Rural News Clips, August 21, 2026

FiftyPlusOne
Rural and suburban voters haven’t looked this Democratic since 2018
August 21, 2026

• An average of generic ballot polls shows rural voters have shifted 13 points toward Democrats since Trump’s inauguration, outpacing urban and suburban movement and marking the party’s strongest standing with these Republican-leaning voters since the 2018 blue wave.

• Democrats now hold a 6-point edge in the suburbs, which would be their first suburban lead in over a decade, and a 27-point advantage in cities. Republicans still lead rural voters by 13 points, near their 2018 margin.

• Analysts tie rural frustration to tariffs, inflation and an unfinished farm bill, and polling shows many rural voters feel betrayed by their own party. The authors caution that crosstab data is noisy and urge treating the shift with uncertainty.

The Washington Post
Seeking to flip Senate, Democrats are running ads to criticize their own
August 21, 2026

• Democrats running for Senate in Republican-leaning states are distancing themselves from their own party in ads, casting themselves as independent and bipartisan as they try to flip the chamber in November. The pitch leans on rural-resonant themes like guns, resource development and the farm bill.

• In North Carolina, Roy Cooper touts opposing “defunding the police”; Iowa’s Josh Turek advertises voting with Republicans 700 times; and Alaska’s Mary Peltola vows to take on anyone, including Democrats, who misunderstands hunting and resource development.

• The party is barely more popular than Trump in some target states, making the strategy risky, and similar 2018 pitches by Democrats in Missouri and Indiana failed. Republicans dismiss the bipartisan branding as cover for what they call a “toxic” party agenda.

The Associated Press
Governors’ races are being increasingly buffeted by the toxic politics of data centers
August 18, 2026

• Governors are moving to rein in AI data centers as a public backlash reshapes 2026 races, a shift echoing loudly in rural areas, where residents fear losing farmland, water and open space to the sprawling, energy-hungry warehouses.

• Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro imposed what he called the nation’s strictest guardrails, requiring projects to cover their own power costs, curb water use and win local approval first. In Texas, Greg Abbott, once a data center booster, ordered regulators to shield ratepayers.

• The politics cut both ways. Arizona, New York and Illinois governors have curbed tax breaks or paused projects, and Democratic challengers are running rural ads attacking Republicans. But in Wisconsin, a candidate who centered a construction moratorium lost the Democratic primary.

USDA Rural Development
Glen Smith sworn in as under secretary for rural development
August 21, 2026

• Glen R. Smith, a longtime Iowa farmer, was sworn in as USDA under secretary for rural development, the agency said, putting him atop the office that steers federal loans and grants for rural housing, broadband, water and utilities. Its direction matters for rural communities, especially as the administration pushes to cut federal spending.

• Smith, of Atlantic, Iowa, has farmed for more than 50 years, growing corn, soybeans and hay, and founded an ag services firm handling farm management, land appraisal and brokerage. He chaired the Farm Credit Administration board from 2019 to 2022 after Trump appointed him.

• Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins administered the oath at the Iowa State Fair. Iowa Republicans, including Sens. Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst and Gov. Kim Reynolds, praised the pick, citing Smith’s decades working with farmers and rural lenders.

Pennsylvania Capital-Star
Rural communities in Pa. and elsewhere wait after mixed ruling on digital equity dollars
August 21, 2026

• A federal judge blocked Trump’s move to unilaterally kill the $2.75 billion Digital Equity Act but let the administration strip race as a funding factor, leaving rural communities that rely on the grants for internet skills and access waiting in limbo.

• Congress created the 2021 program to expand digital skills for groups including rural Americans, older adults and veterans. After Trump called it a “woke handout,” the government froze the grants; Judge John D. Bates ruled he can’t cancel laws over a policy disagreement.

• The freeze forced nonprofits to cut navigator programs, including ones teaching rural Ohio seniors to pay bills and reach healthcare online. Rural areas lag in home internet, Pew found. Democratic sponsor Sen. Patty Murray vowed oversight; Republicans like Sen. Ted Cruz opposed the race-based criteria.

WJAC
‘A slow slog:’ how limited broadband access impacts rural Pennsylvania students & schools
August 21, 2026

• Many students in rural Pennsylvania school districts still lack reliable home internet, forcing schools to improvise so they aren’t left behind, local educators say. The gap likely widens rural learning inequities, as terrain and low density make providers reluctant to build where there’s little profit.

• In hilly districts like Tussey Mountain and Penns Valley, some mountain homes have no phone lines, let alone broadband. Schools send home hotspots, convert online work to paper packets, keep Wi-Fi on after hours, and some students do assignments in the parking lot.

• The Pennsylvania Broadband Development Authority cites deployment costs, permitting and utility pole access as barriers. A federally funded infrastructure program has reached more than 17,000 homes and businesses, with a goal of nearly 30,000 within a year.

The Washington Post
Why one highway exploded this summer — and why many more are at risk
August 20, 2026

• Record-breaking summer heat is causing roads, rail lines and bridges to buckle, twist and explode across the country, showing how infrastructure built for a cooler era is failing, with rural communities that lean on a few key highways likely to feel closures and detours most acutely.

• In Greenville, Texas, a stretch of U.S. 69 expanded until it burst into a two-foot ramp that launched a pickup into the air. Similar “blowups” closed interstates in Maryland and Louisiana, and a New Jersey bridge stuck shut four times this summer.

• Engineers are adapting with polymer-treated asphalt, reflective “cool pavement” and white-painted rails, and federal officials have urged designing for future climate rather than past records. But the Trump administration has revoked transportation rules meant to make agencies plan for a warming climate.

Politico’s Energy & Environment News
Cramer puts hold on Trump picks in feud over wetland policy
August 19, 2026

• North Dakota Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer has placed a blanket hold on all of Trump’s nominees to pressure the administration to loosen a wetland conservation program that has frustrated his state’s farmers, who want to plant closer to protected easements.

• The Fish and Wildlife Service recently dropped plans to ease the rule after more than 200,000 public comments and pushback from other Republicans and hunters, who warn that draining Prairie Pothole wetlands could sharply cut duck populations.

• Cramer’s hold could stall nominees across Interior, HHS, the National Science Foundation and other agencies, including Project 2025 author Dennis Kirk. The dispute splits North Dakota’s farmers and hunters over how the region’s federal easements are managed.

NationofChange
Three-quarters of Americans would oppose a data center near their home, new polling finds
August 21, 2026

• Three-quarters of Americans say they’d oppose a data center near their home, and more than six in 10 strongly so, a Heatmap Pro poll found, with opposition spanning party and the rural-urban divide. Rural voters are 63 points against, a sign the AI buildout is alienating the communities often targeted for it.

• Opinion has swung 33 points against data centers in a year, Heatmap editor Robinson Meyer wrote, as the share strongly supporting one nearby fell from 13% to 4%. More than 530 counties and towns have restricted or banned the facilities.

• States are responding with moratorium bills, and New York’s governor paused hyperscale permits. A key driver is cost: a Union of Concerned Scientists analysis found $4.3 billion in PJM grid upgrades to connect data centers, over 95% of it billed to all ratepayers.

Inside Climate News
Proposed data centers could use more electricity than all Alabama homes combined, analysis shows. Who will pay?
August 19, 2026

• More than a dozen proposed data centers could collectively draw more power than all Alabama homes combined, an Inside Climate News analysis found, and residents fear the costs will fall on ratepayers already facing the nation’s highest bills, with several projects targeting rural, majority-Black communities.

• Alabama Power promises data centers will cover their full cost so household bills won’t rise, but a new state law, SB 270, leaves that guarantee dependent on how the three-member Public Service Commission enforces it. A contract the utility released was heavily redacted.

• Project Red Clay in rural Lowndes County would need 1,500 megawatts, enough for about a million homes, plus up to 100,000 gallons of water daily from a small rural utility. Data centers have become a flashpoint in the governor’s race between Republican Tommy Tuberville and Democrat Doug Jones.

The Daily Yonder
Q&A: Taylor Goldenstein on the unique politics of data centers in Texas
August 21, 2026

• Rural Texans are increasingly wary of the data center boom reshaping one of the nation’s fastest-growing markets, Texas Tribune reporter Taylor Goldenstein says in a Daily Yonder Q&A, and the pushback is scrambling the usual politics in ways worth watching nationally.

• More than half of Texas’s proposed data centers are headed to rural areas, where residents fear strains on water and power and higher electricity rates. With counties lacking zoning authority, some Republican local officials are breaking with small-government orthodoxy to demand more regulatory power.

• Big Tech money is flowing into Texas politics, favoring the party in power, though its influence is unclear. Gov. Greg Abbott has proposed curbing tax breaks and banning data centers in rural neighborhoods. Goldenstein calls the opposition a rare bipartisan, “unicorn” issue.

Hard Reset
Wisconsin versus (AI) Goliath
August 19, 2026

• Residents of Wisconsin Rapids, a small former mill city, are waging a cross-partisan fight to block a proposed AI data center at their shuttered paper mill, a battle that shows how small towns with strained budgets and limited zoning options struggle to resist big tech, writes JJ Lansing, a San Francisco-based writer with longtime family ties to Wisconsin.

• The group South Wood County Neighbors for Responsible Development says city officials have withheld basic information, including water use and whether an NDA exists. Members are skeptical of a proposed community benefit agreement and are recalling an alderman who pressured a business over yard signs.

• The Russian-founded PNK Group’s plan drew a visit from indicted former NYC Mayor Eric Adams, who backs it. Residents fear higher utility bills in a county where 40% are financially strained, few local jobs and contamination at the mill site. Wisconsin’s data center tax break, signed by Gov. Tony Evers, helped lure such projects.

The Hill
Almost 4 in 10 say extreme weather damaged their communities in past year: Survey
August 18, 2026

• Nearly 4 in 10 Americans say extreme weather damaged their community in the past year, a Walton Family Foundation-Gallup poll found, with the heavily rural South reporting the most destruction and rural areas likely absorbing an outsized share of the harm.

• In the East South Central region, covering Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee, 58% reported damage, the highest of any region, followed by 47% in the West South Central region. The Mountain region was lowest at 26%.

• Affected residents felt less control over their futures, and 57% of Americans worry about more damage ahead. The findings land as the Trump administration overhauls FEMA, with new administrator Cameron Hamilton pledging to prioritize cost savings.

Politico
Flirting with disaster (aid)
August 18, 2026

• A bipartisan group of lawmakers is pushing a bill to bar presidents from weighing “political affiliation” when approving disaster aid, aiming to depoliticize FEMA relief, a fight with high stakes for rural communities that lean on federal help to recover from storms and wildfires.

• The effort follows a Politico investigation finding Trump approved disaster requests from Democratic-led states 23% of the time in his second term, versus 89% for Republican-led ones. Backers, led by GOP Sen. James Lankford, hope to attach it to the Senate defense bill.

• Republicans cite their own grievance, pointing to a FEMA supervisor fired after allegedly directing staff to skip Trump-supporting homes after Hurricane Milton. Critics say the bill lacks enforcement and wouldn’t curb the president’s power to grant or deny aid.

Psychology Today
How to help rural victims of domestic violence
August 19, 2026

• Domestic violence is harder to detect and address in rural areas, where isolation, scarce services and the near-impossibility of anonymity keep victims from coming forward, writes Wendy L. Patrick, a trial attorney and behavioral analyst, drawing on new Swedish research.

• A study of 38 social workers across 17 rural Swedish municipalities found intimate partner violence is rarely identified there, leaving staff inexperienced at risk assessment. Rural workers juggle more social problems with fewer resources and high turnover among the few who are trained.

• In small towns, victims may avoid local services for fear of being recognized, a barrier compounded by limited transportation and greater acceptance of abuse. Suggested fixes include seeking help in a neighboring town, remote reporting and online counseling.

ProPublica
At “quasi-public” private schools, 100% of students get tuition vouchers. There’s almost no accountability.
August 17, 2026

• Private schools where every student’s tuition is covered by taxpayer-funded vouchers face almost none of the oversight required of public schools, a ProPublica investigation found. As voucher programs spread into rural areas, the same gaps could leave rural taxpayers funding unaccountable schools.

• In Wisconsin, 39 such “100% schools” enrolled 7,923 children and took in about $87 million in vouchers last year. Unlike public schools, they aren’t bound by open-records or open-meetings laws and needn’t serve all students with disabilities.

• At Milwaukee’s Atlas Preparatory Academy, which earned the state’s lowest rating, the board chair also worked as a paid administrator making over $150,000, and his firm held an $87,250 contract, arrangements that would be barred, sometimes as a felony, at public schools.

Education Week
How to nurture teacher retention in far-flung rural districts
August 21, 2026

• A new federal guide draws on Alaska’s largest rural district to help far-flung schools keep teachers, spotlighting that rural educators more often leave over working conditions than pay, a signal that retention money may be better spent on support than on salaries alone.

• The Lower Kuskokwim district teaches 4,100 students across an area the size of West Virginia, with schools in tiny, low-income villages reachable only by boat or plane. In 2022-23, 78 of its 350 teacher jobs went unfilled.

• Researchers found that setting realistic expectations and helping new teachers find housing and connect with Yup’ik communities were key levers. The Education Department guide urges districts to diagnose local root causes before copying standard recruiting fixes.

KJZZ
Arizona Corporation Commission approves regulatory process change for rural utilities powering large users
August 19, 2026

• Arizona regulators approved a new review process for rural electric cooperatives fielding data centers and other big power users, as AI-driven demand pushes these facilities into rural areas, where small co-ops worry about the strain and residents fear footing the bill.

• The Arizona Corporation Commission adopted a standardized checklist, sought by the Arizona Electric Power Cooperative and rural members, for reviewing service agreements with large users. Staff will weigh whether a deal serves the public interest and whether costs would shift to households.

• Data centers have long clustered in metro Phoenix, but developers are eyeing rural grids as urban zoning increasingly rejects them, said commission chair Nick Myers. Small co-ops can struggle to serve massive loads; the new process promises decisions within 90 days.

WBRC
Alabama food bank leaders warn of impact as 80,000 lose SNAP benefits
August 19, 2026

• More than 80,000 Alabamians are losing SNAP benefits under new federal work rules and tighter eligibility, and food bank leaders warn they can’t fill the gap, a shortfall likely to bite hardest in rural areas where more residents rely on the program and food access is thin.

• Nearly a million people in Alabama face food insecurity, 200,000 of them children. Michael Ledger of Feeding the Gulf Coast said SNAP provides nine meals for every one his food bank supplies, calling the program a dam holding back far more need.

• Food bank leaders urged Republican Sens. Tommy Tuberville and Katie Britt to add a two-year waiver to the farm bill so Alabama can fix the error rate behind $174 million in annual penalties. Britt’s office said she isn’t on the Agriculture Committee and can’t offer amendments until the bill reaches the floor.

The Daily Yonder
Non-profit pharmaceutical manufacturer delivers drug access to rural hospitals
August 20, 2026

• A new program from Civica Rx, the country’s only nonprofit drugmaker, aims to guarantee rural hospitals steady access to generic medicines during shortages at stable prices, easing a burden that hits small facilities hardest and could keep life-saving drugs stocked where options are thin.

• Backed by a $3.2 million Helmsley Charitable Trust grant, the pilot covers membership fees for eligible hospitals across nine states, from Hawaii to the Dakotas. It could reach about 225 rural hospitals and 6,750 beds, with access to Civica’s supply if a shortage hits.

• Rural hospitals often sit at the bottom of the supply chain, and 200 to 300 shortages are active nationwide at any time. The program waives minimum-purchase guarantees, aiming to cut costs and free pharmacy staff from hunting for scarce medications. Organizers hope to expand nationwide.

KGOU
AI use is growing in healthcare. An Oklahoma researcher found rural hospitals are slow to adopt it
August 19, 2026

• Rural hospitals are adopting predictive AI far more slowly than urban ones, new Oklahoma State University research found, a gap that could widen rural-urban health disparities as cash-strapped facilities lack the money to evaluate and use the tools safely.

• Reviewing 2023 data from 2,319 hospitals, economist Brian Whitacre found 51% of rural hospitals had adopted predictive AI versus 81% of urban ones. Rural facilities lean on tools built into their electronic health records and often use AI for billing and flagging high-risk outpatients.

• Critical access, for-profit and government-owned hospitals were less likely to adopt, deterred by high costs and thin staffing. Whitacre urges a “HITECH 2.0,” echoing the 2009 federal push that helped hospitals adopt electronic records, to keep rural facilities from falling behind.

WFTV
Rural America’s healthcare crisis: The 10 most vulnerable states
August 21, 2026

• An analysis ranks Texas, Tennessee and Mississippi as the states where rural health care is failing most, weighing hospital finances, closures, missed Medicaid expansion and poor record-sharing. Texas alone has 50 rural hospitals at risk of closing, the most in the nation.

• Federal relief is flowing inversely to need. Under the $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program, Texas gets about $66 per rural resident, the lowest, while Rhode Island, with no vulnerable rural hospitals, gets $6,305. A flat $100 million floor per state shrank big states’ per-person share.

• The 2025 federal budget law cut roughly $1 trillion from Medicaid over a decade, and the American Hospital Association projects rural hospitals will lose about $50 billion. Six of the 10 hardest-hit states never expanded Medicaid, deepening years of losses.

Civic Media
HUD funding lags could hit rural WI hardest
August 18, 2026

• A delay in federal HUD fair housing funding could fall hardest on rural and small Wisconsin communities, the Metropolitan Milwaukee Fair Housing Council warns, noting rural areas face real discrimination, including against Hmong refugees and migrant workers, but have fewer resources to fight it.

• The council, the state’s only private fair housing group and its only one running discrimination tests, is still awaiting a third year of HUD grant money due in July; federal grants make up about 40% of its revenue. CEO Erika Sanders said the delay could hamper investigations.

• Sanders said groups that recently got enforcement grants were barred from reapplying, which she called a possible bid to weaken private civil rights enforcement. OMB said the rule changes ensure tax dollars serve the public.

The Wall Street Journal
Revoking protected status for Haitian workers triggers labor crunch in Florida
August 17, 2026

• The end of Temporary Protected Status for Haitian immigrants on July 27 is squeezing South Florida employers, especially home care and nursing homes, and the direct-care labor shortage it deepens is one that thinly staffed rural facilities elsewhere are likely to feel too.

• Nearly half of the roughly 350,000 Haitian TPS holders live in Florida, about 93,000 in its workforce, immigrant-rights groups estimate. They make up 28% of the state’s immigrant direct-care workers; two Miami-area home-care agencies closed after each lost more than 80 of them.

• The fallout is reaching Massachusetts, Ohio and Georgia, with nursing beds going offline, aging-services providers say. The Supreme Court cleared the terminations in June. Critics of TPS argue the losses are small enough to absorb and could lift wages for American-born workers.

Kentucky Lantern
Kentucky has a measles outbreak, most cases in decades
August 18, 2026

• Kentucky is facing its largest measles outbreak since 1991, with 19 cases this year in people who are unvaccinated or of unknown vaccination status, state health officials said. The affected counties are largely rural, where lower vaccination rates and thinner health access could speed spread.

• Fifteen cases were confirmed in four days across Christian, Owen, Todd, Trigg and Washington counties, with Christian County accounting for 10. Most of this year’s cases are in children, and there have been two hospitalizations and no deaths.

• Vaccinations have declined recently as the U.S. faces its worst measles outbreak since the disease was declared eliminated in 2000. Dr. Steven Stack, the state’s health cabinet secretary, urged parents to make sure children have two MMR doses.

The New York Times
Pentagon fires editor and publisher of independent military publication
August 21, 2026

• The Pentagon fired the editor in chief and publisher of Stars and Stripes, the government-funded outlet covering the U.S. military, raising fears about its editorial independence. The move could thin independent coverage for service members and their families, who are drawn heavily from rural America.

• Editor Erik Slavin said his notice cited insubordination and an unauthorized CBS interview in which he defended resisting censorship. The firings came about 10 days after the paper reported on hardships facing Navy sailors during the extended war in Iran.

• The Pentagon rescinded a decades-old rule guaranteeing the paper’s editorial integrity in January, barred it from running AP articles in March and fired its independent watchdog in April. Spokesman Sean Parnell said it should drop “woke distractions.”

The New Lede
North Carolina poultry industry grows as manure oversight lags, report finds
August 19, 2026

• North Carolina’s booming poultry industry is generating millions of tons of largely unregulated manure, a new Environmental Working Group report found, a gap that likely leaves rural Black communities near dense farm clusters exposed to water and air pollution.

• The state raised more than 421 million chickens and turkeys in 2024, a 3% jump since 2022, producing over 3.6 million tons of manure. Farms using dry litter don’t need water quality permits to spread waste on fields.

• Poultry manure can carry bacteria, nitrate and other contaminants into water, and North Carolina ranks among the worst states for nitrate-tainted drinking water. Democratic bills to require permits have stalled, and an EPA civil rights complaint was rejected.

Minnesota Star Tribune
Opinion: A mental health counselor showed up at my door in rural Minnesota. It changed my life.
August 19, 2026

• Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics are essential in rural Minnesota, where clinical care is scarce and farmers face suicide rates 3.5 times the national average, making same-day, crisis-response mental health services a matter of life and death, writes Theresia Gillie, a Kittson County commissioner and longtime board member of Alluma, the clinic she credits with helping her after her husband died by suicide.

• CCBHCs like the nonprofit Alluma provide crisis response and same-day mental health and substance use care regardless of ability to pay. A counselor came to Gillie’s door the day after her husband’s death; the nearest facility was an 80-mile drive she couldn’t have made.

• Alluma’s clinic served more than 4,000 people across several counties in 2024. Gillie urges permanently authorizing and expanding the model through the bipartisan Ensuring Excellence in Mental Health Act, backed by Minnesota Democrats Rep. Angie Craig and Sen. Tina Smith.

High Country News
The BLM may stop notifying landowners about drilling under private land. Ranchers are alarmed
August 21, 2026

• The BLM has proposed ending its requirement to notify ranchers when oil and gas drilling is planned beneath their land and cutting public comment from 90 days to 10, a change that would hit rural Western landowners hardest by stripping much of their say over development.

• The rule targets “split estate” land, where the federal government owns the minerals under privately held ranches and can grant companies surface access over an owner’s objection. Nearly 58 million acres nationwide are split estate, most of it in Montana and Wyoming.

• The BLM also wants to slash cleanup bonds for abandoned wells from $500,000 to $25,000 statewide, which it concedes could delay plugging orphaned wells. Ranching groups oppose the plan; industry says it helps small operators, and Interior frames it as cutting red tape.

The Conversation
Personal bankruptcy filings are soaring in 2026, signaling growing economic distress
August 19, 2026

• Personal bankruptcy filings are rising again, topping 500,000 in 2025 and up 12% in June 2026 from a year earlier, as wages lag inflation and credit card rates stay high, writes Jay L. Zagorsky, a Boston University business professor who studies bankruptcy. It’s a sign of financial strain that almost certainly bites hardest in lower-income rural areas, according to a 2022 report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

• Filings had fallen from about 1.5 million in 2010 to a low near 368,000 in 2022, buoyed by pandemic aid, before turning back up. Most filers use Chapter 7 liquidation; higher earners use Chapter 13, which repays creditors from income over three to five years.

• State laws sharply shape outcomes: Texas shields unlimited home equity, while Arkansas protects just $800 and Kentucky $5,000, so where a debtor lives can decide whether they keep their house. Zagorsky’s research found financial recovery can take 15 to 25 years.

The Hill
Court upholds EPA rule forcing polluters to pay for ‘forever chemical’ pollution
August 18, 2026

• A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld an EPA rule designating two “forever chemicals” as hazardous substances, letting the agency force polluters to pay for cleanup and likely easing the cost burden on rural communities whose water supplies are contaminated.

• The rule labels PFOA and PFOS, two toxic PFAS compounds linked to cancer, as hazardous under the Superfund law, giving the EPA power to investigate contaminated sites and bill responsible companies. It was issued under Biden and backed by the Trump administration.

• Industry groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, sued, arguing the EPA ignored the costs of its action, and are weighing next steps. The unanimous D.C. Circuit panel, made up of one Obama and two Trump appointees, found the agency acted reasonably.

Des Moines Register
Is Iowa losing its religion? Church closures mount in rural communities
August 18, 2026

• Churches are closing across Iowa as rural congregations shrink, pastors grow scarce and money runs short, hollowing out institutions that anchor small-town life. With governments pulling back the safety net, the losses could leave rural Iowans with fewer places to turn for support.

• From 2010 to 2020, 285 Iowa churches closed and church membership fell 13%, even as the increasingly urban state’s population grew, the U.S. Religion Census found. Only three of Iowa’s 99 counties gained members. Mainline Protestant denominations fell about 30%.

• The decline tracks a national rise in “nones,” now 26% of Iowans, up from 21% in 2013, PRRI data shows. Divisions over LGBTQ rights are driving younger people away, while white evangelical churches, prominent in backing Trump, are also shrinking.

ProPublica
The Trump administration aims to penalize disabled adults who live with their families
April 28, 2026

• The Trump administration is drafting a rule that would cut or end Supplemental Security Income for as many as 400,000 disabled and elderly people who live with relatives receiving SNAP, ProPublica found, a change likely to fall hard on low-income rural households that lean on both programs.

• The rule would count the value of a disabled adult’s bedroom and any family income as support, reducing SSI checks by up to a third even for families below the poverty line. It reverses a Biden-era policy that treated SNAP households as too poor to provide support.

• Initiated by White House and DOGE officials, it’s a second push to shrink disability programs after an earlier plan was dropped. An OMB spokesperson called the story “false” and “trash” without citing errors, and the SSA said the commissioner is committed to protecting benefits.

Forbes
Education Department rescinds student loan forgiveness credit, but scope of rollback is unclear
August 18, 2026

• The Education Department confirmed it reversed some Public Service Loan Forgiveness credit, cutting borrowers’ qualifying payment counts and pushing their debt relief further off, a setback likely felt keenly by rural public servants like teachers and nurses, writes Adam Minsky, an attorney focused on student loans.

• The department first blamed a data error, then said some reversals were deliberate, meant to fix PSLF counter code errors it traced to 2024 changes under the Biden administration. It says it has notified most affected borrowers and resolved the issue.

• But some borrowers say they lost credit for months that clearly qualified, with no explanation and no word on restoration. The turmoil comes amid new PSLF rules, miscalculated payments and backlogs, prompting advocacy groups to call for a national payment pause.