Rural "slush fund" distributions announced

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced this week the establishment of the Rural Health Transformation Program in relation to Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill" passed in July--and the so called "rural slush fund" that was a last-minute addition to that law.  An earlier post about that late addition to the law is here, also noting that it was added in part to secure the vote of U.S. Senator Lisa Muskowski's (Alaska) support for the law.  

The Rural Health Transformation Program website touts it as 

empower[ing] states to strengthen rural communities across America by improving healthcare access, quality, and outcomes by transforming the healthcare delivery ecosystem. Through innovative system-wide change, the RHT Program invests in the rural healthcare delivery ecosystem for future generations.

Its stated goals are: 

• make rural America healthy again
• sustainable access
• workforce development
• innovative care
• tech innovation

Below, I cut and pasted from this website more information about the structure and requirements.  For now, however, I want to focus on details of the distribution.  First, all states got a share of the distribution,  and the states that fared best were Texas, Alaska, California, Oklahoma and Montana.  That said, the award amounts to the states did not vary dramatically.  The average amount awarded to each state was $200 million, with the range from $147 million (New Jersey) to $281 million (Texas).  Here's an excerpt from the CMS announcement of the awards, which went to all 50 states.  

This unprecedented federal investment will help states expand access to care in rural communities, strengthen the rural health workforce, modernize rural facilities and technology, and support innovative models that bring high-quality, dependable care closer to home.

“More than 60 million Americans living in rural areas have the right to equal access to quality care,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. “This historic investment puts local hospitals, clinics, and health workers in control of their communities’ healthcare. Thanks to President Trump’s leadership, rural Americans will now have affordable healthcare close to home, free from bureaucratic obstacles.”

“Today marks an extraordinary milestone for rural health in America,” said CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz. “Thanks to Congress establishing this investment and President Trump for his leadership, states are stepping forward with bold, creative plans to expand rural access, strengthen their workforces, modernize care, and support the communities that keep our nation running. CMS is proud to partner with every state to turn their ideas into lasting improvements for rural families.”

Roll call covered the matter, with a focus on Texas.  Some key excerpts follow: 

Twenty percent of the score was determined by a state’s policy actions, including vows to pursue waivers to ban SNAP users from buying certain items like soda and candy, reinstating the presidential fitness test for schoolchildren and requiring that medical schools teach students about nutrition, among other things. States could lose money in future years through a “rescoring” process if they don’t follow through on those initiatives, Oz said.

The remaining 30 percent is based on the strength of the ideas that states proposed in their applications.

Projects highlighted by CMS on Monday include ones that aim to expand access to preventative, primary, maternal and behavioral health care. States also are pursuing “food as medicine” initiatives, models to address chronic disease prevention and programs to shore up their health care workforce.

Critics had argued the amount of funding available is nowhere near large enough to offset reductions in federal Medicaid spending made by the reconciliation law, which amounts to $911 billion over 10 years. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who voted against the bill, had pushed for at least $100 billion in rural health funding.

The $50 billion would offset only about 37 percent of the estimated loss of federal Medicaid funding in rural areas, according to KFF, a health policy research organization.

Oz says the intent of the funding is not to offset reductions.

“The purpose of this $50 billion investment in rural health care is not to pay off bills,” he said. “The purpose of this $50 billion investment is to allow us to right-size the system and to deal with the fundamental hindrances of improvement in rural health care.”

This excerpt from PBS Newshour coverage hits more squarely at the politics of the matter and what the Trump administration's CMS is trying to accomplish with these awards in relation to its wider "Make America Healthy Again" agenda: 

Several Republican-led states — including Arkansas, Iowa, Louisiana, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas — have already adopted rules banning the purchase of foods like candy and soda with SNAP benefits.

The money that the states get will be recalculated annually, Oz said, allowing the administration to "claw back" funds if, for example, state leaders don't pass promised policies. Oz said the clawbacks are not punishments, but leverage governors can use to push policies by pointing to the potential loss of millions.

"I've already heard governors express that sentiment that this is not a threat, that this is actually an empowering element of the One Big Beautiful Bill," he said.

Carrie Cochran-McClain, chief policy officer with the National Rural Health Association, said she's heard from a number of Democratic-led states that refused to include such restrictions on SNAP benefits even though it could hurt their chance to get more money from the fund.

"It's not where their state leadership is," she said.

Next, what follows is from a rural health care consultant working out of Texas, which I found on LinkedIn: 

Just reviewed the state allocations from CMS’s landmark $50B Rural Health Transformation Program, and the per‑rural‑person math is fascinating. I'm a CPA and I love excel...so you know I had to create my end of year fun facts related to the CMS awards for RHTP.

If you missed the announcement, here is a link to the full article:
https://lnkd.in/gzgCKfby

For context, the average award across all states is $1,957 per rural person.
Texas received $329 per rural person — a solid, meaningful investment in our rural communities.

To put that in perspective:
Rhode Island: $31,525 per rural person
Just above Texas: Ohio ($345), NC ($360), PA ($390), MI ($413)
Next tier below RI: NJ ($5,343), AK ($4,949), MA ($3,332), DE ($3,231)

Texas’s total award is $1.4 billion over five years — the largest in the country. While we weren’t guaranteed the top spot, the hard work by the Texas team at HHSC on the application positioned us to lead in rural innovation.

I was personally hoping for closer to $2.1B, but we’ll take this $1.4B and put it to work transforming the rural health landscape across Texas. Huge congratulations to the HHSC team and all our partners who made this possible.

Here’s to an innovative, data‑driven 2026 and beyond for rural Texas! 🌟

Finally, I'm pasting here the promised details on the program--the sort of call for applications: 

Program Structure

RHT Program funding is $50 billion to be allocated to approved States over five fiscal years, with $10 billion of funding available each fiscal year, beginning in fiscal year 2026 and ending in fiscal year 2030.

• 50% to be distributed equally amongst all approved States
• 50% will be allocated by CMS based on a variety of factors including rural population, the proportion of rural health facilities in the State, the situation of certain hospitals in the State, and other factors to be specified by CMS in the NOFO

Uses of Funds

States must use RHT Program funds for three or more of the approved uses of funds:Promoting evidence-based, measurable interventions to improve prevention and chronic disease management.

• Providing payments to health care providers for the provision of health care items or services, as specified by the Administrator.
• Promoting consumer-facing, technology-driven solutions for the prevention and management of chronic diseases.
• Providing training and technical assistance for the development and adoption of technology-enabled solutions that improve care delivery in rural hospitals, including remote monitoring, robotics, artificial intelligence, and other advanced technologies.
• Recruiting and retaining clinical workforce talent to rural areas, with commitments to serve rural communities for a minimum of 5 years.
• Providing technical assistance, software, and hardware for significant information technology advances designed to improve efficiency, enhance cybersecurity capability development, and improve patient health outcomes.
• Assisting rural communities to right size their health care delivery systems by identifying needed preventative, ambulatory, pre-hospital, emergency, acute inpatient care, outpatient care, and post-acute care service lines.
• Supporting access to opioid use disorder treatment services (as defined in section 1861(jjj)(1)), other substance use disorder treatment services, and mental health services.
• Developing projects that support innovative models of care that include value-based care arrangements and alternative payment models, as appropriate.
• Additional uses designed to promote sustainable access to high quality rural health care services, as determined by the Administrator.
  

NYT feature on the consequences of California redistricting on rural northstate

Kellen Browning reports for the New York Times under the headline, "They Wanted a Conservative State. They Might Get a Democratic Representative Instead."  The story is a richly textured look at how the residents of far northern California feel about the November passage of Proposition 50, which adopted new congressional districts that will temporarily override the decisions of the state's independent redistricting.  As I've written about previously here, here, here and here, this means residents of the current District 1, an inland district stretching from Butte County, about 80 miles north of Sacramento, all the way to the Oregon state line, are likely to be represented by a Democrat after the 2026 midterm elections.  This is because parts of current District 1 will be combined with a strip of coastal wine country stretching down into Marin County, just north of San Francisco.   The current 1st District is shown in lavender in the map below.  Much of it will be subsumed into a new 2d District, outlined by the dotted orange line. 

Source: We Draw the Lines California, California Legislature
Credits: Jeremia Kimelman, CalMatters

Excerpts from Browning's story follow.  Some highlight rural-urban difference and others highlight the feelings of rural voters in California' north state.  

For decades, residents in the rural north have longed for a political earthquake that would cleave their region out of California and allow them to create their own fabled “State of Jefferson” with conservatives in Southern Oregon. They have increasingly felt underappreciated and misunderstood by the liberal Democrats who run California and dominate the congressional delegation — who, in their telling, siphon away their water and prioritize environmental regulations that undercut farmers’ livelihoods.

Now, they not only lack a conservative State of Jefferson, but their entire region is also likely to lose its Republican congressman and have him replaced by a Democrat after next year’s midterm elections. 

“People in the cities don’t have a clue what it takes to survive out here,” said Terry Williams, a 75-year-old rice and walnut farmer who moved to Richvale in 1974. “I don’t think people that were born and raised in the cities can represent us to the same extent.”

Here's a quote from Gene Lifur, a 52-year-old from Orland, population 8,2998, which claims to be the "Queen Bee Capital" of North America for its role in raising the pollinators:  

There was definitely a feeling of throwing up your hands.  You’re going to lose a lot of the interest for voting in the North State.

Another resident, DaNell Millerburg, 62, who manages the Richvale Cafe, "said the idea of her small town being represented by someone from the Bay Area was 'scary.' ...'They want to save the opossums and the beavers and the snakes.  But it’s not good for the farmers, because those animals dig holes in their ditches.'"

Browning meet many of those he interviewed at the cafe, "a nonprofit kept afloat by locals, who wanted to ensure that the area’s solitary farmers had a place to meet."  Richvale, population 234, is the home of current District 1 Congressperson Doug LaMalfa who asserted, "I understand people here far better than a Bay Area interloper."

Rural residents, Mr. LaMalfa said, grew crops enjoyed by California’s cities but were scorned by those living in cities. He said that Democrats were passing expensive pollution regulations, tearing down crucial dams in the name of protecting salmon populations and introducing wolf packs that attacked their herds. Proposition 50 was the latest affront.

“Their voice is being silenced on how they feel about the issues here, because Newsom and the three-to-one ratio of Democrats wanted to see if they could steal five seats,” Mr. LaMalfa said of the governor and state lawmakers.

* * *

“I’m furious,” [LaMalfa] added, “because I’ve had my people kidnapped from me.”

* * *

The Democrats running against Mr. LaMalfa agreed that rural Californians have been neglected by many in their party. But they also argued that Republicans like Mr. LaMalfa have hurt farmers and agrarian communities with their policies.

Those Democrats include Mike McGuire of Geyserville, in Sonoma County, who until recently was president pro tem of the California Senate, and Audrey Denney, who grew up on a coastal cattle farm but has lived and worked for 20 years in Chico, a college town in the same county (Butte) as Richvale.  Denney has already run twice, unsuccessfully, against LaMalfa.  McGuire's California Senate district stretches from Sonoma County all the way to the Oregon state line, but hugs the coast, a more progressive region.  I have observed over the years that he takes the needs of his region's very rural reaches very seriously.  Read about that here and here.  Denney will presumably vie to represent the new 1st District, and McGuire will seek to represent the new 2d District.  

I'll close with this quote from another resident, Chris Culp, 62, a retired Navy officer, who Browning found at the Last Stand Bar and Grill:  

Somebody from Santa Rosa, Oakland, they’re not going to understand, and honestly I don’t think they’re going to take the time to get educated about what’s going on up here.  We’ve got different needs than the people in the dense cities and the coast.

Other posts highlighting the different needs of rural and urban California and long-standing agitation related to the would-be State of Jefferson are here.   

New Hampshire (once again) tries to restrict student voting (Part IV): documents, documents, and more documents

This is Part IV in my look at New Hampshire's history of attempting to disenfranchise college student voters. For Part I, which provides essential background information, please click here. You may read Part II here. You may read Part III here. 

"A resident or inhabitant or both of this state and of any city, town, or other political subdivision of this state shall be a person who is domiciled or has a place of abode or both in this state and in any city, town, or other political subdivision of this state, and who has, through all of his or her actions, demonstrated a current intent to designate that place of abode as his or her principal place of physical presence [for the indefinite future] to the exclusion of all others."

                                                                                                - New Hampshire House Bill 1264

In July 2018, New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu signed a bill into law that amended the state's definition of "resident" for the purposes of voting. Despite a federal court clarifying that students could vote in the state and compromises being reached to make that happen, there were still some who felt that students were simply not welcome at the ballot box. On this day, those interests won. 

Prior to this change, an intent to remain in the state "indefinitely" was sufficient to be considered a resident for voting purposes. In practice, this shift in definition would effectively force out of state college students to get New Hampshire driver's licenses and register their vehicles in the state. Since these things cost money, these new requirements essentially amounted to a poll tax. Just as they had in 1971 and 1972, the New Hampshire chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union came out against the legislation and filed a lawsuit to stop it from going into effect. 

Widespread Opposition 

The bill had passed despite widespread opposition and warnings that it would disenfranchise college students. In fact, the original venue for the bill's July hearing before the Senate Election Law and Internal Affairs Committee was insufficient to hold the people who had turned up to oppose the bill. College students, facing disenfranchisement, showed up to show their opposition.

Many opponents zoomed in on the removal of intent to remain "indefinitely" from the state's election laws. While a federal court later ruled it was unnecessary, even the most ardent opponents of student voting in 1972 agreed that a statement of intent to remain indefinitely was sufficient. This legislation upended a status quo that had essentially persisted for the last 45 years.

SB 3 and the Turn Toward Enforcement

As a voter suppression effort, HB 1264 did not stand alone. It built directly on Senate Bill 3 signed into law the previous year. SB 3 altered the mechanics of voter registration by requiring voters who registered without documentation to complete detailed affidavits and submit proof of residency either at the polls or through post-election follow-up. Those who failed to provide documentation in a timely manner faced civil penalties and the possibility of criminal prosecution.

SB 3 did not explicitly target college students, but its effects fell most heavily on them. Students, who are more likely to register close to Election Day and less likely to have New Hampshire-specific documentation on hand were transformed from presumed eligible voters into legal risks. Civil rights groups warned that SB 3 converted routine voter registration into an act that could trigger investigation by the Secretary of State or referral to the Attorney General.

The New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union, along with other voting-rights advocates, sued to block SB 3’s enforcement. In October 2018, just weeks before the midterm election, a state court issued a preliminary injunction preventing the law’s new registration forms and enforcement provisions from being used. The court concluded that SB 3 imposed unreasonable burdens on the right to vote and risked confusion and disenfranchisement at polling places.

That injunction foreshadowed SB 3’s eventual demise. In 2021, the New Hampshire Supreme Court struck the law down in its entirety, holding that it violated the state constitution by placing disproportionate burdens on eligible voters without evidence of a meaningful fraud problem.

HB 1264, by contrast, survived judicial scrutiny. Because it altered definitions rather than election-day procedures, it was treated by courts as a permissible legislative clarification rather than an immediate burden on voting. The result was an uneven legal landscape: SB 3, which enforced residency claims at the polls, was enjoined and invalidated; HB 1264, which raised the cost and risk of making those claims in the first place, endured. 

After the New Hampshire Supreme Court issued a favorable advisory opinion regarding HB 1264, the lawsuits that sought to overturn it were withdrawn. It still stands to this day. The residency requirements imposed by HB 1264 survived, but the documentation requirements imposed by SB 3 did not. A college student registering to vote today may prove their identity and residency using documents provided by their college, satisfying the requirements of HB 1264.

Both laws were passed under the familiar banner of “preventing fraud.” In reality, they reflected a sustained effort to narrow the electorate by making student participation more expensive, more confusing, and more legally fraught.

The Broader Effort

Taken together, these measures represented the culmination of a long-running partisan effort to suppress the political power of those who live in New Hampshire but are not considered permanent enough to be trusted with a ballot. College students are undeniably present in the state for most of the year, and many will never return to their so-called “home” communities after graduation. Forcing them to vote in those communities compels them to participate in elections where the consequences of public policy may never touch them, while silencing them where those consequences most certainly will.

Part V, which will come next year, will examine the most recent updates.

CalMatters does deep dive into flat-fee contracts for indigent defense

Anat Rubin reports today for CalMatters, the non-profit news service, under the headline, "The Walmart of Public Defense:  How Justice Gets Sold to the Lowest Bidder in Rural California."  Here's an excerpt: 

For three years, the fate of poor people accused of crimes in San Benito County lay in the hands of attorneys who barely spoke with their clients and seldom filed legal motions on their behalf.

While defendants asked them to contest the prosecution’s evidence, to interview witnesses, to do anything, really, to challenge law enforcement’s narrative of the crime, they ushered almost all of them to plea deals instead, averaging just one jury trial for every 1,500 cases.

The attorneys worked for Fitzgerald, Alvarez and Ciummo, the firm that San Benito paid to provide public defense. According to a 2024 state evaluation, they were not doing a good job. Two of the attorneys had inappropriate relationships with clients, another struggled with addiction.

The situation had deteriorated so dramatically that the San Benito district attorney, Joel Buckingham, found himself worrying about the people his office was trying to send to prison. Their attorneys didn’t contest the evidence Buckingham’s prosecutors presented, no matter how it was obtained. Each year, they filed an average of just 10 motions to suppress evidence based on violations of constitutional rights — including unjustified stops and searches, illegal interrogations, and arrests without probable cause.

“Police officers must make mistakes sometimes,” Buckingham told a researcher conducting the evaluation.

The sheriff, Eric Taylor, was also alarmed. If his deputies were never challenged in court, how would they know when they had crossed a line? What would stop them from doing it again?

In Taylor’s previous job, in Santa Cruz County, the courthouse was often packed with law enforcement officers who had been called to defend their actions.

“If we’re doing our job correctly, then we prevail on those motions,” he told San Benito county supervisors last year. “And if we’ve made a mistake, and we’re doing our job incorrectly, we’re held accountable for that.”

Nearly half of California counties pay private lawyers and firms to represent poor people in criminal cases, and most of them, like San Benito, do it through what’s known as a “flat-fee” contract, meaning they pay a fixed amount, regardless of how many cases the attorneys handle or how much time they spend on each case.

It’s a far cheaper alternative — at least in the short run — to operating a public defender office with government lawyers, and it’s created a second-tier justice system in rural stretches of the state: Seven of the eight counties with the state’s highest jail and prison incarceration rates have flat-fee contracts.

You can read the rest of this deeply reported story here.  Read my own scholarship about rural indigent defense delivery here (Yale Law Journal Forum, about how these issues play out in Washington State) and here (Arizona Law Review, about Arizona).  

Congress (finally) renews Secure Rural Schools Act, through 2027

Congress voted overwhelmingly yesterday to renew the Secure Rural Schools Act.  Here's an excerpt from the Los Angeles Times coverage, by Hailey Branson-Potts, which leads with a bit historical perspective on rural schools lobbying efforts for the funding over the past few years:  

In February 2023, Jaime Green, the superintendent of a tiny school district in the mountains of Northern California, flew to Washington, D.C., with an urgent appeal.

The Secure Rural Schools Act, a long-standing financial aid program for schools like his in forested counties, was about to lapse, putting thousands of districts at risk of losing significant chunks of their budgets. The law had originated 25 years ago as a temporary fix for rural counties that were losing tax revenue from reduced timber harvesting on public lands.

Green, whose Trinity Alps Unified School District serves about 650 students in the struggling logging town of Weaverville, bounded through Capitol Hill with a small group of Northern California educators, pleading with anyone who would listen: Please renew the program.

They were assured, over and over, that it had bipartisan support, wasn’t much money in the grand scheme of things and almost certainly would be renewed.

But because Congress could not agree on how to fund the program, it took nearly three years — and a lapse in funding — for the Secure Rural Schools Act to be revived, at least temporarily.

On Tuesday, the U.S. House overwhelmingly voted to extend the program through 2027 and to provide retroactive payments to districts that lost funding while it was lapsed.

The vote was 399 to 5, with all nay votes cast by Republicans. The bill, approved unanimously by the Senate in June, now awaits President Trump’s signature.

“We’ve got Republicans and Democrats holding hands, passing this freaking bill, finally,” Green said. “We stayed positive. The option to quit was, what, layoffs and kids not getting educated? We kept telling them the same story, and they kept listening.”

Green, who until that 2023 trip had never traveled east of Texas, wound up flying to Washington 14 times. He was in the House audience Tuesday as the bill was passed.

In an interview Tuesday, Republican Rep. Doug LaMalfa, who represents a vast swath of Northern California and helped lead the push for reauthorization, said Congress never should have let the program lapse in the first place.

I don't agree with LaMalfa on many issues, but on this one he is absolutely correct.  

The five congresspersons who voted against the Act were: 

• Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ)
• Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ)
• Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL)
• Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY)
• Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC)

Here is an Ed Source story about the passage of the law, and here's an Oregon Public Broadcasting story focused on the significance of this funding to many counties in the Pacific Northwest.  CalMatters covered it here.  An announcement by New Mexico Congressman Gabe Vasquez, who says it means $9 million for his state's rural schools, is here. 

Finally, here is a February 2023 post based on Branson-Potts' previous story about California rural school administrators lobbying in Washington, D.C., for the Secure Rural Schools Act.   The term used there for the pittance represented by this spending--at least from the perspective of all federal spending: "budget dust."  

Chronicle of Higher Education features LSU-Alexandria as an institution successfully serving rural students

Dan Berrett reports on Louisiana State University-Alexandria's success in surviving the rural area amidst which it sits.  The headline is Rural America, Growth Area? and the sub-head is "There’s a growing population of high-school seniors waiting to be reached — if colleges can figure out how to better serve them."  Here are some key excerpts:  

On the surface, Louisiana State University at Alexandria might seem like an institution in trouble. It’s a public regional campus in a rural swath of the state, located in a city of under 50,000 that hugs the Red River and is “surrounded by forest and farmland,” says Adam Lord, a spokesperson for the university. Central Louisiana, according to Lord, is “defined by work-force shortages, growing health-care deserts, and limited access to degree programs.” Less than one-third of the city’s adults have at least an associate degree, below both the state and national average.

But the institution saw its enrollment more than double between 2013 and 2023, largely by focusing on the regional and state population. The heavily rural, 11-parish area in which the campus sits accounts for 94 percent of its student body, and the state’s residents make up 70 percent of its online learners. LSU-Alexandria has grown largely by expanding its online enrollment and touting its low cost and high value. The undergraduate-only institution has developed pipelines to the state’s graduate professional programs. It’s created programs for the rural work force — including aviation, disaster preparedness, and cybersecurity — and programs that feed into local companies, like RoyOMartin, a plywood manufacturer, and utilities and hospitals.

Where its graduates once left for Texas, the institution is now trying to keep them at home.

* * * 

The notion that rural areas are growing runs counter to a decades-long narrative of decline.

* * *

The largest increase in undergraduate enrollment — more than 9 percent — over the past two years has been among institutions in rural areas, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

“There is a slight gain in the number of rural students. That’s the news,” says Patrick Lane, vice president for policy analysis and research at WICHE.

* * * 

Several scholars of rural higher education who spoke with The Chronicle come from such areas themselves, and they consistently recall feeling alienated when they arrived on campus — not unlike what first-generation students and students of color describe, says Tony Pipa, a senior fellow in the Center for Sustainable Development at the Brookings Institution, who has written about rural America and produces a podcast on the subject. “They feel like a fish out of water,” he says of rural students. “Rural is an identity.”

That sense of identity can leave a lasting impact, says Andrew Koricich, a professor of higher education and student affairs at Appalachian State University.

* * *

When rural scholars meet each other, they might find common ground discussing how many 
stoplights or how few people were in the communities in which they grew up, Koricich says. The sense of identity expresses itself in deeper ways, too. “I think there’s a piece of it that is very much around self-sufficiency,” he says. “You meet other rural scholars and we have similar stories about how we had to figure out everything ourselves.”

I really appreciate the attention here to rurality as identity, which is consistent with a recent finding by political scientists regarding rural voters.  

Daniel Woodrell, author of "Winter's Bone," dies, taking with him a particular manifestation of "country noir"

Here's the lede from the New York Times obituary by Alex Traub: 

Daniel Woodrell, a novelist known for prose as rugged and elemental as the igneous rock of the Ozark Mountains, his birthplace, which he returned to just as his artistic craftsmanship peaked, died on Friday at his home in West Plains, Mo. He was 72.

* * *  

Despite Hollywood’s attention to his books, Mr. Woodrell himself did not become much of a public figure; he remained primarily known within the smaller circles of close observers of contemporary fiction, where he was admired as a master storyteller of rural America.

* * *

Much as Mr. Woodrell was drawn to American archetypes — world-weary policemen, small-town crooks — reviewers praised his work for transcending the circumstances of any place or time. He gained command of Old Testament diction, and he sought out themes, like clan loyalty or murder or betrayal, that had been explored since ancient times.

“He writes high Greek tragedy about low people, and he never panders or looks down on the people he writes about,” the writer Dennis Lehane told Esquire. “As a prose stylist, he’s done what all the best do: taken the regional voice of the world he writes about and turned it into poetry.”

 * * *

Frustrated with labels used to characterize his style, Mr. Woodrell coined one of his own: “country noir.” In a 1994 Times Book Review article, he defined this fictional strategy: “To portray the allegedly folksy and bucolic heartland as the frequently rude and savage and dark world those of us who’ve done our time there know it can be is to explode a happy myth of fantasy-America.”

Interesting how many themes of this obituary echo those of my prior post, also about how rural America  shows up in wider cultural tropes.  

Woodrell's work--especially "Winter's Bone"--was a revelation to me because I, too, grew up in the Ozarks.  I found his work very authentic.  I wrote about the movie "Winter's Bone" several times in 2010, when it was released; those posts are here, here, here and here.     

Another NYT take on rural culture, in relation to Trump and MAGA

Today's New York Times Opinions podcast features a conversation about "The Aesthetic that Explains American Identity Now."  The alternative headline is "MAGA and the Country Aesthetic."  Here's the NYT's overview description of the episode: 

Rural aesthetics are in, from cowboy boots to country albums by pop stars to pastoral idealism peddled by influencers. The New York Times Opinion editor Meher Ahmad speaks to the columnist Tressie McMillan Cottom and the contributor Emily Keegin about what these cultural touch points mean for our politics and society at large.

Before including some key quotes, I'll just observe that I think the commentator's argument is overstated.  Here are some excerpts:  

Ahmad: Both Tressie and Emily are keen observers of the cultural zeitgeist, and in their own spheres they’ve been noticing an ongoing mainstreaming of all things country and rural. Think shows like “Yellowstone” and “The Hunting Wives”. Pop stars like Beyoncé and Sabrina Carpenter produce country songs as part of their repertoire. And tradwife influencers like Hannah Neeleman, popularly known on social media as Ballerina Farm, has now more than 10 million followers.

* * *

McMillan Cottom: There’s a show where a farmer takes a wife ... But you can even get into shows that aren’t as character driven, where the rurality is actually a character. So then you’ve got shows where there are alligator hunters in Louisiana, a show called “Swamp People.”

* * * 

Keegin: Yes. I think we’ve had a very long romance with rural aesthetics in this country.  (emphasis added)

And after the second Trump win, what I noticed was there was a big cowboy trend that took off. Denim is big. Western culture is big. “S.N.L.” this season had a musical act in a hayloft. Realtree coming in and dominating the sweatshirt world.

Ok, honest confession, I had to look up "Reatree."  Had no idea what that was.  I had heard of a realty company with a similar name selling rural properties.  As best I can tell, the two are not related. 

Keegin: Well, OK. Where would you have seen it? You would have seen the pattern on the merch of Chappell Roan. She has a hat that says “Midwest Princess.” And Midwest Princess, I think, is part of this trend, as well. That was picked up by the Harris Walz campaign. If you recall they also had a Camo hat.

* * * 

McMillan Cottom: When we’re talking about being romantic for rural life, we’re really talking about an imaginary place. This isn’t really the rural life that actual people who live in rural America tend to be familiar with. These are signifiers that are maybe less about a physical place, a geography.  (emphasis added)

I would say the divide is between nostalgia and today’s politics. It manifests in many different ways. But when you say something like “Make America Great,” that’s a backward-looking vision. That is not about the future — although it’s trying to own the idea of what the future should look like. It is really calling to a nostalgia for an imagined American past where all families were “traditional” and all women were real women and home life looked this way.

* * *

Keegin: We look at how culture changed through the Clinton years and what was on TV. And when the rural revolt happened in 1994, we had a narrative around that about a shift in a rising conservative culture in this country — which was absolutely true. Narratives are based in truth. And our television shows followed that. 

* * *  

McMillan Cottom: [K]eeping in mind that when we talk about Donald Trump being a sort of a quintessential New York urban figure, that may be true in his biography, but we’re not talking about real places when we talk about urban versus rural.

And when you appeal to rural, you are always, always, calling up the idea of urban. These two things exist at the same time. So that’s the first thing.

The second thing is: I would say that what Donald Trump does — the way he enters into the rural imagination: He does it through Southernness.

* * *

I think that what Donald Trump does is he becomes associated with rural life because of how often he has appealed to Southernness, when he, of course, raises the specter of racism or raises the specter of genteel womanhood — all of those things that the South is kind of known for.

They came in the figure of Donald Trump and his rhetoric, so we keep this big treasure chest — a repertoire of ideas in the South. And when somebody wants to call them up, they can go and open the toy chest, and there it is. You can pull out the Confederate flag, and you can pull out songs of the South or whatever it is.

And suddenly, people’s imagination is in the South. Well, once you are in the South, in the imagination, you are just a — if you’ll forgive me — you are just a hayride away from rural America.

And so those two things, I think, are happening simultaneously with Donald Trump. Appealing to nostalgia will always have political power, especially when people are very anxious and afraid, which is what I would argue people are — for many, many reasons. And that’s why I think Donald Trump reads as rural to some people.

Although I’d pay money to see Donald Trump in actual rural America, for what it’s worth.

* * *

Keegin: You know, Donald Trump shows the seams. You see where the makeup ends on his face. It’s very clear that his hair is done by himself, and you see the grease in it. There’s a photo of him where you see that he holds his tie together with tape.

I think when we boil down what a rural aesthetic is, regardless of who is engaging with it, it is about the human hand and showing what humans create — versus the urban aesthetic, which is based in machines and in technology. We think about our urban centers: That is where we produce a lot of our culture, but they’re also the center of our governments and our financial centers.

All of the aesthetics that we associate with urban life come from those occupations, which are about the mind over the body. This is not where you are toiling and making things with the human hand and with your physical self. And that is the schism. When I look at Trump, I think: Yes, there are a lot of things about him that are very rural — because he’s not slick.

Then there's more in this podcast about the "Renaissance of country music" and what it suggests about this political moment, which I'll leave to you readers.  Some of the illustration of what these NYTimes folks label "rural"--especially matters related to cowboys and Taylor Sheridan's "Yellowstone"--seem to me more specifically about the imaginary associated with the "wild west" and with patriarchy.   In the latter regard, I was reminded of Kristen Kobes Du Mez' Jesus and John Wayne.  

Democrats say they'll do more to attract rural voters

Ashley Lopez reported for NPR a few days ago on Democrats' plan to vie from aggressively for rural voters.  Here's an excerpt about the "8 figure investment" the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is making in advance of the 2026 midterm elections, an investment that will include "a full-time staffer who will be focused on 'strategic rural engagement across the country.'"  This is the first time the DCCC has had a program dedicated specifically to rural voter engagement. 

Suzan DelBene, who chairs the DCCC and represents Washington's 1st Congressional District, said Democrats see an opportunity to engage rural voters as President Trump's economic agenda, particularly tariffs, becomes less popular.

She said rural voters see the "damage" being done by GOP policies that have led to "costs going up, health care being gutted," and Democrats can provide an alternative.

Here's a further quote from DelBene:

I think Republicans are turning their back. They've been actively hurting rural communities with the policies they've put in place. Democrats are fighting to improve the lives of rural Americans and farmers.

* * *

When we look at the swing districts across the country, the districts that are going to determine the majority in the House of Representatives, we know that rural voters are key in those districts.

* * * 

According to the Pew Research Center, in last year's presidential election Trump won 69% of voters who describe their communities as rural, compared with just 29% for Kamala Harris.

Lopez spoke to Anthony Flaccavento, a former candidate for congress in southwest Virginia and founder of the Rural-Urban Bridge Initiative, who acknowledged how hard it'll be to win back Democrats:  

We focus on rural, but because there's so much overlap in why people have left the Democrats and why they have so much disillusionment, it's a lot of commonality between working-class folks in small towns and cities and rural people.  When you put those two together, rural voters and blue-collar, working-class voters, then you have the biggest voting bloc in the country.

I've written a lot on the blog about Democrats' neglect of rural voters, including here and here.  

Rural public media struggling in the face of funding cuts

We became aware this summer, when the Trump administration announced cuts to public broadcasting and the abolition of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, that rural areas would be hit especially hard.  This is because rural stations are more reliant on federal funding.  Rural areas also tend to have fewer media outlets, which means that those supported by public dollars are less easily replaced by the private sector--including in the reporting on weather and natural disasters.    

This week, Reveal reported on the closure of a public radio station, KYUK, in the Bethel/Kuskokwim Delta region of Alaska.  Here's an excerpt: 

When a typhoon hit Alaska, public radio station KYUK was on the air, broadcasting critical information about conditions, evacuations, and search and rescue operations. An estimated 1,600 people were displaced, and many were saved in the biggest airlift operation in state history.

“The work that we do in terms of public safety communication literally does save lives,” said Sage Smiley, KYUK’s news director.

KYUK is small, scrappy, and bilingual. It broadcasts in English and Yugtun, the language of an Indigenous population that lives in villages along two massive rivers. The station airs NPR content, but also high school basketball games, local call-in talk shows, and even a show hosted by the volunteer search and rescue team, answering listeners’ questions about ice conditions and safety. The station is a lifeline for this unique region.

KYUK covers an area the size of the state of Oregon, but after Congress passed the Rescissions Act over the summer, it lost 70 percent of its operating budget. Republicans have targeted public media since its inception in the late 1960s. But this is the first time they have successfully ended the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, wiping out more than $1 billion in funding for public media.

For more on that typhoon in mid-October, see NPR's coverage here. 

On using localism to help save rural America

This is from Jeffrey Tyler Syck on Persuasion's Substack on Tuesday, Nov. 25, "Localism, Not Nationalism, Will Cure What Ails Rural America."  Syck, an assistant professor of politics at the University of Pikeville, in eastern Kentucky, frames his argument in relation to J.D. Vance's embrace of nationalism and his concomitant neglect of the local:  

The collapse of rural towns, small industrial cities, and remote farms has coincided with the decline of local cultures. A local identity brings with it pride of place and a certain willingness to live with the disadvantages endemic to the location. When people feel that their locality serves a purpose—that it is embedded within a larger whole—they are willing to tolerate or even embrace its remoteness, slower pace of life, and faulty infrastructure. Rural Americans once thrived on a belief that for all their region’s faults, they were the backbone of the nation.

But [J.D.] Vance’s concept of the nation does not restore this sense of local pride. Instead, it substitutes a globalized vision of tradition for a local one.

The proof surrounds me every day in my native Central Appalachia. As a child, most local businesses in my neighborhood seemed to identify first and foremost with East Kentucky. Many bore names like “commonwealth insurance” or “mountain music.” Though people in the region were patriotic, the primary emotional attachment was regional and not national.

Yet since Vance—and MAGA more broadly—have encouraged a strong dose of nationalism in red states, this has changed. Now when I cruise down the highway I am greeted by “Patriot RV” or “American Laundry and Cleaners.” This is a subtle but telling shift.

* * *

Champions of rural America must reject reactionary nationalist attempts to rewind the clock back to the 1950s. They need a totally new solution to rural malaise—one that combines the localism of the past with the values of the open society that will likely dominate the coming century. This is not an easy task; it asks us to combine two things that have not historically gone well together. Yet it is the only real hope for rural America.

How might it come about?

The first step is for government and civil society to rejuvenate local cultural institutions. For instance, in my native Eastern Kentucky we should work hard to make local newspapers a strong cultural force again. We should restore historical buildings and landscapes, beautifying cheap utilitarian constructions so that they fit with the vernacular culture, and preserve local environments. We should refurbish the folksy brick buildings native to this region, tearing down or renovating eyesores, and conserving the stunning Appalachian Mountains that are the physical home of my people. Perhaps most importantly, we should invest in local art, music, and culture. This could mean cultivating a serious appreciation for bluegrass music, Appalachian literature, and local history. Learning to appreciate the culture of one’s home is a guaranteed path to restoring a sense of purpose to the locality.

For more on "left-behind places" read this essay.