Loving is radical: Rural America and political empathy

After winning the Grammy for Best Música Urbana Album the first thing Bad Bunny said was, “ICE out.” He then continued his acceptance speech with a simple but powerful call for love over hate, saying “we need to be different…we don’t hate them, we love our people.”

This call for loving more than we hate “the other side” stood out to me as what has been missing from the “rural versus urban” debate that consumes politics in the United States. As a self-described “liberal coastal elite,” if you had spoken to me after the 2016 election (when I was only 16) and again after the 2024 election, I would have told you, quite honestly, how much I hated the “other side.” At that time, the “other side” wasn’t limited to Trump or the political systems that enabled him to become president a second time. I meant anyone who voted for him and I was far from alone in that feeling.

“Rural bashing,” as described by Kaceylee Klein and Lisa R. Pruitt, refers to a phenomenon of “harsh criticism - even disdain...” towards rural voters or often all people living in so-called “red states.” While Klein and Pruitt detail that this is not a new phenomenon, they note that it has intensified in the Trump era. Importantly, this bashing isn’t limited to politicians or media, there are a multitude of examples of everyday people unable to feel empathy for those suffering in rural areas because “they voted for this.”

This bashing is further exacerbated by the tendency to equate “rural” with “white." In fact many who support liberal politics fall into the trap of believing that rural white people are the problem. While it is true that rural America votes predominantly Republican, as seen is the 2024 presidential election in which Trump won 93 percent of rural counties, believing rural America doesn’t deserve to benefit from any “liberal” policies or social systems is an uniquely unempathetic belief. As a condition of democracy, many believe that red voters should be held accountable for their actions, or in this case their votes, especially if and when those votes lead to unfavorable outcomes.

(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2025.  

To be clear, I am not saying we need to have empathy for ICE, Trump, or the political and economic systems that have allowed racist, homophobic, sexist rhetoric to flourish. These systems deserve to be challenged, and when necessary dismantled. But when does hate for these systems turn into hatred for the people living within them?

Increasingly, politicians are beginning to realize that writing off rural Americans is not effective or sustainable. As Hannah Thomas has previously discussed on the blog, politicians like Bernie Sanders have been working actively to rally rural American voters rather than dismiss them. Even Hillary Clinton, in her The Atlantic opinion piece titled “MAGA’s War on Empathy,” reflects on her own struggle to feel empathy for people whom she passionately disagrees with. Although the piece, published just last week, may feel like too little, too late, it nonetheless underscores why the rhetoric of active politicians toward rural Americans must change.

If we are serious about creating political change, we must shift our strategies. Active politicians, media, and everyday liberals alike must take note of what is driving us. If the driving force is hate for the “other side” in the form of rural Americans, we will continue to live in a divided America.

Rural immigration: then and now

  The image conjured up from the mention of rurality likely resembles Grant Wood's 1930 painting "American Gothic." The piece shows a man and a woman, two thin, tall looking, presumably Anglo-Americans standing in front of a farmhouse and a piece of another red structure. The man holds a pitchfork, and both the man and woman bear stern expressions imparted to them by the Great Depression. In the imagination of most people, the rural American is a white farmer, without much thought as to the particular ethnic origin or religious denomination of such white farmers.  

We often forget that the ancestors of people like those depicted in "American Gothic" were once immigrants too. Much like the likely unused farmhouse in the picture, the material conditions shaping early immigration to the American countryside have faded, leaving behind echoes of the past.  Rural residency is increasingly no longer defined by yeoman land ownership. 

Along with commercialized agriculture, rural lands find themselves appropriated for newly discovered uses. Particularly with oil and natural gas harvesting, economic diversification comes opportunities for labor and ethnic diversity. While the workers in the PBS video linked are not immigrants to America, they are as though immigrants to rural spaces. In a way, it's the same story as the rest of America's history on the frontier and the spatial gaps waiting to be filled. 

I. How the timing of migrations result in the present-day makeup of most rural communities. 

The Homestead Act of 1862 radically changed the demographic landscape of American territory from the still-sparse Midwest to the Pacific Ocean, especially those sparsely settled territories in the Great Plains region. The act was accommodating toward immigrants at the time, where the "37th Congress intended the Homestead Act as a way to bolster a stagnant population and build an agricultural nation through immigration and the settlement of the public lands of the United States."  Of course, the Homestead Act's preceding efforts found opposition, as "Northern factories owners feared a mass departure of their cheap labor force and Southern states worried that rapid settlement of western territories would give rise to new states populated by small farmers opposed to slavery." The temporary exit of the southern states from the United States made the long-awaited Homestead Act a reality. Newly arrived German immigrants would take a significant portion of the land grants available, along with already settled Anglo-Americans and newly arrived Irish immigrants. As can still be observed by ongoing census statistics, German immigrants fleeing from turmoil within the not-yet united Germany now make up the lion's share of these communities. It's worth noting that even up to World War One, German-Americans themselves were still considered a type of ethnic minority. The frontiers, then as now, were a way for the marginalized to find more opportunities forbidden to them on settled shores. 

The echoes of migration patterns from Europe to the United States can be directly observed with the help of the US Census Bureau's My Congressional District interactive site. For example, a search for Idaho District 2 will show a variety of metrics for the population of the district, including ancestry. English (186,185) and German (138,240) outstrip all other ethnicities, with Irish (81,549) coming in a distant third. Next-door in Oregon's rural District 2, we see similar numbers with German, English, and Irish Americans far outstripping every other ethnicity. In Kansas's rural District 1, the contrast is more stark with German-Americans (195,377) outnumbering English-Americans (67,604) and Irish-Americans (79,082) combined. In Iowa, the scene of "American Gothic," German-Americans outnumber Irish-Americans, the second most populous ethnicity of the state, by a ratio of two to one in all four Congressional districts. The sheer demographic weight of German immigration was felt as far as in formerly Spanish California, where the city of Anaheim, the tenth largest city in California and home of Disneyland, was founded in 1857 as a colony of German farmers and vinters, although the vineyards were soon replaced by citrus groves. 

German-Americans, whose ancestors immigrated alongside Irish-Americans right on time for the frontiers to open for settlement, number among the top three ethnicities for most rural districts, alongside Irish-Americans and English-Americans. Italians, East European Christians and Jews, and Greeks arriving around the 1890s missed their opportunity to take advantage of the homestead act, so they mostly settled in the larger cities. 

[Feel free to ignore this. I thought this was an interesting further breakdown of the European ancestry groups of rural America east of the Midwest. The German-American predominance in rural communities appears to halt once hitting Appalachia. In Kentucky's 1st District, English-Americans (95,889) outnumber German-Americans (69,030). Further east in Kentucky's 2nd District, the ratio rises to above two English-Americans (107,759) for every German-American (48,809). Further east in West Virginia's 1st District, within the bounds of America's original 13 states, we see German-Americans (84,681) again outnumbered by both English-Americans (142,824) and Irish-Americans (91,090). West Virginia's 2nd District, which is adjacent to Southwest Pennsylvania, has a plurality of German-Americans (154,652) outnumbering English-Americans (118,480) and Irish-Americans (123,287). Contrary to popular perception, the Scotch-Irish number only 15,067 and 12,822 in Districts 1 and 2 of West Virginia, respectively. In the far Southwest corner of Pennsylvania, Congressional District 14's German-Americans (179,027) massively outnumber English-Americans (73,661) and Irish-Americans (109,698). Even east of the Appalachian Mountains in PA's District 9, German-Americans hold an even more convincing plurality (209,396) over English-Americans (65,231) and Irish-Americans (92,200). However, just one district over in the significantly more urban District 8, German-Americans (113,212) are outnumbered by both Irish-Americans (136,548) and Italian-Americans (114,220).]

[Looking at rural, agrarian Vermont on the other side of the United States as a control, we see different numbers. Irish (119,423) and English (117,946) predominate Vermont with German (72,670) coming in third if French (53,628) and French-Canadian (39,718). The next most populous group in Vermont are Italians (51,200). New Hampshire tells a similar story, with Irish and Italian populations outpacing German populations. German-Americans find themselves without a plurality in most of Virginia's districts, North Carolina, and South Carolina, but still close to Irish and English population levels.]

From the sample states mentioned, rural America is mostly dominated by English, German, and Irish Americans. Although each group is considered white, a proposition which would make Benjamin Franklin spin in his grave albeit relieved of his concerns that the Germans would not learn the English language, I would argue that each carry with them historical distinctions within the context of American history. To clarify, English-Americans are the same stock as the Founding Fathers. While many Englishmen did immigrate to the United States in the 1800s, they did not need to assimilate to the same degree that German and Irish immigrants were expected to assimilate, so they don't necessarily share the same experience most immigrants had.  

II. The evolving situation

The conditions which led to the initial population of the American countryside have largely been undone. Roughly 40 percent of nonmetro counties reached peak-population in the 1950s before experiencing ongoing population decline. Small-scale agriculture continues to decline in profitability. Manufacturing, arguably more important to the rural economy than the urban economy, saw employment fall by nearly 30 percent between 2001 and 2015. Rural communities find themselves disinvested of schools for their dwindling youth demographic. Where rural communities are losing native-born population, minorities and immigrants have risen to the occasion to fill the gaps. In Juleberg, which is located in the Northwest corner of Colorado, one immigrant math teacher stepped in when no American math teacher would take the vacancy. In more communities than rural Colorado, schools have looked overseas to fill teaching vacancies. Where Americans are unwilling to move to work positions in rural locations, it counterintuitively turns out that immigrants will. In Depopulation, Deaths, Diversity, and Deprivation: The 4Ds of Rural Population Change, Daniel Lichter and Kenneth Johnson shed light on surprising population trends surrounding the simultaneous depopulation of rural communities and the immigration toward rural communities. While, according to the 2020 Census, 76 percent of the non-metropolitan population is white, "nearly two-thirds of all rural population growth was due to Hispanic population growth," not that the growth fully compensated for the total loss in population of nonmetro counties. However, interpreting the data another way, immigration to rural communities may be cause for hope. If most of the population loss is from old age deaths, and presumably most immigrants to rural areas are young, working-age adults, it stands to reason that there's a possibility that they may form families in these areas. And as noted in the PBS video on natural gas fracking attracting a diverse array of workers, people are less likely to move away when they have children.  

                                                        Credit: Daniel Lichter, Kenneth Johnson

Though working with far fewer grants and benefits than what German and Irish immigrants received, Hispano-American and Filipino immigrants are helping to revitalize America's old and new frontier in rural communities. 

III. Conclusion

The more things change, the more they don't. In the same way that the United States government, in part, relied upon German and Irish immigrants to settle the not-yet cultivated lands of the Midwest and beyond, the current United States government may learn lessons from the past. While a modern-day Homestead Act, in its exact prior iteration using federally held lands, is unlikely to succeed due to the ongoing difficulties presented to non-commercial small-scale agriculture, the expansion of internet and electrical infrastructure to rural communities may see a different type of artisanal, non-land dependent, economic growth.

The incompatibilities between the personality traits of lawyers and rural people

One of my uncles is a large, scary man. When he was younger, he regularly attended mixed martial arts events. On most occasions, he was approached by promoters and asked if he had ever considered becoming a fighter. As a young man seeking fortune, he instead set his eyes on what he was told was an extremely lucrative activity: a season of crab fishing.

This type of fishing can be a grueling endeavor. The crews who sign up for it usually expect to work long (regularly over 12 hours) days in freezing weather. With little privacy or connection to the world outside the boat, the weeks (sometimes months) they spend in the boat can really do a number on their mental health. My uncle thought himself perfectly equipped for this job. Alas, it was not the case. Before long, the loneliness and taxing nature of the job got to him. About 2 weeks in, he suffered from a panic attack. Forsaking his dreams of riches, he demanded to be done with the whole thing well before the fishing season ended. He got stuck with the bill for the helicopter lift off the boat.

The key thing my uncle failed to consider was his own personality. Despite his intimidating appearance, he is actually a very warm person who thrives on social interaction. He was not well suited for the life of an Alaskan crab fisherman. He now makes a comfortable living as a pest control technician here in sunny California. If you asked him, he would tell you that there is no amount of money that could have compelled him to stay in that boat for another second.

Several American legal scholars have brought up the issue of the lack of lawyers in rural areas. A common prescription to this issue is financial incentives for lawyers who commit to working in these areas for some time. Whenever such an idea comes up, I always think of my uncle, barely holding onto his sanity in a tiny boat on the Bering Sea.

The personality profile of lawyers has been the subject of some research. The research suffers from a lack of uniformity as to how personality is measured, a problem which permeates the field of psychometrics. The Big Five personality trait model divides personality into five factors (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism) each measured along a continuum.

No single scientific paper collects data and analyzes trends on all five of the Big Five personality traits of American lawyers. Such papers exist for legal professionals in Germany and Israel. The cultural consensus on the Big Five personality traits of lawyers seems to be that lawyers are higher than the average person in openness (creativity and willingness to entertain new ideas) and conscientiousness (diligence and thoroughness). On the other hand, it seems that most people think that lawyers are significantly lower than the average person on agreeableness (willingness to kindly cooperate with others). The research on extraversion and neuroticism (proneness to depression and irritability), indicates that lawyers are lower in extraversion and higher in neuroticism than the average person.

With some idea of the type of person who becomes a lawyer, we turn our eyes to rural populations. A study compares Big Five traits among urban, suburban and rural populations. The study establishes that rural people tend to be higher than their urban counterparts in extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. They are also lower than urbanites in conscientiousness and openness. As described here, lawyers and rural populations are almost mirror images in terms of personality. The only trait which they share is their higher than average neuroticism, which probably does not make for a winning combination.

The cited study qualifies each of these disparities as nonsignificant when one controls for socio-demographic characteristics. This means that rural people do not display the above characteristics because they live in rural areas. Rather, they display them because they are much more likely to be poor, old and less formally educated (“POL”) than urban people, and the aforementioned set of personality traits is highly correlated with a person being POL.

One might suspect that this personality contrast applies to rural populations when compared with any high-income or highly specialized professions, but the evidence suggests otherwise. In Personality and Medical Specialty Choice: A Literature Review and Integration, family care physicians are characterized as high in agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, and neuroticism, and only average or low in openness. At first glance, physicians appear to share far more personality traits with rural populations than lawyers, differing primarily in conscientiousness.

It has been proposed that the legal system might benefit from offering lawyers debt relief if they serve in a rural communities for a certain number of years, much like existing programs for physicians. While I cannot see how such a policy could be harmful, it could definitely face the personality profile of lawyers as compared with that of physicians and rural populations as a major hurdle.

This raises the question of what to do about it. Government-mandated personality changes are still unfeasible, and while money can do fearsome things to a person, it is not clear that it is adequate to overcome absolutely anything. It certainly could not keep my uncle in a lonely boat in Alaskan waters.

One idea is for law schools to admit classes with more varied personality profiles, including people more amenable to rural life. There is some evidence that law schools select for and exacerbate the personality traits characteristic of lawyers. However, rejecting applicants on the grounds of being “too diligent” or “too willing to engage with new ideas” would understandably raise other concerns.

Burning down the house: California’s fire insurance crisis

California residents have become accustomed to historically large wildfires occurring at an astonishing pace, with eight of the ten largest fires ever recorded in California occurring in the last 10 years. The increasing frequency and destructiveness of wildfires has strained fire insurance systems to a near breaking point, and rural communities are often the most impacted by both wildfires and increasing insurance costs.

Fire danger sign on scorched ground outside Klamath. Image source: National Interagency Fire Center

A primer on California’s FAIR Plan

California’s FAIR Plan, commonly referred to as the “insurer of last resort,” was created by the California Legislature in 1968 to act as a temporary safety net for homeowners who were unable to find home insurance from regular providers. Unlike a typical home insurance plan, the FAIR Plan only covers fire damage to structures, not household goods or liability. Contrary to public perception, the FAIR Plan is not a state funded insurer. The FAIR Plan is instead a state managed insurance pool comprised of all private insurers licensed to conduct business in California.

When FAIR Plan premiums fail to cover their exposure, the California Insurance Commissioner may levy assessments of up to a total of $1 billion per year against private insurers based on the market share of these insurers. Ostensibly, private insurers are not permitted to pass the costs of these assessments along to their ratepayers without approval from the Insurance Commissioner.

Trends in FAIR Plan usage

FAIR Plan usage has grown significantly in recent years. In 2009, only 7% of California ZIP codes had FAIR Plan policies accounting for more than 10% of policies in that ZIP code. By 2022, this was true of 22% of California ZIP codes. FAIR Plan usage tends to be much higher in rural areas, as demonstrated by the below map, published by Avery Bick and Nam Nguyen in this post.



To select a few extreme examples from this map, one ZIP code mostly located in Placer County where the largest community, Foresthill, has a population of 1692, has a FAIR Plan rate of 69.625%. Another ZIP code in Orange county has a FAIR Plan rate of 79.67%, and their largest community, Silverado, has a population of only 932.

While the FAIR Plan was not intended to insure such a large proportion of California’s residents, the reason why that trend is unfolding is quite clear–private insurers are fleeing the state as fast as they can. State Farm (still the largest insurer in California) and Allstate stopped writing new homeowner fire policies in 2022. A series of other large insurers left the state in the following years, with Nationwide, Farmers, Travelers, Tokio, and American National all ceasing to write new policies from 2023-2025.

As FAIR Plan usage has expanded, premiums for FAIR Plan policies have also increased significantly, with some consumers seeing rate increases (rarely) as high as 300% in a single year. While the average FAIR Plan policy costs around $3,200 per year, it is common for policies to cost more than $10,000 per year in high fire risk areas.

Why has rural California been hit so hard by the insurance crisis?

The reason that this crisis has hit rural California particularly hard is relatively intuitive. As phrased by Prof. Minnich of UC Riverside, “People want to live with nature, but they don’t recognize that nature is explosively flammable.”

Housing in wildlife urban interface (WUI) areas is much more prone to fire damage. Defined commonly as an area where urban development mingles with undeveloped wildland vegetation, WUI overlaps significantly with areas typically considered rural, but may also include development on the outskirts of urban centers.

Residential development in WUI is the fastest growing land use type in the United States, with the number of houses in WUI increasing by 46% from 1990 to 2020. California has seen the greatest increase of houses in WUI, with one third of California households in WUI as of 2020. Note the striking resemblance that the below map of change in WUI in California, published by Prof. Miriam Greenberg in this article, bears to the above map of FAIR Plan coverage rates.



The increasing number of houses in high fire risk areas coupled with more frequent and destructive fires have proved a hurdle that insurers are often unable to clear without substantial premium increases.

The future of the FAIR Plan

Increased reliance on the FAIR Plan, along with massive exposure from the Palisades and Eaton fires has led Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara to levy the first assessment against FAIR Plan member companies since 1994. The assessment is for the full $1 billion allowed. 

Additionally, Commissioner Lara mandated the use of wildlife catastrophe models in FAIR Plan's most recent rate increase application. The rate increase currently proposed would average a 35.8% increase, with about half of policyholders seeing an increase between 40% and 50%.

In addition to these efforts by the Department of Insurance, a variety of legislative measures have been passed or proposed to address California's insurance crisis. One of the most notable among these is Assemblymember Lisa Calderon's AB 1680, which seeks to overhaul the FAIR Plan in a number of ways, perhaps most significantly by extending FAIR Plan coverage to water damage, personal injury liability, and other coverages typical of standard home insurance policies. 

Conclusions

These and other measures taken by California in response to the Palisades and Eaton fire make clear that policymakers know action needs to be taken, but there is little doubt that they are inadequate. While efforts to mitigate the costs of FAIR Plan policyholders are important, California's insurance crisis is inherent to our homebuilding choices and lack of adequate wildfire hardening. As previous blog posts have noted, wildfire prevention efforts in rural areas of California are severely underfunded. Without serious efforts to mitigate wildfire risk, California is unlikely to halt the exodus of private insurers. 

When a broken tractor becomes a legal issue, the right to repair is critical

For farmers, the ability to repair equipment quickly is more than just convenient; it's essential for making a living. Yet, as farm equipment has become more technologically advanced, the legal and contractual rules governing the right to repair ("RTR") have changed, restricting when, how, and by whom repairs can be done. What was once a mechanical issue has increasingly become a legal matter. 

Photo Credit (2026): John Deere Utility Tractor

RTR is the principle that owners should be able to repair products they lawfully purchase or choose who repairs them, without being forced to use the manufacturer's authorized services. This seems straightforward; a concept that would benefit both rural and urban consumers by preventing a manufacturer's monopoly on the repair market. However, in a 2022 paper on RTR legislation, researcher and Assistant Professor Luyi Yang cautioned that: 

[RTR] legislation can potentially lead to a lose-lose-lose outcome that compromises manufacturer profit, reduces consumer surplus, and increases the environmental impact despite repair being made easier and more affordable. 

Yang's argument complicates the idea that expanding repair rights automatically helps consumers. For rural communities, this raises the question: even if broader RTR legislation changes markets, who is paying the price for limited RTR access right now, and who benefits from it?

These market dynamics are not overlooked by the federal government. In its 2021 report, Nixing the Fix, the Federal Trade Commission ("FTC") addressed concerns about RTR in the auto industry. While acknowledging the manufacturers' justifications, the FTC noted that many restrictions lacked empirical support. The report concluded:

Although manufacturers have offered numerous explanations for their repair restrictions, the majority are not supported by the record...[R]epair restrictions have made it difficult for consumers to exercise [the RTR].

The FTC's stance indicates a willingness to view RTR access through the lens of fair competition, rather than through contractual obligations or restraints. 

While much of the early debate over RTR focused on consumer electronics and automobiles, similar conflicts have occurred in rural America. A 2023 blog post explains that farm equipment owners have long resisted companies like John Deere, seeking the ability to repair their own machines instead of relying solely on manufacturer-controlled repair networks. 

This conflict mirrors rural legal battles over water access, as discussed in a 2026 blog post, where formal legal rights exist on paper but are limited in practice by geography and concentrated market power. In both contexts, laws interact with rural conditions in ways that can weaken rural economies. 

Steelhead Creek - Sacramento, CA (2024)

In 2025, the FTC sued John Deere over its repair practices. Plaintiffs alleged that the company's RTR restrictions created unfair barriers to competition by limiting access to diagnostic software and tools. FTC Chair Lina Khan stated that:

Illegal repair restrictions can be devastating for farmers, who rely on affordable and timely repairs to harvest their crops and earn their income... The FTC's action... seeks to ensure that farmers across America are free to repair their own equipment or use repair shops of their choice. 

Here, the law is seen not just as a neutral enforcer of contracts, but as a way to shift bargaining power between manufacturers and farmers. For the latest update on the FTC's suit against John Deere, click HERE.

Farm Action, a farmer-led advocacy group, expressed views similar to Khan, stating that manufacturers have taken away farmers' meaningful repair autonomy by withholding diagnostic software, stating:

By withholding the software to diagnose and repair, manufacturers force farmers to go to the nearest authorized dealership, which might be hundreds of miles away. 

Efforts to improve RTR access through state legislation have produced uneven results. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 33 states and Puerto Rico considered RTR legislation during the 2023 legislative session. As of today, Colorado is the only state to have enacted legislation extending RTR protections to agricultural equipment, setting an example for other states considering similar measures. 

The legal frameworks governing RTR access have obvious impacts on rural livelihoods. As the RTR movement advances, the ongoing question is whether legal systems will recognize RTR access as essential to rural economic independence or continue to frame it as an optional feature within privately controlled equipment markets. 

Who’s fighting whom? Rural-urban resource competition as misdirection

When I first read this article on the rural lawscape, my gut reaction was defensive. I learned that rural areas have fewer courts, longer police response times, and less access to legal services than urban areas. The obvious solution would be to invest more money in these areas so that they have real access to justice. But then came my instinctive urban response: who is going to fund this? The taxes from urban spaces? Why should cities subsidize rural services?

I sat with that reaction for a while. It felt spiteful, and after some time, I realized it was the wrong question.

The zero-sum framing

That article, “The Rural Lawscape: Space Tames Law Tames Space,” talks about the “mutual constitutivity” of law and rural space. Rural areas have less law because their material characteristics (low population density, distance, sparse built environment) make legal infrastructure expensive to maintain. That sparse legal presence then shapes rural culture, fostering self-reliance and skepticism toward the state.

Photo Credit: Jay Walljasper (2019)

The policy implication seems obvious: if rural residents want more legal infrastructure, they need more funding. And state funding is finite, and largely comes from the taxes of wage-earners in the city. So rural gains mean urban losses, right?

This framing positions rural and urban communities as competitors. It shows up in fights over federal appropriations, in resentment about which communities receive disaster relief, and in arguments about whether “real America” deserves more than coastal cities.

Prior posts on this blog have explored related dynamics. One post on California redistricting quoted a rural rice and walnut farmer: “People in the cities don’t have a clue what it takes to survive out here. I don’t think people that were born and raised in the cities can represent us to the same extent.” This frames the issue as the big-city bureaucrats thinking they know better than the rural folk with their actual lived experiences.

Another post on the Secure Rural Schools Act documented how a rural school superintendent made fourteen trips to Washington over three years to secure funding that Congress acknowledged had bipartisan support but still allowed to lapse. The funding was described as “budget dust” relative to federal spending. If rural needs are so uncontroversial and so cheap, why did it take three years and fourteen flights?

The actual budget

To help me put all this in perspective, I considered the scale of American federal spending. The FY2025 defense budget request was $849.8 billion. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had access to $28.7 billion in 2025. Customs and Border Protection’s budget was more than $19 billion for that year.

Meanwhile, the Legal Services Corporation asked for only $1.797 billion in 2025, while facing the threat of a proposed 46% budget cut. The LSC provides federal funding for civil legal aid to low-income Americans in both rural and urban areas.

Photo Credit: Mina Corpuz (2026)

The access-to-justice gap that the rural lawscape article documents is not expensive to address relative to other federal priorities. The entire LSC budget is less than 0.2% of defense spending. Meaningful investment in rural legal infrastructure, or urban legal infrastructure, would cost a rounding error on military appropriations.

This pattern holds across federal spending. In FY2023, 62% of the federal discretionary budget went to militarized programs: war, weapons, law enforcement, incarceration, detention, and deportation. Less than $2 out of every $5 in federal discretionary spending went to education, housing, childcare, disaster relief, environmental protection, or scientific research. Since 2001, the federal government has added $2 to the discretionary budget for militarism for every $1 added to invest in communities.

Meanwhile, wealth inequality has reached historic levels. In 1963, the wealthiest families had 36 times the wealth of families in the middle. By 2022, they had 71 times the wealth. The incomes of rural men have stagnated for 50 years, while the top 1% saw their incomes increase by 229% between 1979 and 2019. Rural and urban working people have both lost ground to the same forces.

The federal government has the money to fund rural communities. It simply chooses to fund violence in place of investment. The scarcity that pits rural against urban is not a fact of nature. It is a policy choice.

The shared problem

Both rural and urban poor face access-to-justice gaps. Rural residents drive hours to reach a courthouse. Urban residents wait months for overburdened public defenders. The material conditions differ, but the underlying problem is the same: inadequate funding for legal infrastructure serving ordinary people. There is some federal recognition of the specific problems that rural Americans face. The Violence Against Women Act identifies domestic violence in rural areas as a focus for discretionary spending. The Crime Control Act sets aside funds specifically for rural drug enforcement.

But legislative recognition of rural disadvantage does not guarantee meaningful investment. A post on the rural health fund on this blog noted that the $50 billion rural health fund in the recent reconciliation bill came alongside $137 billion in projected Medicaid cuts to rural areas over ten years. The gesture toward rural needs accompanied a policy that undermines them.

The political function of the divide

When rural and urban residents see each other as competitors for limited resources, they do not build coalitions around shared interests in healthcare, legal access, housing, or economic security. The “why should my taxes go there” instinct, which I initially felt, plays into a framework where ordinary people fight over crumbs, instead of coming together to improve their material conditions.

Photo Credit: Jacob Migdall (2015)

A post challenging the Ezra Klein Show’s framing of rural-urban tension pointed out that rural voters alone lack the numbers to determine national elections. Blaming a “rural coalition” for federal policy obscures the urban voters who supported the same candidates and the structural factors that shape resource allocation. The framing is, as the post puts it, “inflammatory and therefore unhelpful. Of course, it is also inaccurate.”

Rural-urban resentment prevents coalition-building. When a rancher in Modoc County and an unhoused person in Sacramento see each other as competitors rather than people with shared interests in functional public services, neither builds power.

What is the baseline?

I believe everyone in the United States should have access to a viable, just legal system regardless of where they live. That belief does not require me to think rural and urban interests are identical. It requires me to think they are not fundamentally opposed.

The money exists. The obstacle is political priority. Rural-urban competition is a distraction from the actual allocation choices being made.