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A Midwest food pantry network that served hundreds of thousands of families has abruptly closed its doors. Ruby’s Pantry, which distributed food at 87 locations across Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota and Wisconsin, announced Tuesday it had immediately ended its operations. The organization helped more than 300,000 families every year, Minnesota Public Radio reports. (Hawkinson, 4/3)

A great-grandmother’s medicine tested positive for cocaine – spawning a 15-month legal nightmare, forcing her to refinance her home, and spurring a new state law that could set a precedent across the country. (Yan, 4/5)

Each weekend across the United States, thousands line up before dawn for free medical care at pop-up clinics, but a patchwork of state laws is preventing volunteer doctors from helping as many people as they could. Despite those constraints, Remote Area Medical (RAM) makes life-changing differences each week. (McCandless Farmer, 4/5)

Kim Paul, executive director of the Piikani Lodge Health Institute, a nonprofit on the Blackfeet Reservation that promotes health and well-being, saw the email notification flash across her computer screen as she was working late last week. It was the U.S. Department of Agriculture saying a nearly $9 million grant contract with Piikani Lodge had been terminated. “The U.S. Department of Agriculture has determined that awards under this program involved discriminatory preferences based on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and wasteful spending that did little to further lawful agricultural land purchases,” the USDA wrote. (Mabie, 4/3)

For weeks, the Food and Drug Administration has been asking a raw-dairy farm in California to recall its Cheddar cheese, which the agency has linked to nine E. coli illnesses in California, Texas and Florida. On Thursday, the dairy farm, Raw Farm LLC, finally complied, though it said it was doing so “under protest” as it continued to deny that its cheese was the cause of the outbreak. (Callahan, 4/3)