Millions in US live in places where doctors don’t practice and telehealth doesn’t reach

• March 15, 2025

By Sarah Jane Tribble and Holly K. Hacker, KFF Health News

BOLIGEE, Ala. — Green lights flickered on the wireless router in Barbara Williams’ kitchen. Just one bar lit up — a weak signal connecting her to the world beyond her home in the Alabama Black Belt.

Next to the router sat medications, vitamin D pills, and Williams’ blood glucose monitor kit.

“I haven’t used that thing in a month or so,” said Williams, 72, waving toward the kit. Diagnosed with diabetes more than six years ago, she has developed nerve pain from neuropathy in both legs.

Williams is one of nearly 3 million Americans who live in mostly rural counties that lack both health care and reliable high-speed internet, according to an analysis by KFF Health News, which showed that these people tend to live sicker and die younger than others in America.

Compared with those in other regions, patients across the rural South, Appalachia, and remote West are most often unable to make a video call to their doctor or log into their patient portals. Both are essential ways to participate in the U.S. medical system. And Williams is among those who can do neither.

This year, more than $42 billion allocated in the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is expected to begin flowing to states as part of a national “Internet for All” initiative launched by the Biden administration. But the program faces uncertainty after Commerce Department Secretary Howard Lutnick last week announced a “rigorous review” asserting that the previous administration’s approach was full of “woke mandates.”

High rates of chronic illness and historical inequities are hallmarks of many of the more than 200 U.S. counties with poor services that KFF Health News identified. Dozens of doctors, academics, and advocates interviewed for this article unanimously agreed that limited internet service hinders medical care and access.

Without fast, reliable broadband, “all we’re going to do is widen health care disparities within telemedicine,” said Rashmi Mullur, an endocrinologist and chief of telehealth at VA Greater Los Angeles. Patients with diabetes who also use telemedicine are more likely to get care and control their blood sugar, Mullur found.

Diabetes requires constant management. Left untreated, uncontrolled blood sugar can cause blindness, kidney failure, nerve damage, and eventually death.

Williams, who sees a nurse practitioner at the county hospital in the next town, said she is not interested in using remote patient monitoring or video calls.

“I know how my sugar affects me,” Williams said. “I get a headache if it’s too high.” She gets weaker when it’s down, she said, and always carries snacks like crackers or peppermints.

Williams said she could even drink a soda pop — orange, grape — when her sugar is low but would not drink one when she felt it was high because she would get “kind of goozie-woozy.”

‘This Is America’

Connectivity dead zones persist in American life despite at least $115 billion lawmakers have thrown toward fixing the inequities. Federal broadband efforts are fragmented and overlapping, with more than 133 funding programs administered by 15 agencies, according to a 2023 federal report.

“This is America. It’s not supposed to be this way,” said Karthik Ganesh, chief executive of Tampa, Florida-based OnMed, a telehealth company that in September installed a walk-in booth at the Boligee Community Center about 10 minutes from Williams’ home. Residents can call up free life-size video consultations with an OnMed health care provider and use equipment to check their weight and blood pressure.

OnMed, which partnered with local universities and the Alabama Cooperative Extension System, relies on SpaceX’s Starlink to provide a high-speed connection in lieu of other options.

A short drive from the community center, beyond Boligee’s Main Street with its deserted buildings and an empty railroad depot and down a long gravel drive, is the 22-acre property where Williams lives.

Last fall, Williams washed a dish in her kitchen, with its unforgiving linoleum-topped concrete floors. A few months earlier, she said, a man at the community center signed her up for “diabetic shoes” to help with her sore feet. They never arrived.

As Williams spoke, steam rose from a pot of boiling potatoes on the stove. Another pan sizzled with hamburger steak. And on a back burner simmered a mix of Velveeta cheese, diced tomatoes, and peppers.

She spent years on her feet as head cook at a diner in Cleveland, Ohio. The oldest of nine, Williams returned to her family home in Greene County more than 20 years ago to care for her mother and a sister, who both died from cancer in the back bedroom where she now sleeps.

Williams looked out a window and recalled when the landscape was covered in cotton that she once helped pick. Now three houses stand in a carefully tended clearing surrounded by tall trees. One belongs to a brother and the other to a sister who drives with her daily to the community center for exercise, prayers, and friendship with other seniors.

All the surviving siblings, Williams said, have diabetes. “I don’t know how we became diabetic,” she said. Neither of their parents had been diagnosed with the illness.

In Greene County, an estimated quarter of adults have diabetes — twice the national average. The county, which has about 7,600 residents, also has among the nation’s highest rates for several chronic diseases such as high blood pressure, stroke, and obesity, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data shows.

The county’s population is predominately Black. The federal CDC reports that Black Americans are more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes and are 40% more likely than their white counterparts to die from the condition. And in the South, rural Black residents are more likely to lack home internet access, according to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a Washington-based think tank.

To identify counties most lacking in reliable broadband and health care providers, KFF Health News used data from the Federal Communications Commission and George Washington University’s Mullan Institute for Health Workforce Equity. Reporters also analyzed U.S. Census Bureau, CDC, and other data to understand the health status and demographics of those counties.

The analysis confirms that internet and care gaps are “hitting areas of extreme poverty and high social vulnerability,” said Clese Erikson, deputy director of the health workforce research center at the Mullan Institute.

Digital haves vs. have-nots

Just over half of homes in Greene County have access to reliable high-speed internet — among the lowest rates in the nation. Greene County also has some of the country’s poorest residents, with a median household income of about $31,500. Average life expectancy is less than 72 years, below the national average.

By contrast, the KFF Health News analysis found that counties with the highest rates of internet access and health care providers correlated with higher life expectancy, less chronic disease, and key lifestyle factors such as higher incomes and education levels.

One of those is Howard County, Maryland, between Baltimore and Washington, D.C., where nearly all homes can connect to fast, reliable internet. The median household income is about $147,000 and average life expectancy is more than 82 years — a decade longer than in Greene County. A much smaller share of residents live with chronic conditions such as diabetes.

One is 78-year-old Sam Wilderson, a retired electrical engineer who has managed his Type 2 diabetes for more than a decade. He has fiber-optic internet at his home, which is a few miles from a cafe he dines at every week after Bible study. On a recent day, the cafe had a guest Wi-Fi download speed of 104 megabits per second and a 148 Mbps upload speed. The speeds are fast enough for remote workers to reliably take video calls.

Americans are demanding more speed than ever before. Most households have multiple devices — televisions, computers, gaming systems, doorbells — in addition to phones that can take up bandwidth. The more devices connected, the higher minimum speeds are needed to keep everything running smoothly.

To meet increasing needs, federal regulators updated the definition of broadband last year, establishing standard speeds of 100/20 Mbps. Those speeds are typically enough for several users to stream, browse, download, and play games at the same time.

Christopher Ali, professor of telecommunications at Penn State, recommends minimum standard speeds of 100/100 Mbps. While download speeds enable consumption, such as streaming or shopping, fast upload speeds are necessary to participate in video calls, say, for work or telehealth.

At the cafe in Howard County, on a chilly morning last fall, Wilderson ordered a glass of white wine and his usual: three-seeded bread with spinach, goat cheese, smoked salmon, and over-easy eggs. After eating, Wilderson held up his wrist: “This watch allows me to track my diabetes without pricking my finger.”

Wilderson said he works with his doctors, feels young, and expects to live well into his 90s, just as his father and grandfather did.

Telehealth is crucial for people in areas with few or no medical providers, said Ry Marcattilio, an associate director of research at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. The national research and advocacy group works with communities on broadband access and reviewed KFF Health News’ findings.

High-speed internet makes it easier to use video visits for medical checkups, which most patients with diabetes need every three months.

Being connected “can make a huge difference in diabetes outcomes,” said Nestoras Mathioudakis, an endocrinologist and co-medical director of Johns Hopkins Medicine Diabetes & Education Program, who treats patients in Howard County.

Paying more for less

At Williams’ home in Alabama, pictures of her siblings and their kids cover the walls of the hallway and living room. A large, wood-framed image of Jesus at the Last Supper with his disciples hangs over her kitchen table.

Williams sat down as her pots simmered and sizzled. She wasn’t feeling quite right. “I had a glass of orange juice and a bag of potato chips, and I knew that wasn’t enough for breakfast, but I was cooking,” Williams said.

Every night Williams takes a pill to control her diabetes. In the morning, if she feels as if her sugar is dropping, she knows she needs to eat. So, that morning, she left the room to grab a peppermint, walking by the flickering wireless router.

The router’s download and upload speeds were 0.03/0.05 Mbps, nearly unusable by modern standards. Williams’ connection on her house phone can sound scratchy, and when she connects her cellphone to the router, it does not always work. Most days it’s just good enough for her to read a daily devotional website and check Facebook, though the stories don’t always load.

Rural residents like Williams paid nearly $13 more a month on average in late 2020 for slow internet connections than those in urban areas, according to Brian Whitacre, an agricultural economics professor at Oklahoma State University.

“You’re more likely to have competition in an urban area,” Whitacre said.

In rural Alabama, cellphone and internet options are limited. Williams pays $51.28 a month to her wireless provider, Ring Planet, which did not respond to calls and emails.

In Howard County, Maryland, national fiber-optic broadband provider Verizon Communications faces competition from Comcast, a hybrid fiber-optic and cable provider. Verizon advertises a home internet plan promising speeds of 300/300 Mbps starting at $35 a month for its existing mobile customers. The company also offers a discounted price as low as $20 a month for customers who participate in certain federal assistance programs.

“Internet service providers look at the economics of going into some of these communities and there just isn’t enough purchasing power in their minds to warrant the investment,” said Ross DeVol, chief executive of Heartland Forward, a nonpartisan think tank based in Bentonville, Arkansas, that specializes in state and local economic development.

Conexon, a fiber-optic cable construction company, estimates it costs $25,000 per mile to build above-ground fiber lines on poles and $60,000 to $70,000 per mile to build underground.

Former President Joe Biden’s 2021 infrastructure law earmarked $65 billion with a goal of connecting all Americans to high-speed internet. Money was designated to establish digital equity programs and to help low-income customers pay their internet bills. The law also set aside tens of billions through the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program, known as BEAD, to connect homes and businesses.

That effort prioritizes fiber-optic connections, but federal regulators recently outlined guidance for alternative technologies, including low Earth orbit satellites like SpaceX’s Starlink service.

Funding the use of satellites in federal broadband programs has been controversial inside federal agencies. It has also been a sore point for Elon Musk, who is chief executive of SpaceX, which runs Starlink, and is a lead adviser to President Donald Trump.

After preliminary approval, a federal commission ruled that Starlink’s satellite system was “not reasonably capable” of offering reliable high speeds. Musk tweeted last year that the commission had “illegally revoked” money awarded under the agency’s Trump-era Rural Digital Opportunity Fund.

In February, Trump nominated Arielle Roth to lead the federal agency overseeing the infrastructure act’s BEAD program. Roth is telecommunications policy director for the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Last year, she criticized the program’s emphasis on fiber and said it was beleaguered by a “woke social agenda” with too many regulations.

Commerce Secretary Lutnick last week said he will get rid of “burdensome regulations” and revamp the program to “take a tech-neutral approach.” Republicans echoed his positions during a U.S. House subcommittee hearing the same day.

When asked about potentially weakening the program’s required low-cost internet option, former National Telecommunications and Information Administration official Sarah Morris said such a change would build internet connections that people can’t afford. Essentially, she said, they would be “building bridges to nowhere, building networks to no one.”

‘That hurt’

Over a lunch of tortilla chips with the savory sauce that had been simmering on the stove, Williams said she hadn’t been getting regular checkups before her diabetes diagnosis.

“To tell you the truth, if I can get up and move and nothing is bothering me, I don’t go to the doctor,” Williams said. “I’m just being honest.”

Years ago, Williams recalled, “my head was hurting me so bad I had to just lay down. I couldn’t stand up, walk, or nothing. I’d get so dizzy.”

Williams thought it was her blood pressure, but the doctor checked for diabetes. “How did they know? I don’t know,” Williams said.

As lunch ended, she pulled out her glucose monitor. Williams connected the needle and wiped her finger with an alcohol pad. Then she pricked her finger.

“Oh,” Williams said, sucking air through her teeth. “That hurt.”

She placed the sample in the machine, and it quickly displayed a reading of 145 — a number, Williams said, that meant she needed to stop eating.

Here’s how KFF Health News did its analysis for the “Dead Zone” series, which pinpointed counties that lag behind the rest of the United States in access to broadband service and health care providers.

To identify “dead zones,” KFF Health News consulted two main data sources.

• The Federal Communications Commission National Broadband Map was used to identify broadband deserts as of June 2024. We used the FCC’s minimum speed standard of 100 Mbps download and 20 Mbps upload, and followed its definition of reliable broadband: service accessible via wired (fiber optics, cable, DSL) or licensed fixed wireless technology. It’s the standard for grants awarded through the federal Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program, known as BEAD. The FCC data shows whether such service is available, and not necessarily whether households subscribe to it.
• Data from George Washington University’s Fitzhugh Mullan Institute for Health Workforce Equity was used to determine counties with health provider shortages. GWU’s data on primary care providers (family and internal medicine doctors, pediatricians, obstetricians and gynecologists, physician assistants, and nurse practitioners) reflects providers who serve at least one person enrolled in Medicaid. We used the most recent years available: 2020 for 44 states, and 2019 data for Texas. Five states — Delaware, Florida, Maine, Minnesota, and New Hampshire — were excluded from analysis because they lacked reliable data for either year.

GWU’s data for behavioral health providers reflects psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors, therapists, and addiction medicine specialists, regardless of whether their patients receive Medicaid. We used data from 2021, the most recent year available.

We classified counties as “dead zones” if they met these criteria:

• Fewer than 70% of homes had access to fast, reliable broadband.
• They ranked in the bottom third of Medicaid primary care providers, defined as the number of Medicaid enrollees per provider.
• They ranked in the bottom third of behavioral health providers, defined as the number of residents per provider.

A total of 210 counties met those criteria. At the other extreme, we defined 203 counties as “most served” if they had the most residences with broadband access (at least 96.7%) and ranked in the top third of Medicaid primary care and behavioral health provider ratios.

We also compared the health outcomes and demographics of dead zone counties relative to others using several data sources:

• U.S. Census Bureau, for data on household income, education levels, and other demographics.
• County Health Rankings & Roadmaps, part of the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, for data on life expectancy and the percentage of residents living in rural areas.
• U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for data on diabetes, high blood pressure, and other chronic health conditions.

©2025 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

​ Orange County Register 

Which is the hardest Southern California county to find a rental?

• March 15, 2025

San Bernardino County had the fewest empty rentals in February in Southern California.

My trusty spreadsheet looked at ApartmentList’s monthly rental vacancy report for 165 big U.S. counties, including six in Southern California. The study, which looks at available units at primarily larger complexes on ApartmentList’s website, tracks a fundamental challenge for folks seeking a rental property: What’s available?

January’s Los Angeles County wildfires created extra housing demand in the region’s already tight rental market by destroying or damaging more than 12,000 structures around Altadena and Pacific Palisades. February vacancy was compared to to December in order to gauge how wildfires altered apartment availability.

Not only was San Bernardino’s 3.7% vacancy rate in February the region’s lowest, it also ranked as the fifth-tightest market among large U.S. counties.

And any search for a rental in San Bernardino got tougher this winter. The vacancy rate fell 0.2 percentage points in two months, the No. 49 dip nationally.

Now February’s rate was equal to San Bernardino’s five-year average vacancy was flat, but that was still the 38th worst result for renters among the 165 counties.

In Los Angeles County, where the fires struck, availability also shrank.

L.A.’s 4.9% vacancy rate in February was 23rd lowest among the big counties. That was down 0.1 point in two months, the No. 52 dip, and 0.5 points below the 5.3% 5-year average, the No. 18 decline.

Here’s how four other local counties ranked on the ApartmentList scorecard …

Riverside County: 4.8% February vacancy, the 18th fewest empty units – down 0.1 points from December (No. 55 decline) and 0.7 points above 4.1% 5-year average (No. 78).

Ventura County: 5% February vacancy (No. 27) – down 0.5 points from December (No. 13) and 0.6 points above 4.4% 5-year average (No. 68).

Orange County: 5.6% February vacancy (No. 51) – up 0.1 point from December (No. 92) and 0.7 points above 4.8% 5-year average (No. 79).

San Diego County: 5.9% February vacancy (No. 65) – up 0.1 point from December (No. 101) and 1.5 points above 4.3% 5-year average (No. 115).

Jonathan Lansner is the business columnist for the Southern California News Group. He can be reached at [email protected]

​ Orange County Register 

Local Ukrainian family faces uncertainty as immigration policies hang in the balance

• March 15, 2025

Oleksandr (Aleks) Gladushko believed his family had found stability in the U.S.

Gladushko, his wife and their son fled Ukraine in April 2022, just months after Russia’s full-scale invasion, arriving in Southern California with everything they could fit into two trunks. They were welcomed by an Orange County family and began piecing together a new life — finding work, enrolling their son in school and even welcoming a new baby.

Now, they’re staring down an uncertain future.

“We came here because the U.S. welcomed us. Now, we don’t know what will happen,” Gladushko said. “It’s making us nervous.”

The future of their legal status — tied to the Biden administration’s immigration policies — is uncertain.

The Gladushkos arrived through Uniting for Ukraine (U4U), a Biden-era program that allowed Ukrainians fleeing war to enter the U.S. on humanitarian parole, granting them temporary stay and work authorization. Another program, Temporary Protected Status (TPS), established by Congress under the Immigration Act of 1990, provides similar protections for Ukrainians already in the U.S., allowing them to stay without fear of deportation and work legally.

Gladushko is in the country solely under the U4U program, while his son and Tatiana, his wife, also have TPS status. Gladushko said his TPS application, which he submitted last year while former President Joe Biden was still in office, has been pending for reasons he does not know.

But President Donald Trump has said he’s looking at whether to revoke TPS for Ukrainians, raising fears that thousands could lose their legal status.

And during his presidential campaign, Trump pledged to end humanitarian parole programs for Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan immigrants that were introduced under the Biden administration, citing concerns over national security and fraud.

It’s still unclear if Ukranians like Gladushko, who is a part of the U4U program, will be affected in the same way. But in late January, the Trump administration announced a pause on new applications for the U4U program while it reviews all humanitarian parole programs.

For families like the Gladushkos, this uncertainty is overwhelming. Gladushko said his wife and son’s TPS status, along with his work authorization under U4U, are set to expire in April.

In January, when the Biden administration extended TPS for Ukrainians through Oct. 19, 2026, Gladushko said he applied for that extension for his wife and son. The family has not yet received a response, he said.

Gladushko said there is no renewal for the U4U program that he can apply for. Instead, he’s still waiting on a TPS response.

“Before, USCIS, as soon as you apply, in one or two weeks, they sent back a receipt with a number. … Now, I cannot check the status of my application on the website because I have no receipt number,” he said.

Lydia Korostelova, a Ukrainian-born immigration attorney based in Virginia, said the lack of response from U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services could be due to the Trump administration’s reported pause on all immigration applications from migrants from Latin America and Ukraine admitted under specific Biden-era programs. CBS News reported in February that in a memo dated Feb. 14, a top USCIS official ordered a pause on all “pending benefit requests.”

Without these programs, the Gladushkos’ legal ability to remain in the U.S. will effectively expire, and Gladushko won’t be able to renew his driver’s license — or legally work.

“I have nothing to show to the DMV,” he said.

However, Korostelova also noted that there is no confirmed policy yet.

“I’ve been in conversation with other attorneys, and we haven’t seen (the memo). It’s from a credible source, but it’s alleged,” Korostelova said.

When the Gladushkos arrived in Southern California, they connected with Bruce and Terri Sargeant, a couple in Orange who had listed their home on Ukraine Take Shelter, a platform created by two Harvard students to match displaced Ukrainians with American sponsors.

“They’re like part of the family now,” Bruce Sargeant said. “Christmas, Thanksgiving, they spend with us.”

The Gladushkos stayed with the Sargeants for six months before moving into a nearby condo the Sargeants own. Gladushko, a former lawyer in Ukraine, found part-time work at a local immigration law firm. Their 15-year-old son settled into school and sports.

Going back to Ukraine, Gladushko said, is not an option.

“The war is still ongoing. Even if they stop the war, the inertia will keep going,” he said. “It’s like when you’re driving a car … if the car is going very fast, even if you step on the brakes, you won’t stop immediately.”

There’s also his son.

“Our son, he’s 15. If we go back to Ukraine, he’ll have a duty to serve in the military,” Gladushko said. “It will be risky.”

For the Sargeants, watching the uncertainty unfold has been devastating.

“They’re good, honest people that deserve everything the U.S. should give them,” Terri Sargeant said.

Hosting the Gladushkos has “opened our eyes,” said Bruce Sargeant, wiping away a tear.

“We became aware of the Ukrainian community in Orange County … and how much we depend on immigrants. Not just from Ukraine, but how hardworking immigrants can be, and how much I appreciate what they’ve done for our country,” said Terri Sargeant.

Bruce Sargeant said he doesn’t understand why families like the Gladushkos are now in limbo.

“There’s a big difference between people trying to come in illegally, which is supposed to be the intent of some of these immigration reforms, right? Here’s an example of people who are doing everything right,” he said. “They’re following all the rules. And yet, they risk getting deported.”

Michael Bazyler, who teaches international law at Chapman University, said the possibility that Ukrainian refugees could lose their legal status could affect up to 240,000 people who came to the U.S. under emergency measures. Unlike official refugees — who must prove they’re fleeing persecution from their own government — Ukrainians who arrived after Feb. 24, 2022, were given humanitarian parole, which allows them to stay temporarily but doesn’t lead to a green card.

“These people were living normal lives, not very different from the lives that we live. They had homes, they had professions, they had children going to school, they had vacations,” Bazyler said. “And on Feb. 24, 2022, everything changed.”

Bazyler, who created the Ukrainian Mothers and Children Transport, a legal aid project providing emergency legal assistance to fleeing Ukrainian families, said he has a personal stake in the crisis. He’s the son of Holocaust survivors from Ukraine.

“My mom fled Ukraine, just like these people fled Ukraine,” he said. “It’s a terrible situation that the Ukrainians who have fled the war are in now. They really don’t know from day to day what the immigration authorities under the Trump administration will do.”

The Sargeants say they feel helpless.

“We don’t want to be hopeless … but we feel pretty helpless,” Terri Sargeant said. “Victims of war should not be the target again.”

It’s unclear if USCIS will resume processing applications for any of the Biden-era programs. When reached, a USCIS spokesperson declined to comment.

For the Gladushkos, there is no backup plan.

“We came here looking for safe lives, not better lives,” Aleks Gladushko said. “We came here because the U.S., and our sponsors, welcomed us. But I definitely don’t want to stay here being illegal. That’s not my way. So if that happens, of course, we will figure out what to do.”

For now, he said he’s simply waiting on a decision that could determine whether his family can stay in the country that took them in.

And as that decision drags on, so does the uncertainty.

​ Orange County Register 

Why planting a seed-grown apple tree won’t develop sweet fruit

• March 15, 2025

If you plant a seed from a Gala apple, the chances are one in a hundred (or less) that the fruit produced from the tree that grows will be sweet.

As Henry David Thoreau remarked, such seedling-grown or pippin apples are “sour enough to set a squirrel’s teeth on edge and make a jay scream.” The reason for this is that apples have a highly diverse gene pool due to their tendency to be self-sterile, meaning they require cross-pollination — a bee landing on a flower of a Fuji tree, for example, would pollinate a Gala flower  — to consistently produce seeds and fruit. Thus, the genetic make-up of their seeds and the trees and fruit that grow out of them will reflect the multi-faceted genome constructed from disparate gene pools mixed together.

Such a mixture of “wild” genes are not conducive to sweet fruit. Yet it is actually to the advantage of fruit trees to be somewhat, if not completely, self-sterile. That quality means increased receptivity to the pollen of other individuals, as opposed to their own pollen, assuring genetic diversity of its seeds in the next generation. This diversity ensures resistance — among at least some of the tree’s offspring — to a wide spectrum of stressors such as drought, flooding, cold, disease, or insect pest infestation.  

Self-sterility — also called self-incompatibility — is not absolute. If you plant a single Gala apple tree without a Fuji next to it, you will still get fruit, but not as abundantly as if it were kept company by a Fuji. Still, if you only have room for one fruit tree and still desire a crop, you do have options. At onlineorchards.com, a collection of 60 “self-pollinating fruit trees” of all types is available, including a dwarf Gala apple.

By the same token, if you plant a seed from a peach or an apricot, as opposed to an apple, there is a fairly good chance that it will grow into a tree with sweet fruit. The reason for this is that peach and apricot trees, referred to as self-fruitful, pollinate themselves — a bee landing on a flower successfully pollinates another flower on the same tree — and do not require another tree to fruit. Thus, their gene pool is small and the fruit that grows from their seeds is pleasantly predictable. Yet the progeny of these trees will also be less equipped to cope with the kinds of stress that a diverse genetic makeup could tolerate. It should be emphasized, however, that even self-fruitful trees will produce a bigger crop with bigger fruit when planted next to a different variety of the same tree that blooms at the same time. 

Insufficient bee activity at bloom time can affect fruit quality. If your apples are asymmetrical or slow to ripen, that’s a sign of inadequate pollination. An apple flower (its ovule, specifically) pollinated only once by a bee will not grow into a quality fruit; the fruit will be small and probably drop before ripening. With apples, multiple pollinations are necessary to ensure multiple seeds, which send out the hormones necessary for optimal fruit development. Even the quantity of calcium in an apple, for example, and its shelf life will decrease when pollination is inadequate. Properly pollinated apples have 7-10 seeds. 

Bad weather can also affect pollination. If there is heavy rain or excessive wind when flowers are in bloom, the petals can be knocked off the tree. Excessive moisture could also cause the petals to rot, discouraging bee activity. To ensure an adequate supply of bees, you can set up a hive of your own. In the city of Los Angeles, one backyard beehive is allowed per 2,500 square feet of property — in single-family home neighborhoods only — and will require a barrier at least six feet tall between hives and neighboring lots so bees fly upward as they leave, as well as a water source so bees don’t go looking for water elsewhere. Hives are banned in front yards and within five feet of lot lines. Beekeepers also have to be registered with the County of Los Angeles Agricultural Commission.

The fact that apples grown from seedling trees are extremely tart and basically inedible — as opposed to cloned or grafted trees — did not hinder the efforts of Johnny Appleseed, the popular name for John Chapman (1774-1845). Chapman did not plant apple seeds indiscriminately but set up nurseries where his seedlings would grow. These nurseries were situated in the path of settlers going west. Thus, the value of the land where Chapman established his nurseries increased as settlers began to populate his nurseries’ environs. Moreover, after setting up a nursery, Chapman would partner with someone local who would sell the trees. This allowed to Chapman to move on and start more nurseries further West. He would travel back and forth from his nurseries, collecting the profits to buy more land.

Chapman was an eccentric character with a proselytizing bent. His mission to plant apple trees paralleled his mission to spread the mystical teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish theologian. Chapman walked barefoot, even in the snow, and famously wore a tin pot on his head, serving both as a cap and as a cooking utensil. He dressed in old clothes received as barter for his trees. Although he had the appearance of a pauper, he was land rich, having accumulated 1,200 acres in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana at the time of his death.

Chapman did not utilize hybrid or grafted trees in adherence to the Biblical injunction he found in Swedenborg’s teachings — “You shall not sow your field with two types of seed” (Leviticus 19:19). Extrapolating on this verse, Chapman was unusual among apple growers in never planting grafted trees, but only apple seeds, giving rise to the “Appleseed” moniker. 

This actually worked to his advantage since seedling apple trees typically produce a crop that, although inedible, still has one marketable quality, that of being excellent for fermentation into hard cider. A stunning statistic from the early 1800s reveals that Ohioans at that time, from the age of 15, drank an average of 30 gallons of hard cider per year.

In a 2001 NPR radio interview, the food and culture writer Michael Pollan commented on Chapman’s enterprise as follows: “Johnny Appleseed was bringing the gift of alcohol to the frontier. That’s why he was so popular. That’s why he was welcome in every cabin in Ohio. He was the American Dionysus. He was the guy bringing the booze.” 

During Prohibition (1920-33), when the production and sale of alcohol was outlawed in the United States, most of Chapman’s trees were cut down due to their fruit’s reputation as a source for hard cider. Of all the trees he planted, only one, in Nova, Ohio, remains today. Nearly 200 years old, it still yields a prodigious crop.

The South Bay Water-Wise Garden Tour is a self-guided/self-drive tour of drought-tolerant gardens and California native plants. The 15th annual tour will be held on Sunday, April 13, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tickets are $10, with proceeds donated to Gardena Willows Wetlands Preserve. For ticket purchase, go to southbaywaterwisegardentour.com.

California native of the week: White chaparral currant has qualities that make it stand out among California natives. It is summer deciduous, a quality that is unusual among California woody plants in general. This species also has flowers with a noticeably sweet fragrance, a characteristic not typically associated with our natives. Its flower clusters consist of up to 25 tubular blooms, which are charmingly pendulous during their flowering period at this time of year. Flowers are magnets to hummingbirds and every kind of bee. Reaching over six feet in height, white chaparral currant can grow in full sun but appreciates light shade. It is extremely drought-tolerant once established. In the manner of most California native currants and gooseberries, its fruit are edible, but not especially palatable, the exception being golden currant (Ribes aureum), whose plentiful crop is an irresistible treat.

Do you have an apple tree experience to share? If so, please send it along to [email protected]. Your questions and comments, as well as gardening challenges and successes, are always welcome.

​ Orange County Register 

Larry Wilson: King Trump and the oligarchs vs. a free press

• March 15, 2025

Much as they might wish to — and they do, they do — politicians don’t get to choose the members of the press who cover them.

The smart ones play the hands they are dealt. They know how to curry favor with the scribes, feeding them tips that will lead to good stories, walking the tightrope between on the record, on background, off the record.

The unwise common wisdom that because many reporters and editors are more politically liberal than your insurance agent means that the press protects liberal pols and goes after conservative ones is demonstrably untrue. Two words: Barack Obama. “Obama came into office pledging open government, but he has fallen short of his promise. Journalists and transparency advocates say the White House curbs routine disclosure of information and deploys its own media to evade scrutiny by the press. Aggressive prosecution of leakers of classified information and broad electronic surveillance programs deter government sources from speaking to journalists,” according to an investigative report by the Committee to Protect Journalists during Obama’s first term.

But the tension is ancient, even on the short American timeline. Thomas Jefferson said of Federalist editors: “They never utter a truth,” and “Every syllable from me is distorted.”

Which brings us to what would be merely the opera bouffe, if it weren’t so dystopian, present, a time in which President Donald Trump bans reporters from the Associated Press news agency from Air Force One and pool coverage because their editors decline to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America on a whim.

Doesn’t Trump know that this whole thing is just a bit, a parodic idea created by liberal comic Stephen Colbert back when he pretended to be a crackpot conservative?

Doesn’t he know he sounds like the newly created Central American dictator in “Bananas,” who announces to a crowd, “Hear me. I am your new president. … All citizens will be required to change their underwear every half hour. Underwear will be worn on the outside, so we can check”?

Doesn’t he know that his big business buddies are now laughing at him behind his back, even as their own portfolios are withering in the Trump “correction”? That it’s only the California tech bros who will now “stand back and stand by,” because the oligarchs literally want our economy to collapse, so they can snap up assets on the cheap, Moscow-style, once we go fully post-democracy?

Whatever. It’s just no fun anymore, trying to laugh at the current president when his completely insane economic policies are crashing the equities markets, which is nothing like an abstraction when you’re approaching retirement and your 401(k) is in the tank because the president of the United States, the bankruptcy king, doesn’t understand the fundamentals of international finance and trade.

No one in the media, by the way, supports the Trump ban on AP reporters. Dozens of news organizations have signed a letter of protest sent to the president, including, yes, The New York Times, CNN and the Washington Post  — but also Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and the far-right Newsmax.

The White House Correspondents’ Association coordinated the letter decrying the ban of  The Associated Press as  “an escalation of a dispute that does not serve the presidency or the public.”

“The First Amendment prohibits the government from asserting control over how news organizations make editorial decisions. Any attempt to punish journalists for those decisions is a serious breach of this constitutional protection.”

Newsmax wrote: “We can understand President Trump’s frustration because the media has often been unfair to him, but Newsmax still supports The AP’s right, as a private organization, to use the language it wants to use in its reporting. We fear a future administration may not like something Newsmax writes and seek to ban us.”

There’s the rub. And yet Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who at the ripe old age of 27 doesn’t yet understand that a tariff is a tax on Americans, says the AP is “insulting” her for pointing that out.

You know what’s really insulting? Oligarchy.

Larry Wilson is on the Southern California News Group editorial board. [email protected].

​ Orange County Register 

One day, our morals will be sensitive to animals

• March 15, 2025

A long time ago on an island far, far away, a man by the name of Jeremy Bentham, with his beloved cat by his side (presumably), which he lovingly named, “The Reverend Sir John Langbourne,” wrote about the implications of his utilitarian views. Namely that, because his utilitarianism placed central importance on the minimization of suffering and the maximization of pleasure, and because non-human animals like the venerable Reverend can suffer, that animals deserve substantial ethical consideration. 

According to Bentham, just because they can’t reason doesn’t mean that they can’t suffer. Nowadays, thanks to the work of researchers, we’re starting to understand that not only can many non-human animal species suffer, but many of them can also reason to an astonishing degree. 

We all know that dolphins, orcas, many species of bird, primates, and elephants are highly intelligent, being able to learn, demonstrating complex social and emotional lives, and having the ability to solve difficult problems. Research is now strongly suggesting that animals which we may have thought are “dumb”, may possess similar cognitive capacities, even the ones that we eat. 

Chickens have demonstrated a remarkable ability to tailor their communications to specific contexts. For example, roosters will signal that there is a threat if they are in the presence of females but not in the presence of rival males. This suggests that they think about the social repercussions before they act. They also vary the pitch and frequency of the vocalizations depending on the size and proximity of the predator. Research also suggests that they are able to anticipate desirable or undesirable future events. 

The intelligence of pigs has also been well documented. They have been observed to use tools such as sticks and hard surfaces and play basic video games. Their success at the mirror test indicates that they are very much self-aware.

Cows do well in navigating maze tests, doing better than dogs, pigs, and sheep, demonstrating sophisticated spatial cognition. Not only do cows play – which is an indicator of curiosity, joy, and social cognition – they also show signs of excitement and pleasure when they learn and succeed during tests administered by researchers. 

If you thought fish were essentially just mindless meat torpedoes, I have bad news. Behind those completely dead eyes is an intelligence that uses tools such as rocky surfaces to break the shells of clams and other bivalves. Their social abilities go beyond simply grouping together in schools. They can also watch others fight to learn how much of a threat they are, they can remember individual rivals that they either beat or lost to, and are very picky about what cleaner fish they allow to groom them depending on several factors including whether they have observed them to be good cleaners.

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the degree of non-human animal intelligence and research is still lacking. As more studies are performed, we will learn more about how much we have underestimated our fellow earthlings. 

We know all of this, and still we eat their meat and treat them like garbage. 

There’s just something in our clearly superior minds (not sarcasm) that doesn’t care enough to change. We know how much pain and suffering we create for animals and yet, as a society we have mostly found it acceptable. I don’t just refuse to stop contributing to the pain and suffering of these highly intelligent and emotional creatures, I contribute about as much as a single human can to the demand. All of my meals have plenty of meat in them – if there’s no meat then it’s barely even food, I say.

I suspect that many find themselves in a similar position. In the back of our minds, we know that animals are treated inhumanely for our pleasure and yet, we just ignore it. 

The aim here is not to chastise – moral progress is slow and often takes generations, much like the slow historical progress of human rights. It can hardly be said that it’s completely incomprehensible how our ancestors could hold such vicious views – their views were the norm at the time.

Much like we are now beginning to feel that there is something wrong with how we treat animals, perhaps some of our ancestors also had a feeling that what they were doing was wrong, but they simply didn’t have the motivation to change because it was their status-quo. It was up to successive generations – young ones often build on or rebel against the teachings of their parents. 

Like a professor once said to his ethics class, animal rights are the next big step in moral progress, and one day future humans will look back at us, much like we look back at past slave owners and say, “how could they do this?”

Rafael Perez is a columnist for the Southern California News Group. He is a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the University of Rochester. You can reach him at [email protected]

​ Orange County Register 

If your camellia flowers are being ruined by fungus, you have some options

• March 15, 2025

Q. My camellia flowers are getting eaten at the base as they are opening. I don’t see any bugs and would like to know what is causing it and how to fix it.

Camellia flower blight is caused by a fungus (Ciborinia camelliae). It causes flower petals to turn brown and premature flower drop. Prevention includes the removal of fallen and affected flowers, weed removal, and pruning to improve air circulation inside the plant. Unfortunately, antifungals are not very effective because treatment can’t reach the fungus hiding inside the tight flower buds. 

If flower blight continues to be a problem, you can try growing blight-resistant varieties such as Kanjiro or Debutante.

Q. My houseplants were getting dusty, so I took them outside to hose them off and get some fresh air. After I brought them back inside, I noticed that many of the leaves looked bleached out. What happened?

Indoor plants are not accustomed to direct, unfiltered sunlight and can get sunburned. Think about going to the beach after spending all winter away from the sun, except you can’t put sunscreen on your plants.

If you want to give your plants a rinse, and it’s too cumbersome to use a spray bottle, hosing them off in the shower (be careful not to get potting soil in the drain!) or outdoors is effective, but you must take precautions when putting your indoor plants outside. Pick an overcast day and a sheltered spot. Once you’ve given your babies their rinse, bring them inside promptly. If you want to give them a chance to finish dripping, set a timer for 5 or 10 minutes so you don’t forget them. For my larger plants, I like to rinse them on the driveway, then drag them into the garage to dry off. 

If your plant has a lot of sunburn damage, give it a dilute fertilizer with every watering to help it recover.

Q. When can I plant tomatoes out in my garden? What about peppers, eggplants, and squash?

For tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, and any other frost-tender plants, you’ll want to find out the last frost date for your area. For example, for most of the Inland Empire, the last frost date is March 15, but this can vary with altitude, proximity to water or development. I found a handy online map at https://www.plantmaps.com that shows this information in detail.

For direct seeding, wait until the soil has warmed up. This will usually be several weeks after the last frost date. If you plant seeds directly into cold soil, they will most likely rot in place without germinating. 

Los Angeles County

[email protected]; 626-586-1988; http://celosangeles.ucanr.edu/UC_Master_Gardener_Program/

Orange County

[email protected]; http://mgorange.ucanr.edu/

Riverside County

[email protected]; 951-955-0170; https://ucanr.edu/sites/RiversideMG/

San Bernardino County

[email protected]; 909-387-2182; http://mgsb.ucanr.edu

​ Orange County Register 

Governors to laid-off federal workers: We’ll hire you

• March 15, 2025

By Robbie Sequeira, Stateline.org

Among the thousands of federal workers who’ve been forced out or taken buyouts in the past month, surely some would be perfect fits for the many vacancies in Pennsylvania’s state government.

That, at least, is the thinking of Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, who recently directed his state to not only offer aid to laid-off constituents, but also to repost some job openings.

He’s catching up to governors in other states — from Hawaii to Maryland — who see opportunity, even as they’re scrambling to help panicked residents. The Trump administration and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency task force have been culling federal workers across agencies while also threatening anyone who doesn’t list in an email how they’re making good use of their time.

The number of announced terminations tracked by global data company Statista exceeded 16,000 as of Feb. 25. That’s in addition to the 75,000 federal employees who accepted buyouts offered by the administration in its earliest days. And President Donald Trump has directed Cabinet agencies to continue mass layoffs.

States are looking to hire those workers, though officials face challenges, such as offering lower salaries and having slower hiring processes.

In Maryland alone, Democratic Gov. Wes Moore estimates about 10,000 of his constituents could lose work in the shake-up. There are more than 5,000 openings in state government.

Pennsylvania has some 5,600 critical openings, from accountants to registered nurses, now described on a newly created website tailored to federal employees.

“This is an act of self-interest for the people of Pennsylvania, because I believe the commonwealth can benefit from the experience and expertise of these federal workers who have been forced out of their jobs,” Shapiro said.

Officials in New Mexico, New York and Virginia — among the states with the highest numbers of federal workers — say they’re offering a silver lining for all that displaced talent, providing ways to streamline the transition from federal government to jobs at the state and local level.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, made her recruitment pitch clear, stating, “The federal government might say, ‘You’re fired,’ but here in New York, we say, ‘You’re hired.’”

Hawaii’s Operation Hire Hawai’i is working to fast-track former federal employees into state agency jobs. Washington state lawmakers have introduced legislation to prioritize these displaced workers in hiring processes.

In Virginia, Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, launched the Virginia Has Jobs program — a website designed to help laid-off federal workers quickly connect with available state jobs.

Despite these efforts, states face significant hurdles in matching federal workers to state jobs. There are differing skill sets, mismatches in salaries, and the time it takes for a job application to wind its way through a state bureaucracy.

For workers, though, a lot of the difficulty is about coming to terms with the mind-boggling turn of events.

Emotional turmoil

For Victoria, who asked that she be identified by her middle name out of fear of retaliation, working for the federal government wasn’t just a job — it was a commitment to nonpartisan public service.

She worked for three years as a contractor for the Federal Aviation Administration before being hired last year to a permanent federal position.

“The reason I wanted to be a federal employee in the first place is because it’s supposed to be nonpartisan work,” she said. “We’re supposed to serve the public in pursuit of a mission, and for the FAA, that mission is aerospace safety.”

Her probation was to end in April. She didn’t make it.

“I got a call from our office manager at 6 p.m. on a Friday night, telling me I was being let go,” Victoria recalled.

She got her official termination email hours later, minutes before midnight. It included a list of resources she couldn’t access because they were, for her, suddenly behind a government firewall.

For people trying to assist workers such as Victoria, the scale and speed of the firings outpaced even what they figured was coming.

Caitlin Lewis is executive director at Work for America, a nonprofit that runs the new Civic Match initiative to help state governments recruit former federal workers. She foresaw a need for the project following the 2024 election.

“When we launched Civic Match in November, we anticipated about 4,000 political appointees and campaign staff seeking new jobs after the election. But what we’ve seen in the new year is a massive surge in laid-off civil servants looking for work,” said Lewis.

One of the biggest obstacles? State hiring is slow.

“The average time to hire in state government is 90 days. In local government, it’s 136 days. That’s a long process for workers who need jobs now.”

If states don’t act quickly, they risk losing experienced talent to the private sector, which moves faster in recruitment, she said. Many former federal workers are already transitioning into corporate roles, nonprofits and consulting firms rather than waiting for state job openings.

Beyond slow hiring, another challenge is that not all laid-off federal employees want to stay in government.

“I’m not actually 100% sure that every single one of those workers who may be impacted is looking for another job in government,” said Nicole Overley, commissioner of Virginia Works, a state agency focused on reemployment. “Virginia has over 4,500 open state jobs. But I’m not sure every individual who is transitioning from the federal workforce is necessarily looking for a state job.”

Overley added that many federal employees may not even be aware of state job resources available to them.

“In the last 48 hours, we’ve had over 1,000 job seekers register for the March 5th virtual job fair,” she said early this month. “I don’t know if all federal workers who are impacted know about the resources that are out there — and that’s where workforce development comes in.”

Some states are working to speed up the process. Hawaii, for instance, has expedited its state hiring process through an executive order from Democratic Gov. Josh Green. In Pennsylvania, Shapiro has told the state’s hiring office to compare federal work favorably to state work for the purposes of notching experience.

Maryland’s schools desperately need substitute teachers now, Moore said in announcing resources recently, and anyone with an associate’s degree can apply.

New Mexico is launching statewide initiatives that include a resource webpage, recruitment events and access to education and training programs.

In Washington, D.C., Mayor Murial Bowser has encouraged laid-off workers to consider district job openings, but she also wants to ensure they have access to unemployment benefits and housing support. The federal government is the district’s largest employer, and the layoffs could devastate the city’s economy.

Lower salaries

Another key hurdle is pay disparities between federal and state jobs.

In many states, federal workers make, on average, significantly more than state employees. They include Maryland, where federal workers earn 183% of state worker salaries, Virginia (175%), West Virginia (163%) and Idaho (157%), according to a Stateline review of data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics.

In states where federal workers earn less than state employees, such as New York (77% of state workers’ salaries) and California (97%), the transitions might be easier, though the costs of living in those states are among the highest in the nation.

For Hawaii, the challenge is particularly stark. The state has one of the highest concentrations of federal employment outside the District of Columbia and Maryland — and federal jobs in Hawaii pay about three times more than state government positions.

To ensure laid-off federal employees can move quickly into state roles, Hawaii has set up an expedited timeline of 14 days from job application to hiring. That means, for example, passing along résumés from human resources to hiring departments on a daily basis and cutting some processes down to hours or days, Brenna Hashimoto, director of the state’s Department of Human Resources Development, wrote in an email to Stateline.

It’s too early to say how the system is going, Hashimoto wrote, but the state will collect data and report to the governor’s office.

Some success

Despite the hurdles, there are signs of success in transitioning federal employees into state jobs.

Shane Evangelist, CEO of Neogov, which manages hiring software for state and local governments, said the potential scale of transitions is significant.

Evangelist shared examples of successful federal-to-state career transitions, including a former IRS employee to a state internal auditor, a federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention employee to a state epidemiologist, and a Census Bureau employee to an IT support analyst.

However, he warned that states risk losing the most skilled workers to the private sector unless they hire right away.

“The most talented workers move first,” said Evangelist. “The ones who are smart, experienced and articulate — the kind of employees the government needs most — will be the first to go.”

There are thousands of potential new job applicants.

On Jan. 19, federal civil servants made up only 8% of Civic Match’s candidate pool. By late February, that skyrocketed to 45.1%. More than 3,300 former federal workers have signed up for Civic Match in just weeks, according to Lewis.

“These are not entry-level employees,” Lewis said. “Many of them have spent over a decade in government roles, gaining deep expertise in policy, finance, environmental management and IT.”

Struggles ahead

Despite state efforts, some former federal employees say they are struggling to find equivalent jobs in both government and the private sector.

“I’ve heard from people with 20 years in government who are being told their experience isn’t transferable,” said Victoria, the laid-off FAA worker.

“It’s a nice gesture that the states are saying all of them want us to work for them, but how many state or private sector jobs actually have an equivalent to what I was doing at the federal level?” she said. “It’s not a one-to-one match.”

Some private-sector employers are undervaluing federal work experience, she noted, forcing federal employees to start at lower levels.

“I’ve heard from people with 20 years in federal government who were told they’d have to start three or four steps behind where they were,” she said. “These companies know we’re desperate, and they’re using it to devalue our skills and pay us less.”

For Victoria and others like her, the hardest part isn’t just losing a job — it’s the way federal employees have been portrayed.

“We’re not some faceless deep-state bureaucrats,” she said. “We’re your neighbors, your friends, and the people you see walking down the street. We got into government because we wanted to serve.

“And if we were in it for the money, we wouldn’t have chosen public service in the first place.”

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson contributed to this report. Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at [email protected].

©2025 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

​ Orange County Register