ITHACA, N.Y. — About six transgender rights demonstrators braved a thunderstorm as they briefly blocked rush hour traffic to march down Seneca Street late Tuesday afternoon.

The demonstration coincides with International Transgender Day of Visibility, which is held annually to raise awareness of discrimination and violence against transgender people.

The demonstrators, some wearing the colors of the transgender flag under their umbrellas, seemed equally unfazed by the torrential rain and lightning as they did by the honks of some frustrated drivers. 

A demonstrator with a bull horn led the small group in chants as they set off from The Commons around 5:30 p.m. The event was organized by the Queer Anarchy Collective, a recently formed local activist and community group.

Legislation targeted at the trans community has seen an uptick during the second Trump Administration. More than half of U.S. states have passed laws banning some kinds of gender affirming care. A recent law in Kansas immediately invalidated identification documents for people whose gender marker does not match their sex assigned at birth.

Transgender people are more than four times more likely to be the target of violent crime compared to cisgender people, according to a study by researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles. The disparity is even greater for trans people of color.

On Tuesday evening, at least five Ithaca Police Department vehicles were on hand to direct traffic along Seneca Street. The group of demonstrators was able to block all lanes of traffic for at least part of their march, which appeared to continue at least until Meadow Street.

At several points, the driver of a silver pickup truck revved his engine loudly and briefly appeared poised to rush at the small group. The driver eventually turned off of Seneca Street, but not before driving past the group loudly a second time.

The post Small group of protestors block traffic on Transgender Day of Visibility appeared first on The Ithaca Voice.

March went up and down like a yoyo—maple sap ran well for a few days then locked up with colder temperatures that were popping the trees outside my bedroom window. It looks like it should be running good by the end of the week. My neighbor, Eric Sutherland, at Moose Maple, said he had a good run and made 30 gallons one day that it was running for his one-man operation. If his open sign is out, he sells it right there while he is processing. The color looked exceptionally good from the syrup he has been making. 

The geese have been flying over and there was a flock in Old Forge Pond today along with a few mallards. My evening grosbeak flock has remained about the same—75 to 100 most everyday and I got out to band few of them. The blue jays are still hogging the feeders with around 20 each day. A few red-winged blackbirds come and go, and a few common grackles are here. Not many small birds but a few slate colored juncos and American tree sparrows. The black capped chickadees, both nuthatches and the woodpeckers are about the same all winter with the red-bellied woodpecker still showing up each day working the peanut butter logs. With his longer bill he doesn’t take any guff from the jays. 

The snowpack is about a foot in the woods but looking across the pond to the south slope of Potter Ridge is about bare. The one big rain day and night plugged the culvert on the ski trail up from the house with sticks and leaves which gives added water flowing into my pond that the outlet won’t manage. I must keep checking that. When I see water going down the gully in front of the house I know there is a problem up above. With that culvert open, it flows under my driveway with no problem and not into the pond. 

This year, View Arts Center is celebrating 75 years in operation from the start on Mernie Kashiwa’s chicken wire fences with art on her front lawn to the green building it now operates out of. Just opening last Saturday is the regional show of artwork in the main galleries and artwork from many young adults from many of the local school’s art classes in the Hank Kashiwa Gallery. 

I’m sure as most have noticed there has been a big up tick in gas prices locally. It went up a week ago from $3.39 to $3.79 and then this week it went to $4.99 which I think is $5 a gallon. Then I got fuel oil today and that went from $3.59 a month ago to $4.79 today. I know President Trump keeps telling us that we don’t need any of the oil that his war in Iran has stopped flowing to other countries as we have all our own oil supplies. Well, can’t be the oil companies that are drilling in the U.S. that feel that way or our prices would have remained the same.

Many say when I write about these things, especially our president, and now his war, what does that have to do with outdoor adventures? Again, if this had occurred a couple of months ago my trip to Yellowstone Park, which was certainly an outdoor adventure with car travel, air travel, vehicle rental, room rental, meals and the many other things you encounter on any trip, it would have been double what I paid. That’s what people are now going to be encountering even if you can get on your plane trip on time. The environmental damage of this war will be catastrophic to the oceans, the land and civilian damage involved, and it is not over yet. The loss of life on both sides may never be known, and the president’s campaign promise of no more foreign wars was just one more of his many lies to the American public. 

The DEC announces record-breaking 2,925 bear harvest estimates, but that’s another story. See ya.

The Appellate Division, Third Department, in Albany, granted a motion by Protect the Adirondacks (PROTECT) and two other appellants for a preliminary injunction preventing LS Marina, LLC (LSM) from installing new docks and dock covers at two marina sites located on Lower Saranac Lake. The injunction will remain in effect pending resolution of the appeal.

The appeal arises from State Supreme Court decisions dismissing two legal challenges to the Adirondack Park Agency’s (APA) 2023 approval of a major expansion of LSM’s commercial marina. The project involves the installation of new docks and dock covers in and over regulated freshwater wetlands. A prior permit issued by APA in 2020 for the project was annulled by the Appellate Division in 2023 on the grounds that the agency failed to properly value wetlands at the project site, as required by APA regulations. Following that ruling, APA issued a new 2023 approval for the marina expansion, determining that the project no longer required a wetlands permit. 

PROTECT, Adirondack Wild: Friends of the Forest Preserve, Inc. and former Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Thomas Jorling challenged APA’s approval. Those proceedings were dismissed, leading to the present appeal. 

“We are pleased that the Appellate Division granted our motion for a preliminary injunction pending resolution of the appeal. This ruling marks a critical step in safeguarding the valuable and irreplaceable wetlands of Lower Saranac Lake,” said Christopher Amato, conservation director and counsel for PROTECT. 

“In issuing this decision, the Appellate Division is preserving the status quo by allowing existing operations to continue while preventing further expansion of the marina. We look forward to presenting our full case to the court and demonstrating why APA erred in 2023 when it approved the marina expansion without requiring a wetlands permit,” said Claudia Braymer, executive director of PROTECT.

The circus was coming to town.

“North’s Circus is coming to Fort Edward on Tuesday, May 29. The array of talent embraced in this troupe is seldom equaled and never excelled,” The Fort Edward Ledger reported on May 25, 1860. “Mr. N. has a great reputation as a horseman, and is one of the most celebrated exhibitors in the country.”

Other 19th century circus news collected from historic newspapers of the region:

1879

“The circus at Port Henry today has created quite a furor here, and large numbers of our citizens have gone to see it,” the Mineville correspondent reported in the Elizabethtown Post & Gazette on Aug. 7.

“A great excitement, particularly among the women and children of our village, was caused last Monday afternoon by the appearance in our midst of a large bear, which, however, so far as we can learn, did but little real damage,” the Bloomingdale correspondent reported in the Elizabethtown Post & Gazette on Oct. 9. “He was a trained, performing bear, said to be one of the cinnamon species from France. In fact, he was a show and was accompanied by a French gentleman who controlled all his actions, making him climb telegraph poles, dance, wrestle etc., and who collected the nickels and pennies bestowed on him.”

1882

“A hotter, dustier day than Monday last is seldom recorded in this latitude, and yet, the throng of people who came to see Jumbo and the rest of Barnum’s ‘great aggregation’ could scarcely have been greater had it been a temperate as a day in early June,” The Glens Falls Messenger reported on Aug. 18.

“Before 7 o’clock, people began to come in from the country, and the numbers upon the streets gave the village all the appearance of a holiday occasion,” the report continued. “The show had rested here over Sunday, arriving late Saturday night, and for once the parade came off at the appointed hour. The display was very fine, differing in many points from the ordinary circus process. There was an unusual amount—brass band, martial drum corps, Scotch bag pipes, plantation negro singers, steam calliope, etc., etc.”

The noon show sold out, but attendance at the evening show was “not so great,” likely due to a rainstorm.

“It is safe to say that notwithstanding his enormous expenses, Barnum was not the poorer for sending his show to Glens Falls.”

“Circus today,” the Port Henry correspondent reported in The Elizabethtown Post & Gazette on July 6. “There are more little horses in it than in 20 ordinary shows. An elephant helped the mired wagons along by pushing with his forehead.”

A Milan man who falsified records to gain admission for his kids to Red Hook public schools has been arrested and charged with several felonies, the State Police reported.

The arrest of Michael Cola, 48, follows an extensive investigation conducted by the New York State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI) at Rhinebeck after officials at Red Hook schools reported their suspicions, police said.

Cola was successful in enrolling his children in Red Hook schools for 1.5 years, State Police Trooper Krystal Paolicelli told The Daily Catch. The district reported a loss of $59,327.30, according to police.

The ages of the children, their grades in school, and the years they attended were not immediately available. But the police data suggest that two children were involved.

Red Hook Central School District accepts non-resident students. For the 2025-26 school year, the fee is $17,185 per student for grades K-6 and $21,510 for grades 7-12, according to the district.

District spokesman Michael Benischek declined to comment on how frequently officials believe families misrepresent their residency.

Cola has been charged with Grand Larceny 2nd, a class C felony, and Falsifying Business Records 1st, a class E felony. The grand larceny charge, under the State Penal Code, involves the theft of property valued at over $50,000 or extortion. It is punishable by up to 15 years in state prison, a fine of up to $15,000, or double the offender’s gain, according to the code. The Class E felony carries a maximum sentence of four years in prison.

Investigators began working the case in December 2024 and determined that Cola lived in the Pine Plains School District.

Cola was arrested on Thursday and released on an appearance ticket returnable to the Town of Red Hook Court on March 28 at 4 p.m.

The post Milan Man Arrested After Allegedly Falsifying Address to Enroll Children in Red Hook Schools first appeared on The Daily Catch.

Northern Forest Center is building what may be the first structure in the Adirondacks to use cross-laminated timber, an emerging sustainable building material, as part of a new 9-unit apartment building in downtown Tupper Lake.

The nonprofit, which owns the property, is hoping the Tupper Lake project and a companion project in Greenville, Maine, will raise awareness of engineered wood products— known broadly as mass timber—and be a catalyst for its expanded use across the region’s forest products sector.

“We’ve been excited as an organization about what mass timber could represent for the forest product sector in the region,” said Leslie Karasin, the center’s Adirondack program director.

What is mass timber?

Mass timber is a category of engineered wood products made by bonding or fastening lumber into large, strong structural components such as panels, beams and columns. This creates “mass” (thickness and density), allowing the wood to bear the weight of large commercial buildings, airports, and apartment complexes.

Some forms of mass timber have been used for more than a century, but modern versions have been in use for the last few decades, particularly in Europe.

Older forms include nail-laminated timber, which consists of lumber products such as 2-by-6-inch pine boards nailed together to form a more structurally formidable piece such as a beam. Nail-laminated timber can be created in a factory or on-site by carpenters.

Other factory-built forms include cross-laminated timber, in which wood is glued and pressed together at right angles; dowel-laminated timber, held together by dowels or rods; and glue-laminated timber, in which pieces are bonded with the grain running parallel to make trusses, beams and other products.

Mass timber is most commonly used in larger structures. It is a major component of the planned expansion at Burlington International Airport in Vermont, and a small but growing number of developers in cities such as New York and Boston have used the product for office and mixed-use buildings. Some colleges, including Amherst and Rutgers, have also chosen mass timber for new construction.

How is it being used in Tupper Lake?

The center has hired contractors to build a 9-unit apartment building using floor assemblages made of cross-laminated timber for apartments at the rear of the building. The large pre-constructed panels were set in place by crane and now serve as the ceiling for the first floor, structural elements between floors and subflooring for the upstairs space.

The building also uses laminated beams for support of the mass timber flooring and in several other areas.

Rob Armstrong, project manager with JFP Enterprises, which is overseeing the construction, said the material has practical advantages on the job site.

“It’s good to work with, and it cuts down on time,” Armstrong said. “(It’s a) trend of what we’ve seen in the industry to use this more innovative and sustainable product.”

The Tupper Lake project is one of two major mass timber efforts for the Northern Forest Center. The other is in Greenville, Maine, where mass timber will be used in the construction of 28 homes, a project expected to begin this spring. That demonstration project aims to show that mass timber can work in smaller residential buildings, where it is less commonly used.

What are the potential advantages?

Some mass timber products, such as the floor assemblages used in the Tupper Lake building, can speed up construction and reduce labor costs. Proponents also note that wood products carry a lower carbon footprint than concrete and steel, and that wood is a renewable resource. Some builders and buyers also favor its aesthetic qualities.

Using wood could also be an economic boon for local communities if mass timber creates additional demand for regional timber. Spruce, fir, hemlock and pine — all species grown in the Adirondacks and the broader Northern Forest — are among the species used in mass timber products.

If this takes off, this will help anchor that age-old industry of logging. We won’t be buying steel from China. We won’t be bringing stuff overseas. It’ll be here, grown here, harvested here, made here, used here.”

Jerry Delaney, executive director, Adirondack Park Local Government Review Board

“If this takes off, this will help anchor that age-old industry of logging,” said Jerry Delaney, a former center board member and current executive director of the Adirondack Park Local Government Review Board. “We won’t be buying steel from China. We won’t be bringing stuff overseas. It’ll be here, grown here, harvested here, made here, used here.”

What are the challenges?

While mass timber is gaining ground in some building circles, it remains an emerging market in the Northeast. Contractors are still familiarizing themselves with the product and how to use it. Mass timber applications aren’t always covered by standard building codes and can require special permits — wood buildings taller than six stories, for instance, require special authorization.

One of the biggest obstacles is the absence of supply chain infrastructure and manufacturing plants in the Northeast. There are currently no cross-laminated timber plants in the Northeast or Mid-Atlantic regions, though plans for plants have been proposed in places such as Maine. There are no mass timber mills in New York.

Without regional manufacturing, products must be trucked in from elsewhere, increasing the carbon footprint of the material and raising costs. The Tupper Lake building used floor assemblages from Sterling Structural, based in Illinois. Beams were supplied by Unalam, based in Sidney, New York.

RELATED READING: Historic Elizabethtown compound to become affordable housing

“The absence of Northeast (cross-laminated timber) factories is notable given the growing capacity elsewhere, with concentrations in the Pacific Northwest, the South, and Eastern Canada,” according to a January report on the state and future of mass timber in the Northern Forest, commissioned by the center.

For the Northern Forest Center, the Tupper Lake building is both a housing solution and a proof of concept—a tangible argument that the region’s forests could supply the next generation of building materials, starting in its own backyard.

Editor’s Note: This story was updated with new information at 8:08 p.m. following a Tuesday evening vote of the Bard Faculty Senate.

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In the aftermath of the release of hundreds of emails revealing a long-standing relationship between Bard College President Leon Botstein and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Bard’s Faculty Senate formally voted Tuesday evening to present a statement to the Board of Trustees calling for stronger faculty involvement in the College’s governance and greater transparency in the ongoing investigation process. 

This comes as 100 Bard College faculty members, one-third of the total, met Tuesday morning to discuss issuing a public statement asserting a point of view on Botstein’s ties to Epstein, which are displayed in hundreds of emails between the men as well as in photographs showing visits to Bard by Epstein and young women. 

According to four faculty members who attended the 90-minute morning meeting and who spoke to The Daily Catch on background to protect sensitive conversations, two statements with divergent messages were considered by the faculty, who met under the auspices of the Faculty Senate, which holds a standard meeting on the first Tuesday of the month.

One statement, which was presented and signed by six senior faculty members at the beginning of the meeting, called for a defense of Botstein and his actions, citing the crucial role he has played as a fundraiser for the college. Botstein is widely viewed as one of the most successful small-college fundraisers in the nation; Bard recently announced completion of a $500-million matching grant challenge by the Open Society Foundation. Botstein has maintained in statements to the media and to the Bard campus that his only interest in connecting with Epstein was to raise money for a substantial gift, which did not materialize.

The second statement did not criticize Botstein for his communications with Epstein, largely focusing instead on the future of the college. The statement was passed by the Faculty Senate shortly after 7:30 p.m. Tuesday.

“The statement was the topic of extensive, thoughtful discussion by the faculty this morning,” said the Rev. Bruce Chilton, Director of Bard’s Institute of Advanced Theology. “This evening, the Senate of the Faculty transmitted it to the Board of Trustees. In my judgment, it addresses the challenges to professional ethics and common morality that the Epstein files represent.”

The letter opens with a statement asserting the wide array of faculty who weighed in on the letter. Then, it offers a statement of support for victims that contextualizes the faculty’s view of Botstein’s connection to Epstein. “We share in the profound outrage and horror at the revelations contained in the Epstein files and extend our deepest support to the women and children who were exploited, trafficked, entrapped, and abused by Jeffrey Epstein and his associates,” the statement reads. “The revelations about President Botstein’s relationship to Epstein raise questions that concern the College as a whole as well as President Botstein personally.”

Faculty then wrote that they support the Board of Trustees’ decision to hire the Washington, D.C. law firm, WilmerHale, and they urged more faculty engagement after the firm’s work is complete. “We believe that the faculty must be integral to deciding next steps following the investigation, with the aim of building toward a strong future for the institution,” the faculty wrote.

In the next paragraph, the faculty notes the disconnect between the college’s role as a “private college in the public interest” and the activities of Epstein. “We take this crisis as a spur to recommit to the bold moral project that defines Bard College,” the faculty said. “At the same time, we recognize that there are steps we must take to reform the institutional structures and cultures that made entanglements with Epstein possible. Institutions dedicated to education and justice must hold themselves to exacting ethical standards.”

The faculty suggested three concrete steps:
• Create an Epstein-linked fund: Faculty members proposed establishing a fund equal to the amount Bard received in donations from Jeffrey Epstein and Leon Black, including any interest earned. The money would support ongoing academic and community initiatives addressing sexual violence and would be overseen by a standing committee of elected staff, students, and faculty.

• Reform faculty governance: The proposal calls for forming an elected ad hoc faculty committee to develop reforms aimed at creating a stronger and more democratic system of faculty governance while safeguarding Bard’s distinctive liberal arts model.

• Plan for presidential succession: Faculty also recommended that the Board of Trustees develop and publicly communicate a clear plan and timeline for leadership transition following Botstein’s 51-year tenure, with faculty playing a meaningful role in shaping future leadership structures and any eventual presidential search.

One source told The Daily Catch that there was a sense of urgency among Senate members to pass this statement and put it out as soon as possible. Botstein spokesman David Wade said Tuesday night that he would seek to obtain a statement from the President.

Each proposal was drafted by a group of four to eight faculty members, and although there was no formal vote on either proposal on Tuesday morning at the meeting, multiple faculty sources said the number of supporters for the second statement outweighed the support for the proposal defending Botstein. One faculty member said that both senior and junior faculty were involved in the drafting process, and they received input from junior and senior colleagues from every division of the college. 

Microphones were set up during the meeting for people to speak publicly, and there was also an online form allowing faculty members to submit anonymous comments about the petitions prior to the meeting. Approximately 20 people spoke into microphones at the meeting, sources said. 

One of the attendees said only two people spoke in favor of demanding Botstein’s resignation, and that among those who spoke, the second letter drew near to a consensus. However, that faculty member said that because a number of faculty positions are personally appointed by Botstein and because he rules on almost every tenure decision, many were still afraid to speak up, even behind closed doors. 

“At any moment, if someone stands up in a meeting like that and says, ‘I think the president should resign,’ you have to assume it will get back to him and that creates a culture of fear,” one source said. “All it takes is one person to whisper in the President’s ear, and that’s it.”

Typically, Faculty Senate meetings include only the 14 members of the Senate, but Tuesday’s meeting was organized as an open meeting to allow for the Senate to hear the perspectives of all faculty members who wished to attend. 

One senior faculty member told The Daily Catch that the Faculty Senate usually holds one open meeting per semester, but said it was still unusual that so many faculty members attended on Tuesday. According to Bard, there are under 300 faculty members at the college.

Faculty leaders also met in early February to discuss a potential response to news about Botstein and Epstein, but they were not able to reach a consensus.

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Read our full coverage of the Epstein-Botstein connection here.

The post In Wake of Botstein-Epstein Relationship, Bard Faculty Approve Statement Calling for Their Stronger Involvement in College Governance first appeared on The Daily Catch.

GREENFIELD, Ind. — Seventh grader Taitym Lynch plans most of her school day herself, mapping out a schedule each morning on her school laptop. She typically starts with math when her brain is sharpest, logging into an online platform her school uses for math lessons. Next she often tackles science with her “class guide,” a teaching assistant who walks her though topics like animal food chains. Lynch chooses to have lunch around noon, and finds time to take breaks in the woods that surround her school, Nature’s Gift. 

Lynch, 13, came to Nature’s Gift this fall after years in a traditional public school. She kept trying to adapt, but her anxiety made it difficult. “Honestly, I had problems with school,” Lynch said. “I didn’t feel like going every day.” She also had a brief stint in virtual school. 

So far, Lynch is happy at Nature’s Gift. She feels comfortable asking questions of teachers and likes the small size. There are just 64 kids in grades kindergarten through 12th, taught by three licensed teachers and several class guides who provide extra support.

Lynch is the sort of student George Philhower had in mind when he helped start Nature’s Gift — one of a small but growing number of public “microschools” across the country.

Philhower is the superintendent of Eastern Hancock Community Schools, a rural district of 1,200 students about 30 miles east of Indianapolis. He’d worried for years about the district’s financial health as more families whose kids didn’t thrive in public school considered homeschooling. 

Around the same time, the concept of microschooling was gaining traction nationally. Microschools offer multiage learning environments that focus on personalized, often less-regulated instruction. Popularity grew during the pandemic when families sought learning alternatives in online, hybrid and pod options; an estimated 750,000 to 2 million students now attend the schools. 

The schools are typically privately run, but Philhower saw a role for them in his small district. Last year, he won approval from the state’s charter school board to establish the Indiana Microschool Collaborative, which he says will incubate a network of microschools statewide. They will operate as charter schools, meaning they are public but have more flexibility in terms of curricula and other operations than traditional public schools.

Nature’s Gift, the first such school, received so many applications for its original 50 spots that it twice added additional seats and still has a waiting list. Philhower hopes that by 2030, the network will add at least 10 more schools and enroll some 6,000 students statewide. Word is spreading: He said he’s received inquiries about the model from school district leaders and education organizations from elsewhere in the state and beyond.  

“The interest has been higher than we ever imagined,” Philhower said. 

While some government and education leaders praise the public microschool model as an innovative way to allow more personalized approaches to learning, it’s far too soon to know the extent to which they can succeed in effectively educating students or stemming falling enrollment. Some experts also worry that the innovation that has defined microschools may be lost as the model expands. 

“American education is populated with fads and failed reforms and that type of thing, things that don’t work out, and it’s hard to start a school and sustain it,” said Christopher Lubienski, director of the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy at Indiana University. Still, he said the collaborative model in Indiana could give the schools a strong shot at succeeding.  

Related: Public school kids were already going missing. Now schools are poised to see even sharper declines 

Don Soifer, CEO of the National Microschooling Center, an industry nonprofit that works to grow the microschool movement, estimates that only about 5 percent of the country’s microschools are public charter schools. But his organization hears from public school superintendents in states with school choice who are curious about the model, he said. “They’re losing some of their best teachers and families to microschools, and they want to get out in front of that.”

According to a 2025 analysis of more than 800 microschools his group conducted, more than 40 percent of students previously attended district-operated schools or were homeschooled before enrolling in a microschool. 

Indiana’s public schools, meanwhile, have been losing enrollment since 2008. Just over 1 million students attend them, while about 70,000 students receive school vouchers for private schools through the state’s voucher program, started in 2011. An estimated 8 percent homeschool, above the national average.

Scott Bess, a board member for the Indiana Microschool Collaborative, said he thinks Philhower has found a middle ground for some rural families who chose to homeschool only because they didn’t have other non-public options such as nearby private schools. “It’s going to feel like a small private school, but it’s public,” Bess said.

Philhower said he understands that some people might question why a public school superintendent is embracing and growing charter schools, but that’s what his community asked of him. “School choice isn’t going anywhere, especially in Indiana,” he said.  

Indeed, the state’s Republican governor, Mike Braun, is an advocate of choice and microschools, and promoted them during a July visit to the state from Education Secretary Linda McMahon. Indiana is going to offer microschool options to parents so “they can educate their kids in a way that they think makes sense,” he has said.

Related: How one state revamped high school to reflect reality that not all kids go to college

At Nature’s Gift — located at a 12-acre youth camp surrounded by woods that includes four barn-red cabins and a main building leased by the school — learning is personalized, with many of the middle and high schoolers managing parts of their daily schedule. Students advance by displaying ability or showing interest in a subject, not by grade level, testing or age alone. 

Most students also participate in hybrid learning and are homeschooled half the time. 

Erin Wolski, lead educator of Nature’s Gift, helps with classes for elementary through high school students, while running day-to-day operations. At any given time, she might be leading group math work, hopping on a walkie-talkie to answer a teacher’s question or taking kids on a nature hike. 

Before joining Nature’s Gift, Wolski spent more than 16 years in traditional public schools, most recently in the Eastern Hancock district, her alma mater. In early 2025, she approached Philhower about wanting a change, and he told her about his plans for Nature’s Gift. Together, they started the school. Most of its budget revenue comes from state per-pupil spending and some state grants, like one for qualifying charter schools that funds up to $1,400 per student. 

Another Nature’s Gift teacher, Christina Grandstaff, also taught in traditional public schools for years. She said she prefers how responsive Nature’s Gift can be to individual students’ needs. “We’re still doing all the things that you need to do for public school, but we have the flexibility,” she said. “We’re outside more, or we can learn outside, or we have kids that move from that group up to this level.”

The school has a very different relationship with parents than traditional public schools. 

Danielle Maroska enrolled her daughter, Kinzie, in Nature’s Gift after homeschooling her for years. She initially chose homeschooling in part to accommodate Kinzie’s athletic schedule: The 11-year-old is a gymnast who spends 16 hours a week practicing. 

“Covid really opened the doors for homeschooling to be enough,” Maroska said. “Most of her gymnast friends are homeschooled, so we went that route, and we did that for a couple years.”

But Kinzie began to miss having a sense of community. This fall, she began attending Nature’s Gift full days on Mondays and half days the rest of the week. Her mother homeschools her those afternoons when she’s not at the gym. Maroska describes herself as a “co-captain” in her daughter’s education, with Wolski being the captain.

Since attending Nature’s Gift, Maroska said she’s noticed her daughter’s approach to learning change. She used to hate reading, Maroska said, but now she regularly curls up with a book, even ahead of pickup time in early December. 

“I feel like this is kind of how college is, in a sense,” Maroska said. “It’s making them take initiative to guide their own learning.” 

Still, Maroska said Nature’s Gift isn’t right for all kids. Her two sons, in the second and eighth grades, are thriving at a traditional public school in Eastern Hancock, she said, and she would never pull them from that school unless something changed.

By contrast, mother Jen Shipley said she was initially skeptical of Nature’s Gift, never having seriously considered public education for her homeschooled 9-year-old. But like Maroska, she appreciates the flexibility and close relationships with teachers. Her daughter, Elliana, attends the school roughly three days a week and is homeschooled the other two.  

“We feel like partners in her education, versus I’m just handing her over and I just have to deal,” Shipley said. 

Related: A lot goes on in classrooms from kindergarten to high school. Keep up with our free weekly newsletter on K-12 education.

As a public charter school, Nature’s Gift must take state tests, unlike private microschools that do not. So far, the results have been mixed. On state benchmark tests in November, the majority of students, 70 percent, scored below proficient in math while only 10 students, or 30 percent, scored below proficient in English and language arts, according to Wolski.  

She said it’s too soon to use student test scores to evaluate the school since it’s been open less than a year. She noted too that her students were educated in a variety of settings before joining the school. 

Only one-third of microschools affiliated with the National Microschooling Center take state tests, according to the Las Vegas-based nonprofit, so data on their performance overall is limited.

Some microschool researchers worry that as public microschools are increasingly evaluated based on state tests, they could become more beholden to that accountability framework and some of what makes them innovative could disappear. “If that high-stakes accountability piece is there, it is inevitable that schools will have to change their operations to lean more towards performing on those metrics,” said Lauren Covelli, an associate policy researcher at Rand, a research organization, who studies microschools.

She added: “With so many school choice options in Indiana, specifically, if families don’t want their child to be taking a standardized test, it’s probably not the choice for them.” 

For families and educators who have chosen Nature’s Gift, the future seems encouraging. “This is sustainable, because so many parents are seeking something different,” said Wolski, the teacher and co-founder. “They have more access to things now than they ever did before.”

As 3 p.m. neared on a recent weekday, Grandstaff wrapped up a lesson and sent some students to the main building for pickup, then checked on a student who was studying at his laptop outside in the 20-degree weather. “He prefers it,” the teacher said.

Wolski said she doesn’t want to be part of undoing what’s happening in traditional schools but, rather, building more options into the public school system. “Families want different things,” she said. “Kids want different things.”

Nature’s Gift still has a long way to go, she said, but she is motivated to keep building it.

“Parents are happy. Kids are happy,” Wolski said. “So we’re going to keep going.”

Contact editor Caroline Preston at 212-870-8965, via Signal at CarolineP.83 or on email at preston@hechingerreport.org. 

This story about microschools was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

The post Are microschools a solution to falling public school enrollment? One district thinks so appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

On 21 November, at the end of the first shift at the Tyson Foods beef processing plant in Lexington, Nebraska, all workers were called to the lunchroom and told they no longer had jobs. Many gathered afterward in the gravel parking lot. Some wailed and cried out. 

“It’s a terrible thing to know that we won’t be able to pay rent, won’t be able to pay the electricity, our cars — all the bills coming our way,” said Constancio Perales, a 64-year-old worker born in Durango, Mexico, who has worked at the plant since 1996 — the last 25 years cutting the bone out of chuck steaks. “It’s very sad that they would fire us like that — just telling us there’s no more work, as if to say go away.”

And the move didn’t seem to make sense. Tyson is one of four beef producers — along with JBS, Cargill, and National Beef, known collectively as “The Big Four” — that control 85% of the industry, and their profit margins are at their highest levels in years as consumer prices soar. Tyson had just announced that its profits were up 6.5% over the previous year. Why would the company shut down one of its largest plants, employing 3,200 workers?

In a statement at the time, Tyson said it was working to “right size its beef business and position it for long-term success” and that it will meet consumer demand by increasing production at other company facilities, “optimizing volumes across our network”. 

Dan Osborn, an independent Senate candidate in Nebraska who got into politics after leading a strike of Kellogg’s workers in Omaha in 2021, didn’t believe that explanation. He went on social media to charge that the plant closing was the continuation of a longstanding pattern. A class action lawsuit brought in 2019 by a coalition of cattle ranchers and feedlot owners, led by Ranchers-Cattlemen Legal Action Fund (R-CALF), claimed that the Big Four were engaged in an “illegal scheme” of “price-fixing, market manipulation, and unfair practices,” carried out by constricting production, including plant closures, to drive down the price of cattle for slaughter and drive up the price of processed beef by creating artificial scarcity.

“This is a time of near record high beef prices and demand for beef,” Osborn wrote on X. “In a real free market, one would expect packers to want to increase capacity to meet this demand. At a minimum, they wouldn’t idle capacity for fear of ceding market share to competitors — who might take advantage of the high prices to expand their own production. But Tyson is doing the opposite. Why?” He answered his own question: “Tyson made a calculation that the profits they will reap manipulating market prices by shutting down this giant plant will EXCEED any loss they incur.” (In October, Tyson agreed to pay $55 million to consumers who claimed that the company colluded with other beef producers to inflate prices, and in January agreed to pay an additional $87 million to a group of small grocers and retailers of case-ready beef. Tyson denied wrongdoing in both cases.)

Beef prices have become a flashpoint among broader concerns about the overall rise in the cost of living. Over the past several years — and in recent months — the growth in beef prices have far outpaced the growth in the US consumer price index. 

From January 2020 to December 2025, data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis shows, the average price of beef steaks soared from $7.65 a pound to $12.51 a pound — an increase of just over 63%, while the general rate of inflation rose roughly 25% over that period. (Ground beef saw a similar jump.) During the first year of the second Trump administration — from February to December last year — the average price of steaks climbed from $10.87 a pound to $12.51 a pound, a jump of 15%. Overall consumer prices increased 2.2% over those same months.

In response to what they allege is years of price-gouging and collusion, many of the Big Four’s business partners have filed lawsuits — including grocery store chains Kroger and Aldi, big-box stores Target and BJ’s Wholesale Club, food distributors including Sysco and Sodexo, and burger giant McDonald’s. President Donald Trump felt compelled to call for action, directing the U.S. Department of Justice, in a post on Truth Social in November, to open an inquiry “into the Meat Packing Companies who are driving up the price of Beef.”

A statement issued by R-CALF applauded Trump, asking that he ensure “that consumers pay prices set by a competitive market rather than a monopolistic one.” Tyson Foods and National Beef did not respond to specific questions for this story, but in response to the antitrust lawsuit said the plaintiffs had to “dream up an elaborate scheme” to explain normal market corrections. A spokesperson for JBS said only that the company “remains firmly committed to producing safe, high quality, affordable food for American families and consumers around the world.” A spokesperson for Cargill directed questions to the Meat Institute – the lobbying organization that represents members of the Big Four and other large meatpackers. The Meat Institute issued a statement claiming that “beef packers have been losing money because the price of cattle is at record highs.”

Osborn still doesn’t buy it. The price of cattle has increased, but only marginally, while prices at the grocery store have soared. He offered his own shopping experience as proof. “I was standing in front of the big meat aisle, and I was just looking at the beef,” he said in a phone interview. “It’s $17.99 a pound for sirloin steak, and a couple years ago, I was paying $5.99, maybe $6.99, for that same sirloin steak.” (Osborn supplied a photo as proof of the current price.) “I find it very, very hard to believe that this is not being manipulated.”

Here’s how the alleged scheme Osborn and others describe works, according to documents filed in multiple lawsuits against the beef packers.

From 2009 to 2014, the Big Four were paying steadily increasing prices for cattle. This was due to a shortage brought on by drought, which had spurred the cattlemen to reduce their herds. The packers responded to the higher prices by closing a total of five plants between January 2013 and September 2014, including one of Cargill’s largest plants in Plainview, Texas, which processed more than 4,500 head per day — roughly 5% of all beef production in the country. Ranchers and small feedlot owners with full-grown, fattened cattle don’t have space or feed to wait out a dip in buying, so they were forced to accept a lower price.

The cattlemen say that was the intended effect: Cattle prices leveled off in November 2014. Industry experts expected prices to remain steady in 2015 and for several years after, before experiencing a gradual decline as the drought eased and the inventory of cattle was replenished. But, according to the lawsuits filed by the cattlemen, the Big Four didn’t want to wait for prices of cattle to come down on their own. Emboldened by the effectiveness of their earlier alleged manipulation, the class action suit filed in federal court in Minnesota alleges, the packers “colluded to make sure, notwithstanding growing beef demand, that this widely predicted period of price stability would never happen.”

This time, the suit alleges, they came up with a system where the heads of operations at all of the Big Four were in direct communication to temporarily halt buying and slaughtering if cattle prices got too high. Because the packers control so much of the market, even a temporary reduction of kills immediately depressed market prices. When those prices hit an agreed-upon level, the lawsuit alleges, packers simultaneously resumed buying. The alleged scheme worked so well that prices for cattle across the US collapsed dramatically in 2015 and then stabilized, but below the prior trend line.

This collusion, according to the lawsuit, increased “the meat margin” — the spread between the price paid by big packers for “fed cattle” (cattle fattened in feedlots and ready for slaughter) and the price they can charge Kroger, Target, or McDonald’s. “Even with the drastic collapse in fed cattle prices caused by [the Big Four’s] conspiracy,” the lawsuit claims, the meatpackers “continued to benefit from record beef prices,” allowing them “to post record per-head meat margins.” (In response, the packers questioned the credibility of key witnesses and denied any allegations of coordinated efforts to keep prices low. In a motion to dismiss, they argued that “fed cattle and beef markets are concentrated commodity markets — where companies should be expected to respond similarly to market forces.”)

In short, the suit charges, they were simultaneously using their dominance of the market to depress the prices paid to cattle ranchers for their supply, while artificially keeping prices high.

For the alleged scheme to work, no one could betray the others by offering a higher price to the cattlemen. By the middle of 2015, Cassandra Fish, a former Tyson risk manager and then a market analyst with the trade journal The Beef, noted the “incredible discipline” among packers in making coordinated decisions to modify the number of kills. “Most have cut hours,” she wrote in June. “So will someone break ranks, pay up for cattle and add hours?” In other words, wouldn’t some company pay the higher prices and increase production?

The answer was no — not for years. Data gathered by the cattlemen show: production rose and fell in unison. 

The Big Four attribute this to market conditions and argue that it is not sufficient evidence of “parallel conduct.” But even when Tyson lost its plant in Holcomb, Kansas, to a fire in 2019, shuttering the plant for four months and slashing the company’s annual slaughter capacity, the other producers didn’t use the disaster as an opportunity, according to the cattlemen’s lawsuit. Instead, the cattlemen claim, the other members of the Big Four cut their production, too.

This was the tip-off, the lawsuit says, that proved the collusion. 

Again, the Big Four attribute their shared low demand to “market forces.” But the cattlemen dispute this claim. “Supply and demand principles do not explain the 2015 price collapse or subsequent low prices,” the lawsuit alleges. The drought had receded, making it possible to increase the inventory of cattle, and demand by Americans for beef had only increased. But the Big Four still weren’t buying cattle above a certain price, and it was working. The price for a single cow ready for slaughter fell from $170 in January 2015 to under $100 in September 2019.

According to the lawsuit, the Big Four control so much of the market for beef in this country that they constitute a cartel capable of overpowering McDonald’s, an iconic corporation with more than 13,000 stores in the US selling north of 5 million hamburgers each day.

The evidence supplied by the cattlemen was compelling enough that many of the largest companies that buy from the Big Four eventually filed lawsuits of their own – claiming that the Big Four weren’t just shorting the cattlemen; they were also gouging wholesale distributors, grocers, and fast food chains, who, in turn, passed the pain along to customers. The most notable suit came from McDonald’s, which, in a complaint filed in federal court in New York in 2024, claimed that “the market for beef became a monopoly,” because the large processors “collude with seeming impunity,” acting as “a single enterprise to advance their conspiracy.”

In other words, according to the lawsuit, the Big Four control so much of the market for beef in this country that they constitute a cartel capable of overpowering McDonald’s, an iconic corporation with more than 13,000 stores in the US selling north of 5 million hamburgers each day.  The meatpackers again denied any wrongdoing, saying that descriptions of a concentrated market do not constitute evidence of conspiracy. 

The Big Four’s business partners — from the cattlemen to the Golden Arches — say the strongest proof of the meatpackers’ stranglehold on prices emerged during the pandemic.

The COVID-19 virus spread unevenly among their packing plants, forcing closures in some areas of the country while plants in other places were able to remain open. In theory, that should have created an ever-shifting market, depending on which producer had more plants in active operation.

For example, in early May 2020, two giant beef plants in Nebraska — the Tyson Foods plant in Dakota City and the Cargill plant in Schuyler — were shut down due to COVID concerns. Those plants could process a combined 13,000 animals per day, more than 10% of the country’s total cattle slaughter. But JBS and National Beef didn’t move to seize that portion of the market with their plants in other locations. Instead, they reduced cattle purchases to match their competitors — and all of the Big Four raised prices to their clients. The cost of choice cuts of beef — ribeye, New York strip, filet mignon — doubled, while the price paid to ranchers for slaughter-ready cattle dropped 30%.

But all four companies reduced production, according to data collected by the cattlemen, even at plants that were functioning. By the last week of April 2020, nearly 40% of the nation’s beef processing capacity was offline as plants were idled due to COVID-19 illnesses among plant employees.

Charles Cain, chief of the SEC’s foreign corrupt practices enforcement unit, bluntly accused JBS and Pilgrim’s of “engaging in bribery to finance their expansion into the U.S. markets.”

Complaints from ranchers grew so loud that the US Department of Agriculture widened an existing investigation into allegations of price-fixing that was opened after the Tyson fire in 2019. But it wasn’t until May 2020, after attorneys general from 11 states issued a letter urging the US Department of Justice to investigate the beef industry, that Trump finally took action. 

The DOJ issued civil subpoenas to the Big Four, specifically seeking any evidence of collusion, and simultaneously opened a criminal investigation into poultry producers, including criminal indictments of the CEO and former vice president of Pilgrim’s Pride, a subsidiary of JBS. Among other evidence cited in the indictments, the DOJ described text messages from executives at Pilgrim’s directing employees to be in touch with supposed competitors to raise their prices. In one message, a Pilgrim’s manager reported to the CEO, “They are listening to my direction.”

Within months, JBS’s Brazilian parent company settled a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) investigation brought by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The US investigation had begun after a police investigation in Brazil concluded that JBS’s owners, Joesley Batista and Wesley Batista, had systematically offered bribes to public officials in order to obtain hundreds of millions of dollars in low-interest loans from a state-owned bank. The SEC concluded that those ill-gotten loans had been used to facilitate JBS’s 2009 acquisition of Pilgrim’s Pride — allowing the Brazilian conglomerate to increase its control over the American food supply. 

Charles Cain, chief of the SEC’s foreign corrupt practices enforcement unit, bluntly accused JBS and Pilgrim’s of “engaging in bribery to finance their expansion into the U.S. markets and then continuing to engage in bribery while occupying senior board positions at Pilgrim’s.” These were, he added, examples of “brazen misconduct” and, in the language of bureaucratic understatement, “a profound failure to exercise good corporate governance.”

Between 2009 and 2020, according to the SEC, JBS officials had paid bribes to obtain loans to purchase American companies, funneled those payments through U.S. banks, and then filed falsified books to cover up those payments, while simultaneously engaging in illegal collusion and price-fixing to boost their profits by cutting American cattle ranchers and other livestock producers out of their share of the market. JBS, its Brazilian parent company, and the Batistas “consented” to the SEC’s finding that they “caused Pilgrim’s Pride’s violations of the books and records and internal accounting controls provisions of the FCPA.” JBS paid $27 million in fines. The parent company also pleaded guilty to “conspiracy to violate the FCPA” and paid more than $250 million as a “criminal penalty.” The agreement saved JBS from criminal charges, but the company’s bid to be publicly traded in the US was effectively ended — and the criminal cases against Pilgrim’s Pride executives proceeded to trial.

“When I win, I will immediately bring prices down, starting on Day One,” Trump said in August 2024.

In early 2021, Tyson paid more than $221 million to settle a private class action alleging price-fixing in the poultry industry. But the attempt to take on the biggest of the Big Four, JBS, during the Biden administration unraveled in 2021 and 2022. Criminal trials in Colorado, where JBS and Pilgrim’s Pride are headquartered, ended in an acquittal of the executives — despite what the Wall Street Journal described as “cooperating witnesses and mounds of evidence, including phone calls, emails and text messages over several years that showed competitors talking about their prices.” The defendants argued that sharing price information isn’t illegal, and said that they never agreed to set prices. 

The DOJ dropped the remaining criminal charges, but an executive order issued by President Biden promised to work toward increasing competition in the beef industry. But nothing changed. The DOJ investigation into the Big Four technically remained open, but no new prosecutions were brought, and longstanding lawsuits seemed to stall or produce small settlements.

Beef prices continued to climb. By early 2024, the price of steaks was up more than 30% from its pre-pandemic price, even though the cost of cattle had steeply declined. The Big Four blamed inflation, but their prices had risen at more than double the rate of other consumer goods. As the 2024 presidential campaign heated up, food prices became a central issue with voters. Biden dropped out of the race in July, but unchecked food costs under his administration — driven by skyrocketing staples like beef and eggs — dogged his vice president, Kamala Harris, as she tried to pick up the campaign, and turned races against Democrats down the ballot.

In November, Trump surged back to the White House, in part by repeatedly promising that he would bring voters’ grocery bills under control. “When I win, I will immediately bring prices down, starting on Day One,” he said in August 2024.

That hasn’t happened.

At Trump’s inauguration, press coverage focused on the support of tech companies such as Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and PayPal, as they raced to curry favor with the White House by giving millions in donations. Less attention was paid to the fact that the largest single donor to the inauguration — contributing as much as those tech giants combined — was Pilgrim’s Pride, the embattled JBS subsidiary that Trump’s DOJ had been investigating less than five years before.

Weeks into his new term, Trump’s administration removed key members of the agencies that had kept open the investigation of JBS under Biden. And then, by executive order, Trump paused enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Charles Cain, the enforcement chief, resigned in April, and that same month, the SEC allowed JBS to offer shares on the New York Stock Exchange, increasing its capitalization by billions of dollars. 

In September, it was reported that Trump’s DOJ had quietly closed the longstanding investigation of the Big Four. In 2018, under the first Trump Administration, another Brazilian company, Marfrig, had acquired a controlling share in National Beef. That means, that just months into his second term, “America first” Donald Trump had allowed two foreign companies to gain a powerful position in the American beef market without meaningful fear of oversight or investigation — even as prices at the grocery checkout and drive-thru window continued to soar.

Weeks later, as “affordability” began to dominate political and media narratives, President Trump announced the US would boost its cattle inventory by quadrupling the amount of Argentine beef allowed to enter the country at a lower tariff rate each year. “If we do that,” Trump told a group of reporters aboard Air Force One, “that will bring our beef prices down.” American ranchers were dismayed. “It’s really just a kick in the nuts,” a Kansas cattle rancher told the New York Times. “Come on, President Trump, this is ‘America First’ policy? No.” Importing foreign beef, they said, would just further undercut their ability to command higher prices from the Big Four.

At first, on his Truth Social account, Trump responded dismissively. “The Cattle Ranchers, who I love, don’t understand that the only reason they are doing so well, for the first time in decades, is because I put Tariffs on cattle coming into the United States, including a 50% Tariff on Brazil,” he wrote. “It would be nice if they would understand that.” The United States Cattlemen’s Association said the White House’s efforts targeted the wrong link in the supply chain by putting pressure on cattle ranchers, instead of the Big Four.

Representative Julie Fedorchak, a Republican from North Dakota, told the New York Times her office had been flooded with calls and texts from ranchers after Trump first mentioned buying more Argentine beef. Within days, she and seven fellow Republican representatives sent a letter to the White House relaying “strong concerns” and asking for more information about its plans.

Trump’s Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins seemed to take note. “When you have four major processors,” Rollins said, during an appearance on Fox News in late October, “you have a major issue [because] they are processing 85% of the beef in America.” Her proposed solution was what independent cattle ranchers have been advocating for years: “We have to decentralize, deregulate, invest in and incentivize smaller processors.” In November, Trump shocked everyone by announcing that he was instructing the Department of Justice to open an inquiry.

Attorney General Pam Bondi responded within minutes: “Our investigation is underway!”

Soon after, the White House issued a press statement identifying the Big Four beef packers as the targets. It noted that these four companies “currently dominate” the industry and echoed Trump’s objection that two of the companies are “either foreign-owned or have significant foreign ownership and control.” The statement cited “mounting evidence” that these companies “have violated antitrust laws through coordinated pricing or capacity restrictions.” The White House promised to “root out any illegal collusion, restore fair competition, and protect our food security.” No mention was made of the DOJ dropping its investigation into these very allegations weeks earlier. And, according to Bloomberg, the Big Four “have chosen not to comment on the investigation or the president’s allegations.” (The White House declined to provide on the record responses to questions about the reporting  in this article.)

And though the Big Four complain that the meat margin has been reduced by rising cattle prices, their earnings remain strong. (In fact, JBS Beef North America reported record revenue of $7.2 billion for the third quarter of 2025.) Meanwhile, many cattle ranchers — unable to maintain their herds with razor-thin margins — have reduced the size of their operations, pushing cattle prices slightly higher. JBS, in its quarterly earnings statement, said this was “pressuring profitability.” 

Soon after, Tyson announced the closure of its Lexington plant. The move seems to mirror the decision by each of the Big Four to close plants in coordination in 2015 — and hints at more closures to come now. Just days after the Tyson announcement, Beef Magazine wrote, “Tyson went first. Now the question becomes, Who goes next?”

All of which puts President Trump in a tight spot.

Since JBS’s giant donation to the inauguration in January, the company’s CEO Joesley Batista flew from Sao Paulo to personally petition Trump to lower trade tariffs on Brazilian beef (it worked). But now, deep red towns in deep red states are losing thousands of jobs, seeing cattle operations go bankrupt, and are watching their grocery bills go through the roof. (In a statement, a JBS spokesperson said: “We continue to invest in best-in-class practices, technology, and innovations that support a resilient food system and meet the expectations of our customers, partners, and the communities we serve.”)

Will Trump insist on a full investigation of the Big Four or listen to their claims of steep investments and falling profits? In an email to The Guardian, a spokesperson for Tyson said the company “continues to navigate significant headwinds in its beef business, which reported a $143 million loss in the first quarter of fiscal 2026, following $720 million in losses over the past two years, as the U.S. cattle herd remains at historic lows.”

Back in Nebraska, Senate candidate Dan Osborn doesn’t believe the claims  that Tyson is doing necessary belt-tightening. “We’re seeing big profits out of Tyson. We’re seeing executives get huge bonuses. We’re seeing all the stockholders getting paid.” The only ones suffering, he says, are Tyson line workers like Constancio Perales. “There’s people that have been there thirty years that are ready to retire, and now they’re just out. That’s not the right thing to do.” 

He hoped that President Trump would step in and prevent the closure in Lexington or, at least, force Tyson to sell the plant to a smaller competitor. And he hopes that Trump will deliver on his promise to investigate the Big Four, in order to save cattle ranchers and small town jobs and ease food prices for working families.

In the meantime, Tyson has proceeded with its plans to close the plant in Lexington. Its last day of full operation was January 20. The company temporarily retained about 300 employees to “perform duties related to the plant closure” — but most of those workers have been laid off now, too.

“For me it was a very good place to work,” Constancio said. “Yes, I get worn out and my whole body aches because I’ve been there for so many years, but I feel at home working there.” He made enough money to buy a 1,500 square-foot house just south of the Union Pacific tracks, a place to raise his kids and give them an education, so they could have better jobs than he has. “I’ve been able to provide for my family, that’s the most important thing.”

But with the plant closure, everything may be lost. And not just for him. The whole town depends on Tyson — more than half the working-age adults in the town of 10,000 are employed by the company. An impact analysis conducted by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in December estimated that the closure may cost the state nearly $3.3 billion in annual economic losses. María, Constancio’s wife of 32 years, works as a lunch lady in the public schools. Employees there have been told that their contracts could be cancelled because soon there may not be enough kids to keep schools open. María said she didn’t know what they would do. Constancio was months shy of getting his pension and still two years away from qualifying for Medicare.

He could apply for jobs at other Tyson packinghouses in Nebraska or Kansas, but there’s no guarantee he’d get work at those plants. And he hates to think about moving away and, with everyone leaving town, his family is worried what it could get if they sold the home in Lexington where they have lived for more than a generation. 

“Without his work, nothing in Lexington would be worth anything,” María said, sitting at the kitchen table while a pot bubbled on the stove. “But after almost thirty years, this house is going to be worthless, and it’ll be as if we did nothing. We don’t have any savings; this is all we have.”

On December 6, Trump signed an executive order to create task forces in the DOJ and the Federal Trade Commission to investigate price-fixing. “My Administration will act to determine whether anti-competitive behavior, especially by foreign-controlled companies, increases the cost of living for Americans,” Trump wrote. Task forces are one thing, but prices continue to climb. And it is starting to take a toll – both economically and politically. Days after Trump’s announcement, POLITICO published a poll of more than 2,000 Americans that showed that half of those surveyed said they find it difficult or very difficult to pay for food. A majority — 55% — blamed the Trump administration for the high prices.

Dan Osborn warns that Trump is especially at risk of further alienating voters in rural areas, where grocery prices are often as much as 25% higher than in urban areas — due to lack of competition and reliance on dollar stores and chains like Walmart.

“This is rural America,” Osborn says. “This is his base that essentially he’s — for a lack of a better term — fucking over.”

With the Olympic Training Facility located in Lake Placid, the Adirondacks are home to many winter Olympic athletes. Explore the list below to learn more about some of the games’ standout athletes with ties to the region.

Tate Frantz, ski jumping

Tate Frantz, 20, grew up and resides in Lake Placid. This is Tate’s first Olympic games.

In the men’s ski jumping normal hill individual event, Tate ranked 21 out of 50 athletes. Team USA’s mixed ski jumping ranked seventh.

READ MORE: Meet the Adirondack ski jumper in his first Winter Olympics

Mystique Ro, skeleton

Mystique Ro, 31, lives and trains in Lake Placid. Mystique is a defending world champion in the mixed team relay.

She won gold in the mixed team competition and silver in the individual event at the 2025 World Championships.

Mystique first saw skeleton while watching the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. She initially dismissed it as something she would ever do because she thought it was insane, but after learning more about the sport from her track and field coach, she became interested.

Sean Hollander, luge

Born in New Hampshire, Sean Hollander, 26, lives in Lake Placid. He and teammate Zachary DiGregorio finished eighth in luge men’s doubles.

Prior to the Olympics, Sean earned a gold medal in the 2022-23 Oberhof, Germany U23 World Championships. Sean was also a 2023-24 Lake Placid World Cup gold medalist and is a six-time World Cup relay medalist.

Sophia Kirkby, luge

Originally from Vermont, Sophia Kirkby, 24, lives and trains in Lake Placid. Sophia finished fifth in luge women’s doubles as well as the team relay.

Sophia won seven World Cup medals in the 2024-25 season, including a gold medal. In 2024, she was a World Championship bronze medalist and relay silver medalist.

Jonathan Gustafson, luge

Hailing from Massena, Jonny Gustafson, 28, lives in Saranac Lake. Jonny finished 11th in luge men’s singles out of 25 athletes and fifth in the team relay.

Prior to the Olympics, Jonny was a bronze medalist in the World Cup team relay, won two silver medals in World Cup mixed events and was a two-time U23 World Championship bronze medalist.

Emily Fischnaller, luge

Coming from Connecticut, Emily Fischnaller now lives in Lake Placid. In her third Olympics appearance, she ranked 12th in luge women’s singles.

Emily was a 2025 World Championship bronze medal winner, a 2019 World Championship bronze medal winner and has won a total of 29 World Cup and World Championship medals, including two golds.

Frank Del Duca, bobsled

Frank Del Duca, 34, was born in Florida but now lives in Saranac Lake.

Frank joined the U.S. Army World Class Athlete Program in order to afford to continue his bobsledding career. Now, in his second Olympic games, the father of two was an Olympic flag bearer for team USA.

Jasmine Jones, bobsled

Jasmine Jones, 29, is from Pennsylvania, but lives in Lake Placid. Jasmine will compete in the two-woman bobsled on Feb. 17.

A mom and Senior Airman in the U.S. Air Force, Jasmine is a former track and field athlete. She has been competing in the World Championships since 2023 and finished fifth in the 2025 tournament.

Joshua Williamson, bobsled

Born in Florida, Josh Williamson, 29, lives in Lake Placid.

Though Josh never competed in an ice sport in his youth or high school years, he picked up bobsledding when he won the reality competition “The Next Olympic Hopeful.” Most recently, Josh finished fourth in the 2025 World Championships. This is his second Olympic games.