rolled by outside, Gonzalez looked up out the window to see who was behind the wheel. Others did the same.

“Out of the 35 years that I’ve been alive, I’ve never felt any sort of heat like this until right now,” a man at the table said. 

Residents feared for the community’s children. Ocampo said her six-year-old niece is scared to go to school because her friends are missing. As a volunteer “lunch buddy” at the local elementary school, Ocampo has heard kids say they’re afraid they won’t see their parents again. She once walked home with a kid who was afraid of being taken by ICE.

“Kids are going to be living with that for the rest of their lives,” said a man at the table. “Like, ‘remember, mom, when we were younger and we were tucked away for months and months on end?’ That doesn’t feel like an American story to me.”

A mental health professional, Vander Pol talked about the cost of this psychological trauma, the cost of kids missing schoolwork, the cost of picking up the pieces after someone is taken. “We as community members are having to pick up that cost.”

Not just a psychological cost, the economic toll is also mounting. With people too afraid to leave their homes to work or shop, many local businesses – including Gonzalez’s and Juan’s – are taking a financial hit. A young woman who works at her parents’ restaurant said they had to close for two weeks because her parents are immigrants, and when they re-opened, they put cameras around the building, reduced their business to just pickups and deliveries, and lowered prices – both to incentivize business and make food more affordable for community members who may be struggling financially.

“This is not bringing wealth or security or a greater America to this town,” Vander Pol said. “It’s bringing devastation.”

Lindquist also thinks about the cultural cost. Many of the town’s ethnic-specific grocery stores and restaurants have been forced to close their doors, while big-box corporations stay open. By default, the foods and cultures that remain are those that are protected by some level of privilege. 

“Apparently we’re trying to make America greater, bigger, better,” Vander Pol said of the Trump administration’s purported goal. In reality, the ICE siege on Willmar is only making the town poorer, smaller, more afraid. 

“It starts like this”

Residents are doing everything they can to minimize the damage to their community.

They are keeping watch around Willmar for ICE agents, whistles around their necks at the ready to alert neighbors to ICE activity.

They are picking up the pieces after ICE arrests a neighbor, contacting their family, returning their belongings, and arranging care for children and pets left behind.

And they are caring for their neighbors who are too afraid to leave their homes. Lindquist, a veteran community organizer, said that the community had mobilized in a big way, donating to food and hygiene product drives, helping deliver resources, and giving rides. 

“When I look around at the people that I’m sharing space with and they’re out there bringing food, giving rides, I know I’m on the right side of this,” said Lindquist.

Juan and Lizbeth have started donating perishable foods from their grocery store, even driving to people’s houses to drop off food when they are too afraid to leave. Another resident started organizing raffles to donate raised funds to impacted families.

Residents are also showing their solidarity with neighbors in everyday interactions.“I find myself making eye contact more often than I used to,” said Vander Pol. She does it in the grocery store now, trying to signal to people that she is a safe person. “We need to be really intentional that we are standing alongside each other, and that we’re letting it be known through micro actions.”

“We’re finding out who we really are as neighbors,” Vander Pol said. “We’re not just businesspeople, partners, people driving past each other on the street. There is community inside this community that’s taking care of each other.”

Though the community has come together in many ways, the presence of ICE has also fractured the politically diverse town. Many residents had managed positive relationships with neighbors across party lines before the siege began. One man at the table talked about his good friend who is a Trump supporter: “I love the guy,” the man said. But when it comes to what ICE is doing in his community, the man said, “I’m not going to stay quiet. I love you enough to tell you that.” 

While some cross-party relationships remain intact, others have devolved, particularly online, into political sparring about ICE.

The pro-ICE rhetoric that frustrates residents the most is the narrative that ICE is after “illegals” and “criminals.” Residents talked about the immigrants they know, people who had poured decades and thousands of dollars into obtaining citizenship under constantly changing rules, people who had no criminal record or nothing more than a couple traffic tickets, people who had come to this country to work hard for a better life.

“It’s not about illegal or legal anymore,” Lindquist said.

Many residents looked ahead to the future, thinking of ways to rebuild their community if and when ICE ended its targeted operation there.

Looking around the restaurant, a man at the table said, “they’ve been feeding people here for years.” Pointing to Gonzalez, he said, “to go to date night with my woman, I come here.” Pointing to Juan, the grocery store owner, he said “when I’m trying to grill out, that’s my people.” 

When businesses open their doors again, the man said he hopes people flood back in. For now, the people around the table remain laser-focused on supporting their community and – especially for those unlikely to be targeted themselves – standing up against ICE and the government that sanctions it.

“I think about my childhood as a privileged white person from Willmar,” said Steve Vossen. “Being silent’s not an option anymore,” he said. “This is not the America or the humans we want to be.” 

Looking at her daughter Adyssey, Brielle said, “When she has her own kids and they’re like, ‘what in the world happened?’ She can say, we were on the right side. We stood up.”

Julie Vossen-Henslin, another resident in the room, wondered aloud about how the community might recover from an experience like this. 

Then, looking at her neighbors sitting around their big, makeshift table, she answered her own question, “it starts like this.”

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The post A Small Town Under ICE Occupation appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

On Wednesday, January 28, 2026, peaceful protesters in Dilley, Texas, were blocked from accessing the South Texas Family Detention Center as state troopers in riot gear fired pepper balls into the crowd. Hundreds of people gathered in Dilley, a rural town in Frio County, to demand an end to the detention of children.

Earlier this week, dozens of immigrant families protested from inside the detention center, where five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, from Minneapolis, is being held alongside other children. Video and audio recorded families chanting “Libertad” (“Freedom”), a refrain protesters echoed on Wednesday as they marched nearly three miles from Dilley’s central square to the gates of the South Texas Family Detention Center. 

“What’s happening in Dilley shows that rural communities are not just sites where federal policy is carried out, but places where people are organizing, witnessing harm, and speaking out,” Eric Martinez, executive director of Mano Amiga Action, one of the groups that organized the protest, told The Daily Yonder. “Rural resistance matters because it challenges the idea that harm is acceptable as long as it happens far from public view.”

Sulma Franco, a Guatemalan immigrant to Texas and former detainee, spoke of her experience to the crowd. 

“I spent more than two years detained in different centers. The detention system has broken many of our communities of color…We’re here in solidarity for all the children, all the mothers, all the fathers, all the brothers and sisters that have been detained,” Franco said. “It is important to me, as an immigrant woman, to come here and represent those communities that are still suffering oppression.”  

Thirteen-year-old Candi also shared her detention experience and commitment to protesting. 

“I was detained when I was three, along with my mother,” Candi said. “I am here to raise my voice for myself, for my friends, and for all the children that have been unjustly incarcerated…There shouldn’t be cages for children.” 

We have withheld Candi’s last name from the publication to protect her identity.

Protesters and organizers traveled from across Texas, joined by locals, including Jesse James Cruz, a Dilley resident and former employee of the detention center.

“The detention center is often discussed as a good work opportunity since we don’t have a lot of high-paying jobs here, but personally, it’s hard to see it as that, especially working so closely with the detainees there,” Cruz told The Daily Yonder. “I got to know a few of them, and there are a lot of kind people. A lot of good souls.” 

Protesters traveled from across the state, including urban centers like San Antonio and Austin, as well as rural areas in Kerr County, Maverick County, and Frio County. 

“We’re standing up for due process. We’re standing up for the right for these [detained] people to be heard and to have their attorneys tell their story,” Mary Claire Munroe of San Antonio told The Daily Yonder. “What is happening now is that they are being detained without any end in sight, without any access to lawyers, and in very inhumane treatment.” 

For many protesters, the scenes from Minneapolis have ignited a new sense of urgency and action. 

“I’ve wanted to do this for a long time, knowing that this detention center was here,” said Mike Munroe from San Antonio. “The folks in Minneapolis have been protesting in negative 40-degree wind chills. This is the least that we can do.”

Demonstrators repeatedly said they were peaceful and unarmed, but when they reached the South Texas Family Detention Center, Border Patrol agents and state troopers blocked the entrance, ordering protesters to retreat. As dozens of additional troopers arrived, officers used pepper balls to disperse the crowd. Two protesters were arrested.

“When officers respond to prayer, vigils, and marches with force, it reveals how fragile this system is when faced with moral accountability,” Martinez said. “Detention centers are often framed as economic opportunities for rural towns, but that framing ignores the human cost carried by families and neighbors who live alongside them.”

For Cruz, a Dilley local, the solidarity felt in his community defined the day. 

“I think it’s beautiful to see so many people from all around unite here under one step and one force,” Cruz said. 

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The post Rural Texas Protests Against the Detention of Children  appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

Kentuckians are being urged to avoid unnecessary travel as a massive winter storm brings snow, sleet and freezing rain.

“We have a long day and night ahead of us,” Gov. Andy Beshear said at a news conference in Frankfort.

Pulaski County to Barren County and areas in between appear to be the most heavily impacted.

As of mid-morning, there were 60,000 power outages across the state, mostly in the southern and eastern regions. The number of outages is expected to climb throughout the day and evening as the ice storm continues. Beshear said emergency responders are reaching out to hospitals and nursing homes.

“I’m anticipating challenges potentially through Monday,” Beshear said. “Once the temperature gets below a certain amount, what we use to treat the roads just doesn’t work as well.”

Ice remains the greatest concern through Monday morning. Bowling Green to Campbellsville, Richmond, Morehead and Ashland could see up to a quarter inch of ice, according to Beshear’s office.

In and around Louisville, LG&E reported less than 1,000 customers without power as of Sunday afternoon. Work crews cleared roads in the city and across the river in Southern Indiana, but snow continues to pile up, needing nearly constant attention to stay clear. Louisville residents can see maps of road conditions and other storm related resources here. Public library branches are open 1-5 p.m. Sunday as warming centers, according to Mayor Craig Greenberg.

“I’m anticipating challenges potentially through Monday,” Beshear said. “Once the temperature gets below a certain amount, what we use to treat the roads just doesn’t work as well.”

Many of the largest concentrations of customers without power were among electric cooperatives in south central and southeast Kentucky.

More than 21,000 South Kentucky RECC customers were without power, followed by Tri-County EMC with more than 15,000, Jackson Energy Cooperative with more than 9,000 and Farmers RECC with more than 5,000.

Pulaski County had the most outages, at 10,000. Allen, Barren, Laurel and Monroe counties all had more than 5,000 outages. In McCreary, more than half the county’s customers were without power.

Ice remains the greatest concern through Monday morning. Bowling Green to Campbellsville, Richmond, Morehead and Ashland could see up to a quarter inch of ice, according to Beshear’s office.

In and around Louisville, Sunday afternoon arrived at the lower end of what was predicted.

“This was still and still is as the snow continues to come down right now, a very significant winter event, a significant amount of snowfall for Louisville,” Mayor Craig Greenberg said at a press conference.

LG&E reported less than 1,000 customers near Louisville without power as of Sunday afternoon. Work crews cleared roads in the city and across the river in Southern Indiana, but snow continues to pile up, needing nearly constant attention to stay clear. Louisville residents can see maps of road conditions and other storm related resources here.

Brian Neudorf with the National Weather Service said the city could pick up another 1-2 inches of snow before it tapers off Sunday evening. The winter storm warning expires Monday morning, but a cold weather advisory goes into effect at midnight transitioning to an extreme cold warning.

Kentucky currently has 113 warming centers across the state for those facing an outage. To find a warming center or for additional assistance, resources can be found on Kentucky Emergency Management’s website.

The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office will delay enforcing evictions and set-outs through Feb. 2., which according to a news release will prevent around 30 families from being displaced during the hazardous weather.

Jefferson County Public Schools, the state’s largest school district, canceled school Monday and Tuesday.

The Kentucky National Guard began making rounds in local communities Saturday. They’re continuing to do wellness checks and prepare for any needed transports due to power outages.

Gov. Beshear urged drivers to stay off the roads unless it’s an emergency due to the threat of becoming stranded and low fuel availability at many gas stations.

“Our crews continue to work long 12-hour shifts to respond and adapt to changing conditions, but travelers with a Monday commute should anticipate significant issues, as the storm will continue into the morning,” Kentucky Transportation Secretary Jim Gray said.

President Donald Trump has approved an emergency disaster declaration for Kentucky in response to the storm.

This story has been updated with additional information. 

Rebecca Feldhaus Adams contributed to this reporting. 

Crowds of people turned out at demonstrations in Bowling Green and Paducah Saturday to protest actions taken by the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency – and the killing of Renee Nicole Good by a federal agent this week in Minnesota.

In Paducah, well over a hundred people lined the sidewalk in front of Noble Park at a protest organized by Four Rivers Indivisible, where the group played music and led the protesters in chants of “We want justice for Renee” and “No hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here.”

Hannah Kerr, of Paducah, said she was compelled to come out after seeing the newly surfaced video of Good’s killing from the perspective of the officer.

“I woke up and I saw the video and it actually brought me to tears and I didn’t get out of bed for 20 extra minutes and then I saw this protest and I just felt like I had to be here,” Kerr said.

Noah Blackburn, who made the trip up from Murray, said he’s concerned about the direction the country’s going, and that he believes now is the time to make his voice heard.

“It seems like it’s just going to continue to ramp up if we don’t organize and step out and come together as a community to have our voices – have our frustration heard – and make sure there’s an end to this,” he said.

Joann Tilley Dortch, an 83-year-old retired schoolteacher and education advocate, accompanied her daughter to the protest on Saturday.

“I know that there are more good people in this world than there are bad. And we just have to get all together and work for the good. The hate has to go away,” she said. “Everybody [here] is positive and nice. This is what America’s like to me, what it ought to be.”

Military veteran and retired chaplain Kempton Baldridge said he’s dissatisfied with the Trump administration’s use of the U.S. armed forces, criticizing recent actions taken in Nigeria and in Venezuela, among others. Baldridge said he came out Saturday because he wants to be engaged and hopes more people like him making their voices heard can spur action.

“I do see other people who are encouraged by our presence and to know that they’re not alone,” he said. “Shrugging your shoulders and saying, ‘Well there’s nothing we can do.’ That’s one answer, but it’s not the right one.

At least one other anti-ICE protest is expected to happen later this month in Paducah, with social media posts indicating one is planned to take place in front of the McCracken County courthouse on Jan. 30.

Protesters call for justice on the march in Bowling Green

In Bowling Green, more than 100 protesters marched through the downtown square in protest of the violent methods used by ICE agents. Speakers called for justice for Good, as well as Keith Porter, a 43-year-old father of two killed by an off-duty ICE agent in Los Angeles.

Seth Thomas felt compelled to march when he saw like-minded people standing up to what he said is a fascist regime taking over the U.S. government.

“I’m here because I want it to be known that I stand against fascism. Whether it’s in Bowling Green, whether it’s in Minneapolis, ICE is just the latest iteration of fascism that we have,” Thomas said. “The state shouldn’t be allowed to murder you in the street without a trial. I’m here because I support love and justice for everybody, whether they were born here or moved here from somewhere else.”

In a brief march, protesters blocked the street through the downtown square with chants, “Out of the bars, into the streets,” as well as calls to abolish ICE and free Palestine. Chants also called for the removal and conviction of key members of the Trump administration, including DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and DOD Secretary Pete Hegseth. Chants also called for the arrest of Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot and killed Good.

Organizers with SOKY Solidarity and Community Defense plan to organize for further protests until they see justice for those victimized by ICE.Saturday’s protests in Bowling Green and Paducah follow earlier demonstrations against the ICE shooting death of Good in other parts of Kentucky, including Louisville and Berea.

Copyright 2026 WKU Public Radio

The demise of the coal industry left much of Appalachia in economic tatters, with lost jobs, spoiled water, and depopulated communities across the coalfields of Kentucky, West Virginia, and Virginia. Now, in an ironic twist of the region’s energy history, tech companies and data center developers are eyeing these same rural landscapes with ambitious plans to power the artificial intelligence revolution.

From the hollows of Tucker County, West Virginia, to the former strip mines of Wise County, Virginia, proposals for massive data center complexes are sparking both hope and fierce resistance. Proponents promise economic revitalization and tax revenues for struggling communities. Critics warn of environmental degradation, soaring utility bills for residents, limited job creation, and the stripping away of local control over development decisions.

The stakes are enormous. According to a September 2025 report from the Energy & Manufacturing in Appalachia initiative, approximately 92 gigawatts of data center capacity are currently in the pipeline across the United States, with seven gigawatts being added monthly by the end of 2024. Traditional data center hubs like Northern Virginia’s “Data Center Alley” are becoming saturated, pushing growth toward rural regions in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Kentucky.

Where Data Centers Stand Today

Northern Virginia remains the undisputed capital of the data center world, with roughly 300 operational facilities across Fairfax, Loudoun, and Prince William counties. Northern Virginia is one of the world’s largest internet interconnection hubs. But capacity constraints and community opposition are forcing the industry to look elsewhere. West Virginia has thrown out the largest welcome mat in the region.

In Appalachia proper, data center development remains nascent but is accelerating rapidly. Southwest Virginia’s Wise County hosts the Mineral Gap Data Center, which came online in 2023 and is powered by a 3.4-megawatt solar array built on former strip-mined land—widely promoted as the first abandoned mine land converted to solar in Virginia. OnePartner ATAC runs a facility in Duffield, Virginia.

In January 2025, developers announced plans for Kentucky’s first hyperscale data center in Louisville, a 400-megawatt campus to be developed by PowerHouse Data Centers and Poe Companies, with utility service from Louisville Gas and Electric. The Lane Report noted the project is expected to begin operations by late 2026. It will likely represent a demonstration of what can be exported to Eastern Kentucky.

Southwest Virginia’s Growing Pipeline

Beyond the Wise County proposals, data center interest is spreading across Southwest Virginia, often into communities with minimal regulatory frameworks to evaluate such projects.

In early December 2025, Wythe County announced its first data center: a 99-acre AI computing campus at Progress Park to be developed by Solis Arx, a newly formed digital infrastructure company led by CEO Rob Noll. Cardinal News reported that county officials project the facility will represent more than $1 billion in total investment. County Administrator Stephen Bear told the Wythe County Board of Supervisors that the project would generate more than $10 million in annual tax revenue by 2028, making Solis Arx the county’s single largest taxpayer.

The company claims its facility will consume only about 2,000 gallons of water daily—roughly equivalent to a restaurant—by using closed-loop and air-based cooling systems rather than the evaporative cooling that can require hundreds of thousands of gallons per day at older facilities. Appalachian Power will provide electricity, with water supplied by the town of Wytheville.

At a December 9, 2025 board meeting covered by Cardinal News, nearly all of the dozen residents who spoke during public comment opposed the project or raised concerns about electricity rates, water supplies, environmental impacts, and the loss of rural character. Resident Hannah Ainsworth questioned the trajectory of such development: “It’s 99 acres proposed today, but what about next year, in three years? At what point is our region unrecognizable?”

Board of Supervisors Chairman Brian Vaught acknowledged a significant vulnerability in how such projects arrive. Wythe County is one of approximately seven Virginia counties that lack zoning ordinances governing where data centers can be built. “So until that’s addressed, if you don’t live in the town of Wytheville or the town of Rural Retreat, one of these could pop up as your neighbor,” Vaught said, according to Cardinal News.

Pulaski County may not be far behind. The 2025 Virginia General Assembly allocated $15 million for site readiness improvements—including road extensions, grading, and natural gas pipeline work—to support what budget documents describe as “up to $3.0 billion in capital investment” through construction of a data center and power plant. The project remains under nondisclosure agreements, with no developer publicly identified, according to Inside Climate News and Cardinal News.

Montgomery County supervisors are also weighing the issue. Cardinal News reported in mid-December 2025 that local officials are considering commissioning a study on data center zoning—a sign that even communities without active proposals recognize the need to prepare for an industry expanding rapidly across the region.

The Wise County Vision: Mine Water Cooling

One of the most ambitious proposals involves transforming 65,000 acres of former coal mining land in Wise County, Virginia, into an energy hub including data centers. A nonprofit venture called Energy DELTA Lab, managed by Will Clear and Will Payne, envisions building a massive 450-acre “Data Center Ridge” on top of old mining lands that could be powered and cooled using billions of gallons of water that naturally replenish in abandoned underground mines.

In a December 2025 report, the Thomson Reuters Foundation detailed how the entrepreneurs hope to prove the feasibility of their idea to Texas-based Energy Transfer, which owns the land managed by Penn Virginia Operating Co. Unlike neighboring areas plagued by acid mine drainage, the Wise County coalfields lack the mineral pyrite that contaminates water. The underground mine water maintains a temperature of 55 degrees or below, roughly 10 to 15 degrees cooler than river water typically used for data center cooling elsewhere in Virginia.

Payne told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that the water quality makes the site attractive for data center cooling. He acknowledged, however, that the region faces deep skepticism about outside development. “Anyone looking at expanding in the region, there is skepticism because there have been so many stories of promises made but not kept,” Payne said, according to the Reuters report.

Canary Media reported in September 2024 that tax revenues from data centers could help address the region’s fiscal crisis. Will Clear told Canary Media that local government finances face an existential threat without new development. The Virginia Mercury reported in July 2024 that a 36-megawatt data center could provide about $464 million in capital investment and create approximately 40 high-income jobs.

West Virginia’s Controversial Push

West Virginia has become the most aggressive state in pursuing data center development, passing sweeping legislation in April 2025 that strips local governments of regulatory authority over such projects. House Bill 2014, championed by Governor Patrick Morrisey as the centerpiece of his economic development agenda, prohibits counties and municipalities from enforcing zoning ordinances, permitting requirements, noise regulations, or code enforcement on certified microgrid districts or “high-impact” data center projects.

The law also diverts most property tax revenue from data centers away from local taxing bodies to state coffers. Under the final version, only 30% of property tax proceeds go to the host county, with five percent divided among the state’s other 54 counties. The West Virginia Gazette-Mail reported that this formula is estimated to cost counties and school districts millions of dollars.

Upon the bill’s passage, Morrisey declared it “the economic development bill of the session,” according to the Gazette-Mail. “West Virginia is America’s energy state, and this law is going to demonstrate it to the whole country that we are ready for action,” Morrisey said in a statement reported by Mountain State Spotlight.

At least four major data center projects are now publicly known in West Virginia. The most controversial involves Fundamental Data LLC, a Virginia-based company seeking to build a 1,656-megawatt natural gas power plant and data center complex on 500 acres between the towns of Thomas and Davis in Tucker County. The Wall Street Journal reported that the proposed facility could eventually span 10,000 acres across Tucker and Grant counties if fully realized.

Kentucky: Multiple Proposals, Growing Debate

Kentucky’s data center conversation has moved quickly from possibility to reality. Beyond the Louisville hyperscale campus, the Kentucky Lantern reported in August 2025 on a proposed multi-billion-dollar “technology campus” with data centers in Mason County, though key details remain thin, and local reaction has included both hope and skepticism.

In Oldham County, Louisville Public Media reported that residents organized against a proposed hyperscale data center, and the controversy has become a statewide case study in zoning disputes, noise concerns, and rural quality-of-life politics. The fight illustrates how quickly economic development proposals can become community flashpoints when a hyperscale project lands on rural ground.

The Economic Equation

The Promise of Tax Revenue

Proponents argue that data centers represent one of the few realistic options for diversifying Appalachian economies devastated by coal’s decline. The numbers from Virginia’s experience are eye-catching. According to Loudoun County officials quoted by the Citizens Voice in December 2025, data centers generate 35 to 40% of the county’s General Fund revenue, with fiscal contributions jumping from $1 million in fiscal year 2018 to $875 million in 2024. That figure is projected to reach $1.1 billion by fiscal year 2026.

A PricewaterhouseCoopers study cited by Virginia Business found that between 2017 and 2021, data centers contributed $54.2 billion to Virginia’s gross domestic product. Southwest Virginia localities have positioned themselves to capture some of this wealth by implementing the state’s lowest regional property tax rate on data center equipment at 24 cents per $100 of assessed value, compared to $3.70 in Prince William County, according to Virginia Business.

The Jobs Question

Critics contend that data centers deliver far fewer permanent jobs than their industrial footprint suggests. According to an October 2025 report from ReImagine Appalachia, most data center employment is in construction, and those jobs are often contracted from outside the communities where facilities are built.

A typical data center adds up to 1,500 workers during construction but employs only about 50 full-time workers when operational, according to a 2024 Virginia state report cited by the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Those permanent positions are primarily security or janitorial staff.

At an April 2025 town hall meeting in Davis, West Virginia, covered by 100 Days in Appalachia, electrical engineer Brian Reed—whose family has been in Tucker County since 1896—challenged the jobs pitch. “$12 an hour isn’t a job, you can’t survive,” Reed said. “The operators in the plant where I work make $43 an hour. That’s a job that makes a difference. So don’t offer jobs that are for security people that are going to starve to death.”

Nationwide, data center employment grew from 306,000 to 501,000 workers between 2016 and 2023, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But more than 40% of those jobs are concentrated in just three states, far from Appalachia’s coalfields, as reported by West Virginia Watch.

Environmental Concerns

The Water Challenge

Data centers rank among the top ten water-consuming commercial industries in the United States. A medium-sized facility can consume around 110 million gallons of water annually for cooling, with some consuming up to 5 million gallons daily, according to a report from the University of Tulsa. The Environmental and Energy Study Institute reported that data centers in Northern Virginia collectively consumed nearly 2 billion gallons of water in 2023, a 63% increase from 2019.

Water consumption varies significantly based on cooling technology. Evaporative or wet cooling requires substantial water withdrawals and raises concerns in drought-prone areas like Maricopa County, Arizona, which has been inundated by data center developments. Air cooling reduces water needs but increases electricity consumption. The Wise County proposal’s closed-loop mine-water cooling approach attempts to change the equation by using cool underground mine water as a heat sink, potentially eliminating dependence on surface water or municipal systems.

Water concerns are particularly acute in some Appalachian locations. Tucker County, West Virginia, suffered through a severe drought in 2024 that forced emergency water pumping from the Blackwater River. 100 Days in Appalachia reported that in neighboring Thomas, the reservoir reached its lowest level in 60 years, rendering water unusable due to high iron concentrations.

In a December 2025 Brookings Institution podcast, Davis Mayor Al Tomson expressed concern about cumulative water impacts. “We’ve suffered a drought for the last two summers,” Tomson said. “We’ve had to go to our secondary water source, which is the Blackwater River. But if the data centers start drawing water out of the aquifer… I’m concerned that it’s gonna affect the source water for the creek that we’re using right now.”

Noise Pollution

The constant hum of cooling systems and backup generators has emerged as one of the most contentious issues for communities living near data centers. According to TechTarget, facilities produce noise levels between 55 and 85 decibels from cooling fans, mechanical chillers, and ventilation systems—sounds that are particularly intrusive in rural areas where residents moved seeking quiet.

In Northern Virginia, Amazon Web Services data centers near the Great Oak subdivision in Manassas have drawn persistent complaints. WUSA9 reported that residents describe the sound as a low roar combined with a high-pitched whir. “These data centers are loud, noisy beasts, and they are being built too close to residential areas,” community activist Roger Yackel told WUSA9. “That’s not something that we should have to live with.”

The Prince William Times reported in December 2022 that noise remediation can cost millions of dollars, and unless regulators apply pressure, companies may be slow to implement solutions. In Tucker County, the prospect of constant industrial noise near the tourist towns of Davis and Thomas—known for stargazing, hiking, and natural beauty—has fueled fierce opposition.

Air Quality and Diesel Risk

Large data centers typically rely on diesel backup generators that produce air pollution during testing and emergencies. The Parsons Advocate of Tucker County reported that the Fundamental Data project there would include 30 million gallons of diesel fuel storage to back up its natural gas power plant.

The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection approved an air quality permit for the Tucker County facility in August 2025 over strenuous community objections. The Intermountain newspaper in Elkins, West Virginia, reported that more than 1,600 written comments were submitted during the public comment period.

“We are extremely disappointed that the West Virginia DEP really isn’t upholding their mission to protect our air, land, and water,” Nikki Forrester of Tucker United told The Intermountain. “They discussed at the public meeting that they’ve never rejected an air quality permit before.”

Community Backlash: Three Overlapping Camps

Across Appalachia, community reactions to data center proposals tend to fall into three overlapping camps. The first is the development coalition: county officials, industrial development authorities, some trades, landowners, and utilities who argue that data centers represent a once-in-a-generation chance to replace the coal-era tax base and keep young people local.

The second is the quality-of-life coalition: nearby residents, tourism businesses, and preservation groups focused on noise, light pollution, traffic, and land conversion. The third is the accountability coalition: people who might tolerate a project if rules are strict, demanding transparency about corporate identity, enforceable limits, and binding community benefits.

In Pittsylvania County, Virginia, grassroots organizing successfully blocked Balico LLC’s proposal to build what would have been Virginia’s largest natural gas power plant at 3,500 megawatts alongside a hyperscale data center campus.

In Tucker County, residents formed Tucker United within weeks of learning about the Fundamental Data proposal. West Virginia Watch reported that the group now counts hundreds of members. “No Data Center in Tucker County” signs have proliferated in windows, storefronts, and on vehicles throughout Davis and Thomas.

One recurring complaint involves the lack of transparency from developers. Fundamental Data’s air permit application was heavily redacted, with the company claiming confidential business information. The firm’s public website consists only of a logo and a copyright notice, as noted by 100 Days in Appalachia.

“The company hasn’t come down and spoken with us at all,” Forrester told Corporate Crime Reporter in August 2025. “From a local leadership standpoint, none of us were aware that this was even a possibility. It feels like it’s a power grab where they want to get rid of any local control, take the money, and leave West Virginians to suffer.”

WVVA reported in April 2025 that more than 1,000 West Virginians signed a petition asking Governor Morrisey to veto HB 2014. He signed it anyway.

Utility Companies in the Mix

This is not just a technology story—it’s a utility planning story. Several major utilities are positioning themselves to serve the anticipated data center boom in Appalachia.

American Electric Power, the parent company of Appalachian Power in West Virginia and Kentucky Power in eastern Kentucky, has emerged as a key player. Data Center Dynamics reported in February 2025 that AEP expects to bring 4.7 gigawatts of new data center capacity online in 2025 alone and has customer commitments for 20 gigawatts of incremental load by 2030.

Louisville Gas and Electric will serve Kentucky’s first hyperscale data center campus. Dominion Energy, Virginia’s largest utility and the company most directly tied to Northern Virginia’s data center concentration, is expanding infrastructure across the Commonwealth. In Southwest Virginia, Appalachian Power and Dominion Energy provide electricity to the region where the Energy DELTA Lab project is proposed.

FirstEnergy has announced $15 billion for power infrastructure investments to support data center growth, according to the Energy & Manufacturing in Appalachia report. The company serves customers across Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland, and New Jersey.

PJM Interconnection, the regional grid operator covering much of coal-country Appalachia, has become central to debates about supply, demand, and rate impacts. West Virginia Public Broadcasting reported that projected data center load growth far exceeds new supply coming online in the near term.

Will Electric Bills Rise?

The short answer appears to be yes, and in some cases dramatically. Data center demand has already contributed to soaring wholesale electricity prices across the PJM Interconnection, the regional grid that serves West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and other mid-Atlantic states. Stories of ratepayer protests about rising electricity prices are appearing all across the mountains.

Mountain State Spotlight reported in October 2025 that the cost to secure an adequate power supply in PJM’s annual capacity auction jumped from $2.2 billion for 2024-2025 to $14.7 billion for 2025-2026, an increase of more than 500%. CNBC reported that an independent monitor found data center demand, both actual and forecast, accounted for $9.3 billion, or 63%, of that total. In the December 2025 auction, prices hit $16.4 billion, with PJM falling short of its reliability target for the first time. Nearly all of the 5,250-megawatt increase in projected demand was attributable to data centers.

Monitoring Analytics, a specialized firm that acts as an independent monitor for the PJM Interconnection, said in its June report: “Data center load growth is the primary reason for recent and expected capacity market conditions, including total forecast load growth, the tight supply and demand balance, and high prices.”

These costs are spread across the entire grid, affecting ratepayers throughout the region. CNBC reported in November 2025 that residential electricity prices surged 13% in Virginia, 16% in Illinois, and 12% in Ohio during a recent 12-month period, well above the six percent national average.

A Harvard Law School study released in September 2025 warned that utilities may be subsidizing data center growth by shifting infrastructure costs to residential and other ratepayers. The Union of Concerned Scientists reached a similar conclusion in an October 2025 analysis: “The wealthiest companies are building extraordinarily expensive data centers that you and I are subsidizing.”

Cathy Kunkel, an energy consultant at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, told Mountain State Spotlight: “One of the principles of electric rate regulation is that the entity that’s imposing cost on the system bears those costs to the extent possible. The historical way transmission cost allocation has been done is just not keeping up with that principle when it comes to data centers.”

Corporate Players in Appalachia

Two overlapping groups of corporations are driving the data center push into Appalachia. The first consists of hyperscalers—the companies whose cloud and AI services create the underlying demand: Amazon (AWS), Microsoft, Google, and Meta. Even when they aren’t named publicly, they often sit behind developer NDAs or vague references to “Fortune 100” clients, as the Kentucky Lantern has noted in its coverage.

Amazon Web Services has the largest data center footprint nationally, with hundreds of facilities in Northern Virginia alone. Google has committed $25 billion for data centers and infrastructure, including a $3 billion deal with Brookfield Asset Management for hydropower electricity, according to the Energy & Manufacturing in Appalachia report.

The second group consists of developers, landholders, and power partners—the visible local actors. PowerHouse Data Centers and Poe Companies are developing Kentucky’s first hyperscale campus in Louisville. Compass Datacenters and QTS Data Centers are building the Prince William Digital Gateway in Virginia, billed as the world’s largest future data center complex at 23 million square feet, according to Virginia Business.

In West Virginia, Fundamental Data LLC of Purcellville, Virginia, is pursuing the massive Tucker County project. TransGas Development Systems of New York is proposing two off-grid power plants in Mingo County for what the applications call the “Adams Fork Data Center Energy Campus,” according to Mountain State Spotlight. Texas-based Fidelis New Energy has proposed a data center complex in Mason County.

In early December, ten Mingo County residents filed a federal lawsuit seeking to halt the Adams Fork project, alleging violations of the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, and National Environmental Policy Act.

Questions Communities Should Ask

What Advocacy Groups Recommend

Several organizations have developed frameworks to help communities evaluate data center proposals and advocate for responsible development. Their recommendations share common themes: transparency, local control, binding commitments, and protection for existing residents and ratepayers.

Virginia Data Center Reform Coalition

The Piedmont Environmental Council and nearly 30 environmental, preservation, and climate advocacy groups formed the Virginia Data Center Reform Coalition in late 2023. Julie Bolthouse, the Council’s director of land use, told Inside Climate News in December 2023 that an “ever-increasing data center footprint” has resulted in “higher utility rates, new transmission lines, declining air quality, reduced water supply,” and a loss in Virginia’s “hard-fought climate goals.”

The coalition has articulated four pillars of reform. The first is enhanced transparency, requiring disclosure and statewide reporting on data center energy use, water consumption, and emissions. The second is state oversight, establishing state-level regulatory review to evaluate regional impacts. The third is ratepayer protection, safeguarding residents and businesses from subsidizing billions of dollars in infrastructure that data centers require. The fourth is incentivizing sustainability by connecting tax exemptions to clean energy and efficiency standards.

“There needs to be more transparency around this industry; we need to know how much energy, how much water, and their emissions,” Bolthouse told Data Center Dynamics in November 2024. “Our localities are ill-equipped to handle the regional implications that are coming from these massive projects.”

PennFuture’s Model Ordinance

PennFuture, a Pennsylvania environmental nonprofit, has created a model zoning ordinance and educational video series to help municipalities prepare for data center development. The organization developed its model after reviewing ordinances passed in Pennsylvania and Northern Virginia.

The model ordinance addresses water consumption, power consumption, noise, and aesthetic concerns. According to PennFuture’s website, “Municipalities must take seriously their responsibility to plan for this new land use and avoid being caught unaware, as many were when the distribution center boom struck Pennsylvania in recent years.”

Donna Kohut of PennFuture told the Republican Herald in August 2025 that Pennsylvania faces serious risks from legislation that would fast-track data center approvals. “By allowing developers to side-step critical and constitutionally required environmental protections, our elected officials would be allowing for unfettered destruction of Pennsylvania’s natural resources and risking the health of our local communities,” Kohut said.

ReImagine Appalachia

ReImagine Appalachia, a coalition focused on sustainable economic development in the Ohio River Valley, published a report in October 2025 titled “Is Responsible Data Center Development Possible?” The report argues that data centers can benefit communities if proper safeguards are implemented.

The organization recommends that data centers be located on shuttered industrial facilities rather than greenfields, ideally co-located with factories or greenhouses that can benefit from waste heat recovery. Components should be procured locally to contribute to the region’s manufacturing sector. Strong labor standards should ensure local workers are hired in development and construction, including prevailing wage requirements, project labor agreements, and registered apprenticeship programs.

“Attracting new industries to our communities should not be a race to the bottom,” ReImagine Appalachia wrote. “The new growth of data centers in the region is a call to assess how our policy models have historically favored economic and project development that benefits extractive, exploitative, absentee corporations at the expense of our communities, workers, and lands.”

NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Principles

In September 2025, the NAACP and environmental justice advocates released guiding principles for data center development following a convening in Memphis, Tennessee, of nearly 70 climate and community advocates. The gathering was prompted in part by concerns about Elon Musk’s xAI data center in South Memphis, which the NAACP has challenged legally over unpermitted gas turbines in a historically Black neighborhood.

The NAACP’s framework demands that companies disclose water and energy consumption, emissions, subsidies, and corporate ownership details as soon as they propose new projects. Energy efficiency standards and environmental commitments must become legally binding through community benefit agreements.

“No community should be forced to sacrifice clean air, clean water, or safe homes so that corporations and billionaires can build energy-hungry facilities,” the NAACP stated in the principles, as reported by The Verge. Abre’ Conner, director of the Center for Environmental and Climate Justice at the NAACP, told The Verge that the principles put tech companies “on alert” that “if they do not meet our demands… we move into other forms of advocacy, including filing litigation.”

An Uncertain Future

The data center rush into Appalachia encapsulates the region’s century-long struggle with extractive industries and outside development. Like coal before it, data centers promise jobs and prosperity while communities worry about bearing the environmental and social costs.

Julie Bolthouse, director of land use at the Piedmont Environmental Council, offered a warning to West Virginia Watch in June 2025: “What you’re going to get if you do it this way is the worst players, the ones that didn’t need to be in Northern Virginia. The players that are wanting that lack of regulations because they didn’t want to abide by rules and didn’t want to or need to protect communities, which is worse for West Virginia and the communities.”

The U.S. Department of Energy projects that data centers could consume between 6.7 and 12% of total U.S. electricity by 2028, up from 4.4% in 2023. That growth will require new power generation somewhere, and Appalachia’s abundant natural gas, available land, and water resources make it attractive despite the challenges.

Whether the region can chart a different path than its coal experience remains to be seen. The battles playing out in Tucker County, Wise County, Wythe County, and communities across the region will help determine whether data centers become genuine engines of renewal or simply the latest chapter in Appalachia’s long history of extraction without lasting benefit.

As one Tucker County resident put it at an April town hall covered by 100 Days in Appalachia: “It’s been so long and such a hard fight, and then all of a sudden it feels like this is gonna kick the legs out from the stool from everything that’s already here.”

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Full, unedited version of this article can be found on James Branscome’s Substack.

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James Branscome is a retired managing director of Standard & Poor’s and a former journalist whose articles have appeared in the Washington Post, York Times, Business Week, and  Mountain Eagle of Whitesburg, Kentucky.  He was a staff member in 1969-71 at the Appalachian Regional Commission, a lobbyist for Save Our Kentucky in Frankfort, and a staff member of the Appalachian Project at the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tennessee.  He was born in Hillsville, Virginia, and is a graduate of Berea College in Kentucky.

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Beckie Irvin crested the rocky hilltop in her truck. She threw it in park and joined Cobra Thomas and Beverly Garland, the property’s owners, at the edge of a ravine. Beneath them, the expanse of Texas Hill Country stretched out for miles. This view will one day belong not only to Garland and Thomas, but to countless travelers on the xTx trail (pronounced ex-Tex), a proposed 1,500-mile route stretching across Texas from the Louisiana border to El Paso.

The current xTx trail, intended for hikers, cyclists, and equestrians, navigates entirely along existing public routes—shoulders of state highways, backcountry gravel roads, and established trails. It connects travelers to state and national parks and showcases Texas’s vast and varied landscapes, all while remaining on public land.

The xTx team is now planning the trail’s next phase, which includes routing around concerning areas and moving sections of the trail off public roads and onto private property through public access easements. By partnering with landowners like Garland and Thomas, Irvin, xTx’s acting executive director, is taking the first steps toward a safer and more sustainable trail that preserves public access and fulfills the long-term vision of xTx founder Charlie Gandy.

In the summer of 2024, Gandy was hiking through snowy trails in Lake Tahoe, wishing he was back in his home state of Texas. 

“It was June and there was still snow up to my waist,” Gandy said. “It just occurred to me, why isn’t Texas the great through-hiking adventure for people in these seasons when the conditions on other trails can be prohibitive?” 

Watch the video here:

With that seed planted, Gandy—a former state legislator, avid outdoorsman, and founder of BikeTexas—began wondering what it would take to create a long-distance trail experience in Texas.

One challenge stood out immediately: access. More than 96% of the state’s land is privately owned, one of the highest rates in the country.

But Gandy had seen what most Texans hadn’t. 

“I’d worked for the Texas Nature Conservancy and in other roles that allowed me to go behind the gates most people never see,” Gandy said. “I was able to experience the 96% of Texas land that’s privately owned and closed to the public. Seeing that landscape firsthand made me realize that, over time, we could create a trail system that takes advantage of the facilities that already exist.”

Now, he, his wife Melissa Balmer, xTx’s chief storytelling officer, and Irvin, are making that vision a reality.

Finding the Trail

Gandy published the first draft of the xTx Trail route in August 2024. Since then, the work of refining the route has become a near-constant loop of scouting and revision. After four full passes by car, he’s now completing the route a fifth time—this round by bike—while the xTx team continually adjusts the map. 

Each trip brings new puzzles: how to avoid high-traffic roads, how to reroute around unsafe terrain, and how to forge relationships with landowners, ranchers, and local governments who have mixed feelings about the project.

The revision process can also be slow, Irvin said, because maps rarely tell the whole story.

In November, Irvin set out with a map and a plan to reroute around a dangerous section of state highway near Leakey, Texas, that the xTx currently crosses. But when it comes to navigating on backcountry roads, things don’t always go according to plan. 

“Sometimes you can see a road on the map, but then you start driving down it. You get 10 miles in, and you come out to a gate and you have to turn around and find an alternative route,” Irvin said. 

As she criss-crossed the stretch of highway between Leakey and Barksdale, two small Hill Country towns, Irvin turned down every promising backroad, only to hit locked gates, dead ends, or private property lines. Each wrong turn meant backtracking and recalculating.

Irvin marked the property lines and blocked roads on her GPS and also noted other features that could affect travelers.

“We use my GPS software to mark things like hazards, points of interest, businesses or gas stations that might be off the beaten path, but that people could use to refuel,” she said. 

Even after a full day of searching, Irvin was not able to find a viable alternative route and she now faces the possibility of rerouting a much larger section of the trail. 

On top of perilous highways, the Hill Country stretch of the xTx also poses the particular challenge of water sources. 

“Water sources aren’t an issue in East Texas, but once we get out here, we really need to carefully consider how the trail accesses water,” Irvin said. 

Partnering with local communities and landowners is part of the solution, potentially opening up new opportunities to construct backcountry water caches and develop trail infrastructure. 

Community Collaboration and Gateway Towns

As the xTx team works to create access points across Texas’s ecological range, they often return to one of their core motivations of connecting people to the land itself.

“Second only to California, Texas is the most biodiverse state in the country. We have more than 800 habitats here. When you walk the xTx Trail, you’ll pass through the Piney Woods, the Cross Timbers, the prairies, the Edwards Plateau, and the Trans-Pecos Mountains—five of Texas’s major ecoregions,” Irvin said. “You’ll see how different the flora, fauna, and even the weather are in each one. I think what’s so powerful about spending time in nature is that when you connect with something, you feel more pride in it. You deepen your sense of belonging to the land and to a place.”

To bring that vision to life, xTx depends on strong local partnerships. One of the communities stepping forward is Bandera, a Hill Country town known as the “cowboy capital of the world.” With its ranching history and equestrian culture, Bandera has quickly emerged as a potential gateway to the trail.

Debbie Breen, who serves on the Bandera City Council, said local interest formed almost immediately. 

“I think it’s an awesome thing. I found out about it about a year ago,” she said. “It fits so well into our community, so we wanted to be involved in every way we could.”

Bandera’s horse and cowboy culture took root after the Civil War, when the town became a main staging point for cattle drives up the The Great Western Trail, a major 19th-century route that moved millions of Texas longhorns north to railheads and markets across the Great Plains. The ranching heritage endured into the 20th century, cementing Bandera’s equestrian culture. 

Among those hoping to weave Bandera’s heritage into the xTx trail is Diana Walters, a local business owner and co-founder of the Bandera Equine Posse, which works to connect the local horse community and improve trail access. 

One of Bandera Equine Posse’s proposed projects involves turning an underused storage hut into a day-use livery, or public stable, that could support equestrians on the trail. 

“I think that we would be the only city in the United States that actually has a livery. We haven’t encountered another one,” Walters said. “I see Bandera as a gateway to equestrian activity, so it could definitely be tied in. Just looking at the xTx map, I can see interesting ways to incorporate what’s already here [in Bandera] into xTx in the future, and there are a lot of willing people ready to help make it happen.” 

Community partnerships, like the one developing in Bandera, are crucial to the trail’s future. Irvin said her role is to design collaborations that strengthen the local foundations already in place. 

“I do not want any community, any land owner, any public land entity, to feel like we are trying to take over or plow through what they’re doing. So much incredible work is already being done,” Irvin said. “My vision is to come alongside and amplify the work that’s already happening, such as a historic restaurant in Bandera. I can put it on our maps, share the details, and highlight its story.” 

For residents like Walters and Breen, partnering with the xTx goes beyond recreation or tourism, it is also about the rural roots that define the region. 

“If you identify yourself as a gateway to the longest accessible horse trail in the United States, to me, that is monumental for the town, and it also capitalizes on the history of this town as being the gathering point for the feeder for the Western Trail,” Walters said. 

But when it comes to private land access, there may still be challenges ahead. 

“People aren’t leasing their ranches as much as they used to,” Breen said. “They still do, especially the big game outfits, but the smaller places rarely lease anymore. It’s gotten hard to find a lease…It’s still around, just nothing like when I was a kid.”

And with the opening of whitetail deer hunting season in Hill Country, Irvin has a lot on her mind. 

“Hunting is such a big economic driver,” Irvin said. “I don’t know what it looks like yet, but my mind is already thinking about the consideration and conversations we need to have about safety.” 

And in Bandera, Walters said property rights and hunting culture are central. 

“You know the rights that property owners have to do things on their property, they take them very seriously here,” Walters said. “But it is part of the heritage, and it’s a way of life.” 

Partnering with Landowners

Other landowners have leapt at the opportunity to be a part of the xTx. 

Once Gandy began laying the groundwork for the xTx Trail, he realized he wasn’t alone in imagining a long-distance route across Texas.

“When we went public on this a year ago, I had several people come out of the woodwork saying, ‘Hey, I’ve I’ve hiked these trails. I’ve had that idea, but never got around to doing anything.’ So now those people are helping us open gates and find friends along the route,” Gandy said. 

In its current, earliest phase, the trail relies heavily on public land and existing roads. But Irvin and Gandy are already looking ahead to what the next version of the xTx could become.

“The vision was that, if we hit the ground running, we could create a trail that made use of existing facilities at first,” Gandy said. “Then, over time, we could transition the trail onto private ranches that offer unique features, facilities, and other standout elements.” 

Building a trail across private lands requires navigating a complex network of interests. Ranchers, farmers, conservationists, outdoor users, and local governments all view land through different lenses, Irvin said, and the xTx team aims to build trust and connections across those communities.

“It is like a huge venn diagram with multiple circles, and I’m constantly stepping foot into those different circles,” Irvin said. “I take very seriously my responsibility to build rapport with these land owners and educate the public on issues related to their land and make sure that we protect them and are extremely respectful when we’re on them.”

For some, learning about the trail prompted life-changing decisions. When Cobra Thomas first heard about the xTx, he immediately thought of his wife, Beverly Garland, a fourth-generation Texan and lifelong horse lover.

“I sent her the article and said, ‘Do we want to look for property along this route they’re talking about?’ And she texts back YES—all caps, and I think there was an exclamation point in there too,” Thomas said. “That’s how we first learned about it, and then we started looking for properties along the trail here.”

They studied maps and GPS coordinates from the xTx website and began scouting potential properties. Garland and Thomas live in a converted school bus and have had dreams of purchasing a property for years. Within months of first learning about the trail, they purchased 35 acres in Medina, Texas, right along the proposed route. The property sits atop a hill, offering sweeping views of the surrounding Hill Country.

Garland and Thomas plan to use part of the property as a space for overnight equestrian visitors, offering facilities where both riders and their horses can rest and recover.

“We envision this being a place where people will want to stop, recuperate a bit, and enjoy the Texas Hill Country, the quiet, the solitude, and soak in more of what they came to the trail to get, which is to be away from their day-to-day life and its stresses, and whatever healing they’re here to do,” Garland said. “We just want to be part of that and help facilitate it for them.”

They recently walked Irvin across the new property, pointing out possible locations for future trail infrastructure, camping spots, and access.

“It’s a rare experience to walk across raw land that literally there’s not even a trail on. We just have a map with topographic lines. So that was really special,” Irvin said. “And to get to see, oh, this could be a spot where future travelers camp and refill their water and horses can graze was surreal.”

Irvin and Gandy are making these visits to properties across the state, from the edges of East Texas to the far reaches of West Texas, carving out a long-term plan to merge public and private. 

As Garland and Thomas watch the sunset from the highest point on their property, a section they have named contemplation corner, they see the potential in the land and the people who may someday pass through it.  

“It’s wonderful to think about people coming in and having a close-up view of Texas, learning not just about the beautiful landscape here, but about the people, and having that real, up-close experience with individuals they might have held stereotypes about, but who they’ll meet as real, flesh-and-blood people with ideas and sorrows and joys, just like them,” Garland said. 

Irvin knows that building these relationships, and completing the broader vision for the trail, will take time. She is constantly weighing the questions, concerns, and resources that emerge in conversations between landowners and the xTx team.

“What does it look like for a landowner to say yes to allowing people to come onto their property, to allowing us to build a trail on their property?” Irvin said. 

Garland might have the answer. 

“It’d be really cool if someday people tell stories about the time they came to the trail and they stayed at our place; that we become a good part of their memories,” she said. 

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The post A Proposed 1,500-Mile Trail Across Texas Will Take a Village – Or Dozens appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

Editor’s Note: This post is from our data newsletter, the Rural Index, headed by Sarah Melotte, the Daily Yonder’s data reporter. We will be taking the next edition off as we head into Christmas. Subscribe to stay in touch with us during the New Year.

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Compared to their urban and suburban counterparts, a greater share of the rural population lives in states with the most restrictive abortion legislation, according to my analysis of data from the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that focuses on reproductive rights. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June of 2022, it became harder for women to access reproductive care, but the burden often disproportionately hurt rural women.

About 46% of nonmetropolitan, or rural, Americans live in states with either ‘most restrictive’ or ‘very restrictive’ abortion legislation, representing 21.3 million people. Approximately 35% of metro Americans live in these states, representing roughly 99.1 million people. 

State-level abortion legislation is complex; it’s rarely as simple as an outright ban or permit. Abortion policies can include stipulations like waiting periods, ultrasound requirements, gestational duration bans, insurance coverage bans, telehealth bans, and more. To deal with some of this complexity, the Guttmacher dataset groups states into one of seven categories that broadly captures the state’s access to abortion: 

• Most Restrictive
• Very Restrictive
• Restrictive
• Some restrictions/protections
• Protective
• Very Protective
• Most Protective

Click here for the interactive map.

Seventeen states make up the ‘Most Restrictive’ category, and 13 of those states have enacted full bans with few exceptions. Those states include Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Dakota, North Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia. The rural population in those states equals about 15.8 million people. 

Rurality Exacerbates Access Challenges

In the Post-Roe landscape, pre-existing rural challenges are exacerbated by restrictive abortion legislation, a change that has led to increased maternal mortality, particularly for women of color. The new state of abortion in America means people often have to travel much further to get the care they need, often out of state.

An ABC special that featured women who had to travel for abortions highlighted the story of Idaho resident Jennifer Adkins, who was excited when she found out she was pregnant with her first baby. But a 12-week ultrasound showed that continuing her pregnancy would put her life in danger. With financial help from family and friends, Adkins had to travel to the nearest clinic in Oregon to receive the care she needed. 

My previous analysis of abortion data showed that rural travel to abortion clinics increased from 103 miles on average in 2021 to 159 miles on average after Roe v. Wade was overturned. But travel distance varies by state, with women in parts of rural South Texas having to travel up to almost 800 miles to receive care. 

In rural Louisiana, where all the bordering states have also issued abortion bans, the distance to a clinic has increased by almost 400 miles since Roe was overturned. The average rural Louisianan is about 492 miles away from the nearest abortion clinic. The data for that analysis came from the Myers Abortion Facility Database.

In 2024, approximately 12,000 Texans traveled to New Mexico to receive an abortion, according to the Guttmacher Institute data. Nearly 7,000 Texans traveled to Kansas, and another 4,000 traveled to Colorado. Texas enacted a near total ban on abortions in July of 2022.
In Idaho, which enacted an abortion ban in August of 2022, 440 people travel to Washington and 140 travel to Oregon for abortions in 2024. (Visit the Guttmacher’s interactive map of abortion travel by state to explore the topic in more detail.)

Abortion and Rural Voters: More Complex Than You Might Think

Every time I write something about how rural people suffer from GOP policies, I get comments and emails from readers saying some version of, “They voted for this.” I take issue with this response for many reasons. It’s unkind, and it erases the thousands of rural voters who don’t support these policies. While some people are going to say you get what you deserve, here’s another way to look at it.

In a previous analysis of voting data from the nine states that had abortion on a ballot measure in 2024, I found that support for Trump didn’t always line up with support for abortion restriction. In 2024, approximately 73% of rural voters supported Trump, but only 61% voted to restrict abortion access. 

While 61% is still a majority vote, the 12-point gap between support for Trump and support for abortion restriction demonstrates that abortion access is a complicated issue for many Americans across the geographic spectrum. This data shows a rural voting base that is willing to split with the broader Republican platform on key issues. 

“All voters are complex,” said Nicholas Jacobs, rural sociologist. “People voted for [Trump], even if they wanted more access to reproductive care or were disappointed that a national standard was lifted by the courts.” 

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The post The Stats on Abortion Access in Rural America appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

I sit at the lunch table knowing my food is getting cold, too busy writing to eat. My two table mates are eager to tell me their stories. They are both veterans, attending an Armed to Farm training for beginning farmers. One went out of her way to welcome me, fetching a chair from a nearby table.

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Mary Martinez Rigo, 64, is older than most of the other attendees. She and her husband rehabilitated a former pine forest in Virginia into pasture for alpacas by literally drilling nutrients into the compacted clay. Her husband’s health is declining and she is at Armed to Farm with an eye to the future.

“I don’t want to give it up, and am looking to age gracefully in place as a farmer and a veteran,” she said. “I am looking to pivot from production to offering workshops.”

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This November event was the 54^th Armed to Farm, a program of the nonprofit National Center for Appropriate Technology. NCAT was founded during the energy crisis of the 1970s to develop energy saving strategies for underserved communities. In 1987, NCAT expanded its mission to include sustainable agriculture.

The week-long training events combine classroom instruction with in-depth farm tours. Experts, some of them veterans themselves, present on beekeeping, marketing, soil health, and agricultural law in the mornings. Afternoon tours provide for a close inspection of thriving small-scale agriculture operations and the chance to ask practitioners specific questions.

Participants begin by discerning goals for their farm. During the week they explore enterprises that could meet those goals. Some are aiming for profitability while others are seeking to be self-sufficient, grow a community garden in order to donate food, or operate a farm that trains other veterans. 

The farm visits at the November event, held in Berea, Kentucky, exposed the group to aquaponics, horticulture, beekeeping, fruit and nut production, goat tending, retail operations, and seed saving. The Berea College Forest hosted a session on horse logging that drew a lot of interest.

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Towanda Farrington got involved in farming through an equine program for veterans. She found that being outdoors and caring for animals helped her PTSD. She plans to operate her Mississippi-based vegetable and herb enterprises the old-fashioned way.

“I want to use a plow horse on my farm,” she said. “I got my horse from the Humane Society and like nurturing him as he nurtures me.”

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Piloted in 2013 and launched in 2015, the Armed to Farm program has welcomed participants from 46 states. It has also proven highly successful; 83% of its thousands of graduates remain involved in farming. Some have gone on to leadership in community food system work.

Participants in this program gain much more than knowledge. Veterans face unique challenges, and being in a group with their former military peers creates an instant community. Participants feel safe to share their military experience in this nurturing environment, and program leaders are intent on accommodating their special needs. 

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Sean Judge was in a pivotal place in June 2019 when he attended his first Armed to Farm. With a PTSD diagnosis and recent surgeries to remove a tumor from his spinal cord, his physical restrictions dictated that he walk slowly and carry nothing over five pounds. Regardless, he felt like a full participant in the event.

“They asked about accommodations on the application and found a way for me to attend,” he said. “They never let go of me, even though they knew it would take a little bit for me to get there.”

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Some attendees don’t know any other veterans interested in agriculture before Armed to Farm. They meet the teaching staff of NCAT, five of whom are veterans, who act as mentors and guides, and emerge connected to a supportive network they can call on in the months and years to come. 

“Veterans having their own program is one of the biggest factors in [Armed to Farm’s] long-term success,” said Mike Lewis, a veteran and NCAT staff member. “I get at least four texts a week from graduates reaching out or asking technical farming questions.” 

Veterans continue to benefit from NCAT resources after their Armed to Farm experience. Each receives a stack of books and pamphlets to take home, and can take advantage of networking and virtual learning opportunities. The advanced Armed to Farm 2.0 events provide a deeper dive into the business aspects of farming and scaling up production. 

NCAT developed and operates Armed to Farm through a cooperative agreement with USDA-Rural Development. Each event relies on organizational partners for expertise and funding. Nonprofit Ranchin’ Vets offers a transportation stipend to participants. The Berea event was in partnership with Kentucky State University under one of their grant programs.

Looking to the future, Armed to Farm leaders hope to expand its reach. They are working on offering more enterprise-specific trainings, and hosting a tribal-focused Armed to Farm event.

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