KFF Health News chief rural correspondent Sarah Jane Tribble discussed the findings of a KFF-Associated Press poll about rural support for the Make America Healthy Again movement on NPR’s Morning Edition on Sept. 30.
Céline Gounder, KFF Health News’ editor-at-large for public health, discussed a new GLP-1 weight loss drug on CBS News’ CBS Mornings and health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s comments at a MAHA summit this week on CBS News 24/7’s Mornings, both on Sept. 30.
Gounder also discussed how Anthropic’s Claude agents might help develop new gene-editing technology on CBS News 24/7’s The Daily Report on Sept. 24.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
The discovery adds strong evidence that the outbreak that sickened thousands over the summer originated in the company’s fields or processing facility in northeastern Mexico.
Democratic congressional members and candidates are already planning to use any midterm election gains to expand health coverage, including boosting Affordable Care Act subsidies, reversing Medicaid cuts, and lowering the Medicare eligibility age.
But Democratic strongholds across the country — including Oregon, California, New York, and Washington — have more ambitious goals: single-payer, universal healthcare systems.
No state is closer to that goal than Oregon. A panel created by the state legislature in 2023 is slated to send lawmakers its proposal for a universal health plan by Dec. 1. The nine-person Universal Health Plan Governance Board seeks to establish, starting in 2032, medical, vision, dental, and mental health benefits for every state resident from cradle to grave — with no premiums, deductibles, or copayments. Lawmakers could vote on a plan during the 2027 legislative session or refer it to voters as a ballot measure in 2028.
If approved, the state would be the first in the U.S. to implement what’s called a single-payer health coverage system. It could serve as a model for other states — and potentially the nation.
States have often served as laboratories to test health policies later implemented nationally. The Affordable Care Act was modeled after Massachusetts’ attempt to achieve universal health insurance coverage, once single-payer efforts there stalled. And Canada’s universal healthcare system began with a provincial plan in Saskatchewan.
“In the short to medium term, there is no chance that ‘Medicare for All’ can be passed at the national level,” said Jonathan Oberlander, a University of North Carolina health policy professor. “That’s where the states come in. A state like Oregon provides a more hospitable political environment and a more realistic path to single-payer reform.”
But advocates of the plan expect a significant fight from healthcare behemoths, including large hospital systems, seeking to sour public opinion on making such widespread changes. Nine of the Fortune 500 companies are health insurers. The industry’s deep pockets have helped derail myriad universal healthcare efforts at the federal and state levels.
In 2011, the Vermont Legislature voted to implement a universal healthcare plan but, three years later, Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin, who had campaigned on the promise of single-payer, pulled the plug, citing “potential economic disruption.”
States that took the issue directly to voters have fared no better. Ballot measures in Colorado in 2016, Oregon in 2002, and California in 1994 all failed by large margins.
“The aspirations of progressive reformers usually run smack into sobering political realities,” Oberlander said. “Translating a slogan into a legislative and political reality is a daunting task.”
Valdez Bravo, president of Health Care for All Oregon, speaks at the nonprofit’s annual garden party in Portland on Sept. 12. The state will soon consider a plan for universal health coverage that the state legislature ordered in 2023. (Christena Dowsett for KFF Health News)
Redirected Healthcare Dollars
Oregon’s proposal seeks to maintain the current level of spending on healthcare by government, business, and consumers with new corporate and personal taxes to replace insurance premiums and other out-of-pocket costs. Those would be combined with federal and state spending to create a single fund from which all hospitals, doctors, and other practitioners would be paid.
Board members said savings from cutting red tape, reducing fraud, and negotiating drug costs should allow the state to provide better benefits to more people.
In examples prepared for consumer focus groups, the board estimated that a 30-year-old making $55,000 and purchasing a benchmark silver-level plan through the Affordable Care Act now pays $5,478 a year for insurance premiums in Oregon, but instead could pay $2,331 in taxes under the proposed plan.
Someone making $55,000 a year with coverage through their employer now pays $3,063 in premiums and out-of-pocket costs. Under the draft plan, that person could pay nothing for health services and could see any doctor in the state.
Currently, many employers pay much of the health insurance costs for their workers. The plan seeks to maintain those contributions by establishing a corporate payroll tax for companies whose payrolls exceed $500,000. Their employees could receive a partial tax credit for the taxes their employers pay. As a result, 31% to 60% of Oregonians wouldn’t pay anything for health benefits.
More affluent people, however, could end up paying more than they do now. The exact numbers would depend on how lawmakers set tax rates and payment thresholds.
“What we are proposing is something very different,” said Miriam McDonell, executive director of the Oregon board. “Everyone contributes based on the amount that they are able to contribute and not based on utilization.”
A work group created by the state legislature in 2023 is slated to send lawmakers its proposal for a universal health plan by Dec. 1. Lawmakers could vote on the plan as soon as the next legislative session or refer it to a ballot measure in 2028. The nonprofit Health Care for All Oregon hosted a garden party on Sept. 12 ahead of the reveal. (Christena Dowsett for KFF Health News)
Backers of the universal healthcare coverage plan will try to convince hospitals and health systems that they would benefit from reducing red tape and eliminating unpaid bills. (Christena Dowsett for KFF Health News)
Messaging Challenge Lies Ahead
The plan’s backers will try to convince hospitals and health systems that they would benefit from reducing red tape and eliminating unpaid bills. Currently, hospitals hire scores of workers to bill dozens of public and private health plans, each with its own coverage and billing rules. A single plan covering everyone in the state could streamline the process, saving billions.
Rural hospitals could gain financial stability. They now often struggle to stay afloat because they typically have higher rates of patients who are uninsured or on Medicaid, with its often low reimbursement rates.
Hospitals aren’t so sure.
“The universal health plan proposal preserves much of the broken, fragmented status quo and adds new taxes and complexity that Oregonians can’t afford,” said Becky Hultberg, president and CEO of the Hospital Association of Oregon. “With federal policy changes looming, we are entering a period of tremendous upheaval. This proposal could destabilize a system that is already struggling.”
Under the proposal, doctors and other practitioners would be paid somewhere between what Medicare pays on the low end and what private insurance pays on the high end. Although total payments to doctors would remain unchanged, rates would be negotiated with physician groups to shift more money into primary care and less into specialty services.
But it is unclear whether doctors would agree that more patient time, fewer administrative hurdles, and no more unpaid bills would be worth a payment structure that could cause specialists to lose out.
Rebecca Schoon, an associate professor at Pacific University who attended last month’s Health Care for All Oregon garden party, says that communicating what universal healthcare is will be one of the biggest challenges ahead for Oregon’s proposed plan. (Christena Dowsett for KFF Health News)
“There’s always winners and losers in designing something like this, and so how to distribute those is the hardest part,” said Rebecca Schoon, an associate health policy professor at Pacific University who is slated to join the Oregon board in January. “But the second-hardest part is, I think, messaging this.”
Courtni Dresser, vice president of government relations for the Oregon Medical Association, said her physicians group shares many of the board’s goals in improving access to care and reducing administrative burdens. But the group has yet to declare its support or opposition to the effort.
Health insurers haven’t formally weighed in on Oregon’s proposal either, but a single-payer system would, in essence, close off Oregon to any private healthcare plans.
“We expect insurance companies to put every ounce of money they can against this idea because our system is broken and they profit from it,” said Collin Stackhouse, communications coordinator for Health Care for All Oregon, a consumer group advocating for universal healthcare.
Wendell Potter, a former insurance company executive who now works to expose industry influence, said he expects health plans to hammer the Oregon proposal with claims of high taxes, loss of choice, and the specter of “socialized medicine.”
“Most people go year to year without testing the limits of their health insurance policy,” Potter said. “And so, they’re easily scared into thinking that something valuable will be taken away from them, and that they will have something that’s inferior in its place.”
Health insurers argue their health plans help shield consumers from the full impact of rising healthcare costs.
“Americans consistently report strong satisfaction with their health coverage, including more than 180 million covered through work and 36 million who choose Medicare Advantage,” said Chris Bond, a spokesperson for the health insurance trade group AHIP. “Policy solutions are needed to rein in the ever-higher prices charged by hospitals and drugmakers and make care more affordable for everyone.”
Volunteers converse at the Sept. 12 garden party in Portland. Oregon’s legislature created a work group in 2023 to draw up a plan to create universal healthcare in the state. The proposal is due Dec. 1. (Christena Dowsett for KFF Health News)
Federal Approval Needed
It’s unclear whether Oregon could secure federal approval to redirect Medicare and Medicaid dollars into its universal plan. Backers of the proposal do not expect the Trump administration to be receptive but say it will be years before approval is needed and hope the 2028 presidential election ushers in a more supportive administration. If federal waivers are not secured, Oregon could proceed in stages, starting with the non-Medicare population.
In California, Democratic candidates for governor are not debating whether to implement single-payer but how. New York lawmakers are debating a single-payer bill called the New York Health Act. And in Washington, state legislators have created a commission to design a universal healthcare plan.
The Oregon board has had regular contact with teams working on single-payer proposals in California and Washington, sharing approaches and looking for ways to collaborate, McDonell said.
Richard Bruno, an Oregon family physician and a member of Physicians for a National Health Program, said he could envision the other West Coast states joining Oregon in implementing single-payer, much as California, Washington, and Hawaii have in public health efforts to counter changes in federal vaccine recommendations.
“If our four states could do it,” he said, “that would be the momentum we would need to get it nationally.”
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
A catheter carrying the lethal drug may not have delivered the doses to Christa Pike’s bloodstream, experts said. The drug itself may have been degraded.
The KFF Health News Minute is available every Thursday via direct download or the RSS feed.
Oct. 1
Arielle Zionts [arr-ee-ELL ZY-ence] reads the week’s news: If you’re an older patient taking a long list of medications, consider reviewing them with a primary care provider to make sure they’re helping more than hurting. Plus, states are experimenting with Medicaid meal deliveries to cut costs and improve patients’ health.
Jackie Fortiér [FOR-tee-ay] reads the week’s news: Many small businesses say they can no longer afford to offer their staff health insurance. Plus, when friends and neighbors act as informal caregivers, they’re unlikely to receive protection for time spent away from work.
Zach Dyer [DYE-er] reads the week’s news: The high cost of fertility treatment is making some Americans look abroad for help getting pregnant. Plus, a nonprofit in Austin, Texas, is trying to keep its city’s music scenes going by helping artists pay for health insurance.
Jackie Fortiér [FOR-tee-ay] reads the week’s news: Laser cataract surgery, which can be pricier, may not be worth the extra cost. Plus, the federal government is pulling funding for test strips that can help users detect fentanyl in drugs in favor of other public health approaches.
Zach Dyer [DYE-er] reads the week’s news: Violence against hospital workers fuels calls for mandatory staffing rules. Plus, tips on how to find a clinical trial.
Katheryn Houghton [CATH-er-in HOW-tun] reads the week’s news: A wristband with the words “I Gave Birth” could be a lifesaving tool for new moms, and many homeless people will have to prove they’re working to stay on Medicaid.
Arielle Zionts [arr-ee-ELL ZY-ence] reads the week’s news: Pediatricians try to persuade more parents to vaccinate their kids amid measles outbreaks. Plus, how hospital monopolies drive up costs for patients and insurers.
Rachel Spears reads the week’s news: Many people with disabilities fear that a new Justice Department legal opinion could roll back protections that have given them access to in-home care. Plus, some cities are using 911 to respond to mental health distress calls with mobile crisis teams instead of police.
Katheryn Houghton [CATH-er-in HOW-tun] reads the week’s news: Some older adults are seeking roommates to help them age in place. Plus, doctors say they shouldn’t be the ones determining if someone is too sick to comply with Medicaid’s new work rules.
Zach Dyer [DYE-er] reads this week’s news: Health insurance companies promised to make it easier to get doctor-ordered care, but patients are still waiting. Plus, a common surgery might not be the best way to solve knee pain.
Jackie Fortiér [FOR-tee-ay] reads this week’s news: Coverage disruptions can have fatal consequences when switching health plans. Plus, more states are shaming employers that use your tax dollars to cover health costs for their low-income workers.
Sam Whitehead reads the week’s news: Some health plans are pocketing their enrollees’ drug discounts, while many Affordable Care Act insurers want to raise rates by double digits next year.
Rachel Spears reads the week’s news: When babies receiving infant formula allegedly get sick or die, what happens next is largely up to the companies that make it. Plus, abortions continue to rise four years after the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Jackie Fortiér [FOR-tee-ay] reads the week’s news: More Americans than ever are surviving cancer and face lingering mental health issues. Plus, tips to get your health insurance company to pay for a GLP-1 drug.
Zach Dyer [DYE-er] reads the week’s news: The U.S. is getting its first new sunscreen ingredient in decades. Plus, at-home cancer tests have their limits.
Katheryn Houghton [CATH-er-in HOW-tun] reads the week’s news: New rules that require millions of Americans to work to access Medicaid are stricter than many expected. Plus, the federal Family and Medical Leave Act protects many people’s jobs — but there’s a big catch.
Sam Whitehead reads the week’s news: More Americans are getting access to physician-assisted suicide as states legalize the practice. Plus, hundreds of people allege medical neglect in ICE detention centers.
Arielle Zionts [arr-ee-ELL ZY-ence] reads the week’s news: For some older adults, the risks of certain preventive screenings might outweigh the rewards. Plus, cost spikes for Obamacare plans have consumers seeking cheaper health coverage, which is often less comprehensive.
Jackie Fortiér [FOR-tee-ay] reads this week’s news: Suicide prevention experts argue that improving Americans’ financial well-being could save lives. Plus, the Trump administration proposes looser artificial intelligence safeguards to speed innovation in healthcare.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
The health secretary, Vice President JD Vance and other top officials addressed a conference sponsored by corporations, including A.I. companies and others with business before the government.
This story describes a lethal injection procedure used in state executions.
In May, a group of healthcare workers spent about an hour trying to establish complete IV access so they could inject Tony Carruthers, an inmate at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, Tennessee, with a lethal dose of sedative.
Maria DeLiberato, an attorney for Carruthers, was in the room. She said the workers stuck his arms and feet with needles, to no avail. A doctor then tried to insert a central line through his collarbone and shoulder. That didn’t work, either.
Carruthers groaned in pain and blood oozed from puncture wounds, DeLiberato said in a news briefing.
After more than an hour, Gov. Bill Lee called the warden, ordering him to halt the execution attempt. He later granted Carruthers a one-year reprieve.
Now, as another death row inmate’s execution approaches, doctors and nurses in the state say they want medical professionals removed from the execution process. They’ve also joined defense attorneys and nine Republican state lawmakers in demanding a moratorium on the death penalty and an overhaul of the state’s execution methods.
The doctors’ arguments echoed those the American Medical Association has made before the U.S. Supreme Court and in its code of ethics.
Tennessee is among 27 states where the death penalty is legal, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit that offers data and analysis on issues surrounding capital punishment.
Governors in four of those states have halted all executions, citing moral concerns and logistical ones, such as being unable to obtain lethal injection drugs amid pharmaceutical companies’ refusal to sell them for use in executions. Lethal injection is still the primary execution method nationwide, but some states may use gas, a firing squad, or electrocution.
Since the beginning of 2020, 170 people have been executed in 17 states, with most occurring in Florida, Texas, and Oklahoma. In that time, six states have had botched lethal injections, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, which defines those as executions that include a departure from the protocol because of unanticipated problems and that cause more pain for the prisoner than anticipated, whether they ultimately end with a death or not. Several of the stories read like Carruthers’ — protracted but ultimately failed attempts to establish IV access.
Tennessee Health Workers’ Concerns
The IV team gave up on trying to place a typical line into Carruthers after several failed attempts, according to DeLiberato’s account. Following protocol, physician Mark Fowler, a contractor for the state’s prison system, then tried to place a central line in a deeper vein. That’s a quasi-surgical procedure in which a plastic tube is inserted in the chest, groin, or neck. Fowler used a series of syringes, trying to insert the tube under Carruthers’ collarbone and then through his shoulder.
In an October 2025 deposition, Fowler said he hadn’t done such a procedure in the 12 years since he had stopped working in an emergency room, and didn’t know that placing a central line could be among his execution duties.
Fowler told NPR by phone on Sept. 24 that “the doctor does not participate in the execution. The only thing the doctor does is declare the person dead.” He did not have further comment.
Two months after the halted lethal injection, more than 40 doctors and nurses sent a letter to Lee, calling on the Republican governor to pause executions and redesign the protocol to omit health workers from the process.
The letter said that Tennessee’s rules requiring the participation of pharmacists, physicians, and other healthcare workers in executions are at odds with medical ethics, as well as guidelines explicitly laid out by groups such as the American Medical Association. The AMA code says doctors are to preserve life when there is hope of doing so and bars participation in executions.
“This means that the health care professionals who agree to take part in Tennessee’s executions are those willing to set aside their professional ethics,” the letter to Lee reads. “The problems that we have seen, such as in Mr. Carruthers’s case, are the predictable result of working with such unscrupulous actors.”
John Greer, a retired Nashville hematologist, said in a news conference about the letter that he wasn’t surprised the central line placement went awry.
“Placing a central line is not just sticking a needle in a person’s arm,” he said.
Greer said the doctor has to tap a large vessel above the heart. He said that it’s a risky procedure in which an error could cause a collapsed lung or heavy bleeding — and that only those with specific training and routine practice should attempt.
“And I cannot imagine that there would be someone who’s doing these routinely who would be involved in this procedure,” Greer said.
Some Republican state senators also called for a hold on executions and an overhaul of the process, saying that “incompetent administration” of capital punishment gives its critics more ammunition.
This summer, Lee said he didn’t want a pause.
“The Department of Correction did exactly what they should,” he said. “It should not affect executions in the future.”
“It’s one of the most difficult things that we do in this state,” Lee said later. “But I am committed to making sure that it is done in the way that it should be.”
The state’s lethal injection protocol orders the prison to keep a curtain over the media witnesses’ viewing window until the IVs are established, so none of them could offer a visual account of the failed execution attempt.
A lawsuit challenging that policy has been filed has been filed by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and news outlets including NPR member station WPLN. The lawsuit argues the lack of transparency during the IV placement process obscures problems like the ones that happened in Carruthers’ case.
There’s a broad understanding in the U.S. that the medical establishment doesn’t participate in executions, said Matthew Wynia, director of the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Colorado’s medical school.
“We came out of World War II with a whole bioethics and medical ethics enterprise that is really strongly opposed to medicine serving as an arm of the state and using specialized medical skills to hurt people or kill people,” Wynia said.
Wynia mentioned other nations where medical professionals still participate in executions.
“But they are, you know, Iran and Saudi Arabia and Russia, sort of authoritarian states, where medicine is an arm of the government,” Wynia said. “Medical involvement in executions ends up happening because medicine is unable to say, ‘No, we don’t do that.’”
Upcoming Execution
On Sept. 30, Tennessee is scheduled to execute Christa Pike, who was 18 years old when she and her boyfriend killed Colleen Slemmer.
Pike’s attorneys this year raised several concerns that the state’s lethal injection protocol would violate her rights. Among them is their contention that because she suffers from a platelet disorder, it’s likely she will need a central line placed. They also argued that she was at risk of needless suffering, alleging Carruthers’ execution showed that Fowler — who has confirmed publicly that he will oversee Pike’s execution — is incompetent at placing central lines.
In June, they put all of those concerns in a request to the Tennessee Supreme Court, asking for a special investigator to collect evidence and hold hearings to determine whether they warranted an order to delay her execution and design a method for only her.
The court did appoint a special investigator, Senior Judge Mark Ward. He held a series of hearings in Knoxville last month. Ward said he didn’t believe Pike’s rights would be violated by the process and submitted his report to the court.
On Sept. 23, the Tennessee Supreme Court denied Pike’s stay, agreeing with Ward, saying none of the concerns amounted to a constitutional violation. On Sept. 28, Lee announced he would not grant her clemency.
This article is from a partnership that includes WPLN, NPR, and KFF Health News.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
The run-up to the midterm elections is turning into a food fight — literally.
The summer was marred by a massive foodborne outbreak that sickened scores of people and the recall of tens of thousands of pounds of imported meat, turning the safety of the U.S. food supply into a topic of national conversation and a political cause.
Late-night talk show hosts joked about symptoms that included explosive diarrhea. As a precaution, chain restaurants such as Chipotle and Taco Bell yanked lettuce, jalapeños, and other suspected products from menus. Some food safety scientists blamed the outbreaks on federal cuts to public health.
These dynamics collectively have raised questions about whether it’s safe to order a salad or burger.
Democrats have come out on the offensive, saying voters worried about the safety of the U.S. food supply should oust Republicans in the midterm elections. The Trump administration has countered by accusing Democrats of scaremongering over food safety to score political points.
The political fracas reflects the toll that large-scale outbreaks have had on the public psyche. Midterm voters have long cared about pocketbook issues such as grocery prices, but the spate of recalls has them worried about whether the food they’re buying is safe to eat — and political leaders are paying attention.
The outbreak linked to cyclospora in lettuce led to almost 20,000 laboratory-confirmed cases of illness from May through August, compared with 1,180 cases during the same span in 2025, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That makes it the largest recorded outbreak of the parasite.
“One of the reasons food safety is in the news this year, and people have been rightfully concerned, is the combination of high-profile restaurant names and the absolute colossal number of illnesses,” said Teresa Murray, consumer watchdog director with the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, or PIRG, an advocacy group, referring to a recent cyclosporiasis outbreak. “It’s thousands of people. It makes it more real.”
A majority of registered voters have little or no confidence in government oversight of food safety, with Democrats far more likely than Republicans to doubt the protections in place, according to a July survey by Quinnipiac University. Ninety-four percent of U.S. adults indicated they were concerned about the frequency of food recalls in a poll by GS1 US, a data standards organization.
The share of consumers who strongly agree that the U.S. food system produces food that’s safe to eat declined to about 30% in August, from 40% in November, based on survey data released in September by the University of Illinois and Purdue University.
Democrats have jumped at the chance to repeat criticisms of President Donald Trump’s budget cuts and priorities.
The Democratic National Committee recently posted a list of recalled food items on social media while calling Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. a “complete disaster” who must resign.
“Trump is dismantling our government — and it’s harming people,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) posted Sept. 2 on the social platform X, adding: “Slashed food safety agencies → cyclospora outbreak.” Just weeks earlier, she had written to Kennedy demanding answers for what she described as the administration’s “failed response” and its connection to political contributions.
Rep. Gabe Amo (D-R.I.) posted Sept. 5 on X: “I’m calling on Trump to stop gutting the FDA & restore its inspectors. We deserve safe food.”
The campaign for Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) posted Sept. 5 on X: “Trump is cutting our food safety funding and workforce, and we have seen far too many food recalls this summer.”
But the number of recalls doesn’t tell the whole story.
While recalls aren’t markedly up this year compared with 2025, they are up over a broader time span. The country saw 320 food recalls by the Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2025, up from 296 in 2024, according to PIRG.
The total number of recalls grew 21% from 2021 to 2025, based on an analysis by Trace One, a provider of regulatory guidance software. A rise in Class I recalls, which are the highest priority because the products could cause serious illness or death, drove much of the increase.
But recall numbers can be misleading. For starters, federal agencies do not publicize all recalls, especially if products are no longer on the market. Recall data itself is suspect because a single contaminated food can result in multiple recalls if the item is incorporated into processed food or other products.
A far better measure is the number of people sickened, epidemiologists say. And this summer’s specific multistate outbreak from cyclospora was exceptional, affecting people in 21 states.
When it comes to bacterial contamination of food — which is more common and includes E. coli, listeria, and salmonella — the overall trend points to outbreaks in which fewer people are falling ill. That’s a promising sign, some food safety leaders say, although the CDC says an estimated 48 million people each year in the U.S. experience foodborne illness.
“That’s an indication we’re finding more outbreaks and finding more when they are smaller and limiting the extent to which they can get bigger,” said Craig Hedberg, a public health professor at the University of Minnesota and leader in food safety surveillance.
Still, the perception that the food supply is riskier has been enough to ignite political rancor.
The FDA recently asserted on X that recalls for fiscal year 2026 are among the lowest levels recorded in over a decade, stating, “Don’t believe the fake news.” It included a chart that showed recalls dropping to 1,836 in fiscal 2026 from almost 4,000 in fiscal year 2013.
On the same day, HHS senior adviser Calley Means doubled down on the claim, posting on X that Kennedy is doing so well that Democratic operatives are slamming the FDA for doing its job by conducting food recalls.
“It makes sense that these craven, disingenuous attacks are all these influencers have,” he wrote.
But some food safety experts question the numbers, noting that the agency’s recall totals cover a range of products. The tally also includes drugs and medical devices, based on an analysis of the posted data by Susan Mayne, who was director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition from 2015 to 2023. Some food safety leaders say it’s misleading to imply that food safety recalls have declined if the data the claim is based on includes recalls not related to food.
“This HHS assertion appears to be based on incorrect data,” Mayne said on LinkedIn, a job-oriented social networking site.
It’s About More Than Recalls
Food safety has occasionally taken center stage in politics. In 1993, for example, an E. coli outbreak traced to Jack in the Box fast-food outlets pressured newly inaugurated President Bill Clinton to make it an agenda item at his first Cabinet meeting. His administration wound up adopting a new approach focused on preventing foodborne illness and credited with drastically reducing E. coli infections.
Concern about food safety has especially taken hold now, public health leaders say, because the administration is portraying itself as a safety crusader while cutting staffing and funding for federal agencies responsible for surveillance and inspection.
“There’s a level of hypocrisy from the administration when they promise to make our food safer and then eviscerate the agencies and programs that detect and prevent outbreaks,” said Sarah Sorscher, regulatory affairs director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
The FDA continues to have the staff required for outbreak investigations, and no FDA investigators were affected by staffing changes or reductions in force, HHS spokesperson Grace Davis Jamison said in an email.
The CDC lab supporting foodborne outbreak investigations also was not impacted by reductions in force, she said, and the agency maintains a dedicated team investigating foodborne outbreaks and working closely with state and local health departments.
“The Trump Administration has mounted a robust response to each outbreak, working closely with health departments in all 50 states and leading the public health response by promptly identifying known sources and providing Americans with the information they need to protect themselves,” she said.
The administration’s initiatives risk weakening food safety protections. Trump in late August said he would take action to make it easier for small livestock operations to slaughter and process their own meat, raising concerns among food safety leaders that the change could allow inadequately inspected beef to enter the food system.
Trump also announced the U.S. would import more beef from Argentina and Brazil, despite concerns about inspections and safety. The European Union has implemented a ban on Brazilian beef imports because of noncompliance with food safety and antibiotic use.
The administration withdrew a proposed Biden-era rule that would have stopped the sale of raw turkey and chicken containing high levels of salmonella. And it said it would delay compliance with a rule requiring grocery stores and companies to trace food in their supply chains, allowing for quick removal in cases of contamination. Implementation, originally set for Jan. 20 of this year, would instead occur in July 2028.
The actions came after hearing concerns from stakeholders about the time needed to comply, Davis Jamison said.
Some food safety leaders say the administration should do more to prevent foodborne illnesses, saying that failing to direct more resources into preventing problems makes it harder for Kennedy’s campaign to encourage people to eat more fresh foods.
In fact, almost half of consumers changed their habits regarding which groceries they bought and 40% modified purchases at restaurants in the past month due to foodborne illness concerns, according to the survey by the University of Illinois and Purdue University. Concerns about foodborne illness exposure via fresh vegetables increased in August compared with feedback from the previous two years.
“If you want people to eat real food, fresh fruits and vegetables, they have to be safe,” said Sandra Eskin, chief executive at Stop Foodborne Illness, a nonprofit public health organization. “Instead, we have had farmers plowing under fields because people aren’t buying lettuce.”
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
State health officials said 55 new cases had been reported since Wednesday. In all, 890 measles cases have been reported across 39 counties so far this year.
MAPLEWOOD, Mo. — After Missouri voters added abortion protections to the state constitution in 2024, Kelly McCoomb decided to keep her yard sign supporting the measure in the basement of her suburban St. Louis home.
Abortion access is important to McCoomb. She wants her daughter to grow up in a state where the option is available if needed, and the sign was a keepsake from the day Missourians voted to reverse the state’s near-total ban. McCoomb also couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d need to display the sign in her yard again soon.
“I have little faith in our Missouri government,” McCoomb said, sitting on her front porch.
Sure enough, just two years later, the state’s Republican-dominated legislature is asking Missouri voters to overturn the abortion protections they recently supported. The conflicting measures even have the same title: Amendment 3. But while a “yes” vote in 2024 supported adding protections to the state constitution, a “no” vote in 2026 would keep them. McCoomb covered the “YES” on her yard sign with a “NO” made from black duct tape before placing the sign back in her yard.
Voters will weigh in on abortion in Missouri, and three other states, in the November general election. Missouri is also one of two states voting on it for the second time since 2024. Nevada will vote again, too.
The spate of referenda comes after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned federal abortion protections with its 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, leaving each state to make its own abortion policy. The result has been a patchwork of state rules with varying degrees of bans or limitations, and even a series of “shield laws” in states where abortion remains legal that aim to protect providers from prosecution in states where it’s not.
“I just think there’s a constitutional crisis that’s coming,” said Kristi Hamrick, vice president of media and policy for the anti-abortion organization Students for Life Action.
“Can you have 50 state standards on whether or not a human being is a human being? Can you have 50 state standards on whether human beings have legal protection?” Hamrick said.
Advocacy Groups Work To Clarify Ballot Measures
That patchwork of abortion protections is the reason Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom introduced the 2024 ballot measure to enshrine the state’s law allowing abortions up to 24 weeks after conception into the state constitution, said Denise Lopez, president of the coalition.
The measure received strong support two years ago, with 64% of voters in favor. Nevada law requires two majority votes to enshrine constitutional amendments, so voters will need to support the expanded protection again in November for it to be enacted.
The Nevada ballot measure wouldn’t change the state’s existing law allowing abortions up to 24 weeks after conception. But the proposal would make it more difficult to overturn abortion access, requiring voter approval of any new ban in two elections.
Lopez said Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom has been campaigning to ensure voters are still mobilized.
“Folks care about it,” she said. “They’re seeing what’s happening at the national level, and they want to make sure that whatever’s happening in our neighboring states, like Idaho and Utah, doesn’t happen here in Nevada.”
Idaho, where a ballot measure establishing abortion rights recently qualified to go before voters in November, has one of the strictest abortion bans in the country. Voters will decide whether state statute should allow abortion through fetal viability, the point when a fetus can survive after birth, which is generally considered to be around 24 weeks.
In Utah, abortion is allowed up to 18 weeks while legal challenges to the state’s ban continue.
In Virginia, where abortion is already allowed through two trimesters of pregnancy, until 28 weeks, voters will decide whether to amend their state constitution to codify those rights.
Missouri is the only state voting this year on removing abortion protections already on the books. The measure would repeal the 2024 amendment that guaranteed abortion access through fetal viability in the state and replace it with a ban on abortions with exceptions for medical emergencies, fetal anomalies, and pregnancies resulting from rape or incest. Abortions for rape and incest would have to occur before 12 weeks of pregnancy.
Missouri was the first state to ban abortion after the Dobbs decision in 2022. At that time, abortions had already mostly ceased in the state after three decades of state regulations targeting the practice, including a 72-hour waiting period, minimum dimensions for procedure rooms and hallways in clinics that provide abortions, and a mandate that the clinicians have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals, among others. Only 150 abortions were performed in Missouri in 2021, down from 5,772 in 2011, state records show.
Even though Missouri voters backed the abortion amendment in 2024, it took nearly two years for medication abortions to resume in the state.
A Second Vote Causes Confusion
Margot Riphagen-Dunn, CEO of St. Louis-based Planned Parenthood Great Rivers, said the whiplash of a second statewide vote on abortion mirrors the confusion that patients have experienced about whether abortion is available in the state.
“Chaos is kind of the point here,” Riphagen-Dunn said, “and it is absolutely a tactic that gets in the way of being able to provide.”
The confusion has presented problems for abortion opponents in the state as well.
“I think it’s unfortunate,” said Reagan Barklage, who is a vice president of Students for Life of America and the treasurer of the Missouri Students for Life Ballot Committee. “People need to be very clear on what they’re voting for.”
Barklage said she has had to correct anti-abortion voters while out canvassing to remind them that they are voting “yes” on Amendment 3 this year even though they voted “no” on Amendment 3 last time.
“It is crazy that it ended up being even the same number. I do not think that was intentional, but we’ve got to deal with what we’ve got,” Barklage said, adding, “I hope the pro-choicers kept their yard signs from last time.”
In Maplewood, Missouri, McCoomb said she was happy that her repurposed sign supporting abortion access had been noticed.
“I hope lots of people see and remember to revote,” McCoomb said.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
OAK HILL, W.Va. — Each day at New River Health in Oak Hill, Lisa Emery finds disheartening signs of what she describes as a slow-motion repeat of the Hawks Nest Tunnel disaster.
The disaster she’s reminded of started in 1930, when construction began on a 3-mile tunnel through Gauley Mountain in West Virginia. Over the course of 18 months, some 3,000 miners, most of them Black, spent long hours drilling through sandstone, engulfed in a cloud of its toxic byproduct, silica dust. More than 750 men died from that exposure.
The risk still exists, and advocates for workers say the government should do more to rein it in.
In April of last year, the Trump administration paused the enforcement of a rule designed to help protect coal miners from an aggressive form of coal workers’ pneumoconiosis, commonly known as black lung disease, the primary cause of which is exposure to silica dust.
(Other occupations at high risk of exposure to silica dust include construction, countertop fabrication, and oil and gas work. The new rule would reduce the permissible limit of exposure in coal mining to the existing level in other industries.)
This April, the Labor Department’s Mine Safety and Health Administration announced an indefinite delay in enforcement of the rule.
Gary Hairston sits on New River Health’s board. For decades, Hairston, a retired coal miner and president of the national Black Lung Association, has been an advocate for miners struggling with the debilitating effects of black lung, including extreme fatigue, an incessant cough, and a sensation of drowning. He regularly lobbies legislators for improved working conditions and black lung benefits. His entreaties, he said, seem to fall on deaf ears. He rarely gets an audience with the legislators themselves.
“I’d just like them to look me in the face,” Hairston said.
Gary Hairston, president of the Black Lung Association, says his lobbying of legislators for improved working conditions and black lung benefits for coal miners seems to fall on deaf ears. (Taylor Sisk for KFF Health News)
Evidence from just-released research underscores the urgency of his appeals for a safer work environment.
In August, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, an agency within the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, released a report on the results of testing conducted over the past five years on miners in central Appalachia — eastern Kentucky, southwestern Virginia, and West Virginia — with 25 or more years underground. Almost 1 in 3 tested positive for black lung disease, the highest rate in nearly 50 years.
The rate in 2018, the last time the agency reported results, was 1 in 5. The lowest reported rate, in 1999, was less than 1 in 10.
“We knew this would happen,” said Sam Petsonk, a West Virginia attorney who has represented thousands of miners in the region. “It’s surprising to me that they only found one in three.”
Silica Dangers
Exposure to silica has increased as more-accessible coal seams are depleted, requiring mining operations to probe deeper, often through sandstone. The stone breaks into sharp particles that are 100 times smaller than a grain of sand and, according to National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health research, are some 20 times more toxic than coal dust. Trapped in lung tissue, those particles can cause a debilitating, sometimes fatal condition.
Kenny Thompson, a retired West Virginia miner who now lives in Richmond, Kentucky, was employed in the mines for 22 years. He would sometimes cut into four feet of sandstone to reach a coal seam.
“You ate a lot of dust,” Thompson recalled. It induced nausea. It took a toll.
In October 2025, he had his left lung removed. Post-surgery, he was in a coma for three months; he flatlined three times, he said. “They were about to really give up on me.”
He had to relearn to walk and to talk. Trekking to the mailbox still leaves him winded, lightheaded, and blurry-eyed.
The new silica rule would cut the allowable level of silica dust in half, thereby meeting the standard of other industries. Miner advocates laud the fact that it would require operators to deploy engineering controls, such as improved ventilation systems and water sprays.
But the National Mining Association and other industry trade groups argue that reaching and maintaining compliance would also require supplementing those controls with workforce measures, such as requiring personal protection equipment and rotating miners from particularly dusty areas. Many miners, and their advocates, say such measures are impractical — because respirators can impede breathing, can limit vision, and often malfunction, and because smaller mines don’t have enough workers to support rotating schedules.
In April 2025, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted an emergency stay of the rule to give operators more time to comply.
In May of this year, the Labor Department sent the White House Office of Management and Budget a request to gather information on the proposed rule. And in July, the department’s regulatory agenda included a new notice of proposed rulemaking, indicating its intent to amend the rule.
The department’s Mine Safety and Health Administration “recognizes it has a clear duty under the law to impose stricter silica standards,” said Petsonk, the attorney representing coal miners. “They’re failing to provide that measure of protection to American coal miners, so they’re going through bureaucratic motions to make it seem like they’re doing something, when, in fact, they’re just perpetuating an illegal and lethal status quo.”
The Labor Department declined to comment on ongoing rulemaking or litigation.
“We knew this would happen,” West Virginia attorney Sam Petsonk says of a recently released report showing that the black lung rate for coal miners in central Appalachia is at a nearly 50-year high. (Taylor Sisk for KFF Health News)
‘It’s On the Books’
The rule is, in fact, in effect, said Chris Williamson, head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration in the Biden administration — it’s just not being enforced. He and his team filed a legal brief in the closing days of the administration defending the rule.
“It’s on the books,” Williamson said, adding that the Mine Safety and Health Act prohibits weakening existing protections for miners. “I’m just genuinely curious,” he said. “I want to know how they can address the issues that the industry’s raised without weakening protections for miners.”
Meanwhile, younger miners, with a decade or less in the mines, are being diagnosed with advanced stages of black lung. New River Health’s Emery said the youngest person her clinic had diagnosed with complicated black lung was 30. He’d worked underground for 10 years.
This is no longer just your “papaw’s disease,” she said. “It’s your husband’s disease. It’s your son’s disease.” (More than 90% of coal miners are men.)
With families to support, Emery said, “what do these guys do when they’re disabled in their 30s?”
Lisa Emery is director of the New River Health Breathing Center in West Virginia and chair of the National Coalition of Black Lung and Respiratory Disease Clinics. She says the youngest person her clinic has diagnosed with complicated black lung was 30. (Taylor Sisk for KFF Health News)
She told of a man who sat in her office with his wife, describing his symptoms. As he spoke, he began to cry. His wife was taken aback. “‘I didn’t know it was that bad,’” Emery recalled her saying. “And he said: ‘That’s why I haven’t fixed the deck. I haven’t fixed the deck because I can’t breathe, and I’m just so tired.’”
Thompson can relate. “For 22 years, you’re used to getting up, putting your boots on every day, and going to work,” he said. “I’d been in great health shape and 160 pounds. And here I am now, I don’t work at all and I’m 115 pounds.”
Still, he recognizes what the job afforded.
“You know, it put my girls through college,” he said. “And to me, as a dad, that was the best reward that I can give them, to move forward in life, to be successful at what they chose to be and not work like a dog like I had to.”
President Donald Trump said in an April 2025 executive order: “Our Nation’s beautiful clean coal resources will be critical to meeting the rise in electricity demand due to the resurgence of domestic manufacturing and the construction of artificial intelligence data processing centers.”
Six months later, the Energy Department announced a $625 million investment to “expand and reinvigorate America’s coal industry.”
Should the administration announce a weaker rule, it would be “an unconscionable crime against American coal miners,” Petsonk said. “But I fear that’s going to happen.”
“It seems like coal miners, we’re just a number,” he said. “Just a number.”
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
The agency led by Dr. Mehmet Oz is proposing an end to weekly tracking of respiratory infections at the facilities where thousands of elderly residents died in the pandemic.
About half of rural American voters believe the economy is worse off now than when President Donald Trump returned to office, according to a new survey that points to economic frustration among a key group that has backed Trump and other Republicans in recent elections.
The poll of more than 2,000 rural registered voters by The Associated Press in partnership with KFF found broadly negative views on the national and local economies, including from many Republicans. The costs of groceries, gas, and healthcare rank as top pain points for the rural voters, who were surveyed over two weeks starting in mid-August. And a larger share than among voters overall say they are worried about being able to afford groceries or gas.
At the same time, about half of rural voters approve of Trump’s job performance, more than among U.S. adults overall in separate AP-NORC polling.
The findings suggest that many rural voters haven’t turned on Trump but that they also largely don’t think he has delivered the economic renaissance he promised on the campaign trail.
Ed Westrick, a registered Republican and veteran, rates Trump’s job performance as “mediocre, middle-of-the-road.” Westrick, who lives in rural Texas, isn’t sure he will cast a midterm ballot, a troubling sign for Republicans in a key state in their fight to keep control of Congress.
Rural Americans skew Republican and historically have been an instrumental group of voters for Trump. The survey reveals that while rural voters seem unlikely to support Democrats on a large scale, Trump and the Republican Party could face challenges with them in November.
Deep Unhappiness About the Economy
As the election approaches, only about 4 in 10 rural voters approve of Trump’s performance on the economy. They rate him similarly on his handling of the Iran war, an entanglement that has proved expensive for the U.S. and increased oil and gas prices. And rural voters rank pocketbook concerns and fraud in government programs higher among the things they want to hear about from politicians than other perennial issues, such as gun policy and abortion.
Westrick, 59, is a technical trainer in the electronics industry and has seen an increase in business in part because he works with defense contractors, but he said he’s concerned about the cost of living.
“I hear the politicians talk about making groceries more affordable and making healthcare more affordable but yet none of them are addressing the issues,” Westrick said.
Westrick adjusts a roof on a small building at his home in rural Texas. (LM Otero/AP)
In the poll, about three-quarters of rural voters rated the cost of living in their communities as “only fair” or “poor” — up from about half in a KFF-Washington Post survey in 2017. Rural Americans, who have consistently lower wages than those who live in suburban and metro areas, have been hurting economically for decades, according to Tim Slack, a professor of sociology at Louisiana State University and co-author of the book Rural and Small-Town America.
“Many folks are connecting the cost-of-living crisis to many of the Trump administration’s policy choices: the war in Iran, tariffs, trade wars,” Slack said. “None of those things are going to bring down prices at the pump or the local Walmart.”
“Trump promised to lower prices on Day 1, and instead the cost of living’s continued to climb. And that’s especially painful in rural America,” Slack said, adding that he expects many working-class Republicans to skip voting in November.
Rural Republicans do have a brighter economic perspective than rural Democrats or independents, particularly about the U.S. as a whole, according to the survey. About 6 in 10 rural Republican voters say Trump has improved the national economy, compared with only about 2 in 10 independents and fewer than 1 in 10 Democrats.
But only 45% of rural Republican voters say Trump has made their local economies better off. About 1 in 4 said there are fewer good-paying jobs where they live than five years ago.
In Michigan, 37-year-old independent voter Brittainy Sosebee said she isn’t sure if she will vote in the state’s midterm election, which includes a tight Senate race seen as crucial to the Democratic Party’s push to win back a majority. Sosebee voted for Trump in 2016 and Democratic candidate Joe Biden in 2020; she didn’t vote in 2024.
Sosebee, who lives in St. Johns, a small town just north of Lansing, said she used to have extra money to take a vacation or buy a new pair of jeans without worrying. Now, she scrutinizes every expense, cringing at the rising cost of fresh produce when she shops for her three children.
“We hunt, so we have a lot of venison and things like that, so we don’t have to buy meat from the grocery store, but it’s still crippling,” she said.
Healthcare Policies Go Unnoticed
The KFF-AP poll found that rural voters overall don’t perceive much positive impact from the Trump administration’s healthcare policies even as they have been a top priority for Republican leaders, who have promoted efforts to lower drug costs and touted a $50 billion rural health program.
Only 17% of the voters said the Trump administration’s healthcare policies have had a “positive impact” on their healthcare costs, while 41% said they’ve had “no impact” and another 41% said they’ve had a “negative impact.”
Sitting on her front porch in Woolwich, Maine, 71-year-old Democrat Kathleen Hanning sipped a chai tea latte in the sun and recalled how she stopped voting for Republican Sen. Susan Collins in 2020.
Collins and Trump are “intertwined,” Hanning said. “She is not independently voting on what’s best for Maine.”
Hanning, a retired federal worker, said she hadn’t paid much attention to the health policies in Trump’s signature tax-break-and-spending-cut bill passed last year. The law reduces federal Medicaid spending by roughly $900 billion over a decade but also includes the billions of dollars for the Rural Health Transformation Program, which it created.
A year after the law’s passage, more than 8 in 10 rural voters said they’d heard either “a little” or “nothing at all” about the health fund. About 60% said they had heard nothing, according to the survey.
Rather than transforming, Hanning said, “hospitals up here in Maine are consolidating.” She travels an hour to see a specialist and noted that mothers will now have to drive farther for care because the hospital in nearby Damariscotta announced it would soon close its labor and delivery center.
Nine in 10 rural voters said it was “extremely” or “very” important for candidates to talk about healthcare costs, with more than half saying it’s “extremely important.” Mirroring the general population, rural voters ranked healthcare costs and gas prices as top economic worries.
Rural Republican Voters Still Trust GOP More
When asked which political party they trusted to do a better job handling issues such as the cost of healthcare or the cost of living, rural voters tended to side with their own party. The finding signals that Democratic candidates are more likely to benefit from rural Republicans’ staying home this November than from their voting across party lines in large numbers.
Republicans are more ambivalent about their party’s ability to handle key healthcare issues, compared with Democrats. About 8 in 10 Democratic voters say they trust the Democrats to address healthcare costs, while closer to 6 in 10 Republican voters say the same of the Republicans.
In Manassas, Georgia, a tiny town about an hour’s drive inland from Savannah, Republican voter Wanda Rogers feels the Trump administration is doing the best it can to clean up what she sees as an economic mess that Democrats left behind when they lost power.
“I kind of think people think like I do, that he knows what needs to be done,” she said. “It’s just taking them a while to get it there.”
Still, the 66-year-old said, “gas prices, they’re eating me alive right now.” She said she has stopped traveling to the beach because it has become too expensive.
Pamela Shaw, an independent voter who lives in a rural area near Asheville, North Carolina, said she sees the impact of rising costs in her community.
“When hamburger is over $7 a pound and steak is $15 or more a pound, a lot of people are not able to buy some of the things that they are used to buying,” the 59-year-old said in an interview.
Trump’s Rural Standing Has Slipped
Trump remains relatively popular among rural voters in the KFF-AP poll, with 48% approval — substantially higher than in a July AP-NORC poll of U.S. adults overall, in which only a third approved of his performance. But he’s also down slightly, from 56% approval, among rural voters, based on a similar question asked in the earlier KFF-Washington Post survey.
This year’s competitive elections feature key Senate races in states including Ohio, Michigan, and Maine, all of which have large rural populations. In close races, Democrats may have a chance to “show up and give a message that rural people might find appealing,” said Nicholas Jacobs, a political scientist at Colby College and co-author of the book The Rural Voter.
“But it’s nothing more and it’s nothing less than that — an opportunity,” Jacobs said. “And time and time again, Democrats have shown a certain proclivity for not seizing that opportunity.”
Many rural voters don’t think the major parties or the president respect people like them. About half, 48%, of rural voters say the GOP respects people like them “a lot” or “some,” while 45% of rural voters say this about Trump and 37% say this about the Democratic Party.
On a recent Thursday, registered Republican Nate Lawrence answered his phone after paying $57 to fill up his Chevy Equinox in New Concord, Ohio, a village of fewer than 3,000 people about an hour’s drive east of Columbus.
Lawrence, a middle school English teacher, said the candidates should be talking about spending power: “I need to be able to go to the store and feed my family on what I make as a teacher,” Lawrence said. “I should be able to pay for a house on a teacher’s salary.”
Lawrence has voted for Trump in the past but didn’t in 2024. For Ohio’s Senate race, Lawrence said he is torn and not sure whether to pick Democrat Sherrod Brown or Republican Jon Husted.
Still, even if the politicians say they will lower prices, Lawrence said, he won’t believe them.
“Trump said that, and it didn’t happen,” he said.
About the Poll
The KFF-AP Rural Voters Survey was conducted online and by telephone Aug. 12-24, 2026, among 2,241 registered voters living in rural areas, defined as census tracts that fall within codes 5-10 of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 2020 Rural-Urban Commuting Area (RUCA) codes. Voters were reached through a combination of the probability-based SSRS Opinion Panel and a registration-based sample from the L2 voter file. Overall results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, including design effects due to weighting. Error margins are larger for subgroups. In collaboration with the AP, KFF researchers worked to design the survey sample and questionnaire and analyze and report findings.
This report is from a collaboration between KFF Health News and The Associated Press.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
October 03, 2026
Rose
