>> Yes, we are going to have a budget shortfall, there's no question.

>> What's the state going to do about it, and will you be affected?

>> This is about oil and regime change.

>> Harsh words from a Kentucky Republican about the Trump administration policy on Venezuela.

>> The goal is for any patient who gets this, to be able to know that they get the same product every time.

>> Go inside a Kentucky medical cannabis facility to see the painstaking effort to ensure quality.

>> I directed that show.

I made costumes for the show.

Designed the set for the show.

I designed the props for the show.

And then I collapsed after the show.

>> I bet.

And how a community's time and talents are keeping the arts alive and well in south central Kentucky.

>> Production of Kentucky Edition is made possible in part by the KET Millennium Fund.

>> Good evening and welcome to Kentucky Edition.

For this Wednesday, December the 17th, we are at the midway mark of the week.

I'm Renee Shaw, and we thank you for winding down your Wednesday with us.

Kentucky's budget picture has improved, but the state still faces a budget shortfall.

The question now how will the state deal with it?

Tuesday, a committee of economists known as the Consensus Forecasting Group, predicted that Kentucky's general fund will take in $15.5 billion during the current fiscal year, which ends June 30th of 2026.

That's down from the 15.7 billion from the last fiscal year.

But it's an improvement from the consensus forecasting group's prediction three months ago.

The governor talked about the improved numbers during his news conference Thursday.

>> My budget director, John Hicks, reported that general fund receipts rose 9.2% in November compared to last year.

This increase followed two Monthly declines.

So good and much needed news.

Total revenues for November were up to over 1.3 million, an increase of 115.6 million from 2024.

Yes, we are going to have a budget shortfall, there's no question, but it does look like it might be somewhat smaller now based on this really good November that we had.

>> The governor is expected to announce a plan to deal with the budget shortfall during his news conference tomorrow.

You'll hear his comments tomorrow night on Kentucky Edition.

Meanwhile, State Senate Budget Chairman Chris McDaniel said the forecast quote appears far less severe than what the governor projected in September, unquote.

He added the new data suggest a more measured and realistic picture of Kentucky's fiscal position.

Democrats have held a seat in the Kentucky State Senate.

Democrat Gary Clemons won yesterday's special election in the 37th district in Louisville.

Clemons is a veteran of the Army Reserves and the president of United Steelworkers Local 1693.

He defeated Republican Calvin Leach and Libertarian Wendy Higdon.

Clemons received 72% of the vote.

Clemons will replace former state Senator David Yates, who resigned from the Kentucky General Assembly when he was appointed as Jefferson County's interim county clerk, replacing the late Bonnie Holsclaw.

Turning now to federal politics, another Republican is running for Congress from central Kentucky, sixth district.

He's Steve Shannon.

Shannon filed his paperwork Monday in Frankfort.

He says he's running with the slogan, the center lane is now open, and says some people have referred to him as a so-called rhino, which means Republican in name only.

He says he supports fiscal accountability and better opportunities for everyone.

Shannon joins a field of candidates that includes former state Senator Ralph Alvarado and current State Representative Ryan Dotson.

President Donald Trump will address the nation tonight at 9 p.m.

Eastern time.

The speech comes one day after the president announced a blockade of Venezuelan oil tankers, crucial to that country's economy.

The U.S.

has also been bombing boats off the coast of Venezuela, claiming they are being used to carry drugs.

Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie of the fourth district denounced the president's Venezuela policy today on the House floor.

>> The framers understood a simple truth to the extent that war making power devolves to one person, liberty dissolves.

If the president believes military action against Venezuela is justified and needed, he should make the case and Congress should vote before American lives and treasure are spent on regime change in South America.

Let's be honest about likely outcomes.

Do we truly believe that Nicolas Maduro will be replaced by a modern day George Washington?

How did that work out in Cuba, Libya, Iraq or Syria?

Previous presidents told us to go to war over WMDs, weapons of mass destruction that did not exist.

Now it's the same playbook, except we're told that drugs are the WMD.

If it were about drugs, we'd bomb Mexico or China or Colombia, and the president would not have pardoned one Orlando Hernandez.

This is about oil and regime change.

>> PBS and KET will carry President Donald Trump's speech tonight live.

Lawmakers on Kentucky's Make America Healthy Again task force, that's called the Maha Task Force, are putting together their policy recommendations heading into the upcoming state legislative session is our June Leffler reports.

Lawmakers want to see more healthy foods in Kentuckians kitchens, especially Kentuckians using food stamps.

More on that in tonight's legislative update.

>> The Maha group released preliminary recommendations this week in Frankfort.

Those include eliminating processed foods and dyes from school meals, increasing physical education requirements in schools, adding warning labels for food additives, and reducing public exposure to environmental toxins.

That emphasis on what Kentuckians and their kids eat could mean changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or Snap.

Policymakers can control what people on public assistance buy.

>> If people are not going to access proper nutrition on their own, perhaps we do need to put some further guardrails or some more stringent guardrails around those programs.

And if they choose not to be in the program, that's entirely up to them.

>> Other states will soon ban snap purchases of candy and sodas.

That's possible through a waiver process with the USDA, which runs the federal program.

>> That all the states around us have applied for waivers to for their snap snap benefits.

Not to include soft drinks and candy.

You know, there's 18, 18 states across the country that have applied for that.

And so Kentucky is kind of an island.

>> This lawmaker suggests doling out benefits twice a month instead of just once a month.

Could change buying habits.

>> One of the things that I saw every month when when snap, when people came in with their Snap benefits, they would spend them all in one day.

The whole the whole thing.

And and you know, they'd get a grocery cart and they'd have, you know, four cases of Mountain Dew, four bags of potatoes, maybe a bag of apples and a bag of oranges and maybe one gallon of milk because they were buying for a full month.

And a gallon of milk won't last a full month.

Fresh fruits and vegetables won't last a full month.

And and not only that, you know all of our farmers markets through the, I guess, the federal program.

Oliver Farmer's markets now during the summer will give you $2 worth of produce for $1 in Snap benefits.

But, you know, a typical family doesn't have any Snap benefits left toward the end of the month.

>> The Trump administration wants to weed out fraud and Snap.

Trump is demanding more Snap related data from states.

Democratic governors, including Andy Beshear, say that Ask invades recipients privacy.

A federal independent watchdog released its report on Snap this week.

It says criminal groups and retailers have electronically stolen millions of Snap dollars, leaving recipients with an empty Snap account for Kentucky Edition.

I'm June Leffler.

>> Thank you.

June.

State lawmakers will convene in regular session in less than three weeks.

On January the 6th.

A Ten Commandments monument given to Kentucky in 1971, is back on the state capitol grounds in Frankfort.

It was a gift to Kentucky from the Fraternal Order of Eagles.

It was removed in the 1980s when it was put in storage because of construction work.

Earlier this year, the Kentucky General Assembly passed House Joint Resolution 15, directing the monument to be restored.

State Representative Shane Baker, the resolution sponsor, said the monument is in the tradition of displays acknowledging the commandments role in our heritage.

Just days after Kentucky's first medical marijuana dispensary opened in western Kentucky, a 10,000 square foot cultivator site cut the ribbon in Jessamine County, Kentucky, Ops expects its first harvest of medical cannabis in February.

Our Mackenzie Spink takes us inside the facility to learn more about the medical marijuana industry.

>> The VA's Kentucky Ops Cultivator is in phase one of its operations, so it only has about 400ft S of active canopy currently growing.

But even using a fraction of its space, this cultivation site will produce 40 to 50 pounds of cannabis flower a month.

Because these plants will be sold as medicine, the cultivators say biosecurity and consistency are essential.

>> Unlike a lot of modern crops like corn and soybeans, when you harvest cannabis, you can't wash it, spray it off.

So really what goes in to that cannabis plant is what those patients are going to end up consuming.

You don't want a patient to go into the dispensary and try something from one harvest that works well for them, and then they come back two weeks later and they get something that's that's the same name, but not the same consistency.

>> A big part of my job is making sure that the plants have the proper temperature, humidity, that they're getting watered properly, that we're doing our plant maintenance.

It is a weed, so it tends to grow a lot.

It's a big part of what we do here is we have to have our flower tested by the state and make sure that we're in compliance for any kind of foreign objects.

>> Microbials another way, medical cannabis is raised differently than recreational is the use of trackers.

>> It's a seed to sale tracker, so every plant you'll see when you get out there has one of those tags on it.

Even the little clones.

That way we know that if any issues arise, we can track that particular batch straight back to the plant, to the mother plant, that it came from.

>> The 250 plants that are being raised right now could potentially be sold to 5 or 6 dispensaries by the time it's harvested in February, depending on customer demand, Dickerson says.

In order for the business to be sustainable, Kentucky would need about 50,000 patients certified to purchase medical marijuana.

Earlier this month, Governor Beshear announced that over 23,000 Kentuckians have been certified so far.

Dickerson says he believes Kentucky will warm up to the medical cannabis industry once people start seeing the benefits.

>> There is so many ailments that this plant can help with.

It's it's changed not only my life, but my family's life as well.

A lot of people in our community, and I'm excited to bring that to Kentucky.

>> VS Kentucky Ops will be expanding its operation over the next eight months to eventually use all 10,000ft of growing space for Kentucky Edition.

I'm Mackenzie Spink.

>> Thank you.

Mackenzie.

Medical marijuana was legalized two years ago in Kentucky with Senate Bill 47.

So far, the state has granted 80 business licenses, 48 of which are dispensaries distributed by a lottery last year.

Here's a great Christmas gift statewide praise and $25,000.

That's just what a Taylor County high school teacher is getting.

She's the Milken Award winner, and she received the award Tuesday in front of her peers and students.

>> I was told that we were coming in to do a celebration for vibrant learning at Taylor County High School, and it ended up being that, but also being an assembly to honor me, which was surprising.

>> The Milken Educator Award goes to Sidney Newton.

>> But right before I heard my name, I thought, we have a million outstanding educators here in our district.

And then I was just in shock and disbelief when I heard my name.

>> Oh my gosh, I started crying, I screamed, and I was like, she deserves that completely.

I was in her English two class and she was always really productive.

Like with teaching us.

She was always hands on.

She made the assignments really fun.

It was always like projects rather than like just giving us a test and making us read stuff.

She really helped us understand it and really found my love for English that way.

I really started to enjoy reading books.

>> Getting to know the kids and the kids lives, and just getting to be there for them as maybe a pillar in their life that they might not have as somebody, as support.

But also it's just so rewarding.

Like one of my former students just graduated from Cumberland University and got her PhD yesterday.

So I mean, being able to follow them through life, it's it's definitely the kids.

>> I actually got inspired to become a teacher myself.

I love you so much and I hope you know that you are the best teacher anyone could ever ask for.

You are an inspiration for so many different things.

>> Shout out to Laura Davidson from Russell County High School.

She is the person who inspired me to be a teacher and the person who really believed in me.

And I thought if I could do one thing like Laura Davidson did, I would do it and I would be living my life.

Right.

And this is proof of that.

>> Well, congratulations to her.

Well deserving.

Newton will also attend an all expenses paid trip to the Milken Education or Educator Awards Forum in Washington, DC next year, alongside other teachers across the country.

A community theater group in Barron County celebrates a big milestone in 2026.

They've produced shows in their historic venue for two decades, even in 2020, performing in masks.

Our Laura Rogers visits them on set at dress rehearsal for A Christmas Carol.

This is our part of our arts and culture segment that we call tapestry.

>> Yeah.

>> It takes humor, hard work, and a few special effects to help a production of this caliber come together.

>> I'd like to think that the productions that we do are a little bit even more than a cut above your traditional community theater.

>> The City of Glasgow has had community theater since the 1950s, but it would be decades later, in 2006, that the far off Broadway Players would begin a two decade run at the historic Plaza Theater.

>> I did my first play when I was six.

>> That spawned a lifelong love of theater for Paul Clodfelter, who for the past eight years has led the group as artistic director.

>> They have corpus.

>> He challenges us, I think, as a group, which we need.

>> I was scared because I had only ever directed professionally, but what I was amazed at, I didn't see any difference in the talent.

>> A talent that extends beyond the stage for cast members like Peggy Goodman doing a little bit of everything, such as in the 2015 production of You Can't Take It With You.

>> I directed that show.

I made costumes for the show, designed the set for the show, I designed the props for the show, and then I collapsed after the show.

>> That show accommodate, which Goodman says goes over well with audiences.

>> We have enough hard things in life to deal with that they have a chance to laugh.

They take that chance.

They need that.

>> Community theater itself a need.

According to Peggy's husband and fellow far Off Broadway member, Glasgow attorney Charlie Goodman.

>> It's just as much as a necessity as industry as retailers.

If it were missing a piece of the quality of life necessary for a fully rounded community would be missing.

>> The group of 501.

C3 has vowed not to let that happen, producing nearly 70 shows over the past 20 years across all genres.

>> Drama, comedy, horror, a full blown musical, little shop of horrors.

>> And seeing it all come to life in this beautiful, three dimensional presentation is just magical.

>> It can also be emotional for those who fully immersed themselves in these characters.

Peggy Goodman says one of her favorite roles was Daisy Werthan and Driving Miss Daisy.

>> And it's the scene where she is trying to find her papers to get to get ready to go to school, and for some reason, that was always an emotional part for me.

>> If you actually learn your lines the way you're supposed to, then you are not you.

You have morphed into somebody else.

>> It takes a lot to volunteers and passionate people for Far Off Broadway to continue to thrive.

Serving the community as a community.

>> It gives you a chance to meet people, work with people, be with people that your past never would have crossed before.

>> A gift to treasure this holiday season for Kentucky edition, I'm Laura Rogers.

>> Thank you.

Laura shows on tap for 2026 include Jane Austen's Lady Susan, Moonlight and Magnolias, Dracula and It's a Wonderful Life.

Did you know some places in Kentucky used to celebrate Christmas on January the 6th?

Is our Chip Polston reports in this Kentucky Life extra, what's called Old Christmas dates back 500 years.

It was once popular in Appalachia.

>> Thanks much and it's good to be with you again.

We've all heard traditional Christmas carols like Jingle Bells and Deck the Halls, but what about the cherry tree Carol?

With origins traced back to the seventh century, this old song has ties to another fairly obscure tradition called Old Christmas.

Begun in 1582, Old Christmas was celebrated on January 6th, and this tradition was followed in Appalachia up until the 1930s.

Unraveling the traditions of Old Christmas and how it found its way to the mountains of Appalachia involves a bit of a history lesson, and there's no better place to get things sorted out than the Kentucky Historical Society in Frankfort.

So the whole concept of old Christmas, why did that start and where did that come from?

>> So old Christmas is the tradition of celebrating Christmas Day.

So the feast of the Nativity, or the birth of Jesus on January 6th, as opposed to December 25th, which we're all more familiar with.

And it goes back to a difference between the Julian calendar.

So the old calendar that used to govern the Western world to the Gregorian calendar, which is the calendar we all currently use today.

>> Over time, the Julian calendar, named after Julius Caesar, became more and more inaccurate.

And by the late 1500s, Pope Gregory the 13th was ready to make things right.

>> So in 1582, on October 5th, he decreed that the next day was not going to be October 6th, 1582.

It was going to be October 14th.

So he added ten whole days to the calendar to try to get things back in sync.

>> So what used to be December 25th was now January 6th, and some people weren't very happy about that.

And that's a major clue to the mystery of how old Christmas came to Appalachia.

>> So when the Pope made the calendar shift, so Catholic countries immediately adopted it.

But Protestant countries or non-Catholic countries like England didn't actually make the switch for hundreds of years.

So old Christmas was Christmas in England up until 1752.

So it was a very entrenched tradition, and a lot of people who came to Appalachia had roots in Britain Protestant, Ireland, England, Scottish Highlands, things like that.

>> And the Kentucky Historical Society has some amazing old Christmas items in its collection.

>> We have a book of poetry by William Aspinwall Bradley.

He was a New England journalist who came to Appalachia in 1913 to interview people and then write poetry about what he found.

He wrote a whole poem called Old Christmas that tells of that tradition of animals speaking and kneeling in the barnyard.

It's this beautiful verse that kind of encapsulates what Appalachian Christmas felt like.

>> These heaps of folks here still believe on Christmas.

That's all.

Christmas Eve.

The elders bloom upon the ground and critters low and kneel around in every stall, though none I know has seen them kneel or heard them low.

>> Another old Christmas tradition that was popular in Appalachia is the Cherry Tree Carol.

>> So the cherry tree Carol again, we're going back in history.

It goes all the way back to a story in the seventh century, a story about Mary and Joseph on the flight into Egypt with the child Jesus.

So they're stuck in the desert.

Mary's getting faint.

It's hot.

And she wants dates from a date tree, but she can't reach them.

And so her baby Jesus miraculously has the date tree kind of bend down to give her this fruit.

And this is a very popular story.

It was recirculated and told a lot and then passed down.

Eventually it gets to England again.

We come back to England and it's changed a bit.

It turns into a story.

Now it's it's cherries instead of dates.

It's now not the flight into Egypt, it's actually Mary's still pregnant.

And Joseph doesn't want to pick fruit for her because he thinks that she's cheated on him, which is not true.

But the core is the same, and it gets turned into a song.

So a folk ballad, a kind of religious song that gets played at religious festivals and things.

But it's the same story all throughout this time and again that that song comes from medieval England and then back into an Appalachian folk song.

>> Took to Mary all on his right knee and said, tell me, pretty baby, when your birthday will be said.

Tell me, pretty baby.

When your birthday will be.

>> I think old Christmas reminds us kind of of what Christmas really means.

I think remembering how people celebrated in the past can help us decide what traditions we want to celebrate and what we want to pass down to the future, and reminding us that we're all connected throughout history.

So the things that we do today don't exist in a vacuum, and we're building on things that came before us that are related to medieval songs and old calendars and Appalachian traditions and folktales that we're all in kind of this one big story together.

>> Great stories like this one come your way on our show each Saturday night at eight eastern, seven central, right here on KET.

We wish you a merry Christmas and the happiest of holidays as we continue to cherish this great Kentucky Life back to you.

>> And our well wishes to you.

Chip Polston.

Thank you so much.

Now, with the holidays approaching, you're probably spending money on gifts in stores and online.

But buyer beware.

It's the time of year when con artists can ruin your holiday spirit.

We'll talk to Heather Clary of the Better Business Bureau about avoiding holiday scams.

That story, and much more.

Tomorrow on Kentucky edition at 630 eastern 530 central, where we inform, connect and inspire.

We hope that you'll connect with us all the ways you see on your screen through the social media channels Facebook, Instagram and X. We also encourage you to send us a story idea by email to Public Affairs at ket.org.

Look for us on the PBS app that you can download on your phone and other smart devices.

And of course, you can stream content online on demand at ket.org.

I'm Renee Shaw, thank you for being with us tonight.

We hope to see you tomorrow night.

And in the meantime, take really good care.

So long.