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When it comes to politics in Appalachian Kentucky, one of the first things anyone will tell you is that people defy easy categorization.
There are fervent church goers who say that Jesus’ message of helping others is basically socialism, and that’s a good thing. There are gun owners who pine for universal healthcare.
Home to shuttered coal mines and steel plants, Appalachian Kentucky remains one of the most disadvantaged regions in America. Unlike many other Republican-leaning parts of the country, there are few military-adjacent companies or industries in its hollers and hills.
With two of the 13 American military members killed in the Iran war so far from Kentucky, the decisions being made in Washington on what many are calling a needless conflict are hitting home hard. And while Donald Trump won 65% of the vote in Kentucky in the 2024 election, there are growing signs that the conflict is fueling mounting discontent here.
Early estimates suggest the first 12 days of the war on Iran cost the US taxpayer around $16.5bn. An estimated 40% of children in eastern Kentucky are growing up in households where income is below the federal poverty level. In July 2022, flooding from heavy rain led to the deaths of 38 people in eastern Kentucky.
All the while, thousands of eastern Kentucky residents have seen Snap and Medicare support cut by the Trump administration, and rising utility prices drive them back into poverty.
“This war, with no congressional approval, is a slap in the face of rural Kentuckians and my neighbors. There are so many things that that money could be better allocated for … especially after all the cuts that have been made, it’s really difficult to kind of swallow that pill,” says McKenna Brashear, the acting president of the Perry County Young Democrats, who’s from the tiny community of Viper.
“Our schools rely heavily on government assistance. Any portion [of the Iran war spending] could greatly increase an educator’s ability to get school supplies. Higher gas prices are only going to make it more difficult for those on welfare or for those just struggling to make ends meet.”
But some say that attacking Iran is a necessary action.
Brandon La Voie, a life-long Democrat who voted for Trump in 2024 and wrote in Bernie Sanders four years earlier, is one of those who doesn’t fit into the typical Democrat versus Republican rhetoric.
“I’ve been a Democrat my entire life,” he says. “I align with what a Democrat is supposed to be.”
Although having voted for Trump two years ago in large part after a child in nearby Morehead was killed by an undocumented immigrant, he “cannot buy into the cultism of it all”.
Similarly, his views on the war on Iran are also nuanced.
“People who sentence their children to death … There has to be intervention. You can’t protest the regime [in Iran],” he argues. The Iranian government is thought to have killed as many as 30,000 people during a crackdown on anti-government protesters that began in late December.
“Do I think [the war] is a good idea? I think it was the only idea, unfortunately.” He says that weakening or eliminating the Iranian regime now is preferable to a bigger war in the future that could see his sons drafted to fight in the Middle East.
“Do I think the money spent on tomahawk [missiles] could be spent elsewhere? Absolutely, we need community centers … that money could be used to build up community. But what does it build up to if there is a greater evil beside you,” he says, referring to the Iranian regime.
“While you’re spending that money on community centers, that evil continues to grow, and your sons and grandsons will have to [pay the price].”
Several Kentucky politicians have criticized the attacks, and the price Kentucky families are paying for it. When visiting a packaging plant in Kentucky on 11 March, Trump failed to acknowledge that soldiers from the commonwealth had died in the ongoing conflict.
That he failed to spend time with the family of service member, Sgt Benjamin Pennington, from Glendale, also sparked criticism from Andy Beshear, Kentucky’s governor who is considered by some as a leading contender to be the Democratic party nominee for the 2028 presidential election.
Tellingly, it’s not only Democrats assailing Trump for instigating a war.
Rand Paul, a Kentucky senator and Republican, recently noted: “I don’t think this [war] is going to be good for the Republican party to have high oil prices, high gas prices and the war lingering over our heads for several months.”
One of Trump’s biggest critics on the Republican side of the aisle is Thomas Massie, the Kentucky representative whose constituency includes much of northern Carter county. Massie believes the war “will radicalize a new generation of terrorists” and told members of Congress on 4 March, “we owe our military servicemembers a clear mission, and American families in my district want to know how this is going to help them pay for groceries.”
At a time when federal cuts to food and other assistance programs are hitting the region harder than most of the rest of the country, attempts to bring back heavy industry jobs in recent years have failed.
On Industrial Parkway, about two miles from the only interstate that runs through eastern Kentucky, lies a large, flat expanse of land with long grass and white PVC pipes emerging from the ground. It’s the site of a $2bn aluminum mill plant that was supposed to bring manufacturing back to the region.
Dozens of local students had spent years studying to accumulate the skills required to run the plant. The jobs were supposed to pay workers $65,000 along with benefits.
But by 2022, the plan was essentially abandoned. Beshear called it “the worst and shadiest economic development deal in Kentucky’s history”.
It is this kind of betrayal that, locals say, helps populists such as Trump connect with eastern Kentucky residents.
In Perry county, where the per capita income is less than $30,000 and where Trump won four times as many votes in the 2024 election as Kamala Harris, a Democrat, McKenna Brashear says disappointment fueled by economic loss and other struggles has driven locals to find refuge in religion.
And when it comes to the war on Iran, one that the Trump administration has repeatedly framed in a religious context, the preponderance in eastern Kentucky of evangelical Christianity, which sees a war in the Middle East as a sign of the end times, is not unpopular.
“Religion is contributing to views on the war,” Brashear says.
For La Voie, who runs a restoration company that sees him and a team of workers fixing derelict properties, the culture of taking material resources and people from this often-forgotten part of America is as long-standing as it is troubling.
“Extraction is something that we’re used to; my grandfather was extracted from here to serve in the Vietnam war. He was exposed to extreme amounts of Agent Orange and ended up passing from it,” he says.
“We are being hijacked.”
