Joshua Smith of Yankee Kingdom Media and his eldest daughter, Elizabeth, at a remote broadcast with WYKR.
Over the past decade, the way people connect and build community has shifted in meaningful ways.
As Joshua Smith watched these changes unfold, he noticed something important: while online platforms offered new opportunities, many people around him still craved real, local connection. Around the same time, the owner of WYKR, his hometown radio station, kept joking, “Josh, if you ever want to buy a radio station, let me know.” In 2023, Josh took him up on it.
Based in Wells River and serving parts of northern Vermont and New Hampshire, WYKR is the oldest country radio station in Vermont. True to its roots, Josh is revitalizing what radio was back in the ’70s and ’80s, featuring outdoor shows and programs, broadcasting the local basketball games, and keeping advertising affordable.
Josh is building something enduring. He took over The Bridge Weekly Showcase, a local paper, soon after buying WYKR. He formed Yankee Kingdom Media to sustain and grow both outlets. Local ownership, he notes, ensures the voices and stories of his community are heard. And it enhances the symbiotic relationship between local businesses. “Keeping local media local and independent? We can’t take it for granted,” he says.
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“I don’t know where I would have ended up.”
When Josh reflects on where he started—a disengaged student from rural Vermont—he’s clear about one thing: “I wouldn’t be here without VSAC believing in me.”
A self-professed theater kid at Blue Mountain Union High School, Josh wasn’t sure about college. His three brothers didn’t go, and although his parents wanted him to continue his education, he knew they couldn’t pay for it. Then, junior year, he began meeting monthly with a VSAC outreach counselor from VSAC’s GEAR UP college and career readiness program.
“My outreach counselor guided me through the entire process and took away any barriers I perceived. She also helped me remove the barriers of funding. She reinforced the fact that education is a right, not a privilege.”
Josh’s VSAC counselor helped him with his applications and financial aid paperwork, and coached him on what to expect in college. “VSAC looked at me and saw the full future version of me. Not my test scores, not my grades. Me,” he says.
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Josh’s theater teacher had friends who taught at Webster University in Saint Louis, and they encouraged him to apply. So he did, along with a slate of other schools, all of which he was accepted to. Webster remained his first choice—and he ended up with a financial aid package that made it possible for him to go.
From art school to international service
Josh originally dreamed of becoming a children’s book illustrator. Over the course of his college years, however, his perspective began to shift. He joined the Peace Corps after college, which changed everything, and high school French classes landed him a position in Niger.
After being in Niger for two years, Josh renewed his option to stay for another two years. “I lived in a mud hut and pulled my own water from a well. And while there, I read all the books I was supposed to read in high school.”
Josh’s Peace Corps experience ignited a passion for international service. He went on to earn a master’s in International Education from the School for International Training in Brattleboro and spent the next 12 years working with global humanitarian organizations, including Doctors Without Borders and Action Against Hunger. From Pakistan to the Philippines, Libya to Nigeria, Joshua managed the complex logistics of getting food and medical supplies to those in crisis.
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“I repaired ambulances in Libya during the revolution and had a machine gun pointed in my face. Along with survival, the logistical challenges of getting food and medical supplies to places during a crisis were mine to solve.”
But even while doing this high-stakes work, he never forgot his roots—or the people who helped get him started. “The key to success is showing up and believing in yourself,” he said. “My self-confidence really came from working with VSAC. They made me feel comfortable with being uncomfortable. When you’re a teenager, there is no self-confidence. When you have someone who believes in your potential more than you do, especially when it’s an adult—that’s powerful.”
“I don’t believe in one career for the rest of your life. I’m on my third.”
After marrying his wife, Edith (whom he met while working in Niger), and moving back to Vermont, Joshua earned an MBA from Norwich University and dove into the nonprofit world. He led an organization supporting people with intellectual disabilities and sat on several local boards before the opportunity to purchase WYKR came about.
Now 49, at the helm of Yankee Kingdom Media and living in Morrisville with his wife and three children, one of Josh’s greatest joys is hosting a podcast—Vermont Authors and Artists—bringing together his lifelong love of creativity, service, and conversation.
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Through it all, he carries forward his commitment to continuous curiosity—something he learned in theater and through the arts and is now passing on to his children.
“I don’t believe in one career for the rest of your life,” he notes. “I’m on my third. Ten years ago, I wouldn’t have seen this career coming.”
The Vermont Student Assistance Corp. was created by the Vermont Legislature in 1965 as a public nonprofit agency. We advocate for Vermont students and their families to ensure that they have the tools they need to achieve their education and training goals. We create opportunities for all Vermont students, but particularly for those—of any age—who believe that the doors to education are closed to them. Growing families save for education with VT529, Vermont’s official 529 savings program. To help Vermonters plan and pay for college or job training, our counselors work with students in nearly every Vermont middle school and high school, and are also available to work with adults. Our grant, scholarship, and workforce development programs create opportunity, help students re-skill or learn new skills, and grow the economy. VSAC’s loan and loan forgiveness programs provide competitive education financing to students and families. Find us at www.vsac.org or visit Facebook,Instagram,LinkedIn.
U.S. Sen. Peter Welch on Friday said the Pentagon had ordered the deployment of the Vermont Air National Guard’s 158th Fighter Wing to the Caribbean amid heightened tensions with Venezuela.
According to Welch, the deployment is part of Operation Southern Spear, which has been targeting drug trafficking in the region as President Donald Trump’s administration has sought the ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
A Pentagon spokesperson on Friday referred questions to the Vermont Guard.
The 158th Fighter Wing, based in South Burlington, includes 20 F-35A Lightning II fighter jets and approximately 1,000 personnel.
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Joseph Brooks, a spokesperson for the Vermont Guard, told the Globe earlier this week that the unit had been ordered by the Department of Defense to mobilize, but he would not disclose the location or details of the deployment.
Brooks declined to comment further Friday night.
In a written statement, Welch thanked Vermont Guard members for their service but criticized the Trump administration for deploying them.
“I strongly oppose President Trump’s mobilization of the Vermont Air National Guard alongside thousands of other U.S. military units in what appears to be a relentless march to war,” Welch said. “An undeclared war against the Venezuelan regime would be illegal under our Constitution. If this president — or any president — wants to start a war with Venezuela, which has not attacked us and is not a source of the fentanyl that is killing Americans, then he needs to seek authorization from Congress, as the authors of the Constitution intended.”
Details of the deployment remained unclear Friday, though Seven Days, a Burlington newspaper, reported that the unit would be stationed at a recently reopened military base in Puerto Rico. The newspaper said some Vermont Guard members had already headed there to prepare for the deployment.
WINOOSKI, Vt. — A small school district in Vermont was hit with racist and threatening calls and messages after a Somali flag was put up a week ago in response to President Donald Trump referring to Minnesota’s Somali community as “ garbage.”
The Winooski School District began to display the flag Dec. 5 to show solidarity with a student body that includes about 9% people of Somali descent.
“We invited our students and community to come together for a little moment of normalcy in a sea of racist rhetoric nationally,” said Winooski School District Superintendent Wilmer Chavarria, himself a Nicaraguan immigrant. “We felt really good about it until the ugliness came knocking Monday morning.”
The Somali flag was flown alongside the Vermont state flag and beneath the United States flag at a building that includes K-12 classrooms and administrative offices. Somali students cheered and clapped, telling administrators the flag flying meant a great deal to them, he said.
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What ensued was a deluge of phone calls, voicemails and social media posts aimed at district workers and students. Some school phone lines were shut down — along with the district website — as a way to shield staff from harassment. Chavarria said videos of the event did not also show the U.S. and Vermont flags were still up and spread through right-wing social media apps, leaving out the important context.
“Our staff members, our administrators and our community are overwhelmed right now, and they are being viciously attacked. The content of those attacks is extremely, extremely deplorable. I don’t know what other word to use,” Chavarria said Tuesday.
Mukhtar Abdullahi, an immigrant who serves as a multilingual liaison for families in the district who speak Somali and a related dialect, said “no one, no human being, regardless of where they come from, is garbage.” Students have asked if their immigrant parents are safe, he said.
“Regardless of what happens, I know we have a strong community,” Abdullahi said. “And I’m very, very, very thankful to be part of it.”
The district is helping law enforcement investigate the continued threats, Chavarria said, and additional police officers have been stationed at school buildings as a precaution. Winooski is near Burlington, about 93 miles (150 kilometers) south of Montreal, Canada.
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White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson called the calls and messages the school received “the actions of individuals who have nothing to do with” Trump.
“Aliens who come to our country, complain about how much they hate America, fail to contribute to our economy, and refuse to assimilate into our society should not be here,” Jackson said in an email late Thursday. “And American schools should fly American flags.”
Federal authorities last week began an immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota to focus on Somali immigrants living unlawfully in the U.S. Trump has claimed “they contribute nothing ” and said “I don’t want them in our country.” The Minneapolis mayor has defended the newcomers, saying they have started businesses, created jobs and added to the city’s cultural fabric. Most are U.S. citizens and more than half of all Somali people in Minnesota were born in the U.S.
At the school district in Vermont, Chavarria said his position as superintendent gave him authority to fly the flag for up to a week without the school board’s explicit approval.
The school district also held an event with catered Somali food, and Chavarria plans to continue to find ways to celebrate its diversity.
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“I felt sorrow for the students, the families, the little kids that are my responsibility to keep safe. And it’s my responsibility to make them feel like they belong and that this is their country and this is their school district. This is what we do,” he said.
BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – Vermont police officers are working overtime shifts along the Canadian border under a federal program that critics say could violate the state’s anti-bias policing laws.
“Up here, we’re so small we rely on our partner agencies,” said Swanton Village Police Chief Matthew Sullivan.
On a recent frosty Friday, Sullivan was patrolling along the Canadian border as part of Homeland Security’s Operation Stonegarden. The chief and other local officers work overtime shifts for the U.S. Border Patrol.
“It acts as a force multiplier because we’re able to put more officers out in these rural areas in Vermont,” Sullivan said.
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During an exclusive ride-along, Sullivan showed us a field where, as recently as last fall, migrants were smuggled across the border. “These people are really being taken advantage of,” he said.
From 2022 to 2023, U.S. Border Patrol encountered just shy of 7,000 people entering the country illegally in the region, more than the previous 11 years combined.
In several instances, police say cars have tried to crash through a gate in Swanton along the border. Others enter from Canada on foot and get picked up by cars with out-of-state plates.
The chief says the illegal crossings strike fear among local parents. “They didn’t feel safe allowing their kids outside to play, which is extremely unfortunate,” Sullivan said.
Through Operation Stonegarden — which was created in the wake of 9/11 — Sullivan and his officers get overtime pay from the feds. “We’re kind of another set of eyes and ears for border patrol,” Sullivan said. His department also gets equipment and training.
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Six agencies in Vermont participate in Stonegarden: The Vermont State Police, Chittenden County Sheriff’s Department, Essex County Sheriff’s Department, Orleans County Sheriff’s Department, Newport City Police Department, and the Swanton Village Police Department. Some three dozen across New England participate in Stonegarden. These agencies collect relatively small amounts from the feds — $760,000 in Vermont, $190,000 in New Hampshire, and $1 million in Maine.
But amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, Stonegarden is under scrutiny.
“This has become quite relevant to a lot of people once again,” said Paul Heintz, a longtime Vermont journalist who now writes for the Boston Globe. “These three states have dramatically different policies when it comes to local law enforcement working with federal law enforcement.”
Vermont has some of the strictest rules about police assisting federal immigration officials. The Fair and Impartial Policing Policy limits cooperation with the feds and says immigration status, language, and proximity to the border cannot be the basis of an investigation.
“Vermonters have made clear through their elected representatives that they want state and local law enforcement to be focusing on state and local issues,” said Lia Ernst with the ACLU of Vermont. She says Stonegarden is crossing the line. “They don’t want their police to be a cog in the mass deportation machinery of any administration but particularly the Trump administration,” Ernst said.
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The ACLU and other critics are concerned that Stonegarden creates a cozy relationship between local police and immigration officials that can be used to enforce the president’s immigration crackdown.
Heintz says the distinction between civil and criminal immigration enforcement can be fluid. In most civil cases in which the feds seek to deport, Vermont law enforcement can’t play a role because it’s against the law. In criminal cases, which local police can enforce, immigrants can be detained and charged.
“An operation may start out appearing to focus on a federal criminal immigration issue and may turn into a civil one over the course of that investigation,” Heintz said.
“There is a lot of nuance to it,” admitted Sullivan. He insists his department is not the long arm of federal law enforcement and is instead focused on crime, including guns, drugs, and human trafficking. However, if someone is caught in the act of crossing the border illegally, that constitutes a crime, and the chief said he calls for federal backup. Though he said that rarely happens.
“It’s a criminal violation to cross the border outside of a port of entry, and technically, we could take action on that. But again, we’re not here to enforce civil immigration while working Stonegarden,” Sullivan said.
