Medicare open enrollment is underway until Dec. 7. (Photo by Getty Images)

As Medicare open enrollment begins on Oct. 15 (and continues through Dec. 7), millions of older Americans face the dilemma of choosing between traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage. This decision can significantly impact access to care, financial stability and overall health. Understanding these options is more important than ever, with major changes to Medicare on the horizon.

In 2025, several reforms are taking place that will make Medicare more affordable for many beneficiaries. One of the most notable is a new $2,000 annual cap on out-of-pocket prescription drug costs for those enrolled in Medicare Part D; the previous out-of-pocket limit was $8,000. This is a positive change for the many seniors who struggle to pay for their medications. Other reforms include expanded financial assistance for low-income individuals and price negotiations for some high-cost drugs, which should help lower prices across the board.

Traditional Medicare, with its nationwide network of participating providers, enables enrollees to see any doctor or specialist who accepts Medicare. It also generally avoids the hassle of pre-authorizations, simplifying access to care without associated delays. However, out-of-pocket costs can add up quickly, as there’s no cap on expenses, such as deductibles and coinsurance, for things other than medications. Many beneficiaries opt to cover these additional costs by purchasing supplemental insurance, known as Medigap policies.

Medicare Advantage, offered by private insurance carriers, bundles Medicare Parts A, B and often Part D into a single plan. Medicare Advantage plans may offer additional benefits, such as dental and vision coverage. However, they typically have restricted networks of providers. Receiving care outside of those networks can lead to higher costs or even denial of payment. Nearly all Medicare Advantage plans require pre-authorization for at least some services, which can delay or deny access to necessary care.

There are specific times when changes can be made in Medicare or Medicare Advantage coverage. The Medicare open enrollment period is the time to switch between traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage or to change to a different type of Medicare Advantage plan. There is a separate Medicare Advantage open enrollment period from Jan. 1 to March 31, when it is possible to change from Medicare Advantage to traditional Medicare or change from one Medicare Advantage plan to another. Ironically, however, it is generally NOT possible to change from traditional Medicare to Medicare Advantage during Medicare Advantage Open Enrollment. For more details, go to Medicare.gov.

In summary, while the new Medicare policy changes are positive ones, they do not necessarily make the decision-making process any easier. The choice between traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage remains complex, with each option offering distinct advantages and disadvantages. Each person should consider their particular needs and preferences, do their research, and make the best choice for their situation.

For more Medicare information, visit AsclepiusInitiative.org/medicare.

Congressional clerks pass the Electoral College certificate from the state of Ohio while unsealing and organizing all the votes from the 50 states in the House of Representatives chamber at the U.S. Capitol January 4, 2013 in Washington, D.C. The votes were tallied during a joint session of the 113th Congress. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The United States is the only democracy in the world where a presidential candidate can get the most popular votes and still lose the election.

Thanks to the Electoral College, that has happened five times in the country’s history. The most recent examples are from 2000, when Al Gore won the popular vote but George W. Bush won the Electoral College after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, and 2016, when Hillary Clinton got more votes nationwide than Donald Trump but lost in the Electoral College.

The Founding Fathers did not invent the idea of an electoral college. Rather, they borrowed the concept from Europe, where it had been used to pick emperors for hundreds of years.

As a scholar of presidential democracies around the world, I have studied how countries have used electoral colleges. None have been satisfied with the results. And except for the U.S., all have found other ways to choose their leaders.

The origins of the U.S. Electoral College

The Holy Roman Empire was a loose confederation of territories that existed in central Europe from 962 to 1806. The emperor was not chosen by heredity, like most other monarchies. Instead, emperors were chosen by electors, who represented both secular and religious interests.

As of 1356, there were seven electors: Four were hereditary nobles and three were chosen by the Catholic Church. By 1803, the total number of electors had increased to 10. Three years later, the empire fell.

When the Founding Fathers were drafting the U.S. Constitution in 1787, the initial draft proposal called for the “National Executive,” which we now call the president, to be elected by the “National Legislature,” which we now call Congress. However, Virginia delegate George Mason viewed “making the Executive the mere creature of the Legislature as a violation of the fundamental principle of good Government,” and so the idea was rejected.

Pennsylvania delegate James Wilson proposed that the president be elected by popular vote. However, many other delegates were adamant that there be an indirect way of electing the president to provide a buffer against what Thomas Jefferson called “well-meaning, but uninformed people.” Mason, for instance, suggested that allowing voters to pick the president would be akin to “refer(ring) a trial of colours to a blind man.”

For 21 days, the founders debated how to elect the president, and they held more than 30 separate votes on the topic – more than for any other issue they discussed. Eventually, the complicated solution that they agreed to was an early version of the electoral college system that exists today, a method where neither Congress nor the people directly elect the president. Instead, each state gets a number of electoral votes corresponding to the number of members of the U.S. House and Senate it is apportioned. When the states’ electoral votes are tallied, the candidate with the majority wins.

James Madison, who was not fond of the Holy Roman Empire’s use of an electoral college, later recalled that the final decision on how to elect a U.S. president “was produced by fatigue and impatience.”

After just two elections, in 1796 and 1800, problems with this system had become obvious. Chief among them was that electoral votes were cast only for president. The person who got the most electoral votes became president, and the person who came in second place – usually their leading opponent – became vice president. The current process of electing the president and vice president on a single ticket but with separate electoral votes was adopted in 1804 with the passage of the 12th Amendment.

Some other questions about how the electoral college system should work were clarified by federal laws through the years, including in 1887 and 1948.

After the 2020 presidential election exposed additional flaws with the system, Congress further tweaked the process by passing legislation that sought to clarify how electoral votes are counted.

Other electoral colleges

After the U.S. Constitution went into effect, the idea of using an electoral college to indirectly elect a president spread to other republics.

For example, in the Americas, Colombia adopted an electoral college in 1821. Chile adopted one in 1828. Argentina adopted one in 1853.

In Europe, Finland adopted an electoral college to elect its president in 1925, and France adopted an electoral college in 1958.

Over time, however, these countries changed their minds. All of them abandoned their electoral colleges and switched to directly electing their presidents by votes of the people. Colombia did so in 1910, Chile in 1925, France in 1965, Finland in 1994, and Argentina in 1995.

The U.S. is the only democratic presidential system left that still uses an electoral college.

Then Republican candidate for governor and Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron waves to the crowd during the 143rd Fancy Farm Picnic, Aug. 5, 2023. Behind him are U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell; Elaine Chao, former U.S. Transportation and Labor secretary; U.S. Rep. James Comer (partially blocked by Cameron's arm) and Cameron's wife, Makenze Cameron. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Austin Anthony)

FRANKFORT — The word “privacy” does not appear in the U.S. Constitution. But the right to privacy — to be free from baseless government intrusions into our “persons, houses, papers and effects” — is woven all through the Constitution and our laws.

Despite having sworn an oath to support the Constitution and the law, former Attorney General Daniel Cameron misused his power in order to harass physicians who had performed abortions in Kentucky when the procedure was still legal here.

We know this only because a court case that had been kept secret for more than a year was recently unsealed. The Lantern joined with Louisville Public Media to hire lawyers to ask that the records be opened because the public needs to know — and we want to report — what happens in the courts.

The public also needs to know when government officials abuse their power, as they have long been wont to do.?

How Kentucky’s former top prosecutor used his powers to go after abortion providers in secret

Our nation’s founders understood the risk of unencumbered government power. They took pains in the Constitution to keep Americans secure from the kind of harassment inflicted by England’s monarch, whose men could search anyone’s belongings “without any cause other than the perceived suspicion that they were political enemies.” ?

In the summer of 2022, in the days after Americans lost the federally-protected right to end a pregnancy, EMW Women’s Surgical Center and Planned Parenthood filed a legal challenge to Kentucky’s near-total ban on abortion. The ban had been triggered into effect by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision.?

Two physicians on the University of Louisville medical faculty provided abortions and trained future doctors at EMW — ?training required to maintain the medical school’s accreditation. At a hearing asking a judge in Louisville to block the abortion ban, one of the physicians testified, “Abortion is essential health care. … People have the right to determine whether they wish to have children.”

Cameron, who had made opposition to abortion a cornerstone of his political platform, was defending the state’s abortion ban and also gearing up for his successful campaign to become the Republican nominee for governor.

Kentucky appeals court rejects AG’s efforts to get employment records in abortion case

He decided to go after the physicians’ employment records and sought the information through the discovery process. When that didn’t work, Cameron opened a criminal investigation and subpoenaed their W2s, 1099s, insurance info, time sheets and job descriptions under the pretense that a Franklin County grand jury wanted them.

Two Kentucky courts concluded that Cameron had no evidence to justify his demands for the physicians’ records, that he was conducting an illegal “fishing expedition,” much like the king’s henchmen.

Significantly, Cameron’s successor, Attorney General Russell Coleman, also a Republican, ended the fishing expedition by opting not to seek a review by the Supreme Court.

All along the way, political considerations appear to have steered Cameron. He pleased conservative interests like the Family Foundation by going after the physicians’ info in the first place. But by the fall of 2023, in the heat of the gubernatorial race and with Democrat Andy Beshear attacking him on abortion, Cameron wanted to keep his actions secret. He quickly obtained a Court of Appeals order to keep the case sealed when Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd signaled his intent to open it.

Cameron misused his considerable powers as attorney general against Kentuckians whose offense was taking the opposite side of a divisive public issue. If, as the physicians argued, Cameron had succeeded in obtaining their private information, he might well have used it to publicly harass them or as fodder for his campaign.

Cameron’s fig leaf of a rationale was a suspicion that public money was somehow supporting abortion because the U of L professors also worked at EMW, at one time Kentucky’s only abortion provider. Longstanding state and federal laws ban the public funding of abortions.?

But, as his own legal team admitted, even that flimsy fig leaf had evaporated by the time Cameron issued the criminal subpoena because the one-year statute of limitations on that? law had expired.

To give Cameron the benefit of the doubt, to protect any genuine investigation of any genuine possible wrongdoing, Judge Shepherd had allowed the attorney general’s team to present its evidence privately or “in camera.”?

We can conclude from the record that Cameron had no justification for probing the physicians’ private records. Mitch McConnell’s protege, endorsed in his quest for the governorship by Donald Trump, had put ambition and politics above the law he had sworn to uphold.?

Kentuckians needed to know that, no matter how they feel about abortion or politics.?

If you support the Lantern through your donations, you helped them find out. Thank you.

X owner Elon Musk endorses former President Donald Trump during a campaign rally on Oct. 5, 2024 in Butler, Pa. It was the first time Musk joined one of Trump's rallies and, writes columnist Teri Carter, evidence of their growing alliance in the final stretch of the presidential election.(Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Back in June, I deactivated my X (formerly Twitter) account.?

At the time this felt like a meaningless gesture. I often deactivated when I needed a break from the maddening masses. But I was always conscious about needing to reactivate within 30 days so as not to lose my account altogether; so conscious that I would mark my calendar “Turn Twitter Back On” about three weeks out, fearful I would forget and lose my (yes, measly) 7,000-ish followers and my public voice.

But come July, I let my “Turn Twitter Back On” warning pass with an obvious realization: Quitting X felt a lot like when I quit drinking. Deleting my account was surprisingly difficult. Our addictions to our phones and social media are real.?

As someone who writes about local, state and national politics, could I cut the cord? Could I know everything I needed to know without the immediacy of X? I was about to find out.

Last weekend, billionaire X owner Elon Musk appeared onstage at a Donald Trump rally. Musk touted the importance of free speech, adding, “this will be the last election” if Trump doesn’t win. Wearing a cap with the “Make America Great Again” slogan of Trump’s campaign, Musk appeared to acknowledge the foreboding nature of his remarks. “As you can see I am not just MAGA — I am Dark MAGA,” he said. It was the first time that Musk joined one of Trump’s rallies and was evidence of their growing alliance in the final stretch of the presidential election.”?

Here in Kentucky, our GOP legislators often complain on their social media about the media, accusing news organizations and journalists of bias. Yet they do not seem to mind that the owner of one of the biggest media companies on the planet is openly campaigning for Trump.?

I wonder why.

When Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, was being considered as VP Kamala Harris’s running mate, Republican electeds and their spokespeople poked fun at him, repeatedly saying he’d been born with a silver spoon. But these same legislators seem to have no issue with Trump’s golden spoon and are proudly supporting him.?

Funny how that works.

Ask many of the Trump voters here in rural Kentucky and they will tell you right off that all of us in the media — except Musk, I guess — no matter how local or nationally recognized, are liars; are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome; are infanticide enablers, gun grabbers, school sex groomers, open border advocates, God haters, suppressors of free speech. The “enemy of the people” Trump has railed against since 2015.?

Meanwhile, Musk’s purchase of X, with his creeping control of who and what gets amplified or suppressed on X — one of the biggest media companies in the world — has been the proverbial icing on Trump’s cake.

It is telling that Trump did not even need to come back to X and claim his old megaphone because the political journalists he regularly calls “enemy of the people” (and worse) post screenshots of his all-caps, hateful, Truth Social lies and rants on their own X accounts like an army of free press secretaries.

Writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, who famously left Twitter before it became X, is back in the news with his latest book “The Message.” Coates had about a million followers when he disappeared from the platform. In an interview prior to his departure he was asked if he ever thought about leaving Twitter. His reply: I wake up every day hoping for the courage to leave.

I quit X because I, too, had long been awaiting the courage to leave.?

How many of us have become addicted to scrolling, to news alerts, to watching the endless supply of two-minute videos, overwhelmed by the scope of bad news? And then there is the building of a platform, especially if you are a young person in the news business. Can you build a career — especially if you are in a smaller state like Kentucky — if you are not on X with a brand and a following?

I knew I was finished with X when I started overthinking and censoring my own posts. There is no greater death knell for a writer than censorship. The same goes for democracy. And don’t we keep saying we are worried about democracy?

X is no longer a democratic space. That train done left the station long ago.

X is not Twitter, the platform of old where we found extended community and camaraderie.?

X — for all of Musk’s pledges of his love of free speech — is a killer of free expression, political heroin curated by a billionaire controlling our discourse and stumping at presidential campaign rallies for another billionaire, the man who branded journalists as the enemy of the people.

X is the symbol with which one signs their name when they cannot read nor write. An ominous sign.

According to Volunteers of America, every case resolved through restorative justice outside of the court system saves an average of $48,000. By utilizing restorative justice, we are not only making our communities safer, but we are also practicing sound fiscal decision-making.?(Getty Images)

Everyone agrees that individuals who cause harm to others should make amends for what they’ve done. Victims of crime deserve to feel justice has been served in their cases. Judges and prosecutors work very hard to ensure that justice is served in every case, and we take that search for due process and a resolution very seriously.

For a long time, punitive sentences like probation and fines were the only tools judges and prosecutors had at our disposal to make offenders right their wrongs. However, sometimes these unfortunate acts serve as great opportunities for young people to learn from their mistakes and promote a positive behavior change.??

Restorative justice provides a facilitated process to allow individuals harmed by wrongdoing to meet with the offender so they can negotiate their own resolution outside of the traditional justice system. It allows victims and offenders to participate fully in the resolution of the crime and work to find a solution that makes amends and transforms negative situations into learning experiences, benefiting both parties in the long run. The program is voluntary and begins with a facilitated meeting between the two parties. The person harmed can explain how the offense impacted them and what needs to be done to make up for previous mistakes.??

Both parties work together to determine a course of action that allows persons who caused harm to not only fully understand the gravity of their actions, but also make amends for what they have done. For instance, a young person who breaks into a convenience store and steals money from the cash register might pay the stolen money back to the store owner and work at the store for a certain number of hours to remedy his or her actions.

Persons harmed who we have worked with in the past as part of the restorative justice program are glad they participated. By working with offenders to ensure they accept responsibility and work through the restorative process, they often tell us that they feel a sense of closure and healing.

One of these individuals was a woman named Robin. Going through the restorative process proved to be what both individuals needed to move forward.?

“Sometimes, people just need someone to say, ‘It’s okay — I understand, and I forgive you,’” she said. “[Restorative justice] is a great process for people who need to communicate and resolve things in a fair way.”

When asked what would have been the outcome if restorative justice was not an option, she said, “We both would have walked away with never knowing the possibilities.”

By engaging directly with the people they harmed, offenders better understand why their actions have real-life consequences. According to data made available by the Administrative Office of the Courts, offenders who participate in restorative justice programs are more than 50% less likely to commit a future crime.?

Additionally, this program saves communities significant tax dollars. According to Volunteers of America, every case resolved through restorative justice outside of the court system saves an average of $48,000. By utilizing restorative justice, we are not only making our communities safer, but we are also practicing sound fiscal decision-making.??

As county attorneys, we recognize our duty to uphold law and order in our communities. While punitive measures have traditionally been our primary tool, restorative justice has emerged as a promising alternative, offering a path to healing and accountability for both victims and offenders.?

As we continue to navigate the complexities of our justice system, it is important to keep what is best for our communities at the forefront. By using programs like restorative justice, our communities benefit and come out stronger.?

"The U.S. Supreme Court has been clear: First Amendment protections apply as fully on college campuses as they do in the community at large," writes Ken Miller. "Suppressing voices — in spite of DEI structures being abandoned — betrays this constitutional right and erodes the very fabric of higher education as a place for intellectual growth and civil discourse." (Getty Images)

As Kentucky’s colleges and universities scale back their DEI initiatives under pressure from the General Assembly, academic leaders face a critical challenge: safeguarding free speech and protecting the rights of minority students.?

While DEI structures may be dismantled, the need to amplify marginalized voices remains, even as debates over racial equality, inclusivity and social justice spark tension across the commonwealth.

Announcements from the University of Kentucky and Northern Kentuckyn University illustrate this issue. UK President Eli Capilouto recently declared that the Office of Institutional Diversity would be disbanded. While he assured the campus community that UK remains committed to “creating a sense of belonging, respect, and academic freedom,” he also acknowledged listening to policymakers concerned about the university appearing “partisan or political.”

University of Kentucky disbanding its diversity office, president announces

Capilouto’s response, couched in the language of neutrality, signals a potential retreat from ensuring diverse perspectives are supported. Redistributing the responsibilities of the Office of Institutional Diversity to “other offices that support the entire institution” creates ambiguity about who will safeguard the interests of marginalized groups.?

Similarly, NKU President Cady Short-Thompson announced that the university would eliminate its Office of Inclusive Excellence. Citing “the circumstances under which universities across Kentucky and the country find themselves” and legislative priorities, Short-Thompson’s statement reflects a broader trend: Kentucky’s academic institutions are scaling back DEI efforts in response to mounting political pressure.

An open letter from the ACLU of Kentucky reminded college presidents of their duty to uphold free speech. In a time when DEI structures are being dismantled and the political climate grows more charged, upholding this commitment is critical. Colleges are not only legally obligated to ensure the free exchange of ideas under the First Amendment, they have a moral responsibility to protect these voices as a cornerstone of higher learning, ensuring that all voices can be heard without fear of restriction or retaliation.

A second public university in Kentucky closes its diversity office under GOP lawmakers’ pressure

With UK and NKU citing possible revisitation of DEI issues by state legislators, there is growing concern that academic leaders will be pressured to dilute or silence student and faculty voices. Suppressing these voices — whether by dismantling DEI offices or quelling campus protests — undermines the core mission of higher education and betrays the principles of academic freedom. Kentucky’s college presidents, provosts and deans may find themselves under external pressures that seek to limit discourse or penalize dissent, especially on challenging or controversial topics.

Universities have long been catalysts for social change, and Kentucky’s campuses are no exception. From student-led protests during the civil rights movement to resistance against the Vietnam War, these pivotal moments shaped the commonwealth’s history.

Today, with tensions over diversity, equity and inclusivity continuing to grow, Kentucky’s higher education institutions have a responsibility to protect the rights of students and faculty — especially when their views challenge the status quo. Preserving such dissent is fundamental to maintaining a dynamic learning environment where diverse ideas can be explored, debated and refined.

The U.S. Supreme Court has been clear: First Amendment protections apply as fully on college campuses as they do in the community at large. Suppressing voices — in spite of DEI structures being abandoned — betrays this constitutional right and erodes the very fabric of higher education as a place for intellectual growth and civil discourse.

For Kentucky’s academic leaders, the pressure to silence dissenting voices will only intensify as the political climate heats up. External interests, including some in the General Assembly, may urge them to stifle protests or impose penalties on those who express unpopular opinions. But their role as defenders of free speech and academic freedom demands that that they stand firm in their commitment to apply policies fairly, ensuring that every student and faculty member — regardless of their position — has the freedom to be heard.

Free speech must be upheld without discrimination. Whether students are advocating for racial justice, workers’ rights or other causes, universities must resist outside pressures to silence viewpoints or penalize dissent.?

The challenges of protecting free speech and inclusivity are real. Yet, they are notminsurmountable. By working closely with students and faculty and rejecting calls to silence dissenting voices, Kentucky’s colleges and universities can remain true to their mission of developing thoughtful and engaged citizens.

Now more than ever, Kentucky’s colleges and universities can lead by example, showing that the free exchange of ideas is something not to be feared and rejected but something to be trusted and embraced.

"As Catholics we are taught every public policy decision must be first filtered through a lens of 'How will this affect the poorest among us?' The answer for Amendment 2 is: it hurts the poor," writes former state Rep. Jim Wayne of Louisville. (Getty Images)

St. Agnes Catholic School in Louisville holds the distinction of being a U.S. Department of Education Blue Ribbon School four times. Only a handful of schools across the entire nation have achieved this prestigious honor of education excellence.

As members of St. Agnes Church, my wife and I know our financial support for this school is part of our mission to share our faith with the new generation. Along with a well-rounded, rigorous program in arts and sciences, the school teaches the foundations of our faith and our identity as followers of Christ to serve the world, especially the poor, with our talents and treasures.

This financial support is not new for us. Our great grandparents and grandparents did the same, as did our parents. We now witness grandchildren benefiting from this same spirit of generosity spurred by our faith.

None of our extended family looked to the government to subsidize what we believe to be a core value of our lives.

For those not able to afford Catholic tuition, organizations like the remarkable Catholic Educational Foundation in the Archdiocese of Louisville and Community Catholic Center in West Louisville and the Portland neighborhoods work to make tuition affordable for many moderate income and poor families.

However, Catholic schools are not designed to accommodate all children the way public schools must do by law. Children with severe mental, physical and learning challenges or with language differences (children in Jefferson County Public Schools speak 139 languages), those on the margins are shut out of Catholic schools.

My Catholic faith teaches that each one of these children is just as sacred, just as valuable, as any other child. Their unique educational needs must be addressed by specialists in a thriving public education system.

Yet our public school systems, where more than 90% of Kentucky children attend, are under attack in Frankfort. They remain drastically underfunded, with teacher pay far below what it needs to be to attract and retain the brightest and most gifted teachers. Student test scores and dropout rates continue to shame us all. Wrap around services for students with special learning and emotional needs remain inadequate, resulting in thousands entering the work force without basic skills to navigate daily living. In frustration, many turn to violence, drugs, alcohol and criminal behavior in adulthood in desperate attempts to master their demons.

Despite these harsh realities, Frankfort Republican leaders are not just ignoring what is occurring, they promise to compound the problems by pushing Amendment 2, which sets the legal stage to give middle- and upper-class Kentuckians vouchers to finance private schools, including all Catholic schools. If passed, this constitutional amendment will permit the misguided Republican legislators to suck hundreds of millions of dollars from the state’s coffers to subsidize private schools that serve a select group of students.

To compound the problem, Kentucky’s misguided Catholic bishops are promoting Amendment 2 with the fallacious reasoning it will offer “choice” to poor children whose parents want to escape a failing public school system and flee to a Catholic school.

The hole left in the state’s budget — which has been structurally imbalanced for over 20 years — will drain even more money from critical state programs including public schools; child protective and day-care services;? after-school, health and mental health programs, as well as Youth Services Centers.

As Catholics we are taught every public policy decision must be first filtered through a lens of “How will this affect the poorest among us?” The answer for Amendment 2 is: it hurts the poor.

Sometimes Catholics are led by our bishops, sometimes our bishops must be led by the people in the pews. Our bishops, perhaps unaware of the serious fiscal crises facing our public school systems, now need to be instructed.

It is time they promote full state funding for all valuable public services in our poor, undereducated, unhealthy, environmentally threatened commonwealth. It is not the time for them to siphon money from our state treasury to pay for Catholic schools or any private school.

Our Catholic schools can be financed by prosperous Catholics whose lives have been shaped by their faith experiences in Catholic schools. The state should not pay for any school that promotes any religious creed. Period.

It is time for all Catholics to follow our church’s teachings on protecting the poor and promoting the common good.?

SCL homes are a good thing.?They allow people with intellectual and developmental disabilities to live in a home, such as yours, which enables them to be part of a community. (Getty Images)? (Getty Images)

I know my neighbors.? We wave and say hello.? But I don’t really know them.? How well do you know your neighbors?

If you live in a middle-class neighborhood, you may have a Medicaid-funded Supports for Community Living (SCL) home on your street.? What is an SCL home?? Our government created SCL homes as a response to mistreatment of people living in mental institutions, many of them with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) such as cerebral palsy and down syndrome.? SCL homes are a good thing.? They allow people with I/DD to live in a home, such as yours, which enables them to be part of a community.??

This is good for most, but for some the isolation of institutionalization continues and is accompanied by the monster of abuse. A nurse practitioner in Kentucky who sees people with I/DD under state guardianship tells me she has seen evidence of “heinous and egregious acts of abuse.”

This is a nationwide tragedy. Last year, in Kentucky alone, the Department of Developmental and Intellectual Disabilities confirms 97 people were abused in these homes. That’s a plane crash.? This story should make the national news.?

And it gets worse. This data is only substantiated abuse. How many incidents were unsubstantiated because residents are unable to communicate? “We hear repeated stories of abuse,” reports the National Council on Severe Autism. “Injuries occur, investigations ensue, and nothing is substantiated because people with intellectual disabilities are incapable of telling their stories or coming to their own defense.”

And how many incidents went unreported because residents fear retaliation? According to the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Victims of Crimes, despite the prevalence of abuse among people with disabilities, more than half of victims never seek assistance from law enforcement.??

At the top of the list of common reasons for this is fear of reprisal.??

And how many incidents were just not reported? Federal agencies say that for every incident of group home abuse reported, nearly 24 additional cases remain undetected and that people living in group homes are at risk of serious harm; 15,000-19,00 people with I/DD are raped each year in the U.S. Most abuse occurs in group homes where 85% of cases go unreported.

(Sigh.) This is not a plane crash. This is a catastrophe.?

So how do you be a good neighbor?? To begin, if you hear anything or see something suspicious,? call Adult Protective Services in Kentucky at 1-877-597-2331.? Your phone call is anonymous and may save a life.??

Sen. Reggie Thomas has filed Bill Request 42 which would allow cameras in SCL homes. Other legislators are needed as co-sponsors and supporters to help extend to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities the protections of the Kentucky Bill of Rights, which reads, “All men are, by nature, free and equal, and have certain inherent and inalienable rights, among which may be reckoned: the right of seeking and pursuing their safety and happiness.”?

Vulnerable people need cameras for protection. Federal and state oversight is unable to prevent abuse. Vulnerable people need protection at the point of care.?

The president of the Autism Society of the Bluegrass says it so well:? “It is the right of us all to be protected in our homes. You or I can freely use technology such as cameras to enhance that protection. As the parent of a young man with autism, I would want no less for him. You would want the same for your loved ones.”

As philosopher Elbert Hubbard said, “Who is your neighbor? Your neighbor is the man who needs you.”

The Graves County Courthouse in Mayfield in 1942. Twenty years before a deputy fatally shot the sheriff and stood trial there. The building was damaged beyond repair in the December 2021 tornado outbreak. Photo by George Goodman (1876-1961) from the Goodman-Paxton Photographic Collection. (University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center)

The Sept. 19 Whitesburg slaying wasn’t the first time one county official was charged with killing another in a Kentucky courthouse.??

Letcher County Sheriff Shawn Stines, 43, is accused of first degree murder for allegedly shooting District Judge Kevin Mullins, 54, in his chambers. So far, the sheriff’s motive is unclear.

On March 6, 1922, Deputy Sam Galloway, 29, gunned down Graves County Sheriff John T. Roach, 30, in the sheriff’s office. Galloway evidently killed Roach after he heard the sheriff planned to fire him.?

Stines, who immediately surrendered to authorities, pleaded not guilty and remains jailed without bond. A preliminary hearing has been set for Oct. 1.

The Whitesburg shooting has attracted state and national media coverage. Likewise, the Mayfield shooting grabbed newspaper headlines across Kentucky and the country. The latter ultimately led to a book, “A Courthouse Tragedy: Politics, Murder and Redemption in a Small Kentucky Town,” written by the late Murray attorney Sid Easley, a Graves County native. Published 10 years ago, it’s still available on Amazon.

Easley wrote that Roach and Galloway had been friends. Both wanted to run for sheriff in the August 1921, Democratic primary. Apparently, the two men struck a deal: Galloway would bow out in favor of Roach, who would appoint him a deputy, a post that often was a stepping stone to sheriff.

After he won the primary and easily defeated a Republican in the general election, Roach kept his word. But trouble brewed when Galloway found out that Roach planned to cut his pay and work hours. Worse, Galloway later learned that his days as a deputy were numbered.?

Galloway confronted Roach in the sheriff’s office on circuit court day. Both became angry; Galloway shot Roach three times with a .45 caliber pistol, according to Easley’s book.

Galloway quickly handed over his weapon and submitted to arrest. Fearing mob violence against the prisoner, authorities transported him to the McCracken County jail in Paducah.?

On March 7, the Graves County grand jury indicted Galloway for willful murder, which carried a maximum sentence of death or life imprisonment. The case against Galloway seemed open and shut. After all, there were multiple witnesses.

Roach’s death resulted in a historical first for Kentucky. His widow, Lois Roach, was named to succeed him. Apparently the state’s first woman sheriff, she was elected in her own right in 1923 and reelected to a second two-year term in 1925.

Galloway’s trial began on June 26. Because he and the late sheriff had many friends in Mayfield and Graves County, Circuit Judge W.H. Hester summoned a jury from adjacent Ballard County.?

Galloway pleaded self-defense, claiming he fired only when he saw Roach reach in his pocket for his pistol. His testimony was disputed; the prosecution characterized the deputy as a cold-blooded murderer.

The jury deliberated for three days and failed to reach a verdict. Hester declared a mistrial and prepared to set a date for a second trial, Easley wrote.?

Hester gaveled the court into session on July 26 with jurors from Carlisle County, which also adjoined Graves. The judge stopped the trial after a juror unexpectedly died on July 28. The judge scheduled a third trial, also with Carlisle countians in the jury box, for Aug. 1.???

In his charge to the jury, Hester said Galloway could be found not guilty, found guilty of murder and sentenced to death or life imprisonment, or found guilty of voluntary manslaughter and imprisoned for “not less than two nor more than twenty-one years,” Easley wrote.

On Aug. 4, the panel convicted Galloway of the lesser charge and sentenced him to seven years. Hester subsequently denied a defense motion for another trial and Galloway’s lawyers gave up on a fourth trial.?

After his release from Eddyville Penitentiary, Galloway moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, with his second wife. His first wife died soon after he was locked up. The couple had two sons; one lived to 72, the other, born while the deputy was jailed and awaiting his first trial, died at age 5.??

Galloway was 74 when his life ended in Tulsa in 1968. He is buried in a Tulsa cemetery.?

Roach and his widow, who died in 1979 at 83, are buried in Mayfield’s old Maplewood Cemetery. A metal plaque recognizes her as the first woman sheriff in Kentucky. Besides his spouse, Roach was survived by their 3-year-old daughter, Ruth, who lived to age 86.

The 1880s vintage red brick courthouse, where Galloway violently ended Roach’s life and was punished for his crime, is gone, a casualty of the deadly Dec. 10, 2021, tornado that devastated much of Mayfield.??

Easley ended his book by quoting the editor of the “Mayfield Weekly Messenger” who, three days after the shooting, urged the citizenry “to be calm, collected and full of the spirit that controls sadness and tears. And yet it is also the time for wise men and those who love the integrity and honor of Mayfield to counsel peace and the law.”

The author concluded, “The voice of that editor eloquently reminded the community that the spirit of redemption was always present, and that the wise among them should reach for the healing offered by its power of restoration.”

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell speaks during the 144th annual St. Jerome Fancy Farm Picnic in West Kentucky, Saturday, Aug. 3, 2024. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Austin Anthony)

Mitch McConnell is on his way out — first as U.S. Senate Republican leader, at the end of this year, then as senior senator from Kentucky, surely at the end of 2026. There are no real signs to the contrary, but the 82-year-old Louisvillian won’t come out and announce his retirement just yet, perhaps because it would diminish his influence. Washington still listens to him, and he still brings home its bacon.

When House Republicans passed a government-funding bill with a purely political provision supposedly banning non-citizens from voting (already illegal), which threatened a government shutdown because it was unacceptable to Senate Democrats and President Joe Biden, McConnell said “it would be politically beyond stupid” to shut down the government, and House Speaker Mike Johnson backed off. Donald Trump wasn’t happy, which probably pleased McConnell.

Unfortunately, a decade of such brinkmanship, episodically ended by last-minute, catch-all spending bills that avoid spending cuts to please majorities in both parties, has worsened the nation’s financial situation to the point that our national debt is now larger than the gross national product — a threshold many economists warned against. That, and the occasional standoffs in Washington over raising the debt limit, threaten to undermine the dollar as the world’s main reserve currency, a status that gives us unique leverage across the world.

There will be a reckoning next year, with expiration of the deficit-ballooning tax cuts passed by a Republican Congress and Trump in 2018.

?Meanwhile, McConnell has reclaimed his status as Congress’ biggest slicer of “pork,” local projects funded by federal appropriations.

In the appropriations bills passed before the August recess, McConnell had $498.9 million worth of projects, more than any other senator and far ahead of second-place Susan Collins, R-Maine, who had $361 million. Almost all the difference is the leader’s biggest lick, $218 million to finish the long-delayed larger locks at Kentucky Dam, an appropriation also included in the House energy-and-water bill by 1st Congressional District Rep. James Comer.

Other biggies include $138 million for an Army Reserve hangar at Fort Knox, $50 million for a biomedical research building at the University of Kentucky, $22 million for a precision-medicine center at the University of Louisville, and $20 million to fix the Edmonson County Water District’s supply problem, caused by federal removal of an old dam that exacerbated pollution in Mammoth Cave.

Democrats control the Senate, but spending your money is the most bipartisan of legislative processes; the 49 Republicans in the 100-member Senate got 46 percent of the pork. And McConnell is making up for lost time; he helped pass the bipartisan $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill in 2021 but “sat out the earmarking process in each of the first three years after Democratic leaders brought it back in 2021, after a decade-long absence,” CQ Roll Call reported. At the end of that year, McConnell issued a press release decrying “Democrats’ reckless tax-and-spending spree.”

What changed? McConnell is giving up the leadership of a Senate caucus that is largely opposed to earmarks and more concerned about spending and the debt, and he seems intent on getting as much federal help for our relatively poor state as he can before he leaves office. He could become chairman of the Appropriations Committee, the catbird seat for spending, if Republicans take control of the Senate — which seems more likely than not.

McConnell is probably all the more eager to bring home the bacon from the next Congress because he knows that Kentucky’s other senator, Rand Paul, would need to undergo a deep philosophical conversion to become a pork slicer. Paul is a deficit hawk who makes a priority of reducing spending and the debt. His last “Festivus Report” claimed $900 billion in wasteful spending. (The current Senate earmarks total $7.74 billion.)

Because Paul is out of the Republican and congressional mainstream, he’s mostly been a talker on spending, not a doer. If and when he becomes our senior senator, it would be folly to expect much help from him when it comes to getting our share of federal outlays. That should be a priority for representatives of a poor state.

It’s good to talk about reducing spending and the debt, but as long as Congress continues its current practices, I am glad we have Mitch McConnell to slice the pork. And Hal Rogers does a good job of it in the House, as his constituents all over his 5th Congressional District will attest.

Perhaps next year’s reckoning on taxes will also bring a reckoning on spending. Let’s hope it does. But in the fight for federal dollars, which will continue no matter what happens, Rand Paul will amount to unilateral disarmament. So let’s wish Mitch McConnell good slicing.

This column is republished from the Northern Kentucky Tribune, a nonprofit publication of the Kentucky Center for Public Service Journalism.

The days of “when they go low … we go high” are long gone. At this point, our discourse could devolve into “yo mama” jokes, and no one would blink.?(Getty Images)

Democratic Party messaging couldn’t be called punchy — until now.

This election season, Democrats are going for the jugular rhetorically with cries of “Stop Project 2025,” “Mind your own da—business,” and “We are not going back.” The left is now employing the visceral, simplistic, fear-inducing messaging strategy that Republicans had heretofore owned (re: Southern Strategy, Willie Horton, Monica Lewinsky).?

In the past, Democrats would flash facts and figures, wax poetic, or attempt to appeal to logic when selling the merits of liberal policy. Now, the coconut-emoji keyboard warriors, the wordsmiths at KamalaHQ and the Republicans-turned-Democrat-allies at The Lincoln Project are leaning into the messaging of zero-sum games and existential political threats.?

Democrat TV ads feature gutting stories about child assault victims and mothers killed by untreated miscarriages. Left-wing social media influencers are crafting harrowing tales of shadow governments waiting in the wings to replace lifelong civil servants with an army of sycophants ready to serve a “dictator on day one.” Democrats are painting themselves as watchmen atop the wall of America’s democracy, warning against a horde of authoritarian barbarians at the gate.?

Meanwhile, Republicans are accusing immigrants of kidnapping and eating family pets in Ohio.

Daily pundits, politicians and papers promote conversation about fraud and cheaters, adult film stars and Epstein Island, stolen valor and heel spurs, and other things so misogynistic and indecent I dare not mention.

The days of “when they go low … we go high” are long gone. At this point, our discourse could devolve into “yo mama” jokes, and no one would blink.?

The Democrats’ newfound rhetorical strategy could be deemed a necessary evolution in the survival of a political species. But as a political scientist and former journalist, I am deeply concerned about the democratically deleterious implications of our fever-pitched political discourse.

Wordplay warfare is effective. But is it worth the collateral damage to our social cohesion, norms of decency and ability to engage in constructive dialogue? I think not.

Both Democrats and Republicans would do well to holster their speech six-shooters after this election. Will they do it? Not likely.?

A statue of James K. Patterson, the University of Kentucky's first president, looks over the center of campus. (Kentucky Lantern photo by McKenna Horsley)

Lately, national attention on Kentucky news seems to focus on the sensational and the shocking.

The national media reported on the discovery — a day after authorities called off a massive law enforcement search — of the decomposing body of the person believed to be the I-75 shooter by a colorful Casey County couple with genealogical ties to the legendary Hatfields and McCoys.

National reports of the murder of a Letcher County judge by the county sheriff in the judge’s chambers quickly surfaced in media headlines.

It is less common for a national news service covering academia to shine a light into the dim administrative recesses of Kentucky’s public universities.?

But as national headlines heralded the recovery of the shooter’s body — not far from the site where he allegedly committed his crimes — and announced the courthouse murder, The Chronicle of Higher Education redirected national attention to a controversy at Kentucky’s flagship university that the university would have happily preferred, no doubt, to remain local.?

The ironies in The Chronicle’s story — “After a No-Confidence Vote at the U. of Kentucky, a Tussle Over Ballots Gets Messy” — are rich.?

University of Kentucky Senate votes no confidence in president over governance changes

Administrators at the University of Kentucky — an institution whose open records and open meetings performance has been tested and regularly assigned failing marks — lectured members of the now dismantled University Senate, reassigned staff, and threatened legal action, based on the Senate’s records-keeping and records-management practices — practices on which the administration itself had offered bad legal advice in the past.?

Indeed, it is the recording and maintenance of the former University Senate’s votes that is at the heart of the controversy on which The Chronicle focuses. In October, 2021, a UK attorney advised that “it is compliant with the Open Meetings law for the Senate Council/Senate to merely record in the minutes whether or not a motion ‘passed,'” reaffirming this at a later meeting. A 2018 open records request for a copy of the university attorney’s legal analysis yielded a copy of a federal court opinion that offered no support for his position and nothing more.?

To be clear, during its existence, the University Senate was considered a public agency for open meetings purposes. Kentucky’s Open Meetings Act requires public agencies to keep minutes containing accurate records of votes and actions of every public meeting.?

Unless a vote is unanimous, the minutes must reflect how each public agency member voted. Minutes of meetings are to be maintained in “College/University Archives (or designated institutional repository)” for permanent retention.?

Suffice it to say that the University Senate met these requirements. In spite of past advice from the university’s lawyers that minutes of University Senate votes were sufficient if they reflected that the measure upon which the vote was taken was “approved” or “disapproved,” the Senate has, for years, properly maintained Senate votes — corresponding to the identity of the senator casting that vote — and archived them in a secure location.

This, however, is where a unique tension exists.?

Elected representatives of the University Senate, as it was previously known, acted as public servants accountable to their faculty colleague “constituents.” But they also occupied the unique status — in a non-open meetings context — of university employees.?

Access to their individual voting records in certain scenarios — say, for example, a “no confidence” vote on the University president — threatened to expose them to workplace retaliation. The Chronicle reports that some faculty fear the administration will, indeed, retaliate based on their votes — a suggestion the university, of course, rejects and at which it takes great umbrage.?

Perhaps this is why, as The Chronicle of Higher Education reports, the American Association of University Professors “has no policy on how no-confidence votes should be conducted or reported,” but “affirm[s] professors’ right to protected intramural speech.”

“The idea is, senators are voting their conscience. They’re voting for what their colleagues would hope they would vote for, and they should be able to do so in a way that they don’t feel like someone’s going to come for them when they make their voice known,” said one member of UK’s AAUP chapter.?

As noted, those University Senate’s actions were recorded in its meeting minutes. Votes were recorded and reflected how each senator voted. They were archived in a location that limited access unless requested — whether by Uk administrators, a curious professor, The Kentucky Kernel,? a concerned citizen, or anyone else — through the Open Records Act. Upon submission of such a request — triggering statutory duties and a public process that culminates in a published Kentucky attorney general’s open records decision — those individualized University Senate votes were and are publicly accessible.?

In the meantime, the votes are archived and secured (mostly) from surreptitious access and the possibility (even if remote) of retaliation.?

But this unsettled state of affairs teaches me an invaluable lesson, albeit a lesson I learned late in the open government game. A “one size fits all” approach to open government law can yield unexpected and unwelcome outcomes for public servants wrestling with the tension created by statutory duty, on the one hand, and fear of retaliation in the workplace, on the other.?

I, for one, am satisfied with how the University Senate resolved this tension to ensure compliance with open records, open meetings, and records management laws and, at the same time, preserve its elected senators’ right — to the extent legally possible — to vote their consciences.?

More importantly, this unsettled state of affairs teaches us all that “the faculty-administration relationship at the [University of Kentucky,] since the decision was made to reform its shared-governance model,” continues to “deteriorate” with no real end in sight.?

The Chronicle of Higher Education’s reporting ensures that this once local “tussle” is now nationally known.?

Sen. Lindsey Tichenor, R-Smithfield, told University of Louisville President Kim Schatzel, "I don't like that word, equity." (Getty Images)

If you want to witness firsthand how systemic racism works, you need only have been in Capitol Annex Room 154 on Tuesday, Sep. 17, for the Interim Joint Committee on Education, as Kentucky’s lawmakers (who are, by-far, majority white) lorded over a hearing to allegedly discuss DEI: diversity, equity and inclusion in postsecondary education.

I say allegedly, because a good half hour into the testimony of University of Kentucky President Eli Capilouto (who is white), the woman next to me (who is white) whispered what I (a white lady) had been thinking. “Why are we here? What is the purpose of this meeting?”

Capilouto emphasized that UK is making strides to be more nonpartisan, saying at one point “we should welcome discomfort in hearing ideas. But we can’t tolerate indoctrination, intimidation or disrespect. The lectern serves learning, and is not a pulpit for proselytizing.”

And yet Capilouto said these words in a legislative hearing where you could feel the tension of intimidation permeate the room, and the pulpit of proselytizing was monopolized by lawmakers like Sen. Lindsey Tichenor (who is white) as she condescendingly lectured University of Louisville president Kim Schatzel (who is white) about how much she dislikes that pesky word “equity.”?

“Our Constitution talks about equality,” Tichenor said, “I don’t love that word, equity.”?

Last year, the University of Louisville changed the name of its Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion to the Office of Institutional Equity in an apparent mad scramble to get ahead of potential anti-DEI legislation.?

Schatzel responded by defining equity, but her clear answer was not clear enough for Tichenor to drop it. Equity, Tichenor said, “assumes that there’s an overall that everybody can have or comes in, you know, it leaves the same way. That’s just impossible. We’re all different people. So I guess my question to you would be, why would you choose … the Office of Institutional Equity, as opposed to the Office of Institutional Equality, because that truly is more of our founding in the United States of America, that we’re all created equal.”

Hold up. What now?

The dictionary defines equity as “the quality of being fair and impartial.”?

The dictionary defines equality as “the state of being equal, especially in status, rights, and opportunities.”?

Listening to Tichenor dig in was like listening to someone demand you acknowledge the difference between stepping out to use the restroom vs. the bathroom. But of course this back and forth was not about a word, it was about power. Tomato, tomah-to, use the word I want you to use to show your deference to me and prove publicly that I am the boss, that I hold the purse strings, that you report to me and will do as you’re told, thank you very much.

Ah yes, this. Groveling publicly before the legislature. This is why we were all there. This was the purpose of the meeting.

There was also the unfortunate but predictable, oh-gosh-we’re-running-short-on-time remark from committee co-chair, Sen. Stephen West (who is white), after allowing such a big chunk of time up front for UK and U of L that they had to call the presidents of Eastern Kentucky University (who is white), Western Kentucky University (who is white), and Murray State University (who is white) to testify together and in a hurry.?

Rude, dismissive, and humiliating.

Remember, this is the same GOP supermajority (of mostly white folks) who, for the second year in a row, could not be bothered to pass the Crown Act out of committee “which would have outlawed discrimination on the basis of a hairstyle historically associated with a person’s race.”

And sitting front and center was Rep. Jennifer Decker (who is white), primary sponsor of an anti-DEI bill this past session, who, earlier this year, told an NAACP audience with a straight face that her white father was a slave.

It was a crushing disappointment to witness this two-hour hearing.?

It was a crushing disappointment to watch silently as, one by one, five powerful university presidents (all white) groveled at the feet of majority-white lawmakers, promising that they have, of their own accord, already dismantled diversity offices, vowing that they are behaving — No DEI being practiced here, ma’am! We don’t even say ‘DEI’, sir! — and will continue to fall in line. Did a Black lawmaker say a few words here and there? Sure, but nothing consequential.?

It was a crushing disappointment to witness the cowering and cowardice on display from the leaders of our top universities, the very institutions we trust to teach our children to be bold and brave in learning as they grow into adulthood.

And it was embarrassingly obvious that in a legislative hearing alleging to address diversity, equity and inclusion, not a single person of color was handed a microphone and asked what they thought, even as one brave Black woman sat right there in the front row wearing a bright red t-shirt that read in bold white letters, “Make America Not Racist for the First Time.”

This is systemic racism at work.

Despite the stigma, there is no evidence that talking about suicide will put an idea into someone’s head that is not already there due to their pain, lack of belonging or loneliness. In other words, talking about suicide does not cause suicidal thoughts. In fact, not talking about suicide can increase isolation and the perception that others don’t care. (Getty Images)

September is National Suicide Prevention Month, “a time to raise awareness of this urgently important crisis,” per the National Alliance on Mental Illness. However, while raising awareness is crucial, it’s not enough on its own. In Kentucky, where suicide ranks as the second leading cause of death among people aged 10 to 34, awareness must be coupled with action.

This isn’t just a public health issue — it’s a community responsibility.

Kentuckians must engage in proactive efforts to prevent suicide, support those at risk, challenge the stigma surrounding mental health, and, thus, acknowledge that this issue requires our collective attention. According to the National Institute of Health, in recent years the number of suicides in the US has been double that of homicides. Over the past seven years, we have lost 5,321 Kentuckians to suicide: more than 800 a year.

Moreover, our research indicates that each suicide impacts approximately 135 people. Mathematically, it’s easy to work that somber equation: It means that, in the past seven years alone, 700,000 people in Kentucky communities were impacted by suicide. And, over the same timeframe, Kentucky emergency rooms saw nearly 25,000 visits for intentional self-harm.?

People are struggling and in need of help from those who love them.

It’s time to get to work.

Together, we must endeavor to meet this issue head-on and reverse the trajectory of these trends. That begins with breaking the stigma and understanding how we all can prevent suicide.?

Actions We Can Take Today

The first step is to ask ourselves a question: If your friend mentioned suicide — if your teen was struggling with depression — if your partner appeared hopeless — would you know what to do??

Most people will likely answer no, and no one should be ashamed of that. But, it should catalyze action. After all, we regularly embrace training for responses to physical ailments, such as the Heimlich maneuver and CPR. Fortunately, training for responses to mental ailments is now more accessible than ever before through a program called QPR that is now free and available online to all Kentuckians.

QPR — which stands for Question, Persuade and Refer — is a simple, yet powerful method that anyone can learn to help save lives from suicide. UK HealthCare’s Healthy Kentucky Initiative, recognizing the urgent need for accessible mental health resources, now offers this training online, for free, 24/7, to anyone across Kentucky.?

Any Kentuckian can take this training at ukhealthcare.com/qpr.

QPR training is rooted in the idea that anyone, not just medical professionals, can intervene in a mental health crisis. The training teaches individuals how to recognize the warning signs of suicide, how to talk to someone who may be at risk and how to guide someone to appropriate resources. Much like CPR, QPR teaches us how to proactively identify warning signs, intervene quickly in a crisis and get help. It’s a less-than-one-hour commitment that could potentially save a life.

It is important to understand: Despite the stigma, there is no evidence that talking about suicide will put an idea into someone’s head that is not already there due to their pain, lack of belonging or loneliness. In other words, talking about suicide does not cause suicidal thoughts. In fact, not talking about suicide can increase isolation and the perception that others don’t care.

It is just as crucial to recognize the key elements in lowering suicide risk are hope and connection. Each of us already possesses the ability to offer these to others. Online QPR training provides additional guidance regarding how to broach the subject and discuss this topic with someone who needs to feel hope and connection.?

Finally, it’s vital for us to communicate that treatments are available to help people who are suicidal find a life worth living. Even a brief pause and conversation with someone can change a path toward suicide and encourage a person to seek help. QPR can help prepare Kentuckians for those conversations.?

This September, let’s remember that preventing suicide is a community responsibility. Start by educating yourself and others about the realities of suicide. You can do this by taking the QPR training and breaking the silence associated with this topic. You can initiate conversations about mental health in your own circles.

You also can share resources that exist to assist those in crisis. Available 24/7/365 and free-of-charge, 988 is an easy three-digit phone number that will connect callers with a person — a trained, compassionate counselor who can provide immediate help. Counselors belong to a Kentucky network of call-centers linked to other emergency response services. This allows callers to be quickly connected to the right kind of help.

Remember that each of us may, at some juncture, represent exactly the right kind of help for someone who is struggling.?

So, as we observe National Suicide Prevention Month, let’s remember that raising awareness is just the beginning. In Kentucky, where the impact of suicide is felt so deeply, we cannot afford to stop at awareness alone. This crisis demands action — action that each of us across Kentucky should take by equipping ourselves with the tools to intervene.

The time to act is now; it starts with each of us committing to make a difference.

In May 1963, civil rights demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama, demanded the integration of public schools. White authorities ordered them pummeled by fire hoses. In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that racial segregation in public education violated the U.S. Constitution. One response in the South was to give white parents vouchers to pay to send their children to all-white private schools. (Photo by Frank Rockstroh/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

The Kentucky State AFL-CIO’s opposition to Amendment 2 shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows labor history. Unions have always championed public schools.

The Republican-backed amendment, which will be on the Nov. 5 ballot, would change the state Constitution to permit the General Assembly to pass laws letting tax dollars go to private schools. You can bet if voters approve the measure, come January, the GOP supermajority House and Senate will lose no time approving a voucher program in which parents and guardians can use those public funds to send their children to private schools.

Just as unions have historically supported public schools, “Republicans, and white conservatives, have long been hostile to public schools,” Brynn Tannehill wrote in the New Republic. “School desegregation drove white evangelicals to become the strongest Republican demographic. Ronald Reagan promised to end the Department of Education in 1980. Trump put Betsy DeVos in charge of the Department of Education, precisely because she was a leading proponent (and funder) of defunding public schools, and funneling it to religious schools.”

Simply put, a voucher program will severely weaken public schools by draining away funds desperately needed to keep schools open. Depending on its size and scope, a voucher program in Kentucky would cost between $1.19 billion and $199 million, the equivalent of employing between 9,869 and 1,645 teachers and other staff, according to the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy.

Supporters of Amendment 2 claim vouchers enable parents or guardians to choose where to send their kids to school. While Amendment 2 proponents maintain that vouchers especially benefit poor families, evidence points the other way, starting with the origin of voucher programs.???

“Vouchers were first created after the Supreme Court banned school segregation with its ruling in Brown v Board of Education,” explains the National Education Association. “School districts used vouchers to enable white students to attend private schools, which could (and still can) limit admission based on race. As a result, the schools that served those white students were closed, and schools that served black students remained chronically underfunded.”??

The NEA points out that “unlike public schools, private schools can (and some do) limit their admission based on race, gender, sexual orientation, ability, and any other number of factors. Furthermore, vouchers rarely cover the full tuition, so families who were promised a better education are left footing the bill.”??

It’s no coincidence that supporters of vouchers are also anti-labor. “They’re against the teachers’ unions,” said Jeff Wiggins, Kentucky AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer. “They want their own private schools so they won’t have any unions.”?

Added Wiggins, “These conservative private schools have their own agendas. They want to teach students what they want them to learn. They don’t want them to learn about unions and the struggles of working people.”?

Writing in HuffPost, Robert J. Elisberg warned that “the less educated the public is, the more it relies on authority figures, rather than question anything. And the more that education is disdained, the less that inconvenient facts will be believed.”

Public schools didn’t become common in the U.S. until the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Since colonial days, almost all schools had been private and too expensive for working class Americans.

Hence, “the labor movement was instrumental in establishing free public schools,” American Federation of Labor President Samuel Gompers said in a speech at the National Education Association’s 1916 national convention. He explained that “wage-earners are more vitally interested in…public schools than any other group of citizens” because “public schools are the only educational institutions available for their children and for them.”?

Amendment 2 reflects old-time Social Darwinism, a pseudoscientific theory popular among the rich in Gompers’ time. A perversion of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, Social Darwinism was an elitist notion that the rich and their apologists in the press and pulpit often cited to justify the brutal exploitation of workers by millionaire industrialists.

In the main, Social Darwinian theorizing held that “the powerful in society are innately better than the weak and that success is proof of their superiority.” Thus, Social Darwinists argued that public schools, unions, worker and safety and health laws — and anything else that helped “inferior” folk — should be resisted as violations of what they claimed was an immutable law of human nature: the strong survive, and the weak don’t.

The self-styled “Captains of Industry” worshiped at the altar of Social Darwinism and sent their kids to posh private schools while cheerily hiring poor kids — the younger the better — to work in their hellish factories, mines and mills. (Today, some right-wing Republicans are talking up rolling back child labor laws.)

In the heyday of Social Darwinism, industrialists stubbornly, and often violently, resisted unions. Wages for industrial workers were so low, their children as young as 10 had to go to work to help their families make ends meet. Precious few families did, even with mom, dad and the kids all working. Unions saw public education as the surest way out of poverty for the children of workers.

Elisberg said conservatives have always wanted “just private schools and homeschooling” which he said will be “the end of an educated nation. …. But for conservatives, that’s okay. The wealthy and privileged will get their children a great education. And the rest of America? You’re on your own.”

He concluded: “Public education is what helped make America the envy of the world. A nation of well-informed citizens. Leading the way in the space race, technology, finance, and medical advances.

“But conservatives? They want to go back to ‘the old fashioned way.’ Like the Dark Ages. Where kings and the aristocracy ruled. And you peasants, obey thy overlord. Make no mistake, this is nothing new. The attack against education is the drug that conservatives have been pushing through history.”

In Kentucky, that drug is Amendment 2. “Power is their drug,” Wiggins said. “They want to control everything, so they’re coming after public schools. My tax money belongs in public schools, not private schools.”?

Senseless gun violence is as American as apple pie. (Getty Images)

One of the everyday pleasures of living on the edge of the Daniel Boone National Forest in London or my hometown of Morehead is being surrounded by woods and hills.

Unless a sniper is loose in them.?

I’m writing this as schools have been closed for two days and law enforcement continues to search part of the national forest for Joseph Couch, 32, an ex-Army Reserve private. Couch is charged with taking a position on a ledge overlooking Interstate 75 a few hours before dusk Saturday and opening fire on vehicles below.

Thankfully, miraculously, no one was killed but five people were injured and 12 vehicles struck by gunfire. A major north-south corridor was shut down for hours.

During the nail-biting uncertainty as we awaited — dreaded — a body count, Republican state lawmakers from the southern Kentucky area issued a statement. The “senseless act of violence,” they said, “does not reflect the values of this community, our Commonwealth, or its people.”

I think what they meant is that a place full of bighearted people shouldn’t be judged by the actions of one heavily armed whacked-out individual.

But let’s be real: The ease with which Couch bought a weapon of war that he turned on innocent people clearly reflects the political values of those lawmakers and others in Frankfort and Washington who steadfastly put protecting easy access to firearms above protecting people.

Republicans in Kentucky’s legislative supermajority don’t just value guns over people, they’ve sanctified their devotion. Two of the lawmakers who issued the statement, Rep. Josh Bray of Mount Vernon and Sen. Brandon Storm of London, sponsored legislation to make Kentucky a “Second Amendment sanctuary,” which it became during last year’s session.

(One of their goals was to hamstring the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, whose agents, nonetheless, responded to the I-75 emergency.)?

I probably don’t need to point out that this is not the kind of sanctuary you want when bullets shatter the windows of your moving car.?

It’s not the kind of sanctuary that shields you when a shooter starts taking out shoppers at a supermarket or at a country music concert or a Monday morning staff meeting at a Louisville bank. There’s no sanctuary for children and teachers even in our fortified schools.?

Senseless gun violence is as American as apple pie. Nowhere else outside of war zones are people randomly mowed down by semi-automatic weapons or caught in crossfire.

It does not have to be this way.

We know it doesn’t have to be this way because Congress with bipartisan support in 1994 banned the sale of some semi-automatic weapons including AR-15s. Congress acted in response to mass shootings, including one in 1989 at a Louisville printing plant that killed eight people and injured 12.

The ban did nothing to decrease the number of semi-automatic weapons already in private hands and lasted only 10 years because Congress refused to renew it.?A decade wasn’t long enough to definitively measure the ban’s long-term effects, according to researchers.

But data does show an almost immediate – and steep – rise in mass shooting deaths in the years after the assault weapons ban expired. (Congress did ban something: federal funding for firearms-related research in 1996, anticipating, perhaps, that more knowledge would produce more demand for sane gun laws.)?

We can definitively say that if an assault-weapons ban had been in place Saturday Joseph Couch could not have legally purchased an AR-15 rifle. Couch, who was charged with threatening a neighbor with an AR-type weapon earlier this year and has a DUI on his record, also purchased 1,000 rounds of ammunition.?

He texted his ex-wife shortly before the shooting began. “I’m going to kill a lot of people” and “myself afterwards.”

Thankfully, Couch failed in the first part of his self-avowed mission. If he succeeds in the second part, we may not know for sure until some poor hunter or hiker stumbles across the remains. That uncertainty gives Couch a sickening kind of power over people who can’t help but be nagged by the possibility that he could still take a position and open fire again.

They won’t really be alone, though. In Kentucky where the Republican supermajority only ever loosens gun laws and in a nation where even the Supreme Court is in thrall to the firearms lobby, all of us might as well be living at the foot of a hill with someone wandering around up top, armed and wanting to randomly kill a lot of people.

Randy Adams, once a teacher in Anderson County, speaks in an ad promoting Amendment 2. The ad is paid for by a political action committee affiliated with U.S. Sen. Rand Paul that is largely bankrolled by Jeff Yass, a billionaire options trader who lives in Pennsylvania. (Screenshot from KET)

When I saw the first, big money PAC ad promoting Amendment 2, the so-called “school choice” bill coming to your Kentucky ballot this November, it was no surprise to see preacher and former Anderson County Schools teacher, Randy Adams, in the starring role.

Do not be fooled.?

Adams has been a chaos agent, sowing division and animosity about public education in Anderson County, where I live, for the last two years.?

In the fall of 2022, just before the November midterms, Adams posted a (since deleted) manifesto on his Facebook page which led to a standing-room-only school board meeting. The vast majority of attendees in that meeting were not there to help; they were there to make fearmongering, religious statements against our public schools and/or applaud those who did.

I know because I attended this meeting; I noted the seemingly-odd-at-the-time attendance of David Walls, executive director of The Family Foundation, a registered lobbying group that says it advocates for “policies based on Biblical principles.” I stayed for the public comments, which were so outrageous that our local newspaper’s front-page headline quoted one of the speakers, who said, “The devil is trying to destroy the family unit.”

A year later, during the fall election season of 2023, Adams was back at it. He was a preacher at Ballard Baptist Church at the time and invited Brad Briscoe, an Anderson County Schools parent, to come to the pulpit to share a story about his daughter and our public high school with the congregation. Adams then posted the video of that church meeting on Facebook, writing, “Share this message if you support the Briscoe family and want to protect children” with an edict to attend our next school board meeting with a list of what to say.

Hundreds of citizens showed up at that Anderson County school board meeting in what appeared to be an effort to oust a school counselor and the superintendent and, like the meeting a year earlier, quote Bible verses and toss a blowtorch into an otherwise peaceful community.?

It is no exaggeration to say the Adams roadshow has worn out its welcome here. And yet, in a video posted on The Family Foundation’s Facebook page, Adams said, “Over the last couple years, how many Twitter or YouTube videos have you seen of parents going to school board meetings and giving impassioned speeches and there’s no reply? It’s like talking to a blank wall … I believe educational freedom is the solution.” He also claimed the guidelines he was given as a teacher meant “Christians aren’t welcome as public servants in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. We’ve got to really address that as a form of persecution.”

What a bunch of hooey.

There is zero proof that Kentucky Christians are being persecuted or are not welcome as public servants, a truly ludicrous statement. Many of us are active members in the churches in our towns, whether we’re talking about big Jefferson County or little rural Anderson County, and some of our fellow congregants are the teachers who teach our kids and grandkids in our public schools.

Billionaire TikTok investor, charter school advocate puts $8 million into Paul affiliated PAC

This basic fact, sadly, has not stopped Adams from working with The Family Foundation to spin a political message in an ad that’s paid for by a PAC bankrolled by Jeff Yass, a billionaire options trader and TikTok investor from Pennsylvania.

So when you see a smiling Adams in today’s expensive, political TV ads, hawking Amendment 2, know that you are not listening to some random, sweet teacher they just happened to come across and film in a classroom. You are being conned. You are being coerced by a man who has repeatedly created unnecessary chaos, turning neighbor against neighbor in a small, rural Kentucky county, seemingly for his own benefit and the benefit of a registered lobbyist.

Amendment 2 is not about school choice.?

Amendment 2 is just the latest gizmo being sold by opportunists like Randy Adams to change the Kentucky Constitution today so that tomorrow they can use your tax dollars for their church schools — where there are no standards, no public accountability, and where they can handpick the kids they want to teach.

Voters should look at their choices this year through a public health lens, writes Dr. Kevin Kavanagh. (Getty Images)

As our 2024 presidential election approaches there is intense focus on the economy and the economic policies of our current administration. For many families, the cost of everyday household items has risen to critical levels and renewed inflation is still of concern.?

Although the debate has focused on economic policy, I would like to put forward the case that our current economic challenges may be driven by three existential threats, those of long COVID-19, bird flu and an aging workforce due to falling birth rates. All three are public health issues and underscore the need for increasing public health funding. Two of the threats are workforce issues which can also be mitigated with a comprehensive and robust immigration policy.

Long COVID-19

A number of recent government reports have presented data on the rising incidence of chronic diseases but have been reluctant to mention the impact of long COVID. The Brookings Institute published one of the last reports regarding long COVID and the United States’ workforce. In 2022 Brookings estimated that long COVID has taken 2 million to 4 million adults out of the workforce. In April 2024, the United Kingdom’s Office of National Statistics issued a warning regarding people leaving the country’s workforce due to chronic illness. A report from the UK’s Health Foundation estimated that one in five of the UK’s working population has a work-limiting illness, an incidence which threatens the economic viability of the country. The definition of long COVID may not capture those disabled from a stroke, heart attack, diabetes or a severe infection which may still be a long-term sequel of COVID-19.

Bird flu?

Imagine alleviating skyrocketing food prices by providing tens of millions of free chickens for the United States consumer. Prices would be expected to fall. The bird flu, H5N1 virus, has done just that, only in reverse. There are fewer chickens and eggs which places upward pressure on prices.

Over the last four years, the price of eggs has nearly doubled, outpacing other staple foods. Since 2022, the United States government has paid over $850 million to offset farmer’s losses due to the bird flu pandemic from the culling of chickens, turkeys and egg-laying hens. So far over 80 million birds have been culled. Presently, the virus has infected over 150 cattle herds in 13 states. There have also been at least 13 documented poultry and dairy workers infected, but this may only be the tip of the iceberg. Of concern is that if one of these workers was also infected with seasonal influenza, the viruses could exchange genes and create a version of bird flu that would be highly infectious in humans. The bird flu outbreak is nowhere near under control and is having a profound impact on our agricultural industry.

Birth rate

The average fertility rate in the world is 2.25 births per woman. In the United States this figure is 1.62 and in Europe is 1.40. Rates lower than two will not support a growing population and a young workforce.
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Byproducts from pesticides, plastics and forever chemicals are endocrine-disrupting chemicals and can disrupt our body’s hormones, as can biological agents, such as SARS-CoV-2 which target the high ACE2 receptor concentration in the human testes. It is the COVID-19 infection not the vaccine which poses a significant risk to fertility. All of these pressures have been implicated in an over 50% fall in sperm counts which has occurred since 1973, and has accelerated since 2000.

Public health and population

In the short term, we must support public health to slow down the spread of disease in our communities and agricultural businesses, and to mitigate human exposure to environmental and biological toxins linked to decreasing fertility rates.?
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Propping up our workforce by creating the capacity to screen and document large numbers of immigrant workers is of utmost importance. Early this year Britain experienced a significant worker shortage which necessitated businesses to fill vacancies with migrants.

In the U.S., the? bipartisan Senate border bill of 2024 was a step in the right direction. According to FactCheck.org: “It included money to build more border barriers, to greatly expand detention facilities, and to hire more Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents, asylum officers and immigration judges to reduce the years’ long backlog in cases to determine asylum eligibility.”?

The bill was supported by the union representing Border Patrol agents and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. But for right-wing politicians, it did not go far enough. Regardless of the outcome of the election, we need a robust immigration policy which allows large numbers of workers and their families to be rapidly documented and legally cross into the U.S. Both our national security and economic health require the rapid adoption of immigration reform.

The legislature convenes on the third floor of the the Kentucky Capitol in Frankfort, photographed here the night of Jan. 4, 2023. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Arden Barnes)

When Rep. Daniel Grossberg’s attorney, Anna Whites, said that he has no plans to resign after multiple sexual harassment allegations, my first and only thought was: He deserves due process, and he should resign.

The Legislative Ethics Commission is investigating Grossberg’s alleged behavior unbecoming a state representative. There is additional Lexington Herald-Leader reporting that three more women — ages 26 to 28 — came to them directly with detailed allegations, including text messages, of unwelcome, sexually explicit comments and behavior.

Louisville Democrats — his own party — issued a statement on Aug. 29 asking that Grossberg “temporarily refrain from participating in LDP events and meetings while the Legislative Ethics Commission investigation is in process.”

And still, he has no plans to resign. Why would he? Powerful men behaving badly, arrogantly and even offensively in the Kentucky legislature is today’s norm. And there are not enough watchdogs to consistently call it out.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us got so used to viewing meetings online, at our leisure, that we gladly traded long commutes and time away from home for a video screen. But what we see/hear on legislative video feeds is extremely limited, kind of like being locked in your cabin on a cruise ship where all you can see of the expansive and potentially treacherous ocean is what’s visible through your one, tiny porthole.

One, tiny porthole is not enough.

After the Old National Bank mass shooting in April 2023, I spent as much of the next year in Frankfort as I could. I learned what it feels like to be there, to be present; that there is a staggering difference between being inside the Capitol Annex meeting rooms and in the Senate and House galleries in person vs. following online; that not everything happens on camera.

To give credit where credit is due, at least House Democrats have shown integrity by suspending Grossberg from their caucus and interim committee meetings during the ethics investigation.

The last couple of columns I filed about the 2024 General Assembly — one on sexism, one on racism — centered on what it felt like to be in those rooms, to experience the steady offensiveness that permeates the GOP supermajority in our legislative body. The sexism and racism are features, not bugs, and not even a little bit hidden.

You might remember the shocking photo of Senate President Robert Stivers and Floor Leader Damon Thayer scowling, shaking fingers, losing their tempers at Sen. Karen Berg for questioning data supporting House Bill 5, arguably the most consequential bill of the session. What if that photo had not been taken??

There was the Senate Committee on Veterans, Military Affairs, and Public Protection meeting, led by Sen. Rick Girdler, in which a little, dark-skinned girl sitting with Sen. Gex Williams witnessed nothing but 21 minutes of a good old boy, misogynistic, frat-house-like romp masquerading as legislative work. I remember turning to the person sitting next to me, in a meeting I almost skipped because it had such a short agenda, and saying something like, My God, there is an entire story in this one awful meeting.

There was a snarling Rep. Ryan Dotson on the House floor, finger-pointing and raising his voice as Rep. Sarah Stalker dared — yes, a woman, dared — to ask him the most basic questions about a discriminatory housing bill, to the point that House Speaker David Osborne stopped Dotson and advised caution. And then everyone carried on as if nothing happened.

Is it any wonder that a male legislator like Grossberg, working in this same Capitol Annex, feels like he can do whatever tickles his fancy in such a consistently vulgar, unrepentant, frat-boy atmosphere??

I have often found myself looking around a committee room and wondering, did you guys hear that? Where is leadership? Is someone going to stop this, call it out, say something, say anything at all??

In one — just one! — of the many allegations, reported by the Herald-Leader, against Grossberg, “Woman B, who is 26 and involved in Democratic politics, shared several different occasions in 2024, both in person, through texts and in other messaging apps where he repeatedly made comments she considered harassing or threatening. He asked questions about her sexual orientation and expressed serious romantic interest, she said. Woman B also said Grossberg told her if she were to learn what his porn preferences were, “I would never forgive him,” she recounted in a text to a friend. He also “relentlessly” asked for nude photos.”

Please tell me what can be misconstrued or misunderstood here?

Ah well. Grossberg says he is not resigning, that he will continue working, so Woman B will also go back to her job and things will be … the same?

And then we wonder why women do not report.

After sine die in April, I needed a break from being in Frankfort in person, so I took the summer off. When people asked why I wasn’t there, why they did not see me in this meeting or that, I said with all honesty, “Because being there feels like drinking poison.”

Dawn J. Post works in Treasure Beach, Jamaica, home of Atlantis Leadership Academy.

I am a children’s rights attorney based in New York City. For over a decade I have advocated for youth who no longer live with their adoptive parents — what I call broken adoptions — and raised awareness about adoption subsidy misuse.?

In March 2024, Chelsea Maldonado, a survivor of Tranquility Bay in Jamaica, contacted me about Atlantis Leadership Academy, also in Jamaica. The Jamaican government had abruptly removed teenage boys from the American-owned facility due to allegations of severe abuse and neglect.

Maldonado is a consultant and researcher for Paris Hilton’s charitable arm 11:11 Media Impact, created in response to the abuse and neglect Hilton suffered as a teenager in institutional care.?

I traveled to Jamaica on my dime to offer my expertise in child welfare to authorities and to advocate for the boys pro bono. Three of the boys who had been removed were adopted and their families were allegedly not planning for their return to the U.S.

As I approached the foster care facility where the boys were staying, the glaring sun beat down on two armed guards who sat on a picnic table as they waved my driver and me to the side. Their presence contrasted sharply with the colorful painting on the main building and the bright, green soccer field. The extra security was deemed necessary because wealthy, white parents had allegedly made plans to kidnap the boys to return them to the U.S. by boat through a teen transporter. Affronted that the Jamaican government requested that they cooperate with a home study to facilitate their child’s return, they had located the youngsters via drone.

Adoption stereotypes persist

As reported by USA Today in 2022, in a first-of-its kind data analysis and investigation, for tens of thousands of children in the U.S., their “forever family” doesn’t last long. Specifically, investigative journalists found that 12 adoptions out of foster care break every day. But even this number is an underrepresentation, as, during the period that USA Today reviewed, caseworkers were not mandated to capture broken adoptions as a data point. Nonetheless, the numbers that were captured are alarming.??

I am ashamed to say that despite my research and work on foster youth being placed in for-profit behavioral health facilities that also house so-called troubled teens, I failed to realize how many teens, adopted internationally and domestically, are a part of that same population. Not a lot of data exists, but the very few studies that do have shown that adopted children are disproportionately represented in residential treatment programs and wilderness camps in the U.S. One found that despite representing 2% of the total population, adopted youth make up 25%-30% of the total population in these facilities.?

I anticipated that there would be a lot of red tape, based on my experience in child welfare. But I had no idea that all my efforts during the subsequent three weeks contacting advocates, individual state child welfare and juvenile systems, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Administration of Children and Families, and the Children’s Bureau, would yield so few results, particularly since all the boys had been system involved in some fashion before their placement in Jamaica.?

As a result, the three adopted boys, who happened to be the only ones of color, were placed in the permanent custody of Jamaica.?????

Unfortunately, stereotypes persist that adopted children and youth are irredeemable because they are too damaged or suffer from reactive attachment disorder (RAD). The myth of RAD has taken over the narrative as children are pathologized as “kids without conscience” who are simply “violent, dangerous, at-risk, and risky.”??

Alarmingly, there is another facility in Jamaica that has approximately 170 youth, Youth of Vision Academy (YOVA), and claims to specialize in RAD.?

Who might want them?

According to director Noel Reid, the majority are adopted from foster care in the United States. Three members of YOVA’s leadership, including Reid, have ties to a private school in West Virginia called Miracle Meadows that was shut down based on allegations of torture of children in its care. They were identified in the underlying investigations of the civil lawsuits which resulted in settlements of more than $100 million, according to law firms that represented the West Virginia survivors.?

Survivors of YOVA have reported abuse and neglect reminiscent of the abuse and neglect suffered not only at Miracle Meadows but what the boys suffered at ALA. It’s unclear what will happen because any protective action against YOVA would pose a national emergency for Jamaica when the ALA boys have already used up much-needed resources. (Reid has labeled the allegations of abuse at YOVA as “false narratives,” according to Loop News in Jamaica.)?

Randall “Randy” Cook, the owner of ALA, who according to past reporting was formerly affiliated with The Worldwide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASP) that was recently profiled on Netflix’s “The Program: Cons, Cults and Kidnapping,” exploited RAD and other stereotypes. In an email following the teens’ removal, he claimed: “Our open communication, goodwill and active engagement is continuing to make its way through the Parish and shine light on the fact that we have some historically challenging young men that enabled ‘well intended’ Government Officials. Again, in both Governments. I do not believe 1 of our families have not been put in a situation with your Son that they intentionally and aggressively manipulated available levers to them, to both be in control and to harm or punish you, as a Parent and regardless to any possible damage to the family unit.”?

One of those sons, “Noah,” was that of former Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin who had been adopted from Ethiopia. And he was one of the boys that I brought hopefully good news when I traveled to the foster care facility where most of them were placed. Pseudonyms have been used for Noah and the other boys to protect their privacy.

I last saw them following their third court appearance, which only one parent attended. We stood together in the blazing sunshine of the dusty parking lot outside the courthouse next to the police station’s impound lot filled with burned-out vehicles. Many already had known that their parents didn’t want them back, and if they didn’t, they had just learned so in court from local attorneys hired by their parents who said as much to the judge. Including Noah’s parents. In the brief time that the boys had before boarding the bus back, they gave me names and locations of people who might care about them. Might want them. Even if their parents didn’t.???

Cottage industry dupes desperate parents, caters to those with ‘buyer’s remorse’

Tarah Fleischman, whose son, Logan, was removed from ALA said that one of the “success stories” that ALA shared with prospective parents was about it warehousing an adopted youth until he was 18, dropping him off in Miami with some money, and telling him never to contact his adoptive parents again. In my subsequent interviews with the boys, they added that they were told by staff that this youth had been shot and they could end up just like him.?

When I first met the boys, Noah was the one I was most concerned about. After they all signed retainers for free legal services and support, I met with each of them individually, and in some cases, I was able to Facetime their parents or proposed guardians. For some, it was the first time they had contact with anyone from their prior lives.?

His eyes glassy, Noah was in disbelief when I told him that I had been successful. He told me that his adoptive mother claimed that the proposed guardian Noah had selected would never want him, which only reinforced the negative statements made at the facility, that the boys were all worthless and no one would ever believe them. For the first time, I saw him smile, no, not just smile, beam, as he joined the call.??

ALA is part of a cottage industry that dupes desperate parents into entrusting institutions with the care of their vulnerable children and caters to other parents (biological or adoptive) who simply have no interest in actually parenting their child, those who seemingly have “buyer’s remorse” over their decision to become parents of a particular child — of a teen like Noah who believes that he had been adopted to be part of a rainbow-family photo-op.?

What next?

Ultimately, as the Sunday Times of London reported, this “is a story about an American industry exploiting Jamaican trust, high unemployment, low wages and under-resourced state scrutiny for American parents who want their children to effectively disappear.”?

Noah is back in the U.S. Even though Jamaica has limited resources, arguably the country has shown “greater diligence towards these foreign children’s welfare than their own U.S. state authorities have displayed.”? However, it appears that the government’s patience has run its course as they have continued to house the last adopted teen from Michigan, abandoned not just by his adoptive parents, but the state and federal systems that have been repeatedly contacted regarding his situation.?

As of the time of this publication, Emmanuel? is scheduled to fly into Miami with the apparent hope that the Florida Department of Children and Families will bring him into care at the port of entry. The alternative?? The parents have signed over guardianship to a well-known figure in the troubled teen industry who wrote a strong letter in support of ALA and its staff following the boys’ removal.

Emmanuel complains, “I’ve called the CPS people in Michigan so many times [and] they said they would help but [they’ve] done nothing for me.” He hopes that Florida will take him in. “I would love to be placed in a group home or transitional placement in foster care so I can [have resources] when I turn 18.”? Including education. Because Emmanuel hasn’t received one for at least two years.

Adopted. Abandoned. But not forgotten as I and other advocates continued to advocate for not only a safe placement for Emmanuel back in the U.S. but for other youth in and outside of the country placed in institutional care which prioritizes profit over treatment and care.

Growing up, J.D. Vance, the Republican nominee for vice president, visited family who lived in the Panbowl section of Breathitt County. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Kevin Nance)

Sigmund Freud says we embrace mythical origin stories of leaders, warriors, and saints to disguise their true identity and to give them mystical powers or political agency.

Freud gives the example of Moses in the Bible who grew up as a young man of wealth and privilege in Pharaoh’s palace. However we do not think of Moses as a high born Egyptian reformer who led the Jews out of bondage. Instead, we accept him as a child given up by Hebrew parents and secretly placed in the water near where the royal Egyptian family bathed — this done so his floating basket could be discovered by a princess who would then adopt him. The Moses origin story is that he was pulled from the bulrushes. And Freud points out that this same extraction from the bulrushes is the mythological way Ra and other ancient gods had emerged in Egypt for a thousand years before Moses.

A few months back I stopped for a tank of gas and a quick bite at Go Time near the mouth of Lost Creek in Breathitt County, Kentucky. From the quick-stop hot table I ordered a piece of fish and got in my mind I wanted to split an order of onion rings and roasted potatoes. I explained it inartfully, and the lady behind the counter said, “Wait a minute. You want potatoes and onion rings?”

Feeling caught out, I said, “I guess that’s wrong?”

She said, “No judgment here, baby. You like what you like.”

When I was growing up in East Kentucky, people here did not like being identified as hillbillies. A lot of my boomer generation disguised their accents, shunned their family’s country ways, and looked to get out of the mountains as soon as a path cleared. In 1960s and ’70s popular culture hillbillies were mocked and laughed at in literature, movies, comic strips, as well as on the most-watched TV shows.

Hillbillies say we don’t care what others think, though in truth, we obsess over it

And perhaps worse, Appalachians were pitied in the press and among the intelligentsia for being poor, backwards, and ignorant. So when J.D. Vance, a kid who grew up in Middletown, Ohio, goes to Yale law school, and makes it as a venture capitalist, suddenly lays claim to his Breathitt County hillbilly roots, it is as if he pulled himself from the bulrushes. Or as the old political saw goes, he was born in a log cabin he built himself. And now that he is both the senator from Middletown, Ohio, and Breathitt County, Kentucky’s own candidate for vice president of the United States, we can take a moment to put the person, the place, and the politics in perspective.

Since his best-selling book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” hit the stands, a phalanx of Appalachians, many who themselves have escaped the territory, have been pushing back on Vance’s claim to be a hillbilly and his standing to judge the rest of us. In a nutshell the reaction is: His family may have come from Breathitt, but he didn’t, and what he says doesn’t count.

Replete with characterizations of shiftlessness, addiction, and hillbilly self-pity. But in a bad way.

And it has been particularly galling for those, like me, who have spent decades trying to set the record straight about Appalachian life and hillbilly stereotypes to in turn see the nation’s elite institutions — universities, philanthropy, the press — embrace Vance’s account of Appalachia over ours. His book is replete with characterizations of shiftlessness, addiction, and hillbilly self-pity. But in a bad way. To put a finer edge on it, his dystopic view of Appalachians fits hand in glove with the putdowns we fear hearing most. As hillbillies we say we don’t care what others think, though in truth, we obsess over it.

The crystalline moment for me came when a delegation from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation came to East Kentucky to visit and look at our organization’s work. “Hillbilly Elegy” had been required reading for the foundation staff, and they all wanted to talk about it. None of us did. The official leading the group told me, “Now after reading the book, I think I understand your people.”

The confounding thing about Vance, the author, is that not everything he says in “Hillbilly Elegy” is easy to dismiss. He talks about faith, sacrifice, making good choices, not whining, and taking responsibility for yourself. He invests a lot of ink telling hillbillies and buckeyes alike to quit with all the dissembling. He writes, “We talk about the value of hard work but tell ourselves that the reason we’re not working is some perceived unfairness: Obama shut down the coal mines, or all the jobs went to the Chinese. These are the lies we tell ourselves to solve the cognitive dissonance—the broken connection between the world we see and the values we preach.”

Still if we accept “Hillbilly Elegy” as a self-help book for working class people, it must make it more curious that J.D. Vance has now aligned himself with those blaming Obama for shutting down the coal mines and the Chinese for stealing our jobs. What he called lies. He once wrote Donald Trump was “unfit for our nation’s highest office.” And Vance said he “couldn’t stomach Trump.” But if you are running for vice president, you have to be nimble and slick. It has become common practice in American democracy that what you said in the past, you are permitted to disavow now, if you can dismiss it as politics. You say about past statements, that is yesterday’s news.

Threats, shootings, murders, coups well into the 20th century

The Breathitt County that Vance claims has a uniquely peculiar set of political yesterdays. Historically East Kentucky was solidly pro-Union and anti-slavery prior to the Civil War. The region resisted efforts by the planters in Louisville and Lexington to have Kentucky secede from the United States. But Breathitt, on the other hand, was an anomalous Confederate county in Union territory, and that more for political reasons than race or a plantation economy. In 1860 a comparatively small 4% of the county population was listed in the census as slaves. For perspective, Lincoln was born a hundred miles west in a Kentucky county more favorable to commercial farming, and there the percentage of enslaved people was four to five times larger.

The legacy of the Civil War in many of the mountain counties was internecine feuding, conflicts between military families that did not end with Lee’s surrender. And Breathitt County may have been the worst example. Political life was punctuated by threats, shootings, murders, and coups well into the 20th century.

Breathitt County was singled out in local, state, and national newspapers as a place where assassination became accepted political practice. The best known story is the 1903 death of attorney and Republican reformer James B. Marcum. The threats against Marcum from his political rivals — the judge, the sheriff —had become such that for a year he only left his home for the courthouse surrounded by women and carrying his infant son. After arriving safely he would pass the child to the entourage and go on to work.

But then one day he was shot in the back after he made it inside of the Breathitt County Courthouse. Shot again and killed as he lay fallen. The Louisville Courier-Journal wrote, “The feud which took Mr. Marcum’s life, has caused, it is said, no less than forty deaths in the last two years. This would be astounding to anyone unfamiliar with these mountain vendettas…” (“Bloody Breathitt: Politics and Violence in the Appalachian South”).

Pulled from bulrushes, saved by a rogue rhododendron

Like Vance I too was pulled from bulrushes. My grandmother also came from Breathitt County, or at least half of her did. Virginia Dare Creech was born in Athol in a house that straddled the Breathitt and Lee County line. We used to tell her, “Granny, say you are from Lee County. We don’t want anybody to think we are from Breathitt.” But now I would like to disavow those statements and say they are yesterday’s news.

And even though I was not born there, I nearly died in Breathitt County. As a chunky 10-year-old visiting my cousins in Jackson, we went climbing up to the rocks called the Indian Post Office. Suddenly I started sliding down a shale covered hillside and could not stop; in the last second to be saved from going over a sheer cliff by a rogue rhododendron that caught me in the crotch.

And to enhance my Breathitt County credentials, later in life as a divorced father I drove back and forth through Breathitt County each weekend, making scheduled stops at the Jackson Hardee’s to buy my boys peach and strawberry milkshakes with real fruit you had to forcefully suck through the straw. When I was asked to deliver the commencement address at Jackson High, I told the graduates about my near-death experience climbing up Indian Post Office and that wherever they ended up in the world they should keep Jackson in their hearts. Also at the suggestion of my sons, I bought each graduating senior his or her own Hardee’s milkshake.

I do not challenge Vance’s ties to Breathitt County, his attempt to be a rural politician, or even his account of his grandmother pouring gasoline on his grandfather and setting him on fire. We all have stories. Here are a few of mine.

Politicians visit the region

In 1968 Robert F. Kennedy visited a one room Breathitt County school at Barwick on his fact-finding visit to the region before he announced his candidacy for president. Later that very day I walked beside Kennedy in Hazard, not Barwick, but I like to think that if I ever had the opportunity to address the kids that once went to school there, I would tell them to keep Barwick in their hearts and to be careful when climbing.

I was also part of helping RFK’s brother Teddy’s visit to East Kentucky in 1985 as he retraced his brother’s trip. I drove Senator Paul Wellstone in 1998 when he repeated RFK’s journey. I helped Paul set up town halls, school visits, and a meeting with coal miners. I also drove John Edwards around East Kentucky when he reprised the Bobby Kennedy tour in 2007.

And I was executive producer on a 1987 documentary that looked at Breathitt County schools and the political legacy of the powerful Turner family. Marie R. Turner was superintendent of Breathitt County Schools and her husband, Irvine, had been circuit judge. Marie ruled the county with an iron fist and a heart of someone with an iron fist. My friend, Nick Stump, who lived in Jackson, had to go visit Miss Turner and explain his rock and roll band’s plans before the bank would loan him money to buy a guitar amp.

During our filming, Buck Maggard, one of the production team, got a call from a man on his death bed claiming to have killed 18 men for Judge Turner. But the problem was that he did not want to confess in front of our camera. He wanted Buck to get him on “60 Minutes” so he could come clean to Mike Wallace or Ed Bradley. In the end the story perished with him. Judge Turner had died 20 years earlier.

Not many politicians took on the Turner family and succeeded. One who did was Jim Maggard, Buck’s younger brother, who served several terms in the Kentucky General Assembly. He told me he should write a book. He said the way he got elected despite Marie R.’s opposition was that he was working at the Jackson radio station. He recorded himself giving a speech blasting the Turners. Then he said he laid down a background track of a crowd laughing and applauding. Then he recorded himself using different voices from the audience yelling things like, “You tell ‘em, Jim. I’m so mad I can’t.” He ran the speech over and over on the radio. Local listeners were stunned that he could get out a crowd of people not afraid of Marie R.

During the campaign he said he was in town electioneering one day, and Marie Turner saw him and beckoned him from her car. He said he sheepishly went over to her, and she asked, “Jim, where did you make that speech?”

He said, “Miss Turner, I can’t lie to you. I recorded that at my family reunion over at Buckhorn Lake.”

Swapping stuff on E-Bay with Melania

When Howard Schultz, then the Starbucks CEO, was considering running for president in 2020, he also wanted to retrace RFK’s iconic trip to Appalachia. Bobby was his hero. I agreed to be tour guide, and our first stop was the Hardee’s in Jackson for coffee. I asked a couple of friends, Mark, a libertarian and a former candidate for lieutenant governor, and Martin, a businessman who has climbed the tallest mountain on five of seven continents, to join.

Martin explained to us that he was there and ready to go up Everest, but a storm hit, killing 23 sherpas and the trip no longer made sense. The two told us about historical plaques up at the Breathitt County courthouse commemorating the fact that no one was drafted from the county in either World War I or II because the service quota was more than met by volunteers.

And after a rigorous conversation Mark introduced Howard to others in the restaurant including a columnist for the Jackson weekly, Bobby Deaton, if I have it right. He told Schultz he did not like Starbucks because of the way the employees pushed Schultz around. He also told Schultz that Obama was a Muslim. Howard said, “No, he’s not.” Deaton “corrected” him. Then Deaton told Schultz Obama was not born in this country. Howard said, “Actually he was.” Deaton again corrected Howard.

We left Hardees to find the historical markers, and there we ran into the high sheriff of Breathitt County, Clemons. His sidearm was a yellow taser blaster, and Howard stopped him and asked about it. Sheriff Clemons asked Howard where he was from. Schultz told him Seattle. The sheriff said he and his wife had been there. He said Trump had brought them out there and put them up in a fine motel. The sheriff went on to say that his wife and Melania were big friends. Howard asked how the wives came to know each other and was told Mrs. Clemons and Melania sell a lot of clothes and things together on E-Bay.

We found the markers and headed for the next stop. The back story is Sheriff Clemons got into some trouble over the disappearance of evidence and $40,000. He decided to not run for re-election, and the county’s insurance company would no longer bond the sheriff to carry a loaded firearm into the courthouse. When we pulled away, Howard said, “How can that be right? I am pretty sure Trump has not been to Seattle.”

Click here to watch video report on recovery efforts in Breathitt County after the July 2022 flood, produced by the Center for Rural Strategies/Daily Yonder.

Probably looks like Breathitt County, if you’d never been there

I don’t know how often J.D. Vance gets back to Breathitt County, but he did bring director Ron Howard in when they were scouting locations for the film version of “Hillbilly Elegy.” Having movie stars like Glenn Close and Amy Adams around could have made a lasting impression on the county, changed the stories people tell for a hundred years, but in the end they shot the East Kentucky scenes in North Georgia. That’s filmmaking. It probably looked a lot like Breathitt County, if you’d never been there, and I’m sure the craft services out of Atlanta were better for catering meals than Hardee’s.

We made a little movie in Rousseau in Breathitt County after the devastating 2022 East Kentucky Flood (44 dead, thousands left homeless). We profiled the volunteer fire department there. When emergency services could not get rescue boats into the community, the volunteers took charge. And after the water receded they spent the next year getting food, clothing, and tools, to victims. We mostly think of democracy as how you register, vote, and govern. But the system, at its core, is built on the tenet of looking after each other.

Marie Turner tried her best to get President Lyndon Johnson to come to Breathitt County. Even named a school LBJ Elementary. She did get First Lady Lady Bird to visit the one-room Lick Branch School in 1964. There are pictures of Lady Bird using a hand pump to bring up water and of Mrs. Johnson eating a 10-cent lunch with school kids on one of the desks. (LBJ Elementary was shut down in 2018 and now demolished. Yesterday’s news.)

After the East Kentucky Flood, President Biden came to Breathitt County on his own. Or maybe the governor asked him. He showed up at the Lost Creek School, near the Go Time, and announced what became hundreds of millions of dollars for rebuilding and relief efforts. You’d think that government helping people in trouble would make a difference to voters, that it wouldn’t be ignored or soon forgotten. But then, that’s politics. Investment is welcome, but credit is fleeting. And Vance likes his ticket’s chances in the flood counties this cycle.

I did stop behind a school bus just past there, not long after the flood. That part of the county was crushed. Maybe half the houses were destroyed. I was impatient that afternoon and ready to get around the traffic and on toward home. This little chunky boy, 9 or 10, gets off the bus, hands his backpack to a waiting grandad, and runs full speed to what I assume was a new FEMA trailer parked along Highway 15. The kid gets to the end of the trailer and throws out both arms, puts his cheek up to the siding, and hugs it. Stands there and hugs a mobile home like it was his long lost dog. You love what you love. No judgment here, baby.

Maybe between now and November, J.D. Vance will drop by Hardee’s for a cup of coffee on a campaign stop between Middletown and North Georgia. I could pop over and swap corrections with him. But what I keep deep in my heart is hope that one day I will stop for gas and run into Mrs. Clemons and Melania sitting together enjoying a milkshake, maybe onion rings and fries, as they post photos of dresses, shoes, and handbags on E-Bay.

This article first appeared on The Daily Yonder and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

United Auto Workers members rallied for and won a new contract last year. (UAW photo)

Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and Republican nominee Donald Trump are in a tight race for the White House. Every voting bloc will count – including members of labor unions and other people in their households.

The majority of union leaders have over generations endorsed Democratic candidates, and this race is no exception. Although rank-and-file union members have also historically sided with the Democratic Party by large margins, that support has wavered for at least the past 45 years. In 2016, exit polls indicated that voters in union households supported Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton over Trump by only 8 percentage points, down from 18 percentage points in 2012 when Barack Obama was on the ballot.

No Democratic presidential nominee had fared worse with union voters since Ronald Reagan’s wins over Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale in 1980 and 1984.

Union voters are particularly prominent in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Nevada, three swing states where the share of voters who belong to unions is above the national average of 10%.

A late 2023 New York Times/Siena College poll of six swing states that Joe Biden won in 2020 – those three plus Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin – shows that Biden and Trump were tied at 47% among union voters when they were asked who they’d vote for in 2024. Biden had an 8 percentage point advantage with these same voters in 2020, according to a different survey.

3 key issues

Union voters, like all U.S. citizens, are concerned about many issues. But they are more likely than most people to seriously consider a candidate’s record in terms of support for workers and organized labor. Labor historians generally concur that the Biden administration has the second-strongest labor-friendly record, after Franklin D. Roosevelt.

And I find that historian Nelson Lichtenstein, who contends that Trump’s years in office were bad for organized labor, is representative of how labor experts see his track record.

In my view as a labor studies scholar, three aspects of the candidates’ records are the most likely to sway union members one way or the other.

Federal workers

Trump signed three executive orders in 2018 that restricted the labor rights of approximately 950,000 federal government employees who belong to unions. In 2020, he signed another measure, known as Schedule F, that The Washington Post described as “designed to gut civil service job protections.”

Biden rescinded those executive orders. He also established a White House task force charged with making recommendations for how to streamline the procedures for federal worker union organizing, which Harris chaired. The number of federal employees in unions has risen by tens of thousands during the Biden administration.

Union elections

Rules governing how elections are conducted once workers express an interest in forming a union date back to the 1930s, when Roosevelt signed the National Labor Relations Act into law. The National Labor Relations Board, created by that legislation, oversees union elections.

In 2019, when Trump appointees held a majority of the NLRB’s five seats, the board overturned an Obama-era NLRB ruling mandating speedy elections. In 2023, when Biden’s appointees were in the majority, the board issued a ruling favorable to unions that rolled back that Trump-era ruling.

Today, when a majority of workers in a workplace say they want union representation, an employer must either recognize and bargain with the union or seek an election. If that employer violates labor law in the period before the election, the election is called off and the NLRB may order the employer to recognize and bargain with the union.

OSHA

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a Labor Department agency, is responsible for U.S. workers’ health and safety.

Fewer workplace inspections occurred during the Trump administration than during Obama’s second term. This decline is largely attributable to the slow hiring of new OSHA inspectors to replace those who had retired.

The number of inspections is rising again. However, by OSHA’s calculations, workplace accidents and fatalities have increased during the Biden administration.

The Trump administration issued no workplace rules about coronavirus safety, leaving hundreds of thousands of people employed in health care, groceries, meatpacking and education at risk.

By comparison, two days after taking office in 2021, Biden issued an executive order that established masking guidelines, and his administration made health and safety protocols on the job during the rest of the COVID-19 pandemic a high priority.

Compared with the inaction by the Trump administration during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Biden administration has been more active in proposing health and safety measures. For example, in July 2024 it proposed rules designed to protect some 36 million workers from health risks associated with extreme heat. After a period for written comments, public hearings will be held on the bill.

When Trump tried cutting OSHA funding for 2018 by approximately US$10 million, Congress blocked his efforts. The Biden administration is seeking a 3.7% increase in OSHA’s budget for the 2025 fiscal year.

Legislative and gubernatorial records

Harris was a U.S. senator before she became vice president; her vice presidential running mate, Tim Walz, is the governor of Minnesota and was a member of Congress before that; and Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance is currently a U.S. senator as well. The candidates’ records in those positions are also indicators of what they might attempt to do in the White House.

The AFL-CIO, the largest umbrella organization for U.S. unions, gave Harris a lifetime score of 98% on her Senate voting record. Walz got a 93% rating for his votes from the AFL-CIO when he served in the House of Representatives. He belonged to the National Education Association, the nation’s largest labor union, while working as a high school teacher.

As Minnesota’s governor, Walz signed into law paid sick days for the state’s workers and a measure that made Minnesota the first state to establish a minimum wage for Uber and Lyft drivers. In 2023, Walz also signed a law that established the Nursing Home Workforce Standards Board to oversee the health and welfare of nursing home workers.

The AFL-CIO has given Vance a 0% rating for his Senate votes as of mid-2024. Among other things, Vance opposed the nominations of several judges and government officials with pro-labor track records.

Addressing auto workers

Perhaps the most visible sign of Biden’s support for labor unions came when he walked a Michigan picket line with striking members of the United Auto Workers in September 2023. He was the first president to do so.

Trump turned up nearby the next day. He gave a speech at a nonunion auto parts plant.

More recently, Trump did himself no favors with labor voters and their allies when, in a highly publicized conversation with Tesla, SpaceX and X CEO Elon Musk, he praised Musk for firing employees who spoke out on workplace problems and attempted to unionize.

How union households will vote in 2024 is not clear. But there’s no doubt that the Harris and Trump campaigns are certain that it will matter, just as it did in 2020, when Biden narrowly won Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – and in 2016, when Clinton lost those states.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In the 1920s, many women became more comfortable in their skin. But the facts of life remained in short supply. (George Grantham Bain Collection/Library of Congress)

American women still have fewer orgasms than men, according to new research that suggests that decades after the sexual revolution, the “orgasm gap” is still very much in effect.

One of the study’s lead authors at the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction told The New York Times that the gap persists because many Americans continue to “prioritize men’s pleasure and undervalue women’s sexual pleasure.”

As my research shows, these attitudes toward sexual pleasure have a long history.

But so do efforts to push back against them.

Almost a century ago, a pioneering American sex researcher named Katharine Bement Davis challenged the prevailing view that respectable women did not – and should not – experience sexual desire or have sex, except to please men or to have children.

Davis’s 1929 book, “Factors in the Sex Life of Twenty-Two Hundred Women,” completely upended this thinking.

By surveying everyday American women, she was able to show that it was completely normal for American women to have sex for the sake of pleasure.

An unlikely advocate for sexual liberation

Davis spent the first half of her career policing women’s sexuality, not promoting it.

In 1901, after earning her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, Davis became superintendent of the New York State Reformatory for Women at Bedford Hills. While there, she studied the women in her care. Most female convicts, she concluded, were “immoral women.”

Davis’ efforts to enforce sexual morality drew the attention of philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr. In 1917, he invited her to lead his private agency, the Bureau of Social Hygiene, founded to study and combat prostitution and venereal disease.

During World War I, Davis promoted sex education to curb sexually transmitted infections among soldiers and civilians. Through this work, she became convinced that sexual ignorance – not sexual immorality – posed the greatest danger to women’s welfare.

Davis had long criticized the sexual double standard, which condoned men’s sexual experimentation but condemned women’s sexual experience.

Now, she also recognized that this double standard promoted women’s chastity at the expense of knowledge. She complained that discussions of women’s sexuality were “taboo,” which resulted in “distorted views, baffled speculation, and unfortunate experiences.”

Tackling a taboo topic

Insisting that Americans needed accurate information to achieve “a sane outlook on all matters pertaining to sex,” Davis made it her mission to teach women about sex.

But first, she needed to learn about women’s actual sexual experiences. Davis decided to undertake a large-scale study of what she called “the sex life of normal women.”

Davis’ approach was a dramatic departure from existing studies of “abnormal” sexuality focused on institutionalized populations. “Except on the pathological side,” she remarked, “sex is scientifically an unexplored country.”

By contrast, Davis explained, she wanted to understand “the woman who was not pathological mentally or physically.”

To that end, Davis distributed a detailed questionnaire to what she called “women of good standing in the community” from 1921 to 1923. The resulting study sample of 1,000 married women and 1,200 unmarried women was not representative – it skewed white, well-educated and well-to-do. But their responses allowed Davis to redefine female sexuality.

America’s first sexual revolution

Davis launched her study of women’s sexuality during what historians now refer to as America’s first sexual revolution. The second – and more well-known one – would take place in the 1960s.

In the 1920s, as one commentator noted, a “revolution in manners and morals” was underway. Sex suffused popular culture. Contestants in beauty pageants displayed their charms in skimpy bathing costumes and short skirts. Actresses flaunted their sex appeal on stage and screen.

New attitudes about sex affected the daily lives of average Americans, too. Young women throughout the nation adopted the sexy look of “flappers,” the term used for women who sported short skirts, rolled stockings and bobbed hair.

Prior to the 1920s, courtship often took place in the home, allowing parents to closely supervise couples. But the ubiquitous automobile – which one juvenile court judge had dubbed “a house of prostitution on wheels” – rendered adult chaperonage obsolete and granted young people unprecedented sexual freedom.

Meanwhile, birth control activists like Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennett distributed contraceptive devices and disseminated sexual information in defiance of the Comstock Act of 1873, which had defined birth control and sex education as “obscene” and made circulating such materials a federal crime.

Sex, secrecy and shame

Even amid the nation’s first sexual revolution, the facts of life remained in short supply.

According to surveys Davis distributed to married women, only about half of the respondents believed that they had been “adequately prepared … for the sex side of marriage.”

After expanding her study to include unmarried women, Davis found that fewer than one-third of all participants received sex education from their parents.

Many women didn’t know how pregnancy occurred. Some had been unprepared even for menstruation. One recalled that when she experienced her first period, “I naturally thought I was bleeding to death.”

In place of information, many women imbibed shame. “Having acquired the feeling as a small child that any sex pleasure was shameful and a great sin,” as one respondent put it, some could never overcome their discomfort with sex. Another woman regarded all sexual thoughts as “something to be shunned like the devil.”

One response succinctly summarized the problem: “Our present secrecy, fear, and repression are responsible for most of our sex ills.”

Challenging the conspiracy of silence

Many women were eager to challenge what one called a “conspiracy of silence” surrounding female sexuality.

Study participants ended up providing Davis with over 10,000 pages of handwritten responses. She used this information to produce the nation’s first major study of women’s sexuality, a 400-plus page book brimming with both statistical data and personal stories.

“Factors in the Sex Life of Twenty-Two Hundred Women” covered a wide range of topics, ranging from sex education to sex play. Running throughout the entire work, however, was one central idea: Women liked sex.

Davis included data on birth control, same-sex relationships and masturbation. At the time, these practices were universally stigmatized and often criminalized. Yet significant proportions of study participants engaged in all these activities.

Nearly three-quarters of married respondents reported using contraceptives. Many probably took advantage of state laws allowing physicians to prescribe diaphragms to protect patients’ health. Surprisingly, nearly 1 in 10 women admitted having abortions, even though the procedure was illegal in every state.

More than half of unmarried women and nearly one-third of married women stated that they had experienced “intense emotional relationships” with other women. In each group, approximately half described those relationships as sexual. This was a remarkably high figure, given prevailing views of homosexuality as sexual deviance and state laws criminalizing homosexual acts.

Nearly 65% of unmarried women and more than 40% of married women reported masturbating. Since nearly all physicians and pastors condemned the practice, Davis assumed the actual numbers were even higher.

Davis’ data demonstrated that “normal” women experienced what one called “natural sex feeling.” In short, her study showed that many women enjoyed sex for its own sake.

Davis believed that reliable data would lead to “more satisfactory adjustments of the sex relationship.” In other words, better information would lead to better sex.

Davis paved the way for future studies that validate women’s sexual pleasure. While researching female sexuality, she established the National Research Council’s Committee for Research on the Problems of Sex. The Rockefeller-funded committee later subsidized Alfred Kinsey’s studies of human sexuality.

Davis’ legacy lives on. The findings from the Kinsey Institute’s latest study show that discussing sexual pleasure still matters, particularly for women. It also suggests that Americans’ understandings of sex have improved over the past century.

When Davis conducted her study in the 1920s, she found it “advisable” to define “orgasm” for participants who were unclear on the concept. Now, a generation of better-informed Americans ponder how to address a persistent “orgasm gap.”

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Demonstrators and members of the Black Womens Collective gather around the Breonna Taylor memorial at Jefferson Square Park on Oct. 3, 2020 in Louisville. (Photo by Jon Cherry/Getty Images)

It is disappointing that a Kentucky federal judge dismissed felony charges against two former police officers charged in the death of Breonna Taylor during a 2020 raid.

But the decision by U.S. District Judge Charles R. Simpson III to place blame for the 26-year-old emergency-room technician’s death squarely on boyfriend Kenneth Walker III defies logic. And it reinforces the difficulty of holding police accountable, even when one detective has already pleaded guilty to lies and coverups.

Walker shot once from his legally owned gun as Louisville police burst through Taylor’s apartment door unannounced on March 13 at 12:45 a.m. Police returned fire 32 times, with several bullets hitting Taylor. Her death added fuel to international protests over police killings that summer.

Walker’s decision to shoot is “a superseding cause” of her death, the judge said. “There is no direct link between the warrantless entry and Taylor’s death.”

The link appears obvious: If officers had not lied that a drug dealer lived there, the shooting would not have happened. “If they had just knocked on the door and said, ‘It’s the police,’ we would have opened the door,” Walker said in an Instagram post on the ruling.

Also, in a legal system that endorses “stand-your-ground” laws, why is Walker criticized for exercising his right to self-defense? Why single him out when prosecutors dropped charges against him for wounding an officer in the leg, and the city of Louisville reached a $2 million settlement with him over police misconduct?

Will the next argument be that Taylor is responsible for her own death, just for being asleep in her bed when police showed up?

Federal prosecutors intend to appeal the judge’s ruling, according to Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer. “The only thing we can do at this point is continue to be patient,” she said in a statement. “The appeal will extend the life of the case but as we’ve always maintained, we will continue to fight until we get full justice.”

What this means right now is that former Louisville Police Detective Joshua Jaynes and former Sgt. Kyle Meany, who handled the warrant but were not at the shooting, face only misdemeanor charges that could end with fines.?Jaynes and Meany were charged with depriving Taylor of her constitutional right to be free of unreasonable searches. Simpson, a senior judge appointed by President Ronald Reagan, said the facts did not justify the felony charge.

Jaynes is still charged with conspiring with another detective to cover up the false warrant and of falsifying a document to mislead investigators. Meany is still charged with making a false statement to FBI investigators.

This tragedy began with police efforts to arrest Taylor’s ex-boyfriend, DeMarcus Glover, for drug-dealing. He was arrested the night of the raid at another location.?

Former detective Kelly Goodlett pleaded guilty in federal court to lying on the warrant for Taylor’s apartment by saying it was Glover’s primary address and that they had documented that he kept drugs and cash there. Officers also lied about the need for the more aggressive “no-knock” warrant, said Goodlett, expected to be sentenced in April.

Two officers who did the actual shooting in the apartment have not been charged. A grand jury did not indict them, after then-Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron did not recommend charges. Another officer who shot 10 bullets into the apartment building, endangering other residents, was acquitted in a state trial and won a mistrial in federal court. He is expected to be retried in October.

“You wonder, where’s the accountability?” Sadiqa Reynolds, a Louisville activist and attorney told WHAS11 after the judge’s ruling. “What is in place to prevent an officer from making up a warrant and causing someone’s death? What do we do?”

Louisville government officials have taken some responsibility, at least. A $12 million settlement of a wrongful-death lawsuit included promises of improved crisis intervention, more citizen oversight, and an “early warning” system for troubled officers.

The city also is winding down negotiations over a federal consent decree that would place a judge in charge of overseeing overdue police reforms in 36 areas of operation, including training, administration, community response and employee management.

A two-year investigation into the department exposed violations of residents’ constitutional rights: illegal stops, detentions and arrests; excessive force with neck restraints, stun guns and dog bites; inadequate attention to sexual assault and domestic-violence cases; yelling and name-calling, which escalate conflicts. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland called the report “an affront to the people of Louisville who deserve better.”

Kenneth Walker also deserves better.?

While it is well within the judge’s power and expertise to determine whether police actions were felonies, it’s unfair to brand Walker as Taylor’s killer when he tried to be her protector.?

Without his eyewitness testimony, Breonna Taylor would not be remembered as a promising life unfairly ended but written off as another drug-dealing casualty.

Indiana and Ohio give tax-funded vouchers to just about anybody, regardless of income, so the vast majority of voucher money is enriching families whose children already attend private church schools, writes columnist John Schaaf.?(Getty Images)

Many Kentucky churches are losing members and money, but they’re hoping taxpayers will vote to bail them out of their financial problems.

Church lobbyists pushed Amendment 2 onto the November ballot, and if their scheme passes, hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars will flow into questionable religious schools operated in church basements across the commonwealth.?

Judging by what’s happening in other states, Kentucky would likely pay churches at least $8,000 in public money for each child in their schools, but many of the “teachers” in the schools will be untrained volunteers recruited from church congregations.??

Unfortunately, the schools will have no accountability when those “teachers” fail to teach and students fail to learn.

Paul Prather, the insightful writer who is pastor of Bethesda Church in Montgomery County, recently discussed data showing that only about 5% of Americans regularly attend church. (“Regularly” means attending services at least three out of four weeks.)

As in the rest of the country, few Kentuckians regularly attend church, and even fewer put their children in church schools. However, if Amendment 2 passes, politicians will force every Kentucky taxpayer to pay for two school systems — one public, and one consisting of schools run by Baptist and Catholic churches.

The churches, which pay no taxes to anybody, will use taxpayer dollars to teach their religious doctrine to students they choose to allow into their schools.??

That’s right — the “school choice” behind Amendment 2 belongs to the church schools, which can choose the children they want and reject the ones they don’t want.??

Even worse, a church school could accept a child’s voucher money, then for reasons real or contrived, they could kick the child out a month or two into the school year and keep the tax dollars they already collected.?

Sadly, there are examples of this failed voucher scheme across the river in Indiana and Ohio, and in other states like Arizona, Florida and Wisconsin.??

Indiana and Ohio give tax-funded vouchers to just about anybody, regardless of income, so the vast majority of voucher money is enriching well-off families whose children already attend church schools.?

In the 2023-24 school year, Indiana paid $439 million in tax dollars to private schools, with church schools grabbing 98 percent of that amount, and almost 70 percent of it paid for students who previously attended private school without a voucher.?

Like Indiana, Ohio’s spending on private schools grew dramatically after politicians opened the voucher program to everybody, regardless of income. In just four years, overall spending on vouchers nearly doubled, going from $557.5 million to a projected $1.05 billion in FY 2025, and close to 100 percent of the money goes to church schools.?

Arizona opened its taxpayer-funded voucher program to everybody in 2022, helping create a $1.4 billion budget hole that caused severe cuts for state universities and cancellation of road projects, school construction and water infrastructure projects.??

As in the other states, more than 70% of Arizona voucher recipients were already enrolled in private schools (90 percent in church schools) and had been paying for it without a handout from taxpayers.

Florida spends really big on vouchers —? $3 billion in the 2023-24 school year, with 82% of voucher recipients attending a church school.

In Wisconsin this year, taxpayers will pay $12,731 for each voucher student in grades 9-12, and 96% of the money goes to church schools.?

With politicians diverting more than $700 million per year to private schools, Wisconsin’s local school districts are frequently forced to ask residents to raise their property taxes to make up for lost state contributions.

Kentucky voters should consider these examples of taxpayer dollars flowing into unaccountable and mediocre church schools when deciding Amendment 2.

Oprah Winfrey departs after speaking on stage during the third night of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Aug. 21, 2024. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

Democrats have their opponents on the run now that Kamala Harris has become their party’s standard bearer. And they’re making no secret of it.

How can you tell?

Not because of the dollars pouring into the Harris campaign. Supporters will open their wallets for a lost cause if they get caught up in the moment.

And not because of the excitement that poured out of the Democratic National Convention this week. Activists drum up false enthusiasm even when their side faces crushing defeat.

Rather, you can tell top Democrats think the vice president is on her way to a promotion because of what they’re saying about themselves. A series of speakers at the DNC tried to give the impression Harris is a continuation of their legacy.

President Joe Biden not only portrayed the VP as an extension of his successes, he described picking her as “the best decision” of his lengthy career.

Hillary Clinton characterized Harris as her successor in the fight for women’s advancement. Clinton’s failed presidential bid in 2016 elevated Harris right up against the “glass ceiling” holding female leaders down. Harris just needs help pushing through the cracked surface.

The Obamas spoke as though their rivals still run the country. Hope was “making a comeback,” Michelle Obama asserted, after having been “buried too deep for far too long.” She didn’t even mention the sitting president. Her husband briefly thanked Biden, but then relegated him to the history books. Kamala was a kid with a funny name, like Barack, who would extend “Obamacare” reforms. Harris was picking up his torch.

To paraphrase an old saying: Failure is an orphan, but success has many parents. Those old pols want a piece of the action because they smell success.

But they’re flattering themselves. The Democrats look strong not because of continuity, but instead thanks to an aggressive makeover, one that distances Harris from the baggage of those who preceded her. Having far-left progressives mad at the Biden-Harris administration only made that transformation easier.

The Democrats began this year saddled with a dismal public image.

Like Biden, they were too focused on stopping Donald Trump, not enough on what they’d deliver. Harris, though, without being obvious about it, is campaigning more as challenger than incumbent. She promises to fight problems like inflation and illegal immigration that worsened on Biden’s watch.

Like Clinton, Democratic elites were viewed as aloof intellectuals, dismissive of the “deplorables” in middle America — a party of scolds, of buzzkills obsessed with the country’s imperfections. The Republicans were poised to be the party for “normies” who wanted to have fun, take care of their families, and feel pride in their country.

Kamala Harris with her toothy grin and oft-mocked laugh — aided by the GOP’s fearful negativity — managed to flip the script to become the candidate not of killjoys but of joy. Toss in running mate “Coach Walz,” former National Guardsman from Minnesota, and Democrats could lean into patriotism, family, and Friday Night Lights while dismissing the GOP as the party of “weird.”

If any politician on the DNC stage earned a right to claim co-authorship of the Harris-Walz rebranding, it might be Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear. A series of DNC speakers, including Harris herself, echoed Beshear’s promise to look beyond political conflict and solve everyday problems that transcend party and ideology. Beshear and fledgling activist Hadley Duvall foreshadowed how Democrats could exploit abortion to become the party of freedom, the party of “mind your own damn business.”

Still, if I had to pick one DNC speaker who embodies the sales job Kamala Harris now needs to pull off — the person on that Chicago stage with the best claim for having passed a torch — she wasn’t a politician. My nomination goes to Oprah Winfrey, who didn’t even claim credit for Harris.

President Obama sought to represent not red states or blue states but united states. He seemed to promise a purple-state blend, yet the country plunged into division during the first two years of his leadership, and he presided over the half-decade collapse of the Democratic Party. That’s a legacy Harris must avoid.

Oprah, on the other hand, presided over a vast media empire for a quarter century. She united red and blue America into an audience as purple as the outfit she wore for her DNC speech. When I would call one relative of mine, a Southerner who hasn’t voted Democrat since Jimmy Carter, she always had advice handy from Oprah’s doctor or nutritionist. That’s the crossover appeal Harris must offer swing voters.

Obama would speak with the uplifting cadences of a preacher, but often his sentiments sounded more appropriate to the teachers’ lounge. He once pushed back against the idea of “American exceptionalism,” an unforced error that dogged him for years. Oprah showed no such qualms about embracing the country’s uniqueness during an interview before her DNC appearance. Only in America, she said, would her success have been possible.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, similarly, offered his family as proof that “America, uniquely, holds the promise of a place where everyone can belong.” Celebrating the best of America lets Democrats sound genuinely patriotic.

Unlike Obama, Oprah understood how to escape the false choice that often faces celebrities of African descent: between suppressing their race and letting their public image be dominated by it. Harris must repeat that trick, holding on to Biden’s white support while exciting voters of color who were drifting.

Polls suggest that Kamala Harris is pulling off the Oprah Gambit so far, especially in battleground states most likely to move this year.

Even if it persists, would that marketing success carry over to “flyover” states, such as Beshear’s Kentucky? Probably not.

To move en masse, voters usually need more than words. They need to see positive outcomes. At most, Democrats might hope for a clean sweep of the states currently in play, giving them a landslide Electoral College victory.

Still, they have a popular message. Trumpsters have signed over to them most advantages Republicans used to bring into a national election: law, order, patriotism, pride, freedom, the American Dream. If the Democrats can recruit candidates consistent with the new brand — avoiding the flaws of powerful Democrats who narrowed their party’s appeal — they might make gains in places previously thought unobtainable.

The status quo isn't optimal while full repeal of the certificate of need law isn't feasible, writes Andrew McNeill of KYFREE. "Every stakeholder in the CON conversation ought to be open to the idea that finding common ground is not only possible, but desirable. Greater access to quality health care for our families and loved ones should motivate our best effort to get there."

Meaningful reform on controversial issues takes time and hard work. Passions run high.? Sharp elbows get thrown. Nuance can contradict ideology, requiring compromise.

Which brings me to Kentucky’s certificate of need (CON) laws.

CON regulates investment in our state’s health care sector. Before opening certain types of facilities, an entrepreneur or health care provider must demonstrate there is a “need” for the services. The process is complex, it can be expensive and, at the end of the day, there’s no guarantee an applicant will get the go-ahead to move forward.

What to know about the certificate of need debate in Kentucky

Giving the government a veto on whether someone can open a business is the antithesis of free enterprise. Then again, health care is unlike any other sector of the economy.

During the 2023 interim, the General Assembly appointed a task force to evaluate the issue.? Legislation to reform CON was filed in the ’24 session but didn’t get traction. In June, the Licensing & Occupations Interim Committee dedicated their first meeting to the topic.

Smart people from all sides have debated what steps, if any, lawmakers should take to modify our certificate of need program. The gap between the positions is wide but that doesn’t mean it’s insurmountable.

Here are four guidelines to reset the conversation around sensible steps for CON reform:

Increasing access to quality health care is the goal.

Call it “CON reform” or “CON modernization,” the goal should be the same. Changes to CON must make it easier to invest in facilities and technology that provide health care services to Kentuckians. This will mean new entrants in certain areas but must also mean streamlining the red tape that hinders existing providers from expanding access.

Kentucky’s?health care market is actually many distinct markets.

Recognizing the differences between the state’s urban and rural health care settings is crucial to evaluating the policy options to reform CON. Nearly half of Kentucky’s acute care hospital beds are located in only five counties. Specialized in-patient services (cardiac, psychiatric, neonatal, etc.) are mainly — though not exclusively — concentrated in Lexington, Louisville and Northern Kentucky. On the flip side, we also have 25 rural hospitals —which provide essential care to thousands of our fellow Kentuckians — that have 25 or fewer beds.

Respect concerns from rural legislators.?

The connection between Kentucky’s smaller communities and their local hospital is more than a transaction. Knowing care can be provided close to home is a great comfort to patients and their families. Rural legislators are unlikely to support anything that risks a hospital closing in their district, no matter how small that risk might be.

Significant progress is possible through incremental steps.?

In 2018, a CON reform exempting several outpatient categories of care passed the legislature with broad support. Pragmatic changes can move the needle if the give-and-take of the legislative process works properly.

A family member recently developed a health condition that required a short hospital stay in Maysville, my hometown. I spent three days in that setting watching the nurses and doctors provide excellent care. The experience provided me with greater clarity on the CON debate than any report I’ve read or testimony I’ve listened to.

The status quo isn’t optimal while full CON-repeal isn’t feasible. Every stakeholder in the CON conversation ought to be open to the idea that finding common ground is not only possible, but desirable. Greater access to quality health care for our families and loved ones should motivate our best effort to get there.

Kinship caregivers are often approached by the system in a time of crisis. Typically, that’s when a child is removed from an unsafe home or even in the hospital due to abuse/neglect.?(Getty Images)

At the second gubernatorial debate in October 2023, the governor acknowledged the plight of kinship. Later he said, “We must do everything we can to ensure their needs are met.”

Kinship care is when a child is living with relatives or close family friends other than their parents. These children may be victims of abuse and neglect and/or formally in the child welfare system; while many for a myriad of reasons are informally left with relatives or friends.

There are things we do well in Kentucky around kinship care and there are things that need improvement. For the past five years, we’ve needed improvement regarding the initial placement process. This is when a caregiver is given paperwork from the Department for Community Based Services (DCBS) which captures specific custody details around placement with them.

When placement is offered, it’s an emotional time for a caregiver.? They are in shock as they hear details about the circumstances of the child’s removal from their home such as abuse, neglect and sometimes even dealing with the child’s required hospitalization.

At the initial placement conversation, there’s a multitude of things to consider such as researching many services; learning about the family court system and DCBS requirements; determining the emotional and physical needs of the child. A caregiver might not be thinking clearly and there are many unknowns. The initial wrong decision can affect longer term services for the child.

This year, we found an answer to improving the initial placement process. It is Senate Bill 151. Though it should have been simple and was unanimously approved and signed into law. It has a history to sort out in regards to implementation. At the center of the issues, there’s a Feb. 8 estimate created by the Cabinet for Health and Family Services (CHFS) that reflects the need for $20 million in additional general funds to implement. There’s also a referenced Kentucky Supreme Court ruling that basically states that if there isn’t funding, there doesn’t have to be implementation.

The bill was amended with stricter parameters and was presented on Feb. 29 ?to the House Families and Children’s committee.? There were no objections or concerns raised at the meeting and the bill unanimously moved forward until signed by the Gov. Andy Beshear on April 5.

It’s my opinion that the amended bill reduces costs (from the Feb. 8 CHFS estimate) by limiting placement time option to 120 days and through other potential administrative regulation changes. It’s even better cost wise, if we get federal funding.

At the?IJC Children and Families meeting on July 30, the CHFS secretary shared that they would be happy to ask for federal funding. The $20 million estimate that holds SB-151 hostage from implementation did not include federal funds. Kentucky gets approximately 72 cents of every dollar of applicable federal funds.

As legislators continue to pursue the issues, we wait until the next committee meeting in late-August. As a kinship advocate who understands the seriousness of needed changes like SB-151 for vulnerable families; it feels like a series of games of “Whack-A-Mole,” where each event leads to another meeting with something new, but without tangible results. I’m most concerned about families becoming ineligible for longer term services because we are waiting for resolution. I also feel we can do more around better communication of the services in the interim.

We need a private working meeting with CHFS, some legislators, key experts/stakeholders, where we’d assess potential funding sources; review the amended bill and revise regulation changes all focused on one goal — creating a definitive plan to do the work expeditiously. We shouldn’t leave the room until we have an agreed upon plan. I’d volunteer my time and gather state and national child welfare experts who would give their time.

The governor was right when he said we should be doing everything we can to ensure that their (kinship) needs are met. We need his intervention to keep the promise to kinship families.

We can’t change the past, but we can change today and the future.

Flowers rest on steps at a makeshift memorial for victims after a mass shooting in Louisville in April 2023. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Abbey Cutrer)

As if we needed more examples of our entrenched gun culture, here’s the latest:?Bullets, sold through vending machines — in grocery stores.

The distributor,?American Rounds, recently began installing such machines in a few stores in Alabama, Texas and Oklahoma. Customer ID is scanned using facial-recognition software. Yet, there are no checks into criminal, mental-health or domestic-violence backgrounds.

The machines, defenders say, provide more oversight than online purchases which often does not require proof of age. But having more ways for weapon buyers to avoid scrutiny and accountability makes little sense — if there is any real intention to reduce gun violence. Several mass shootings have even happened inside grocery stores.

This development is relevant because the Kentucky legislature has a habit of copycatting pro-gun laws and policies from other states. That has contributed to the state having some of the weakest gun-safety laws and the 16^th?highest gun-death rate. Between 2014-23, there were at least 6,339 shootings, with 2,767 people killed and 5,078 injured, according to the?Gun Violence Archives.

Selling bullets from vending machines sounds more like at April Fool’s joke than any rational policy, said Terry Brooks, executive director of?Kentucky Youth Advocates, an independent nonprofit concerned with families and children.

“Kentucky has experienced a real spike in child and teen deaths by guns,” he said. “The biggest threats to our grandchildren are bullets, not cancer or car accidents.”

Firearm-related incidents — homicides, suicides and accidents — are now the leading cause of death among Kentucky youth, according to federal data. In 2022, there were 388 firearm-related deaths among those age 19 and under, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Kids Count report.

That’s a rate of 37 per 100,000 young people dead — higher than the national average and a big jump from 2019, when the rate was 29 per 100.000.

If Kentucky lawmakers are looking for gun laws to duplicate, Brooks said, they should support secure-storage regulations passed by?26 states — including GOP-dominated North Carolina, Virginia, Florida and Texas.

“We’re not trying to take away your hunting rifles,” he said. “But if you have guns in your home, they should be unloaded, locked up and kept separate from bullets. That’s just commonsense.”

Kentucky allows?people to carry concealed guns without getting a permit or completing a background check and safety training. It does not require the removal of guns from those charged with domestic violence. This year, the legislature followed other Republican states with a law that makes it illegal for law enforcers and state employees to help enforce federal gun laws.?The only substantive state restriction is on a firearm dealer knowingly selling to a felon.

Gun violence is a national public-health crisis, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy recently declared. More than 48,000 Americans died from gun injuries in 2022. Weekends this summer have been marked by mass shootings that?left dozens of people dead or wounded.

Most adults have either personally or had a family member impacted by a gun-related incident, such as witnessing a shooting, being threatened by gun, or being injured or killed by a gun, according to a?Kaiser Family Foundation poll.

To drive down gun deaths, Murthy calls for a secure-storage law, a ban on?automatic rifles, universal background checks of gun buyers and restrictions on guns in public. But when it comes to gun safety efforts, it has been one step forward and two steps back.

Congress last year passed a?bipartisan law?that toughens background checks for the youngest buyers, keeps firearms from more domestic-violence offenders and helps states pass laws to take deadly weapons away from people who show signs they could turn violent. The U.S. Supreme Court in June?upheld the banning?of weapons in domestic-violence cases.

However, the court also issued a?2022 ruling?against state restrictions on carrying weapons in public and overruled a bipartisan federal ban on the sale of equipment that turns rifles into more deadly machine guns.

Earlier this year, legislative leaders?refused to hold a hearing?on?a bipartisan bill that would allow courts to temporarily remove guns from those experiencing mental-health crises. Whether a secure-storage law would fare any better remains to be seen.

“I’m optimistic that can happen,” said Brooks. “The General Assembly simply has to decide whether it will advocate for the gun lobby or for kids.”

Meanwhile, the business of making bullets easily available, just yards away the bread aisle, is likely to spread.

Would Kentucky lawmakers draw a line against such an unnecessary risk of more deaths and injuries?

Kentucky Senate President Robert Stivers, left, and House Speaker David Osborne are among the Republicans who declined to answer the Right to Life candidate survey this year. They conferred during the State of the Commonwealth address in the House chambers on Jan. 3, 2024. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Arden Barnes)

FRANKFORT — Picture this: You pull an item off a store shelf that has no price tag.

Do you assume it’s free?

If you said yes, you might have a future in the Kentucky General Assembly, where some members seem astonished ?— offended, even —that actual money is needed to pay for new programs they shepherded into law earlier this year.

Kentuckians fostering young relatives are among the losers; some of them would have gained much needed help from a newly enacted law. Unfortunately, it’s one of 24 new laws or resolutions that Gov. Andy Beshear’s administration says it cannot implement because the legislature failed to appropriate money to pay for them.

Some new Kentucky laws are in limbo as governor says lawmakers failed to fund them

How lawmakers can be oblivious to the cost of bills they are moving just became less puzzling, thanks to reporting by Joe Sonka of Kentucky Public Radio: The price tags on legislation? — known as fiscal notes — have largely been removed from public view.

Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, explained to Sonka that waiting to find out how much a bill would cost can be “quicksand” for measures that leadership wants to move, “especially late in the session.” Also, fiscal notes can be inaccurate and vague, says Stivers.

“I don’t want to create such a bureaucracy and to slow something down when we really need to get something moved,” Stivers said in an explanation that will never be mistaken for fiscal conservatism.??

Stiver’s rationale is also a far cry from the kitchen table economics that politicians are always praising. “Come on, baby, we need to buy that truck now. You can read the mumbo jumbo in the loan agreement after we get back from four-wheeling.”

Lawmakers can and often do request legislative staff to research the cost of a bill and its impact on the state budget. These estimates are put into a fiscal note. I spent a good bit of time during this year’s session looking for fiscal notes attached to bills on the legislature’s website. I found hardly any. Now I know why.

Sonka discovered that some — perhaps many? — fiscal notes are labeled with a red “confidential” and never attached to bills.?

The absence of a fiscal note keeps the cost unknown to most lawmakers and also to the taxpaying public that foots the bill.

Only three of the 30-plus lawmakers interviewed by Sonka were aware that confidential fiscal notes are a thing.

It’s hard to know how many fiscal notes have been withheld from the public because the legislature says the documents — prepared and printed at taxpayer expense — are not public records and therefore cannot be obtained under Kentucky’s open records law.

What is observable to the naked eye is that the Republican supermajority makes a habit of moving high-cost legislation amid lots of rhetorical virtue-signaling but with little or no regard for paying for it.

The legislature has yet to fund the school resource officers or counselors promised in a 2019 school safety law. In 2022, it enacted a formula for gradually reducing the state income tax without an estimate of its impact on the state budget, at least not one known to the public.?

Our self-described conservatives are disregarding the most basic conservative rule, one they accused Democrats of breaking for decades: Don’t buy something if you don’t know the cost (especially if it’s likely to be expensive).

This way lawmakers please some constituents and get positive media by moving legislation, then, when the bill comes due, they say we’ll try to fund it next time or blame Beshear for not scrounging the needed funds from state government’s couch cushions.

Beshear estimates the bills at issue would cost $153 million; that’s a big number but the legislature is sitting on a record surplus.?

Study: Kentuckians increasingly excluded from lawmaking process by fast-track maneuvers

Public radio’s Sonka discovered that Kentucky is in a minority of states where the legislature does not require a fiscal note on bills that would impact the budget. In recent years, he reports, the Republican supermajority has changed the rules in both chambers to make it even easier to keep a bill’s cost under wraps.

Enacting laws without considering or even knowing the costs is terrible policy for obvious reasons. It’s also totally consistent with the secretive, top-down way the Kentucky legislature does business, using procedural maneuvers to rush through controversial legislation with little warning to lawmakers or the public.

Rep. Savannah Maddox, R-Dry Ridge, told Sonka she plans to file a bill in the 2025 session to require public fiscal notes on legislation.

While the mighty GOP majority has proven it can do about anything it wants, with Beshear and Maddox attacking this bad practice from different directions, maybe the public will have a fighting chance.??

"A colorful Member with a fiery temper" is how the U.S. House "History, Art & Archives" describes Matthew Lyon "depicted in this infamous print with Roger Griswold of Connecticut." (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)

The first sound bite in American political history was recorded more than two centuries ago in Western Kentucky.

First District Congressman Matthew Lyon of Eddyville, a fierce Jeffersonian Democratic-Republican, used his teeth to detach a detractor’s digit.

It was self-defense. The constituent was trying to pop the congressman’s eyeball out.

Lyon was an Irish-born Revolutionary War veteran who’d been a Vermont congressman before he migrated to frontier Western Kentucky and helped found Eddyville on the Cumberland River. (Eddyville is the seat of Lyon County, which was named for his son, Rep. Chittenden Lyon, an Eddyville Democrat who was in Congress from 1827 to 1835.)

Matthew Lyon was elected to the Kentucky legislature in 1802, and he served in Congress from 1803 to 1811.

“The coonskin democracy of southwestern Kentucky idolized the Colonel,” wrote historian Bernard Mayo in an old article in “The North American Review.” “In all Kentucky there was no candidate so energetic, so colorful. Lyon’s bag of electioneering tricks, said seasoned observers, was inexhaustible.”??

Lyon reportedly could “out-shout his rivals, ‘drink grog all day long without getting drunk, & tell pretty rough anecdotes.’”

Lyon said he owed his political success to stationing himself “at a crossroads by which everybody in the district passed from time to time … abusing the sitting member,” according to Mayo’s book, “Henry Clay: Spokesman for the New West.”??

One time, abuse came from a man named Cofield. He tried to embarrass his member of Congress by dredging up the story of Lyon spitting in the face of Congressman Roger Griswold, a Federalist foe, during a 1798 House session. It’s unclear if the great expectoration was saliva or tobacco juice, but it led to a brawl on the House floor between “The Spitting Lyon” and Griswold.

A year later, Lyon was briefly jailed under the Alien and Sedition Acts for printing commentary sharply critical of Federalist President John Adams — whom he hated — in his newspaper, “The Scourge Of Aristocracy and Repository of Important Political Truth.”?

Lyon was still behind bars when his Green Mountain State constituents reelected him. After he was released, he returned to Congress in time to help make Jefferson president over Aaron Burr in 1801. The two tied in the Electoral College after the 1800 presidential election. (The Federalist Adams lost.) So the House had to decide who won.?

Lyon claimed if it hadn’t been for him, Burr might have triumphed. “During that long tie-vote contest ending only with the thirty-sixth ballot, ‘a Lyon grim and bold, for desperate warfare fam’d of old,’ manfully resisted Federalist bribes and cast Vermont’s vote for Jefferson,” Mayo wrote in his article.

He also quoted from a New York Herald account of Lyon’s “lively scuffle” with Cofield: “Mr. Lyon immediately cracked away at Mr. Cofield, but Mr. C so completely defended himself that he parried off the blow, and the scene of action commenced hot and hard.”

Cofield finally knocked Lyon flat and prepared to deliver the coup de grace in a backwoods brawl: gouging out an eye with a deft thumb flick.

“In the attempt, however,” the “Herald” explained, “the honorable gentleman got Mr. C’s thumb in his mouth and completely amputated it at the first joint.”

In his book, Mayo wrote that by chomping off Cofield’s thumb, Lyon helped confirm eastern opinions “that Kentucky was truly a paradise for barbarous Yahoos.”

Lyon died in Arkansas in 1822 and was buried in Eddyville’s Riverview Cemetery. Neither his epitaph ?nor a nearby state historical marker mention “The Spitting Lyon’s” unique form of hand surgery though it truly was a sound bite.

Father Jim Sichko was the master of ceremonies at the Fancy Farm political speaking, Saturday, Aug. 3, 2024, during the St. Jerome Church parish picnic. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Austin Anthony)

Gov. Andy Beshear’s big audition didn’t get him a new role, but the continuing tryouts of people who might succeed him or seek other statewide office began a new round.

Republican hopefuls were on stage before and during the political speaking at the annual Fancy Farm Picnic, which Beshear skipped — apparently because he was on call to Vice President Kamala Harris as she chose a running mate for the job she now holds.

Beshear didn’t make the Democratic ticket, but seemed in the hunt until Saturday, when sources told The New York Times that he could be a “compromise candidate” who would please both centrists like himself and progressives who objected to Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s comments about pro-Palestinian protesters.

In his auditions — TV interviews and appearances at fundraisers and a Harris event in Georgia — Beshear kept attacking the Appalachian bona fides of Donald Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, who has family ties to Breathitt County.

Beshear wasn’t a one-trick pony, also talking about abortion — an issue that helped him get reelected last year, in a sea change for Democrats following the Supreme Court’s repeal of federal abortion rights. And his unspoken message was that he was a moderate Democrat who could win over rural voters, who have largely abandoned the Democratic Party in the last 40 years.

But Harris’s choice, two-term Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, has a rural background. He grew up on a Nebraska farm, taught high school and coached football in Mankato, Minnesota, a town of 45,000, then represented it in Congress. Perhaps more importantly, Minnesota borders two swing states: Michigan (in Lake Superior) and Wisconsin.

Beshear wouldn’t have delivered Kentucky’s electoral votes, and has to be careful about attacking Trump, who remains popular in Kentucky, for fear of blowback from constituents. Walz has no such worries. Speaking of Trump and Vance two days after President Joe Biden dropped out, he delivered the most memorable line of the auditions: “These guys are just weird. They’re running for he-man women-haters club or something.”

Walz’s pithy sense of humor probably made the difference for Harris, said former 3rd District Rep. John Yarmuth, the Kentuckian who knows him and Beshear best.

Beshear did well in his auditions, though he used Trump’s mispronunciation of Harris’s first name in speaking with Georgia reporters. He leaves the process with his national stock boosted and his Kentucky stock probably undamaged. The auditions “put him in a totally different category of national politicians,” Yarmuth said.

If Harris wins and runs for reelection in 2028, Beshear will have a choice: try to maintain himself nationally without an office, or run for the U.S. Senate seat occupied by three-term Republican Rand Paul, who seems to have his own Trump-like following in Kentucky. But Paul hasn’t endorsed Trump and been making noises about running for president in 2028. When he did that in 2016, Republicans used a caucus system to let him run for the Senate at the same time, but they seem unlikely to do that again, because other Republicans would like to be senator.

In 2026 and 2027, respectively, Kentucky will elect a senator to succeed Republican Mitch McConnell, who seems certain to retire; and a governor to succeed Beshear, who is term-limited. Several Republican prospects for those jobs auditioned before and during the Fancy Farm Picnic.

At the Graves County Republican Party breakfast, 1st District U.S. Rep. James Comer, who narrowly lost the 2015 gubernatorial primary and still wants to be governor, took aim at a possible opponent,? Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman. He joked that he was shocked to hear that his opponent, Erin Marshall, had been endorsed by the lieutenant governor, whom Comer “misidentified” as Rocky Adkins, Beshear’s senior adviser. “If you didn’t learn anything today, know that we have a lieutenant governor, and it’s not Rocky Adkins.” He called Coleman “Jackie something-or-other.”

Adkins is in effect deputy governor, traveling more with Beshear, and a certain prospect for 2027, since he ran second in the 2019 primary. He got a boon when Beshear apparently didn’t allow Coleman to represent the administration at the picnic.

Former attorney General Daniel Cameron, whom Beshear defeated last year, was a late addition to the picnic lineup, speaking on behalf of Trump, who endorsed him in last year’s primary. He said, “For Kentucky and for our country and for our culture, let’s make America great again.”

“Culture” now seems to include the internal-combustion engine. Attorney General Russell Coleman blasted “absurd EV mandates.”

Secretary of State Michael Adams, the only other term-limited constitutional officer, thanked Comer “for holding the Bidens accountable” but made an implicit 2027 case for himself at the breakfast? by saying Republicans must appeal to independent voters. And he, Cameron and McConnell were the only Republican speakers who pronounced Harris’ first name correctly.

This column is republished from the Northern Kentucky Tribune, a nonprofit publication of the Kentucky Center for Public Service Journalism.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has condemned his Democratic opponent for her laugh, which he told a Fox News interviewer is "a laugh of a crazy person." (Getty Images)

In the hours after Vice President Kamala Harris became the de facto Democratic nominee for president and Gov. Andy Beshear was lauded as a potential pick for vice president, I received a text message about Beshear from a MAGA man in my family: Maybe he can control her.

Words I do not recall hearing, in my lifetime, about any male candidate for president.

When asked about a potential Harris-Beshear ticket, state Sen. Damon Thayer, the Kentucky Senate’s floor leader, told Isaiah Kim-Martinez of WHAS11, “I don’t know if Kamala Harris is dumb enough to pick Andy Beshear, but maybe she is.”

Harris graduated from college and law school; served as a prosecutor; was elected attorney general in one of the most populous states; was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2017; and was chosen as the vice presidential nominee in 2020, a role in which she has honorably served for three and a half years.

A hardworking, accomplished woman reduced, in the parlance of Thayer, to dumb.

In former President Donald Trump’s Republican Party (and it is his party now) childishness and cruelty and pettiness reign, the primary focus long ago shifted from policy to ad hominem name-calling, and women’s accomplishments are relegated to irrelevance.?

And then there is her laugh.

In a sit-down interview with Laura Ingraham on FOX News, the GOP presidential nominee said about Harris, “She’s crazy. That laugh, that’s a laugh of a crazy person.” Ingraham tried to help him out by cutting him off and saying, “I like laughter,” but Trump wasn’t budging. “Not her laughter,” he said.

This, on the tails of a laughable Republican Party convention lacking in gravitas and in which Hulk Hogan and Kid Rock were headliners and none of the conservative, standard bearers with names like Cheney, Bush or Romney played the smallest part while Mitch McConnell was booed.

As Heath Mayo, Christian conservative and founder of Principles First, wrote about today’s GOP, “The breathless outrage at the folks in drag from the same people who just last week eagerly cheered a porn star, a man who hit his wife in the face, and an adjudicated rapist who cheated on his wife with a stripper… is quite something. Selective morality is not morality.”

The Republican Party is no longer the party of family values or even a political party. That ship done sailed.

Today’s Republican Party is a steaming, smoldering cult of one personality, of a man found guilty of fraudulently paying a porn star to help his 2016 political campaign, who consistently calls women nasty and crazy or worse, was recently held liable in a court of law for sexual abuse, and laughs off his own old jokes about grabbing women by the p***y.

As my Grandma Ann would say with an eye roll, he’s a real knee-slapper, that one.

When Martha Raddatz at ABC’s This Week asked New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu about Trump’s rally comments indicating that Christians would no longer need to worry about voting four years from now, he chuckled — yes, chuckled — and said, “I think that’s a classic Trumpism.”

On CBS’s Face the Nation, Sen. Lindsay Graham was giggling — yes, giggling — before host Robert Costa could even ask about the voting remark. Graham’s giggling continued as Costa asked a serious question about the right to vote, so much so that Costa said, “You’re laughing, what do you believe he’s trying to say?”

And not to be outdone, Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., told Neil Cavuto on FOX News that Harris “needs to prove to the American people that she’s a serious person. Margaret Thatcher didn’t giggle. Golda Meir didn’t giggle. … Many Americans think that the vice president is a little bit of a ding dong.” Cavuto tried multiple times to direct Kennedy to talk about policy, saying, “Doesn’t it look petty to judge her on this level?” but Kennedy, like his cult leader, dug in, doubling down on “she’s a bit of a ding dong.”

Funny, I haven’t heard any GOP complaints about their powerful, supposedly serious, elected men laughing or making comments about ding dongs or calling the vice president dumb.

I wonder why.

I also haven’t heard anyone, including my Trump-voting family member, call for Trump’s VP choice to control him.

It’s a real mystery.

The U.S. Supreme Court pictured on September 28, 2020. (Al Drago/Getty Images)

The U.S. Supreme Court is deregulating corruption, with arguably grim consequences for American democracy.

The latest example of this troubling trend was the case known as Snyder v. United States. At first glance, this may have seemed like a narrow, wonky case about whether a part of the U.S. criminal code that outlaws bribery also covers “gratuities.”

Yet the court’s decision, issued on June 26, 2024, kneecaps federal prosecutors’ power to go after corrupt government officials.

Snyder follows a pattern of the current Supreme Court I’ve documented in three books. Since John Roberts became its chief justice in 2006, the court has made prosecuting corruption, especially at the state and local level, nearly impossible for federal prosecutors.

Gift, gratuity or bribe?

The Snyder case centered on a former mayor of Portage, Indiana, who was charged with violating federal anti-corruption law while he was mayor. He accepted US$13,000 from a truck company in 2014 after the city had signed a $1.1 million contract to buy trash trucks.

Mayor James Snyder showed up at the trucking business and said, “I need money.” He claimed the payment was a consulting fee, or gratuity.

In a 6-3 decision, along ideological lines, the court’s conservative majority overruled the lower court that convicted Snyder of bribery and the appeals court that had affirmed his conviction. The mayor should not have been prosecuted, the justices said, because federal anti-corruption statute Section 666 in question covers only bribes and not gratuities.

And bribes, it said, are paid before an official action, not after that official action is complete.

In his majority opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh explained why it’s not desirable for federal prosecutors to go after small-time local crooks. For one thing, he argued, many states and cities already have their own laws about politicians and gratuities; thus, the Department of Justice need not play Big Brother.

“Section 666 does not supplement those state and local rules by subjecting 19 million state and local officials to up to 10 years in federal prison for accepting even commonplace gratuities,” Kavanaugh wrote.

Deregulating campaign finance

The Supreme Court has also been narrowing what counts as corruption in campaign finance.

In a 2007 case called WRTL II, the court blew a huge hole in a federal campaign finance law called the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, also known as McCain-Feingold. Among other regulations, McCain-Feingold had barred “electioneering communication,” when corporations and unions buy campaign ads in the lead-up to voting.

In WRTL II, the court ruled that “corruption” in political campaigns must be “of the ‘quid pro quo’ variety, whereby an individual or entity makes a contribution or expenditure in exchange for some action by an official.”

This definition means that a briber must be cartoonishly bold in demanding a specific vote from a lawmaker in exchange for cash. Most bribery in the real world is more subtle, as the Supreme Court once recognized.

Under Roberts’ predecessor, Chief Justice William Rehnquist, the majority of justices – both left-leaning and right-leaning – saw efforts by political donors to set the agenda for political parties and elected officials as an improper corruption of the political process.

As the Rehnquist Court once concluded, corruption occurs “not only as quid pro quo agreements, but also as undue influence on an officeholder’s judgment, and the appearance of such influence.”

Money in politics

The Roberts Court’s most notorious acquiescence to money in politics was Citizens United. Issued in 2010, the Citizens United decision decided that corporations have a First Amendment right to spend as much money as they want on political ads in any American election.

Limiting corporate spending on political ads has “a chilling effect” on corporate free speech, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, and the government’s “anti-corruption interest” does not trump that concern.

The court reiterated this stance in 2014, when it threw out the federal limit of $123,000 in total donations per person to federal candidates over a two-year election cycle. In McCutcheon v. FEC, the court again insisted that campaign finance regulations must target only quid pro quo corruption – or “dollars for political favors.”

“Campaign finance restrictions that pursue other objectives impermissibly inject the Government” into deciding who wins an election, wrote Roberts in his majority opinion.

The chief justice was unswayed by arguments that strong campaign finance rules ensure rich and poor have an equal say in elections.

“No matter how desirable it may seem, it is not an acceptable governmental objective to ‘level the playing field,’” he wrote in McCutcheon.

Today, individual donors may sink unlimited funds into a federal election.

Redefining fraud

The Roberts Supreme Court has substantially narrowed the definition of corruption in white-collar crime cases, too.

In 2016’s McDonnell v. United States, the justices declared that Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell did nothing wrong when he touted a dubious health product on behalf of a man who had paid for McDonnell’s wife’s clothes and his daughter’s wedding.

Four years later, the Supreme Court decided that the federal government could not prosecute a woman named Bridget Anne Kelly involved in the 2013 Bridgegate Scandal, when aides to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, including Kelly, intentionally caused a stifling traffic jam on the George Washington Bridge to punish one of Christie’s political opponents.

“Not every corrupt act by state or local officials is a federal crime,” wrote Justice Elena Kagan, typically considered a liberal justice, in Kelly v. United States.

The Supreme Court continued this trend in a 2023 case called Percoco v. United States.

Joseph Percoco, an aide to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, had been convicted of fraud in 2018 for accepting $315,000 from two New York-based corporations to promote policies that favored their businesses. The Supreme Court threw out the conviction, in large part because the money exchanged hands while he was working on Cuomo’s 2014 election campaign – meaning he was not technically in government.

Yet, Percoco used a New York government phone approximately 837 times during that period, suggesting he wanted the outside world to perceive him as a government insider with access to political power.

Traditionally, private individuals found to have “dominated and controlled” government business, as Percoco was alleged to have done, could be guilty under federal law of what’s called “honest-services-fraud.” Since Percoco, that term now covers only bribery and kickbacks.

The Supreme Court’s lax stance on corruption endangers the integrity of American democracy, as I explain in my latest book, “Corporatocracy.” From McDonnell to Kelly to Percoco to Snyder, its rulings have eviscerated anti-corruption law. That sends a message to the corrupt: “You can be venal with few legal consequences.”

Corrupt people get a pass; good government takes another hit.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

From left, first lady Jill Biden, President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Douglas Emhoff take part in a ”Reproductive Freedom Campaign Rally” at George Mason University on Jan. 23, 2024 in Manassas, Virginia. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Vice presidential picks can’t help a presidential candidate, but they can hurt one, according to political scientists. Presidential campaigns still spend a fair amount of time thinking about running mates and the ways in which they might boost the ticket – or at least not hurt it.

Who will Vice President Kamala Harris pick as her running mate, now that she appears set to be the Democratic nominee?

During the 19th and through much of the 20th century, parties picked vice president candidates who would provide the ticket with some geographic or factional balance. In many cases, those amounted to the same thing.

That approach has shifted in more recent years to selections based on experience and ideology. Those shifts have mirrored changes in U.S. politics over the decades and centuries.

Here’s a run-through of vice presidential picks since 1960 and what considerations were prominent in the choice of these running mates. As a scholar who studies American politics as well as parties and elections, my aim is to shed light on how political considerations have changed over the years, which choices may have contributed to a winning campaign – and which didn’t.

Geographic and factional balancing rises – and falls

The classic example of a geographic and factional choice for vice president was Democrat John F. Kennedy’s selection of Lyndon Johnson as his running mate in 1960. Kennedy, a liberal from the Northeast, wanted to give the ticket more appeal among conservatives and Southerners. Johnson, a U.S. senator from Texas and a favorite of the party’s conservative Southern wing, fit that role perfectly.

In 1988, Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis hoped that this “Boston-Austin Axis” would work for Democrats again, leading him to pick U.S. Sen. Lloyd Bentsen of Texas as his running mate. It didn’t work, and the Dukakis-Bentsen ticket failed to catch on with voters that year.

In 1976, Democrats did the same sort of geographic and ideological balancing, but in the opposite direction. That year, Gov. Jimmy Carter, a moderate Southerner from Georgia, picked U.S. Sen. Walter Mondale, a liberal from Minnesota, as his running mate. Carter’s decision proved a wise one – he and Mondale managed to win narrowly that fall.

In recent years, as regional differences have diminished and the parties have become more ideologically unified, this type of balancing has diminished but not disappeared. For example, in 2016 Republican candidate Donald Trump, a thrice-married Manhattanite with an ambiguous ideological background, chose Mike Pence to be his running mate. Pence, then governor of Indiana, had strong appeal among conservative and evangelical Republicans in the Midwest and helped reassure those voters about Trump.

A variant of geographic balancing that still occurs is the swing state pick. By picking a running mate from a swing state, candidates hope to increase their chance of victory in a state crucial to assembling a majority in the Electoral College. Recent examples include Republican Mitt Romney’s pick of Wisconsinite Paul Ryan and Democrat Hillary Clinton’s selection of Virginian Tim Kaine.

Filling gaps

One type of balancing that is still common is using experience to balance the ticket.

When the nominee is relatively young or lacking in national political experience, they might look for a vice president with a long resume. For example, in 2000, Republicans nominated George W. Bush, then governor of Texas. Since Bush had no foreign policy experience and had never been in Congress, he chose Dick Cheney, a former member of the U.S. House and a former secretary of defense.

The same logic led Democrat Barack Obama to pick Joe Biden in 2008. By the time he got the nomination, Obama had been in the U.S. Senate for only four years and was just 47 years old. Biden, on the other hand, had been in the Senate for over 30 years, where he had served as chair of both the Judiciary and Foreign Affairs committees.

Conversely, candidates with years of experience often try to balance the ticket by picking a relatively young running mate to add a shot of youth and energy.

Examples of this include George H. W. Bush’s selection of Dan Quayle in 1988, John McCain picking Sarah Palin in 2008 and Romney selecting Ryan in 2012 on the Republican side, and Biden’s choice of Harris in 2020 for the Democratic ticket. This same generational balancing probably helped convince the 78-year-old Trump to pick 39-year-old U.S. Sen. JD Vance of Ohio as his Republican running mate this year.

Demographic differences

As American politics and society have become more diverse and inclusive, campaigns have looked for running mates that reflect those changes in the hopes of expanding the ticket’s demographic appeal.

Perhaps the first example of this was in 1984, when Democrat Walter Mondale selected U.S. Rep. Geraldine Ferraro, making her the first woman on a major party ticket. In 2008, Palin became the first woman on the GOP ticket. More recently, Harris became the first Black woman and the first person of South Asian descent to run for vice president.

The reverse of this is when a party nominates a presidential candidate from a previously unrepresented group. In those cases, putting a white man on the ticket was seen as helping to reassure more traditional voters. Thus, Obama chose Biden in 2008 and Hillary Clinton chose Kaine in 2016.

Doubling down

A final category of running mates rejects balancing and instead reflects a choice to stress the attributes of the presidential nominee.

The first example of this was in 1992. Conventional wisdom suggested that Bill Clinton, the young, moderate governor of Arkansas, should pick someone with Washington, D.C., and foreign policy experience who could appeal to the Democratic Party’s liberal wing.

Instead, Clinton chose to double down on his own characteristics in order to emphasize that he was a “different kind of Democrat” by picking Tennessee U.S. Sen. Al Gore, another young, moderate Southerner like him.

Trump’s choice of Vance is the most recent example of the “double down” strategy. Trump rejected more established conservative Republican figures such as Florida U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum. Instead, he went with Vance, who shared his more nationalist and populist vision for the GOP.

Harris: Safe or bold?

In which direction will Harris go?

As a woman of Black and South Asian descent, the safest route for Harris would be to balance things out with a more conventional running mate, much as Obama and Clinton did during their campaigns. The possibilities here include candidates such as Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear or North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper.

A bolder strategy would be for Harris to double down by picking someone other than a white male in the hopes of energizing the base of the Democratic Party as well as helping to mobilize groups such as young voters or communities of color. Candidates in this category might include Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, U.S. Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey or New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham.

Whether Harris decides to play it safe or go bold with her pick, the most important consideration is to do no harm.

While political scientists have found little evidence that vice presidential candidates help their tickets, a bad pick can hurt the ticket.

With a bad pick, the issue isn’t whether the ticket is sufficiently balanced or diverse, it’s whether the vice presidential candidate is adequately vetted. The worst picks – Tom Eagleton in 1972, Quayle in 1988 and Palin in 2008 – resulted from hasty and poorly thought out selection processes.

Given the rushed nature of her own candidacy, Harris’ most important task is to make sure her vice president pick receives adequate scrutiny.

This commentary is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Until the law can be amended, there is a temporary solution in the form of a carefully drafted memorandum of agreement for sharing the records with the auditor's ombudsman under terms of strict confidentiality and only for the legitimate governmental purpose stipulated. (Getty Images)

Gov. Andy Beshear and Auditor of Public Accounts Allison Ball squared off earlier this month in a legal dispute over the auditor’s access to iTWIST, a database maintained by the Cabinet for Health and Family Services that “track[s] the state’s efforts to assist its most vulnerable citizens” and that was available to the ombudsman attached to CHFS until July 1, 2024.?

Senate Bill 48, enacted in the 2023 regular session with a delayed effective date, “moved the ombudsman’s office from CHFS to the newly created Commonwealth Office of the Ombudsman in the auditor’s office. The auditor maintains she must have full access to iTWIST in order for the commonwealth ombudsman’s office to discharge its newly assigned duty.

The bill’s primary sponsor, Sen. Stephen Meredith, insists that the bill’s “clear intent was for the [auditor’s] office to have access to the iTWIST database. This common-sense reform ends the practice of the cabinet investigating itself. The language of this bill is clear and undeniable.”

The governor, however, is not convinced. He maintains that in reassigning the duties of ombudsman to the auditor in the 2023 regular session, the General Assembly neglected to revise current laws restricting disclosure of information stored in iTWIST.?

Welcome move to boost child protection in Kentucky trips over conflicting views of the law

He has not publicly described the compromise the administration proposed to the auditor until the CHFS confidentiality statutes can be revised. Instead, he asserted that he is statutorily foreclosed from giving the auditor full access to the database until next year’s session and a legislative fix.?

According to Kentucky Lantern contributor Deborah Yetter, Beshear has ignored a “demand letter” for access to iTWIST that Ball’s office delivered to his office in early July.?

Yetter knows a bit about the subject, having successfully litigated an open records case involving child fatality and near fatality records under KRS 620.050 — the same statute the governor belatedly invoked to deny the auditor access — as a reporter with the Courier Journal during the gubernatorial administration of Beshear’s father, Steve Beshear.?

With due respect to the warring constitutional officers, this dispute is a political tempest in a public records teapot.?

Yes, multiple CHFS-specific confidentiality statutes are embedded in Kentucky law. In fact, KRS 620.050 —- on which, as noted, Gov. Beshear relies — according to the Lantern — led to Yetter’s, and other newspapers’, open records appeals. The appeals culminated in two scathing Kentucky Court of Appeals 2016 opinions denouncing the “culture of secrecy” at CHFS — then operating under Gov. Steve Beshear — for its refusal to disclose child fatality and near fatality reports.?

Some of these CHFS-specific confidentiality statutes are broadly worded; some are narrowly worded; most establish statutory carve outs for classes of individuals or entities with a legislatively recognized need for access.?

One thing is certain, the existence of a statutory confidentiality provision has not — at least in the past — precluded the exchange of confidential records or the sharing of confidential information between public agencies “when the exchange is serving a legitimate governmental need or is necessary in the performance of a legitimate government function.”

This statutory language — which appears at KRS 61.878(5) — has long been construed to “promote agency sharing of otherwise exempt public records” for legitimate government purposes. Although “there is no unqualified right for one entity to examine” the confidential records of another “in their entirety and without restrictions,” past attorneys general have deemed responsible agency sharing of protected records between public agencies, under terms of strict confidentiality, a “laudable goal” that is to be “strongly encouraged.”?

This sharing “eliminates duplication of effort and conserves resources” when the recipient public agency verifies to the custodial public agency that the shared information “is necessary in the performance of a legitimate government function” and agrees to observe the records’ confidentiality.

For example, a 2011 open records decision turned on the existence of a memorandum of agreement between the Medicaid Fraud and Abuse Control Unit of the Kentucky Attorney General’s Office and? the Cabinet for Health and Family Services’ Department of Community Based Services under the terms of which the Medicaid Fraud Unit received statutorily protected records — on condition of strict confidentiality — compiled by CHFS in investigating criminal abuse or neglect cases to discharge the attorney general’s duty to prosecute Medicaid fraud.?

While it is true that “nothing contained [in KRS 61.878(5)] entitles one governmental agency to demand from another information which does not serve a governmental need,” where — as here — the government need is strongly substantiated by the auditor (not to mention the General Assembly), Beshear is on shaky legal ground.?

Ideally, our lawmakers would exercise far less haste and far greater care in languaging new laws. Here, their “intent” may have been “clear.” The bill’s language was not.?

But abused and neglected children should not be further victimized because of legislative ineptitude or gubernatorial stubbornness.

We’ve witnessed the former in multiple instances and the latter in former Gov. Steve Beshear’s past endorsement of CHFS secrecy at the expense of vulnerable Kentuckians. We are witnessing it again.?

Until the law can be amended to everyone’s satisfaction, there is a temporary solution in the form of a carefully drafted memorandum of agreement for CHFS sharing of iTWIST with the Auditor’s ombudsman under terms of strict confidentiality and only for the legitimate governmental purpose stipulated.?

Can these warring constitutional officers set aside their political wrangling for the public good?

Gov. Andy Beshear has been on the attack against Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance, including this appearance on CNN.

Gov. Andy Beshear obviously wants to be in the White House – first as vice president.

He went from coy to clear as soon as President Biden deferred to Vice President Kamala Harris and she started looking for a running mate. Until he endorsed Harris, Beshear said he would consider being on the ticket if he could help Kentucky. Monday, he said he would if he could “further help my people and help this country.”

In that interview and one that aired Monday night, Beshear aggressively auditioned for the job by tearing into his would-be opposite number: Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio.

Vance gained fame and wealth by writing “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis,” a 2016 best-seller that became a neatly timed reference for people trying to understand Donald Trump’s appeal to white, blue-collar workers who haven’t been to college – often called the white working class.

Vance is from Middletown, Ohio, but says he considers his grandparents’ native Breathitt County “home” because of the love he felt in visits there. The book is mainly about his rise to Yale Law School, but he used a broad, sloppy brush when he described Appalachian culture: “Many folks talk about working more than they actually work.”

In the anthology “Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy,” Appalachian scholar Dwight Billings of the University of Kentucky wrote, “It is one thing to write a personal memoir extolling the wisdom of one’s personal choices, but quite something else — something extraordinarily audacious — to presume to write the ‘memoir’ of a culture.”

So, to use an Appalachian metaphor, Beshear was loaded for bear Monday. Asked on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” if he was interested in being vice president, he went quicky to his target:

“If somebody calls you on that, what you do is at least listen. And I want America to know what a Kentuckian is, and what they look like, because let me just tell you that J.D. Vance ain’t from here. And the nerve that he has, to call the people of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky, lazy. Listen, these are the hard-working coal miners that powered the industrial revolution, that created the strongest middle class the world has ever seen, powered us through two world wars. We should be thanking them, not calling them lazy. So today was both an opportunity to support the vice president but also to stand up for my people. Nobody calls us names, especially those who have worked hard for the betterment of this country.”

In other words, “Lemme at him.”

Presidential elections are rarely about the No. 2 candidates, but Beshear’s unspoken argument may be: “If we can expose Vance as a fraud, it buttresses Harris’s attack on Trump as a fraud, and it just might help us get back some of those rural folks who voted for Obama and then for Trump in Wisconsin and Michigan.” Meanwhile, Beshear was showing he could attack on the national stage.

But as Monday went on, it became known that Harris had asked three people for background material to vet them for vice president: Govs. Roy Cooper of North Carolina and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona – three states that, unlike Kentucky, are up for grabs in the election and could decide it.

Then three governors were added to the list: J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, already a lock for Democrats; Tim Walz of Minnesota, a likely Democratic state; and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, a key swing state – but her selection would make an all-woman ticket. This was the second tier of candidates, and Beshear still wasn’t in it. ABC, citing an unnamed source, reported Tuesday that Beshear, Cooper, Kelly and Shapiro had been asked for vetting materials.

Meanwhile, Vance, 39, had replied to Beshear, 46, saying “It’s very weird to have a guy whose first job was at his father’s law firm and inherited the governorship from his father to criticize my origin story.”

Asked about that in a CNN interview, Beshear ignored the question and said Vance “would come in the summers maybe for some period of time, or to weddings or to funerals, and then he claims to be from Eastern Kentucky; tries to write a book about it to profit off our people, and then he calls us lazy. This makes me angry, but it especially makes me angry about our people in Eastern Kentucky.”

Earlier, asked to comment on Vance’s charge that Harris and others covered up Biden’s infirmities, Beshear said, “They’re graspin’ for straws. Listen, J.D. Vance is a phony. He’s fake. I mean, he first says that Donald Trump is like Hitler, and now he’s actin’ like he’s Lincoln. I mean, the problem with J.D. Vance is that he has no conviction. But I guess his running mate has 34.

He had that line ready – maybe too ready. Attack Andy (or “ain’t Andy”) seems over-eager.

This column is republished from the Northern Kentucky Tribune, a nonprofit publication of the Kentucky Center for Public Service Journalism.

Voting is one of the duties and privileges of living in a democracy. You'll also get one of these stickers. The deadline to register to vote in Kentucky is Oct. 7. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Austin Anthony)

Kentuckians should be proud that Secretary of State Michael Adam received a Profile in Courage Award from the John F. Kennedy Foundation for “protecting access to the ballot and ensuring that our nation remains a beacon of democracy.”?

In a time of rampant election denialism and threats against election workers, this state in 2021 expanded voting access while many Republican-controlled states pushed ways to restrict it. House Bill 574 allowed ballot drop-boxes, countywide voting centers, and in-person voting for three days, including a Saturday, before Election Day.?

Adams, who faced down opposition from within his party, accepted the honor last month “on behalf of the election officials and poll workers across America who sacrifice to keep the American experiment in self-government alive.”?

?Yet our democracy also includes the right, even the responsibility, to challenge government policies. That’s what Kentuckians for the Commonwealth (KFTC) is doing with its June 28 federal lawsuit against the state’s process of removing voters from the rolls.?

So far, Adams and other election officials have overreacted to the group’s reasonable concern — one that legislators could easily address.

The problem: Kentucky does not notify people when they are dropped from voter rolls or allow them time to respond, as required by the 1993 federal National Voter Registration Act. While the federal law allows some flexibility in how states purge voter rolls, it outlines a process of providing written notice and even time to determine if a person votes in the next federal election.

Kentucky law “allows administrators to remove voters without any notice, opportunity to respond or waiting period, which could lead to eligible voters being wrongly and unlawfully removed,” the grassroots advocacy group said in a news release. A 2023 amendment to the election law requires purging within five days of receiving notice that a voter has registered in another state, The lawsuit asks for an injunction prohibiting the state from canceling voter egistrations until lawmakers can modify the law.?

“The notion that we’re disenfranchising people is absolutely ridiculous,” Adams told Spectrum News. “What we’re doing is preventing fraud, and we have an effort by this shady group that is trying to make it able for people to vote in multiple states at the same time.”

Kentucky’s process for purging voter rolls challenged in federal court

Looking forward to challenging the lawsuit in court, Adams said: “We’ve taken 400,000 voters off the rolls in four years, and we haven’t gotten a single complaint, not once.”

No complaints, however, does not necessarily mean no mistakes. What would it hurt to send notice of expungement, just in case another state’s records are wrong??

Also, there is nothing “shady” about KFTC’s four decades of advocacy, community organizing and voter registration. In other comments, Adams described the nonpartisan group, with more than 14,000 members statewide, as “fringe left-wing activists” aiming to “sow chaos and doubt in our elections.”?

As the recent attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump illustrates, our country has entered a fraught election season. Partisan groups are gearing up to aggressively monitor the polls, challenge individual votes, and block certification of elections. Trump supporters who launched an insurrection after embracing the conspiracy of a stolen 2020 election, now threaten civil war after another possible loss.

In response, 12 states and Washington, D.C., have banned firearms near polling sites. Since 2022, 20 states have passed laws to protect public officials and election workers from doxing, threats of violence and interference with their duties. Kentucky is not one of those states. Republican political dominance reduces the likelihood of being a battleground state during federal elections.?

With little conflict over state election processes, the KTFC lawsuit is seen by Adams as an attack on “a national success story.” However, it simply points out one aspect of state law that needs changing to ensure no citizen is unfairly denied the constitutional right to vote.?

Taking the extra step of notification doesn’t require much courage — just common sense.

Ohio U.S. Sen. JD Vance. (Photo by Graham Stokes for Ohio Capital Journal. Republish photo only with original article.)

Donald Trump announced Monday Ohio junior U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance as his running mate in the 2024 Election, and I have some concerns.

Like J.D. Vance, I am also 39 years old; I also grew up in a struggling old industrial city in Ohio; I have also lost countless people close to me to the scourge of drug addiction; and I have also spent a lot of time in Appalachia — although my time was spent as a reporter in the Ohio foothills of Appalachia covering poverty, education, crime, courts, transportation, health care, business, and labor for nearly a decade.

Where does one begin? Perhaps 2016 when Vance first launched into the national spotlight with his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.” The memoir part of the book I found interesting and sad and heartbreaking on the level of all the other stories I have witnessed, heard, and reported on about childhood traumas passed down in families struggling with poverty.

Then there was the other part of his book, the diagnosis and prescription part, that I couldn’t understand or relate to: A certain seething contempt and scorn for the people of Appalachia and the Ohio “rust belt,” as though their struggles were the result of deep personal character flaws and a lack of bootstrapping, and not predictable consequences wrought by growing up poor in a region wracked by exploitation, stuck in cycles of generational poverty, and mired in the kind of desperation that accompanies these things.

Most reporters drift toward certain topics of personal interest, and mine has always been the hardships of those in poverty and all its attendant ills. You see, “poverty” is not its own specific beat; it’s a topic wrapped up in the largest resource, funding and hence achievement gaps in education; it’s tied to the lack of reliable transportation to get to work, or job interviews; it’s weighted down by a lack of access to primary and preventative health care, and even internet access; it’s connected to childhood trauma, and hunger, and the long-term denial of regular meals and nutritious food; it’s burdened by increasing costs and regressive taxes: A greater and greater percentage of income goes toward rent, utilities, groceries, toiletries.

I’ve met grandmothers providing kinship care to their grandchildren who’ve had to look at a couple boxes of mac and cheese and hot dogs, a loaf of bread and PB&J, as food for the week. I’ve met mothers working two jobs having to face a high electric bill but not having enough leftover for shampoo and deodorant. Imagine the bullying at school that leads to, and then think about how that bullying is just one more additional hardship — like not ever having your parent or parents around because they’re working two jobs, and you have to take care of younger siblings from the time you turn nine because child care is unaffordable.

The generally crushing existence of all of it year after year, decade after decade, a lifetime of one blow after another; one trauma after another; one setback after another; one car breakdown, one broken bone or disease racking up medical debt, one layoff sending the family hurtling toward crisis and bankruptcy, just imagine it, and you begin to see how poverty perpetuates itself by breaking everyone in it down, and leaving the vast majority without a shot to break the cycle. And of course the susceptibility to addiction is high. Anything to fade away from the nightmare for a few hours. So that begets all its own problems and cycles and traumas from there. I learned all about it in the courtrooms and at the addiction treatment centers.

So here is where I take issue. While I covered poverty in Appalachia, these are the cycles and problems of poverty at-large, wherever you find it, in the cities or in the country hills, regardless of race, creed, or religion, throughout the country. This is not some cultural problem with Appalachia or the so-called “rust belt” — which is an insulting term, by the way, as is “Hillbilly.” This is what poverty is like anywhere in America. All that and much more.

Appalachia itself is charming and noble. The “Hey Buddy” drawl and geniality of so many people is downright charismatic. A lot of folks are a helluva lot of fun to go four-wheeling with or to visit with over a draft at the local hole-in-the-wall. There’s genuine warmth and a good-times attitude. There’s an authentic kindness and lack of pretension. Then you learn the history of the coal mines and the breaker boys and the company towns and the union-busting and the Battle of Blair Mountain, and the Matewon Massacre, and you begin to understand what the region has been through and where it is now.

The rural Ohio I know is full of strong, caring, resilient, community-minded people. I can say the same for the cities. Sometimes I get asked where I look for hope, and I always say that it’s not the politicians; it’s the thousands of good-hearted people working so hard every day to help their communities, in cities, towns and villages across Ohio. In my work as a reporter, I’ve been lucky enough to meet a whole heckuva lot of them.

So after all my years of reporting their stories, some things seem pretty obvious to me as far as what can be done to help these communities, and giving tax cuts to billionaires just isn’t one of them. But that’s what Donald Trump is promising.

Neither is saddling them with the regressive financial burden of 10% tariffs, which amounts to a $1,700 tax on Americans and will increase inflation that falls heaviest on those in poverty. That?is another Trump promise. Replacing income taxes with tariffs, as Trump has also suggested, would send millions of families in poverty hurtling toward ruin, not only paying much higher sales taxes and other fees to try to still fund the government, but seeing vast swaths of support systems removed from under their feet. Costs going up would also forestall interest rates coming down. Devaluation of the dollar, as they propose, would also jack up inflation rates. Trump has also proposed cutting corporate tax rates from 21% to 15%, after already cutting them from 35% to 21% in 2017.

Defunding the U.S. Department of Education as Trump has proposed would cut $18 billion a year for Title I high-poverty schools, cut $15 billion a year for special education, and cut $28 billion a year for Pell Grants. That would have a devastating impact on these communities.

What these communities need is lots of funding and support to overcome the poverty achievement gap in education with best practices: early childhood education, before school programming with a full breakfast for those who need it; full universal lunch during school hours; and after school programs with dinner availability and options ranging from athletics to music and the arts to media production to outdoor activities. We need full, well-rounded education; and trauma-informed training for all public-facing teachers and workers; and connected, wraparound support systems for families.

We shouldn’t be cutting our education budgets, commoditizing and privatizing education as billionaires are planning to do under Trump, and leaving whole communities out in the rain to perpetuate the cycles. We should realize, to paraphrase Frederick Douglass, that it’s easier to give a child education, hope, and opportunity than it is to fix a broken man.

We should be making our public schools palaces of such learning, hope and opportunity, that keep children away from potentially toxic or negligent home environments for as long as possible; that give them three square, nutritious meals a day if that’s what some need; that provide them with good adult role models and mentorship, and allow them the opportunity to explore a variety of interests to find their individual passions to pursue, and a pathway toward a fulfilling, stable career and adulthood.

On Wednesday night, J.D. Vance made his pitch to the “working man” in his vice presidential acceptance speech. Stood up next to the actual Trump agenda, I just don’t know what he’s talking about. That’s my concern. Nothing in the Trump agenda tangibly promises to help the families J.D. and I know so well. Quite the opposite. Meanwhile, as far as the heart-wrenching menace of drug addition, J.D. has already prioritized defunding Ukraine over fighting fentanyl.

I have many other concerns, such as his extreme moral and intellectual flexibility that raises serious questions about his ethics and candor; and his advocacy for abandoning Ukraine to the ravages of Putin; and his playing footsie with a neo-monarchist named Curtis Yarvin; and his comments that the radical right should seize institutions and ignore the courts; and his joining the ticket of a convicted felon — also adjudicated guilty of sexual assault and business fraud — who conspired to overturn the results of a free and fair election and rob millions of Americans of their votes, and instigated a violent mob attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 to disrupt constitutional business and the peaceful transfer of power.

I am concerned that J.D. has said he would’ve went along with the plot to create a constitutional crisis by overstepping his authority as vice president and overthrowing the election results.

In short, I have grave questions about J.D. Vance’s judgment and trustworthiness, and I do not understand his apparent desire to overthrow the post-WWII Pax Americana in favor of some sort of nationalistic isolationism where autocrats rum amok, with a reactionary domestic agenda that dismantles programs for people in poverty and will only exacerbate and perpetuate their plight and exploitation, while Trump and the five dozen billionaires supporting him get even more filthy, stinking rich.

This commentary is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal?which, like the Kentucky Lantern, is part of the nonprofit States Newsroom network.

Dental students, working as volunteers, attend to patients at a Remote Area Medical mobile dental and medical clinic on Oct. 7, 2023 in Grundy, Virginia. More than 1,000 people were expected to seek free dental, medical and vision care at the two-day event. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

As health care costs continue to rise, so does anxiety about being able to afford medical treatment. Even those with good insurance can find themselves stuck with a surprise medical bill or mounting out-of-pocket expenses.?

The reality is that many Kentucky families are just one medical emergency away from a financial crisis. The specter of medical debt adds massive uncertainty and stress to what are already some of the most uncertain and stressful moments in our lives. No one chooses to get sick or hurt, and no one chooses to rack up the significant expenses it can take to get well.?

Even with the right coverage, prices are rarely predictable, leaving people already in pain and distress to figure out what they owe (and how to pay for it) after the fact.?

Kentucky ranks 10th in the nation for residents with medical debt. It’s the single most common cause of personal bankruptcy, even as it differs greatly from other forms of debt.?

These aren’t costs we choose to incur. We’re often opted in against our will, by an illness or accident.

?The financial consequences of a health issue can be just as devastating, forcing working families to delay or avoid medical care, cut back on basic necessities or become trapped in a vicious cycle of loans and credit cards.?

The data shows that medical debt disproportionately affects people of color, those with serious health conditions like cancer, and people with disabilities. But make no mistake, this is a crisis that can affect anyone, at any time.?

Medical debt should be treated as a symptom of our complicated, often confusing health care system rather than an indicator of a person’s creditworthiness. That’s why we applaud the new rule announced by the Biden administration that will remove all medical debt from consumer credit scores.?

But while we support these advances at the federal level, we must continue to advocate for policy change on the state level.?

While some states have their own community benefit standards in place, with the expectation that hospitals will provide a certain amount of charity care and financial assistance, the strength of these standards varies widely due to a lack of statutory clarity and intent, accountability in implementation or both.?

Kentucky-tailored patient protections would improve access to nondiscriminatory financial assistance, ensure nonprofit hospitals actually utilize their community benefit payment assistance programs, and limit aggressive billing and collections practices that place liens on homes and garnish wages of people who are already living paycheck to paycheck.

Kentuckians deserve stronger cost transparency rules and patient protections that address the root causes of medical debt and prevent it from happening in the first place.

?But we also recognize that many Kentucky families can’t afford to wait. That’s why we launched a medical debt forgiveness campaign during Kentucky Voices for Health’s annual giving drive. We were overwhelmed by the response from our coalition and other community members who chipped in to help alleviate the burden of medical debt and bring a bit of financial stability to Kentuckians in need.?

Together, we have purchased and erased over $1.2 million of medical debt in Kentucky. This relief has gone out to 1,257 Kentuckians across 113 counties.?

Thanks to our campaign partner Undue Medical Debt, we were able to purchase delinquent debt for pennies on the dollar. But unlike collection agencies, once we purchased the debt, it was immediately forgiven. Notices have already been mailed out to Kentuckians who had their debt abolished as part of the campaign — no tax burden, no strings attached.

We believe no Kentucky family should have to choose between seeking health care and making ends meet. That’s why our forgiveness campaign must be met with real change to reform the broken system of medical debt.?

We urge Kentucky’s state and federal lawmakers to find legislative solutions that reduce health care costs for working families and provide financial protections for consumers that prevent medical debt in the first place.?

We all have reason to support moves that lessen the impact of medical debt, protect the financial health of Kentucky’s families and its workforce, and increase health care access for everyone.?

A candle is held up during the July 9 vigil for the Florence mass shooting victims. (Photo by Hailey Roden | LINK nky)

Over Fourth of July weekend, there was a mass shooting at a 21st birthday party in Florence (northern Kentucky, Boone County); four people were shot to death; three are recovering, including a 19-year-old girl.?

According to news reports, the 21-year-old shooter was on probation with a criminal history that included sexual assault of a 13-year-old.

Community unites in mourning for victims of Florence mass shooting

The 19-year-old girl’s father, while thankful for community support, said, “I mean, I’m not very hopeful for the future. I really am not after this has happened. I love the support, but it’s just so devastating. Now I’m worried about things like this happening again. If it happened to me, it could happen to anybody. And I hate to see that other families are going to have to go through situations like this.” He says guns are too easily accessible to people who shouldn’t have them.

According to Everytown for Gun Safety, Kentucky has the 15th highest rate of gun violence in the United States, and we continue to do not one damn thing about it.?

While we await more information on how a man with this criminal history had seemingly easy access to firearms and ammunition, here is your reminder that our Republican supermajority in Frankfort continues, year after year, to kick this deadly can down the road.

We have some of the most free-for-all gun laws in the country: open carry, concealed carry, gun sanctuary, etc… During the 2024 General Assembly, the GOP rammed through House Bill 5, a multifaceted, complex, omnibus addressing punishment of crimes after the fact while staggeringly leaving out gun crime prevention altogether.?

The American Civil Liberties Union called HB 5 “an extremely bloated collection of regressive policies and regurgitated ideas,” and if you spent any time following this year’s session, you could not miss the absolute, stubborn refusal of leadership to allow hearings, much less public votes, on simple, straightforward solutions like Senate Bill 13 — crisis aversion, allowing firearm removal from people experiencing a mental health crisis — or Senate Bill 56 to require safe storage of guns.

During session, sponsors of HB 5 were repeatedly asked how HB 5 prevents gun violence **before** it happens.?

Primary sponsors like Reps. Jason Nemes and Jared Bauman never gave a clear answer.?

House and Senate leadership did not seem to care.

Following the Old National Bank mass shooting in Louisville last year, the Kentucky Medical Association designated gun violence a public health crisis. “Two of the KMA’s proposals related to gun safety include barbed criticisms of Kentucky’s GOP supermajority, which, as one resolution notes, “has denied protection of our school children, citizens and police officers by ignoring control measures for assault rifles and killing enhancements by avoiding enactment of effective background checks and ‘red flag’ laws.”

But as Senate Floor Leader Damon Thayer posted during KYGA 2024 on Mar. 4 on Twitter/X, “Just because it is sent to committee doesn’t mean it is on the move. On the contrary, it lacks the votes in committee & on the Senate floor. As the only legislator to win @NRA “Defender of Freedom Award,” I am opposed to SB 13 & all red flag laws. #kyga24”

Of course, the very reason these bills lack votes in committee and on the Senate floor is because, as leader, Sen. Thayer ensures they are never heard in committee and do not make it to the floor.?

What a clever trick this is.?

Maybe if the KMA handed out look-at-me awards he could brag about on social media, Sen. Thayer and his caucus might be more amenable to listening to medical experts, the people on the front lines of gun violence, instead of the NRA.?

After the Florence mass shooting last week, Sen. John Schickel posted his condolences on Twitter/X, stating that everyone is in his thoughts and prayers.?

Two questions for Sen. Schickel:? How would HB 5 — which he vociferously championed just a few months ago— or any of his own proposed bills while in office, have thwarted this kind of tragedy? What has he done during his lengthy time in the legislature to address gun violence?

Like Sen. Thayer, Sen. Schickel is leaving office at the end of this year, but he made sure to boost Twitter/X condolences from state Rep.-elect TJ Roberts of Boone County, who posted a Bible verse and referred to the Florence mass shooting as “unfathomable evil.”

But don’t expect much from Rep.-elect Roberts in addressing gun violence. You need only have followed his Twitter/X account the last few years to note his seeming obsession with guns.?

I have never met Roberts, but this time last year, after I’d begun writing regularly about the Old National Bank mass shooting, it was no surprise to see him post, “Kentucky ‘journalist’ Teri Carter has to be the biggest Karen in Kentucky. Show off your guns and make her mad” with photos of what appeared to be his guns.

I tell you this not because men like Roberts sometimes behave childishly and irresponsibly on social media — as law enforcement will tell you, responsible gun owners do not flash photos of their guns at strangers — but because this kind of behavior, along with that of leaders like Sen. Thayer blocking discussion of potential gun laws, represents the mindset in our GOP supermajority, the people we count on to make laws, to behave responsibly, to keep Kentuckians safe.

Gun violence is not “unfathomable evil” and will not be stopped with thoughts or prayers or burying good gun legislation in the basement of the Capitol.?

Gun violence is fathomable and preventable, and it continues to go unchecked here in Kentucky because our GOP supermajority, in their unfathomable cowardice, refuses to grow up and address it.

As the father of Florence’s 19-year-old shooting victim said, guns are too easily accessible by people who shouldn’t have them.?

What are we — what are our GOP supermajority lawmakers — going to do about that?

Guests at the Old Town Pour House watch a debate between President Joe Biden and presumptive Republican nominee former President Donald Trump on June 27, 2024 in Chicago. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

As everyone opined in the aftermath of the Biden-Trump debate, our grandchildren (ages 4 and 5) were arriving to spend the Fourth of July holiday week with us, so we were careful in how we discussed the debate within their earshot. And we were certainly not tuning into TV pundits who, I later learned, spent most of the last week poking fun at old age and excusing rampant lying.

Are these the American values we’re teaching our kids these days??

Joe Biden is 81. Donald Trump is 78. This is not new information. Had we not all, prior to the debate, posited that younger candidates should have been considered? Making this point moot??

According to fact-checker Daniel Dale at CNN, Trump told at least 30 falsehoods during the debate, which, in a 90 minute program, constitutes a lie every three minutes. A blip, compared to Biden’s advanced age, in the news cycle.

In his July 4 speech, Trump said, in part, “Those who seek to erase our heritage want Americans to forget our pride and our great dignity, so that we can no longer understand ourselves or America’s destiny,” and “My fellow Americans, it is time to speak up loudly and strongly and powerfully and defend the integrity of our country.”

Would you teach your kids and grandkids that telling a lie every three minutes is integrity? And what should we make of his line about “our heritage”??

Weeks after Trump’s “very fine people on both sides” dismissal of white men marching through Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 carrying tiki torches and chanting “Jews will not replace us!,” historian and MacArthur Fellowship recipient Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote in The Atlantic to remember that Trump is “the first president to have served in no public capacity before ascending to his perch.”

Coates wrote, “The mind seizes trying to imagine a black man extolling the virtues of sexual assault on tape (“When you’re a star, they let you do it”), fending off multiple accusations of such assaults, immersed in multiple lawsuits for allegedly fraudulent business dealings, exhorting his followers to violence, and then strolling into the White House. But that is the point of white supremacy — to ensure that that which all others achieve with maximal effort, white people (particularly white men) achieve with minimal qualification.”

Much has happened since, including Trump’s conviction on dozens of criminal counts, liability for sexual assault, and then some. To say the bar has been lowered (and lowered and lowered and lowered again) since Trump first came down that escalator in 2015 and declared his candidacy is an understatement of mass proportions.?

He has still not conceded he lost the 2020 election, something we say so often the meaning disappears into the ether, even as he continues to insist the last presidential election was stolen (it wasn’t), that our elections are rigged (they’re not), and that there was massive voter fraud in 2020 (there wasn’t).?

Lies, lies and more lies.

In his July 4 speech, Trump also stated what seems, like so much of his bluster, a throwaway lie. “I am here as your president,” he said.?

I am trying, as I write this, to imagine President Barack Obama claiming, years later, in a public speech, that he was still president. We would wonder if he’d fallen and hit his head.

So many of our historical norms have been shattered by one old white man, and his name is not Biden.

Recall that the Trumps did not invite the Bidens, as is customary, to the White House during the transition period.?

Recall that Trump did not attend the 2021 inauguration. The NPR headline that day: “For 1st Time In 150 Years, Outgoing President Doesn’t Attend Inauguration.”

Recall that, due to substantiated threats, Washington D.C. had to be fenced off and locked down in 2021 in order to hold a public inauguration at all.

Recall how, on Jan. 6, Trump sat in the White House for hours, watching his supporters on TV as they ransacked the Capitol and fought police officers, pouting and angry because Vice President Mike Pence had refused to help him illegally overthrow a federal election.

What have we taught our kids in these Trump years?

Biden is old. He is a lifelong public servant who often mumbles or misspeaks. Should we ask questions about his competency? Absolutely.

But Trump is also old, and he has spoken in rambling gibberish for years. He posts his rage and pettiness almost daily on social media. His singular entree into politics was birtherism, the years he gleefully sowed racist lies about our first Black president.?

It is beyond irony that Trump’s Republicans — as they resoundingly demand the old white Democrat disappear — has firmly defended their old white man even as he repeatedly insisted our first Black president was illegitimate (while that president was in office) while having the temerity to falsely declare on July 4, 2024,”I am here as your president.”

Do you have to be a racist to support Trump? No. But you have to be comfortable with his felonies, his lies, his hatefulness, his racist dog whistles; you have to be comfortable with Charlottesville and Jan. 6 and the trashing of norms; you have to be comfortable with a leader whose political power began in, and survives today in, the roots of racism.?

Where is the competency test for that?

If the Republican Party had an ounce of the pride, integrity and dignity that Trump spoke of on July 4, they would have demanded his removal as their leader long ago. So why haven’t they? Because that, my friends, would be something worth teaching to our kids.

By ending a standard that has stood for 40 years, the U.S. Supreme Court has raised questions about how regulations will be written to protect the public and who will write them. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

??The U.S. Supreme Court just ended something called Chevron deference, in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, Case No. 22-451. Should you worry? Alas, yes, the Supreme Court just threw our protections under the bus. Here’s how.?

In 1984 in a case involving Chevron, the Supreme Court decided that when an agency’s implementation of a federal statute is reasonable, the agency is entitled to deference. This is true even if other interpretations could be made.?

This happens a lot — in environmental protection, food and drug safety, occupational safety and health, consumer product safety, you name it. A statute will direct an agency to “protect human health, safety and the environment,” or something similar. The agency has to implement that standard. It does this by issuing a regulation.

This means jumping through hoops. The regulation must be published as a draft. The agency must explain the science, the technology and the costs it considered, and ask for public comments, then respond to those comments, all before it issues a final regulation. If the regulation is challenged, a court will review it to see if it meets the federal standard. Under Chevron, even if the court would have written a different regulation, the agency decision will be given deference. In case of doubt, the agency wins.

You may find this unfair, but consider: Career civil servants are assigned to review the science, the technology and the costs of a proposed regulation, using their academic credentials and professional experience. They spend months, sometimes years, reaching their recommendations. If Chevron deference is gone, what happens next? What happens if a reviewing court may simply replace the agency’s discretion with its own??

A reviewing court may punt: Sorry, Congress, back to you to spell out the standards. All of them. For everything. Good luck to us while Congress figures it out. Protection delayed is protection denied.

Or, a reviewing court may appoint a special master to advise the court on the science, the technology and the costs. The special master likely will come from the industries governed by the regulation, where the day job is to lobby for those industries — including fighting any new regulations. Will such a special master support the agency or the regulated industries? If you didn’t trust civil servants to protect you, try trusting lobbyists.

Yikes, you say, but our Kentucky agencies will pick up the slack. Nope. Kentucky statutes often have a “no more stringent than” requirement. If the federal regulation is in limbo in Congress, it’s in limbo here. And if lobbyists wrote the federal regulation, guess what the state regulation says. Even if there is no federal regulation, the General Assembly routinely vetoes agency regulations without writing any legislative standards to replace them.?

The Supreme Court tries to justify its decision as a simple distinction — courts interpret the law and agencies apply the facts. Would that it were that easy.?

Children eat lunch together on Nov. 28, 2023, at the iKids Childhood Enrichment Center in Benton. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Abbey Cutrer)

The annual national KIDS COUNT Data Book includes more data into which to dive than column inches allow.? But an overview of the report reminds us that Kentucky is not the best place in America to be young.? Or the second-best place. Or the tenth or the 20th or even 30th.? Instead, the 2024 report card on the well-being of our nation’s kids plops Kentucky in the bottom rung of states at 38th.

More than 200,000 Kentucky kids woke up this morning in poverty. This report saw a stark rise in child and teen deaths — much of which is linked to guns. And almost 300,000 children live in households in which parents lack secure employment. Those troubling findings should, in fact, be bipartisan catalysts around which the governor and the General Assembly grab onto as foci for systemic policy change during the 2025 legislative session.

While the report offers food for thought in areas ranging from economic security to health, for the first time in its over 30-year history, the KIDS COUNT report focused on the policy domain of education. A timely and important focus as the commonwealth’s students face long-standing and new challenges post-pandemic.

And speaking of that first KIDS COUNT year in 1990, do you remember?? 1990 — when media critics predicted “Seinfeld” would be canceled during its initial season.? 1990 — when the largest McDonalds in the world opened in Moscow and gas had soared to $1.15 per gallon? And even more difficult to comprehend — in 1990, THE preeminent national exemplar when it came to K-12 education reform was Kentucky.??

On the heels of the Kentucky Supreme Court decision about funding equity, Democrats and Republicans from rural and urban Kentucky in the General Assembly along with the governor came together and passed the (inter)nationally acclaimed Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA).??

Even a cursory look at the Data Book’s Education section 34 years later is a cause for alarm. On EVERY metric — from fourth grade reading scores to eighth grade math proficiency, from young children in early education settings to high school graduation rates — the results show decline. And that doesn’t even include supplemental measures which reveal that 1 in 4 Kentucky students are chronically absent and the much-discussed, seldom addressed racial achievement gap is exploding rather than being mitigated.

Again, the regrettable reality of word counts precludes a thorough discussion of policy solutions — and there are common ground and achievable ideas to be tackled!? But more than any data point or policy issue, the 2024 KIDS COUNT Data Book reminds us that folks on the local level — county judges and faith communities and nonprofits and parents and, of course, educators — have to coalesce around what is good for those young people in our schools to turn this tide of decline.??

That means regardless of the outcome of the school choice ballot initiative, we must talk about reading and math proficiency rather than hot button social agendas in Frankfort’s education conversations. It means we apply research to the burgeoning issue of chronic absenteeism and what leads to it rather than yielding to the politically motivated nonsense that dominated talk about truancy this past session. It means that we have to deepen the important wrap-around services our kids so desperately need, such as tutoring programs, after-school care and mental health supports. And it means we must directly address the K-12 workforce crisis in imaginative ways.?

The import of this report’s focus on education is a clarion call for our elected leaders in Frankfort to get down to the business of kids — and ask themselves not what national partisan voices demand but what our children should expect from them. There was a time when kids’ interests were paramount in Frankfort; that is simply not the case in 2024. We need to get that commitment back if Kentucky’s place in the national ranking is going to cease to be a collective embarrassment when it comes to our kids.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and his vice presidential prospects had been the center of speculation in his home state for weeks. (Kentucky Lantern photo by McKenna Horsley)

When Gov. Andy Beshear formed a political committee in January and started making appearances around the country (he’ll be in Iowa July 27), his obvious long-term goal was the White House. In 2028. Presumably.

If Beshear and his advisers were as wired into the national Democratic establishment as one would think, they knew there was always a chance that President Biden might not make it to the ballot. After all, he turned 81 on Nov. 20, amid much talk about his infirmities.

But surely Beshear’s camp nor the rest of the establishment figured on Biden cratering in his debate with former President Trump, showing that the president had failed the threshold test for any politician: “Know yourself.”

Biden’s hapless performance sparked widespread calls for him to step aside for someone else, but as this is written Tuesday, those calls have come almost exclusively from commentators. No significant Democrat has been willing to incur the wrath of the White House and the establishment by saying the president has no clothes.

On Monday, Beshear was slightly more critical and less supportive than some other Democratic leaders, who have said Biden should stay in. Reporters in Frankfort Monday didn’t ask him that question, and he didn’t volunteer an answer. Asked a general reaction question, he said, “Well, the debate performance was rough. It was a very bad night for the president. But he is still the candidate; only he can make decisions about his future candidacy, so as long as he continues to be in the race, I support him.”

Asked about a possible candidacy of his own, he said, “Only the president can determine his future as a candidate. He IS the candidate, and as long as he is, I’m supporting him.” And what if Biden stepped aside? “The president says he’s staying in and I believe him.”

Those responses were “blazing neon” among most Democrats’ muted comments, senior political columnist Jonathan Martin of Politico wrote on X, where he said earlier, “No elected Dem wants to be the first to speak up in public.”

So, Beshear didn’t embrace Biden, but didn’t quite put him at arm’s length, either. Perhaps he wants to be the presidential prospect with the most candor, which is both admirable and advantageous. He did have one piece of advice for the president: “My hope is that there’s more information forthcoming, that he’ll speak to the American people and leaders around the country.”

That sounded like a plea for a phone call from Biden, but also implied a truth: The president must restore confidence, not just inside his party but in the country, to prevail.

Beshear gets mentioned in any Top 10 list of possible replacements, and sometimes in a Top 5, but is not yet a major player like the governors of Michigan and Pennsylvania, two states Democrats need and could carry, unlike Kentucky, and other governors of larger states. And all these hopefuls’ prospects are dubious.

First, barring a serious health episode, Biden’s candidacy is his own, to keep or kill. Second, if he does pull out, Vice President Kamala Harris has the best claim of succession, and Democrats who doubt her electability rightly fear a decimated voter base if the first Black and first woman vice president were denied the nomination.

Also, Harris apparently needs to stay on the ticket, in either spot, for the Biden-Harris campaign to keep the contributions it has received without a laborious refund-and-giveback process that would be a net negative. If she were somehow persuaded to remain in the second spot, it’s hard to imagine Beshear in the first one.

Beshear surely knows that, but he’s playing the long game, making as many friends as he can and touting his record. Monday, he delivered a subtle sales pitch when asked to comment on being mentioned as a presidential candidate:

“It’s a reflection of all the good things going on in Kentucky. As compared to the rest of the country, the temperature’s been turned down here, Democrats and Republicans all excited about the jobs we’re creating, the investment that we’re seeing, record low unemployment, record low recidivism, decreases in our overdose deaths; those are all really good things. So I think the rest of the country turns to us, and says ‘How can a Democratic governor and a Republican General Assembly create really good results?’ And I think the answer to that is, everything is not partisan. People are tired of the clashes day in and day out. So when they look at what WE have done in Kentucky, they see a better future that’s beyond some of the back and forth that we see on the federal level.”

Kentucky Republican legislators surely scoffed at that, but that’s not the audience Beshear was addressing. For now at least, he’s gone national.

This column is republished from the Northern Kentucky Tribune, a nonprofit publication of the Kentucky Center for Public Service Journalism.

These men should be on the golf course. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

There’s nothing quite like watching your democracy fail in real-time, with chyrons and everything.

I’ve had some long moments in my life, but few seemed more elongated than the 90-minute debate between your great-grandpa and an aspiring authoritarian.

As much as I was watching the debate, I was watching social media and came to realize that there was nothing good about Thursday’s CNN Presidential Debate.

I mean nothing.

In live-TV reality, unscripted, unrehearsed, and completely unhinged, it was like an MRI machine peering slice-by-slice into the rot that has gripped us, and if you haven’t been scared before the debate about the fate of this country, it’s time to start fretting.

The thing that has most made America seem like the world’s spontaneous and thrill-seeking cousin is what proved to be our most ugly reality: We value style over substance.

Former President Donald J. Trump was poised and gave a flawless factless performance that left the anchors dumbfounded — or at least that’s what I have to assume was the stunned feeling that should have washed over them as Dana Bash and Jake Tapper left absolutely no lie checked.

And that’s the problem: If this were an acting audition, Trump completely steamrolled President Joe Biden. But only one of the debate participants was acting.

Unfortunately, Biden used much of his time being speechless. And sadly, it showed.

Trump’s sheer blitzkrieg of bullsh—t completely overwhelmed Biden, leaving him not knowing where to start, or how to make sense of the nonsense and lies.

If we’re scoring the debate on factual accuracy, there is no question who won.

And that’s exactly the problem: No one was watching this debate, looking to be swayed or hoping to be inspired. Indeed, no one was scoring the debate.

We weren’t carefully considering the policy points, discussing them because we wanted information. Instead, the headlines declared that Trump won the debate based on public perception. The buzzkill fact-checkers among us, though, would tell a different story.

But seriously, how many voters went watching the debate searching for facts? Let’s face it, many went there to rubber-neck this 90-minute train wreck. Few probably expected to have it validate so many bad things so quickly.

That’s the worst part of it. We’ve had almost 249 years of history, and these two are the best we can do?

I don’t know if I am mad, or scared or resigned.

Trump’s performance was smooth in the way the devil bribed Robert Johnson — a deal done, but at a helluva price. Just like that deal, the devil promised glory, but didn’t say for how long. How many times can we trick ourselves into believing we can get the better end of the deal from a man who has made his career going bankrupt and stiffing average workers?

Trump’s popularity concerns me because if Trump’s first term was an exercise in allowing us to be our worst selves, the second term may be mandate for something even worse.

But the Republicans can be credited for giving their base what it would seem to want, which is the opposite way Dems have treated their voters.

The vanity of the Democrats to believe that their cause is so righteous, and the voters so desperate for an alternative, that they would blindly accept a knowledgeable, but ancient, octogenarian makes them every bit as guilty as anyone for not seeking out a candidate who could blow us away or at least blow out his own birthday candles.

Finally, the most heartbreaking moment of last night’s debate was the failure of journalism.

Often, journalists are called on to be moderators — well researched so they could keep factual sideboards on the often wily debates.

Bash and Tapper weren’t unprofessional in the way they treated the candidates, but they completely failed journalism.

Trump spewed a torrent of lies and both moderators seemed fearful or unwilling to call out even the most outrageous falsity. Moderating is holding a candidate to account, pressing them for answers. Without that, the debate became less than neutral, it had a corrosive effect on our democracy by allowing lies to perpetuate unchecked.

Because of the role both of those journalists play, especially on their own cable television shows, when they do not let politicians squirm away from difficult questions, the lay audience on Thursday was left to think that silence might have equaled approval.

It wasn’t so much a debate as a platform. At other times during the debate, it was something more sinister but not unlike watching a couple of grumpy old men argue over the TV remote in the nursing home’s communal lounge.

At a time when journalism has a chance to shine a bright light, helping to re-assert the inextricable role a free press plays in free society, it, like everyone else involved in the debate, failed.

This commentary is republished from the Daily Montanan, a sister publication to the Kentucky Lantern and part of the nonprofit States Newsroom network.

Kinship caregivers are often approached by the system in a time of crisis. Typically, that’s when a child is removed from an unsafe home or even in the hospital due to abuse/neglect.?(Getty Images)

I am shocked and saddened as I reflect upon recent events regarding Senate Bill 151 for kinship caregivers. There are many questions, beginning with, how is nothing better than something for children, when we know we can do better????

?The story requires some background; I begin with the term “kinship care.” It’s when a child is living with relatives or close friends other than parents. The kids may be victims of abuse and neglect and/or formally in the child welfare system with involvement of the Department of Community Based Services (DCBS) or informally placed with relatives/friends.??

In 2019, kinship advocates were elated as Kentucky offered formal kinship caregivers a relative foster care option. It provided a second primary option of custody at initial placement in the child welfare system while the family courts pursued reunification with the parents or permanency elsewhere.

The first option is temporary custody which provides fewer financial resources and less oversight; the second option of relative foster care offers more resources with more oversight.? The decision is annotated on a DCBS form at placement.

For five years, caregivers shared frustration and concerns over how these options have been offered. Legislators wondered why caregivers weren’t selecting relative foster care. In fact, more than half of Kentucky children in the system were in temporary custody rather than relative foster care which indicated a problem.????

When people aren’t thinking clearly, they shouldn’t be making rushed critical decisions that can wait. Kinship caregivers are often approached by the system in a time of crisis. Typically, that’s when a child is removed from an unsafe home or even in the hospital due to abuse/neglect.? Under duress, decisions with long term implications are made without knowing what the future will look like or what’s needed. Yet, regardless of the circumstances, once the placement form is signed, it’s permanent.?

During the 2024 legislative session, Sen. Julie Raque Adams sponsored SB 151. The bill allowed caregiver flexibility up to 120 days for that critical decision and in some cases, the potential ability to change options after the 120 days. This bill also requires a social worker to ask a child whom they’d like to be placed with at removal; it gives that child a voice.?

On Feb. 6 at a Senate Families and Children Committee meeting , Sen. Raque Adams referenced a fiscal note stating no additional costs to implement the bill.??

The bill was unanimously approved in both Kentucky House and Senate committee meetings and on the House and Senate floors and later signed by Gov. Andy Beshear on April 5.??

‘Flabbergasted:’ Help for kinship care families passed unanimously. $20M price tag could derail it.

I assumed SB 151 would soon become reality. It’s a bad assumption. On June 19 at the Interim Joint Committee on Families and Children, Sen. Raque Adams asked DCBS for the status of SB 151 implementation. The discussion led to the discovery of no implementation due to the need for $20 million; basically, it’s no money, no action.?

We’re now hearing of letters and events that have happened over the last few months, including a letter from the governor dated five days after he signed the bill that says “the omission of an appropriation is the same as elimination.”?

Thankfully, all of this will be discussed at a July 30 committee meeting and get to an acceptable resolution for the families in need.

I’m a grandma, kinship advocate and citizen. I believe in good faith efforts. To me, good faith is more than one email or letter; it’s phone calls, meetings, talking and more talking. Good faith should be authentic outreach in all possible ways.??

If the governor, legislature and DCBS all believe the bill should be done, how can this be an all or nothing action/decision? Where are all the potential options, knowing there are issues in the current policies/system??

This bill helps children in the child welfare system and fixes known problems. Does it really cost $20 million to ask a child whom they’d like to be placed with before we determine placement?? Have we earnestly looked at the 120-day policy change and found all implementation options would cost $20 million? Many kinship kids in the system are innocent victims of the opioid epidemic; why wouldn’t we consider opioid settlement dollars as a solution to needed funding?? Are we doing all we can today or taking the easy path to nothing??

In Louisville and Lexington, the new federal screening level for lead was exceeded in in 29% and 12% of soil samples, respectively. Children playing in contaminated soil can ingest lead. It's also possible to ingest lead by eating fruit or vegetables grown in contaminated soil. (Photo by Alex Ratson via Getty Images)

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

As spring phases into summer across the U.S., kids are spending more time outdoors. Playing outside is healthy in all kinds of ways, but it also poses some risks. One that many families may not be aware of is exposure to lead in soil, which is still a serious problem, mainly in cities.

Children can be exposed to lead by swallowing or inhaling soil while they are playing. Young children often put their hands in their mouths and may have dirt on their hands. Kids and pets also can track lead dust from soil indoors. And anyone who eats fruit or vegetables grown in contaminated soil can ingest lead.

Early in 2024, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency lowered the screening level for lead in residential soils from 400 parts per million – a standard that was more than 30 years old – to 200 parts per million. This more protective lower number reflects current understanding of soil as a significance source of lead exposure for children.

EPA officials said that at homes exposed to lead from multiple sources, the agency will generally use a more conservative 100 parts per million screening level.

This new level is not a cleanup standard; it’s a threshold at which the EPA will make site-specific decisions about how to protect people there. Actions may include providing information about soil lead, recommending ways to reduce exposure, or removing the leaded soil and replacing it with clean soil.

The standard is designed to guide EPA assessments of residential soils around polluted sites under two federal laws. The Superfund law addresses hazardous wastes that were improperly created or disposed of before 1976, while the 1976 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act governs hazardous waste generation and disposal from that year forward. More than 4,000 sites across the nation are currently being cleaned up under those two laws.

I study urban lead poisoning in children from soil and other sources, and I have worked with colleagues to analyze tens of thousands of soil samples collected from typical homes by research scientists and by citizens across the U.S.. This work is ongoing, but our newly published findings show that under the new EPA standard, potentially harmful lead exposure from soil is far more widespread than many people – including public officials – realize. Reducing this risk will be a very long-term effort.

A toxic legacy

Lead exposure has blighted communities across the U.S., particularly lower-income communities of color. Many factors have contributed, including lead in gasoline, water pipes and paint. In addition, redlining and other policies have trapped vulnerable families in substandard housing that often contains lead paint and is located in areas heavily polluted by traffic and industrial sources.

Lead affects many parts of the body, including the brain and central nervous system. Exposure to high levels of lead in childhood can lead to lower educational outcomes and lower earning potential.

Since the federal government started severely limiting the production and use of lead in the 1970s, the share of children in the U.S. who are considered lead-affected, based on current standards, has fallen dramatically. This means that for tens of millions of U.S. children, the risk of being cognitively impaired by lead exposure is greatly reduced. In the 1970s, this figure was near 100%; today it is about 1%, which equates to some 500,000 children.

But many urban children are still exposed to lead at unsafe levels, and soil exposure isn’t addressed by laws that have reduced other lead sources. Lead in soil is the residue of degraded lead-based paint, pollution deposited by cars that burned leaded gasoline for decades, and emissions from factories and industrial facilities.

Lead in soil is a widespread risk

Our national analysis of samples collected from 16 cities found that out of 15,595 household soil samples, 12.3% – one in every eight – exceeded the old federal screening level of 400 parts per million. When the standard is adjusted down to the proposed level of 200 parts per million, 23.7% of households – nearly 1 in 4 – contain a lead hazard.

These samples were typically collected in sets, with one sample near the exterior walls of a home, where highest soil lead values are expected; another from the yard; and a third from near the street, which can also record elevated lead levels.

If our findings are extrapolated across the nation, they indicate that up to roughly 29 million households out of the 123.6 million that were recorded in the 2020 census could be exposed to soil lead hazards and should take steps to mitigate them. Applying the EPA’s aspirational goal of 100 parts per million, our analysis indicates that some 40.2% of households could be affected – equivalent to nearly 50 million households nationwide.

Not all communities in our research have similar risk profiles. In Chicago, for example, 52.8% of household soils that we tested contained more than 200 parts per million of lead. Samples from parts of several medium-sized cities, including Springfield, Massachusetts, and Chattanooga and Memphis, Tennessee, had comparable percentages.

It is difficult to fully assess city-specific soil lead burdens, for several reasons. First, the citizen science dataset that we used in our analysis was collected by private citizens using certain guidelines, not under the strict scientific protocols that the EPA would follow. Second, there is no other systematic, comprehensive measurement of household soil lead values across the U.S. that could be used to assess the accuracy of the community science samples.

Capping soil as a first step

Because so little data on lead soil values exists, it’s not yet possible to determine which particular households have the greatest potential risk. Without that information, the real cost of mitigating this problem is also unknown.

Full remediation, which involves removing contaminated soils and replacing them with clean soils, can cost from US$10,000 to $30,000 per household. Typically, the cost of this type of voluntary cleanup is borne by the homeowner, although some states may have assistance programs.

At this rate, the price tag for mitigating all households nationwide that we project to have soil above the new EPA standard would range from $290 billion to over $1.1 trillion. Household soil remediation involves many steps, including soil testing and monitoring dust levels. If it is done poorly, it can actually scatter lead-contaminated soils and dust beyond the mitigation site.

Given this projected price tag, my colleagues and I do not expect such a program to be proposed any time soon. However, there’s a faster and much cheaper strategy: capping existing soils with clean soil or mulch. This is an imperfect solution, but it solves the immediate lead exposure problem for children living in these settings.

Capping isn’t a permanent answer, since land cover can be disturbed, which would make lead-enriched soils an active risk once again. But even covering a contaminated site with clean soils will permanently dilute the site’s total lead concentration. Nearly all lead deposited from human activities is captured in the upper 10 inches of soils. Adding another 10 inches of clean soil on top would cut the soil lead concentration by half.

It’s a cliche but nonetheless true that the solution for pollution often is dilution. I see this simple strategy as an immediate way for cities to start addressing their new lead challenge.

"The news media, contrary to Sen. Mills’ Twitter/X post and Trump’s unfounded 'enemy of the people' refrain, serve as the voice for people who, unlike our lawmakers, do not hold positions of power," writes columnist and gun safety activist Teri Carter. (Getty Images)

Last Friday, I ran into the Anderson County judge-executive at Five Star where we were both getting gas. I had not seen him in a year. He smiled big and said, “Well hello, Miss Carter!,” walked around his truck to give me a hug, and stayed to chat about our families.?

On Saturday, a couple I used to go to church with yelled a big hello to me as they were walking into the Lawrenceburg Kroger and I was looking for a parking spot. Seeing them was a bright spot in my afternoon.?

The next day I texted a former magistrate to tell her I’d been thinking about her in Sunday school. The word ‘love’ was used in our exchange.

I tell you this because I am an outspoken Democrat, the above folks are all lifelong Republicans, and these encounters are both routine and antithetical to what we see from too many GOP supermajority leaders and communications personnel in Frankfort who, if you follow their public comments and Twitter/X feeds, would have us believe real life in Kentucky is as snarky as they are.

It is not.

Just this week, Sen. Robby Mills — who ran for lieutenant governor alongside Daniel Cameron — posted, “Watching @KyTonightKET and listening to the leadership of the Frankfort media ‘out themselves’! They are simply not balanced…that is why our citizens are confused as to what the truth is.”

Click to watch: State of the Media on KET’s “Kentucky Tonight”

No, senator. No one outed anyone and Kentuckians are not confused. But you do have to wonder why people like Sen. Mills are so bent on creating this illusion. Does he speak in person, in this tone, to his constituents who do not agree with him politically? Does he speak to anyone in this manner??

One of the destructive habits Donald Trump ushered in with his presidency was constant, off-the-cuff, Twitter whining by elected officials, as though being in a protected, elite position were an unbearable burden. Poor, poor me, they seem to be screaming.

When I see powerful Kentucky lawmakers on Twitter/X and elsewhere complaining about their coverage, I am reminded of the wise words of writer Anne Lamott: “If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”?

The reason I have not seen our judge-executive in so long is because, after the Old National Bank shooting in April 2023, I decided to spend the entire next year outside of Anderson, up the road in Frankfort, to learn, in person, how things really work in state government, to spend hours upon hours in rooms with Republican lawmakers, and to see if the most basic firearm legislation stood a chance.?

While I am sorry to disappoint recent GOP Twitter/X hullabaloo, I am nothing so glamorous as a? lobbyist. I am just a citizen, mother, grandmother, and volunteer — read “unpaid” — trying to find a way to keep people from getting shot to death at work, school, church, etc… A timely reminder that one of the fundamental differences between real news and social media is fact-checking.?

As to potential gun legislation, what I learned this past year is that the chasm between doing what many in our GOP supermajority know (they know!) is right — like that people in the midst of a mental health crisis should not have access to guns — and the powerful seats they hold in our Republican supermajority is Grand Canyon-esque.

The seat itself must be held at all cost, and that cost, let’s be blunt, includes lives.

With the exception of Sen. Whitney Westerfield (who, it must be said, has an affable Twitter/X presence but is unfortunately leaving office at the end of this year) even the most rudimentary discussion of laws to stem gun violence in Kentucky will not occur in any public setting where it could be video recorded and, in turn, shared on social media. It is simply not done.?

Call it fear of the Trumpian social media mob; call it fear of the uninformed voter; call it fear of the constituent who gets most of their political information from non-fact-checked social media (including lawmakers and pundits who regularly post Trump-like snark); call it fear of being ousted from the Frankfort fraternity.?

But call it what it is at its core. Fear.?

And the news media, contrary to Sen. Mills’ Twitter/X post and Trump’s unfounded “enemy of the people” refrain, serve as the voice for people who, unlike our lawmakers, do not hold positions of power.?

Earlier this month Bill Kristol, founder of The Weekly Standard, posted a quote from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn that stuck with me: “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts.”

I am a Democrat living in a rural county that voted resoundingly for Donald Trump in both 2016 and 2020, but I am also the person who purposely goes to Kroger on a Saturday because I want to run into folks I have not seen lately and talk to my neighbors, no matter their political affiliation.?

I spent the last year in Frankfort, attending every meeting I could and talking primarily to Republicans to, as I wrote in a recent article about Senate Bill 2, “meet with the senator because I wanted to understand both him and his bill. Was I missing something?” All it cost me was time.

The line separating good and evil is not party affiliation, it is fear of the other.??

I encourage lawmakers like Sen. Mills and anyone else who feels stuck in an echo chamber to remember that social media and professional, fact-checked news are not the same — kinda like a Mustang convertible and barbecued ribs are not the same — and that talking to people, in person, who disagree with you politically is healthy for you, healthy for Kentucky and free of charge.

An image of Willie Mays is displayed on the video board while baseball fans observed a moment of silence during the sixth inning of a game between the Chicago Cubs and the San Francisco Giants at Wrigley Field on June 18, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois. The Cubs defeated the Giants 5-2. (Photo by Nuccio DiNuzzo/Getty Images)

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In 1959, when Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev visited San Francisco and members of the International Longshoreman’s Union greeted him with cheers, newspaperman Frank Coniff quipped: “This is the damndest city. They cheer Khruschev and boo Willie Mays.”

It was the height of the Cold War and, for Coniff and many of his readers, there was no better symbol of America than Mays. At that time, Mays was a 28-year-old centerfielder for the San Francisco Giants and the best ballplayer in the world, and he was occasionally booed by fans of his own team.

A decade before that, Mays was playing for the Birmingham Black Barons, a Negro League team near his hometown of Westfield, Alabama, while still in high school.

Mays, who died on June 18, 2024, at the age of 93, was not only the greatest baseball player of the last 80 years, and quite possibly ever, but he was an enormously important figure in American sports, culture and history. His journey from the segregated Deep South of his childhood to being honored by President Barack Obama with the Presidential Medal of Freedom spans much of America’s racial history in the 20th and early 21st century.

In 2009, Mays traveled to the All-Star Game, in which he had played a record 24 times (from 1959-1962 there were two All-Star Games a year), on Air Force One, where he told a rapt and smiling President Obama how much it meant to him after “growing up in Birmingham” to see an African American elected president.

Mays repeated several times how proud he was of Obama. The president responded, “If it hadn’t been for folks like you and Jackie (Robinson), I’m not sure I would have ever got elected to the White House.”

‘Racism and racial epithets’

Mays began his career with the New York Giants in 1951, four years after Jackie Robinson played his first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers. He became known as the “Say Hey Kid” because of his youth, exuberant style of play and habit of greeting people with the phrase, “Say Hey.”

In those years, the integration of the National and American Leagues was still in its earliest stages. There was an informal ruhle limiting each team to no more than three non-white players. Many teams, including the Yankees and the Red Sox, were still entirely white.

Although the Giants played on the northern edge of Harlem, where Mays lived early in his career and was widely beloved, when the team traveled to more southern cities and during spring training in Florida, Mays was subject to the same racism and racial epithets as Robinson.

The centrality of baseball to American culture during this period made Mays even more significant. This was still a time when baseball players were by far the most recognized athletes in the U.S. and when much of the country tuned in to the World Series every fall.

By the late 1950s, Mays was, along with Mickey Mantle, the most famous ballplayer in America. For decades it has not been unusual for African American athletes to be broadly admired, but Mays was the first. Mays’ appeal to all fans was not just due to how good a player he was, but also the panache with which he played the game, wowing fans with basket catches and daring base running, as well as a public personality that was outgoing and friendly.

Representing … with a ‘regal stature’

Robinson was a trailblazer and a unique figure in American history, but Mays’ impact on the culture was broader and at least as important.

Frank Guridy, a professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University, summed this up: “Mays was this Black mega-superstar in this country who was somehow able to transcend his background as somebody from the Jim Crow South to become appealing to white America. He was able to be Black and represent the Black intervention in the sport, while maintaining a regal stature that is appealing to all people.”

During the 1960s, when Mays was the best and most famous baseball player in the world, he was criticized by some for not being radical or outspoken enough. That criticism seems a bit unfair now.

Unlike many other great African American athletes of the era, like Bill Russell, Tommie Smith, John Carlos, Wilt Chamberlain, Jim Brown or Robinson, Mays was a product of the Deep South and, on some level, carried that trauma with him.

It is often overlooked that, for the last decade or so of his career, he was deeply respected by almost all African American baseball players because of his ability and his role as an early trailblazer. As the best player, with the most seniority, on the San Francisco Giants in the 1960s, he set a tone and kept the peace in what was then by far the most diverse clubhouse in baseball.

Because Mays played in San Francisco for the Giants from 1958 until he was traded to the Mets, and back to New York, during the 1972 season, his off-the-field activities did not always receive the attention they deserved. However, for decades he worked with youth in San Francisco’s Bayview-Hunters Point community, a largely African American neighborhood where Candlestick Park was located.

Transcending racist history

Mays, who played his last game during the 1973 World Series, was a baseball star at the very end of the period when baseball was a massively important cultural institution, and at a time when baseball led the country on civil rights and integration.

His extraordinary statistical accomplishments speak for themselves, but the grace, joy, energy and intellect with which he played the game allowed him to separate himself from other great players of his, or any, era.

Mays’ death is not only a loss for baseball, but for all of America. Willie Mays is a reminder of what America can produce and how there is always hope that the country can transcend its ugly racial history and embrace a graceful, talented and proud African American man as a uniquely important national hero.

(Photo by Michael B. Thomas/Getty Images)

What in the world could they have been thinking?

That’s one of the questions (or, at least, one hopes it is) that most white Americans ask themselves periodically when contemplating the evil of human slavery – the institution that undergirds so much of their modern privilege and wealth. How could any human being ever think themselves entitled to own another human because of their skin color?

But, of course, as many Native Americans regularly remind us, the brutal enslavement of millions of Africans and people of African descent is far from the nation’s only original sin. And it’s also far from the only example from American history that readily gives rise to that question – “What in the world could they have been thinking?”

What in the world could white people have been thinking when they denied even the most rudimentary of civil rights to Black Americans and enforced racist miscegenation laws for another century after the end of slavery?

What in the world could American men have been thinking when they denied women the right to vote for nearly a century-and-a-half, along with an array of basic property rights, for another half-century-plus after that?

What in the world could the nation’s factory owners have been thinking at the turn of the last century when they employed thousands of preadolescents in virtual peonage?

What in the world could the nation’s political leaders have been thinking when they imprisoned 120,000 Japanese Americans in internment/concentration camps during World War II?

What in the world could leaders of all parties and races have been thinking when they made LGBTQ+ people criminals and denied them the most basic of human rights – like the right to marry – right up until 2015?

And, as even a moment’s honest contemplation reveals, new entries continue to emerge (and hopefully always will) in the list of “what in the world could they have been thinking?” questions.

Even comfortable progressives who now smugly contemplate their own relative enlightenment will (one suspects and hopes, anyway) continue to learn and progress and look back years from now on their own blind spots and prejudices and ask, “what in the world were we thinking?”

Of course, the encouraging flipside to this phenomenon is that many people – even some of the chief architects of the nation’s top “what in the world could they have been thinking? moments – i.e., the old, white and privileged men who make up roughly 10% of the population – can and do learn, see the errors of their and their forebears’ past ways, and find paths to growth and progress.

For a classic example, consider the man who signed into law this week’s Juneteenth national holiday into law three years ago.

As anyone old enough to remember the treatment of Prof. Anita Hill during the U.S. Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas will attest, President – then Senator — Joe Biden was and is no saint. Rather, he was and is an imperfect human being with plenty of foibles and prejudices who was and is capable of having his own “what in the world was he thinking?” moments.

But there’s another thing that this week’s holiday serves to remind us about the president – one that distinguishes him from a large percentage of his peers in the political world: Biden is also a man who can see the past clearly and honestly and who learns and progresses.

Fifty years ago, as a young and “moderate” border state senator, the notion that Biden would ultimately become a champion of civil and human rights, a partner to the nation’s only Black president and vice president, and the proud signatory of the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act – something he called “one of the greatest honors I have had as president” – would have seemed absurd.

But today, thanks to his willingness and ability to think and learn and grow and confront the nation’s “what in the world were they thinking?” moments, Biden has become one of the nation’s most impactful presidents when it comes to civil and human rights and an important bridge figure in the nation’s history.

And this, of course, represents a sharp and admirable break with his predecessor – a president who devoted his term in office looking to return to the nation’s past and who never acknowledged, much less admitted and apologized for, numerous direct acts of racial and gender prejudice and discrimination for which he was personally responsible (be it the false and racist “birther” attacks on President Barack Obama, his pre-political career record as a discriminatory landlord, his embrace of white nationalist groups while in office, or his sexual misconduct toward women).

What in the world could they have been they thinking?

This week is a good one to contemplate that question with respect to a lot of moments in American history – even the 146-year delay in recognizing the Juneteenth holiday itself. But it’s also a fine week to think honestly about our modern politics and whether our present-day leaders will have the courage and honesty to keep asking it.

This commentary is republished from NC Newsline, a sister publication of Kentucky Lantern and part of the nonprofit States Newsroom network.

"HB 5 wrote a blank check on an account that is already overdrawn, and it will cause conditions of incarceration that are even more inhumane and dangerous than what we have now," writes Kyle Ellison, a former probation and parole officer. (Getty Images)

House Bill 5, the “Safer Kentucky Act,” is emotion-based legislation, rather than the evidence-based legislation Kentucky deserves. Legislators and research organizations who presented data and asked hard questions were stonewalled at every step of development of this legislation, which became law over Gov. Andy Beshear’s veto.

Kentucky has the eighth harshest criminal sentencing statutes in the U.S., according to The Sentencing Project, even before HB 5, which will significantly increase penalties, takes effect.?Facts about the decrease in crime rates in Kentucky and the unknown billions of dollars HB 5 will cost, were drowned out by “tough-on-crime” sermons, photos of crime victims, and incessant crime stories on our televisions and computers.??

Read the report

The Process and Results of Passing HB5:? An Opinion from Retired Jail and Corrections Employees?

HB 5 wrote a blank check on an account that is already overdrawn, and it will cause conditions of incarceration that are even more inhumane and dangerous than what we have now. Those of us who worked in prisons and jails over the past 50 years have first-hand experience resulting from legislation that created more incarcerated people without adding money to the corrections budget for humane housing, rehabilitation programs and staff.?

Over the past 40 years, our legislature has enabled county jail beds to be used as state prisons, because jail beds are half the cost of state prison beds. Forty percent of state prisoners serving felony time are housed in jails designed for short term confinement, with no space or resources for humane living conditions and rehabilitation programs.?

The majority of county jails (45 of 74) are overcrowded. Twenty-eight jails have 120%, or more, people than beds and ten of those jails are more than 150% overcrowded, according to state reports.?

County budgets profit from overcrowding their jail with state and federal prisoners who come with per diem payments for the jail.? If horses were treated this way, there would be public outrage.?

Kentucky now has only one private prison. Our county jails are being operated on a private prison business model, and overcrowding prisoners brings in more money. Kentucky is the only state where jailers are elected officials who can lobby the legislature to support their interests. Kentucky’s jailers are well on their way to controlling the Kentucky Department of Corrections and there is no means to hold these individual “Kingdoms” accountable.?

Veto of mass incarceration bill gives Kentucky supermajority a shot at redemption

Our state prisons and jails are facing dramatic and sustained staff shortages which create dangers for staff and prisoners alike. From 2022 to early 2024, Kentucky State Penitentiary operated at half capacity because of staff shortage. Luther Luckett Correctional Complex has correctional officers working 60-hour weeks in a prison holding twice the number of people it was designed for.? Kentucky State Reformatory, once the largest state prison, is being closed for lack of staff. The largest state prison in 20 years is being built to accommodate geriatric prisoners. Louisville’s Metro jail is 80 correctional officers short. ?In 2021, Lexington’s jail considered using the National Guard for jail staff.??

These issues require funds that could be spent on education, mental health, addiction and housing. HB 5 dumped those problems on the legislators and citizens of tomorrow. In the meantime, we will all suffer when people held in inhumane conditions, without rehabilitation programs, are released. Kentucky’s state prisons hold 11,500 people and county jails hold 20,000 more. There are 63,000 people on probation or parole. HB 5 might feel tough on crime, but there is no evidence it will make anyone safer.??

Ten retired jail and corrections employees — who have a combined 245 years of experience in corrections work — contributed to this column and signed the accompanying research report. Read their?analysis of how they say the process and passage of HB 5 failed the people of Kentucky.

Learning isn’t just about the curriculum offered. It’s also about students feeling connected to and supported by their institutions. When institutions represent a single cultural identity, students with minority identities can feel excluded and are less likely to thrive. (Getty Images)

This commentary is republished from The Conversation.

Just four years ago, following the murder of George Floyd, almost every college and university in the U.S. had at least one diversity, equity and inclusion — or DEI — program. Many had existed long before. These programs ranged from DEI-related degrees and professional training to resources for culturally, linguistically and neurologically diverse students. But in the last year and a half in almost every state, 159 institutions have reduced or eliminated these programs.

New legislation in states like Texas and Florida has banned DEI programs outright. In other states, institutions are shuttering programs preemptively to avoid political pressure. This will have lasting effects.

In Texas, dozens of professional faculty and staff have already been fired. Minority students have lost access to community groups, cultural centers and resources. Furthermore, following the Supreme Court ruling in 2023 that race could not be considered in admissions decisions, scholarships for students with diverse racial identities have disappeared.?

Lawmakers can roll back DEI programs, but they cannot remove identity from the learning context. Colleges and universities continue to admit increasingly diverse student populations. Without programs of support, I believe these students are more likely to be harmed rather than helped by college.?

Eliminating DEI programs could have serious consequences for teaching and learning. As a scholar who researches the relationship between identity and learning, my work has shown that inclusivity is a prerequisite for how students form their identities in relation to the content they learn. For example, learning math becomes especially difficult, if not impossible, if a student does not identify positively with the subject. Math identity isn’t just based on competency. It’s also based on societal expectations, such as stereotypes of who is most likely to become a mathematician based on demographics – including racial, ethnic and gender identities.

Why identity matters in learning

Research shows that Black students are more likely to stay in college and earn a degree if they attend a historically Black institution versus a predominantly white one. Why? Because learning isn’t just about the curriculum offered. It’s also about students feeling connected to and supported by their institutions. When institutions represent a single cultural identity, students with minority identities can feel excluded and are less likely to thrive.

In general, how we view ourselves relies heavily on external validation. In fact, child psychologists strongly caution parents from labeling children by their character traits or behavior so that their identities do not become prematurely limited. For learning to take place, students need to identify with the content, which becomes especially difficult when they feel like their identities are not welcomed in the learning environment.?

Effective teaching emphasizes students’ identities in order to make important connections with the learning. For example, we know that fewer women graduate in STEM fields than men. This is not because they can’t succeed in STEM – science, technology, engineering and math – but because they aren’t as likely to identify with the field. Many studies demonstrate that targeting students with certain identities for support increases their academic performance as well as the performance of other students.

More evidence of the link between identity and learning comes from the Gallup-Purdue Index. The large survey of more than 30,000 college graduates measured the academic experiences that most prepared them for life. Near the top of the results: “My professors cared about me as a person.” The goal of DEI programs is to make sure everyone feels cared about as a person. Eliminating these programs means further marginalization of students with specific identities who have historically faced discrimination.?

Open records loopholes die in Kentucky Senate. Attempt to revive anti-DEI bill also fails.

How DEI programs ensure everyone gets to learn

Through my research, I have found that DEI training increases teachers’ awareness of diverse identities, helping them to design courses that are interesting and relevant to everyone. DEI programs also often include the creation of dedicated spaces and initiatives so that students can experience connection and support from other students like them, even when it feels like their identities are not otherwise welcome on campus.

A Gallup and Lumina Foundation report found that Black students are more likely to feel discriminated against than other students, and Black and Hispanic students are the most likely to have thought about stopping out. If all students do not feel safe and welcomed, they cannot learn.

Lawmakers can roll back DEI programs, but they cannot remove identity from the learning context. Colleges and universities continue to admit increasingly diverse student populations. Without programs of support, I believe these students are more likely to be harmed rather than helped by college.

Former President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally in Indianola, Iowa, Jan. 24, 2024, on the eve of the Iowa caucuses. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

When U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell voted not to convict Donald Trump of impeachment for inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection, which he nevertheless blamed on Trump, he excused himself in part by saying “We have a criminal justice system in this country.”

The Senate Republican leader was surely not thinking about the $130,000 in hush money the president paid a porn star to help his 2016 election chances, which led to Trump’s May 30 conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records – judged to be felonies because they facilitated another crime, election interference.

It was the weakest and least significant of the four criminal cases against Trump, and the verdict may be overturned on appeal; the election-interference crimes weren’t specified. But no other cases are likely to be tried before the Nov. 5 election, so Republicans are using the curiosities of the case to delegitimize the verdict of the jury — a linchpin of our system of government.

They avoid direct attacks on the jury, blaming the judge and the prosecutors. But when they say such things as “judges, investigators and prosecutors . . . misled the jury,” as 4th District Rep. Thomas Massie did on X, they impugn the intelligence of the jury, which included two lawyers and people who get their news from a wide range of sources. And they are, with little evidence, undermining public trust in our courts.

Sixth District U.S. Rep. Andy Barr, a lawyer who knows better, called it a “sham trial.” Second District Rep. Brett Guthrie, a former Army officer who should know better, called it a “kangaroo court.” They didn’t hear the case; the jury did. McConnell was circumspect, saying “These charges never should have been brought.” U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, state Attorney General Russell Coleman and U.S. Reps. James Comer of the 1st District and Hal Rogers of the 5th District, a former prosecutor, called the case political.?

There’s no real proof of that. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is a Democrat who, like most prosecutors, is elected on a partisan basis. Prosecutors are supposed to be advocates, and while Bragg’s theory of making it a felony case looked like a stretch, he had a mountain of facts to prove the charges. And an appellate court rejected Trump’s attempts to disqualify the judge for alleged conflicts.

Yes, the judge made $35 in anti-Trump political donations, but he swore an oath to render impartial justice, and so did the jurors. Republicans’ attacks on that system are the purest form of cynicism: a belief that everyone always acts in their own self-interest. And the attacks are right in tune with Trump’s siren song to cynical voters, that our whole system is corrupt and nothing is on the level — so he’s the one you should trust. Autocrats have been selling that sewage for centuries, and sometimes millions of people join their cults. Sadly, that is what we see in our country today.

The case’s details take some explaining, so some persuadable voters will be steered by the simple but vociferous arguments of Trump’s defenders. It seems that an outrageous proposition — electing a convicted felon who faces even more serious charges in three other jurisdictions — calls for a defense full of outrage.

The basic fact of the case is Trump did everything he was accused of, and as conservative commentator David French said, “The underlying facts of the case here should be totally disqualifying for any presidential candidate ever.” That is also true of the other cases (about the insurrection, election interference and secret documents), which have much stronger facts that make convictions likely — if they ever come to trial. The election of Trump could prevent that, and cause more injustice. He’s already said he would use the government to wreak revenge on his enemies; allegations that Biden is doing that to Trump are completely unproven, and his own Justice Department is trying his son!

But Trump has long run on lies, the biggest one being that he was defrauded in 2020, and now Republicans facilitate those lies because his election chances will be the biggest factor in their party’s election performance (that’s McConnell’s rationale as party leader); Trump may become president again, and has made clear he will help friends and punish enemies; and even if he doesn’t win, apostates could suffer bad consequences because he’s primed for revenge and has a firm grip on most Republican voters.

So, as disappointing as the reactions of leading Kentucky Republicans are, they are understandable if you think cynically, that they are acting purely in their own political interests. So much for the national interest, and for the moral high ground. As conservative commentator David Brooks says, moral character was once a pillar of American conservatism, and “Character is destiny, and if private virtue falls apart, the public order collapses.” Danger lies before us.

This column is republished from the Northern Kentucky Tribune, a nonprofit publication of the Kentucky Center for Public Service Journalism.

U.S. Sens. J.D. Vance of Ohio and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama showed their support for former U.S. President Donald Trump by attending his his trial in New York City and standing behind him as he spoke to media. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Donald Trump was an extraordinary politician even before becoming the only former U.S. president to be convicted of a crime.

Trump’s crime, however, is not extraordinary. It’s basically the same thing that landed former Kentucky Democratic Party chair Jerry Lundergan in prison.

Both Lundergan and Trump concealed political spending that by law should have been disclosed in campaign finance reports.?

Lundergan falsified documents to hide that his company had bankrolled services, including a bus, for his daughter’s 2014 campaign. Alison Lundergan Grimes, then Kentucky’s secretary of state, was challenging Republican Mitch McConnell for his seat in the U.S. Senate.?

Trump falsified documents to conceal that his company bankrolled payments to keep his tawdry trysts hidden from voters. If Stormy Daniels had gone public, his campaign likely would have tanked and the United States would have elected a woman president before Mexico did.?

Here’s where the similarities end: You did not hear Lundergan or other Democrats protest that the justice system had been “weaponized” or “rigged” against the family of a McConnell challenger, or that anyone was “conflicted,” even though the prosecutor and judge had connections to McConnell.

Nor did Democrats complain that the prosecution was “partisan,” a “witch hunt” or “election interference” — in sharp contrast to the outpourings of outrage from Republicans after Trump’s conviction.

The U.S. attorney who won the guilty verdict against Lundergan, Robert M. “Rob” Duncan Jr., is the son of a prominent Republican fundraiser, Robert M. “Mike” Duncan, who has served on the Republican National Committee, including as its chairman. The elder Duncan is close to McConnell and has served as a director of McConnell’s super PAC. Rob Duncan is now deputy to Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman.

U.S. District Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove, who sentenced Lundergan to 21 months in prison and two years of supervised release, is a former McConnell staffer. While Lundergan was awaiting sentencing, it was reported that Van Tatenhove’s wife had given $250,000 to the McConnell Center, cofounded by McConnell, at the University of Louisville.?

At the time of the sentencing, Rob Duncan said, “This case should underscore the fundamental principle that breaking the law has consequences.”

Also, “These are important laws that regulate the integrity of our elections.”

The judge received 89 letters on behalf of Lundergan, including one from former U.S. President Bill Clinton. Van Tatenhove said he was convinced that Lundergan had done good in his life, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported, but said a loss of liberty was required to hold Lundergan accountable under the jury’s verdict.

Lundergan appealed, as Trump will, but his appeals failed, and he served time in federal prison and a halfway house.

We don’t know what sentence awaits Trump, but his conviction won’t shake his MAGA supporters’ loyalty; they’ve excused a mountain of sleaze to stand by their Trump.

Still, the zeal with which elected Republicans rushed to his defense, marching in rhetorical goose-step, er, I mean, lockstep is dismaying. They could have just remained silent like Kentucky Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams. It seemed as if they felt they had to make a display of loyalty to Trump. (And some are auditioning to be his running mate.)

Especially rich are the cries of “election interference” from people — like Appalachian imposter and U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio — who defend the Trump followers who interfered big time in an election by violently attacking the U.S. Capitol and Congress.

Even Kentucky’s top law enforcement official, Rob Duncan’s boss, Attorney General Coleman, tweeted: “It’s politics — not the law — behind New York’s prosecution of President Trump. The American people want to focus on the issues that matter and will render their own verdict on November 5th.”????

I’m not a lawyer, but Coleman’s statement strikes me as odd coming from someone who has sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution.

I do have a feeling Coleman is correct when it comes to Nov. 5. The American people will have to be the ones who, in the words of Jerry Lundergan’s prosecutor, “underscore the fundamental principle that breaking the law has consequences” and uphold “the integrity of our elections.”

The “party of law and order” sure isn’t doing it.

The worldview exposed in Margaret Atwood's novel is eerily similar to that of Trump's defenders, writes Teri Carter. Protesters, above, dressed as Handmaids in 2018. (Getty Images)

For a literary, nonpolitical project, I recently had to reread Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel and re-watch the Hulu TV series of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” a dystopian story about a new United States which adheres not to the Constitution but to a strict, twisted, patriarchal interpretation of the Bible.?

In this new U.S., all women are subjects of the regime and, since the wives of powerful men are unable to reproduce, fertile females known as handmaids are held prisoner for the sole purpose of producing babies.?

As I watched the TV version, it occurred to me that Kentucky Republican legislators like Sen. Lindsey Tichenor, Reps. Josh Calloway and Nancy Tate, and all of those in our Republican supermajority seemingly obsessed with religion as it relates to sex, sexual deviance and public education, should be required to watch at least seasons one and two and then explain what is so appealing about this worldview that seems so eerily close to their own.

I again considered this as I watched Kentucky’s GOP response to former president and presumptive 2024 presidential nominee Donald J. Trump’s conviction on all 34 felony counts related to secretly paying hush money to a porn star (a campaign finance violation) in order to hide the story from voters days before the 2016 election.

Here are some of those statements from the alleged party of family values and the rule of law:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell: “These charges never should have been brought in the first place. I expect the conviction to be overturned on appeal.”

Congressman James Comer: “ … another example of Democrats being relentless in their pursuit to weaponize the courts … and target President Joe Biden’s political opposition.”

Congressman Andy Barr:? “ … corrupt New York district attorney … sham trial … outrageous.”?

Kentucky House GOP primary winner TJ Roberts reposted Alex Stone on X, whose lengthy statement began, “It’s a sad day where we can no longer sing certain lines of ‘God Bless The USA’? without it being true. We aren’t free. This isn’t what freedom looks like. I know that this is cliche and so many people have said it before, but we ALL need to rise up against this evil, tyrannical system that has plagued the United States of America.”

State Sen. Lindsey Tichenor: “ … circus of a trial and verdict … political witch hunt … veil has been pulled back for the world to see clearly. They’re running out of options and growing Trump’s base of support every move they make.”

Retiring state Sen. and longtime Republican Floor Leader Damon Thayer: “ … best described by invoking … the horse who finished second to Secretariat … #Sham.”

A lengthy statement from the Republican Party of Kentucky began, “Today is a shameful day in American history that should send chills down the spines of anyone who respects a fair and impartial judicial system.”

Chills are running down spines, all right, because Donald J. Trump, the national leader of the Republican Party, is now a convicted felon.?

And, lest we forget, that is not all.

He tried to overturn a federal election that he lost, seemingly not caring that his followers attacked U.S. Capitol Police and chanted about hanging his vice president, while he continues to falsely claim the election was stolen.

He took boxes and boxes of sensitive national security documents when he left the White House and, when politely and quietly asked for months, refused to return them, resulting in federal agents having to go and get them.

It was just months ago that Trump was found liable in civil court for sexual abuse and defamation of E. Jean Carroll for which he owes a judgment of more than $90M.

And it is not like Trump’s behavior is new.

Early in his first presidency, a judge awarded a $25 million settlement to students of Trump University, “which was not an actual university but a for-profit seminar series, and former students waged a years-long battle claiming the course misled them with claims of teaching real estate success. The program ended in 2010. Some elderly plaintiffs who paid $20,000-plus in tuition died waiting to receive their checks from the settlement.”

At some point — and, based on initial lawmaker reactions to his conviction on 34 criminal counts, we are now at that point — we have to assume that what the Kentucky Republican Party most reveres in their leader is his sexual debauchery and blatant, nose-thumbing criminality.?

Not a bug but a feature, as the kids say.?

I recommend Kentucky lawmakers watch, at minimum, the first two seasons of “The Handmaid’s Tale” and let us know which parts of the story do not apply or appeal to their quickly evolving, biblically twisted, women are second class citizens, laws are for other people platform.?

But if they continue watching into season three, they might most enjoy the episode in which the Washington Monument is converted into a cross under which hundreds of subservient handmaids — with their mouths now stapled permanently shut — kneel before their corrupt commander and silently pledge allegiance to him.

I promise it will sound familiar.?

Rep. Savannah Maddox speaks on the House floor. (LRC Public Information)

Some of Kentucky’s Republican primaries for the legislature were the latest chapter in a three-decade struggle between traditional, “establishment” elements of the state GOP and those who want it to be more conservative. The latter faction is gaining ground, but is making too much of its modest gains in low-turnout elections influenced by local quirks and other factors.

Rep. Savannah Maddox, whose outspokenness makes her a Frankfort facsimile of U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., called the results “a wholesale rejection of business as usual” in the state capital. Her post on X was retweeted by 4th District U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie; he and U.S. Sen. Rand Paul are thought leaders in the self-defined “Liberty Caucus” of Republican insurgents.

Maddox’s claim hung on two hooks: the 4.4-percentage-point loss of House Agriculture Committee Chair Richard Heath of Mayfield and the overwhelming defeat of moderate Rep. Kilian Timoney of Nicholasville. She would have a stronger case if House Health Services Committee Chair Kim Moser of Taylor Mill had not won renomination (by just 84 votes out of 3,000 cast).

Heath, a veteran legislator who had nearly won two statewide primaries for agriculture commissioner, lost to Liberty-branded challenger Kimberly Holloway by 161 votes out of 3,647 cast. Even Holloway said she was surprised, but Heath was undercut by lawsuits he had taken – a traffic-accident case that some saw as frivolous and one that threw Holloway off the 2022 ballot.

Timoney lost by almost 3 to 1 to Thomas Jefferson – whose name evokes a higher plane than his campaign and an allied group, which sent mailers labeling Timoney “Groomer Killian” and insinuating that he was a sexual predator because he voted against Senate Bill 150, the anti-transgender law of 2023, and a ban on transgender athletes. (Moser became a target when she voted against SB 150 and said, “To the rest of the world who is watching Kentucky: We are not Neanderthals.”)

Some of the money behind Jefferson came from supporters of “gray machines,” gambling devices that were banned by a 2023 bill Timoney sponsored. But the really big money in legislative elections came from establishment sources such as the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce and a moderate-establishment group that labeled itself the Commonwealth Conservative Coalition.

Maddox said the CCC “wasted $846,818 trying to defeat rock-solid incumbents,” and “EVERY incumbent whom the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce endorsed AGAINST won.”

Those establishment groups and Senate leaders backed Ed Gallrein against fellow Shelbyville resident Aaron Reed and incumbent Sen. Adriene Southworth, a right-wing election denier who ran third because of her extreme views and a radical redistricting that gave her all new voters except those in her home county of Anderson.

Reed had wanted to run in 2022 but the redistricting put him in an odd-numbered district in a year when only even-numbered districts were on the ballot. He had been campaigning since 2022, and won Anderson, a key to his victory. Establishment Republicans expect him to be more of a disrupter than she was. He told Joe Sonka of Louisville Public Media, “They kind of have to eat a little bit of crow now, and they have to come to me if they want to bring me into the fold.”

Reed and Jefferson both have Democratic opponents, who could have a chance in an election that will have a much larger turnout than the 13 percent statewide in the primary.

But low turnout does not fully explain the election results. Most of the energy in the Kentucky GOP is clearly with those who want it to move farther right, who reject the leadership of U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, and who look to Paul and Massie for ideological guidance and inspiration. Maddox was probably right when she said after the election that the insurgents’ successes will energize them for the next round of legislative elections in 2026.

What she didn’t say, and what is also likely, is that some incumbent Republicans will likely move further right to fend off intra-party opposition. That could provide openings for Democrats to begin rebuilding their legislative influence, a task that will take time and more leadership than Gov. Andy Beshear has shown in his role as party leader.

One more note about the primary: I engaged in wishful thinking before the election by saying I would be watching the presidential vote for signs that former president Donald Trump’s support might be eroding in the face of his “hush money” trial. But Kentucky Republicans gave only 6.4 percent of their vote to Nikki Haley, who had suspended her campaign but not endorsed Trump. (She said later in the week that she would vote for him.) Her votes and those for Chris Christie (who still hasn’t backed Trump) and “uncommitted” totaled only 11 percent, making Kentucky’s Republican voters look even more Trumpy that West Virginia’s.

This column is republished from the Northern Kentucky Tribune, a nonprofit publication of the Kentucky Center for Public Service Journalism.

Louisville Metro Department of Corrections (Photo by Getty Images)

After a near 12-month reprieve, another person has died in Louisville’s jail.?

Richard Graham, 34, allegedly overdosed in Louisville Metro Department of Corrections’ (LMDC) facility early on the morning of May 19. The staff and others held in the jail attempted to provide aid to Graham but were unable to prevent his death.?

Members of Stakeholders for Change at LMDC have worked in partnership with city officials to enact meaningful change in Louisville’s jail, and there has been progress. The fact that there was reportedly Narcan available to try to save Graham’s life is a testament to the collaborative efforts of the Stakeholders, particularly the Louisville Metro Department of Public Health, and jail officials.

Citizens group demands new medical provider, end of overcrowding at Louisville jail where 12 died

But while all parties involved want to ensure those who are in government custody are treated humanely and with dignity, stakeholders and directly impacted people continue to be left out of important conversations about how to accomplish this goal.?

Clearly, access to contraband in LMDC is a huge issue, as evidenced by Graham’s death and the deaths of several others over the past two years. While LMDC has taken some steps to reduce the amount of contraband making its way into jail cells, there is much more to be done to keep safe those held in custody there.??

City officials MUST include community members and organizations who are working in the criminal legal space in conversations about solutions to systemic issues.?

There is a current opportunity to do just that in the consent decree negotiations between the city and the U.S. Department of Justice. Just last month, in a Courier-Journal article, the Justice Department’s Deputy Chief of Special Litigation Paul Killebrew said: “Every time we have a consent decree, stakeholders come to us with better ideas than the ones that we had […] we then modify the consent decree in order to make it make more sense.”

?It is only fitting, then, that stakeholders be involved early in the process, saving time, effort and, ultimately, lives.?

Barely 24 hours prior to Richard Graham’s death, Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) made another arrest. A world-famous golfer was charged with, among other things, second-degree assault of a police officer, which is a felony. He was released a mere 90 minutes later of his own recognizance, with no bail.?

If Richard Graham had only been detained for 90 minutes, he might still be alive today.

Riverside Cemetery in Perry County, where members of the author’s family are buried. (Photo by Tracy Staley)

This story was first published in The Daily Yonder on May 21, 2021 and is is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

While their friends are cannonballing into the city pool this weekend, my sons will spend the day in an Eastern Kentucky cemetery, placing flowers on the graves of relatives they never knew.

We are going back home on Decoration Day — a folk tradition practiced by generations of Appalachians and Southerners dedicated to visiting cemeteries where their families are buried to clean and decorate their graves, and often to attend a religious service and dinner on the cemetery grounds.

Like most who grew up in Eastern Kentucky, I’ve been practicing various rites of Decoration Day all my life. I loved the reunions, playing with my cousins, and filling plates of food and desserts. Although, I admit: I have often seen the other parts of Decoration Day as an unnecessary effort, one I had little interest in carrying on. What good was there in spending money on artificial flowers for people who would never know you made the gesture?

Yet this year, something changed. Perhaps it was turning 40, or the reckoning of the pandemic, or both, that made Decoration Day seem urgent and important not only to observe, but to pass down to my children.

As my perspective changed, my interest grew and sent me seeking answers, both historical and personal, about the cultural tradition, its origins, and why I felt a sudden urge to drag my three children to a cemetery on their first week of summer vacation.

What Is Decoration Day?

In Ohio, the streets of my small town are lined with tiny American flags. Living near a military base, with many active-duty and retired U.S. Air Force neighbors, I am keenly aware of the reverence paid to Memorial Day. Each year, I’d find myself asking my friends, “We always called it Decoration Day. We decorated everyone’s graves. Did you?” The answer was, with rare exception, no. Secretly, I worried if somehow I had incorrectly celebrated a patriotic holiday. Was this the same as not knowing I needed to illuminate a flag at night or take it down in the rain? Did we get this wrong? Had we expanded it selfishly to include everyone when we should have been only honoring those who died in battle?

For insight, I turned to the book “Decoration Day in the Mountains,” by folklorist Alan Jabbour, founding director of the American Folklife Center?at the?Library of Congress.

Jabbour’s thorough exploration of Decoration Day relieved me of my concerns and filled me with a new appreciation for history and rituals.

Decoration Day, Jabbour wrote, actually inspired Memorial Day, pre-dating any post-Civil War celebration in the South or North. Before the war, Appalachians and Southerners were already practicing what they called Decoration Day, also called “a decoration,”??which involved an annual “cleaning of community cemeteries, decorating them with flowers, and holding a religious service in the cemetery, often with “dinner on the ground.” Families spent weeks leading up to Decoration Day making buds and petals from bright crepe paper, cleaning the cemeteries.

His research also softened my other silent concern that Decoration Day was tied up in celebrating the Confederacy. Jabbour explains that two early and unrelated celebrations of the Confederate dead — one in Charleston, South Carolina, and the other in Petersburg, Virginia — both using the word “decoration” and both using flowers, led Jabbour to the conclude that organizers of the events each drew upon an existing tradition.

After reading Jabbour’s book, I called my grandmother, with whom I had tagged along to the cemetery, reunions and flower-buying expeditions. It was she who had carried the duty of Decoration Day to me, and I wanted to know why.

‘I was kindly like your youngins’

One question from me about Decoration Day transports my grandmother back to her childhood — and ties me to the generations that came before me.

“Can you tell me what you remember about Decoration Day?”

From the old days?

“Yes.”

Hearing her stories made it clear: Decoration Day, for me, was the remembering, linking myself and my children to the generations before us.

As I grow older, and as a pandemic has brought the fragility of life into clear focus, I’m buoyed by the remembering, by the traditions that connect the present, future and past. To quote Alan Jabbour, “At the deepest spiritual level, a decoration is an act of respect for the dead that reaffirms one’s bonds with those who have gone before.”

And so?today, my children will carry the flowers over the hillside to the graves of their great-grandfather, great-great grandparents and other relatives.

We’ll make sure to place a small bouquet on the stone of my grandfather’s little brother, who died as an infant.

They’ll listen to our stories as we walk around the cemetery, and I hope, feel connected to the people who came before them.

They will get hot, tired, and bored.

Like their great-grandmother 80 years before them, they will want us to hurry up and get gone.

But someday, maybe they will want to come back.

Paid family leave would mean fewer parents have to choose between their jobs and caring for their family. (Getty Images)

Sleep deprivation, mental health challenges, breastfeeding, child care, family dynamics and body image are just a few of the challenges many new parents face when expanding their families.?

As a fierce maternal and child health advocate, Louisville Metro Office for Women ambassador and lactation consultant who supports new parents, I know that providing access to paid leave is imperative in addressing these challenges and keeping Kentucky families healthy.?

This is especially true when it comes to breastfeeding. Breastfeeding requires practice, and establishing a healthy milk supply generally takes between six and eight weeks. Countless studies indicate that breastfeeding is directly associated with increased infant bonding and reduced perinatal mood disorders, like postpartum depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder associated with a traumatic birth experience, and — in extreme cases — psychosis.?

Access to paid leave would also address Kentucky’s abysmal maternal mortality rates. Kentucky consistently ranks in the top 10 states for maternal mortality. Lack of access to paid leave is a social determinant of health that directly contributes to these numbers.

Fathers need access to paid leave too. When fathers have paid leave from work, the parental partnership is strengthened, and positive involvement increases parental confidence. Early and continued infant bonding with fathers has lasting and enriching impacts on child behavioral outcomes, academic success, and maternal mental health.

Very few families in Kentucky have access to paid leave. The United States is one of the few countries that does not have federal laws offering parental leave. Thirteen states have parental leave policies, but sadly, Kentucky isn’t one of them.

The good news is there is an opportunity to change this, at least for Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) employees at the board’s budget meeting on Tuesday, May 28.

Paid leave is a common sense investment in the JCPS workforce. Not only does paid leave demonstrate a commitment to employees’ physical and mental health, and the health of their families, it could save the district thousands of dollars.?

Paid leave fosters employee retention, offers work-life balance and invests in the future of retirees through the savings of paid time for sick leave.?

On average, urban school districts spend more than $20,000 on each new hire, on expenses related to separation, recruitment, hiring and training. These investments don’t pay their full dividend when teachers leave within one or two years. Implementing paid leave is imperative to attract and retain faculty and reduce the 26.1% teacher turnover rate.

No new parents should be forced to choose between their job and caring for their family. I challenge the JCPS board to adopt a paid leave policy to foster a better school district, community and Kentucky by ensuring all new parents and children can thrive.

Sen. Max Wise indicates he had received zero requests to meet about his school "guardian" bill. The author is seated behind him. (LRC screenshot)

Near the end of this year’s legislative session, a week before lawmakers recessed for the 10-day veto period, I met with state Sen. Max Wise in his office for about 15 minutes.

We both agreed to speak off-the-record so that we could speak freely. And so we did.

I am not one of Sen. Wise’s constituents, so you could argue he had no reason to meet with me at all. But for the last month I had been writing about and actively fighting the passage of Senate Bill 2, which he was sponsoring, to allow school boards to bring unpaid, volunteer, armed “guardians” — in lieu of school resource officers that schools either could not find or could not afford — into our schools.

I wanted to meet with the senator because I wanted to understand both him and his bill. Was I missing something? Who was Max Wise, the person? Why this bill and why now? Why no funding allocation in a budget year with a surplus? Why not just fund more SROs instead? Did he understand, from a rural perspective, who might apply for these volunteer “guardian” positions? Could I, a rural citizen, help?

SB 2 was filed late, on Feb. 22, and yet it was blessed with the No. 2, indicating this special number had been saved for its “specialness.”?

Senate President Robert Stivers showed up in committee just in time for Sen. Wise’s introduction/presentation of the bill, and it has been my experience that Stivers is rarely in committee. His appearance seemed to indicate to committee members and any citizen not in favor: get on board, we are passing this bill.

And yet, I continued — still continue — to ask, why this bill? And why now?

Contrary to how it looks on paper, it is not necessarily easy for a citizen — even a citizen like me with many published columns about Kentucky policy and politics — to get meetings with lawmakers.

And getting 15 minutes of Sen. Wise’s time was not without drama.

I had written about the fact that, even though Sen. Wise raised his fist in committee to indicate that zero people had asked to meet with him about SB 2, this was not true.

On Sept. 11, I had emailed Sen. Wise about gun violence prevention, closing with, “You will often see me sitting in committee meetings, even in the interim, wearing my red ‘Moms’ shirt. If there is anything I can do to help you, please ask.”

He did not ask.

On Oct. 30, I emailed Sen. Wise again. The subject line read: “On potential firearm legislation in 2024” and I closed the email with, “If you are open to discussing potential firearm legislation for 2024, I would love to talk to you. Please tell me what I can do to help.”?

He did not tell me what I could do to help.

And in his defense, we had never met and knew nothing about each other. Fair enough.

Sen. Wise and I exchanged long emails and agreed to meet.?

This seemed simple. It was not.

When I talked to his secretary — who was extraordinarily helpful, bless her — she first let me know that she had no record of me contacting the office for a meeting. This was true, I told her, I had never called the senator’s office. I had emailed him directly.?

She then said she’d been working diligently on getting together the massive amount of information I’d demanded. What information? I told her this was not true and unnecessary, that I had not asked for any records or information. That, in fact, I had no interest in any records. I simply wanted to meet with Sen. Wise to discuss his bill.

She said she could get me on his calendar for 15 minutes in about 10 days. It was end of session. He was busy. I said I would gladly come anytime that worked for him. I also indicated that I might bring someone with me, to which she said I would have to let her know in advance because the senator’s office is very, very small and, if I brought anyone, even one other person, the meeting would have to be moved.

This seemed … odd. Wise is a long-time senator. How small could his office be?

Days later a fellow gun violence prevention activist emailed the senator about SB 2 and said she looked forward to seeing him at our meeting. This prompted some hoopla, as I had not yet called his office to say I would be bringing her. When I called, I was again told about his very, very small office and that, if another person was coming, we would just have to reschedule for a time after the session was over, maybe in the summer.

Again, this made no sense to me — how small could the man’s office be? — but I agreed to come alone to keep my meeting time, even as I predicted SB 2, with all of its flaws, lack of funding, and obvious questions, would pass as is because it checked all of the right boxes of not doing nothing.?

The day of my meeting with Sen. Wise, I had no other reason to be in Frankfort, but I prepared in advance like I would for any meeting with a legislator, put on a nice suit, and drove to Frankfort and back, all to meet with a state senator for 15 minutes and share my concerns about a bill that we both knew would easily pass.

In the end, SB 2 passed minutes before midnight on the last day before the veto period, with each side given only three minutes for floor arguments.

Three whole minutes.

This is how it works, folks. If our system, such as it is, sounds absurd, it is because it is.

On May 20, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported that Rep. Josh Calloway “helped broker a deal regarding Senate Bill 2… “We were like — I won’t use the word ‘threatened’ — but they wanted Senate Bill 2 bad. I kept being asked, ‘please, will you not call your amendment?’ … Finally, about eight o’clock that evening I was taken off the floor and asked, ‘What would you have to get in order to not call your amendment?’ I said ‘House Bill 278.’” Both Senate Bill 2, without Calloway’s amendment, and House Bill 278 passed that night.”

After reading this story, I immediately texted Rep. Calloway. Can you tell me who kept asking you not to call your amendment? I asked. And who took you off the floor to ask what it would take to get you not to to call your amendment?

I received a “read receipt” before noon on May 20. As of this writing, Rep. Calloway has not responded.

Remember all of this next time you are told to call or write or meet with elected officials because you are concerned about a bill.?

Remember that I emailed the Education Committee and my representative about SB 2 multiple times; exchanged long emails with Sen. Wise; attended Sen. Wise’s school safety task force meetings over last summer and fall; published columns; testified in committee; met with the sponsoring senator.

None of it mattered.?

They wanted SB 2 bad.

Well. They got it.?

And Sen. Wise’s office is not remotely small.?

This commentary is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.?

Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court decision that desegregated public schools, stands in the collective national memory as a turning point in America’s fight for racial justice. But as the U.S. observes its 70th anniversary, Brown also represents something more somber: It ultimately led to thousands of Black teachers losing their jobs.

Before Brown, Black teachers constituted 35% to 50% of the teacher workforce in segregated states. Today, Black people account for just 6.7% of America’s public K-12 teachers, even as Black children make up more than 15% of public school students.

As researchers focused on education policy, teacher diversity, critical research methods and teacher quality, we believe this is an important piece of unfinished business for a country still reckoning with systemic racism. In our view, the best way to fulfill Brown’s promise and confront the national teacher shortage is to hire more teachers of color.

How Black teachers’ ranks rose and fell

Before Brown, Black children often were excluded from public schools or forced into underfunded and unsafe schools. Rather than accept these conditions, many Black communities pooled limited resources to build private schools of their own, buy curricular materials and hire Black teachers.

Conditions were vastly unequal to those for white children at the time, but the presence of Black teachers provided Black children with deep value and care.

Prior to 1954, there were about 82,000 Black teachers in the United States. A decade later, with hundreds of segregated schools closing, more than 38,000 Black teachers had been fired by white school leaders. As the community-run schools for Black children disappeared following the end of legalized segregation, so too did the Black educators who staffed them.

Brown had mandated integration for students but said nothing of their educators.

The importance of Black teachers

In the decades since, parents, social justice advocates and researchers have documented the importance of teachers of color and pleaded for teacher workforce diversity. They argue that Black teachers support student learning and social and emotional development of children of color in ways that lead to better outcomes.

One study found the presence of Black math teachers increased the likelihood that Black students enroll in rigorous math classes. Another found that Black students taught by at least one Black teacher from kindergarten through third grade were 13% more likely to graduate from high school and 19% more likely to attend college than same-race peers who did not have a Black teacher.

Still, the teacher workforce remains stubbornly white-dominated. Why? Research shows problematic certification measures, adverse working conditions and discriminatory hiring practices contribute to keeping Black people from becoming teachers or keeping their teaching positions.

Certification exams are barriers to entry

Obtaining a professional license is a critical milestone in a teacher’s career. Yet licensure policies and exams long have kept Black teachers out, similar to race-based policies such as literacy tests that once prevented Black people from voting in the segregated South.

By several measures, standardized tests have been found to be biased against people of color. Research shows they contain culturally biased questions that privilege white test-takers.

What’s more, certification and licensing exams prevent the entry of Black people into teaching and determine which teachers are retained. As a result, from 1984 to 1989, about 21,500 Black teachers lost their jobs, according to one study of the impact of reliance on licensure exams and policies.

This gatekeeping function is especially troublesome because other studies show exam results are poor predictors of teacher effectiveness. In one study, Black teachers in North Carolina with low exam scores nonetheless had positive outcomes on Black student achievement.

Difficult work conditions lead to turnover

Black teachers have the highest rate of turnover among teachers, both white and nonwhite. When asked to reflect on their careers, longtime Black teachers say they face constant racist microaggressions from fellow teachers, non-Black parents and district personnel.

Black male teachers in particular say their expertise is overlooked and that they are forced to play disciplinarian for Black boys. Other studies show Black teachers are systematically sorted into schools with fewer resources, chronic turnover and leadership instability.

Last-in-first-out hiring policies exacerbate the issue. Layoffs of this nature disproportionately affect the students most often taught by beginning teachers and teachers of color.

All of this makes teaching a precarious profession for Black educators.

Discriminatory hiring practices

Teacher hiring practices have made this cycle, and they can break it, too.

One study found equally qualified Black teacher applicants receive fewer job offers than white candidates. When hired, Black teachers are more likely to be selected by principals of color, and they, too, are a disproportionately small percentage of school leaders.

Principals say they seek teachers who best fit their school culture. Yet research shows that definitions of “fit” rely on subjective traits and personal attributes, and often this means excluding Black teachers.

The nation faces a massive teacher shortage, but there is no shortage of potential teachers of color. Seven decades after Brown, it is a lack of willingness to hire and retain them that is missing.

The details are still a bit sketchy, but it is clear that attorneys representing the parties in Kentucky’s pension litigation will return to Franklin Circuit Court for a hearing in Tia Taylor, et al. v. KKR? & Co, LP, et al. on Monday after Judge Thomas Wingate gave the green light for the case(s) to proceed.?

In a nutshell, the case pits state pensioner Davids against hedge fund/private equity Goliaths in an action seeking damages “from some of the biggest names in finances,” based on alleged “breaches of fiduciary duty and other bad conduct in the sale and management of custom hedge funds” in relation to the woefully underfunded Kentucky state pension fund.?

The playing field has been leveled, at least to some extent, by the pensioners’ legal team —? led, writes finance and economics authority Yves Smith, “by Michelle Lerach, with her formidable and controversial husband, one-time top securities litigator Bill Lerach.” But for their dogged pursuit of the financial giants — against ostensibly overwhelming odds — the cases might have ended several years ago.?

In her blog “Naked Capitalism,” Smith writes: ?“After yet another long detour from the original case, Mayberry v. KKR, first filed in 2017 and now replaced by overlapping new actions, Judge Wingate has finally completed what must have been the painful process of evaluating the merits of a very large number of motions to dismiss.”

On May 1, Judge Wingate “issued orders on the extremely large number of motions to dismiss. The magnitude of that task, plus getting his arms around the very large body of past filings (generated before Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd recused himself in 2022) presumably accounted for the substantial delay. The compact orders are well reasoned,” Smith writes. “They seem even more credible by rejecting the idea that the Attorney General could properly represent the Tier 3 plaintiffs, and denying the motions to dismiss of the hugely powerful defendants, KKR, Blackstone, PAAMCO, and private equity kingpins Henry Kravis, George Roberts, Steve Schwarzman, and Tomlinson Hill personally.”

“The stakes here are much higher than the potentially meaty recoveries. Private equity and hedge funds fetishize secrecy because, too often, their conduct will not stand up to scrutiny. The giant fund managers are almost certain to be most afraid of discovery, since the sharp practices they used with Kentucky Retirement Systems were very likely to have been replicated at other public pension funds. Even the limited discovery so far uncovered more misconduct and allowed the plaintiffs to add to their claims,” Smith writes.

Our interest in the culture of secrecy that pervades Kentucky’s pension system and the ensuing litigation — aimed, at least in part, at avoiding oversight and accountability — began with coverage in the late, great “Insider Louisville,” by reporter Joe Sonka, of the? retirement system’s refusal to comply with Senate Bill 2, enacted in 2017. That law required the retirement systems “to improve transparency regarding the administration of the (retirement) systems” by posting on its website the contracts for the investment managers of the Kentucky Retirement Systems (KRS) and the Teachers’ Retirement Systems (TRS).

Sonka reported that “nearly 100 contracts have not been posted to the pension plans’ respective websites, and many of those that have been posted are heavily redacted.” The retirement systems deferred to the predictably self-serving investment managers in determining what would and would not be posted — state law notwithstanding.?

A few years later, we were outraged by the refusal of the retirement systems, now reconfigured under the Kentucky Public Pension Authority umbrella, to release a copy of a $1.2 million taxpayer funded Calcaterra Pollack consultant’s report resulting from an investigation of “‘any improper or illegal activities’ in billions of dollars in hedge fund deals that led to the lawsuits alleging wrongdoing.”

In a scathing opinion, Franklin Circuit Court Judge Phillip Shepherd ordered release of the report. He reasoned:

“A full review of the Calcaterra Pollack report gives rise to questions as to whether the purpose and intent of the report was to fully expose all the relevant facts (and to determine if the KPPA and its employees made mistakes), or if the report was commissioned to cover up or minimize those mistakes in an effort to convince the (attorney general) to not pursue claims that could prove embarrassing to the current or former management of KPPA.”

“The public paid $1.2 million for this report,” Shepherd ruled, “(t)he public has a right to know its contents and decide if it got what it paid for.”

Secrecy? You bet! And that is why this complex litigation commands our attention.?

Plaintiffs/pensioners’ attorneys reacted swiftly to Judge Wingate’s May 1 orders rejecting defendants/financial investment monoliths’ slew of motions to dismiss.

Within days, pensioners’ counsel filed a motion for a hearing before Judge Wingate. Scheduled for 9 a.m. Monday, May 20, that hearing will, we understand, address at least in part pensioners’ motion for open proceedings and open discovery — that thing most vigorously resisted by defendants.?

By any measure, Monday’s hearing is the critical next step in determining what direction the litigation will take and to how much the public will be privy.?

Our minds return to the Boston Globe/STAT’s successful legal battle to unseal discovery in Kentucky’s Purdue Pharma OxyContin litigation in 2018.

Writing for the appellate panel in a 72-page opinion that resembled a treatise on public access to court records, but that was inexplicably depublished by the Kentucky Supreme Court, Judge Glenn Acree wrote:

“Kentucky’s presumption of public access to court records is broad because ‘every citizen and taxpayer has an interest in the manner in which the government is operated (and to) . . . determine whether public officials are properly fulfilling the functions of their office . . . ‘ Every claim of the Commonwealth against another, including the claim against Purdue, is the property of the people regarding which the public has a legitimate concern. On that basis, the right of access supersedes even the right to privacy (‘right of privacy does not extend to affairs with which the public has a legitimate concern.'”)

With the exception of the Purdue Pharma OxyContin litigation, we can conceive of no public issue in which Kentucky’s citizens and taxpayers have a greater — or more “legitimate” — interest and financial stake than Kentucky’s state pension. This fact clearly militates in favor of openness in the proceedings and records produced in discovery.

Tuesday is primary Election Day in Kentucky. (Getty Images)

When Mitch McConnell voted not to convict Donald Trump on impeachment for the assault on the Capitol, the Senate Republican leader excused himself on grounds that Trump had left office. That was an untested legal theory; McConnell had already tested the politics of his members, and voted with most of them.

But then he laid the wood to Trump, saying the rioters “did this because they’d been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on earth,” who displayed “a disgraceful dereliction of duty. . . . There’s no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.”

After making his legal argument that impeachment was about removal and Trump’s term had ended, McConnell said Trump “didn’t get away with anything, yet. Yet. We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one.”

McConnell clearly expected President Biden’s Justice Department to hold Trump accountable, and clearly hoped that would keep Trump from seeking another term. But Attorney General Merrick Garland (kept off the Supreme Court by McConnell) dithered, and now the only trial Trump may endure is the current one in New York over “hush money.” He is Republicans’ presumptive nominee, so McConnell has endorsed him, doing what he sees as a party leader’s duty.

But that endorsement is about as tepid as an endorsement can get, and many of McConnell’s fellow Kentucky Republicans have similar antipathy to Trump. Yes, they are surely in the minority; Kentucky was one of Trump’s best states in the last two elections, and McConnell’s antipathy is unlikely to change that. He remains the most unpopular U.S. senator in his own state, according to first-quarter polling by Morning Consult.

But now that Trump has finally been forced to the bar of justice, he is showing greater weakness among Republican voters. On April 23, the day testimony in his trial began, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who has suspended her campaign, got 16.5 percent of the vote in Pennsylvania’s primary — better than she did in any of the four primaries held on April 2, even though most of those had allowed registered independents to vote. On May 7, in Indiana’s open-to-all-voters primary, Haley did even better, getting 22%. And on May 14, she got 20% in Maryland, 9.4% in West Virginia and 18% in Nebraska (which, unlike the others, barred independents from voting).

My gut, heart and head tell me that most Republicans who have voted or will vote for Nikki Haley cannot abide Trump and are unlikely to vote for him in the fall. So I’ll be watching Kentucky Republicans closely and hopefully on Tuesday night. ? ?

On Tuesday, May 21, Trump’s trial will be winding down and Kentucky will conclude a primary that is open only to registered Republicans, so it could be an even better barometer of long-term Republican antipathy toward Trump. Kentucky was often a bellwether state in presidential races, until its conservative Democrats tired of their party’s increasing social liberalism, but it remains near the mainstream; it recently reelected a Democratic governor and rejected an anti-abortion amendment to the state Constitution.

Porn star Stormy Daniels’ graphic testimony at trial “underscored Trump’s challenges with women voters, which some GOP lawmakers view as his biggest liability heading into November,” Alex Bolton of The Hill noted in a report that quoted several Republican senators. “A troubling sign for Trump is that Republicans who show up to vote in primaries tend to be consistent voters, and as such are a key piece of the GOP base. While they are unlikely to vote for Biden, many of them may simply stay home in November.”

In Kentucky, some Republicans might see staying home as abandonment of their party, but they could still go to the polls and not vote for president. They could rationalize and say that they’re not abandoning their party, but that it has abandoned them by becoming a personality cult for a lying egomaniac with no respect for the rule of law. As one such Republican told me, “People shouldn’t leave the church because they don’t like the preacher.”

Trump is no preacher, of course. His latest “sermon,” at a rally on the Jersey shore, was vulgar, profane and occasionally unhinged. He yelled at journalists, “You guys suck. F— fake news. Go f— yourselves.”

Many Kentuckians are offended by such words, but not by such feelings. Trump’s anti-elite, populist message still appeals to many who want simple solutions to complex problems and think the political system is so corrupt that whatever corruption Trump adds to it doesn’t matter. For him and them, nothing’s on the level.

I hope that doesn’t describe the majority of Republicans, my partisans of heritage, but I fear it does. As for the remainder, my gut, heart and head tell me that most Republicans who have voted or will vote for Nikki Haley cannot abide Trump and are unlikely to vote for him in the fall. So I’ll be watching Kentucky Republicans closely and hopefully on Tuesday night.

This column is republished from the Northern Kentucky Tribune, a nonprofit publication of the Kentucky Center for Public Service Journalism.

You can’t turn on the news, open an online newspaper, or scroll social media without seeing Trump’s name and/or picture, though cable TV — from CNN to MSNBC to FOX — might be the worst. Merchandise featuring the former president was sold at a Trump rally at Big League Dreams stadium in Las Vegas. (Photo by Jeniffer Solis/Nevada Current)

One morning during the 2024 legislative session, I walked out of a meeting about Senate Bill 2 — putting armed guardians in lieu of fully-trained school resource officers in our schools, with no budget allocation — and ran into a familiar lawmaker and two interns waiting for the elevator.?

“I was just saying how all of us know how we’re going to vote before going into committee meetings,” the lawmaker said to me, both interns looking puzzled. The lawmaker continued explaining that leadership drives the bills they want, that bill sponsors know they have the votes to get out of committee before they testify or present their bills, and that nothing is a surprise.?

I joined the conversation to express, as a citizen, how infuriating this is. The young interns shook their heads in disbelief, but this is how it works.?

So much is predetermined. And it is all performance.

The day before primary voting began, I ran into a longtime, Chamber of Commerce-style, Anderson County Republican and asked for his thoughts on our state Senate primary, a three-way race among Adrienne Southworth (incumbent), Ed Gallrein and Aaron Reed.?

I pointed out that Reed, with his cowboy hat and giant signs around town, seems to be making the biggest splash, and our conversation circled around to the current state of GOP politics: Our three candidates are all basically the same — Trump loyalists, election and/or vaccine deniers — and leaning far enough right that none would have qualified as a normal conservative prior to 2016 and Donald Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party.

What stands out is not policy, but performance.

Watching Trump on trial for hush money payments (potential campaign finance violations) to a porn star, I’ve come to realize how blinded I have been about the former president, and current presumptive nominee, as far back as the Access Hollywood Tape.?

To refresh your memory, and mine, here is a transcript of the audio/video, which opens thus: “WARNING: This video contains language that some may find offensive.”

“I moved on her, and I failed. I’ll admit it. I did try and f—- her. She was married…,” and then, “You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful, I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the p—-. You can do anything.”

From 2016 on, I was so focused on the “grab them by the p—- part that I missed the point that appealed, and continues to appeal, to many Republican voters. “When you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything.”?

Trump might have been a TV star with “The Apprentice” leading up to the 2016 election, but that pales in comparison to today. You can’t turn on the news, open an online newspaper, or scroll social media without seeing Trump’s name and/or picture, though cable TV — from CNN to MSNBC to FOX — might be the worst.

It’s like watching the O.J. Simpson white Bronco chase circa 1994 on a never-ending loop. We can’t take our eyes off of it, even though nothing new ever happens. We are transfixed, not by breaking news but by the outlandishness of the constant, over the top performances.

Republicans voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 for the same reasons they will vote for him in 2024. He is the ultimate American celebrity; an obsession on the right and the left; the big middle finger to liberalism; the rule-snubbing blowhard voters wish they could be in their boring, restricted, church-going, law-abiding lives; their hero; their definition of what it means to be a man.

If Adrienne Southworth loses her reelection bid, I suspect it will be less about policy differences than the fact that, because she talks back and has refused to fall in line with Republican leadership in Frankfort, they redistricted her away from her own voting base.?

Gallrein and Reed, both loudly touting their Navy Seal credentials in next door Shelby County, where GOP voters almost double those in Southworth’s original Anderson, will be more appealing to the Trump voter looking for the man with the biggest hat.?

Agree or disagree with Southworth — and I disagree with her on all policy — the fact is that more than a few times she has been less than deferential, therefore displeasing, to leaders in the Frankfort Frat House.?

But the bigger than life, Navy Seal he-men? Military retirees more likely to fall in line and take orders from leadership? Check and check!?

It’s the same way committee meetings work. Leadership has already chosen winners and losers and what happens is 100% based on what those men can sell as tough enough, as man enough, in a Trump-dominated election year.

I can see now, for example, that Senate Bill 2 — sponsored by leadership darling Sen. Max Wise, and a bill that I followed and fought in good faith — was one of those bills blessed with passage long before it ever saw its first committee meeting, which was nothing more than a formality.?

If the Republican Party is not yet dead, it is a five o’clock shadow of itself. The GOP goal, at the state and national level, is not governing. The goal is getting the most time on stage.

If you’re a star, they let you do it, you can do anything, even if it’s driving nail after nail in the coffin of your own party.

University of Kentucky freshmen kicked off the academic year at Kroger Field, August 2023. (Photo by Mark Cornelison | UK Photo)

In a recent meeting with several employers from across the country who hire our graduates, I heard many of the same themes.

Our students are smart and capable. They are prepared. They have the technical skills necessary to do the job, working in what are often complex fields.

But in many cases, I was told in today’s environment, employers need more of what are often called soft skills – the ability to communicate and present, work in teams and navigate job expectations as well as challenging situations and personalities.

University of Kentucky Senate votes no confidence in president over governance changes

It was timely and important feedback. Our Board of Trustees has directed me and our campus to work quickly and intentionally to accelerate our progress in advancing the state. How we prepare students for a growing workforce, and how we prepare more of them, is central to that effort. So, too, is how our institution can move quickly and responsively when the state asks us to do and be more.?

That’s why as part of our work to accelerate Kentucky’s progress, the Board also asked us to closely examine the rules and regulations that guide so much of our work. The rules can either position us for progress or stymie it.

Our Board knew how we would respond. We’ve asked more of our community over the last decade. And every time we have delivered.?

We are educating and graduating more students than ever before, extending service further across our state and world, healing more people with more complex illnesses and doing more research that directly addresses our state’s biggest and most important challenges.

But the needs are only growing. There are more economic opportunities than at any time since I’ve been here, but there’s also a lack of skilled workers, prepared for the 21st century jobs being recruited to Kentucky. We are extending hope and healing to more patients – treating more people than at any time in our hospitals and clinics – but health outcomes in our state still lag. Our research and service capacity must grow to address these issues as well.?

As I have talked to hundreds of people across our campus, I heard repeatedly the desire to be more involved, but the inability to do it under the current rules and governance structures.

Too often, the voices of students and staff, specifically, were discounted or not heard at all in our current governance processes and structures. And too many faculty feel hamstrung by cumbersome rules and byzantine processes.?

I can’t unhear what I’ve heard from our people. And we should be willing to examine what we do and how we can improve.

To be sure, on a campus, members of the community should debate and disagree. Dialogue – whether in support or opposition – almost always leads to better outcomes.

After all, this process of reform through revision isn’t about blaming anyone. It’s about empowering our people and optimizing our processes so we can be aligned with the state’s needs and priorities.

As one staff member told me, “it’s not about your class, it’s about your role.” It’s time that our rules and structures better reflect that. Everyone has something to offer – if given the chance.

That means adding more voices to the table and it means giving more authority to those closest to the decisions around issues like the composition of the curriculum. Faculty at the college level know best what’s happening in their fields and how to be more responsive to our state’s needs.?

A professor’s wake-up call to University of Kentucky president and trustees

The revisions our Board of Trustees gave initial approval to last month clarify and streamline the rules, making authority and responsibilities easier to understand and approvals for new programs more manageable to negotiate.

The suggestion that somehow faculty tomorrow won’t be able to determine grading policies or the language on a course plan is simply inaccurate. Those kinds of basic functions that are part of how faculty manage the curriculum won’t change, nor will our commitment to critical concepts like academic freedom and the essential nature of tenure in that.?

Growing strategically to enroll, prepare and graduate more students for success in careers and life also is not, as some on these pages have suggested, antithetical to our values.

Those are our values. Change can be uncomfortable. That’s why it’s called growing pains.?

Kentucky, though, needs us now to accelerate our progress. And our Board – informed by what our campus has said in community conversations with hundreds of people – is working to reform the rules so we can do more on behalf of the state we were created to serve. That is our calling. It is a moment that I’m confident we will meet.

Senate Majority Floor Leader Damon Thayer, R-Georgetown. (LRC Public Information)

In an April 21 KET interview, GOP Senate leader Damon Thayer was asked to define the term “normal Republican.”

“Someone who wants to help put the fire out that’s burning in America today,” he said, adding that he is “tired of the jokers,” only to add this minutes later: “I don’t think that President Trump is the problem, but I do think his style of politics exacerbated the situation and made it appear to be a more ugly and dirty and, yeah, by the way I’m voting for Donald Trump for president in November.”

This is the same Donald Trump currently sitting a courtroom every day, the one who vows to use his next presidential term to exact punishment on perceived rivals and, according to his latest interview with Time magazine, “uses crime as a cudgel, painting urban America as a savage hell-scape even though violent crime has declined in recent years, with homicides sinking 6% in 2022 and 13% in 2023, according to the FBI” even as he personally “faces dozens of felony charges, including for election interference, conspiracy to defraud the United States, willful retention of national-security secrets, and falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments” to a porn star prior his 2016 election.

I apologize, Kentucky

In what political dystopia is Trump not one of the jokers to be tired of??

How did we get here?

As recently as a few years ago, there was a clear, two-way split in the Republican Party of Kentucky. Normal Republicans claimed the conservative, chamber of commerce-style party of Ronald Reagan while, flipping over the table, Trump Republicans bucked all tradition.

Today, there are three, very different and competing factions of Kentucky Republicans: Conservatives (in the tradition of Reagan), Trump’s MAGA group, and the Liberty Party.?

We should therefore disabuse ourselves of the notion that there is one, big Republican supermajority in Frankfort. There is not. If anything, that supermajority is rotting from the inside out, and, like at the building of Frankenstein’s monster, leadership seems both stunned and in denial at their own creation.

In the same April 21 KET interview, Thayer gleefully points out that Kentucky’s Democratic Party “failed to field candidates in a majority of House seats,” conveniently failing to explain why so many “normal Republicans” are also taking a hard pass at running for office.?

Why are the normals not running? The very real dangers, to themselves and to their families, in a Trump-dominated state where political candidates who do not pledge blind fealty to Donald Trump become a target of the violence-hungry, gun-obsessed, MAGA and Liberty-fringe embraced and emboldened by Trump and his allies.

Let’s be clear. If you are voting for Trump or supporting Trump’s policies — such as they are, no thinking person believes he has actual policies any more than they believe he has read the U.S. Constitution or the bibles he’s now hawking to pay his legal fees — you are a Trump Republican.

What Thayer, the state Senate’s majority floor leader, either does not realize or cannot yet admit is that he is as responsible for building the monster and setting the Trumpian political fire — the one he now claims he wants to put out — as anyone, selling his Reagan card on the black market long ago in exchange for anyone labeling themselves with an “R” to fill seats so that he could, in turn, declare the current supermajority as his personal achievement and legacy.

Congratulations, I guess?

In this respect, departing Senate floor leader Thayer is no different than Newt Gingrich who, when he resigned his speakership decades ago, said about the new-school Republicans he himself ushered into power, “I am not willing to preside over people who are cannibals.”

Or, as historian George Packer wrote about Gingrich on page 24 of his National Book Award winner, “The Unwinding”:? “Whether he ever truly believed his own rhetoric, the generation he brought to power fervently did. He gave them mustard gas and they used it on every conceivable enemy, including him.”

Listening to Thayer’s obvious — or maybe oblivious — disconnect between insisting he is dedicated to dousing Trumpian wildfires while also voting for Trump, I am reminded of Mr. Magoo, the bumbling, near-sighted cartoon character who goes happily about his daily routine while leaving a trail of chaos and destruction behind for others to clean up.?

Thayer was right when he said there are fires burning in America today.?

What he fails to do is take responsibility.?

Thayer will be gone at the end of this year, leaving regular, everyday Kentuckians who are suffering and will suffer for decades to clean up the mess and the monster he helped create.

Some legacy.

The campus of the University of Kentucky, where trustees are set to give final consideration to controversial internal governance changes on Friday. (Photo by Mark Cornelison | UK Photo)

On Monday, the University of Kentucky’s University Senate passed a vote of no confidence in President Eli Capilouto. In response, both Dr. Capilouto and the chair of the Board of Trustees, Dr. Britt Brockman, released separate statements doubling down on the controversial plan to strip the Senate of its oversight over core academic matters. President Capilouto’s email message to the university community even ended on an ominous note: “That is the expectation of our Board, which has directed this effort to accelerate our progress in advancing Kentucky. … And believe me, that is what I intend to do.”

There is no indication here that the president has learned from his mistakes. It is not a few disgruntled faculty who have reservations about the proposed changes to the university’s governance structures. The vote of no confidence passed with 58 votes against 24, with 11 abstentions.

This means that President Capilouto and the board that is backing him — “unequivocally” even — have lost the good will of a large majority of UK’s faculty. They will have to implement their plan against the objections of most of those who teach UK’s classes and conduct its research. “Believe me, that is what I intend to do.” Seriously?

The University Senate’s no-confidence resolution focuses on the manner in which the proposed changes were fast-tracked without proper consultation — despite the fact that the Senate repeatedly signaled its willingness to engage in conversations about how its procedures could be improved. But there are several other aspects of “Project Accelerate” that are equally ill-advised. Let me point out three.

First, the president and Board of Trustees intend to strip the faculty of its authority in academic matters: decisions on the content of programs, on admission and graduation standards, approval of new programs or discontinuation of existing ones, and so forth. An analogy of this plan would be the idea to deprive a baker of the authority to decide what kinds of bread, cakes, and cookies to bake, and to shift this authority to the baker’s support staff. Or the idea to let management decide how fast to build airplanes, rather than to trust the judgment of the engineers on the ground who are intimately familiar with the complicated technology that goes into a safely constructed flying machine. Does the last example sound familiar? It should. This is what happened at Boeing — with the tragic results that we know.?

The bakers and engineers of a university are its faculty. The notion that faculty should have a merely advisory role in relation to the university’s core academic operations shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what a university is: it is an educational institution, which is why educators need to be at the center of how it is run. (By the way, this is not a revolutionary idea: when the first universities were founded in Europe some 700 years ago, this is how they were designed to function.)

My second point concerns the notion that, in order to serve the Commonwealth of Kentucky, UK needs to “accelerate” and do “more” of everything. “More” isn’t necessarily better, nor is it a good idea, in this age of breathless exhaustion, to speed everything up. We need to stop and think where our civilization is going, rather than confusing progress with heedless rushing toward the abyss.

Not so long ago, under President Lee Todd, the commonwealth and its flagship university agreed that UK should, by 2020, become one of the nation’s 20 leading public research universities. The emphasis then was on quality, not quantity. President Todd is quoted as saying, “As the state’s flagship institution, UK is mindful of its responsibility to help all Kentuckians. Our land-grant mission calls on us to make a positive impact across the state. We need to be an education leader, while remaining accessible to all Kentuckians. We need to be a cultural leader, sharing new ideas and opportunities across the state. And we need to be leading Kentucky’s charge into the new economy. We are the catalyst for a new Commonwealth.” Ironically, this statement remains on UK’s website to the present day.

Thirdly and finally, UK’s President and Board of Trustees have taken to referring to UK as “Kentucky’s university.” UK is not Kentucky’s university. It is Kentucky’s flagship university. Its mission is to be the leader in higher education in the commonwealth, not to squeeze the life out of the other state universities by trying to do what they are already doing and siphoning off their students. These local universities are vital to the health of Kentucky’s regions.

Wake up, President Capilouto! Wake up, trustees! There is still time to stop your wrong-headed reform of UK’s governance structures, and to work together for a better UK and better life in the commonwealth.????

Ala Hassan speaks into a megaphone during a solidarity rally for Gaza on May 1, 2024, outside the William T. Young Library at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Matthew Mueller)

Activism on behalf of Gaza’s Palestinian population made its way to Lexington last week, in the form of a rally near the University of Kentucky’s main library.

The modest crowd, estimated to number under 300, engaged in no violence, no vandalism, and no threatening behavior. No one faced arrest, nor did counter protestors accost them.

Rather than camping out indefinitely on the lawn, with all of the property damage such an encampment entails, participants communicated their message, then disbanded within a couple of hours — preventing no one else from enjoying use of campus (whether for learning, leisure or anything in between).

My description of the UK rally sounds extraordinary, compared to what’s appeared in the news and over social media about protest activity elsewhere. But it isn’t. It describes, more or less, what’s occurred in most communities where activists have sought to soften the U.S. government’s pro-Israel policies.

What’s extraordinary are the destructive (if not violent) protests that have taken place at a handful of elite institutions. Those isolated incidents loom large in the public’s mind because of biases in how information reaches us.

The camera lies

People tend to believe what they see, but because no device can capture everything taking place everywhere at every time, the camera necessarily lies.

At first blush, it might seem as though audiences are less vulnerable to manipulation than they used to be.

We no longer require a well-positioned camera crew — with lights blazing and film rolling — to see political events. Citizens now walk around with high-resolution cameras embedded in their smartphones. When something big happens, amateur videographers record it.

Nor are audiences dependent on what media organizations consider newsworthy. Almost anyone can be an amateur news producer thanks to social-media apps.

Nevertheless, we still witness political events secondhand, after filters determine which images reach our gaze. And political strategists know how to exploit those filters to create propaganda.

Preparing a presidential address, for example, might seem a simple matter of speechwriting. But viewers process images as well as words. A president’s handlers know that remote audiences will see everything in the camera frame, but nothing outside of that rectangle. So ample planning goes into shaping a speech’s backdrop. An “advance team” will populate the stage with loyalists who shout, clap, and wave flags. That entourage might be diverse, or instead heavy on laborers or soldiers, depending on the message the White House hopes to convey.

Image manipulation isn’t restricted to national politics. When Gov. Andy Beshear spoke at Kentucky’s fabled Fancy Farm last year, he didn’t arrive with just his wife and a memorized speech. Instead, to highlight Beshear’s popularity, Democrats trucked in a small army of activists from Lexington and Louisville. Their team wore matching T-shirts to stand out visually, with scripted cheers to stand out audibly. To ensure their visibility, team leaders (communicating over walkie-talkies) shepherded the student activists around the picnic grounds.

Protests rely on image creation and manipulation more than most forms of political activity. The challenge faced by protestors is to do something odd or disruptive — hoping to wake a dormant public — yet to do it in a way that wins sympathy and tilts the balance of power their way.

Orchestrating disruptive behavior has become easier with the proliferation of consumer electronics. Campus organizers can order materials, like tents and locks, online in bulk to support a demonstration. They can summon outsiders to bulk up their numbers or donate supplies.

Once organizers generate video that makes their cause look popular, social-media apps distribute the publicity to a wider audience. It can become a “trending” topic, so that social-media users are fed a steady diet of related content, amplifying the protest’s apparent scope and significance.

What’s harder for organizers to do is control messaging.

Like the traditional journalists they supplanted, online content generators carve up reality into bite-sized pieces of news. These news events — what one historian called “pseudo-events” — usually emphasize the angry, the ugly, the scary, the extreme.

With so many cameras roving around, risk is high that protestors (and counter protestors) will reveal their ignorance, their intolerance, their sense of privilege, their violence, maybe even their murderous impulses.

Such content “goes viral” and squanders sympathy.

An impression of prevailing violence

It’s easier than ever for activists to attract attention, but harder to ensure the attention is positive. We see both biases at work with anti-Israel protests supposedly “sweeping” American universities.

The “campus unrest” storyline exaggerates the turmoil, giving an inflated impression of both how dangerous campuses have become and how many students prioritize Middle Eastern politics.

At some elite universities, malevolent actors have exploited the discord as an excuse to unleash hateful impulses – including antisemitism (which Jewish Americans have good reason to fear).

Cameras zoom in on those protestors, especially violent or outlandish ones, ignoring what most students are doing outside the frame.

Berkeley’s oft-discussed pro-Palestinian encampment, for example, amounts to a relatively small group that’s erected tents in front of one administration building. Off camera, Berkeley undergrads go about their days much as they did last year: working, studying, socializing and consuming.

Strolling Berkeley’s campus recently, after end-of-semester partying, what I saw sweeping the campus was litter, not radicalism. A visitor to Berkeley this Saturday would have found more students on stage performing Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” than in the Spring protest camp.

Outside of such elite institutions, radical politics is an even lower priority.

In the days before UK’s rally, I noticed I hadn’t seen anything from the Bluegrass in a while, so I searched Twitter/X for “Kentucky.”?

And it became immediately apparent that online Kentuckians weren’t focused on politics, Middle Eastern or otherwise. They were focused on their religion — by which I mean, of course, basketball. I had to wade through dozens of posts debating UK’s new coach before I finally found a tweet related to anything else.

No surprise that UK’s rally attracted modest participation.

Kentucky isn’t unique in this respect. Professors at other state schools have sought to convey the same message, including political scientists at institutions such as Illinois and Texas A&M. A Louisiana Tech historian asked his students if they were following the Columbia University protests; they “looked at me like I had nine heads.”

Bad news for Biden?

For politically aware Americans right now, campus unrest — as framed visually by cameras and rhetorically by social-media influencers — appears to be what literally everybody is doing or talking about.

Neither conservatives nor progressives want you to hear that campus unrest is more isolated than it seems.

Conservatives don’t want you to hear it because any perception university people are going crazy supports their narratives.

Progressives don’t want you to hear it because they sympathize with student activists — they want to believe protest is widespread — and, well, they’re out of touch and don’t realize how much campus unrest helps the right.

Such conflict within the Democratic Party’s core constituency would be bad news for President Biden, who’s already struggling with swing voters.

The good news is, the whole world isn’t really watching.

And by the time the general election kicks in, campus radicals no longer will be disrupting graduation ceremonies. They’ll likely have drifted off to summer break.

Alyssa Rigney speaks to a rally in solidarity with Gaza on May 1, 2024, on the lawn of the William T. Young Library at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Matthew Mueller)

LEXINGTON — History has a way of vindicating student protests — civil rights, Vietnam, apartheid — but it can take a while.

I was thinking about this while trudging up Woodland Avenue on a sunny afternoon last week to a pro-Palestinian rally at the University of Kentucky.?

Along the way I passed a group of college women setting up lounge chairs in a front yard and hoisting a sign that said “You Honk We Drink.” (Youth is a many-splendored thing, especially when you’ve just finished your last exam of the semester.)

In the shade of the parking lot, I asked if I could take a photo of Mousa and Mags Samaan of Lexington as the father helped his teen daughter don her keffiyeh. The Samaans explained that the black and white scarf is a symbol of Palestinian solidarity.?

Lexington has large, vibrant Arab and Jewish communities that enrich the city in many ways and who share similar histories of both discrimination and success in Kentucky. How painful it must be to see ancient homelands torn by ethnic violence and to again feel the threat of uninformed bias and ugly stereotypes.

At the rally, sponsored by a group called Lex4Palestine, I was surprised by how many students declined to be interviewed or even give their names. Many wore masks of the type made common by the pandemic. One young woman explained she was trying to protect her identity while also respecting others’ health.

(“Aha,” I thought the next morning when the New York Times published “In an Online World, a New Generation of Protesters Chooses Anonymity.” Fear of online harassment — doxing — and, specifically, fear of being branded antisemitic, is prompting many protesters on campuses to hide their identities, the Times reported.)

I was directed to the organizing coalition’s media liaison, Ben Bandy, who wore a yarmulke and a Star of David on a thin chain. Bandy, a 2022 UK grad from Atlanta now working in Lexington, told me it’s “very, very frustrating” when people equate opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza with antisemitism. “When I think about my Jewish values, I think of treating each other with kindness, not of a genocide that’s killed tens of thousands.”

Later, Bandy got the biggest cheer of any speaker and told the crowd, “I’m a Jew and I’m against the ongoing genocide in Gaza.”

I spoke to Joanne and Charlie Martha of Lexington who are in their 60s and Palestinians. Joanne, who came to this country when she was 6, still has family in Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Charlie’s father’s family lost its home as did most of the Palestinians who lived in what’s now Israel after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war in a forced displacement known as the Nakba or “catastrophe.”?

After doing little or nothing to prevent the Holocaust, Britain and the United States supported a Jewish homeland, heedless of the people who already lived there.

“The world thinks it started on Oct. 7, which was terrible,” said Charlie. “It started in 1948.” He adds, “The elephant in the room is the occupation.”

Since Hamas’ surprise attack of Oct. 7, in which 1,200 people in Israel were killed, some in sickeningly sadistic ways, and 252 were taken hostage, it has seemed to me that particularly malevolent forces —? brutality, cynicism, political self-interest, the arms industry — are swirling around this small beautiful slice of the globe.?

Now Joanne worries that most Americans think all Palestinians are terrorists instead of “family-oriented people who want to live in peace.” When she visits family, she is struck by the lack of freedom and opportunity and by the apartheid-like system under which Palestinians must live. She’s sad that her adopted country is funding an unparalleled military assault on her childhood home.

“Palestinians have lost their past, their future, their present in this war,” she told me. “What’s going on is a one-sided genocide.”

More than 34,600 Palestinians have been killed and 77,000 wounded, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

Joanne Martha does not blame the Israeli people but the country’s government for what even ally Joe Biden has called Israel’s “over the top” war in Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who needs to stay in power to avoid prison on corruption charges, may see political advantage for himself in prolonging the war and Israelis’ sense of existential crisis. Netanyahu backed a plan to prop up Hamas, which in 2006 won a parliamentary election with 44% support in what was widely viewed as a protest vote against corruption, then the next year took Gaza by force. By supporting Hamas in Gaza, Netanyahu and his team had hoped to divide Palestians thus thwarting any move toward a Palestinian state. Netanyahu also miscalculated Hamas’ strength and intent. As recently as September, a month before the Hamas attack, Netanyahu signaled that the government of Qatar, which with Israel’s tacit approval has put billions of dollars into the terrorist organization, should continue the payments to Hamas.

I asked the Marthas about one of the slogans the students were chanting. “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” has become a lightning rod, admittedly used by Hamas, and interpreted by many as a call to destroy Israel.?

Almost 20% of Israel’s population — or 2 million people — are Palestinians, who live as second-class citizens. Jews and Palestinians lived in peace in the past, the Marthas said. The slogan, they said, is a call for freedom not annihilation.

Kareem Hassan, a recent UK graduate agreed. “Wanting to be free does not insinuate violence.”

Taylor Slone of Georgetown was carrying a sign that said “Anti-Zionism Is Not Anti-Semitism.” He turned out for the rally because “I felt like I needed to do more” and also because he thought “more bodies” offered more protection.

No one needed protection from anything harsher than sunburn, however. UK Police stood at a polite distance and appeared more concerned about protecting the William T. Young Library than any possibility of violence, in contrast to some campuses where students and faculty were forcibly arrested.

The protesters called for a ceasefire, which would be a blessing, though I have a hard time seeing any good way out of this misery, bloodshed and hatred.

Even if Israel Defense Forces force every last Hamas fighter from underground, Israel is creating more than enough new enemies for itself — young people who have nothing to lose or hope for — to replace the terrorist organization many times over.

I’m confounded that the Holocaust, the 20th century’s most horrific mass atrocity, is somehow begetting a mass atrocity in this century.

The United Nations, the U.S. and the rest of the West have been ineffective, apathetic even, toward the Palestinians’ plight and other human rights abuses in the Mideast, ready to turn a blind eye as long as the oil was flowing. But wounds left to fester will inevitably burst, spewing poison everywhere.?

History probably will vindicate opposition to what’s happening in Gaza and also the West Bank. It will vindicate the many Jews who are courageously advocating for a peaceful solution and pushing for release of the hostages. I pray a peaceful solution comes soon; the alternative is unbearable to imagine.

Published by Caulfield and Shook, Inc of Louisville, this post card is entitled "An Exciting Finish At Churchill Downs." Photographers James Caufield and Frank W. Shook founded their studio in 1903, and it became the Derby's official photographer in 1924. (University of Kentucky Libraries Special Collections Research Center, Post Card Collection)

To paraphrase a wiseguy I once knew, this Saturday’s Kentucky Derby — the 150th edition of the famed horse race — is made history. From its first running in 1875 as the feature race at a just opened Churchill Downs in Louisville to its current place atop a sports and culture pinnacle, its narrative has been a burgoo of glory and hype, continuity and change.????

Start with the beginning and the backstory. Modeled after England’s Epsom Derby, the first Kentucky Derby was won in an upset by a chestnut colt named Aristides, who was owned by gambler H. Price McGrath and bred on his stud farm near Lexington, and trained and ridden by two African American horsemen from the Bluegrass, Ansel Williamson and Oliver Lewis. It was a 1 ? mile race (shortened to 1 ? miles in 1896) for three-year olds and 15 of them ran. Contemporary accounts put the crowd as large — 10,000 estimated — the weather fair and the atmosphere festive.?

The race and its track, which was developed by Meriwether Lewis Clark, grandson of William Clark of the Lewis and Clark expedition, soon gained a foothold in a booming industry.

It was the Gilded Age of the late 1800s — a time of unbridled opportunity and crass exploitation when robber barons and labor strikes, railroads and skyscrapers, immigrant millions, diamond-studded dinners and corrupt politics stirred the land — and horse racing was America’s national sport. Racetracks numbered more than 300 and drew large crowds, from sweatshop workers to nouveau aristocrats. On the same day in 1872, for example, 40,000 people filled Monmouth Park in New Jersey, while just 300 watched a professional baseball game at a Brooklyn field. And in 1887, Congress adjourned for a match race at Pimlico in Baltimore.?

The bubble burst in the early 1900s with the rise of the Progressive Movement and its puritanical social agenda. Gambling on horses (and all else) was frowned on and legislated against and racing declined dramatically. By 1908, only 25 tracks were operating in the country. The pendulum swung after World War I as anti-gambling fervor cooled. Tracks reopened and pari-mutuel betting was widespread. Racing became Hollywood’s “sport of kings” and its stands were full and its stars — Man o’War, War Admiral, Seabiscuit, Whirlaway, Citation and others? —? were household names.?

Amid those national tides, the Derby and Churchill Downs struggled, at least for a while. A brouhaha over bookmakers in 1886 led to a de facto boycott of the race by Eastern horse owners that lasted some 25 years. The Derby lost prominence and Churchill floundered under financial difficulties. In 1902, the track, which had never been profitable, faced closure and was bought by a partnership formed by Matt Winn, a Louisville salesman and merchant tailor.?

A comeback began when Winn’s group took over and soon accelerated. Winn, who made a Time magazine cover in 1937, was named president of Churchill in 1938. An industry celebrity and gifted promoter, he cultivated and wined and dined the national media, and with their help and hype made the Derby bucket-list Americana. It became the race horsemen — owners, trainers, jockeys, grooms and hot walkers — wanted to win and the public was fascinated by and wanted to attend.?

The momentum and mystique Winn created has continued, largely unabated, since his death in 1949. The New York Times called him “a prophet (who) preached the gospel of racing through the United States. . . . He alone made it (the Derby) what it is today.” For most of the mid and late 1900s, that meant, more than anything, embracing and sustaining a status quo. As Tom Meeker, the track’s president from 1984 to 2006, put it, Churchill’s business was to “tweak the Derby at the margins but leave the main canvas alone.”??

That approach has shifted markedly in recent decades. Yes, the race itself — 1 ? miles under the iconic 1895 twin spires — remains the same. But much of its surrounding milieu has changed. What was a sprawling labyrinth of an urban track — with old brick walkways, beadboard betting windows, hidden corridors, trough urinals in men’s rooms and more— has been morphing into a modern (albeit still sprawling) racing and entertainment facility.?

Behind the transformation is Churchill Downs Inc., the track’s corporate parent. Formed in 1950,? CDI has become a publicly-traded, nationally leading racing, online wagering and gaming company, with some 27 casinos and racing properties across 14 states. Over the past two plus decades, the company has spent more than $450 million on brick-and-mortar capital projects, including most recently a three-year, $335 million one that’s added new seating and hospitality areas and was capped by a $200 million redesigned paddock that opened last week.

Amid these projects, CDI has prospered, with record net revenue of $2.5 billion last year, up 36% from 2022. Numbers for the Derby last year showed a record $288.7 million wagered from all sources on Derby day, up 5% from 2022’s record. Attendance of 150,335 was up 2% from 2022 (the record of 170,513 was set in 2015). The race attracted 14.8 million viewers on NBC, down from 16 million in 2022.?

These bottom lines should assure the Derby and its brand a rosy future. But there’s an elephant — American Thoroughbred racing — in the room.

Back to the past. Even with the Derby at the forefront, racing’s glory days didn’t last. The landscape changed. By the 1960s, the sport and industry began a decline that’s accelerated over the subsequent decades. With isolated exceptions —? most notably Secretariat in the 1970s — racing has receded in the national consciousness. The Derby aside, it’s on few people’s radar anymore. Its default spot on an ESPN app, for instance, is on a list with lacrosse, cricket, badminton, kabaddi and a host of “more sports.”?

Some reasons for racing’s decline — an aging and shrinking fan base; the rise and popularity of the NBA and NFL, marginal TV coverage and competition from state lotteries, casino gambling and sports betting —? have been societal and demographic and arguably out of the industry’s direct control.?

But others have been primarily self-inflicted and much more damaging. Over the past decade alone, two of them — drug scandals and on-track horse deaths — have become recurring national news. The drug scandals have involved several prominent trainers and led to suspensions and federal indictments. And the deaths have forced leading tracks, including Churchill and Santa Anita Park in California, to close for investigations of surfaces and training practices.?

As part of all this, racing’s field sizes have shrunk and major tracks, including Hollywood Park in Los Angeles and Arlington Park in Chicago, have shut down. The industry’s main attempt to address its decline has been the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA), which aims to develop and implement national, uniform safety, anti-doping and medication rules. It took effect last year.

As American racing’s city on a hill, the Derby had avoided the industry’s woes. But in 2021, that changed when Medina Spirit, who finished first in the Derby, was disqualified after failing a post-race drug test. A protracted and very public legal battle involving the horse’s high-profile trainer, Bob Baffert, owner Amr Zedan and Churchill followed. The track prevailed and Baffert was banned from Churchill for what is now a third year.

The incident is mostly over. But it took a toll. It stripped the Derby, now in year 150, of some of its curated transcendence and brought it closer to a troubled industry’s mean. And it raised the question of how big — and destructive — its elephant in the room might become.

Democrat Andy Beshear's last term as governor ends in 2027, a year after U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell is expected to leave office. Beshear and McConnell and McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, a Cabinet member under two Republican presidents, met on stage during the 143rd Fancy Farm Picnic, Aug. 5, 2023. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Austin Anthony)

Welcome, Derby visitors! Here’s our annual handicapping of Kentucky’s political horses amid the pageantry of the 150th iteration of America’s oldest continuously held sporting event.

The political star of the Derby TV show, for about 30 seconds during the trophy presentation, is the governor. His name is Andy Beshear. That may sound familiar. He’s in his second term, and his father Steve served two terms, ending in 2015. This is a Republican state, but they are Democrats. How’s that?

As politics became more about social issues, and Republican success expanded to state and local offices in this socially conservative state, many Kentuckians remained Democrats of heritage — willing or even wanting to vote as their parents and grandparents did. And GOP leaders’ and voters’ choices for governor didn’t work out.

Republican Ernie Fletcher got mired in a personnel scandal and lost to Democrat Steve Beshear, an old pro who understood the state — and got lucky again in 2011 when Republicans nominated perhaps the state’s most unpopular politician at the time, state Senate President David Williams, now a well-regarded circuit judge.

Beshear was term-limited in 2015 but worked hard to elect his son attorney general, and they lucked out again when GOP Gov. Matt Bevin said a teachers’ protest against him led to the sexual abuse of children and their use of drugs. About half of Kentucky’s teachers are Republicans, and they made him pay; he lost by 0.37 percentage points.

Republicans thought Andy Beshear would be easy pickings in 2023, but voters liked his performance in the pandemic, and he gained the upper hand. Then his focused campaign, the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on abortion, and Kentucky Republicans’ draconian law all but banning it, helped him win by 5 points.

Term-limited, Beshear now looks beyond Kentucky. He has a political committee to help moderate Democrats like himself, and is mentioned in 2028 presidential speculation. He says he will serve out his term, which ends in December 2027, taking him out of the race for the seat of U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, who is stepping down as Senate Republican leader but says he will represent Kentucky through 2026.

Beshear’s best bet at this point looks to be challenging Sen. Rand Paul, who is up in 2028. Paul is more of a libertarian than a Republican, and has become more recently defined as an isolationist, which he calls “informed neutrality.” A deficit hawk, he generally opposes foreign aid, and on the Ukraine issue more or less declared open war against McConnell after his senior seatmate announced he wouldn’t seek another term as leader.

Likely Republican candidates for McConnell’s seat are his protégé, Daniel Cameron, an African American who was attorney general and lost to Andy Beshear; Rep. Andy Barr of the Lexington-centered 6th District, who voted to help Ukraine; and Rep. Thomas Massie of the 4th District, who didn’t. Massie is cut from the same cloth as Paul but has woven it into the political equivalent of an audacious Derby hat, most recently supporting Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s petition to throw House Speaker Mike Johnson out of the chair.

Others in Kentucky’s delegation are less inclined to performative politics. First District Rep. James Comer, the House Oversight and Reform Committee chair, became performative after then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy surprised him with the assignment of helping make an impeachment case against President Biden. Comer is a popular fundraiser and TV talker, but has exaggerated and implied too much in trying to tell Republicans what they want to hear. He says he would rather be governor, come 2027; he lost the 2015 primary to Bevin by 83 votes.

Louisville’s congressman is Morgan McGarvey, the delegation’s sole Democrat. If his party takes control of the House, watch him; he was a very effective state Senate minority leader. A small part of Louisville is represented by Brett Guthrie of the 2nd District, who could move up to chair one of the House’s most powerful committees, Energy and Commerce. Fifth District Rep. Hal Rogers represents most of Appalachian Kentucky and is in his 44th year of funneling federal money to it. He is an appropriations subcommittee chair and the longest-serving current House member, and at 86, seems determined to keep it up.

Closer to home, the Republican to look for at the Derby if you need help in Frankfort is Senate President Robert Stivers, who is arguably the state’s chief policymaker since he is the strongest leader in a legislature firmly controlled by Republicans. But he’s not a pusher of hot buttons like many GOP legislative leaders in the South; he is a traditional Republican, close to McConnell, and has steered Kentucky GOPers away from some of the right-wing excesses seen in other Republican-controlled legislatures. He knows that while Kentucky is Republican, it still has Democratic rootstock.

This column is republished from the Northern Kentucky Tribune, a nonprofit publication of the Kentucky Center for Public Service Journalism.

From vaping to truancy, the Kentucky General Assembly did little to help kids and their families in the 2024 session. (Klaus Vedfelt/Getty Images)

It’s Spring 2024 in the Bluegrass State. And if I am writing about sports, I should be focused on new basketball coaches and the Derby and the PGA Championship at Valhalla. But as I reflect on the 2024 General Assembly, my mind drifts to football and the 1938 Chicago Bears. That was the team which still holds the NFL record for the most fumbles in a single season. And from my viewpoint, this legislative session had the most fumbles for kids I have seen in my 20 years at Kentucky Youth Advocates.

There were fumbles that had to do with raw politics. As an example, HB 11 was a common sense and bipartisan effort to curb the epidemic of vaping among Kentucky’s kids … and I am talking 4th and 5th graders here! This was a proposal that simply put teeth in existing sanctions against retailers selling vape and tobacco products to your 10-year-old kid. The bill gathered excellent movement. In fact, the momentum was so strong that Big Tobacco — at the last minute — dumped big bucks for a well-connected lobbying group to dilute the effort to a degree that the legislation was rendered useless.

Your 6th grade grandkid can probably buy a vape product at your corner store this afternoon because the General Assembly fumbled away an opportunity to protect kids.

Other fumbles were caused by legislative near-sightedness. As an example, no one can ignore the burgeoning crisis within the state’s juvenile justice system. We absolutely need a myriad of reforms ranging from punishment to prevention. Perhaps the most critical crossroads decision is, what happens to that youth when they make a mistake? Do we continue practices that do little for deterrence and most likely simply deepen recidivism? Or do we make moves that can actually put that young person back on the right track? Through budget negotiations, we at first saw promising per-year investments in thoughtful “get back on the right track” alternatives to detention programming, such as in-home wraparound services and community-based responses.

And the final result? While there were much-needed investments in physical and mental health services for those youth in detention, the funding for addressing behaviors while keeping young people out of the maze of the juvenile justice system fell short.

And then there were fumbles that can — at best — be described as dumb … er, I mean dumbfounding. This was a General Assembly running hard on a highly politicized “tough on crime” mantra. We are going to criminalize the homeless. A kid is missing too much school? Let’s not dig into root causes and engage families. Instead, let’s lock them up too!

But there was one group on whom there was apparently no appetite to be tough — perpetrators of child abuse. Two examples amplify my “dumbfounded-ness” about this fumble. HB 275 would have — simply put — protected students from perpetrators in their schools. And SB 181 would have made sexual extortion a felony. The 2024 General Assembly version of “tough on crime” tackled issues it shouldn’t and fumbled what it should have carried. If you discover that your child’s teacher next year was being investigated for abusing a student this year in another school district and wonder how this could happen, call your legislator and ask that question.

There were other fumbles as well. SB 203, or the Horizons Act, crafted a game-changing early childhood agenda, which would have given child care a sustainable future for kids, families, and local economies. It didn’t happen, and we are actually going back to eligibility levels for the Child Care Assistance Program lower than pre-pandemic rates that will exclude 16,000 children currently receiving the subsidy. Common sense protections for families against unnecessary eviction punishments (HB 71 and SB 34) didn’t happen. HB 199 would have paved the way for birthing centers to offer delivery options for low-risk pregnancies. It didn’t happen.

Now to be fair, along with that record setting number of fumbles, there were some touchdowns. Kinship care; school-based behavioral and mental health supports; beginning steps to address the teacher shortage; and, the “Momnibus Bill” to better serve pregnant moms and their babies are stellar examples of what this legislative body can do when they want to support kids.

There is some hope, however. Only two years after that disastrous 1938 season, the Chicago Bears won the NFL championship and that was just the first of four consecutive trophy runs. That means that maybe — just maybe — our General Assembly can get back on a winning streak for our youngest Kentuckians.

Maybe — just maybe — our lawmakers will not capitulate to well-heeled lobbyists and their out of state “dark money” masters. Maybe — just maybe — our lawmakers will be as tough on people who abuse kids as they are on vulnerable populations. Maybe — just maybe — our lawmakers will go upstream and create real solutions and make real investments on issues ranging from chronic truancy to early childhood education to curbing youth vaping.

George Hallas was the coach and architect who transformed the Bears from a fumble machine into champions. At the time, he asserted, “Nobody who gave their best will ever regret it.” I hope that Senate President Robert Stivers, House Speaker David Osborne, and every member of the General Assembly will ask themselves a simple and profound question, “Did I give my best for Kentucky’s kids in 2024?”

And maybe — just maybe — an honest answer to that self-examination will inspire our lawmakers to become champions in making Kentucky the best place in America to be young.

Firefighters try to extinguish a fire after a chemical warehouse was hit by Russian shelling on the eastern frontline near Kalynivka village on March 8, 2022, in Kyiv, Ukraine. Russia invaded the country on Feb. 24. (Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

Kentucky’s congressional Republicans were deeply divided on aid to Ukraine, setting the stage for their expected primary to succeed U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, who led the fight for it and seems likely to retire in 2026.

The loudest on each side were U.S. Reps. Thomas Massie of the Fourth District and Andy Barr of the Sixth District. Massie voted against the aid bill and criticized Barr for supporting it, after Barr threw shade at Massie on a related issue without naming him.

Both men have been in the House since 2013 and are logical candidates for the Senate. Barr is based in the only major media market limited to Kentucky, and is a senior member of two major House committees; Massie is the outspoken libertarian ally of U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, and they have access to major right-wing funders.

Before the House acted on Ukraine aid, it took up a border-security bill that failed because it needed a two-thirds vote to pass, under a rule supported by all Democrats and “a handful of self-destroying Republicans,” Barr posted on X. What he didn’t say was that those Republicans acted on behalf of former President Donald Trump, who opposes action on the border crisis so he can keep maximum advantage over President Joe Biden on the issue.

One of those Republicans to which Barr referred was Massie. In a reply to Barr, he noted that House Speaker Mike Johnson couldn’t pass Ukraine aid without votes from Democrats, who “wanted [a] separate show-vote on border [issues] to give guys like Andy (who voted for $100B foreign aid) political cover. We refused to go along with charade in Rules Committee!” Massie, a Rules Committee member by virtue of a deal that elected previous speaker Kevin McCarthy, had voted against the rules for the border and Ukraine bills. That was a clear break with most House leaders, which he soon made clearer by endorsing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s motion to vacate the speakership.

Barr made his own stance clearer, and put a label on Massie, by replying: “Another truth the isolationists don’t want to admit: Every border security bill will die in [Majority Leader Chuck] Schumer’s Senate…” (In reality, the Senate has passed a bipartisan border-security bill, which Trump scuttled.)

Massie replied with a broadside aimed directly at Barr: “You voted for the omnibus. You voted for warrantless spying. You voted to send $60 billion to Ukraine today in exchange for nothing from the Senate. Speaker Johnson never tried to attach border security to this bill. Maybe it’s time to quit blaming conservatives for your votes.”

The omnibus was the recent spending bill to keep the government open. “Warrantless spying” is authorized in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which Massie and Paul tried to amend by requiring federal agencies to obtain a court order to buy Americans’ online data, David Catanese of the Lexington Herald-Leader reported. Massie got the measure through the House, but it failed in the Senate.

Sen. Rand Paul’s political punch has increased lately, thanks to his alliance with billionaire Jeff Yass. In March, Yass gave $8 million to a political committee affiliated with Paul, Tom Loftus reported for the Kentucky Lantern. Yass owns 15% of the parent firm of Tik Tok; the firm would have to sell the social-media platform, under a bill the House passed as part of the package of aid to Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and other nations. Massie voted no.

Besides Massie and Barr, another likely Senate candidate appears to be former attorney general Daniel Cameron. He recently formed his own PAC, which he said will give only to Kentucky Republicans. Cameron was the GOP nominee for governor last year, but seems to have made the Senate his new target.

The likeliest Republican candidate for governor in 2027 is Rep. James Comer of the First District, who lost the 2015 nomination by 83 votes. He told me Monday that he’d still rather be governor than anything else.

Comer voted against Ukraine aid, and said he didn’t look at the latest intelligence on the war, as Johnson had pleaded with members to do. “I have had nothing but bad experiences with the intelligence community,” Comer said, adding “We have to stop spending money we don’t have.” He said his district is “overwhelmingly” against the aid; that opinion has surely been solidified by Trump.

The rest of Kentucky’s delegation supported Ukraine aid. Rep. Hal Rogers of the Fifth District, who in some ways has the state’s Trumpiest district but is loyal to House leaders, heavily downplayed his vote for the aid in a press release that emphasized what Massie called his “show-vote” for border security. It said the Ukraine bill “includes a loan repayment agreement,” but that’s only for $9 billion, and the loan is forgivable. Rogers’s office said he saw the latest intelligence.

This column is republished from the Northern Kentucky Tribune, a nonprofit publication of the Kentucky Center for Public Service Journalism.

In 1922, the Louisville Herald commemorated the Election Day violence of Bloody Monday, Aug. 6, 1855, when anti-immigrant mobs attacked Irish and German immigrants in Louisville. At least 19 people died. (Public domain)

Donald J. Trump, meet Charles S. Morehead, the guy who was elected governor of Kentucky in 1855 on the anti-immigrant “Know-Nothing” ticket.

“Americans should rule America” was the Know-Nothings’ credo. Translation: white, native-born Protestants like them.?

Officially, the American Party, it was dubbed the “Know-Nothing” party because members were supposed to reply — like Sgt. Schultz on “Hogan’s Heroes” — “I know nothing” to an inquiry about the party from a possibly hostile journalist or suspicious stranger.

The party faithful shrieked that foreigners loyal to an “inflated … despot” were threatening to take over the country. Translation: German and Irish-born Catholics.??

According to the Know-Nothings, these “papist” foreigners were hellbent on foisting their “false religion” and its “anti-Christian” law on America. German and Irish Catholics were “a foe to the very principles we embody in our laws, a foe to all we hold most dear.”?

Too, the party claimed immigrants were “the chief source of crime in this country.” They weren’t. Trump says “illegal immigrants” are boosting the violent crime rate in the U.S. They aren’t.

Multiple “studies by academics and think tanks have shown that immigrants do not commit crime at a higher rate than native-born Americans,” Reuters reported. Other “studies specifically examine criminality among immigrants [who are] in the U.S. illegally and also find that they do not commit crimes at a higher rate.”

Trump has been demagoguing against “illegal immigrants” since he announced his presidential candidacy in 2015. He’s called them “animals.” He said migrants from Haiti and from African nations came from “shithole countries.” He charged that “illegals” are “poisoning the blood”?of the U.S., meaning the blood of white folks. (“The remarks ‘poisoning the blood of our country’ are straight out of Hitler’s 1925 autobiographical manifesto “Mein Kampf” — his blueprint for a ‘pure Aryan’ Germany and the removal of Jews,” wrote Russell Contrearas in Axios.

Trump denies he’s parroting Germany’s Nazi dictator who ordered the murder of six million European Jews.?

If he’s reelected, Trump promises he’ll promptly order “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” The “illegals” he wants to kick out are black and brown.

While Trump’s appeal to nativism and xenophobia is rooted in racism, the American Party downplayed white supremacy and elevated anti-Catholic and anti-foreign bigotry over race-baiting. “You didn’t have a substantial enough free Black voting population to make any difference in electoral politics,” said Murray State University historian Brian Clardy.??

Demographically, Trump’s MAGA movement is strikingly similar to the Know-Nothings. Overwhelmingly, it’s composed of conservative whites of American birth, most of whom are evangelical Protestants. In the Trump-tilting Bluegrass State, almost 87% of the population is white. Nearly half ?of Kentuckians who say they are religious identify themselves as Protestant evangelicals, a big chunk of the Trump base.????

Like the Know-Nothings, Trump “appeals to the baser instincts of people who subscribe to nativism and seeks electoral gain at the expense of marginalized populations,” Clardy said.?

In the 1855 spring municipal elections, Know-Nothings took control of city governments in Louisville, Lexington and Covington. In the Aug. 6 state elections, Morehead won the governorship, plus his party notched majorities in both houses of the General Assembly and claimed six of the state’s 10 U.S. House seats, according to the Kentucky Encyclopedia.?

The party’s violently anti-Catholic and anti-foreign rhetoric led to bloodshed in Louisville on Aug. 6. Many blamed the anti-foreign hysteria, at least in part, on editor George D. Prentice of The Louisville Daily Journal. He endorsed the Know-Nothing ticket and authored vicious editorials against “the Pope of Rome, an inflated Italian despot who keeps people kissing his toes all day.”

Know-Nothing mobs rampaged through German and Irish immigrant neighborhoods, murdering, beating, burning and looting. At least 19 men died in the violence which went down in history as “Bloody Monday,” the encyclopedia says.?

Most Know-Nothings had been Whigs before the party collapsed in 1854. Kentucky-born Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president, was an ex-Whig. He denounced Know-Nothing nativist bilge in no uncertain terms.

“I am not a Know-Nothing,” he declared in an Aug. 24, 1855, letter to his friend, Joshua F. Speed of Louisville. “That is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of Negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid.”?

Ultimately, the? Know-Nothings faded away and ended up on the trash heap of history, where they belong. There’s plenty of room for Trump in history’s landfill, too.

Clardy fears violence if Trump wins and enacts his mass deportation programs aimed at “illegals” of color. He worries that white supremacist groups and individuals, taking their cue from the White House, will “attack immigrants, native-born African Americans, Hispanic Americans and others. Trump is going to embolden racists to do their worst.”?

George L. Atkins was a state auditor like none before him, exposing shady deals in the administration of Democratic Gov. Julian Carroll. Later, as a lobbyist for Humana, Atkins pleaded guilty to mail fraud and served time in jail.

George L. Atkins Jr., who died April 14 at age 82, was a politician for barely a decade. But he was a touchstone for modern Kentucky politics and historical currents that go back more than a century: the corrupting force of big business, voters’ desire for reform, the influence of the news media and the compromises made by people in public life.

Atkins’ political life began at the University of Kentucky, where he played basketball for Adolph Rupp, and in his hometown of Hopkinsville, where he was appointed and elected mayor in his early 30s. His smooth but forthright manner was so appealing that he was easily elected state auditor in 1975, and even before he took office was on short lists of prospective Democratic candidates for governor in 1979.

Atkins was an auditor like none before him, exposing shady deals in the administration of Democratic Gov. Julian Carroll, and that was the basis of his campaign. There was another major reform-oriented candidate, former Louisville Mayor Harvey Sloane, and Democratic sage Ed Prichard and others thought they should team up, perhaps with Atkins running for lieutenant governor. Sloane told me that a Louisville meeting was arranged, but a snowstorm kept Atkins from getting there. Then businessman John Y. Brown Jr. jumped into the race just before the filing deadline, and the meeting wasn’t rescheduled.

In such a fractured race, newspaper endorsements took on more importance, perceived or real. Keith Runyon, who was on the editorial board of The Courier-Journal and The Louisville Times, told me Publisher Barry Bingham Jr. was preparing to endorse Atkins until his father, company Chaiman Barry Bingham Sr., steered the endorsement to Sloane, to whom the elder Binghams were close. (That set the stage for the newspapers’ endorsement of Republican George Clark for mayor over Sloane in 1981, which contributed to the family dissension that led to the papers’ sale in 1986.)

With no big endorsement and polling poorly, Atkins withdrew and backed Brown, who had suggested privately during a KET debate days earlier that they “get together.” Atkins told me then that “the real key” was a classic column by The C-J’s John Filiatreau that portrayed the Democratic field as a poker game robbed by a Republican bandit as they argued. Atkins’ endorsement helped nominate Brown, who finished 4.49 percent ahead of Sloane.

Atkins became Brown’s finance secretary and cabinet secretary, sort of a deputy governor, but also the target of anti-Brown Democrats. At the 1980 Fancy Farm Picnic, former Gov. A.B. “Happy” Chandler said the state wouldn’t have bought its famous Sikorsky helicopter “if George Atkins were still alive.” The quip stuck so well that Brown himself used it at the next picnic to remind the crowd he was selling the ‘copter that had brought him: “If George Atkins were still alive he’d never let them take that helicopter from me.” The headline in the Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer read, “Atkins roasted again at Fancy Farm.”

Chandler, who entered politics in 1927, had a knack for reflecting the public mind, in which Atkins had evolved from a crusading reformer to a high-flying governor’s tool. That image lingered in 1983, when he ran for lieutenant governor. But he probably would have won if not for this: A supporter of Sloane, who was running for governor again, asked him, “Who do you want for your lieutenant?” he replied, “Steve Beshear,” the attorney general. Sloane’s whisper was loud enough for C-J reporter Robert T. Garrett to overhear, and his story put Sloane on the defensive a week before the primary.

After Beshear won by 4.8%, he told C-J reporter Richard Wilson that Sloane’s remark helped him run a strong second in Jefferson County to former County Judge Todd Hollenbach, and that was his key to victory. Several others were running for lieutenant governor, so the remark hurt Sloane, who lost to eventual Gov. Martha Layne Collins by only 4,532 votes, 0.7%. Beshear came up short in the 1987 gubernatorial primary, but was elected governor in 2007 and 2011, setting up his son Andy to likewise serve two terms.

So, many political threads ran through George Atkins, but he was spent as a politician. He had a family to support and joined Humana, then a hospital company, and became its chief lobbyist. In 1990, Humana was determined to have the legislature relax limits on hospital expansion in Louisville. The deciding vote for the bill was cast by state Sen. Patti Weaver of Walton, after Atkins agreed to help her get a state job. When she failed the state personnel exam and threatened to tell her story, Atkins funneled $10,000 to her through Sen. Helen Garrett of Paducah (who was convicted on an unrelated charge in a broad federal investigation of state-government corruption, mainly in the legislature).

Atkins pleaded guilty to mail fraud and was sentenced to 24 weekends in jail and 400 hours of community service and fined $10,000. Humana apologized and paid the $92,437 cost of the investigation. In sentencing Atkins, Judge Joe Hood was harder on Humana, suggesting that the company knowingly blinded itself to his actions as it pressed him for results. Atkins told Hood the bribe money came from a Humana account that he could use on his own. Humana said afterward that it knew of no illegal acts but “Closer supervision might well have prevented this occurrence.”?

Atkins, facing the possibility of a year in prison, told Hood that he hoped “in some way this could be a wake-up call for thousands of people just like me . . . You can’t get so wrapped up in your job, so wrapped up in your career … that you don’t stop and ask, ‘Where does this lead, where does this go?’”

Atkins remained a health-care consultant in Washington and was largely forgotten in Kentucky, but his words are worth remembering. If anyone ever had a meteoric career, it was him: a young man full of ideals and promise who came up just a little short in his last election, and wound up cratering. There but for God’s grace go many of us. May his example be remembered.

The Kentucky House of Representatives in session, Feb. 27, 2024. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Arden Barnes)

In a republic, the form of government that the U.S. Constitution prescribes for states, the will of the people is supposed to be exercised through elected representatives. In Kentucky, we call our government a commonwealth, a term borrowed from our mother state, Virginia, meaning that it should serve the well-being of the people.

The people’s well-being, and their will, were not served on several issues in the recently concluded session of their elected representatives. That’s true of every legislative session, but it’s particularly remarkable for one that had billions of dollars in surplus the General Assembly could have used to give the people some things they want and need.

The overarching issue is the Republican-controlled legislature’s maintenance of a big surplus to justify more income-tax cuts, to reach its stated goal of abolishing the tax. Advocates point to greater economic and population growth in some of the seven states that have no income tax, but those states have advantages that Kentucky does not: warmer climates in Tennessee, Texas and Florida; the oil industry in Alaska and Wyoming, and broadly legalized gambling in Nevada. Most states have a broad variety of taxes.

Like other states, Kentucky spends the bulk of its state tax revenue on education, and most of that goes to pay teachers, who are getting harder for Kentucky schools to find partly because their salaries aren’t keeping up with inflation or raises in other states. Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear wanted to raise teachers’ pay 11 percent, but that was a non-starter in a GOP legislature that sees teachers as his primary political base. So it again left raises up to school districts, but didn’t give most of them enough money to make much of a difference.

Beshear also wanted to fund pre-kindergarten for every child in the state, but that faced not only a political obstacle — a governor who hasn’t worked with the legislature very well — but an ideological one: some conservatives’ notion that it would move too much child-rearing outside the family. But we have a society and an economy in which most parents want or need to work outside the home.

Beshear also asked the General Assembly for a big increase in funding of child care, partly to replace the loss of federal pandemic funds, and a Republican senator, Danny Carroll of Paducah, made a more ambitious proposal. The legislature passed much more modest increases, prompting the hundreds of providers who care for more than 150,000 children to say that they were “at risk of collapse.”

Children figure in many issues, including their use of nicotine vapor products (22% of high-school students) and adult Kentuckians’ addiction to tobacco, fourth in the nation at 17.4%, the biggest driver of the state’s bad health status and health-care expenses. A broad array of groups interested in the Kentucky’s health, including the state Chamber of Commerce, sent senators a letter asking that the state’s annual tobacco-prevention spending be raised to $10 million from $2 million, but Senate President Robert Stivers and Majority Floor Leader Damon Thayer told me that none of the advocates for the increase ever spoke to them about it. Thayer questioned the efficacy of prevention programs, but surely our commonwealth can afford to make a stronger effort and see what happens — if for no other reason than fewer smokers mean less Medicaid spending.

The legislature punted on the most difficult issue, abortion. Most Kentuckians oppose our law that bans abortion in nearly all cases, but Republicans bottled up bills that would have made exceptions for rape and incest — because that point of the issue divides them and they don’t want their anti-abortion base fractured in an election year. But the issue seems likely to get a hearing before next winter’s session.

Finally, a good word for the Senate: Thanks, for not taking floor action on the House bill that would have gutted key parts of the Open Records Act and Open Meetings Act by allowing public officials to surreptitiously conduct public business electronically. This was a case where ardent conservatives like Sen. Gex Williams, R-Verona, trumpeted the value of transparency in government and forced a closer look. That’s what the House and Senate need to do, in detail, before the next session — in cooperation with news organizations and other open-government advocates.

To be sure, we will never eliminate the doing of public business in private, but we need strong laws to discourage public officials from doing that. Of course, it doesn’t help that the majorities of the House and Senate set a bad example by deciding most big issues secretly, in their party caucuses. Those have become nearly impenetrable, with the departures of leakers and a shortage of reporters at the legislature. As Justice Louis Brandeis of Louisville said, “Sunshine is the best disinfectant.” Give light, or leak!

This column is republished from the Northern Kentucky Tribune, a nonprofit publication of the Kentucky Center for Public Service Journalism.

Republican lawmakers and the families of crime victims join GOP Secretary of State Michael Adams for a ceremonial signing of the omnibus crime bill, House Bill 5. (Kentucky Lantern photo by McKenna Horsley)

If there is a photo that defines Kentucky’s 2024 regular session, it is a smiling Secretary of State Michael Adams signing House Bill 5 — a sprawling, data-questionable, pro-incarceration bill with an unknown, sky’s-the-limit budget, overriding the governor’s veto — on the House steps, surrounded by more than two dozen applauding supporters and lawmakers. All white.

Adams quipped, “I feel safer already!”

A few days earlier, I had been speaking at a dinner about frustrations with our GOP supermajority legislature on HB 5 and failed firearm legislation when a Black man in the audience asked about the Crown Act.

Could I explain this to the audience? he wanted to know.

I tried, twice, and realized I could not.

Not logically.

How do you logically explain the outright dismissal of a bill that would allow Black people and marginalized others to wear their natural hair, the hair God gave them, in the workplace?

What stands out to me, now that the 2024 regular session has come to a close, is not the many faceted and cruel HB 5, which stole much of the spotlight. What stands out to me is the consistent, ugly undercurrent of racism.

Some of that racism was big and bold and overt, like Senate Bill 6 and House Bill 9 which aimed to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion — DEI — in our education system, but there were others that poisoned the Frankfort drinking water, too.

House Bill 18, for instance, passed with a veto override, keeping landlords from having to accept Section 8 housing vouchers. Discrimination based on source of income.

I will not soon forget watching the bill sponsor, Rep. Ryan Dotson, on the House floor as he presented his bill, growing frustrated to the point of snarling and raising his voice as Rep. Sarah Stalker dared to ask the most basic questions about his overtly discriminatory bill.

To say Dotson was snarling is not an exaggeration. I watched it live, and it was so shocking in the moment I took a screenshot and paused as House Speaker David Osborne stopped him, advising caution.

While Rep. Jennifer Decker’s anti-DEI House Bill 9 failed to pass, who can forget the story of her telling an NAACP audience that her white father was a slave. “So, if you’re asking, did we own slaves? My father was a slave, just to a white man and he was white.” And then she doubled down on the claim when asked to explain.

Many bills are filed every session, assigned to committees, and never see the light of day. But notably this year, of the hundreds of bills filed, only two did not receive a committee assignment.

One was Sen. David Yates’s abortion exceptions bill. No surprise there, with a GOP supermajority who can’t decide if it’s politically expedient to allow exceptions or not.

The other was Sen. Gerald Neal’s proposed Crown Act, “which would have outlawed discrimination on the basis of a hairstyle historically associated with a person’s race.”

Republican state Sen. Whitney Westerfield, who will leave office at the end of this year, recently told WKYT’s Bill Bryant about HB 5, “We are doing things that are shortsighted, very expensive, and don’t have a return on investment that actually improve public safety.”

Westerfield, who is white, has also sponsored a version of the Crown Act, twice, this year and last, telling Bryant, “Last year when I filed the bill, I think there were 18 no votes in my caucus” and yet even after robust discussion and filing amendments to address concerns, he got no traction, going “from 18 no votes to 17 no votes.”

He went on to explain the damage, both physical (due to chemicals) and mental. “Harm is being done just so that Black men and women, particularly Black women, can look more like the Euro-centric, white woman look, and they’ve been punished for that. Black men have been punished for not looking more like this,” Westerfield said, pointing to his hair. “The hair God gave you ought to be the hair you get to wear … and why there’s not more support for that, I’ll never understand.”

I don’t understand either.

But in an attempt to understand, I went back to the 2023 committee discussion of Westerfield’s Crown Act / Senate Bill 63, relating to discriminatory practices against a person. What follows is Sen. Phillip Wheeler’s questioning in that committee.

“You say this applies to everybody, right?” said Wheeler. “So if my secretary decided to come in tomorrow with a pink, spiked [hair]do into the office, and wearing a shirt that says “F.U.,” and I know my secretary would never do that, but if she did, could I say this is not the image I want to present for my business? You need to come in with, you know, a more traditional look, and a professional look, similar to the dress code that we adopted on the senate floor?”

Westerfield responded that an employer can certainly impose an office dress code, but that this is not germane to the bill, which specifically protects hairstyles “historically associated with race.”

This prompted Wheeler to say, “I guess if she had Irish heritage, and if you’ve ever watched the movie “Druids,” there’s some pretty wild [hair]do’s, so she could come in there and argue something like that” and then “I guess if you had an African-American working there, that would probably imply that you didn’t have a problem with African-Americans working there just by the fact that they’re present, would it not?”

Wheeler’s legislative bio states that he is a Christian, an attorney, and a Fulbright Scholar. And yet his convoluted argument — which I watched four times to ensure accuracy in quoting him — was like watching a mosquito ride a tricycle in a hailstorm.

I watched one more time and gave up.

In an April 15 report upon the close of session, Senate President Robert Stivers was asked about DEI and replied: “I know some people (don’t) like to report this, but I think this caucus has been very good about being race neutral. What we seek, and what some people don’t want to portray us as, is ‘treat everybody fairly.’ ”

So let’s talk about popular perceptions and how those perceptions come to be.

There is that photo of power — celebrating HB 5, a pro-incarceration bill resurrected from the ashes of discrimination and bad ideas of the 1990s — on the steps of the Capitol Rotunda, where the statue of Jefferson Davis was only recently removed.

There was Rep. Jason Nemes (who is white) ranting in anger at Rep. Derrick Graham (who is Black) for daring to tell the truth on the House floor: that the Jefferson Davis statue was “taken out for a reason,” that being that he led the Confederacy and the “insurrection taking place when the Civil War started.”

There were bills in both chambers — one wasn’t enough? — to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion in education.

There was housing discrimination.

There was funding for university building projects, except for Kentucky State University, the state’s only historically Black public college.

There is a newly-created task force to see if Jefferson County Public Schools should be “broken up.”

And there were bills that could not get to the floor that would allow — ALLOW — Black people to wear their own hair.

I wonder if anyone has ever told Senate President Stivers he could not “wear his own hair” to the office.

To the Black man who asked me to explain the failure of the Crown Act two years running, I still have no logical explanation. This is what systemic racism is, and there is no logic to it. There is just willful ignorance and fear and control and, in our GOP supermajority legislature, continued denial.

I can’t explain it.

I can’t excuse it either.

And no bill, no matter how sprawling or expensive or punitive, is going to make us “safer already” until we address it.

It’s right there in the Frankfort drinking water, poisoning all of us.

Willie Carver was Kentucky's Teacher of the Year in 2022. (University Press of Kentucky)

No matter how hard the viewer strains to see the shadowy face obscured by the words, “Gay Poems for Red States,” the silhouette on the front cover of this stunning collection is unknowable until you open the book and read the poems.?

Starting with his own backstory, Willie Edward Taylor Carver Jr. chronicles his fall from grace as a public high school teacher in Mount Sterling. Shortly before his first day, he is pulled aside by a Montgomery County administrator who asks if the new teacher is “openly gay.”?

When Carver says yes, the administrator replies, “I just want you to understand. In this community, you will be crucified. No one will protect you, including me.”

Carver interprets the warning as a kindness, “an attempt to protect me, as if every Southern queer person isn’t already perpetually awaiting crucifixion.”

Despite the implied threat, Carver taught successfully for more than a decade, inspired by the awesome potential of the students in his classroom. In fact, he credits his students’ energy and commitment to excellence for his designation as Kentucky Teacher of the Year in 2022.

Ironically, this distinction ended Carver’s high school teaching career when a small contingent in the community began attending board meetings and accusing him of grooming, inappropriateness and sexuality, in regard to his students. The group even resorted to doxing the teacher and some of his former students, publishing private information with apparent malicious intent.?

As a result, Carver concluded, “There was no longer a place for me as a teacher.”?

His poems rose from the ashes.

The first one is set in familiar territory, a McDonald’s drive-thru window. When asked, “Would you like a Hot Wheel or a Barbie?” Carver chose the Minnie Mouse toy, and the clerk gave the boy a onceover.?

“You know you’re gonna ruin him?” she said to his mother, handing over the boxed meal.?

Another recovered memory is Carver’s poem, “First Crush,” and a boy named Brandon with “toasted-colored hair” and shoes white as “…the blank page of a coloring book.”

One after another, Carver replays his childhood, one scene at a time. In “Clean Room,” he recalls the tumult of his brother’s lair as that of “a middle-aged trucker,” while his own was “slender and agile,/ a dancer quick to pose for cameras.”

His genius for biscuit making was discovered early: “Before I even learned to sing the alphabet,” he declares.

The secret ingredient?

“Butter transforms everything into love between your teeth and your tongue,” Carver says, adding that the “sea of butter” changes homemade batter into “carbohydrate continents…”

As the poems turn toward adolescent recollections, he recognizes himself as “a jigsaw piece from an entirely different puzzle box.”?

Watching an episode with his father, of “Jerry Springer” featuring a gay man from California seeking his father’s acceptance, was a milestone. Carver was amazed by his parent’s reaction:

“You know, if I ever had a kid who felt comfortable telling me something like that, I hope they’d

Know that it would be okay with me.”

With that remark, time slowed down. “The clock stabbed forward,” the poet says, pausing before he could come up with an apt reply:?

“Well if you ever have a kid like that, I hope they do,” he finally says.

In 2023, the American Library Association documented efforts to censor 4,240 unique book titles in schools and public libraries, an increase from 2,571 the year before.

According to the website, “Organized pressure groups have used their power — and long lists of titles — to wage an aggressive campaign to empty library shelves of all books they deem inappropriate instead of allowing people to decide for themselves what they and their children read. … Nearly half of the titles impacted were by or about LGBTQIA+ individuals and people of color.”

The catch phrase for this year’s just ended National Library Week was, appropriately, “Don’t let censorship eclipse your freedom to read.”?

Published by University Press of Kentucky, “Gay Poems for Red States” is more than a collection of poetry. Another esteemed Kentucky writer, Chris Offutt, sees the work like this:?

“Willie Carver is a humane and necessary voice from the hills of Kentucky. He writes with stunning insight, vivid imagery, and enormous courage. This is a powerful book that should be read by everyone.”

The May 21 primary elections for Kentucky's General Assembly are open to voters who are registered Democrats or Republicans. (Getty Images)

Briefly, ever so briefly, one man had me thinking that Donald Trump could win back the presidency.

He wasn’t a political scientist crunching data to unveil a Republican path to victory. It’s too early for election forecasts to be reliable.

Nor was he some Trump zealot spouting right-wing talking points while wearing a crimson Make America Great Again cap. Those yahoos are doing Trump more harm than good.

The guy who got me to wondering whether Trump might pull it off was a bus driver standing at the front of his vehicle, briefing passengers ahead of a cross-country trip.

Our driver was one part man of “quality” — crisp uniform, tight gloves, tidy mustache— and one part South Central Los Angeles swagger. Think a Samuel L. Jackson character without the swear words. And he was laying down the law on, as he called it, “my bus.”

The briefing our driver delivered would not have gone over well in the delicate confines of a faculty lounge. It would’ve gone over better at a Trump rally.

He started with a joke at the expense of non-English speakers. That wasn’t his last dig at immigrants, either (a perspective likely influenced by frustrations he and his colleagues had experienced trying to load passengers onto the bus efficiently).

He warned that the bus would be locked at one lengthy stop to prevent vagrants and the homeless from climbing on.

He described with relish the many horrors past passengers had performed in the lavatory, which he expected the source to clean up, and he described with disgust various sorts of misbehavior that had led him to jettison “knuckleheads” in the past.

By itself, this strongman speech might have said little about politics. But consider the context.

The bus didn’t actually belong to our driver. Like so many properties in the United States, it belonged to a foreign multinational that had purchased the carcass of a failed American business.

When that bus pulled from the station, we passed what I’ve seen in every American city I’ve visited: broken-down storefronts and filthy sidewalks strewn with derelicts in sleeping bags.

Most important, when the driver delivered that monologue, it was to a mixed-race audience of working class and working poor. These are the citizens supposedly so polarized — people of color anchoring President Joe Biden’s constituency and whites overwhelmingly in Trump’s camp — but they all appeared to be digging his politically incorrect stand-up routine, laughing and signaling their affirmation. “Speak it, brother!”

Those passengers might have disagreed sharply about when, if ever, America managed to be “great.”? Yet no one on that bus seemed to operate under the illusion things are great in Biden’s America now.

Not that this was any new discovery. I’ve been on the road a lot lately, and any time I wasn’t embedded in the comfortable world of affluent professionals — things are pretty sweet for them — I’ve witnessed that same pessimism.

Americans do see their nation in decline. And yes, they’d rather go back to being a better nation again.

What puts Democrats in a panic is that Biden, as incumbent, owns the status quo — while Trump currently has a corner on the MAGA market, and early pre-election polls suggest customers are willing to buy. Trump has been leading nationally, and he’s performing well in battleground states likely to decide the presidential contest.

To believe those polls, however, you’d have to believe Trump has made historic inroads among Hispanic and even African-American voters — the sorts of people scattered around me on that bus — because when analysts drill down to cross tabulations showing where Biden is underperforming compared to four years ago, minority respondents are the main reason Trump’s been killing it.

I still don’t trust those numbers, however much my bus driver and his audience gave me pause. Such crosstabs likely are failing to capture the true sentiments of young minorities, because they rely on relatively few people and the young adults who cooperate with pollsters probably aren’t representative of their generation.

Even if the polls are providing a reasonably accurate snapshot of the electorate, implications for Trump aren’t as hopeful as they might seem. Traditionally, partisans toy with casting protest votes or switching sides, but campaigning is an educational process that reminds them why they vote the way they usually vote, and these voters typically “return to the fold” as Election Day approaches. Trump’s effort should collapse unless he makes up the difference somewhere else.

Still, knowing that the incumbent president is in a decent electoral position doesn’t mean the broad-based unhappiness with Biden’s America ought to be dismissed as politically meaningless. Combine it with the fury against “Genocide Joe” seen among pro-Palestinian activists, and serious cracks are showing in the Democratic coalition.

What’s happening to the United States, in terms of immigration, prices, Big Business and Big Government … Those are not liabilities only among MAGA Republicans. America’s decline — the failure to protect the border, the laws that stack the deck in favor of big and bureaucratic institutions, the uncontrolled borrowing and spending and regulating that make it expensive to accomplish almost anything — are shaping daily life in a way that dismays a broad, multiethnic slice of the electorate.

Trump may not be able to get lightning to strike twice. He was a self-absorbed president who made both his office and the country smaller, weaker, pathetic. Voters have been there, done that.

But Democrats would be foolhardy to think that Biden’s reelection can buy them the time they need to consolidate political control.

White progressives act as though the future’s theirs, because Trump’s support base is dying off, while they’ve captured the hearts and minds of the young and the affluent. They’re ignoring the hardships, as well as the discontent, rising among voters who are not old, not all white, and not currently Republican.

I don’t see Americans tolerating national decline for long.

Soon, some political entrepreneur is going to craft the next vision to Make America Great (with or without the “Again” tacked on), because the hunger for it crosses political and racial lines. If the power brokers propping up President Biden are not going to be the ones to offer it, someone else will.

A bill that emerged from a House committee would allow officials to hide public business on their personal devices.

FRANKFORT — Long before there were text messages, email, cell phones or computers small enough to slip into a purse? — back in the Neolithic when public records were created on IBM Selectric typewriters — the Kentucky Open Records Act protected personal privacy.

The Kentucky Open Records Act still protects personal privacy.

No one is at risk of having their shopping list, porn search or marital discord plucked from their cell phone and spread in public view because of the Open Records Act. (I’m not saying something personal you type into a device won’t come back to publicly haunt you. I’m saying it won’t be because of the Open Records Act.)

No one’s phone, computer or the box stashed in their basement has ever been seized or searched because of the Open Records Act. Or ever will be.

Layers of review built into the law prevent disclosure of private information. (Sometimes they delay disclosure of what’s finally determined to be public information.)

It’s possible that Rep. John Hodgson, sponsor of House Bill 509, sincerely worries that the sunshine law has a “dark side.”

Other lawmakers know better. Concerns about personal privacy are a smokescreen.

And, where there’s a smokescreen, there’s usually something that some people hope to conceal and other people need to see, something they need to know about their government, their community, their future.

HB 509 is a wink and a nod —? tacit permission for public officials to use their personal devices when they want to keep public business on the down low, just among themselves, the insiders. They’ll use their officially issued email accounts the rest of the time.?

You can argue, like Gov. Andy Beshear, that “bad actors” will not hand over information they want hidden even if the open records law, a quasi honor system, says they must. Maybe so, but HB 509 would hand them an engraved invitation to flout the law. The current law provides penalties for intentionally concealing public records. HB 509 does not.

As Republican Sen. Gex Williams said, even if privacy concerns are real, HB 509 fails to accommodate “the necessity for open records — government records — to be available to citizens.”

Open government laws are for everyone, not just the news media. Here’s hoping the Kentucky Senate and Gov. Andy Beshear will see the light of public accountability and reject this attack on a law that has served Kentucky well for 50 years.?

In hopes of reassuring and informing, I ran a few questions by two of the state’s top authorities on open government laws and the First Amendment — Amye Bensenhaver of the Kentucky Open Government Coalition and Michael Abate, an attorney for the Kentucky Press Association.?

I’m combining, condensing and paraphrasing their responses, so advance apologies if I over abbreviate anything.

Question: How does the Kentucky Open Records Act protect personal communications and private information?

Answer: The law provides exceptions for “public records containing information of a personal nature where the public disclosure thereof would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy” and “[c]ommunications of a purely personal nature unrelated to any governmental function.” The last exception was added just a few years ago, the last time legislators tried to exempt all “private” emails or texts from disclosure. This shows that HB 509 is not really about protecting “personal” information — it’s about shielding records from public view.

Also, the law exempts “correspondence with private individuals, other than correspondence which is intended to give notice of final action of a public agency.”

Q: What happens under current law when a requester seeks public records that might be in personal accounts or on personal devices?

A: Government agencies have records custodians. The custodian asks the relevant employee or official to search for and turn over the requested records. The employee or official checks their desk, file cabinet, public and personal devices. Public servers are searched for responsive records. The law has never required or envisioned the records custodian searching through desk drawers or devices or conducting “fishing expeditions.”

Q: What have Kentucky courts said about public records on personal devices?

A: Courts have consistently held over decades that it is the content and purpose of a record — and not the place it’s stored — that determines whether the public can see it.

Q: Would elected officials or public employees be required under the current law to hand over their personal devices for examination?

A: No. They would be expected to share copies of requested public records from their devices, but the devices would remain in their possession. Kentucky Court of Appeals Judge J. Christopher McNeill asked about that in a recent challenge to the open records law by the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources. In that case, citizens who thought that commissioners were engaging in official communications on personal accounts filed an open records request for those records. The appeals court ruled that messages among commissioners that pertain to public business are public records even if they’re on personal devices. In his concurrence, McNeill wrote he wanted “to assuage any concerns the Kentucky Open Records Act requires public agencies to turn over private cell phones or that today’s holding will impose an extreme burden on agencies to identify and produce all public records generated on private cell phones or private email accounts. Our Opinion merely holds that ‘text messages [or emails] related to Commission business and stored on personal cell phones [or personal email accounts] of its members are public records generally subject to disclosure under the Open Records Act absent an applicable exception.'” KDFRW has appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, which has not decided whether to hear the case.

Q: Are messages sent by constituents to lawmakers on the General Assembly’s 800 number or through its email account subject to disclosure under the Open Records Act?

A: No.

Q: How could HB 509 be amended to better protect the public’s right to know?

A: At least two easy fixes have been proposed to this bill. First, if it is going to limit an agency’s obligation to search for records to public devices and email accounts, it should prohibit public officials and employees from discussing the public’s business via any other channels. Nothing in HB 509 would prevent officials or employees from using texts, messaging apps, collaboration software, etc. to communicate. The bill says only that if they have a government email they should not use private email.

Second, the bill should be clear that an individual who violates this requirement must themselves respond to an open records request, even if the agency need not do so.

Q: Anything else?
A: The loopholes created by HB 509 will be easily seen and exploited. And the problem will only get worse over time, as email becomes a less and less important form of communication. That some of HB 509’s supporters continue to deny these realities shows that they must be more concerned about hiding records than making them available to the public.

What if it’s a rising tide of equality that would give Kentucky the lift it needs? (Getty Images)

FRANKFORT — As I sort through the remains of this session, I keep returning to something I’ve heard said, only half-jokingly, about Kentucky: We waited until after the Civil War to join the Confederacy.

It feels like the legislature is doing it again.

White grievance and white supremacy animated this session. Republicans were out to put Black people in their place. No one said it like that, of course. But the subtext came through clear enough.

The biggest example was not the attack on diversity, equity and inclusion — painful as it was to watch — which, thankfully, fizzled with no anti-DEI legislation enacted. It was the roaring revival of “tough on crime.”?

Policing and criminal punishments fall disproportionately hard on Black Americans. Our carceral state is a remnant of chattel slavery. None other than U.S. Sen. Rand Paul has called mass incarceration the “new Jim Crow.” A lifetime of severely reduced earnings await people who have been in prison. That hardship compounds through communities and generations as poverty and inequality are perpetuated and human potential goes to waste.

And, yet, Kentucky’s Republicans passionately — gleefully — recommitted themselves to mass incarceration — in proud defiance of all the last 40 years has taught.

When confronted with facts or challenged by data, they got huffy.?

The very lawmakers who do nothing to stem the flood of firearms into our communities voted to hold teenagers accountable for gun violence. Carry a gun and you’ll be an adult in the eyes of the law even if you’re 15 and your neighborhood is an arsenal, according to Senate Bill 20, which is becoming law without Gov. Andy Beshear’s signature.

Beshear has vetoed the sweeping House Bill 5, which does away with any pretense that the penitentiary is for penance and rehabilitation — at least for the more than 1 in 5 prisoners who will be in for violent crimes under the bill’s expanded definition. We can pray that the enhanced legal protections for defenders of property won’t invite another tragedy like the shooting of Trayvon Martin, 17, armed with a pack of Skittles and dead for wearing a hoodie in the wrong place.

I’ve always thought of Rep. Jason Nemes as a wonkish, open-minded, Libertarian-ish conservative. But there he was taking his place in the pantheon of red-faced Southern pols, thundering on the House floor: “How many times can you burn down a house? How many people do you get to rape? How many people do you get to assault with deadly weapons? How many people do you get to kill before we put you away forever?”???

What is going on??

Giving everyone the benefit of the doubt, I admit that people are unsettled — scared, even — by the uptick in crime during the pandemic, a surge that is subsiding.?

The push for the self-defeating overhaul of Kentucky’s criminal code comes from white Republicans from Louisville. As the world was shutting down for COVID-19 in 2020, downtown Louisville saw weeks of protests of the police slaughter of Breonna Taylor. Louisville is where homelessness is most visible in Kentucky, though there are plenty of homeless Kentuckians across the state.

Donald Trump sets the tone, while conservative think tanks feed Republican lawmakers cut and paste solutions that they regurgitate, no questions asked.?

This session’s malign spirit was captured for me on a Friday in mid-March: On one end of the Capitol, Republican Rep. Jennifer Decker was explaining how “intellectual diversity” would be achieved through a state-imposed system for policing campus discussions of race, sex, colonialism, power and privilege, while also quickly dismantling diversity offices and staffs.

On the Capitol’s other end, two Republican Senate leaders provided a real time demonstration of the GOP-approved marketplace of ideas by getting in the face of a Democratic colleague who had dared challenge the empirical basis for the push to imprison more Kentuckians.?

Senate President Robert Stivers and Republican Floor Leader Damon Thayer rushed across the floor to chastise Sen. Karen Berg. What set them off seems to have been Berg’s assertion that research citations backing the anti-crime law had been plagiarized. The citations were, indeed, copied and pasted from a Georgia think tank’s proposal for Atlanta, as Sylvia Goodman reported for Kentucky Public Radio and LPM News.?

Also, many of the citations have little or nothing to do with the bill, while some — from “renowned criminal justice reformers who spent their careers arguing for alternative methods to deterring crime or exposing the racial biases of the American justice system” — provide evidence against the measure.

This would constitute intellectual fraud in some circles, as Berg noted, to Stivers’ consternation.

Stivers provided another memorable moment when he stood before the Senate on Feb. 8 and wondered aloud why Kentucky can’t be more like Boston or have a Research Triangle like North Carolina. “Tell me why the state of Kentucky cannot emulate that type of dynamic?”

Seriously?

The man who’s enshrining denial of climate science in state law by yoking Kentucky to coal-fired energy wonders why we’re not a hotbed of scientific inquiry.

Stivers presides over a body that has usurped medical decisions for pregnant women and transgender kids and passed an anti-vaccination conspiracist bill. Talk about a formula for repelling the highly educated and young.

Stivers’ caucus sees a record budget surplus not as an opportunity to invest in education or housing or to ease child poverty through a state earned income tax credit. They see a chance to keep cutting the income tax, benefiting most those already on the economy’s high end.

I get that tackling poverty is slow, complicated work, especially in Kentucky where the economic deck has been stacked against whole regions.

Zero sum thinking is always tempting: One person or one group’s gain must inevitably come at another’s loss. Such logic has kept white Southerners in political line for a long time.

But what if it’s not catering to the already well-off that lifts all boats? What if a rising tide of equality would give Kentucky the lift it needs? What if Kentucky made a fraction of the commitment to education that has put Massachusetts (or, as some say, Taxachussetts) in the economic cat bird’s seat. What if there were fewer guns and more decent housing? Fewer inmates and more breadwinners??

Beshear has given the supermajority a chance to redeem itself by upholding his veto of tough-on-crime HB 5. He rightly called it an “unwieldy bill that would criminalize homelessness and significantly increase incarceration costs without any additional appropriation.”?

Lawmakers can come back next year and enact the parts of HB 5 that make sense.?

Meanwhile, this legislature has demonstrated nothing so much as the need to teach young Kentuckians how to think critically — about race, equality, inclusion and who they trust to lead them into the future, not the past.

From left, Gov. Andy Beshear, Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg and Dr. Jason Smith spoke to media about a mass shooting in Louisville on April 10, 2023. (Photo by Michael Swensen/Getty Images)

April 10 marks one year since a mentally unstable 25-year-old walked into Old National Bank in Louisville and shot five people to death — Thomas Elliott, James Tutt Jr., Juliana Farmer, Joshua Barrick, Deana Eckert — and injured eight, including Nickolas Wilt, a young police officer who was shot in the head and miraculously survived.

Dr. Jason Smith, the chief medical officer at University of Louisville Hospital, called on lawmakers to address gun violence. “To everyone who helps make policy, both at state, city, [and] federal levels – I would simply ask you to do something. Because doing nothing — which is what we’ve been doing — is not working.”

Listening to Dr. Smith, I was certain — absolutely 100%, no doubt, certain — that a gunman waltzing into an upscale office and shooting bankers to death during a staff meeting might be the nightmare scenario to move our powerful Republican supermajority, in the words of Dr. Smith, to do something.?

I have bad news.

They did nothing.?

Frankfort is a mirage; a big, marble-floored, rock on a hill; a fraternal house of optical illusion where mostly men come together ostensibly to make policy, to debate in good faith, but are really there these days to sling culture wars clickbait and craft an annual slogan small enough to fit on a cereal box.

This year’s slogan: Safer Kentucky!

House Bill 5 was titled the “Safer Kentucky Act” (see what they did there?) and was both sprawling and simple: just lock everyone up until they’re dead.?

I remember sitting through an evening committee hearing on HB 5 — the one where we found out the data supporting the bill came from Georgia, not Kentucky — and telling a friend on my drive home from the Frankfort mirage, “If those bill sponsors worked in the private sector, they’d all be fired for cause.”?

Senate Bill 20 said kids should be tried as adults if “they were at least 15 years old at the time of an alleged crime and used a gun while committing a Class A, B or C felony — whether or not the gun was “functional.””

Senate Bill 2 will put armed, volunteer ‘guardians’ in schools. In pushing back on this absurd idea, I have been patted on the head and repeatedly told that this bill is flawed and will be “fixed later.” How can anyone with a half-functioning brain pass a bill to arm strangers in our kids’ schools on the vow to “fix it later?”?

But hey, these are our lawmakers — they make THE LAWS — even as this year’s crime bills are nothing more than an eat-your-Wheaties-style sales pitch. Safer Kentucky!?

You will not be any safer, and your lawmakers know it, but they desperately need you to believe, like in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, that you and your kids will be safer … until the November elections are over.?

As we mark one year since the Old National Bank mass shooting, let’s take a look at two gun bills side by side, both filed in this regular session by Republicans.

There was Sen. Whitney Westerfield’s CARR bill — crisis aversion and rights retention — which specifically addressed mental health and firearm access.

CARR was talked about and written about for months before the senator ever presented his bill to the public. When he finally introduced CARR in the Interim Joint Judiciary Committee on Dec. 15, the room was so bursting with hope that two overflow rooms were needed.?

Families of the victims of Old National Bank were there. Whitney Austin, a woman who survived being shot 12 times at a bank in 2018, and others testified in favor. Many hard questions were asked by lawmakers.?

The day Westerfield filed the bill in late January, he and co-sponsor David Yates, a Louisville Democrat, held a standing-room-only press conference. Notably Sen. David Givens, president pro tempore of the Senate, stood in the back of the room. Surely, if for no other reason than out of respect to Westerfield, the CARR bill would be assigned to the Judiciary Committee he chaired, placed upon the agenda, and discussed.

But CARR — presciently assigned unlucky Senate Bill 13 — met its fate on March 1 when it was assigned to Veterans, Military Affairs, and Public Protection and never saw the light again.

In chilling contrast there was Senate Bill 2 — volunteer “guardians” to carry guns in our schools — which sprung from nowhere on Feb. 22 and got its first hearing a week later. The only person who testified in favor was the sponsor himself, Sen. Max Wise, and his bill passed with ease out of committees and in the Senate. Look Ma! No hands!

On the last day of the session, I waited at the Capitol from 8 a.m. until dinnertime to see if this “guardian” bill would get its final passage. I watched the board all day. It was never posted. I assumed it was dead and went home. In the final hour, between 11 pm and midnight, SB 2 was called for a vote on the House floor, debate was limited by leadership to three minutes per side, and it passed. Poof!

So if you’re playing along, the bill vetted and discussed for months that would have given loved ones a legal avenue to remove firearms from someone suffering a mental health crisis, endangering themselves or others, was left in the trash bin. Too hard to sell.

The flawed, not fully thought out, “we can fix it later,” last-minute bill to put armed volunteers in our schools passed as easy as plucking a blade of bluegrass. A Safer Kentucky!?

After the Old National Bank mass shooting a year ago, Dr. Smith addressed the media. “To be honest with you, we barely had to adjust our operating room schedule to be able to do this. That’s how frequent we are having to deal with gun violence in our community,” he said. “I’ll tell you personally, I’m weary … I’m more than tired, I’m weary. There’s only so many times you can walk into a room and tell someone their [loved one] is not coming home tomorrow. And it just breaks your heart when you hear someone screaming mommy, or daddy, it just becomes too hard, day in and day out, to be able to do that.”

What did lawmakers — our powerful Republican supermajority — do to address Dr. Smith’s concerns??

Nothing.?

It will remain easy in Kentucky for a mentally ill person, intent on doing harm, to buy guns and ammunition minutes before walking into an office and shooting innocent people to death during a staff meeting.

The Safer Kentucky Act was just an act.?

Frankfort has become nothing but a swirling mirage of scare tactics to drive voters to the polls, a place where culture wars and sound bites suck up all of the oxygen in lieu of real lawmaking.?

The big GOP legislative priority this year was to scream “Safer Kentucky!” over and over and over again — He likes it! Hey Mikey! — to feed the electoral Beast come November. That’s all.

The goal was never to make you safer.?

The goal was simply to keep themselves in power so they can come back and do nothing again next year.

Gov. Andy Beshear has tried to appeal to his own reputation for transparency to explain his apparent support for a bill that would reduce the public's access to records of official government business. (Photo by Arden Barnes)

Repeatedly in recent weeks, Gov. Andy Beshear has come out in favor of House Bill 509, a bill that would dramatically weaken Kentucky’s open records laws. The governor has tried to assure citizens the bill would result in more transparency, not less. The governor is wrong; this bill will inevitably lead to the public’s business being done in private.

The governor’s argument that the bill does more good than harm doesn’t hold water. HB 509 may not be as bad as it once was — thanks to public outcry over the havoc the original version of the bill would have wrought — but it still would create a glaring loophole allowing public officials and employees (like the governor and those who work in his administration) to easily hide their work from the public.?

You don’t need to be a lawyer to see why this bill is so dangerous. HB 509 requires public agencies to create email accounts for all public officials and employees. That’s a good step that closes a relatively small loophole that exists in the law today. Also laudable is the bill’s requirement that officials and employees only use their public email accounts, and not personal emails.?

Why does Gov. Beshear disagree with Attorney General Beshear? What text messages are the governor and his administration trying to hide? Is he selling out Kentucky’s transparency laws to make it easier to seek a national platform??

But HB 509 then does an abrupt about-face that renders these modest improvements hollow gestures. For the first time ever, the law would limit where an agency needs to search for responsive records. An agency that creates these new email accounts only needs to search those accounts, or other publicly owned devices, for responsive electronic records. All other communication channels may be ignored by public agencies responding to records requests.?

Do you know anyone who communicates only by email in 2024? Of course not. Public employees, like all people, use a variety of platforms to do the public’s business — texts, other messaging apps, collaboration tools, private social media messages and more. Even though all records belong to the public under current law if they are discussing public business — as Attorney General Andy Beshear repeatedly ruled — they will become effectively off limits if the bill is passed and signed into law. What do you think public officials and employees are going to do if they would prefer not to have their decisions second-guessed? You got it; they will simply communicate by means other than their work email. And contrary to what some of HB 509’s proponents have said, nothing in the bill prohibits that.?

What is the governor’s response to this criticism? At a recent press conference, he began by appealing to his own reputation for transparency. Sorry, Governor, “trust me” does not explain away a loophole so glaring any middle schooler could exploit it. Nor will it prevent the public from justifiably considering you the one who destroyed Kentucky’s long tradition of openness if this bill becomes law.

Next, the governor points out that someone intent on shielding communications won’t turn over their texts or direct messages anyway. But that’s why we have an attorney general appeal process and judicial oversight. We don’t repeal our criminal laws because criminals are likely to break them, do we??

Finally, the governor accuses the authors of this piece (one of whom helped write the law) of not understanding how the Open Records Act really works. That ad hominem attack is a tell that the governor knows his position isn’t adding up for the public. And it should force us to ask some necessary, though uncomfortable, questions: Why does Gov. Beshear disagree with Attorney General Beshear? What text messages are the governor and his administration trying to hide? Is he selling out Kentucky’s transparency laws to make it easier to seek a national platform??

The brilliance of Kentucky’s Open Records Act is that it never made the public’s right to access its records dependent on the technology used to create a record or the place where it is stored. Rather, the act’s drafters made all records available so long as they concern the public’s business.

Now is the wrong time to reverse course and use a technology increasingly shunned by future generations to limit the public’s right to access its records. The inevitable outcome of such a law is that the public’s business will be done through “private” channels. The public is at risk of forever losing the right to supervise its public servants.

Senate Republican Floor Leader Damon Thayer (LRC Public Information)

When the legendary Allan Trout was chief of The Courier-Journal’s Frankfort Bureau, he liked to work up “trial balances” on governors and legislatures, evaluating their performances in progress. With two days left in the 2024 General Assembly, largely to reconsider bills Gov. Andy Beshear vetoes, here’s a ledger on the current General Assembly.

Economic conservatives will be pleased that the budget for the two years beginning July 1 keeps the state on track to reduce and perhaps eliminate its income tax, by maintaining a huge surplus. Economic liberals will be disappointed that the state isn’t using those billions to make pre-kindergarten classes universal in a state that still lags in education and, as a result, income.

Social conservatives will be pleased that the legislature is trying again to open the door to public support for private schools, an idea that barely overcame rural resistance in the legislature then ran into a buzzsaw in the courts. Their ultimate solution, an amendment to change the state Constitution, will be on the Nov. 5 ballot.

That doesn’t please social liberals, or rural conservatives who hold public education in high regard, but there’s merit in letting voters decide the issue — unless the referendum question becomes warped by the millions of dollars likely to be spent by both sides.

The ballot will have at least one other amendment, which is completely unnecessary — except for Republicans who run the show and want to generate voter turnout from an ardent part of their base. It would ban non-citizens from voting, which is not a thing. Unless you’re trying to appeal to suspicion, ignorance and hatred of immigrants.

The ballot could still get two more amendments, because they bypass the governor, but it seems unlikely. The House didn’t like the Senate’s idea of moving elections of statewide constitutional officers to presidential election years, which would help Republicans but disadvantage House members, who can now seek those offices without giving up their seats. And there seems to be no sentiment in the House to curb the governor’s pardon powers, another Senate-passed idea of Sen. Chris McDaniel of Kenton County.

Republican politics ruled in passage of bills aimed at Louisville, the biggest blue island in our red state. Republicans struggle in Metro Council and mayoral elections, so they’re making them nonpartisan — and keeping the current council from changing land-use ordinances for a year, among other things. They hate the teachers’ union, which has its biggest local in Louisville, and they’re unhappy with the Jefferson County Public Schools, so they’re starting a study of breaking up the district.

Several other bad ideas died.

When the House decided to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs at state universities, the door to compromise was slammed by the Senate, which had passed a bill that would’ve done little more than ban things that aren’t going on anyway. It’s hard to imagine the two chambers agreeing in the veto session on something Beshear would accept.

When the Senate narrowly voted to transfer the Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources to the state Department of Agriculture, over the objections of hunters and fishers who fund the agency, the House listened and killed the bill. The best sign this was a bad idea is that it was introduced late, perhaps in an attempt to short-circuit constituents’ objections.

You could say much the same about the bill to create a new agency to oversee horse racing and charitable gaming, which passed in the minimum three days at the end of the session. Charitable-gaming interests seemed to be caught flat-footed, which horse-racing interests never seem to be. That’s always been true, but now the industry has two of its own in power: Senate Floor Leader Damon Thayer and House Speaker David Osborne. Is this a bad idea like those above? It’s hard to say. In racing terms, it has not been well vetted— except among those who agree on it.

Still hanging fire is a bill that would badly weaken the state Open Records Act, by exempting from it messages on government officials’ personal electronic devices. Now, those messages are subject to disclosure if they involve government business. The House, and then a Senate committee, rejected language that would have exempted many officials and agencies from the law.

The bill is on the Senate floor, so it could still pass, but to become law it would have to be acceptable to Beshear. His office worked on parts of the bill, and he endorsed the current version, so perhaps the Senate wants to spotlight it and make sure that he shares the credit and/or the blame for it. They’d better just forget it; this one could blow up in their faces. Sooner or later, voters are going to get tired of officials running the public’s business like personal business.

This column is republished from the Northern Kentucky Tribune, a nonprofit publication of the Kentucky Center for Public Service Journalism.

"This is a sad bill," writes Tyesha Gordon. "The commonwealth has $1 billion to spend on this, but not to better fund public schools? To expand housing and SNAP benefits? To provide better economic opportunities to struggling communities?"???(Getty Images)

House Bill 5 — what some call the Safer Kentucky Act, but what I refer to as the Dehumanization Act — has been approved by both chambers of the Kentucky General Assembly and will almost certainly become law.

HB 5 takes an outdated, disproven, tough-on-crime approach to public safety by delivering harsher punishments, mandating longer sentences, making it impossible for houseless people to find a place to sleep, and many other provisions that will have far reaching consequences for everyday people — not just those who lawmakers consider “less than.”?

I grew up in Covington, right on the border of Kentucky and Ohio. My grandma used to say, “If you get in trouble, don’t get in trouble in Kentucky.” She knew from a lifetime of experience that Kentucky laws are already incredibly harsh compared to other states, and she’s right. Kentucky incarcerates a higher percentage of its people than any other democracy on earth, according to the Prison Policy Initiative.?

Repeated pleas from experts within the corrections system for additional resources to ensure the safety of staff, juveniles, and adults in the system have been consistently ignored by legislators, and HB 5 exacerbates our state’s already overcrowded and unsafe jails and prisons. On any given day there are over 21,000 Kentuckians in jail, nearly half of whom have not been convicted of any crime but remain incarcerated only because they cannot afford to post bail.?

What does HB 5 do to address the state’s overloaded and crumbling prison system, or the inequitable cash bail system? Nothing. In fact, HB 5 will make it harder to post bail by preventing charitable bail organizations from furnishing bail of $5,000 or more.?

HB 5 makes me think of friends and family from City Heights public housing, also known as “The Hill,” in Covington’s Latonia neighborhood. No one has addressed the systemic neglect at City Heights, and the complex is set to be demolished, displacing its residents because the units are no longer safe.?

What does HB 5 offer City Heights residents with nowhere to go? Nothing.?

An especially disgusting part of HB 5 is the “Shopkeeper’s Privilege” provision, which grants store owners the authority to use any level of “reasonable” force they deem “necessary” to apprehend suspected shoplifters. Last summer a cashier spoke to me about a group of kids wearing hoodies in their store: “I don’t know why they dress like that, it makes them look suspicious.” Even though they were in line to make purchases, these kids were deemed potentially dangerous. HB 5 empowers people like this cashier to take drastic actions against innocent individuals — including children — without any legal recourse. Non-native English speakers and those with disabilities or speech impairments may also struggle to communicate effectively in these situations.?

How does state-sanctioned violence make us safer? What does HB 5 do to protect these vulnerable community members? Once again — nothing.

My sister works with foster and displaced youth. Recently, a child came into her salon who was sleeping outside in an alley with their siblings — a situation that, under HB 5, is illegal and leaves them subject to arrest.?

What does HB 5 do to help homeless children who had to leave their homes because of abuse or neglect, and have no choice but to camp out on the streets? You guessed it: nothing.

And finally, HB 5 makes me think of women like me, who have had to flee domestic situations and found themselves on the precipice of homelessness.?

What does HB 5 do to make that situation any easier for people fleeing violence in their own homes? Nothing! It only criminalizes them for being without a safe place to lay their heads.?

People’s response to stories like these is usually something like, “well then don’t get in trouble,” or “make better choices.” But life is nowhere near as simple as bills like HB 5 make it out to be.?

This is a sad bill. The commonwealth has $1 billion to spend on this, but not to better fund public schools? To expand housing and SNAP benefits? To provide better economic opportunities to struggling communities????

Punishing people for the circumstances these same legislators create and perpetuate isn’t justice and will do nothing to solve Kentucky’s problems. Gov. Andy Beshear should veto HB 5.

Men of the legislature gathered with Senate President Robert Stivers to talk to media after overriding Gov. Andy Beshear's veto of a bill that preempted housing discrimination ordinances in Louisville and Lexington. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Liam Niemeyer)

A week before the end of this regular session, the Senate Committee on Veterans, Military Affairs, and Public Protection — commonly known as VMAPP and chaired by Sen. Rick Girdler — met for 21 minutes. I attended this meeting.

After the prayer, pledge of allegiance and roll call, Sen. Gex Williams kindly introduced a little girl, his page for the day, and the meeting began.

When Rep. Killian Timoney brought his bill to the table, he was flanked by law enforcement officers. Afterward, chair Girdler joked, “When you bring the police with you, we’ll agree to anything …” ?

After bills presented by Rep. Matthew Koch and Rep. Chris Freeland, both of whom had the same retired general at the table with them, Girdler said, “General, have you noticed that when you’re talking, we don’t interrupt you with anything like a motion … as long as you’re talking, we’re listening,” to which the General responded that he’s been in the role for 32 years and said it’s “a joke that all I need to do is throw on my uniform or throw out the military flag and you all will give me your first born son. It’s a very nice advantage.” ?

When Girdler called Rep. Mary Beth Imes to the table, he said, “Finally got a pretty lady up here instead of all of these old, ugly men.” Chuckles leaked through the room. After the vote on her bill, he added, “You didn’t even have to bring a cop or a general with you. (10:30)?

Throughout these exchanges, I kept glancing at the little girl accompanying Sen. Williams, wondering what she was thinking as she witnessed what powerful men value: that when policemen or military men are at the table, lawmaking is a good-old-boy slap on the back; that even a female elected official, supposedly their equal, holds primary value as a “pretty lady.”

There will be those who read this and roll their eyes, dismissing my observations as partisan nitpicking. But imagine a panel of female legislators goofing off and giggling like this in an official, public meeting about issues that affect law enforcement, the military, or public safety.

You can’t imagine it, so I’ll move on.

I have been re-reading Peggy Noonan’s 1990 memoir, “What I Saw at the Revolution,” about her years working as a speechwriter in the Reagan White House. “Everyone is happy, but not everyone is good,” she writes on page 46. “There is a split, a difference, between how people act and the dreadful things they are doing…”

Preach, Peggy. And while we’re here, let’s take a look at our white, male-dominated, Kentucky GOP supermajority, and see what they’ve done these last few months.

In the beginning, there was rousing support for the Momnibus bill, created in the interim by a bipartisan group of women legislators. There were cheers all around to eliminate the diaper tax. Near the session’s end, we got Sen. Danny Carroll’s ambitious and thoughtful Horizons Act child care bill.?

And they all lost steam. They lost steam because helping women/mothers is not popular with GOP voters — nothing is free, ladies; buck up, pay your own way — and this is an election year.

There was House Bill 513 which removed authority from the governor and gave it to the legislature to decide what gets displayed in our Capitol Rotunda. It appears Gov. Andy Beshear’s removal of the Jefferson Davis statue, a powerful symbol of the Confederacy and the defense of slavery, still has many of our Republican legislators rankled.

And though it did not receive a vote before the veto period — will it come back in April? — lawmakers and lobbyists spent an exorbitant amount of time and resources trying to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) from our public universities. And hey, who needs diversity? Or equality? Or inclusiveness? Apparently, not our GOP supermajority.

There was the common sense Crown Act, Senate Bill 231, which would have allowed Black people to wear their natural hair and cultural hairstyles in the workplace and got absolutely no traction. Imagine voting against “allowing” your neighbor to “wear” their natural hair at work and still walking proudly into church on Sunday, Bible in hand, claiming to love your neighbors.

House Bill 5 — the sprawling, tough-on-crime, let’s just lock everyone up bill — passed as we all knew it would, even as it carried a truckload of controversy, including over where primary sponsor, Rep. Jared Bauman, got the data to support claims. These questions remained unanswered, leading to rising irritation at continued demands for data, culminating in the shocking photo of Senate President Robert Stivers and Floor Leader Damon Thayer losing their tempers at Sen. Karen Berg for daring to demand answers.?

Imagine Stivers and Thayer shaking fingers and openly chastising a male senator on the floor in this manner. But by God, they taught her a lesson.

HB 5 has the distinction of addressing a kitchen-sink list of crimes, much of which includes gun violence but never directly addresses access to guns.?

Senate Bill 56 called for safe storage of firearms — keeping guns out of the hands of children, locking guns in cars so they cannot be easily stolen and used in crimes, etc. — and was assigned to VMAPP on Jan. 3. It disappeared from radar.?

Senate Bill 13, commonly known as the CARR bill and filed by a Republican, allowing for temporary removal of firearms from someone experiencing a mental health crisis, was also assigned to VMAPP and never seen again.

Meanwhile, according to statistics from Everytown for Gun Safety, “By 2021, 72 percent of veteran suicides involved firearms—the highest proportion in over 20 years.” But what interest would VMAPP, a committee on veterans affairs, have in this.

As we rest during the veto period, look at where our lawmakers invested their time and energy these last few months, on what they fought hardest for and ignored, on where they shut down debate, and the priorities of Kentucky’s white, male-dominated, GOP supermajority become blindingly clear.

Hint: It’s not women and children, education, equal rights, or taking care of the most vulnerable. These are the same folks, after all, who rebranded homelessness in HB 5 as “street camping,” as if the homeless are happily outdoors all night, sleeping on concrete by choice, grilling hotdogs and singing campfire songs.?

Maybe if the sponsors of bills for safe gun storage, crisis aversion, child care, the Crown Act and others promised to bring uniformed police officers, a general, or enough pretty ladies to the table, good bills could get a fair shake.?

Remember the little girl — dark-skinned, with naturally curly black hair — who attended the Senate VMAPP meeting as Sen. Williams’ page and witnessed nothing but a good old boy, misogynistic, frat-house-like romp masquerading as serious lawmaking.?

To paraphrase Peggy Noonan, not everyone is good and they are doing some dreadful things. Set your expectations accordingly.

(Getty Images)

This commentary was written by the editorial boards of the College Heights Herald, the Eastern Progress, the Murray State News, the Louisville Cardinal, The Northerner, the Thorobred News and the Kentucky Kernel.

Kentucky state legislators have put forth an attack on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) across the commonwealth’s public university campuses, failing to recognize these initiatives are the best way to preserve the commonwealth’s future.

Out of touch lawmakers are working to remove programs that create a safe space for difficult discussions and an atmosphere of acceptance and belonging that all young people deserve to find. This is an appalling attack on young people and their education that should not have been allowed to make it this far, and it should not be allowed to continue.

University officials have been hesitant to take a stand, which is why we, the editorial boards of independent, student-run newspapers at seven of Kentucky’s public universities, felt we must.

We call on the Kentucky General Assembly to not take up legislation in the future that seeks to eliminate DEI from the commonwealth’s public universities.?

It appalls us that the effort to eliminate DEI protections and initiatives was even given life in the General Assembly. Every person deserves to feel comfortable in making the commonwealth their home, and taking away initiatives that promote diversity will push Kentucky farther into the past.

On Feb. 13, the Senate passed Senate Bill 6. A month later, the House amended the bill with original language from House Bill 9, and voted to pass. The bill returned to the Senate with stronger attacks on diversity while eliminating race-based scholarships for students, mandatory DEI training and orientations, required courses and more.

In January, SB 6 sponsor Sen. Mike Wilson said the bill would outlaw the teaching of “discriminatory concepts” like the belief that some individuals are “inherently superior” to others within the classroom and across faculty initiatives.?

Days later, Rep. Jennifer Decker introduced HB 9, an aim to strip all DEI initiatives on college campuses. Anything deemed to be “differential treatment” would be prohibited and defunded, including dedicated offices and positions.?

Following months of debate and public outcry, the Senate chose not to vote on concurrence with the updated SB 6 before entering the veto period last night. While the General Assembly could still pass a version of the legislation upon returning from the veto period on April 12, they would be unable to override a veto by Gov. Andy Beshear.

This legislation represents a threat to Kentucky’s higher education that their sponsors refuse to acknowledge. It presents Kentucky as a land of archaic ideals, where bygone values endure despite changes of modern times.?

It was less than 70 years ago when the last three of Kentucky’s public universities fully desegregated their campuses. Before 1949, Black Kentuckians had no real option of attending a public university in the commonwealth other than Kentucky State University, which was founded in 1886 as an African American teachers college.

That is not the Kentucky we know now. We have come of age in a place that thrives on, encourages and advances equity, and many of us grew up supporting the fight to protect it.?

Watching our commonwealth’s progress toward equality be systematically dismantled is unimaginable, especially for today’s standards. Diversity, equity and inclusion have been — and continue to be — foundational pillars to our college campuses.?

DEI initiatives encourage students of color to attend college in Kentucky. According to BestColleges, over half of the students surveyed “would consider transferring if their college were to abolish diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.” Even more prospective students said they’d reconsider their decision if a college they were considering had “abolished DEI initiatives.”

When students do not see themselves at Kentucky’s universities, they will have no desire to attend them, either.

Similar legislation has been enacted in other states, resulting in employees being fired because the law no longer allows for their positions. These are not simply numbers. These are people’s lives.?

The lawmakers who are sponsoring and supporting this legislation fail to envision the future and recognize the inherent value of engaging with all of our unique perspectives and lived experiences in the classroom and on campus.

Difficult discussions on Kentucky campuses allow students to think critically about the world around them, with the guidance of professors well-researched and immersed in their fields. They are not “indoctrinating” students against their will; they are expanding our perspectives to include all of our lived experiences.

Classrooms are meant to be safe spaces for discussions and debates with the purpose of education, not political theater.

Our universities have long, rich histories that have only been made greater by students who come from diverse backgrounds and walks of life.

At Murray State University, for example, Mary Holland was the first Black student to attend the university and Nancy Tyler Demarta was the first Black graduate. Another notable figure, Black faculty member Marvin Mills, founded the occupational safety and health major and played a pivotal role in the creation of the Dr. Marvin D. Mills Multicultural Center.?

In similar light, at Eastern Kentucky University, Cynthiana native James Way became the university’s first Black professor in 1967, teaching classes in industrial technology, according to the Notable Kentucky African Americans Database. Following Way, his children, James, Jannette, William and Melissa, were the first Black students to attend Eastern’s Model Laboratory School.

Thanks to their work and the work of countless other individuals, each of our universities are places where faculty are able to educate students about the realities of the past. Because of their efforts, we feel safe and valued in such spaces and our institutions have been enriched by their presence.

This legislation threatened to upend this progress, yet we are not sure the fight is over.?

SB 6 promises academic freedom, but make no mistake: it brings academic restriction at best, and pure censorship at worst. This bill — and those who support it — simply wishes to see traditionally left-leaning topics eliminated from the classroom curriculum entirely.

Such a decision not only has the potential to eliminate valuable classroom discussions and push prospective students away but could turn away faculty and staff who are foundational to building a better future for individuals and for the commonwealth.

At Northern Kentucky University, associate dean and professor Danielle McDonald said the role of the professor is to guide the classroom conversation and encourage students to come to their own conclusions. Introducing new perspectives and creating an environment of inclusivity is already the mission of professors, McDonald said — not presenting a topic as absolute truth.

At Western Kentucky University, members of faculty have not only stated in response to the legislation that there are many who have begun to look for employment elsewhere, but that they cannot, in good conscience, look a high school student in the eye and encourage them to attend a public university in the state.

If Kentucky is to be the future, our lawmakers should draw in the leaders of the future, not scare them away. Universities are where key learning and foundational work happens, and Kentucky universities must be that place for Kentucky leaders.

It takes more than just our voices to fight against such an injustice, however.

Only one university president, Eli Capilouto of the University of Kentucky, has spoken out against the bills. Other university presidents — Bob Jackson of Murray State University, Kim Schatzel of the University of Louisville, Timothy Caboni of Western Kentucky University and Cady Short-Thompson of Northern Kentucky University — have gone as far as acknowledging the importance of DEI on their campuses.

Presidents Jay Morgan of Morehead State University, Koffi C. Akakpo of Kentucky State University and David T. McFaddin at Eastern Kentucky University have yet to release a statement on the legislation or DEI.

The statements of support for DEI are not nothing, but they are not enough in the light of the threat DEI initiatives are facing. So many people in each of these campus communities have spoken out against the bill, leaving many wanting more.

Many of our institutions’ mission statements or strategic plans support diversity, equity and inclusion. There is value in these initiatives. It shows they understand their necessity and that they support providing a helping hand to groups that need it. A response from our university presidents is not an unreasonable request.?

The commonwealth’s universities should have stood in solidarity against these bills. Standing in solidarity reduces the likelihood of repercussions against individual universities while showing Kentuckians that their voices are being heard by those in power.

Instead, it is left to students to pick up the torch and continue fighting where those above us fail. University administration is not taking a stand, so we are.

Protecting diversity in Kentucky creates spaces for students to feel safe, seen and heard. It is a simple fact that different groups of people have been systemically discriminated against and not given equal educational opportunities.?

Great progress has been made in recent decades, but we have to recognize that discrimination is an issue that will never be fully resolved. We do not live in a perfect world, and there is always work left to be done.

Abolishing DEI eliminates decades of steadfast, hardfought progress that has been made. It will encourage high schoolers who are looking at colleges to attend a university located anywhere but in Kentucky. It tells students of diverse backgrounds that they are not welcomed on campuses where they are hoping to build the beginning of the rest of their lives.

We call on the General Assembly to do better. We call on the General Assembly to realize that DEI initiatives and the discussion and acceptance of diversity are in the best interest of every single student, faculty and staff member at each public university campus in the commonwealth.

Despite what certain lawmakers in Kentucky and around the nation might think, diversity is not going away. The world is moving forward, and Kentucky cannot be left behind.

This editorial was drafted and approved by the student editorial boards of independent student news organizations at seven of the commonwealth’s public universities: the College Heights Herald at Western Kentucky University, the Eastern Progress at Eastern Kentucky University, the Murray State News at Murray State University, the Louisville Cardinal at the University of Louisville, The Northerner at Northern Kentucky University, Thorobred News at Kentucky State University and the Kentucky Kernel at the University of Kentucky.

Kentucky’s Constitution, adopted in 1891 and in force today, is clear in proclaiming that “absolute and arbitrary power over the lives, liberty and property of freemen exists nowhere in a republic, not even in the largest majority.” Not even a supermajority. (Getty Images)

To the average person, “venue” is the place where some organized event happens — a concert, a conference, or (particularly in March) a basketball game.

To a person who suffers a legal wrong or injury, it is the court where the law says a criminal or civil case must be filed.

The general rule on venue for civil lawsuits claiming personal injury or property damage is that a lawsuit is filed where the injury arose, or where the defendant resides.

And because of that general venue rule, Franklin Circuit Court has historically been the venue for most constitutional challenges because Frankfort is the seat of the Kentucky government.? And just as the federal District of Columbia Circuit has developed some familiarity with challenges involving constitutional issues by virtue of the frequency and number of cases, so too the Franklin Circuit Court judges have, in my 44 years of experience and observation, developed a particular familiarity with those sorts of challenges among their peers.

Under Kentucky law, a party sued in a particular circuit court may request that venue be changed, and if it can be shown that a fair and impartial civil trial cannot be had because of the nature of the claim, or because of other circumstances, then a change of venue will be granted. There are also rules requiring recusal of individual judges for bias, prejudice or conflicts of interest.

There is an inherent and healthy tension among the branches of government. It is natural that the legislative branch doesn’t like legislative acts being questioned in court cases, and so have constrained the ability of the public to challenge the enactment of its laws. But some in the legislative branch particularly don’t like Franklin Circuit Court’s decisions upholding some of those challenges, even though those lower court decisions are most often affirmed by Kentucky’s higher courts.

And so, in recent years, there have been serial legislative efforts designed to move the venue for constitutional challenges to laws, to regulations and to state agency orders, out of Franklin Circuit Court.

Kentucky’s Constitution confers on the General Assembly the power to assign the venue for civil actions. Yet that power, and indeed all legislative power, is neither absolute nor without constitutional constraints when exercised arbitrarily.

In 2022, the venue for constitutional challenges to statutes, regulations and agency orders was changed by the General Assembly to the county in which the plaintiff resides, or for nonresidents, Franklin County. Eliminated, for only those types of cases, was the option to bring suit where the injury arose, or where the defendant legislature or agency resided. The argument in support of the change? was the convenience of the plaintiff.

Kentucky Supreme Court strikes down ‘random’ change of venue law

Dissatisfied that some constitutional challenges were still being brought in Franklin Circuit Court under those revised rules, the General Assembly passed Senate Bill 126 in 2023, providing an automatic right of any party to engage in a? “change of venue roulette.” By merely filing a motion and without any basis or reason, a party could force a change of venue to a circuit court somewhere else in the state that would be assigned randomly by the Supreme Court clerk.

Last year, the Kentucky Supreme Court struck that law as a violation of the separation of powers and an intrusion into the role of the circuit court to determine whether recusal or a change of venue was needed and justified.

House Bill 804, now pending in the Kentucky Senate, is this year’s entry in the “anywhere but Franklin Circuit Court” crusade. For civil actions challenging state laws, regulations and agency orders, the bill mandates that venue be moved on demand to an adjacent judicial circuit, without any reason or justification.

It delegates unchecked power to a party to a lawsuit to move a case to a new court and new judge, inviting forum shopping by a party without requiring any demonstration that the case cannot be fairly heard in the initial forum in which it was filed.

It singles out cases involving constitutional challenges, while still requiring for all other civil cases that there be a showing of undue influence, or inability to obtain a fair trial.

And it lays bare the fact that the justification for the 2022 change, which was supposedly for the convenience of the plaintiff, was wholly about preventing one circuit court from hearing these constitutional cases.

For under HB 804, a plaintiff filing a constitutional claim in the county of his or her residence under that 2022 law, can be forced to try the case in another forum upon a motion of any other party, with no showing that the court the plaintiff filed with cannot or will not fairly adjudicate the challenge.?

?HB 804 is all about assuring that those remaining constitutional claims that under the 2022 law are filed by nonresidents or by resident plaintiffs in Franklin Circuit Court can be moved on demand by any other party, such as the Attorney General, who typically defends the enactments of the General Assembly.??

Kentucky’s Constitution, adopted in 1891 and in force today, is clear in proclaiming that “absolute and arbitrary power over the lives, liberty and property of freemen exists nowhere in a republic, not even in the largest majority.” Not even a supermajority.

It is past time for the General Assembly to end the crusade, and to recognize that perhaps, just perhaps, the “fault lies not in our stars.” The problem may really not be the particular judicial forum in which challenges to state laws, regulations and orders have been brought in the past, but instead the occasional lapse of restraint and respect for constitutional boundaries in the enactment of laws that fuels successful court challenges.?

The legislature's move to preempt local efforts to create a more equitable and vibrant land use future will accomplish little but to further fuel cynicism and disaffection with the legislature and government, writes Tom FitzGerald. In this photo, the Louisville skyline is photographed from across the Ohio River just after sunset. (Getty Images)

It is said that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of a small mind.? That is nowhere more apparent than with the Kentucky General Assembly and its occasional respect for local governance.

Lawmakers purport to respect “local control” and to value home rule — the idea that, within limits, communities and their local elected officials are in the best position and should have the flexibility and latitude to weigh and decide issues uniquely affecting quality of life in their communities. But when it comes to local decisions affecting Metro Louisville (and Lexington to a lesser extent), some in Frankfort seem all too willing to selectively override local authority and second-guess decision making by elected officials.

The late Howard Baker Jr., Tennessee congressman and later U.S. senator, often recalled his father’s advice which helped to make him such a successful moderate who helped navigate our nation through the difficult issues of his day: “Always go through life working on the assumption that the other guy might be right.”

Seemingly not afflicted by that assumption, the General Assembly has intruded into local governance issues in several ways this session.

Homelessness a problem?? Frankfort knows best — just criminalize it.

Managing the most diverse and complex student body and school system in the commonwealth? Frankfort knows best — just split it up.

Reforming zoning to make housing options more affordable and neighborhoods more diverse and vibrant? Frankfort knows best — just impose a selective moratorium on further action and order more studies.

Prevent landlords from discriminating against veterans and folks with fixed or lower incomes by categorically refusing housing assistance vouchers? Frankfort knows best — just preempt communities from addressing such invidious discrimination.

The most recent example is a Senate committee change to House Bill 388, adopted with no notice to the public, that would impose a one-year partial moratorium on residential zoning reform efforts that have broadly involved the public in Metro Louisville, blocking any changes to zoning regulations that might increase the allowed density of housing units per acre, or the number of inhabitants in a building. Exclusionary zoning has long been the handmaiden of racial and economic discrimination. This move to preempt local efforts to create more affordable rental and owner-occupied housing for a more equitable and vibrant land use future will accomplish little but to further fuel cynicism and disaffection with the legislature and government.

If Frankfort really believes that those who are closest to issues uniquely affecting their communities — their health, their safety, their quality of life— should be empowered to make those hard decisions, subject to the ballot box and constitutional limits, then it should stop enabling those who turn to Frankfort to override local government decisions with which they disagree.

Don’t impose selective zoning bans, don’t criminalize homelessness, don’t meddle in local school system management, don’t interfere with local air pollution control and solid waste planning, and by resisting the calls to do so, send a clear message of respect for the ideas of civic engagement and home rule. Embrace restraint and occasionally, even humility.? Otherwise, be prepared to become embroiled in micromanaging every local controversy, as befits an entity that believes it always “knows best.”

Georgia Recorder columnist Jay Bookman writes that the campaign to deconstruct our public education system is not driven by popular demand but by a relative handful of extremely rich, extremely ideological campaign donors around the country. (Getty Images)

In its attempt to shove school vouchers down the throat of reluctant voters, Georgia Republicans have argued that the state’s existing structure of public schools is not capable of providing an adequate education to many students, especially to those in “failing schools.”

If that’s true, it’s basically an admission of failure by the GOP, since that party has dominated Georgia politics, and Georgia education policy, for more than two decades now. But it also creates a problem of a different sort.

You see, in the words of the Georgia Constitution:

“The provision of an adequate public education for the citizens shall be a primary obligation of the State of Georgia.”

Note the terms “primary obligation” and, even more importantly, “adequate public education.” Not private. Public. That’s the duty that the constitution confers upon those in charge.

By telling us that the state is not providing an adequate public education, Georgia’s current political leadership, including Gov. Brian Kemp, is telling us that in its own judgment it is failing to perform its constitutional duties.

That puts them in a bit of a pickle.

In Senate Bill 233, the private-school voucher program that now stands on the precipice of passage, the General Assembly attempts to hand-wave its way out of that dilemma. The bill states that creation of a voucher program – a program supposedly justified because our schools are inadequate — “shall not be construed to imply that a public school did not provide a free and appropriate public education … or constitute a waiver or admission by the state.”

So we are supposed to believe that our public school system is simultaneously failing and not failing.

Here’s what we do know. We know that schools in lower-income areas are usually those most likely to face challenges, and we know that Georgia is one of only six states in the country that does not provide additional state funding to school systems serving large numbers of children from low-income families. The General Assembly could fund such a program, but instead is choosing to fund private-school vouchers.

Under SB 233, it is allocating up to $141 million a year to help students in lower-performing schools “escape” into supposedly better-performing private schools.

(Based on years of research, most of those private schools will not be better-performing.)

And based on the trajectory of voucher programs in other states, that $141 million is a mere down payment on what’s to come. Next year they’ll come back for more, and then more, and then much much more. It happens every time, in every state.

Initially, the Georgia voucher is limited to a maximum of $6,000, plus a $500 transportation subsidy. That $6,000 is nowhere near enough to allow poor families to cover tuition for a quality private-school education, which costs two to five times that much. But it’s a nice subsidy for upper middle-class families already paying for a private-school education, which is how most vouchers will be used.

Under the provisions of SB 233, the only students eligible for vouchers are those who live in school districts ranked in the bottom 25% of Georgia school districts. That provision may seem like a good-faith attempt to limit vouchers to where they would supposedly do the most good, but again, based on the trajectory of other states, the limitation will be only temporary. It will be eliminated as soon as it is politically feasible to do so.

All across the country, it’s the same pattern. What we’re witnessing is the gradual, persistent, conscious erosion of the public education system. And once we allow that foundation to crumble, it will be extremely difficult if not impossible to rebuild. In some states that are farther down that road, we’re already seeing calls to use public tax money to build the physical infrastructure for private schools, which would then be owned not by the taxpayers who paid for them, but by the non-profit or in some cases for-profit private schools.

And here’s what’s most galling: This campaign to deconstruct our public education system – a system described in our state constitution as a primary obligation of state government — is not driven by popular demand. In every state that vouchers have been put on the ballot, they have been thoroughly rejected. Even Georgia Republicans, with an overwhelming advantage in both the House and Senate, can barely scrape together legislative majorities to pass vouchers.

Instead, the campaign is being driven by a relative handful of extremely rich, extremely ideological campaign donors around the country. Their message has been clear in every state that has adopted vouchers: If you want their campaign money, you must do their bidding.

And Gov. Brian Kemp wants their campaign money.

This commentary is republished from the Georgia Recorder, a sister publication of the Kentucky Lantern and part of States Newsroom.

“Our Nineveh on the Kentucky River," declared a losing candidate for governor in 1951. The reference is to an ancient city, now part of Mosul in Iraq, that was the world's largest urban center and a seat of culture, decried in the Bible for its vice and sin. (University of Kentucky Libraries, Special Collections Research Center, Post Card Collection)

During the current legislative session, the budget that finally emerges will be the result of some compromise and a good deal more behind-the-scenes action. The Republican majority paid scant attention to the Democratic governor’s recommendations. Some observers have argued that having a Republican governor at this time would have better served the state given that party’s overwhelming supremacy in both chambers. But history shows us that such a view could be in error, for when Democrats dominated the state for decades — even more than Republicans do now — strong legislative leadership did not necessarily follow.

Of course, it was a very different era, overall, as I wrote about in “A New History of Kentucky.” (University Press of Kentucky, 2018). In 1951, a losing candidate for governor had attacked the political immorality and corruption in the state capital, “our Nineveh on the Kentucky River.” That was nothing new, for criticism had long existed regarding the influence of lobbies, the way votes were secured, and, on occasion, the general quality of the elected officials themselves.

Journalists in the 1950s and later noted that the liquor lobby kept a 24-hour open house, with free drinks, for any member, “a temptation that proved fatal to many a lawmaker away from home and the cold eye of the Baptist Church.” One member was known for drinking out of a milk carton on the chamber floor; it was less well-known that the carton contained a mixture of half milk, half vodka.

?And antics could be very open. When a bill passed as a result of some political dealings, or even a monetary payoff, it was labeled a turkey bill, and members would yell out, “Gobble, Gobble, Gobble,” as the vote was taken. In 1972 a live turkey was released on the house floor, with the name of a bill on a sign around its neck. Capers such as that brought a versifier to conclude:

In the four decades after the end of World War I, the pattern for the Kentucky legislature had been rather settled, however. The typical legislator was a white, middle-aged male who attended a Baptist church, practiced law, voted Democratic, and during the successful sessions usually followed the governor’s wishes on key votes and in the selection of leadership.?

While turnover in the Kentucky Senate generally matched national trends, Kentucky House members changed at a much more rapid rate, owing in part to the practice of rotating the nomination among the counties constituting a district. At a time when a rate exceeding 50 percent was deemed “excessive turnover,” in the decades of the 1940s and 1950s nearly 62 percent of the legislators in the house changed in each 10-year period.?

Slowly, though, those rates decreased. A strong committee system developed, members were better informed, and professionalism grew. The Kentucky General Assembly attracted more members oriented to their legislative careers and, not coincidentally, less likely to accept gubernatorial guidance.

For a century and a quarter after the Civil War, the Democratic Party ruled unchecked. Only once — in 1920 — had the Republican Party gained control of even one house of the legislature, and that had lasted but a single session. The New Deal of the 1930s cemented Democratic dominance until the 1990s.

The first governor from the Jackson Purchase, the late Julian Carroll, entered his full term in 1975 with a mandate, an ample treasury, and perhaps as much experience as any of his 20th century predecessors. An attorney and excellent stump speaker, he had served 10 years in the legislature (four as speaker of the house), three in the lieutenant governor’s office, then one as governor, after Wendell Ford resigned to become a U.S. senator.

?He brought an extensive knowledge of the details of government to the job and so controlled his first legislative session that an observer said, “A cockroach couldn’t crawl across the Senate floor without an OK from the governor stamped on his back.”?

Yet, despite that control, during his term, Carroll pumped considerable money into the secondary and elementary schools, expanded the state park system, provided aid to the poor to help pay fuel bills, and abolished the bail bonding system.

Moreover, the governor implemented a constitutional amendment that voters quietly approved in 1975, which drastically reorganized the state’s legal system and made it a model for the nation.Under this amendment the position of county judge became totally administrative. A district court system formed the core of the revamped judicial plan. The amendment also renamed the state’s highest court the Kentucky Supreme Court and created a new Kentucky Court of Appeals to hear cases from the circuit courts.

Yet Carroll experienced little good fortune outside state government. A few months before he took office, over two dozen tornadoes had ripped through the state, leaving behind 77 deaths and much devastation.

Floods, severe winters, the Scotia mining disaster that cost 26 lives in Letcher County in 1976, and the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire in Campbell County that left 165 dead in 1977 brought more grief and eventually some regulatory reforms. Gov. Andy Beshear has faced even more devastating challenges and has done well in coping with them.

Despite its emerging professionalism over the last half-century, the work of the legislative branch still falls victim to competing interests and narrow partisanship.? Legislators continue to pass laws that should not pass and stake out positions best left unsaid.

As a result, the public are often left to ponder the wisdom of the late Happy Chandler’s famous quip — uttered? before voters in 2000 approved annual sessions of the General Assembly — that instead of meeting every two years for 60 days, the General Assembly should gather every 60 years for two days.??

Senate Bill 16 could potentially be used to charge someone with trespass for filming or recording an industrial hog operation while standing on their own property. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

We expect, as a commonwealth, that when lawmakers propose to make activity criminal, that they choose their words carefully. We also expect that government will take action to assure that our food supply is safe, and that workers in the workplace will not be exposed to hazards due to employer negligence.

Yet pending before the House of Representatives is a bill that does not tread carefully in protecting these interests, and which could criminalize a worker or state inspector photographing unsafe working conditions or unsanitary food production conditions and could criminalize a neighbor standing on their own property, filming an industrial hog operation next door engaged in pollution or animal cruelty.

Kentucky Senate takes aim at ‘harassing’ drones photographing livestock, food production

In 2018, the General Assembly created a separate criminal offense for trespass involving a “key infrastructure asset,” which made unlawful entry or occupation on the property of a list of infrastructure assets such as refineries, pipelines, water plants, electrical facilities, and the like, a criminal trespass. Also made criminal were drone overflights of key infrastructure properties with the intent to surveil without consent and with intent to do harm or damage.

Senate Bill 16, pending before the House for a floor vote since March 7, would unreasonably expand the criminal activities where food production plants and animal feeding operations are involved, and create a separate and overbroad set of rules for those two types of facilities.

Using imprecise new language limited to those two types of facilities, the bill would criminalize the taking of photographs or video and audio recordings, by a government inspector or a worker lawfully on the premises of a food manufacturing plant or in a confined animal feeding barn, unless the owner specifically authorized that photography or filming. The law could create a new defense for a negligent manufacturer that the evidence collected by a worker or inspector documenting unsafe or unhealthy workplace conditions was unlawfully collected and could not be used.

So too, whether intentional or not, the overbreadth of the new language would make it a crime for a neighbor, standing on their own property, to make an audio, video or photographic recording of an air, water or waste violation occurring at a food manufacturing or packaging plant, or of a confined animal feeding operation located next door.

Though explained in committee hearings as being intended to prevent drone overflights, the bill does much more, greatly expanding criminal liability by covering actions both in the air and on the ground, both on and off the property.

By including actions “on or above” rather than limiting the changes in the law to unmanned aerial overflights without permission, the changes unintentionally make criminals out of workers, inspectors and neighbors who take photos, videos or audio recordings.?

The taking of a photograph by a worker in a food manufacturing plant of a safety violation; the taking of a photograph by a state or local food, safety, or environmental inspector during a routine or emergency inspection of a food plant or an animal feedlot operation; and the taking of a photograph or air or water sample by a neighbor on his or her own property, of a suspected odor or nuisance violation from an intensive hog farm or food manufacturing plant, would all be subject to criminal prosecution.

And although it was not the intent of the bill as explained by the sponsor in committee, because the new language would cover all properties where any number of horses, ducks, chickens or hogs are housed, stabled, or confined and fed for 45 days or more in any 12-month period, the taking of photographs or videos by persons lawfully visiting agritourism venues and racetracks would be criminal, unless the owner specifically consented to those actions.??

The imprecise language and likely unconstitutional overreach of the bill could be corrected by adopting two House floor amendments that have been filed. They would limit the new language to unauthorized trespass onto and unauthorized drone overflights above the properties and would specifically protect the rights of workers to document noncompliance of a federal, state, or local law or regulation and to be protected against retaliation or discrimination. Food safety, workplace safety, and safeguarding the rights of neighbors who live downhill, downwin, and downstream, demand no less.

"If this commission was truly interested in an all-of-the-above approach to electric generation, why not designate a position on the executive committee from the natural gas industry? Someone with expertise in large scale solar installations? Maybe even the nuclear sector?" (Getty Images)

In late February, energy legislation (SB 349) that’s been promised from Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, arrived on the last day for bills to be introduced.

Discussing the measure on the Senate floor last week, supporters emphasized the legislation’s commitment to an “all-of-the-above” energy strategy. It’s a talking point many might buy — unless they read past the bill’s first page.

Truth is that the legislation would lead to unnecessary government overreach into energy policy. And, require Kentuckians to shoulder the costs of financial benefits directed toward a small number of coal companies, several of which don’t even operate in Kentucky.

Kentucky Senate’s pro-coal bill would burden ratepayers, make energy transition more chaotic

?The Energy Planning and Inventory Commission, or EPIC, would be an 18-member group drawn from Kentucky’s business and energy sectors. There would also be an executive committee, which would wield the commission’s real authority. The authority granted to this new bureaucracy is unprecedented.

For example, if an electric utility plans to retire a power plant that has reached the end of its useful life, the utility is required to provide a one-year notice to EPIC’s executive committee before initiating the regulatory process already required through Kentucky’s Public Service Commission (PSC).

?That notice will trigger an expensive, taxpayer-funded report to examine a set of issues that have little to do with the provision of reliable and affordable power and, heretofore, haven’t been necessary for the PSC to do its job. According to the bill, the report “approved by a majority of the members of the executive committee shall be designated as findings of the (whole) commission.”

The five members of the executive committee include the head of the University of Kentucky’s Center for Applied Energy Research? and two members selected by the other commission members. A retired utility executive has a spot on the executive committee.?

Finally, the fifth member must have the “professional experience … required to serve as chief executive officer or board member” of a coal producer.

This is where the bill’s sponsors start hiding the ball.

If this commission was truly interested in an all-of-the-above approach to electric generation, why not designate a position on the executive committee from the natural gas industry? Someone with expertise in large scale solar installations? Maybe even the nuclear sector?

Kentuckians are being told EPIC is needed to focus on reliable and affordable power. But the legislation doesn’t mandate an executive committee member that speaks for consumers or someone who understands the complexities of regional grid transmission.

When asked if Joe Craft, CEO of Alliance Coal and GOP mega-donor, was consulted on the legislation, Senate President Stivers said that Craft was one of many “engaged in the discussions.”?

While others may have been involved, the legislation was clearly written to favor coal operators like Craft.

Frankfort has always been protective of coal. For decades, that aligned with providing the lowest cost energy option for Kentuckians. But that has changed.

Federal regulations have made — and will continue to make — coal-fired generation more expensive than natural gas.

As much as I’d like to see coal prevail in the ideological war that’s been waged against it, moving forward with an orderly transition to natural gas for baseload power is in Kentucky’s best interest.

A new state bureaucracy isn’t the answer to the attack on coal from Washington D.C. Kentucky’s attention should be focused on winning that battle in the courts. SB 349 does nothing to support that fight.

The legislation was fast-tracked out of the Senate. The House still has an opportunity to stop the General Assembly from picking winners and losers.?

Here’s how to start that conversation: “Kentuckians want our coal industry to succeed. However, Kentucky’s ratepayers shouldn’t have to pay excessive energy prices to prop it up.”

Berkeley's Sather Gate has been blocked during regular school hours for months, although the size of the protest crowd varies from day to day. This photo was taken March 12. (Photo by D. Stephen Voss)

Back in college, I authored an essay dripping with antisemitic rhetoric. Jewish Americans weren’t my target — I was frustrated with Israel — but you wouldn’t have known it from what flowed out of my poison pen.

Fortunately, I attended college before social media. Instead of someone leaking my words so they could go viral, the impact remained localized: I had to meet with a few professors, plus a Jewish member of the governing board, after which my apologies settled the matter.

Why confess now?

You might think my point is to condemn cancel culture, the impulse to destroy young people’s futures after they commit thought crimes. If I shed hostilities taught by my upbringing, surely students today might, too, if we let them mature?

But that can’t be the full lesson, because I didn’t feel such hostilities even back then. Nothing in my upbringing encouraged antisemitism. I’d been taught respect for Jewish Americans and sympathy for Jews abroad.

To comprehend this shameful event from my past, we need to dig deeper. But if you’ll accompany me on the journey, it puts in perspective antisemitism plaguing college campuses today.

Saving Jessica and Rebecca

New Orleans in the 1970s was awash with racism, but it mostly targeted African Americans. Once someone fell on the “white” side of the black-white divide, neither nationality nor religion mattered much to those who reared me.

To the extent Jewish people appeared in our lore, the narratives were favorable.

A Jewish politician represented Louisiana in the U.S. Senate even before the Civil War.

A Jewish businessman was crowned first King of Carnival.

Because of the segregation characterizing more-traditional New Orleans social clubs, Jewish businessmen helped launch the Mardi Gras parades that came to define my favorite holiday.

As that anecdote indicates, Jewish successes in Louisiana weren’t always easy. But still, New Orleans held a reputation for being “one of the very best cities for Jews,” and I was taught pride in that.

Family influences reinforced that perspective. An aunt who explored our genealogy thought she’d identified Jewish (as well as Muslim) ancestors. She was tickled by the possibility, not distressed.

My mother would speak with reverence, not scorn or resentment, about the Jewish professionals who staffed our hospitals and owned some of the city’s key businesses.

I never met the owners of our corner drugstore, part of a local chain called Katz & Besthoff. But I knew K&B could stay open on Sundays because it was “Jewish-owned,” and thanks to my sweet tooth, those invisible men were heroes. When Grandpa showed up for Sunday dinner with one of their trademark purple bags, it almost always meant ice cream!

Less invisible were the entertainers shaping our cultural perspective. My mother filled the air with Barbara Streisand, while Neil Diamond was my father’s pick. I would watch Neil Simon with my folks, Woody Allen when alone. We identified so thoroughly with such artists, I didn’t realize they were Jewish celebrities until later on.

As for outside U.S. borders, I admit my perspective was uncomfortably condescending. Jews were sympathetic victims: Shylock and Jessica in “The Merchant of Venice,” Isaac and Rebecca in “Ivanhoe,” Anne Frank in that diary our sisters read. The Holocaust loomed large in our historical memory.

Still, such sympathy meant that — until the arrival of Star Wars — my childhood fantasies typically consisted of saving Jewish people. My favorite toy was a Guns of Navarone playset, which let me defeat gray-plastic Nazis over and over with green-plastic toy soldiers (presumably on their way to liberate concentration camps).

The racism starter kit

I hope it’s become clear how unlikely a candidate I was to be spouting antisemitic garbage. If anything, I felt an abstract fondness for Jewish people, and I’d never witnessed antisemitism in real life.

Yet, sitting alone at my word processor late one night, horrified that Israel was poised to execute a Ukrainian autoworker and struggling to express my feelings persuasively, I latched onto the sort of nasty images and phrases that antisemites had employed for generations.

I was called on the carpet afterward, and my initial reaction was not fear, but deep sadness and regret — the rotten way you feel when you realize you’ve said something hurtful to an old friend.

But then I wanted to understand how I had misrepresented myself so badly. How had I stumbled onto rhetoric employed by the same villains I’d spent my fantasy life combatting?

That shame turned into a fascination with prejudice and racism, launching my career as a scholar studying cultural politics. It’s no coincidence my earliest research focused on former Klansman David Duke.

One thing the study of racism taught me is how adaptable such a centuries-old evil can be.

It doesn’t matter that Americans express positive feelings toward Jewish people. Doesn’t matter if they’re sincere.

Antisemitism sits lurking in the cultural background. Once anger or fear or frustration arises, however justifiable — once those emotions seek expression — they find an easily available (and potentially deadly) toolkit of insults, prejudices, and even conspiracies to exploit.

Antisemitism works the way people (perhaps fallaciously) view drug dependency: Society might stop abusing it, but it’s still addicted, and new stresses can cause a relapse.

Like many who study ethnic conflict, therefore, I’ve been troubled by the rise of antisemitism in the 21st century, and appalled at the hostility toward Jews openly expressed by many campus progressives since October.

Nowhere have those forces been more visible than UC Berkeley, which I’ve visited multiple times during my research sabbatical. Activists have been allowed to create a hostile environment for Jewish students, as symbolized by the long-running obstruction of Berkeley’s famed Sather Gate — at times, even I’ve thought it wise to avoid the area — and culminating recently in violent attacks.

There, as elsewhere, the excuse is that Jewish victims crossed some unacceptable line. If they’d kept their heads down — or, better yet, condemned Israel — then well and good. Expressing kinship toward the Jewish state, though, means paying a price for being on “the wrong side of history.”

It’s not about racism. It’s about foreign policy.

Yeah, right. When you’re part of a mob besieging a campus talk, shattering windows and trying to break down the door — when you reach the point of throttling schoolmates or slapping them and strutting afterward — it doesn’t matter where you started. It’s become about indulging hatreds.

If antisemitic rhetoric is a drug, I guess you could say I tried it once in college and didn’t like it. But on elite campuses today? The kids are tripping on it hard. It’s past time to worry about an overdose.