Between the Trump administration’s budget, DOGE’s destruction of government effectiveness, and the tenets of Project 2025, there seems to be a civil war in America, but this time it’s the billionaires vs. rural America.
The billionairocracy running the federal government right now has proposed or promised a wide variety of initiatives that have placed a target on America’s small towns and rural populations. They want to defund, deregulate, destroy, or privatize – or a combo platter of several of those—much of what makes rural America, well, great.
When proposals roll around—and they do often—to privatize the U.S. Postal Service, those plans would inevitably lead to reduced services—the closing of smaller post offices and a reversal of the universal service obligation that brings mail sent from the smallest town in Iowa to the smallest town in Nebraska—or anywhere in between or beyond. Post offices are still a place where bills can be paid in some areas, and, like libraries, they are a connection to local, state, and federal governments, offering passport applications and tax forms, along with services like certified mail and delivery pauses for when you’re not home. (A recent report from the Institute for Policy Studies, “Who Would Pay the Biggest Price for Postal Privatization,” outlines some of the services to rural Americans that could be lost.) Think we’re crying wolf to worry because past attempts to privatize the post office have failed? Maybe. But it was reported this week that President Trump and the postal service’s governing board are expected to name David Steiner, a board member of FedEx, as Postmaster General.
The billionairocracy is also fond of voucher programs that take money from the public budget to spend on private schools. What type of geography has the least number of private schools? Rural America. Cities and suburbs are where the private schools are located, and they cater to city and suburban students mostly. And who are these students? Study after study show that vouchers are going to families who were already attending or planning to attend private schools, and to families that can best afford to pay for private schools. Who does pay? Among others, rural families, who send their kids overwhelmingly to public schools.
And while vouchers have until now mainly been a state issue, the Educational Choice for Children Act—ECCA—that Trump is trying to wedge into law—possibly through budget reconciliation—would bring that to a national scale—draining billions of dollars from public education.
Airlines cram passengers onto planes these days so they can cram millions of dollars in profits into the pockets of shareholders and CEOs, and privatizing air traffic control will only make it worse for us and better for them. Left to their own devices, they will jack up prices and cut services, but the people who will pay the highest price—financial and through reduced services—are small town Americans.
In 2017, we published “Ten reasons not to give big commercial airlines more power by privatizing air traffic control,” and right in the middle of this list was this: “The airlines don’t care about small towns and rural communities.” Back then we reported that between 2007 and 2013, scheduled departures at medium-hub airports decreased nearly 24 percent and about 20 percent at small-hub airports, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office. We can report now that they care even less—or rather, they couldn’t possibly care less—about rural America.
As we noted in February:
Only four airlines control about 70 percent of domestic airline traffic, and about 70 percent of traffic goes through the 31 largest airports out of about 5,000 public-use airports in the national airspace system. For the airlines, hub-to-hub routes are the most profitable, and it makes sense that they would maximize these. But for many Americans, especially those in rural areas or farther from large cities, this trend makes it harder to access transportation and participate in the modern economy. Towns and small cities that lose access to airline service often struggle to retain businesses and jobs.
In April, we wrote about DOGE’s defunding of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, ending its grantmaking and decimating its staff. Last year, it provided $267 million to libraries and museums across the U.S. It was one of seven agencies targeted in an executive order to “reduce the performance of their statutory functions and associated personnel to the minimum presence and function required by law.” And state lawmakers and governors in some states are following up with their own proposed funding cuts and freezes. Who will this impact the most? Small towns and rural Americans, since the institute’s focus has been on helping to organize book drives and museum field trips in places that don’t have libraries and museums.
We doubt the billionaires in private jets crisscrossing the country between their houses and their other houses and their other, other houses bother to gaze out the window to view the small towns and farmlands that make up what they call flyover country. But that doesn’t mean they’re not looking down on rural America. And it shows.
Donald Cohen
Executive Director