We've had three amazing days at the Rural Progress Summit!

Today's programming included a conversation between OCP founder Heidi Heitkamp and Barbara McQuade, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School and former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, about her book, Attack from Within: How Disinformation is Sabotaging America.

Disinformation has been allowed to run rampant, an invasive weed proliferating in today's media and social media landscape. If left unaddressed, these seeds of untruth can grow and damage the foundations of our democracy. In the book, Barbara explains how to combat rising authoritarianism by increasing media literacy and setting up legal guardrails that uproot misinformation online while protecting free speech and access.

Day Three featured a variety of other conversations about the importance of truth and trust:

• Public schools are the civic and cultural centers of our communities, but are suffering from the GOP's attacks on all fronts. Books bans, "Don't Say Gay" laws, and increasingly politicized curricula are eroding trust in public schools and diverting taxpayers' money to private and charter schools thanks to school vouchers. Iowa State Representative Adam Zabner; Laura Pappano, writer at the Wellesley Centers for Women at Wellesley College; UC Riverside Professor Joseph Kahne; and Kim Popham, public policy and research director at the Montana Federation of Public Employees discussed the impact of local school board elections.
• Media is ever-evolving. Joel Heitkamp, co-host of OCP's Hot Dish podcast; Michelle Rathman, host of The Rural Impact Podcast; Isaac Wright with the Rural Voter Institute; and Voxtopica's Richard Fawal discussed how we can still reach rural voters on channels from FM radio to TikTok.
• Colby College Professors Nicholas Jacobs and Daniel Shea explained the research behind their book, The Rural Voter: The Politics of Place and the Disuniting of America, and why single-party supremacy in rural regions is damaging our democracy.
• The 2024 elections are coming up fast. Tom Bonier and Tim Miller took a look at how control of the House, Senate, and White House could shake out – and how campaigns can drum up voter enthusiasm and drive turnout. Plus, Tom Laroch dove into the Montana Senate race.

Thank you for joining!

Watch the panels Here!

Tessa