Bad Bunny vs. Turning Point USA: a reflection of the American divide

Leading up to the Super Bowl, there were many headlines regarding Bad Bunny and what his performance would entail. I expected Bad Bunny to use this platform to make a statement, similar to how Kendrick Lamar did last year, as a response to this tense political climate.

A week prior to the big event, Turning Point USA announced their own version of a rival halftime show. When I heard of this, I was disgusted. It felt like a direct attack to heighten the nation’s divide. Turning Point has been sowing seeds of political division for years, and now it would be on full display, taking the focus away from America’s pastime. Meanwhile, TPUSA stays in the headlines for what might be an even more damaging initiative as they plan to infiltrate high schools in Nebraska, sowing similar seeds of political division in our nation’s youth.  

Bad Bunny holding the original Puerto Rican flag during his Superbowl halftime performance

Photo Credit: NPR; Kevin Sabitus/Getty Images (2026)

On Sunday February 8, 2026, NFL hosted the first ever full Spanish halftime show. Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime performance was more than just a regular halftime show. Benito’s message was clear: love is more powerful than hate. Bringing the Puerto Rican and Latinx culture into the most watched American sporting event was a beautiful reminder that America is more than just whiteness, and that culture is to be celebrated. The trailer that Apple Music released prior to Bad Bunny’s performance was a great reminder that his music is for everyone. The trailer was a video of Bad Bunny switching dance partners, with every new partner being a person of a different race, occupation, culture, again emphasizing that anyone can enjoy his music. The Americas (North, Central, and South) are a combination of many Latin cultures, and the United States, specifically, is the melting pot of many cultures. Bad Bunny ended his performance with a beautiful display of every single flag that makes up the Americas. Meanwhile, Bad Bunny lists them off saying, “We are America!”

USA Today reported that Bad Bunny’s halftime show had an average viewership of 128.2 million viewers (making it the 3rd most viewed halftime show), with peak viewership of 137.8 million viewers. The NFL reported that 55% of their social engagement with Bad Bunny’s performance was from the international market. 

While people from all over the world were excited for this performance, there was backlash over NFL's choice in musician. Even President Trump had some negative comments to make about the halftime performers. So, in opposition to "Benito Bowl", Turning Point USA decided to announce that they would stream their own halftime show featuring Kid Rock, a problematic MAGA rock-n-roll artist. Their competing halftime show was titled the “All-American Halftime Show,” which ended up having about 6.1 million viewers according to the NY Times. There is no current data on exactly who and where people tuned in from for the TPUSA halftime show. I would assume, however, that the viewers were mostly white Americans because of the organization's demographic. One person who was asked which halftime show they were going to watch, answered Kid Rock because “I don't understand Spanish.” He added, Bad Bunny “isn’t what this country is about.”  I saw other interviews where people offered other justifications for watching Kid Rock. Some said they grew up listening to Kid Rock, or that they know more of his songs over Bad Bunny’s. I can’t help but wonder, though, if they were motivated by racism. 

Between the two halftime shows, Bad Bunny’s numbers blew Kid Rock’s out of the park. But it raises the question: Is this how American society will continue? Will this persist a divide forever? A Turning Point USA spokesperson told Fox News they plan to have another “All-American” halftime show in 2027 after their “massive” success this year. Will TPUSA’s “All-American” rhetoric work to keep Americans divided by race? 

TPUSA Propaganda to Youth and Rural Areas of the U.S.

Nebraska Governor Pillen hosts students for TPUSA "Club America" high school partnership 

Photo Credit: Governor Jim Pillen (2026) 

On February 10, 2026 Governor Jim Pillen of Nebraska announced a partnership with Turning Point USA to bring a Club America chapter to every Nebraska high school. The official website of the Nebraska Governor features a press release about the event.

Pillen hosted an event at his house to make the announcement, which involved local high school students, college students, the TPUSA director, the Chapter President at Creighton University, and the attorney generals. Governor Pillen is a vocal supporter of Charlie Kirk, and during the event he said: 

Through this partnership, we get one step closer to Charlie’s vision of seeing Club America in every high school in the nation.

Currently, there are 22 high school chapters in Nebraska. Club America has more than 3,200 chapters nationwide, which is 13% of all high schools in America. Students who attended this event ranged all the way from Ogallala to Lincoln, Nebraska. 

The chapter president of Creighton University, Emma Smith, spoke at the event about her experience with TPUSA. She mentioned that Turning Point does not tell her exactly what to think, but more so challenges her way of thinking and being confident in her beliefs.

Politics used to be something I avoided entirely, now it’s a part of my everyday life, not because I have to, but because I want to. Because I care deeply about the direction of this country and I believe my generation has a responsibility to protect what is right, rational and worth preserving.

When I read this quote, I initially thought, wow what a great thing that young people are caring about politics and wanting to get involved. Usually teens and college students are not as engaged with the news or politics, but as you get older you tend to get more involved; so it’s great seeing that people are more engaged at a younger age. But then I remembered all the horrible things that TPUSA and Charlie Kirk stand for.  

TPUSA is known for their far-right political rhetoric and Christian nationalism, advertising these ideals to students across college campuses throughout the U.S. and even at some events abroad. Members of TPUSA have expressed racist, homophobic, and transphobic speech while on college campuses. Furthermore, TPUSA provided charter buses to students to attend the January 6th Capitol riot. The founder of TPUSA, Charlie Kirk, has spread across multiple platforms his anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, and misogynistic views. He was very loyal to Trump and his MAGA agenda. 

My issue with TPUSA having chapters across Nebraska high schools and spreading their message to students is that they are normalizing hate speech as a political view and brainwashing these young Americans to believe that white nationalism and Christian nationalism are okay. If high school students are surrounded by people who have these hateful beliefs, those beliefs are likely to be influential. And if the majority of high schoolers start joining TPUSA Club America, students who disagree with TPUSA’s message may not be vocal about it. High school is a very weird time socially for kids; being a teenager, navigating the high school social scene can be complicated. And when a majority of kids follow a certain idea or group, it is likely that many will follow suit. Also, some teenagers wouldn’t know any better, so they would think this is what is “normal.” Teens and young adults are very easily influenced by their environment, and exposure to ideas at this age may greatly influence adult beliefs. 

My Final Thoughts on the Super Bowl and TPUSA Collaborations

For me, the weirdest part of people’s annoyance is that they “don’t understand Spanish” and thus cannot enjoy Bad Bunny’s music and performance. This felt like a weird microaggression that was hiding their internal racism, because – what do you mean you can’t enjoy the music? Personally, I listen to Bad Bunny all the time and I haven’t understood Spanish since learning it for my language course in high school. I also listen to K-pop artists, Ayra Starr, Kali Uchis, and many other global artists – yet I don’t speak a lick of Korean, or Nigerian, or any of those other languages! Music can be enjoyable even when you do not understand the direct translation of what the artists are saying. 

Propaganda is a very effective tool in influencing people, especially young people. Media usage to promote certain political beliefs is more popular than ever because of social media. To see political content, people used to have to do research or watch the news or go out of their way to know what was happening. But now with social media, access to information is so readily available. Whether you choose to see certain “takes,” they may can pop up on your feed anyway driven by the prevailing algorithm. Bits of the news are even more accessible on social media since most young people do not actually go watch cable TV anymore. And if it is not on your feed, it can be sent to you easily as well. My worries of TPUSA being the main influence of the younger Republican generation is that those people will normalize hateful speech and reverse the progress that has been made in America (regarding pro-choice, LGBT+ rights, pro-immigration). 

Bad Bunny's message from his Super Bowl performance was needed given the current political climate of the United States. However, Turning Point USA's collaboration with Nebraska makes me worried for the future of the next generation's view on politics and the American divide.

Taxation by theft: policing for profit in rural America

(c) Lisa Pruitt (2024)

As you cross the California-Nevada state line, you slow to exactly the speed limit from the California-15mph-above. Or at least I would encourage you to. Growing up near the state line, you get warned before nearly every trip east of the hazards of driving with a California plate. Expect to be pulled over, expect a ticket for a violation that may normally be a warning, and try to not look like a big-city liberal. 

While somewhat of a lighthearted joke among Californians, concerns about getting pulled over for going 5mph over the speed limit in rural Nevada reflect a real set of perverse incentives facing rural law enforcement. Often facing severe budget constraints, rural law enforcement may choose to act as a “reverse Robin Hood,” funding their agencies with assets seized from citizens. While excessive speeding tickets are perhaps the most prominent method of doing so, another source of funding comes from the process of civil asset forfeiture.

Excessive ticketing in rural America

As the tax base that generally supports law enforcement in rural areas has declined, small towns have increasingly come to view traffic tickets as an important revenue stream. To pick an extreme example, Georgetown, LA, a town with fewer than 500 residents, derived 92% of their income from traffic tickets. Georgetown is just one of many small towns that have made national headlines for their intensive ticket-writing efforts. 

A 2019 study by Governing identified a concentration of communities where fines exceeded 10% of general fund revenue, largely in rural parts of the South. In contrast, fines and forfeitures accounted for just 2% of general revenues among the 50 biggest U.S. cities. The study notes that high fine revenue is common in high-poverty rural areas throughout the country, especially in states with low property tax rates. See the below map published as part of their study for reference:

Credit: Governing.com (2019)

While residents of these areas suffer from higher fines, models indicate that police officers are more likely to issue tickets to drivers who are not from their community, especially when the driver would need to travel a long way from their residence to contest the citation. 

Another factor that may affect ticketing is state-to-state variation in the amount of fine revenue that a locality can keep, because many states impose a cap on the proportion of a municipal budget that may be derived from fines or mandating that such funds be appropriated to public schools.

An introduction to civil asset forfeiture 

In 2016, in Muskogee, Oklahoma, the tour manager for a touring Burmese Christian musical act, Eh Wah, had $53,000 cash that they had raised for charity seized during a routine traffic stop. Eh Wah was interrogated for hours and then released without being charged with a crime, and also without his $53,000. By utilizing civil asset forfeiture, the Muskogee County Sheriff needed no arrest, just an entry noting that the Sheriff had taken “[p]ossession of drug proceeds.”

Civil asset forfeiture grants law enforcement officers the ability to seize property when they believe that property to be used in or derived from unlawful activity. Forfeiture proceedings are actions against an item of property itself, not an individual, leading to amusing casenames like the seminal US v. Forty-three Gallons of Whiskey, or the more recent US v. Approximately 64,695 Pounds of Shark Fins.

Civil asset forfeiture proceedings starkly contrast with criminal proceedings. Notably, the owner of the seized property bears the burden of proving that their property was not used in or derived from unlawful activity. There is no right to an attorney unless a primary residence is being seized, and it is difficult to recover attorneys’ fees. Perhaps most shockingly, the innocence of the owner of property may not be a defense to an action against a seized item when it was used in the commission of a crime. This may apply to vehicles or real property used in the commission of a crime.

Though asset forfeiture has been used in admiralty law for most of U.S. history, it only became frequently used on land in the 1980s. In 1984, Congress passed the Comprehensive Crime Control Act (CCCA), which expanded the circumstances in which agencies could seize property and allowed local law enforcement agencies to cede credit for a seizure to a federal agency in a process known as an “adoptive seizure.” 

Before the CCCA was passed, many states had caps or limitations on seizure similar to those described earlier related to traffic fines. Adoptive seizures allow federal agencies to receive the proceeds of a seizure and then return up to 80% of those proceeds to the local agency through equitable sharing agreements, thus allowing local law enforcement to effectively bypass state limitations on retaining seized assets.

The circumstances under which adoptive seizure may be used were limited by then-Attorney General Eric Holder, but these limitations were rolled back under Jeff Sessions, Trump's first AG. Merrick Garland did not attempt to reinstate these reforms during his tenure as AG and in fact called for the expansion of forfeiture regarding cryptocurrency. This should be somewhat unsurprising as, then Senator, Joe Biden introduced the forfeiture provisions of the CCCA in 1983 and persuaded Democrats to support them. Trump has continued his support of civil asset forfeiture in his current term, advocating for the seizure of private drones monitoring ICE or Border Patrol activity. 

Many states have reformed their forfeiture procedures recently, with 17 states requiring that the government bear the burden of proof; 16 requiring criminal conviction for forfeiture; and 4 abolishing civil forfeiture entirely. A series of decisions in states where equitable sharing agreements are explicitly prohibited by statute are a promising sign of progress on the issue of state law circumvention, but it is worth noting that the Supreme Court has not yet weighed in on these statutes. 

Forfeiture in rural America

The interaction between civil asset forfeiture and rural America is complex and somewhat obfuscated by lack of focus on rural areas in some scholarship, and the lack of governmental transparency surrounding forfeiture. Gross forfeiture is largest in urban areas, and it disproportionately affects racial minorities. 

While the victims of asset forfeiture are often urban, rural police departments appear more dependent on forfeiture funds than urban ones. Studies of data from the Texas AG’s office indicate higher per capita forfeiture proceeds in rural areas. Additionally, forfeiture is focused near active highways. While data analysis on the subject is scarce, some scholars believe that part of this dynamic is driven by the tendency of rural police departments to seize the property of people travelling by highway through the area, not locals. 

Welcome to Tenaha Credit: Texasescapes.com (2001)

One rural community on the Texas-Louisiana border, Tenaha, provides a striking example of this dynamic. The town sits on a heavily traveled highway between Houston and Louisiana and from 2006 to 2008 the town of roughly 1000 collected over $3 million in assets from motorists through asset forfeiture. David Guillory, an attorney who filed a federal lawsuit related to these seizures noted that of the 40 motorists he managed to contact, all but one was black. 

How to get away from policing for profit

Forfeiture and traffic fine abuse are symptoms of the same dual influences, declining tax bases and a history of racist policing. We have solutions available for the first issue, but they seem to often be impeded by politics influenced by the second. 

Allowing departments to retain all revenue from their seizures is one of the most clearly perverse incentives that I can imagine; yet states like Florida and Texas maintain such practices and seem unlikely to change them. Federal policy has deteriorated under Republicans in particular, but the Democrats have hardly been models of reform. While there is some pushback from conservatives on asset forfeiture, this sentiment seems inconsequential in light of Trump’s full throated support for the policy. 

Similarly, measures to cap or redirect traffic fine revenue are extremely effective at curbing abusive ticketing, but they are simply unpalatable to many conservative politicians. There is a strong correlation between low property taxes and high traffic citation revenue, and some politicians are quite happy to ticket out of state drivers rather than tax local homeowners.

Policing for profit is a problem that is entirely solvable. We simply need the political appetite. 

Gun violence is also a rural issue

Gun-related injuries caused 46,728 deaths in the United States in 2023, underscoring the scale and urgency of firearm violence nationwide. The American Public Health Association, has declared gun violence a major public health issue, emphasizing the consequences of gun violence beyond crime statistics. Firearm deaths include homicides, suicides, accidental shootings, and law enforcement related deaths, each not only causing death but also a ripple effect of trauma through communities. Beyond gun related death, the impact of being exposed to gun violence has also led to an increase in behavioral health outcomes for American youth, including increased likelihood of depression, PTSD, anxiety, and poor academic performance.

 Credit: Alan Cleaver, 2009

Changes in presidential administrations have led to shifts in federal approaches to gun violence prevention. During his second administration, Trump revoked multiple initiatives related to gun safety, including the School Safety Committee and the former Surgeon General’s advisory that identified gun violence as a public health crisis. These actions signal a move away from framing gun violence as a matter that requires public health interventions. Instead, gun violence is often framed as an urban crime problem concentrated in large cities. This framing is not limited to a single administration. In fact violence involving firearms has long been portrayed as a uniquely “big city” problem. This narrative tends to frame urban areas, particularly cities with Democratic leadership, as chaotic and in need of law enforcement or federal intervention, such as the deployment of the national guard by Trump.

However, gun violence is not just a problem for large American cities. In September 2025, the Center for American Progress released findings showing that rural counties have higher overall rates of firearm mortality and gun homicides when compared to small, medium, and large metropolitan counties. Using the National Center for Health Statistics Classification Scheme for Counties to define rurality, the report found 16.6 firearm deaths per 100,000 residents in rural counties, compared to 11.5 deaths per 100,000 residents in large metropolitan counties. This gap is largely accounted for by the high rate of gun suicides in rural counties. Gun-related suicides accounted for nearly six in ten gun deaths in 2023 and nine of the top ten counties by gun suicide rate were rural.

Rural and urban areas are often pitted against one another in political discourse, and the gun violence debate is no exception. Guns are typically more integrated into daily life in rural areas, where they are used for hunting or personal protection, and firearm ownership rates are generally higher. Even so, the statistics of firearm mortality in rural counties is striking. Shaped by media coverage and political rhetoric, many Americans may have internalized the idea that gun violence is concentrated in large cities.

Importantly, many counties with higher rates of gun related death are located in states with comparatively weaker gun laws. Guns hold a great cultural significance to many rural communities and rural traditions should not be vilified in the process of treating this public health issue. However, this crisis cannot be ignored for much longer and policymakers and communities alike need to work together to find the middle ground between effective gun regulations that preserve rural culture and combat real violence.

The Banshees of Inisherin: Friendship and the village

Irishmore, Ireland

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons (2005)

The Banshees of Inisherin is a dark comedy film that came out in 2022. It is set in the 1920s and was written and directed by Martin McDonagh. The movie centers around two longtime friends, Colm, and Pádraic, living on a fictional remote island called Inisherin off the west coast of Ireland. These two friends used to spend their days in the pub, drinking the day away, until Colm decides to abruptly end the friendship.  Colm explains that Pádraic is just too “dull” for him and that he has no desire to waste more time hearing him talk. Colm is a composer and is motivated to leave a legacy through music. When Pádraic refuses to accept the termination of their friendship, Colm escalates the conflict by threatening to cut off one of his own fingers every time Pádraic talks to him. 

This film has a lot to say about the nature of friendship in remote areas. After Colm cuts off his first finger and throws it at their door, Pádraic’s sister is convinced it is time to leave the village and move to the big city. She tries to convince Pádraic to join her, but he remains committed to the village.  

This raises the question: could a feud escalate like this in a big city? I doubt it. The extent to which the two friends are entangled in one another’s lives would be highly unlikely in a big city.  In this village, there is just one pub, only a handful of roads, and Colm and Pádraic continue bumping into one another. 

Despite the conflict, neither is willing to give up their village life.  Pádraic loves his donkey and his daily rituals. The social fabric of Inisherin gives him a sense of rootedness. Is it because he is dull that he has no ambition beyond the remote island? This is a central tension in the film. On the one hand, Pádraic does not crave legacy. Rather, he enjoys modest pleasures: arriving at the pub at 2 p.m., taking care of his donkey, chatting about nothing, really. This contentment reflects his orientation, not his intellect. He values kindness and kinship. 

Colm, by contrast, equates ambition with depth. His prioritization of ambition may reflect a kind of urban-centric orientation. A post from 2014 demonstrates popular culture contributes to simplified or stereotyped portrayals of rural life.  Those tropes exist in Banshees, but by complicating them, the film offers a more layered representation of rural life. 

Why can’t the ambitious composer leave the island? Colm craves the quiet of village life, so he can focus on his composing, but he is unwilling to accept that village life requires him to tolerate the villagers. Would he actually be happier in the big city? In Dublin for example, what he would gain in anonymity, he would certainly lose in other ways. Yes, he wouldn’t have to put up with Pádraic, but he would have to deal with consequences of city life like noise and chaos. Colm’s anxiety about legacy would not disappear in the city; it would likely intensify.  The competition and indifference of urban life could make fear of insignificance more apparent to Colm. In a place crowded with other musicians and artists, he may be forced to confront how ordinary he might be. By the end of the film the irony is apparent. The ambitious composer, Colm, has self-mutilated. His ambition does not make him morally superior to Pádraic.   

The film also invites us to consider whether there is an obligation to remain friends with people we can’t stand. Most people are comfortable with the idea that individuals have a right to decide not to be someone’s friend.  In a big city, Colm could more easily exercise this right. On a remote island, less so. Island life necessarily conflicts with the individual rights urban dwellers take for granted. Individuals cannot freely choose their associates in a place this small and remote.  In a rural context, residents must coexist, even if that means tolerating an unwanted interaction from time to time. This demonstrates that individualism and notions of free will are often constrained in practice by forces like geography. 

The central tragedy for Pádraic is his realization that the social order is collapsing. When his fellow villagers don’t believe in the community, he can no longer experience the sense of belonging he craves. Inisherin represents the type of rural environment that is stuck between two worlds. It is unable to deliver the sense of community that Pádraic relies on, but it also cannot deliver the sense of individuality that Colm seeks to assert. The tension between community and autonomy is thus at the heart of the film’s tragedy. 

The rural other in American horror films

Horror films reflect societal fears, often in a very literal sense. Rosemary's Baby (1968) deals with contemporary societal fears of a loss of bodily autonomy and John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) reflects the "eerie discomfort" of suburban life. Some of the most strikingly violent of these societal fears seem to manifest in the conflict between rural and urban.

An earlier post on this blog identifies the source of this horror as "the countryside’s lack of institutional and technological development mak(ing) for a terrifying landscape." The author argues that rural horror originates from this fear of rural landscapes. While the isolation of rural spaces certainly contributes to their use in these movies, the source of the horror in the majority of these films is the portrayal of rural people as monstrous others. 

The most famous example of this phenomenon is Tobe Hooper's underground slasher The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). The film follows a group of Austin hippies who get massacred on a road trip through the countryside after encountering the Sawyers, a monstrous family of cannibals (though notably only one actually gets killed with a chainsaw). It illustrates the archetype of "backwoods horror" where urban people encounter rural spaces as a horrific underworld filled with backwards cannibalistic murderers. 

The Sawyers' backstory has echoes of modern discussions of rural decline. They find themselves in their current condition of poverty and decay because their family slaughterhouse was shuttered. The Sawyers kill their victims with these slaughterhouse implements, using meat hooks and placing one of them in a large chest freezer typically used for recently slaughtered animal meat. Their association with slaughterhouses indicates that the film perceives the inherent violence of that rural industry as a corrupting force, and with the slaughterhouse gone, those violent tendencies are now turned towards wayward urbanites. 

The Sawyers and other backwoods murderers also represent an antithesis of modernity in a way that is meant to horrify the (primarily urban or suburban) audience. In The Rural Gothic in American Culture (2013), Bernice Murphy describes the chaotic clutter of the Sawyers home as an example of how they: 

like nothing better than to hoard junk that will then be strategically placed around their home in order to create an atmosphere of maximum creepiness…This focus upon the pack-rat sensibilities of the backwoods aggressor emphasizes the fact that mainstream American culture appears to find something inherently suspicious about the self-sufficiency of those who make their own belongings rather than buy mass-produced products in a store like ‘normal’ folks. The ‘make do and mend’ philosophy of those who recycle or salvage what others would throw out, though seen as admirable in narratives which emphasize ‘positive rurality’ (such as The Hunger Games trilogy and Walden) are here further markers of deviants.

The Domain, Round Rock, Texas, where parts of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" were filmed.  Image Source: creativecommons.org  

The Sawyers are so monstrous as to appear almost inhuman, with heavy makeup and elaborate costumes otherizing them from the rest of the cast. This characterization does not reflect rural Texans in any real sense. 

In contrast, John Boorman's Deliverance (1972) at least treats its Appalachian villains as recognizably human. One of the most famous scenes in the film even involves a kind of cultural exchange, with one of the city dwellers engaging a local in a banjo contest.

 Still, as a Guardian 50 year retrospective on the film highlights, Boorman portrays the rural subjects as "ghoulish caricatures" who arbitrarily commit heinous acts of physical and sexual violence. The film treats them as part of the wild and untamed natural landscape. The urban dwellers, intending to conquer the wild Chattooga River via canoe, find themselves in over their heads because they fail to recognize the savagery of the area's rural occupants as a part of the landscape they intend to conquer. 

The Chattooga River, where Deliverance (1972) takes place. Source:  creativecommons.org

Both films tap into the urban/suburban audience's fear of rural spaces and people. Tobe Hooper emphasizes an inherent violence in rural industry redirected due to economic misfortune. Boorman portrays his rural subjects as wild and untamed as the Appalachian mountains they inhabit. And both films associate the divide between rural and urban with viscerally portrayed acts of violence. That they were both so financially successful and culturally significant speaks to widespread perceptions of rural spaces as fundamentally apart from polite society. 

The importance of pharmacies in rural areas

Pictured is Newfane Pharmacy, a rural pharmacy in Newfane, New York my family owns

Newfane has a population of roughly 3,400

When discussing access to healthcare in rural communities, the focus often centers on hospitals and physicians’ offices but rarely on pharmacies. Yet pharmacies are critical healthcare access points: they provide not only prescription and over-the-counter medications, but also direct access to highly trained healthcare professionals. Pharmacists counsel patients on medications, diagnoses, and general health concerns while serving as trusted, familiar faces in their communities. They answer questions about immunizations, referrals to medical services, common colds, heart attack symptoms, and even pet medications. Pharmacists have a uniquely valuable position in their community-- they possess specialized medical and pharmacological knowledge while maintaining close personal relationships with their patients. 

At the same time, rural hospitals are increasingly at risk of closure due to systemic challenges such as funding reductions, high operational costs, and insurance provider reimbursement inadequacies. An article written in November, 2025 from Boston University School of Public Health stated that over 100 rural hospitals have closed in the United States over the past decade. The article also reported that 700 rural hospitals are currently at risk of closing, with 300 of them being at immediate risk of closing. Rural healthcare systems are already strained, and hospital closures further restrict access to care and shift additional pressure onto remaining providers, including pharmacies, critical access hospitals and small clinics, all of which are already few and far between. 

As hospitals close and medical services shrink, rural pharmacies absorb much of the strain. They face growing patient volumes, inadequate reimbursement from insurers—sometimes resulting in financial losses on certain prescriptions—and increasing pressure to expand services such as compounding and immunizations. An analysis by the Rural Policy Research Institute found that 80% of rural independent pharmacies recieved reimbursement less than the cost of acquiring and dispensing medications. Some states, like New York, provide additional reimbursement rates for state medical programs in rural areas to bolster healthcare assess. Additionally, unlike chain pharmacies, independent pharmacies often have the flexibility to adapt. Many provide delivery services for patients without reliable transportation and they expand clinical offerings to fill gaps left by other providers.

Despite funding challenges and cuts, there are signs of support for rural healthcare infrastructure. On December 30, 2025, the New York State Department of Health announced that the state will receive $212 million in 2026 under the federal Rural Health Transformation Program to improve health care access and delivery in New York communities. While the announcement states that "to ensure the funding directly benefits rural residents across the state... [p]rogram implementation will be supported by ongoing stakeholder engagement, including feedback from providers, tribal and faith-based organizations, local leaders and community members to target resources where they will have the greatest impact," it remains unclear if the funds will truly reach rural areas in need. Nevertheless, programs like this are essential to sustaining healthcare infrastructure and providers in rural areas.

(An model antique pharmacy in upstate New York)

Some may argue that funding rural pharmacies is secondary to hospitals due to mail-order prescriptions or outsourcing of prescription services. Access to prescriptions has increasingly shifted to mail-order pharmacy services. While mail delivery can be convenient, particularly for maintenance medications, it presents its own set of challenges. Delays, incorrect dosages, stolen packages, or temperature-sensitive drugs compromised during transit can place patients at serious risk. Additionally, mail-order services do not offer the same in-person consultation and real-time problem-solving that community pharmacists provide. Although mail services play a role in rural healthcare delivery, policy efforts should prioritize sustaining brick-and mortar pharmacies that provide direct support. 

Recent retail pharmacy closures have further intensified the strain. The closure of all Rite Aid stores and numerous CVS locations has increased patient volume at independent pharmacies. With a large proportion of rural patients relying on government-funded insurance programs, reimbursement pressures can make profitability difficult. Independent pharmacists must balance delivering high-quality healthcare with managing the financial realities of running a small business. The dual responsibility of being a pharmacist and a business owner adds stress but many remain committed because of the meaningful and tangible impact they make in their communities.

With healthcare in rural areas experiencing increased strain, policymakers should consider how to strengthen pharmacies’ roles. Perhaps independent pharmacies should have the ability to prescribe some drugs in rural areas. Perhaps federal and state governments should allocate greater support to rural healthcare infrastructure compared to urban ones? Rural pharmacies are pillars of community healthcare—the question is whether policy will evolve to recognize, and adequately support, that reality.