It’s a typical fall Friday evening in the upstate New York town of Fort Edward. Children are playing soccer under the lights. People are walking dogs as dusk settles over Mullen Park, a stone’s throw ...

Inescapable: Facing Up to Forever Chemicals (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026) by F. Marina Schauffler reminds us that rural communities, often overlooked, can lead the way in confronting the ...

For much of the 20th century, rural and urban voters often aligned in their support for presidential candidates. In 1976, when Jimmy Carter was elected, rural and urban residents voted within one ...

On October 8, 2025, more than 200 family farmers from 30 states drove flag-draped tractors around Capitol Hill and packed the National Press Club for a press conference. They were not there to ask for ...

In March 2025, the Trump administration abruptly froze more than $1 billion in funds for local food purchasing programs, dealing a major blow to the schools, food banks and tribal communities who ...

“You are forbidden to go to Old Hickory,” Brian Dempsey’s mother told him as a child in the Mississippi Delta. So, of course he went—though not right away. He describes Old Hickory as “an island of ...

This is the fourth installment of Barn Raiser’s 2024 election coverage series “Charting a Path of Rural Progress,” which features interviews with rural policy experts and organizers who came together ...

The election results reported in this story were updated on December 4, 2024, when the last House race, in California’s 13th Congressional District, was called. Donald Trump was elected the nation’s ...

Last year, the Biden administration announced major climate goals: achieving a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035 and a net zero emissions economy by no later than 2050. Twenty-nine states and ...

Kristina Reser-Jaynes can still recall a time when she’d never heard of school vouchers. Then, a few years ago, the Kickapoo school district in Southwestern Wisconsin that her daughters attend ...

This is the second story in a two-part series on the public history of trees, centered on the essay collection Branching Out: The Public History of Trees. Read the first part here. Until the 20th ...

This is the first article in a series of stories and interviews in which we ask rural organizers, elected office holders and political strategists what lessons are to be learned from the 2024 General ...