One Country Project's Hot Dish

Bethany Brookshire [00:00:00]:
Welcome to the Hot Dish. I'm Bethany Brookshire and I'm thrilled to present this special episode giving you the highlights from this week's Rural Progress Summit from the One Country Project. You'll be able to see all of these panels on our YouTube channel soon, so keep following the One Country Project to find out when they're available. The Summit began with a panel on Trump's trade war and the impact it could have on our economy. While the panelists, including former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy and Gary Wertish of the Minnesota Farmers Union, agreed that the trade war will hurt average Americans. Jason Furman of the Harvard Kennedy School stressed the compounding impact of the Big Beautiful Bill.

Jason Furman [00:00:36]:
If you look at the deficit as.

Jason Furman [00:00:37]:
A share of the economy, that's the way economists do it. So you can compare it over time. It's more than 6% of GDP right now that is larger than any time in our history except World War II, the financial crisis and COVID. There are good reasons for borrowing all those times.

Jason Furman [00:00:53]:
There is not a good reason to borrow right now.

Jason Furman [00:00:56]:
And now that we passed this law.

Jason Furman [00:00:58]:
That deficit is likely to go up.

Jason Furman [00:01:00]:
Relative to our economy, not down. I don't think there's going to be a crisis where we literally can borrow anything. We're just going to have to pay more for that borrowing. And when you pay more for that borrowing, then your deficit and debt go up more quickly.

Bethany Brookshire [00:01:13]:
Of course, agriculture was a major topic at the summit, with Senator Joe Donnelly leading a discussion about the Farm Bill. Scott Marlow, who's been on the front lines of farm policy development for 30 years, pointed out that many of the challenges rural communities face are rooted in decades old farm we have to acknowledge.

Scott Marlow [00:01:31]:
That since World War II and really since the Reagan Administration, the underlying frame of our programs, the underlying frame of our policy has been one of efficiency. It's been one of driving towards greater and greater efficiency of get big or get out. If you and I are both facing the question of get bigger or get out, we both can't get big, someone.

Scott Marlow [00:01:52]:
Has to go out.

Scott Marlow [00:01:54]:
And so the challenge is that with that underlying frame to the safety net in a lot of our programs, and it doesn't matter what the crisis is or the issue is that we try to address and we try and get at, as long as we stay with that efficiency frame and don't bring resilience into the conversation, don't bring the human costs and the costs on rural communities into the conversation, whatever that crisis is, whatever the issue is, it will continue to drive towards fewer and fewer people.

Scott Marlow [00:02:22]:
On the land and fewer and fewer.

Scott Marlow [00:02:24]:
People in rural communities.

Bethany Brookshire [00:02:25]:
And Jennifer Fahy, co Executive Director of Farm Aid, noted that for farmers, this isn't new.

Jennifer Fahy [00:02:31]:
I was not involved in Farm Aid during the farm crisis. But what I'm hearing from farmers is.

Jennifer Fahy [00:02:38]:
That what we're experiencing now is very familiar.

Jennifer Fahy [00:02:42]:
And as you say, so much is out of farmers control, from weather and crop failures and pest and disease outbreaks to prices and interest rates related to market volatility and trade disruptions.

Jennifer Fahy [00:02:55]:
This year has probably been unprecedented in terms of the uncertainty that farmers have.

Jennifer Fahy [00:02:59]:
Been dealt and continue to be dealt, in addition to the funding freezes and program cancellations. And so far on our hotline, which we have operated since 1985, more than half of the callers are indicating that they are calling financially distressed.

Bethany Brookshire [00:03:15]:
Education was also on the agenda, with a focus on the nationwide attacks on public education. Award winning journalist Laura Pappano described the impact Head Start programs can have as Ronny Lau with the National Education association described the impact budget cuts are.

Laura Pappano [00:03:30]:
Having on them, Head Start changes lives. One of the students that I have mentored over the years would not be where he is today if he did not have Head Start is from Mississippi. His mother had him when he was, when she was 15, but she got Head Start involved. He became a voracious reader and ended up going to Yale where I met him. And recently he gave me a phone call when he earned his Ph.D. and he is now an education policy person in D.C. and I said to him, I said, you know, your son will have a very different journey than you did because of the start of Head Start. And he does have a charming, delightful little munchkin of a son.

Ronny Lau [00:04:12]:
We've already seen five out of 12 of the regional offices that lead a lot of Head Start implementation already close.

Ronny Lau [00:04:18]:
Up based on this Administration's priorities.

Ronny Lau [00:04:20]:
So like I said, I think this is a fundamental attack on our nation's future.

Ronny Lau [00:04:23]:
And I'm not sure who actually benefits out of this.

Bethany Brookshire [00:04:27]:
John Rogers, professor at UCLA's School of Education and Information Studies, pointed out the unique place public schools have in our nation.

John Rogers [00:04:35]:
The brand of public schools is democracy. It's about serving everybody. It's about enabling members of the community.

John Rogers [00:04:44]:
To see the strengths and virtues of.

John Rogers [00:04:46]:
People that are different from them and.

John Rogers [00:04:48]:
That they can learn from other folks.

John Rogers [00:04:50]:
That are different from them and that.

John Rogers [00:04:51]:
We all can work together and build a shared future.

John Rogers [00:04:54]:
Private schools can't do that.

Bethany Brookshire [00:04:56]:
Iowa State Representative Adam Zabner also noted a disadvantage public schools have in the voucher Debate, though Laura Pappano acknowledged that they need to change.

Adam Zabner [00:05:05]:
Private schools can organize more explicitly around the families who are.

Adam Zabner [00:05:10]:
Who are sending their kids there.

Adam Zabner [00:05:12]:
Right.

Adam Zabner [00:05:13]:
Ask families to send letters and call.

Adam Zabner [00:05:16]:
Their legislators and support these voucher programs.

Adam Zabner [00:05:19]:
You know, public schools obviously can't really do that, and so there's sort of.

Adam Zabner [00:05:23]:
A structural disadvantage there that I haven't.

Adam Zabner [00:05:25]:
Really figured out what to do with.

Laura Pappano [00:05:27]:
Public schools may need to operate a little bit differently than they have in the past. A long time ago, they were virtually the only game in town. And, you know, when we talk about competition, I really don't believe that vouchers create academic excellence or competition in any way whatsoever. But what they do is they do make public schools need to think a little bit differently about how they communicate, how they gather, how they frame, what it is that they're providing, because private schools do that. And it's part of their, you know, fundraising. Right? It's part of their philanthropy. Maybe the philanthropy for public schools is building community and allegiance and support.

Bethany Brookshire [00:06:12]:
The panel on rural health care featured Jeanne Lambrew from the Century Foundation, who warned of an impending shock to rural Americans.

Jeanne Lambrew [00:06:20]:
The Affordable Care Act, which has covered 2.8 million people in rural America. We shouldn't forget that this fall, people in rural areas who get Affordable Care

Jeanne Lambrew [00:06:31]:
Act premium tax credit is going to.

Jeanne Lambrew [00:06:33]:
Lose a significant amount, significantly more than.

Jeanne Lambrew [00:06:36]:
Urban areas, because of the lack of.

Jeanne Lambrew [00:06:39]:
Inclusion of this extender in the tax cut bill. That's going to be significant.

Jeanne Lambrew [00:06:44]:
So I just hope that we come out of this period with a renewed sense of community that oftentimes generates from.

Jeanne Lambrew [00:06:52]:
Rural areas, but spreads nationwide.

Bethany Brookshire [00:06:54]:
Kevin Stansbury, CEO of Lincoln Community Hospital in Colorado, pointed out some of the ways rural hospitals are placed at a disadvantage by the system.

Kevin Stansbury [00:07:02]:
In the metro areas, hospitals are paid.

Kevin Stansbury [00:07:05]:
At a rate of approximately 240% of Medicare in the rural hospitals on the Eastern Plains were paid on an average of 139% of Medicare.

Kevin Stansbury [00:07:14]:
It's a market imbalance. I can call a large insurance company.

Kevin Stansbury [00:07:19]:
And say, hey, we need to do.

Kevin Stansbury [00:07:20]:
Something about my rates, and it takes them a while to get back to me.

Kevin Stansbury [00:07:25]:
If I'm a big system in the.

Kevin Stansbury [00:07:26]:
City and I own 15 hospitals, that's.

Kevin Stansbury [00:07:29]:
A very different conversation.

Bethany Brookshire [00:07:31]:
Dr. Tom Dean, who practiced medicine for 43 years in his hometown of Wessington Springs, South Dakota, expressed concerns about the impact our complicated health care system has on physicians.

Tom Dean [00:07:41]:
I am concerned about the overall dysfunction in our health system in general, which is simply dysfunctional. Our costs are too high. Vast amounts of our resources go to administration just justifying the bills that come in. And that has placed a big burden on physicians. They the demands for documentation, the administrative demands. I've told a number of people that my last several years in practice were the hardest I had. Not because the patients were any difficult. It was the administrative requirements, the burden of documentation. And that has led so many physicians to either retire early or just be burned out and fed up with the whole thing.

Bethany Brookshire [00:08:39]:
The highlight of Day One was, of course, Heidi's conversation with Secretary Pete Buttigieg who talked about the importance of face to face interaction to bring people together.

Pete Buttigieg [00:08:48]:
I so often think about the human.

Pete Buttigieg [00:08:51]:
In person 3D in real life relationships that transcend those partisan and social divides. And I think this is actually one area where rural America has a lot of to offer because people who live in smaller communities often have more overlapping circles of belonging because so many families that straddle political divides also have neighbors or faith communities that can get off of the kind of pre sorted concentric circles that we all live in with our online identities. I think we were always better able to see each other as three dimensional people in those processes and than when we're behind a keyboard commenting on what's going on nationally.

Bethany Brookshire [00:09:34]:
And the Secretary shared some inspiring words about the future of the Democratic Party.

Pete Buttigieg [00:09:39]:
We can paint a picture of what it looks like when government actually works for you. It's not about making it bigger or smaller. It's about making sure that you get.

Pete Buttigieg [00:09:46]:
Up in the morning and you're breathing cleaner air because your government did a.

Pete Buttigieg [00:09:48]:
Good job of keeping that under control. And you're on a good road to get to where you need to go because you had a successful infrastructure policy and you've got a good school to drop your kid off because we actually invest in education instead of cutting the Department of Education out. And you go to a job that you know you can count on because you have policymakers who care about employment in your area. And I could go on and on, but it's, it's that different and better everyday life.

Bethany Brookshire [00:10:17]:
The second day of the Summit was just as exciting. The day started with a focus on paid family and medical leave. Representative Chrissy Houlahan, an Air Force veteran, engineer, entrepreneur and educator, reminded the audience that the United States is unusual.

Chrissy Houlahan [00:10:30]:
The United States is woefully behind in its understanding and appreciation for the importance of paid leave of all kinds, not just for families, but also medical leave, as you mentioned, because there are always.

Chrissy Houlahan [00:10:45]:
Situations that are happening in families, either.

Chrissy Houlahan [00:10:47]:
To your parents, as you've mentioned, or to your children or to yourself.

Chrissy Houlahan [00:10:51]:
But we are one of only seven.

Chrissy Houlahan [00:10:52]:
Nations remaining that don't have a paid.

Chrissy Houlahan [00:10:54]:
Leave policy of one form or another.

Bethany Brookshire [00:10:57]:
And Carling McManus, a small business owner from West Virginia, explained both the value her company gains by offering paid leave as well as the burden it places on businesses when there is no government policy to support the benefits.

Carling McManus [00:11:10]:
We made policies that allowed eight weeks of paid leave, that we pay 100% of the salary while that employee is either out on maternity leave or caring for a loved one or themselves, themselves during a medical crisis. And it is a really important policy. It has attracted a lot of talent. We might be in West Virginia, but we're competing for employees at the global level. We do do contract work with a number of individuals who are out of state and sometimes out of country, because remote work is a real reality for us. And so these policies stretch beyond West Virginia, and they attract people that I know I can count on their talent. They can count on me as their employer to care for them when they are facing a challenge. But this is not without costs. When we started hiring in 2019, we implemented the policy, and since then, we've had six utilizations of it. And it has cost my company on average about $21,000 a year. So it is expensive.

Carling McManus [00:12:21]:
It is really expensive.

Chrissy Houlahan [00:12:23]:
It's values aligned. We're 100% in support of it, but we're all by ourselves paying for this. People ask me, how do you afford it? You're such a small business. I say, well, we make less money.

Bethany Brookshire [00:12:35]:
Our own Joel Heitkamp spoke with Phil Snape from Impact Social about the sentiments rural Americans are expressing online.

Phil Snape [00:12:42]:
People are saying, well, you know, I was going to buy that new tractor, but I'm.

Phil Snape [00:12:46]:
I'm.

Phil Snape [00:12:46]:
No way I'm going to do that now. I'm going to fix up the old one. I was going to get the combine sorted out again. I'm not going to do that. Am I going to sow that particular crop or that particular crop? I'm not sure because I'm not sure where the tariffs are going to hit. So as a consequence, you see a lot of people in rural communities sitting on their hands, and they're waiting, and they can't afford to wait because that's not the nature of what they do. But they're afraid to make a move. And this is the legacy of what has been a very haphazard economic policy all the way through. We see people talking about things like, say, if something is fixed in the power line, they say the people are driving on the road and thinking, there were 10 guys fixing that power line last week and now there's only one, and it's a white guy. What's happening? So they see people sort of disappearing from the workplace, from their environment, et cetera. And that's having an effect because some people think it's a good thing because they're saying, well, this is great, because it means there's going to be even more jobs for everybody and unemployment is going to go up. Whereas other people are saying, well, how are things going to get fixed? And they're also saying, what's going to be impact on inflation? Because if all the people who normally do lawns and the jobs which you're talking about suddenly disappear and then other people come in, then the cost of that's going to go up. And also, how many people. If you start literally throwing hundreds of thousands of millions of people out of the country, who's going to do those jobs? So there is a fear factor as well as who's going to do the jobs and. And is it going to increase prices?

Bethany Brookshire [00:14:11]:
Senator Donnelly spoke with Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, about the GOP's Big Beautiful Bill and its impact on our nation's future.

Maya MacGuineas [00:14:20]:
It really concerns me when I see parties marching in lockstep.

Maya MacGuineas [00:14:24]:
It's kind of scary to me because.

Maya MacGuineas [00:14:26]:
People represent different parts of the country, different level along the political ideology, different spectrums, different levels of conservatism or progressive or, like, you could think one thing about foreign policy, another thing about economic policy. But when you see everybody falling in.

Maya MacGuineas [00:14:43]:
Line and voting the way the President.

Maya MacGuineas [00:14:44]:
Tells them, that means they're not putting the interests of their constituents first. And I would say on things like.

Maya MacGuineas [00:14:49]:
The debt, it means you're putting political.

Maya MacGuineas [00:14:51]:
Interests ahead of national interests. And I know this issue is hard, and I know the solutions are really difficult politically, but if you care about leaving an economy that's stronger for the next generation, you cannot borrow your way to prosperity. We will borrow our way to a serious fiscal reckoning that will be harmful across the board economically for American families in terms of national security and absolutely for our future generations.

Bethany Brookshire [00:15:17]:
Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky couldn't join the summit in person, but he sent a prerecorded video. Here's some of what he had to say.

Andy Beshear [00:15:24]:
The actions of the Trump administration are providing a huge opportunity for Democrats to. To go out and regain the trust of the American people, to be the party of common sense, common ground, and getting things done. To do that, we have to talk to people and not at them. And we have to explain our why. For me, my why is my faith. It's why as governor, I restored voting rights to almost 200,000 Kentuckians because second chances are our responsibility and our calling. I removed the statue of Jefferson Davis from our state Capitol because a glaring symbol of bigotry and division does not belong in any capitol in our country. And it's why I made Juneteenth an executive branch holiday for the first time in Kentucky's history. I vetoed four anti choice bills and I vetoed every single piece of anti LGBTQ legislation that came to my desk, including the nastiest anti LGBTQ bill in the country. And I vetoed it in my reelection year. I did it because I believe all children are children of God. I knew I'd get pushback, but some things are worth losing over. But I also got a lot of Kentuckians telling me while they might not agree with me, they knew I was doing what I thought was right because I communicated my why and it gave people the grace and the space to maybe disagree but understand where I was coming from. Democrats can regain the faith of the American people with a relentless focus on the core concerns of our hard working families. And that focus must be backed up by actual results and proven effective governing. We have to be the party that delivers. People need to see us get our boots dirty to get out in their communities again and again because showing up tells people you care. In the next election we must win the gut check about which party will make life a little better and make paying the bills a little easier.

Bethany Brookshire [00:17:20]:
Wisconsin Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski led an informative conversation about the future of tribal communities. Jerilyn Church, CEO of Great Plains Tribal Health, explained how they improved outcomes by regaining sovereignty.

Jerilyn Church [00:17:32]:
We run Oyate Health center that was.

Jerilyn Church [00:17:35]:
Previously run by Indian Health Service and we assume management of what was formerly.

Jerilyn Church [00:17:41]:
Sioux San to become Oyate Health Center.

Jerilyn Church [00:17:43]:
And, and what we saw is in.

Jerilyn Church [00:17:47]:
That process we have improved access to health care.

Jerilyn Church [00:17:52]:
We have generated more revenue than Indian.

Jerilyn Church [00:17:57]:
Health Service had previously.

Bethany Brookshire [00:17:59]:
And Skya Ducheneaux, executive director of Akiptan, a Native American community development financial institution focused on agriculture, explained the return on investment of investing in land resilience.

Skya Ducheneaux [00:18:11]:
A lot of these cuts to some of these programs like let's again quit looking at them as expenses versus investments. If we can put more investments to make our land more resilient during all this extremely these extreme weather patterns that we're having that reduces the disaster assistance that happens afterwards. If we are able to make upfront investments, our ROI is going to be reduced disaster costs.

Bethany Brookshire [00:18:38]:
Day two ended with great conversations about the threat to public lands and how that threat was removed from the Big Beautiful Bill. Tracy Stone-Manning, president of the Wilderness Society, had this to say.

Tracy Stone-Manning [00:18:49]:
We have the support of the American people. People from all corners of this country, all stripes, all political stripes, all genders, all ages, said, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on.

Tracy Stone-Manning [00:18:59]:
No, no, no.

Tracy Stone-Manning [00:19:00]:
I love my public lands in ways.

Tracy Stone-Manning [00:19:03]:
That I don't think that either Senator.

Tracy Stone-Manning [00:19:06]:
Lee or the Administration expected. And here's the thing. They're not going to stop saying that.

Tracy Stone-Manning [00:19:13]:
They're going to continue to fight for it if they have to.

Tracy Stone-Manning [00:19:16]:
And that's what gives me confidence, right.

Tracy Stone-Manning [00:19:18]:
That we're in such a divided country right now.

Tracy Stone-Manning [00:19:22]:
And the unity around public lands for me is a path back to reminding.

Tracy Stone-Manning [00:19:30]:
Ourselves how to work together, how to govern for this country and how to.

Tracy Stone-Manning [00:19:34]:
Pass on this incredible heritage that we.

Tracy Stone-Manning [00:19:37]:
Have in, in something called public lands.

Bethany Brookshire [00:19:40]:
And Senator Martin Heinrich of New Mexico added this.

Martin Heinrich [00:19:43]:
We heard a couple of things consistently. One that, don't worry, we're not selling your national parks. And the other was, these are a bunch of vacant lands. And, you know, to a Westerner, those vacant lands are the places you can actually run your bird dog off leash and carry a gun. And, you know, it's kind of like telling somebody from Iowa or North Dakota or Georgia, don't worry, we're just going to sell a few lands around your favorite deer stand because they're being underutilized. And so they just missed the argument completely. It took something as unifying as public lands to really pull a bipartisan coalition out of the Rocky Mountains that ended.

Martin Heinrich [00:20:28]:
Up stopping this thing.

Martin Heinrich [00:20:29]:
And it was because the breadth of people who cared from every state in the union was so strong. I mean, we had, we had the RV industry and the Outdoor Recreation Roundtable and all the hunting and fishing groups and, you know, Johnny Morris at Bass Pro penning letters. We had all these influencers that, that, you know, were successful at generating a mountain of calls into the Senate offices. It was that unifying.

Bethany Brookshire [00:21:00]:
The third day of the Rural Progress Summit was just as interesting as the first two. It began with a conversation about rural broadband, which focused in part on the role connectivity played in the recent Texas floods. Heidi asked Dave Wright, policy director at Spectrum for the Future, about the impact of a limited number of carriers in rural areas and the importance of local control.

Dave Wright [00:21:20]:
When you have historic level disasters. And I'd certainly say the Kern County stuff in Texas, you know, rises to that level. I'm thinking Katrina and, and other things. You know, oftentimes the, the outages and the disruption to service can, can, you know, this isn't a matter of hours. We're talking days, weeks. Yeah.

Dave Wright [00:21:42]:
Sometimes months.

Dave Wright [00:21:43]:
Right.

Dave Wright [00:21:44]:
So you know, what we've seen in many of those cases is. Yes. I mean, the. To. To their credit, you know, AT&T, T Mo[bile] and Verizon, they, they get in there and you know, if their battery backups run out of their generators back generators run out. They get in there with, you know, replacement systems as soon as they can. But what, but having democratized access to spectrum and wireless technology allows the people on the ground just to respond. Right. Themselves. I mean, and you see, you know, people setting up WI fi hotspots, you know, they, they happen to have a broadband connection that's working or somebody brings in a satellite back call for, for broadband. You put a WI fi hotspot around that and, and the community suddenly has connectivity again. They're able to text their relatives to let them know they're alive.

Bethany Brookshire [00:22:30]:
Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio made some very important points during the panel on Understanding Working Class Voters.

Sherrod Brown [00:22:37]:
The workers think that together, politicians, corporations rig the system to benefit the rich and powerful. It's hard to argue that they don't. For all the talk from, from supposed economic experts about the complex factors that determine wages and prices, workers have pretty damn good intuition about it. They know corporate greed when they see it. They know it's a big reason why they can't get ahead and their incomes don't keep up with costs. People talk about corporations using any excuse to raise prices. Workers don't bring up government programs as solutions, but they talk about the need for someone, anyone, to rein in corporate greed. People are hungry for a vision of change will actually reign in corporate greed. Lower their costs, create an economy where their hard work pays off. And that's, that's where all of you come in on this, that you can represent, you can represent rural workers. When I say workers, I mean across the board. It's not just factory workers or carpenters or McDonald's. It's McDonald's workers. It's everybody. But what unites rural workers with working people all over the country is that, that believing the system's rigged. We got to do something about it. And we have to start by listening to them. And that's the most important thing. Go where they are. Listen to them.

Bethany Brookshire [00:23:53]:
Heidi had a fascinating conversation with Mark Elias, a Nationally recognized expert in voting rights and redistricting law, about the ongoing impact of Project 2025 on the rights of Americans. We only have time in this episode for a short clip, but keep following the One Country Project to find out when the entire summit is available on our YouTube channel.

Marc Elias [00:24:12]:
We don't have three equal branches of government. The founders never anticipated there'd be three equal branches of government. They anticipated Congress would be the dominant branch of government. And so like even the premise that like, there are checks and balances, really the way the Constitution is set up is that Congress is a check on the executive through the impeachment power, through the conviction power, through the budget, the ability to budget, the ability to create departments and appropriate funds. Right. That Congress is the dominant branch over the executive. And frankly, they anticipated that Congress would be the dominant branch over the judiciary. It's Congress that establishes the lower courts, it's the Senate that confirms judges. It is Congress can impeach and convict and remove judges. Judges, right. And neither of the other branches have that authority with respect to members of the House and Senate.

Marc Elias [00:25:03]:
Right.

Marc Elias [00:25:03]:
So the theory of the Constitution was that it would be a legislatively dominant government and the role of the President would basically be to see that, to take care of the laws are faithfully executed. And, you know, I won't say that for, you know, the last 200 plus years, it has worked smoothly. You know, certainly Richard Nixon didn't abide entirely by that regime, but by and large that regime happened. I mean, Senator, when you were in the Senate, there was an understanding, Democratic president, Republican President, there was an understanding that if Congress didn't appropriate funds, the money couldn't be spent. If Congress did appropriate money, the funds had to be spent. And that if Congress set up an agency, that agency existed. And what Project 2025, at its most radical, dangerous level is, it is not the overtaking of the executive branch, which, like I said, is bad and bad for government and will lead to, you know, senselessness and suffering. But it is the, the effort to essentially say the President does not need to follow appropriations. He can impound funds, he can abolish departments, he can ignore how they say agencies are to be staffed, what their missions are like. It is essentially a trampling over the legislative branch, which I think is the most dangerous part of Project 2025 and which you are seeing take place across the board.

Bethany Brookshire [00:26:34]:
In the panel on inspiring younger Americans to run for office, North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton talked about her motivations for running at the age of 25.

Anderson Clayton [00:26:44]:
When I ran for state party chair, people told me that you were, I was going to stick my neck out there and my head could get lobbed off in politics. Like, if you run, you may never.

Anderson Clayton [00:26:52]:
Be able to do it again.

Anderson Clayton [00:26:53]:
And I just, I find that to be complete bullshit now. Right. Like, I think that anyone should be comfortable running for office. Like, it's okay if you lose. You know, it's okay if you stand up for your values and the, like, what you think the direction of this party or, you know, your district should be right now. And I would just encourage everybody. The one thing I got told before I ran that always stuck with me is Kelvin Stallings looking at me and being like, if you remember your why, you will never have any regrets. And my why was always that I wanted a party that was going to stand up and fight back for rural North Carolina and not just cede ground to a party that had fully endorsed white supremacy and wanted to see the demise of our communities with their policies. And what we just saw this last week come from Washington, D.C. d.C. With Republicans stripping 17 million people from health care access across our or across our country.

Bethany Brookshire [00:27:49]:
Wisconsin Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski added this.

Sarah Godlewski [00:27:52]:
You know, one of the things that my dad said to me because I was really upset when I lost, and.

Sarah Godlewski [00:27:58]:
I wasn't upset because of myself.

Sarah Godlewski [00:28:00]:
I was upset because I felt like I had let down so many people that I was really fighting for the reason why I ran a lot of women and girls. And this was at the height of when Roe v. Wade was overturned and we had an 1849 Abortion

Sarah Godlewski [00:28:15]:
Ban here in Wisconsin.

Sarah Godlewski [00:28:16]:
And to me, my dad looked at.

Sarah Godlewski [00:28:19]:
Me and he goes, Sarah, remember, failure

Sarah Godlewski [00:28:21]:
is never fatal and success is never final. And for you, your public service journey is just that. And it is going to continue to be a journey. And so I say that to everybody here because while it might not work out, you know, when they. When the door shuts, a window opens. And I think that's exactly also what you have to think about in running for office. You might not get it the first time, but you shouldn't be afraid to.

Sarah Godlewski [00:28:50]:
Step up and try again.

Bethany Brookshire [00:28:51]:
In the final session about immigration in rural America, State Senator Cesar Blanco of Texas talked about the impacts of the GOP's mass deportation policies on the industries in his border district.

Cesar Blanco [00:29:02]:
I'm right on the Texas-Mexico border, and I represent nine counties that stretch out from the whole western bend of Texas. It's about 25,000 square miles. The big industries are trade, oil and gas. I represent parts of the Permian Basin, which is some of the largest oil and gas producing counties in the world. And agriculture and all of it is along the Texas-Mexico border. So we deal with a lot of the immigration policies and the approaches that this administration has implemented which really impact our rural communities first and foremost. There's a lot of uncertainty and there is a lot of inconsistency with how this administration is approaching immigration. And the challenges that we're facing is that it's really creating consequences in rural communities like mine. We are already facing things like workforce shortages. We're dealing with shortages in agriculture, we're dealing with shortages in the oil patch where a lot of our employees are, and then in health care. So these policies have really impacted those industries and especially those aimed at broadening deportation priorities that the administration has prioritized. The fact that they're restricting legal pathways is also deepening the challenges. So, you know, as you all know, when rural employers can't find the workers that they need, production slows down, prices go up, and families, especially family farms, struggle. I'll give you an example. One of the industries in my district is the, the sheep and mohair industry. And a lot of the workers that come from that have the skill of sheep sharing. Many come from Mexico. There's a lot of folks in the United States that don't know how to do this. And a lot of our workers come in and they're seasonal. Some stay longer. But that is a, is a skill set that is difficult to teach. It's a skill set that is difficult to, to teach over the long term. And we don't have that ability to recover those workers if they're deported.

Bethany Brookshire [00:31:25]:
And that's a wrap for the 2025 Rural Progress Summit. We're going to leave you with some inspiring words from Senator Cory Booker. But first, I want to remind you to follow the One Country Project on Bluesky, Substack and YouTube and keep listening to the Hot Dish. While you're at it, be sure to tell your friends about us. We'll be back with a regularly scheduled episode on Wednesday, July 23rd. Thanks for listening. And now, here's Senator Cory Booker.

Cory Booker [00:31:49]:
It's a real honor to participate in the Rural Progress Summit. Thank you to Heidi, my sister and.

Cory Booker [00:31:55]:
My brother Joe and the entire team.

Cory Booker [00:31:57]:
At the One Country Project for bringing us together. You've built something essential here, a place where people can speak truthfully, listen carefully, and collaborate on real solutions for rural America. And in this current moment, with so much at stake, your work has never been more urgent.