Decoding the myth of “real America” and how the Republican party reinvented itself as the party of rural America.

This is part two of a two-part series. Read part one here. “You see that new building over there with the roof and red barn?” asks Bob Walton as he guides me through the dirt roads of Isabella County ...

As a September 30 deadline looms to pass a new farm bill, farm groups and agriculture leaders of all stripes are stepping up calls for Congress to act, warning that too long of a wait for a new bill, ...

For the past half century, the Christian Right has been mastering the tools of electoral democracy in order to erode and end it. The methods and the players have evolved over time, but the goal of ...

If Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump wins the White House in November, his next administration comes armed with plans for a massive deregulation of federally-owned public land—your land, ...

After hours of contentious debate over nutrition, conservation, the definition of “cuts” and the meaning of “bipartisanship,” the Republican-led committee passed a bill that crossed several of ...

Americans share fundamental values that inform our public education system: dedication to the common good; a learning space where all voices are respected; public resources that help students succeed; ...

Barn Raiser is an independent nonprofit 501(c)3 media organization that publishes news, analysis, and information to support diverse, civically engaged, and dynamically connected rural communities.

In a 2019 column in the New York Times, Paul Krugman wrote, “There are powerful forces behind the relative and in some cases absolute economic decline of rural America—and the truth is that nobody ...

Growing up on a farm in West Virginia in the 1980s and 1990s, Rae Garringer saw few reflections of queer identity or culture around them. After moving away to Massachusetts for college in 2003, and ...