On Tuesday, election results poured in and within minutes of polls closing, it became apparent that Democrats were going to have a good night. Kentucky’s Governor Andy Beshear surged ahead, despite the over $2 million in anti-trans ads deployed against him. As the evening progressed, Democrats clinched victories in numerous contests, including taking control of the House and Senate in Virginia…
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Election results from an off-year election in two states indicate that Democrats are continuing to win races in which their Republican opponents have indicated that they want to further restrict or outright ban abortion. In Ohio, a referendum measure to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution passed after several months of attempts by Republicans to block the proposal.
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The Kentucky governor’s race has been nothing short of a financial juggernaut, with gubernatorial candidates collectively raking in more than $36.8 million in contributions, a new OpenSecrets analysis found. The booming fundraising puts the race on track to set a new record in the state. The most ever collectively raised by gubernatorial candidates in a prior election year was $37.1…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The Kentucky governor’s race has been nothing short of a financial juggernaut, with gubernatorial candidates collectively raking in more than $36.8 million in contributions, a new OpenSecrets analysis found. The booming fundraising puts the race on track to set a new record in the state. The most ever collectively raised by gubernatorial candidates in a prior election year was $37.1…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Republican lawmakers in Kentucky have overridden a veto from Gov. Andy Beshear (D) to pass a bill targeting trans children that LGBTQ advocates have described as one of the worst pieces of anti-trans legislation in the country. Republicans, who have supermajorities in both houses of the Kentucky legislature, overrode the veto of Senate Bill 150 on Wednesday. The Senate passed the override by a…
On Wednesday, Kentucky’s Democratic governor announced a plan to expand the state’s Medicaid program to include dental, vision and hearing care for adults.
Gov. Andy Beshear’s plan to expand the services available under Medicaid in Kentucky will impact around 900,000 adults enrolled in the program. New benefits will go into effect on January 1, 2023.
Medicaid is a joint state- and federally-funded program that provides medical coverage to individuals and families with low incomes across the U.S. In Kentucky, a single adult is only eligible for the program if they earn less than $18,075 per year; for families of four, adults are eligible if the household income is below $36,908.
The changes will allow low-income adults in the state to access necessary care that was previously out of reach. (Children in the state are already eligible for dental, vision and hearing care if they receive Medicaid.)
Beshear assured residents that the changes won’t have a major effect on state spending, pointing out that Kentucky already has a healthy Medicaid budget and that federal funding will pay for most of the costs associated with expanding coverage.
Federal dollars will account for 90 percent of the expansion, which will cost an estimated $36 million annually. Kentucky will cover the remaining 10 percent of yearly costs, which amount to around $3.6 million per year — equivalent to approximately 8.5 percent of the state’s total government spending in fiscal year 2022.
“It will have no significant impact on Kentucky’s budget. It will require no changes to our budget in this next session,” Beshear said. “In other words, it is easily affordable, which means we absolutely should do it.”
Beshear touted the changes as being beneficial to workers across Kentucky.
“If you can’t see, it’s really hard to work,” Beshear said. “If you can’t hear the instructions that you’re getting, it’s really hard to work. If you have massive dental problems that are creating major pain or other complications, it’s really hard to work.”
Beshear’s announcement was praised by analysts in the state.
“This is a big deal!” tweeted Dustin Pugel of the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy. “Kentucky Medicaid has long offered vision and dental, but they offered scant services — for example you could get an eye exam, but not glasses. And it has never offered hearing benefits. Good on [the Cabinet for Health and Family Services] for implementing these long-overdue benefits.”
A federal judge has temporarily blocked the enforcement of a Kentucky law that would have placed extensive restrictions on abortion, allowing the last two clinics in the state to continue providing abortion services to clients, at least for now.
The ruling from U.S. District Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings is being seen as a victory — albeit potentially a short-lived one — for abortion rights in the state.
The Republican-run Kentucky legislature passed a law earlier this month that banned abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, a timeframe during which individuals are often unaware they’re pregnant. The law also placed new restrictions on abortion clinics, including reporting requirements, that the two clinics in the state couldn’t immediately comply with.
Gov. Andy Beshear (D) vetoed the bill, sometimes referred to as HB 3. But the legislature overrode his veto last week, passing the measure into law.
Jennings, a Trump-appointed federal judge, did not rule on the constitutionality of the law — she said she would make a decision on that matter during a separate hearing in the future — but she did place a temporary block on the law, saying that it had been passed too quickly and that it didn’t allow abortion clinics to respond to the new regulations in a timely fashion.
“The plain language of HB 3 is clear that the entire law became effective and enforceable on April 13, 2022,” Jennings said in her ruling. She added:
The court finds that based on the plain language of HB 3, the Kentucky legislature intended for the entire law to become effective immediately, regardless of whether [the state] created a means for compliance.
Opponents of the bill lauded the judge’s ruling, noting that the regulations were never about strengthening oversight of abortions, as its defenders claim, but rather about tightening rules in order to make it impossible for the clinics to remain compliant.
“Abortion remains legal and is once again available in Kentucky,” said Heather Gatnarek, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky. “We will always fight to keep it that way here and across the country.”
The law will likely continue to be debated in the federal court system for several months. However, there’s a strong possibility that Jennings’s ruling could be rendered moot, depending on how the Supreme Court rules on abortion later this year.
Kentucky is one of several states that has a “trigger” law in place, which would make abortion illegal outright if the Court overturns Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that recognized the right to abortion throughout the entire U.S. During hearings last winter, the Supreme Court’s conservative justices indicated they were willing to undo or severely curtail federal abortion protections.
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Gov. Andy Beshear (D-Kentucky) announced that state investigators would be looking into claims that employees at a candle factory were threatened with termination if they left in order to take shelter in their homes amid an extreme weather alert.
The factory collapsed last Friday due to a tornado, killing eight workers.
Beshear said that an inquiry by the state’s Occupational Safety and Health Program shouldn’t suggest to residents that “there was any wrongdoing” on the part of the company, Mayfield Consumer Products.
“But what it should give people confidence in is that we’ll get to the bottom of what happened,” Beshear said.
The review, Beshear added, “will take months” to complete.
“Everyone is expected to live up to certain standards of both the law, of safety and of being decent human beings. I hope everybody lived up to those standards,” the Kentucky governor said.
Spokespeople for Mayfield Consumer Products have denied claims that workers were threatened with repercussions, including termination of employment, if they left their jobs early on Friday. But according to a report from NBC News, five workers said that the company made threats to at least 15 employees who wanted to leave hours before the storm arrived.
Requests from workers to leave began around 5:30 p.m., after an initial tornado siren sounded off, according to NBC News. When it became clear that the siren went off too early but that severe storms were still headed their way, workers pleaded with management to be allowed to shelter at home there rather than stay at work.
McKayla Emery, a worker who was injured in the building’s collapse, said that she overheard conversations where ultimatums were given to workers at the Mayfield Consumer Products factory.
“If you leave, you’re more than likely to be fired. I heard that with my own ears,” Emery said.
Another worker, Elijah Johnson, said he was threatened with termination.
“I asked to leave and they told me I’d be fired. Even with the weather like this, you’re still going to fire me?” Johnson said he asked a supervisor, who reportedly told him “yes.”
Company spokesperson Bob Ferguson has characterized claims by workers as “total nonsense.” Notably, however, Ferguson also callously downplayed the significance of the tragedy in a statement to local journalists this week, describing in a positive light the factory deaths as a “miracle situation” because “only” eight lives were lost.
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Three stories from local reporters who uncovered injustice and inequality in their hometowns, from an eviction crisis in Ohio to a Hitler-quoting state police training in Kentucky.
Louisville high schooler Satchel Walton knew something was off about the PowerPoint presentation used by the Kentucky State Police to train new recruits. The slides urged officers to be “ruthless killers” and quoted both Robert E. Lee and Adolf Hitler. Walton reached out to Reveal to ask about our past reporting on police officers in White supremacist Facebook groups, then co-wrote a story with his brother about the training presentation for his high school newspaper, the Manual RedEye. After Walton broke the story, the state police commissioner resigned. Guest host Ike Sriskandarajah talks with Walton about how he reported the story and the change it’s brought to the state.
Then, Reveal reporting fellow Noor Hindi documents an overlooked part of the housing crisis. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government issued a ban on evictions. But as Hindi reports, in Akron, Ohio, evictions kept happening despite the ban. She watched 132 housing hearings this past fall – and found that many renters at those hearings were evicted. Hindi follows the story of mother and nursing-home worker Amber Moreland, who lost her rental home during the pandemic, despite being an essential worker who tried to apply for federal aid.
Next, CapRadio reporter Sarah Mizes-Tan looks into the racial disparities around the Paycheck Protection Program, or PPP. Earlier this year, Reveal found that in major cities across the country, the rate of PPP lending was higher in majority-White neighborhoods than in neighborhoods of color. We shared our data with local reporters around the country, and Mizes-Tan found something else: In Sacramento, California, the disparity was even more pronounced for places of worship. There, three times as much money went to places of worship in White neighborhoods compared with those in neighborhoods where people of color are the majority.
Reporters featured on this episode worked with Reveal’s local reporting networks. If you’re a journalist, learn more about Reveal’s Reporting Networks.
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