North Carolina’s 2026 economic distress designations are here.

And several counties in Appalachia, those directly impacted by Hurricane Helene have been downgraded, meaning they are considered more economically distressed than they were in 2025.

Source: carolinapublicpress.org/73725/helene...

Burke County has the 4th-highest concentration of state employees per capita in North Carolina. That means changes to the state health plan hit us harder than almost anywhere else in the state.

My latest for The Paper on what's at stake: www.thepaper.media/as-state-hea...

$7.7 million of this is going toward rebuilding the municipal golf course in East Asheville.

Surely there's an expansive list of better ways to allocate this funding. Folks are still living in temporary housing. Small businesses are still repairing and recovering from damage to their storefronts.

The healthcare crisis is not abstract policy; it's a 69-year-old in Morganton weighing whether to stop taking heart and diabetes meds he cannot afford, and a 20-year-old nephew making $13 an hour who still cannot realistically buy affordable healthcare coverage.

www.thepaper.media/federal-stat...

Tom Andrews takes 11 medications. His wife takes 18. They have $6,000 in savings. Due to mounting healthcare costs, Medicare cuts, and expired ACA subsidies, they'll soon have to choose which life-saving drugs to keep

My latest for Common Appalachian:
commonappalachian.substack.com/p/those-are-...

Vance’s version of Appalachia is full of intentional victims held back by laziness and government dependency. Kingsolver’s Appalachia looks starkly different: a place populated by fiercely independent people whose connection to their land and willingness to work make them easy to exploit. (3/13)

Dozens of pro-immigration demonstrators gathered at four locations around Morganton on Saturday, protesting federal immigration raids that have swept through western North Carolina.

I spoke with several protestors in rural, Republican Burke County about what brought them out to protest yesterday.

An investigation by the @washingtonpost.com shows that many areas of the Eastern U.S., including Central #Appalachia, are vulnerable to extreme rainfall and #flooding. Mountains, economic challenges and infrastructure along waterways make preparing for and recovering from floods more challenging.

I will never understand why so many American climate activists are okay with Appalachia — one of the most biodiverse places in the world that has been on the frontlines of fossil fuel exploitation for centuries — getting destroyed by climate disasters because of classism and electoral politics.

Tom Belt views the weekly demonstration as a means of helping others “stay enthusiastic about speaking out."

“We want to try to be examples for everybody that drives by here,” he said. “North Carolina is a purple state, and there are going to be some critical elections coming up.”

They've been protesting every week since June 5th.

“We pay attention,” Amy Pletcher, a registered Democrat and Buncombe County resident, said. “There are plenty here in Southern Appalachia who vote for those who stand for our rights.”

commonappalachian.substack.com/p/buncombe-c...

Roughly 700 people gathered in Morganton, North Carolina, this morning for a “No Kings” protest organized by non-partisan Indivisible Burke NC, challenging President Trump’s executive power and authoritarian policies.

That's quite a feat for a rural town whose population is smaller than 18,000.

"Families are terrified," said Carlos Foster, co-founder of the Appalachian nonprofit Hands of Hope. "The raids have been the biggest thing. People don’t know if they’re going to go to work and never come home."

theclick.news/nonprofit-ha...

My first piece with The Click.

1 year since Hurricane Helene.

The Mountain Aid Project is one of several Appalachian groups that organized to provide relief in the immediate aftermath and is now expanding its mission to meet the long-term needs of the community. theclick.news/mountain-aid...