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.

The post The Data Center Rush in Appalachia appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

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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The post ‘Armed to Farm’ Program Prepares Veterans for Success in Agriculture appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

Rural voters in Virginia were part of a statewide shift toward the Democratic Party since the last gubernatorial election in 2021, according to a Daily Yonder analysis.

Democrat Abigail Spanberger defeated Republican Winsome Earle-Sears by 15 points this week, a marked turnaround from the 2021 governor’s race when Republican Glenn Youngkin defeated Democrat Terry McAuliffe by 2 points.

Rural Virginia moved 12 points toward the Democratic Party compared to 2021, from a Republican advantage of 40 points in 2021 to a Republican margin of 28 points in this week’s election. In the 2024 presidential election, rural Virginians supported Republican Donald Trump by 34 points.

The graph above compares the shift toward the Democratic Party in this week’s election compared to both the 2021 governor’s race and the 2024 presidential race. The graph is broken out into the Daily Yonder’s standard geographic categories, which are defined at the bottom of this article.

The Democratic shift in voter preferences occurred statewide but was largest in the state’s metropolitan areas, especially the Northern Virginia suburbs outside Washington, D.C., and the Tidewater region.

In large metropolitan areas, voters shifted toward the Democratic Party by about 17 points from 2021 to 2025. Rural voters shifted about 6 points toward the Democratic Party, although Republican Earle-Sears still won rural voters by a margin of about 2 to 1.

Voters in the state’s small metros moved 16.1 percentage points toward the Democrats, the largest shift outside the major metropolitan counties. This group of cities – including Fairfax, Harrisonburg, Radford, and Staunton – gave 44.3% of their vote to Democrats in 2021. Tuesday, Democrats earned 52.4% of the small city vote.

Turnout was a major factor in the shift toward the Democratic side of the ticket. Democrats turned out more voters in 2025 than they did four years ago in every type of county. Democrats saw their biggest turnout gain (24%) in small metropolitan areas. Republicans, meanwhile, had fewer voters in 2025 than in 2021 in every category of county, with the biggest loss (20%) in the core counties of major metropolitan areas.

A similar pattern in turnout was apparent when comparing the 2025 governor’s race to the 2024 presidential election. (Turnout is always lower in off-year gubernatorial races in Virginia than in the preceding year’s presidential election, so the numbers are negative.)  

Republican turnout statewide in 2025 was 30% lower than in the 2024 presidential election, while Democrat turnout was just 16% lower. See the graph below for a look at how different types of counties fared in turnout compared to 2024.

Daily Yonder County Categories

• Major metropolitan areas have 1 million or more residents. These include the cities and surrounding counties of Richmond, Northern Virginia (Washington, D.C.), and Norfolk/Virginia Beach. Major metros are separated into core counties and suburbs.

• Medium-sized metropolitan areas have 250,000 to under 1 million residents. These include the cities and surrounding counties of Lynchburg, Roanoke, and Bristol. Medium-sized metros are separated into core counties and suburbs.

• Small metropolitan areas have under 250,000 residents. These include cities such as Charlottesville, Blacksburg, Harrisonburg, Staunton, and Winchester, plus nearby counties. 

• Nonmetropolitan counties, which the Daily Yonder classifies as rural, do not have a city of 50,000 or more, and they aren’t generally within easy commuting distance of a county that does.

The post Virginia’s Rural Voters Shift 12 Points Toward Democrats appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

For Wendy Johnson, a livestock and organic grain farmer in Charles City, Iowa, October is usually the time she visits her local Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) office. 

There, she’ll sit down with one of their employees and go over the practices she implemented on her farm over the past year, along with documentation that proves she met the requirements of whichever U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) contract she was operating under. Once that’s done, she gets paid for the work she did. 

But this October is no normal year for Johnson and thousands of other farmers who rely on USDA contracts to operate their farms. 

That’s because of the ongoing government shutdown, which started on October 1, 2025. As of this writing, federal offices continue to be closed, and most government employees are furloughed, including the people who help farmers like Johnson access USDA grants. 

“I can’t even ask questions to my local NRCS office for planning for 2026 because they’re not open,” Johnson said. “I am starting to think, ‘are they just going to close forever?’ That would be awful.”

The shutdown has come as a double-whammy to farmers who were already dealing with the fallout of tariffs that went into effect earlier this year. Prices for soybeans plummeted because China, once the largest buyer of U.S. soybeans, stopped purchasing them in response to high U.S. tariffs, shrinking the soybean market for farmers. On October 30, China agreed to start buying U.S. soybeans again at 25 million metric tons per year, settling some of the issues soybean farmers faced throughout 2025. 

But input costs like fertilizer prices remain high due to retaliatory tariffs from countries like Canada, where most of the potash fertilizer American farmers rely on is imported from. That means the cost to farm is rising while commodity prices diminish. 

High interest rates on loans mean farmers might accumulate more debt to make ends meet, especially if payments on USDA contracts continue to be delayed. 

All of this, in combination with a government shutdown, could create a lethal storm for American farmers. 

“When you’re removing those cost-share opportunities while simultaneously putting tariffs into place… they’re asking for an explosion,” Johnson said. 

Other farmers fear the impacts of this “explosion” on the future of agriculture. 

Gene Steh, a soybean, corn, and wheat farmer who lives near Mitchell, South Dakota, has been farming for 46 years. He started farming during the 1980s farm crisis when hundreds of thousands of farmers defaulted on loans and just as many left the business completely, gutting large swaths of rural America that had been built by small and mid-size producers. 

Steh said that while he’s always been concerned about the state of agriculture, he’s more worried now than ever before as the value of commodities diminishes. 

“I worry about younger people that are trying to get started that have borrowed a lot of money and are trying to get through next year, and they love to farm,” Steh said. “I just hate to see the younger generation have a tremendous setback in the next five years or so.” 

Farming has become almost unviable for small and mid-size producers because of how tight the profit margins can be. The Biden administration was attempting to improve this by increasing staff at USDA offices and allocating more funds to conservation programs via the Inflation Reduction Act, but much of this work has been paused or totally reversed by the Trump administration. Earlier this year, more than 2,000 USDA staff were laid off, many of whom worked for NRCS, implementing Biden-era conservation programs.

“We don’t have folks in county offices that can help design the kind of conservation practices that would help farmers save money,” said Jesse Womack, a policy specialist at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. “Good conservation helps farmers reduce reliance on inputs [like fertilizer], and that can make you more profitable per acre.” 

Making farmers more self-reliant can make it easier for them to stay in business during times like a government shutdown or a tariff war. But with mass layoffs and the reversal of conservation funding, many farmers’ wheels are now left spinning in place. 

“We are watching a lot of our leaders in this country totally ignore how difficult producers have it right now and really neglect their duty to make tools and services readily available and easy to use for producers,” Womack said. 

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The post Government Shutdown, Trade Wars Hit Farmers’ Bottom Line Hard appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

A single mother who relied on federal food assistance lost her benefits in 2020 after Kentucky state investigators concluded she’d committed fraud.

The state alleged she’d made multiple same-day purchases, tried to overdraw her account a few times, entered a few invalid PINs and sometimes made “whole-dollar” purchases that are unlikely during typical grocery runs.

The woman from Salyersville in Appalachian Kentucky had an explanation: She worked at the store. She would sometimes buy lunch there and then get groceries after work. Her child would also occasionally use her card.

An administrative hearing officer kicked her off the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) regardless, based solely on the allegedly suspicious shopping pattern. She sued — and won.

“It is draconian to take away SNAP benefits from a single mother without clear and convincing evidence that intentional trafficking was occurring during a time when food scarcity is so prevalent,” Franklin County Judge Thomas Wingate said in his 2023 decision.

Over the last five years, the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services has brought hundreds of fraud cases that are heavily reliant on transactional data with the goal of revoking people’s food benefits.

Judges, lawyers and legal experts said in interviews and in court documents that such evidence proves little. Kentucky Public Radio reviewed dozens of administrative hearing decisions and court documents from the last five years in which the cabinet relied on shopping patterns to prove a person had “trafficked,” or sold, their benefits.

Kentucky is so aggressive in disqualifying people from SNAP benefits that the state has the second highest number of per-capita administrative disqualifications in the nation, behind Florida, according to the most recent federal data from 2023. In the last decade, disqualifications in Kentucky rose from fewer than 100 in 2015 to over 1,800 in 2023. And more than 300 others have been accused of selling or misusing their benefits since January 2024, according to records obtained by Kentucky Public Radio.

Another Franklin County judge in 2023 ordered the cabinet to stop disqualifying individuals based solely on transactional data, but since the decision, at least three lawsuits allege the health agency continues to bring such cases.

Transactional data alone cannot prove intent to commit fraud nor show the actual result of any individual transaction, University of Kentucky law professor Cory Dodds said, adding, “I’m not saying that folks didn’t do it, didn’t commit the fraud, but I don’t think the cabinet in a lot of these cases has met their burden of proof, either.”

Kentuckians receive notice of their alleged suspicious activity through mailed letters, in which they’re asked to voluntarily waive their right to a hearing and automatically accept the punishment. On first offense, that’s generally a one-year SNAP ban. They’re also required to pay back the full amount the state says they misused.

Often, these cases involve a relatively small amount of money. Records show that more than 900 people have been kicked off for “trafficking” or misuse for less than $1,000 since 2022. The lowest amount alleged was 14 cents.

The state has leaned heavily on administrative hearing waivers since 2015, and by 2023, almost a quarter of all disqualifications were via waiver. Some lawsuits allege individuals did not fully understand the consequences of the waivers and were encouraged to sign by officials.

Kentucky Public Radio reviewed more than two dozen cases since 2020 in which the cabinet accused an individual of trafficking using only spending patterns, despite the participants’ denial or lack of response — and with no other evidence or interviews presented, according to administrative hearing decisions.

Kendra Steele, a spokesperson for the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, declined to schedule an interview with cabinet officials after multiple requests. Steele said in an email that “we have never” brought trafficking cases based solely on transactional data and acknowledged it would not be sufficient to prove intent.

In response to a different question, Steele wrote the investigation into fraud allegations consists of looking into income, living situations “and patterns of spending that are indicative of trafficking.” She did not indicate how any of those factors could be used to prove intentional misuse or selling of SNAP benefits, or how it differs from relying on transactional data — which is inherently a pattern of spending. Steele said in another email that they also interview vendors and SNAP recipients.

‘It’s our fellow Kentuckians who are going hungry’

Roughly 4 in 25 Kentuckians suffer from food insecurity, similar to the national rate of about 14%, according to an Associated Press analysis of U.S. Census Bureau and Feeding America data.

The USDA will stop collecting and releasing statistics on food insecurity after October, saying Sept. 20 that the numbers had become “overly politicized.” The decision comes in the wake of federal funding cuts for food and nutrition safety net programs nationwide.

In the last fiscal year, 1 in 8 Kentuckians benefitted from SNAP, formerly called food stamps. Food insecurity in Kentucky’s rural areas is even more stark, and legal representation harder to come by.

“The people who benefit from these programs are some of the folks that we need to be helping the most in this country,” Dodds said. “It’s our fellow Kentuckians who are going hungry as a result of baseless allegations of waste, fraud and abuse.”

The cabinet denied KPR’s request for case notes on individual fraud accusations starting in early 2024 that would include the evidence used in the accusations. But administrative hearing decisions reviewed by KPR from 2020 through 2023 included the evidence the cabinet relied on; hearing officers would frequently say a person had trafficked their benefits based on shopping patterns the state deemed suspicious.

National legal experts who specialize in SNAP access say an overreliance on transactional data isn’t unique to Kentucky. Transactional data was initially meant as a tool to identify potential fraud cases — not as a means to prove it, Georgetown law professor David Super said.

He’s studied SNAP disqualifications for decades, and has seen many cases where he believes transactional data is misconstrued as direct evidence of wrongdoing, instead of requiring a state to build cases with witnesses, affidavits, video evidence and plea deals.

In one redacted 2023 state administrative hearing decision, a hearing officer decided a woman in the eastern Kentucky city of McKee had trafficked her benefits because she had made eight back-to-back transactions in a year. The decision also said she’d checked her balance several times, made a few insufficient fund attempts and had incorrectly entered her PIN number a few times.

She lost her SNAP benefits for a year. In an appeal, the woman told the state she has two kids and had recently discovered she was pregnant.

“Everyone forgets to get something and has to go back in the store and get it,” she wrote, defending her back-to-back purchases.

She received another hearing, but the outcome didn’t change.

Cabinet officials acknowledged in cross examinations during a 2023 case that back-to-back transactions and whole-dollar purchases aren’t forbidden under SNAP rules, nor are recipients told that the cabinet considers them suspicious.

But all of these things are used as evidence — sometimes the sole evidence — that a person misused their benefits.

Kristie Goff, an AppalRed legal aid lawyer in Prestonsburg in southeast Kentucky, used to see many of these cases, though they’ve declined in the last year.

“There have been very few instances in cases I have handled, where a client was not able to give me a perfectly reasonable explanation for those transactions, and none of it was trafficking,” Goff said. “There are no receipts, there’s no video footage to show that someone’s doing anything wrong. It’s just a number written on a paper.”

While saying purchasing history is insufficient to prove trafficking, Kentucky judges have stopped short of demanding that the state change how it trains employees or conducts its SNAP investigations.

In response to an open records request, the cabinet provided KPR with documents used to train investigators on intentional program violations. They appear to almost exclusively discuss transactional data, including investigating back-to-back payments, large transactions and whole-dollar purchases.

In 2020, Michigan state court of appeals judges decided transactional data alone is never sufficient to prove that a business — or a person — fraudulently used SNAP benefits.

Dodds believes that should be the standard for all states, including Kentucky.

He is in the early stages of systematically reviewing thousands of SNAP benefit trafficking hearing decisions between 2020 and 2023. Data from about 700 decisions in 2020 alone already shows that many Kentuckians have been denied benefits before the state presents what he considers real evidence of guilt.

“There are maybe a handful of cases that I would say there was real evidence that they had done something wrong,” Dodds said. “There was one where a woman was on the phone with the hearing officer while she was actively trying to sell her benefits… But cases with non-transational data are exceedingly rare.”

Waiving a hearing

When Kentuckians receive the formal notice of accusations, they also receive a waiver asking that person to voluntarily forgo their right to a hearing and automatically accept the punishment.

During the George W. Bush administration, a 2004 federal policy memo encouraged states to rethink their waiver forms, reminding them they weren’t designed for cases where there is a mere “suspicion of guilt.”

Kentucky’s Cabinet for Health and Family Services declined a records request for a copy of all the waiver forms sent to accused individuals, which include a summary of the evidence, saying they are private correspondence.

Several legal experts and lawyers told KPR there’s no benefit to signing the waiver — the punishment isn’t lessened nor does refusing to sign lead to criminal prosecution.

But lawsuits over the waivers allege cabinet officials encouraged or pressured SNAP recipients into signing away their right to a hearing. In one active lawsuit, a Louisville mom alleges she signed the waiver because a cabinet employee told her she had to. The cabinet refused a hearing request after she consulted a lawyer. (The lawsuit alleges the case against her is also based on transactional data.)

Goff said rural SNAP recipients may trigger a few elements of the cabinet’s trafficking criteria — buying in bulk, traveling long distances for groceries or frequenting small stores that are more likely to sell in whole-dollar amounts.

Rural areas have fewer lawyers and less expertise in this type of law, Goff said, which makes it even more difficult for indigent rural Kentuckians to seek legal advice.

“I imagine for every one person who walks through my door to get a hearing,” Goff said, “there’s probably five more that have never known that they could call us or known that they could get an attorney.”

Associated Press data reporter Kasturi Pananjady contributed to this report. This reporting is part of a series called Sowing Resilience, a collaboration between the Institute for Nonprofit News’ Rural News Network and The Associated Press. Nine nonprofit newsrooms were involved: The Beacon, Capital B, Enlace Latino NC, Investigate Midwest, The Jefferson County Beacon, KOSU, Louisville Public Media, The Maine Monitor and MinnPost. The Rural News Network is funded by Google News Initiative and Knight Foundation, among others.

In her 20 years running a food bank in Auxier, a tiny town of several hundred nestled in the mountains of southeastern Kentucky, Gail Goble has never seen demand as high as it is now.

The Hand in Hand Ministries food bank serves roughly 150 people in the town and surrounding area of Floyd County who come in once a month for a grocery cart full of canned goods, bread, meat and toiletries.

“They’re here every month, so they depend on it,” Goble said. “And a lot of them come and they’ll say ‘well, I’m completely out of food.’”

The Appalachian region of eastern Kentucky is especially dependent on food assistance. At least a quarter of the population in more than a dozen counties in the region are on the federally funded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as food stamps, according to a Kentucky Public Radio analysis of federal data.

The demand is not just spurred by the rising cost of groceries, but a second round of devastating flooding following the historic regional floods of 2022, she said.

“They need everything, because they lost everything,” Goble said. “They lost their medicines, they lost their food, they lost their refrigerators… so there’s been a great need for that.”

Goble says many of the people they serve are already enrolled in SNAP, but still need the food bank to supplement their family’s groceries. Others they serve have slipped through the cracks and aren’t eligible for the program.

Eastern Kentucky families who were already struggling under inflationary pressure and repeated natural disasters are now contemplating a new threat — a bill estimated to cut hundreds of billions in SNAP benefits over the next decade and drop millions from enrollment.

Under the reconciliation bill passed by the U.S. House last month — dubbed the “One Big Beautiful Bill” by President Donald Trump and its supporters — states would now be required to pick up a large part of the tab for SNAP benefits and a larger portion of administrative costs.

As a result, Kentucky would have to fill a $239 million hole in its annual budget to maintain benefits for the 13% of residents enrolled in the program, or nearly 576,000 people, according to progressive think tank Kentucky Center for Economic Policy. An early Senate version of the bill would make a cut of nearly half that amount, but add more stringent work reporting requirements that could drop the state’s enrollment.

If Kentucky lawmakers choose not to fill this SNAP funding hole in future state budgets amid forecasts of declining tax revenue, they would be forced to either drop many Kentuckians from food assistance benefits or reduce benefits for everyone. With the Republican supermajority in Frankfort focused on reducing spending and cutting taxes, that could be a heavy lift.

GOP Rep. Hal Rogers, who has represented most of eastern Kentucky for more than four decades, voted for the House bill and has not publicly addressed its SNAP cuts. In his district, 22% of households are receiving SNAP benefits. Republican supporters argue these measures are needed in order to prevent waste, fraud and abuse in the system.

Goble of Hand in Hand said she fears what would happen if a reconciliation bill with major SNAP cuts passes into law and the state doesn’t fill in the large budget hole. The Auxier food bank and others in the region are already stretched near capacity of what they can offer people in need, she said.

“If that bill passes, I think it’s going to be very hard to provide for all the families,” Goble said. “It’s already bad enough that the economy is so bad and everything is so expensive, but to take away their SNAP benefits, or lower their SNAP benefits? That would just be horrific.”

Demand for food assistance rising in eastern Kentucky 

The spiked demand for food that Goble sees in Auxier is seen throughout the Appalachian region by Michael Halligan, the CEO of God’s Pantry Food Bank, which coordinates and distributes food to nonprofits across central and eastern Kentucky, including Hand in Hand.

When pandemic-era stimulus checks, increased SNAP allotments and child tax credits vanished, demand at food banks exploded. God’s Pantry has scaled up their services by more than 30% in the past two years to fill the need, Halligan said.

“Folks who have limited resources have to make difficult choices on whether to put food on the table, whether to pay for housing costs, whether to pay for medical expenses, basically the necessities of life,” he said.

Another round of natural disasters in the region this year has now created the highest demand for food he’s ever seen, as they now provide free meals to nearly 280,000 food insecure people in central and southeastern Kentucky. They recently distributed nearly 100,000 pounds of food to groups impacted by deadly tornadoes in London.

Halligan says the meals are only meant to supplement SNAP benefits — and can in no way be viewed as a feasible or realistic replacement for them.

“For every nine meals someone who’s eligible for SNAP receives, we can do one,” Halligan said. “(SNAP) is a critically important piece of the hunger safety net, particularly for folks that don’t have the financial resources to go to a grocery store. If those benefits decline, we cannot grow enough in scale or fast enough to replace them.”

Congress seeks to shift SNAP costs onto states

Under the House version of the reconciliation bill, states would for the first time pick up between 5% and 25% of the cost of SNAP benefits based on what’s called their “error rate.” That measures the state’s unintentional under or overpayment of benefits to individuals.

Kentucky’s most recently calculated error rate was 7.27%, meaning the state would have to pick up 15% of the cost of SNAP benefits if the House bill was in effect, totaling $172 million. Combined with the $67 million of newly shifted administrative costs, that would mean the state would have to find $239 million in its state budget to cover the benefits of all its current SNAP enrollees for one year.

In an interview with the Bowling Green Daily News, western Kentucky GOP Congressman Brett Guthrie said they needed state governments to have “investment in” how SNAP is administered in order to prevent abuse.

“There are (…) people that absolutely desperately need food stamps, but there are also people that sell them to do other things with them, and we want states to be more vigorous,” Guthrie said.

The House proposal would punish states based on their unintentional error rates, not necessarily the amount of fraud in SNAP. Spokespersons for Congressmen Rogers and Guthrie did respond to a request for comment on this story.

An early Senate version of the bill proposed in committee this month is still in significant flux, but would significantly lessen the cost shift to Kentucky. Under that version and the state’s latest error rate, Kentucky would pick up 5% of the costs of SNAP benefits, at a total cost of $124 million when combining new administrative costs. It would also add a significant expansion of current work reporting requirements to include older adults and parents of older children, which would likely drop many from coverage even if the state filled the budget hole.

Opponents of the bill in Kentucky question if the state has the funds to cover any proposed federal cuts, arguing it will instead force states to reduce benefits or eligibility. After several years of budget surpluses that were spurred by pandemic era federal stimulus spending — as well as cuts to the individual income tax rate — Kentucky is now forecast to have slightly lower tax revenue in the current fiscal year ending in July. State revenue is then forecast to drop another 2.3% in the first six months of the next fiscal year.

It’s also unclear if the GOP-dominated Kentucky General Assembly is interested in increasing expenditures on SNAP benefits. Last year, the Kentucky House passed a bill that would have dropped thousands of Kentuckians off SNAP benefits by reinstating a financial asset test and making income requirements more restrictive. The bill, however, was voted down in a Senate committee.

One of the top goals of Republican state lawmakers is to keep lowering the income tax via a set of budget triggers that rely on keeping overall spending low and not drawing down from the budget reserve trust fund. With lawmakers set to craft a new two-year state budget in the session that begins in January, increasing spending on SNAP benefits could significantly lower the odds of future tax cuts under the current system.

If Congress does pass SNAP cuts resembling what’s in the House bill, Halligan with God’s Pantry said he hopes Frankfort would step up and fill the massive $240 million hole in the budget, “but it’s a pretty daunting number to just have to automatically come up with.”

He believes that SNAP is an overall effective program. While small changes and improvements may be called for, he said cost-shifting to states doesn’t address alleged waste, fraud or abuse.

“I sort of have this fundamental belief that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” Halligan said.

Advocates fear hunger and economic impact of cuts

Goble of the Auxier food bank says if Congress cuts SNAP and the state can’t fill that budget hole, that will pile onto their already unprecedented demand from hungry Kentuckians.

“A lot of people that don’t come are probably drawing SNAP benefits as well, and they would end up here,” Goble said. “So they would probably end up getting less food than what we were able to provide, which is not a whole lot anyway.”

While adding to food insecurity among hungry Kentuckians, rural grocery stores and farmers would also likely feel the loss of federal funds.

Jennifer Weeber, the Northfork local food coordinator with the Community Farm Alliance, said programs that encourage SNAP recipients to spend their benefits at farmers’ markets were just beginning to see success in Perry County, where she’s based.

Weeber said agriculture has become an increasingly important part of the post-coal economy in the region. She fears cutting one of farmers’ revenue streams will be a blow to the rest of the local economy too.

“That’s not just $5 in tomatoes, but it’s $5 in tomatoes going to someone who is rooted in the community, who is spending their money in the community, who is supporting community events,” Weeber said.

There are also larger economic implications of cutting SNAP. The USDA Economic Research Service estimated that for every $1 the government spends on SNAP benefits, it increases the country’s gross domestic product by $1.54 in an otherwise slowing local economy. That infusion of spending also helped to improve production for rural industry by 1.25%, according to a five year study that ended in 2014.

The Food Industry Association, which represents grocery stores and food wholesalers, says around 5% of all supermarket purchases are made via SNAP, and Halligan suspects that percentage is higher in rural areas that are more dependent on the benefits.

With the Trump administration’s focus on “Make America Healthy Again,” Weeber said she would have thought programs like SNAP would be a priority.

“A lot of the programs that we already have in place that enable people to access fresh produce, lean proteins and all of that are being cut,” Weeber said. “They are the exact same programs that have helped build our local food economy all across the country, but particularly here in southeastern Kentucky.”

SNAP cuts now in hands of the Senate 

The reconciliation bill is now in the hands of a Senate committee, where an amended version would create less of a budget hole to fill for Kentucky, but also expand work reporting requirements for SNAP eligibility.

For the past three decades, non-elderly and non-disabled SNAP enrollees were limited to three months of benefits unless they reported 80 hours of work per month, but parents and caregivers of children were exempted. This Senate version of the bill would now add work requirements for those ages 55 to 64, as well as the caregivers of children ages 10 to 17.

The Senate version would also remove benefits from refugees and asylum seekers and restrict states’ ability to waive the work requirements in areas with high unemployment rates. In Kentucky, 117 of its 120 counties currently have this waiver, but the bill would limit waivers to counties where unemployment is at least 10% — a level that only 10 counties in the country, and zero in Kentucky, currently reach.

One major roadblock to Republican SNAP reforms in any bill coming out of the Senate is a ruling by the chamber’s parliamentarian last week, which determined that its provision shifting of costs to states based on their error rates violates a procedural rule and would need 60 votes in the chamber to proceed. As part of the reconciliation process, the bill itself only needs a majority vote in each chamber, with the GOP holding a small majority in each — and little margin for error.

Halligan of God’s Pantry says if a bill ultimately passes with large cuts to SNAP, the state will be left with few good options — forced to either shift hundreds of millions of tax dollars from other key priorities to fill the budget hole, or cut SNAP enrollment and benefits for the many who are desperately in need.

“This is really about nutrition,” Halligan said. “This is really about a pathway forward. This is about better education, better employment, better health.”

Weeber of the Community Farm Alliance in Perry County added that the same House reconciliation bill also makes major cuts to Medicaid that could drop close to 300,000 Kentuckians from the federal health coverage, which would also have an outsized impact on the same Appalachian region that is heavily dependent on the program.

“With Medicaid on the chopping block as well, we’re really creating a perfect storm for having a really unhealthy community and really creating the next generation of people who are unhealthy,” Weeber said.

State government and politics reporting is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.