02/19/26: Stacy Mitchell is the Co-Executive Director for the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and wrote this article in the Atlantic: The Great Grocery Squeeze / How a federal policy change in the 1980s created the modern food desert. The Institute for Local Self-Reliance released a new interactive map and policy brief that exposes how decades of unchecked consolidation reshaped the American grocery landscape.

(Joel Heitkamp is a talk show host on the Mighty 790 KFGO in Fargo-Moorhead. His award-winning program, “News & Views,” can be heard weekdays from 8 – 11 a.m. Follow Joel on X/Twitter @JoelKFGO.)