Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear suggested on Tuesday that a family member of Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance be raped and impregnated in an attempt to argue against the Ohio senator’s abortion stance.
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As the number of states banning ranked-choice voting (RCV) is increasing, some are facing ballot measures this November that would implement the voting system.
While 10 states have banned RCV and more may join them this November if voters vote for the ballot measures, six other states will have ballot measures to switch their elections to RCV.
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Kentucky Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell plans to resign from his position as Senate GOP leader this November.
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Kentucky’s attorney general is investigating a health care company that wired $200,000 to James Biden the same day he wrote a check for that amount to his brother and future president Joe Biden.
James Biden worked as a consultant for Americore Holdings LLC, a Florida-based hospital chain that later collapsed. Americore declared bankruptcy in Kentucky in 2022 under federal law amid reports of massive staff departures, poor patient care, and poor equipment at one of the hospitals in the state.
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A string of bomb threats on Wednesday led to the evacuations and searches of at least five state capitol buildings but law enforcement did not discover any explosives, CBS News reported.
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Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., warned states acting to bar former President Donald Trump from the ballot that the House of Representatives will decide whether to certify states’ electors.
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The gubernatorial race between Kentucky’s Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear and Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron appears to be in a dead heat just days before Tuesday’s election, according to a Friday poll.
Beshear and Cameron are tied at 47% among likely Kentucky voters ahead of the Nov. 7 election, with 4% remaining undecided and 2% naming someone else, according to an Emerson College survey. Among the 4% of voters who remain undecided on the race, 62% are leaning toward voting for Cameron while 39% are leaning toward Beshear.
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July marked the beginning of Fiscal Year 2024 for 46 of the 50 states. It also closes the books on most state legislative sessions in what was an incredible 2023 for hard-working taxpayers.
In recent years, we’ve seen significant income tax relief in the states. Notably, 10 states – Kentucky, West Virginia, Montana, Utah, Arkansas, North Dakota, Indiana, Nebraska, Connecticut, and Ohio – have cut personal income taxes (PIT) in 2023. With the new addition of West Virginia, North Dakota, and Connecticut, 22 states have cut personal income taxes since 2021, with several of these states cutting taxes multiple times during that period.
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A federal judge ruled Friday that Kentucky can enforce its state law which prohibits sex change treatments for minors, according to Reuters.
U.S. District Judge David Hale, an Obama appointee, decided that Kentucky can prohibit the use of puberty blockers and hormone treatments for minors after ruling in June that the state law likely violated the U.S. Constitution, according to Reuters. The decision was made because a federal appeals court reinstated a similar ban in Tennessee ahead of the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals hearing both state’s cases together.
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At least 20 states have either restricted or banned transgender procedures for minors, with many of them facing lawsuits and temporary blocks by courts as a result, while future litigation is possible in states considering adopting such laws.
The states that have enacted legislation against such procedures are: Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and West Virginia – essentially all conservative-leaning.
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Thirteen attorneys general announced settlements with opioid manufacturers Teva and Allergan on Friday, while 18 states settled with CVS and Walgreens for a total of $17.3 billion.
The attorneys general said settlement funds will start flowing into state and local governments by the end of this year and will be used for prevention and treatment of opioid addiction.
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The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in Kentucky filed a lawsuit Wednesday to challenge a bill that bans minors from having access to transgender medical procedures, according to the lawsuit.
Senate Bill 150, in addition to prohibiting medical professionals from offering services to minors to “alter the appearance or perception of the minor’s sex,” the law also compels schools to inform parents if their child requests a pronoun change and bars students below sixth grade from learning about “human sexuality.” The bill was vetoed by Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear but then overturned by the legislature, prompting the state’s ACLU branch to file a lawsuit Wednesday in an attempt to stop the bill before it goes into effect in June.
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Republicans have the opportunity to take back the Kentucky governor’s mansion from Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear – who narrowly won in 2019 – in November, and numerous GOP contenders are itching for the nomination.
Beshear is running for his second term in 2023 in a state with a Republican supermajority in the legislature. Though 12 Republicans are running in the May 16 GOP primary, there are three clear frontrunners whose campaigns will largely hinge on issues such as education and crime while also targeting Beshear’s record on COVID-19, they told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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by Eric Lendrum On April 7th, an amicus brief was filed in favor of Florida’s current ban on using state funds to support “transgender” treatments, with 17 state attorneys general voicing their support for the law. According to the Daily Caller, the brief’s filing was part of an ongoing legal…
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Louisville Metro Police Department said at least 5 people are dead and 6 others were hospitalized after a mass shooting downtown Monday morning in the Kentucky city.
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Kentucky lawmakers hope they have already have taken steps that can help avoid a tragedy such as took place in Nashville, Tennessee, on Monday.
On Friday of last week, legislation was signed into law allowing parochial and other private schools to develop pacts with local law enforcement agencies or the Kentucky State Police to have school resource officers on their campuses. House Bill 540, sponsored by state Rep. Killian Timoney, R-Nicholasville, was signed by Gov. Andy Beshear.
In Tennessee on Monday, a shooting at Christian elementary school left three children, three adults and the shooter dead.
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by Madeleine Hubbard Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is expected to remain hospitalized “for a few days” after he fell in Washington, D.C., during a private hotel dinner, a spokesperson for the Kentucky Republican said Thursday. “This evening, Leader McConnell tripped at a local hotel during a private dinner,” spokesman…
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Google agreed to a $391.5 million settlement with 40 states after an investigation found that the tech giant participated in questionable location-tracking practices, state attorneys general announced Monday.
Connecticut Attorney General William Tong called it a “historic win for consumers.”
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In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision that returned the question of abortion limits back to the states, unofficial election results in five states show voters opted to codify abortion as a constitutional right, defend expanded access to abortion, and deny lifesaving care to infants born alive despite an abortion attempt.
More than 133,000 Vermont voters – about 72 percent – appear to have supported a ballot measure that made the state the first to enshrine abortion in its constitution. Nearly 42,000 voters, or about 22 percent, voted against the measure, while 9,000, or about 5 percent, left the ballot question blank, The Hill reported.
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Kelly Knight Craft, a former senior diplomat in the Trump administration, has announced on Twitter a campaign for Governor of Kentucky in the state’s 2023 gubernatorial race.
“I’m running for governor because I know our best days are ahead of us,” Craft said in her tweeted video announcement. “This movement is for all of us who still believe that we can lead in education, that the government doesn’t get a seat at our kitchen table and that our kids should grow up in safe neighborhoods.”
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The COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on the overall health of Kentucky and the rest of the nation. Now, researchers can point out how the coronavirus has affected the population.
According to the University of Louisville’s Kentucky State Data Center, the life expectancy at birth for a Kentuckian has dropped by 3.4 years from 2019 to 2021.
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A public school district in Louisville, Kentucky is forcing all teachers to undergo training sessions that feature far-left curriculum, including Critical Race Theory and pro-LGBTQ+ attitudes, in preparation for the new school year.
As reported by Fox News, Jefferson County Public Schools hosted a “Racial Equity Training” session earlier this summer, which featured such concepts as anti-racist math, implicit bias training, and “Whiteness theory,” among others. The session included forced reading for the teachers such as the books “How to be an Antiracist” and “White Fragility,” both written by black nationalist Ibram Kendi.
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At least 25 have people died in Kentucky– including four children – in the flooding caused by the torrential rains and flash floods earlier this week, Gov. Andy Beshear said Saturday.
“We continue to pray for the families that have suffered an unfathomable loss,” the Democrat governor said. “Some having lost almost everyone in their household.”
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A judge has temporarily blocked two Kentucky laws that would effectively ban abortion in nearly all circumstances, claiming the idea that life begins at conception is a “distinctly Christian” view and that the notion that a disproportionate number of abortions occurs among black women is suggestive of eugenics is “baseless.”
Jefferson Circuit Court Judge Mitch Perry sided with the abortion providers Friday, granting them a temporary injunction against the state enforcing its Human Life Protection Act and Heartbeat Law, referring to the measures as the Trigger Ban and Six Week Ban, respectively.
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A federal judge in Tennessee ruled in favor of Tennessee, Georgia, and 18 other states in their effort to block federal guidelines on transgender athletes and school locker rooms.
The lawsuit, brought by Tennessee, challenged guidance from the United States Department of Education and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that would allow athletes who were marked as males on their birth certificates to compete in girls and women’s sports. The federal guidance also would have prohibited student shower and locker room access from being determined by birth gender and provided guidance on required pronoun use.
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Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron quickly asked the state’s Court of Appeals to stay a circuit court’s ruling that temporarily blocked the enforcement of two state pro-life laws. Cameron filed a Writ of Mandamus and Prohibition Thursday, requesting the Kentucky Court of Appeals lift a temporary restraining order against both…
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Kentucky has seen a record year of overdose deaths as it continues to deal with fentanyl being trafficked into the state, multiple outlets reported based on state data released Monday.
Kentucky saw 2,250 overdose deaths in 2021, a 14.5% increase from 2020, according to the Kentucky Office of Drug Control Policy’s report. The state ranked third in the country for the number of overdose deaths due to the high number that occurred in Kentucky during the pandemic, according to WLKY.
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A federal judge has temporarily halted a new Kentucky law that blocked the state’s last two remaining abortion clinics from performing the procedure.
Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings, a Donald Trump appointee, of U.S. District Court of the Western District of Kentucky, Louisville Division, ruled Thursday in favor of Planned Parenthood and other abortion rights groups by issuing a temporary restraining order that blocks Kentucky officials from enforcing its new law that would block the state’s only two abortion clinics from performing the procedure.
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Kentucky legislators banned males from women’s sports and restricted abortions Wednesday, overriding the Democratic governor’s veto.
Lawmakers overrode Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s veto of Senate Bill 83, which bars males from participating in girls’ sports from elementary through secondary education. Beshear preferred a policy allowing males to compete in girls’ sports if they underwent certain medical sex change treatments rather than an outright ban, he explained in his April 7 veto letter.
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Twenty-one states have filed a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s continued mask mandate on public transportation, including on airplanes.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Attorney General Ashley Moody are leading the effort. Moody filed the suit in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida along with 20 other attorneys general. DeSantis said the mask mandate was misguided and heavy-handed.
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Arizona, Kentucky and Oklahoma are the latest states considering bans on biological males participating in girls’ and women’s sports, with all three states passing legislation Thursday addressing the issue.
The Arizona legislature passed two bills addressing transgender issues that currently await Republican Gov. Doug Ducey’s signature. If enacted, one bill will ban biological males from girls’ sports teams while the other will ban gender reassignment surgeries for minors.
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Sixteen states again are challenging a federal COVID-19 vaccination mandate for health care workers who work at facilities that receive Medicare and Medicaid funding.
Friday’s filing in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana comes after the issuance of final guidance on the mandate from the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS), arguing the guidance is an action that is reviewable.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled by 5-4 vote Jan. 13 against the original Louisiana challenge to the mandate and a similar Missouri filing.
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President Joe Biden surveyed the damage from a deadly weekend tornado in Mayfield, Ky., on Wednesday and said, “We’ve got $99 billion worth of damage just this year — just the year — because of foul weather and climate change.”
In Dawson Springs, Ky., he reiterated the cost of damages and then, in a possible reference to his Build Back Better Act, he said: “I promise you: You’re going to heal. We’re going to recover. You’re going to rebuild. You’re going to be stronger than you were before. We’re going to build back better than it was.”
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Monday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas Tech, Christopher Weiss to the newsmakers line to talk about last Friday’s out of season tornados that ravaged Kentucky and parts of Middle Tennessee.
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Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said Saturday that at least 70 residents are dead after tornadoes and severe weather roared through the South overnight, crushing a candle factory and an Amazon warehouse and leaving a swath of destruction in their wake.
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A bipartisan coalition of state attorneys general launched a probe into Instagram on Thursday to examine whether the company violated state-level consumer protection laws.
The states are investigating whether Meta (formerly known as Facebook), which owns Instagram, promoted the image-sharing platform “to children and young adults” despite being aware of its negative effects, according to statements from the attorneys general. The probe cites internal Facebook communications and research leaked by former Facebook employee Frances Haugen and published by The Wall Street Journal showing Meta was aware that use of Instagram could contribute to body image and mental health issues among teens.
“When social media platforms treat our children as mere commodities to manipulate for longer screen time engagement and data extraction, it becomes imperative for state attorneys general to engage our investigative authority under our consumer protection laws,” Republican Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson said in a statement.
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About 25% of critical infrastructure in the U.S., or 36,000 facilities, is at serious risk of being rendered inoperable as a result of flooding over the next three decades, according to an industry report released Monday.
American infrastructure such as police stations, airports, hospitals, wastewater treatment facilities, churches and schools were all considered in the analysis, according to First Street Foundation, the group that published the first-of-its-kind report. The U.S. is “ill-prepared” for a scenario where major flooding events become more commonplace, the report concluded.
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State legislatures in six states limited their governors’ emergency powers wielded during the COVID-19 pandemic, arguing executives have overextended their authority.
As of June 2021, lawmakers in 46 states have introduced legislation stripping governors of certain emergency powers, according to USA Today. Legislatures justified their actions as necessary to restore a balance between the branches of state government, pointing to examples of executive overreach and the centralization of power in the hands of governors.
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Last week, Kentucky was the first state legislature to pass a new program to fund students instead of systems this year. The proposal, House Bill 563, would allow eligible students to access scholarships to use at approved private education providers of their families’ choosing. But the Bluegrass State’s Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, blocked educational opportunities for thousands of children by vetoing the bill on Wednesday.
Kentucky requires a constitutional majority in both the House and Senate to override Beshear’s veto, and that vote is expected to happen Monday.
During his press conference announcing the decision, Beshear said that the bill “would greatly harm public education in Kentucky by taking money away from public schools and sending it to unaccountable private organizations with little oversight.”
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A group of red states sued President Biden and members of his administration on Wednesday over his decision to revoke a key permit for the Keystone XL oil pipeline, The Hill reported.
The lawsuit is led by Montana and Texas, and backed by 19 other states, including Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
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“Kentucky’s attorney general is suing his own governor in an attempt to keep private religious schools open, despite the state ordering virtual classes during the coronavirus pandemic, “according to Fox News.
Attorney General Daniel Cameron and the First Liberty Institute on Friday asked a federal court to issue a temporary restraining order that would block Beshear’s order from being implemented. An emergency hearing took place on Monday. In the petition, Cameron argued that Beshear’s latest executive order infringed on Danville Christian Academy’s and other religious schools’ constitutional freedoms.
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