The House Agriculture Committee’s version of the farm bill would strip billions in nutrition benefits from American families, according to an anti-hunger group. Rural residents are more likely than metropolitan ones to be participating in the program. Conventional Beltway wisdom is that farm bills pass Congress with relative ease from a rare bipartisan coalition […]
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Nonmetropolitan counties saw an increase in population over the last year — the first such gain since 2011. The increase was slight and confined to rural counties that are closest to cities, according to a report from the UNH Carsey School of Public Policy. Rural American counties reversed a six-year […]
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People see Appalachia as the “other America,” but that blinds them to the causes of inequality in the region — and throughout the American system. When the majority of Appalachians turned out to vote for Donald Trump in 2016, the region was held up as a symbol of our broken […]
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In a recently released court video, Capt. Matt Hilbrecht of the Marshall County, Kentucky, Sheriff’s office testifies about his interrogation of Gabriel Parker, the15-year-old accused of a mass shooting at Marshall County High School in January. “We asked him initially when he had the thought of the school shooting,” Hilbrecht […]
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Arlie Boggs Elementary sits between Kentucky’s two tallest mountains in a remote area that once had a booming coal economy. Ten years ago there were over a thousand coal miners employed here in Letcher county. Today, there are just 28. “We were left with many unemployed miners,” eighth-grader Nicholas Sturgill […]
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After a nine-day statewide strike, West Virginia teachers and school service employees are back to work with a hard-won commitment from lawmakers of a 5 percent pay raise for all public workers. Gov. Jim Justice also ordered the creation of a task force to explore long-term solutions to the public […]
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