music >> Let's lead for the change we want to see.

And that's why I'm running for Senate.

>> Charles Booker becomes the latest candidate in a crowded field for the U.S.

Senate.

>> So either he was lying to us on Sunday, or he's incompetent and didn't know what had happened.

>> To make the call.

>> U.S.

Senator Rand Paul blasts the secretary of defense over a Venezuelan boat attack.

>> It's not as if we all show up to work with casseroles or cookies or anything.

We just work the same as the men and.

>> Plus, hear from Kentucky's first woman chief justice about her job and her passion for mental health.

>> Christmas for all of our Denton.

It wasn't about getting gifts.

It was about finding the truth.

>> And a radio play is about to become a stage play.

>> 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 3rd.

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

The 2026 race for the U.S.

Senate in Kentucky is getting more crowded all the time, with several well-known candidates on both the Democratic and Republican sides vying to replace the retiring U.S.

Senator Mitch McConnell.

Another familiar face is now in the race.

Charles Booker, a two time candidate in the past, joins a crowded Democratic field.

Booker released a video today announcing his candidacy.

Here's part of that video.

>> They thought we were done.

We ain't quitting.

Let's leave for the change we want to see.

And that's why I'm running for Senate.

>> And the video Booker says he wants government to, quote, show up for us instead of stomping on us.

He says greedy industries and politicians are stealing health and wealth from the people.

Booker ran for the Democratic nomination for the U.S.

Senate in 2020, but lost to Amy McGrath.

She lost to Senator Mitch McConnell.

Booker won the Democratic nomination for the Senate in 2022, and then he lost to Senator Rand Paul.

Speaking of Paul, Senator Rand Paul isn't holding back in criticizing Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth over the continuing Trump administration policy of bombing boats off the Venezuelan coast.

President Donald Trump says they are involved in the drug trade.

Paul says Hegseth is either incompetent or lying about a second strike on a boat in September.

The Washington Post reports the second strike killed two survivors of the first strike.

Senator Paul appeared on CNN yesterday and said Hegseth had changed his story about whether he knew about the second strike.

And either way, he says, it doesn't look good.

>> In this sense, it looks to me like they're trying to pin the blame on somebody else and not them.

There's a very distinct statement was said on Sunday.

Secretary Hagel has said he had no knowledge of this and it did not happen.

It was fake news.

It didn't happen.

And then the next day, from the podium of the white House are saying it did happen.

So either he was lying to us on Sunday or he's incompetent and didn't know what had happened.

Do we think there's any chance that on Sunday, the Secretary of the defense did not know there had been a second strike.

>> To make the call?

>> Senator Paul talked more about Secretary Hegseth and his concerns about the overall policy on Bloomberg News.

>> I'm very fearful that these boat strikes and the positioning of our ships and our troops right off the coast of Venezuela is a prelude to war.

I think that there is a real question of legality under the military justice, under the code of military justice.

It says that when someone has been incapacitated or shipwrecked or they're clinging to the wreckage of a boat, that they're out of combat and they're no longer subject to be killed.

And so there is a real question who gave the order, and why would they give the order to kill someone who is out of combat?

Now?

Over the weekend, the Secretary of Defense was saying, well, I don't know anything about it.

I don't know anything about a second attack.

But today he when he was interviewed, he said, well, yes, I left the room for a while.

The second attack occurred and I learned about it when he came back.

But why was he telling us this weekend?

He didn't know anything about a second attack and he had never authorized it.

But now that it's come to light, he says, oh, I didn't do it.

Somebody else did it.

The admiral did it.

So they're all pin and blame on the military guy.

But I'm one who tends to give a lot of leeway to the military guy, and not so much leeway to the person who gave him the orders.

These orders came from the secretary of defense, and ultimately he's going to have to accept responsibility.

But to my mind, there's a question about whether or not killing people in the first place, who you have no proof that they're armed.

You have presented no proof that they're carrying drugs and that you simply kill them.

I think that's outrageous.

But now not only do we kill them, the our government is following up by killing them when they're wounded and stranded and of no threat whatsoever.

>> For the.

>> Senator.

Paul was asked if Secretary Hegseth should be fired.

He says he wants an investigation of the incident.

He says Hegseth should be asked under oath if he ordered an attack on survivors of the September boat bombing.

Governor Andy Beshear is reacting to a Trump administration threat to stop food stamp funding to 21 states, led by Democratic governors that have not provided fraud data to the federal government.

Yesterday, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said the USDA would block nutrition assistance funding starting next week.

Earlier in the year, the USDA demanded states provide fraud data related to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or short, called Snap.

Rollins claims fraud in the program is rampant.

The Kentucky Lantern reports.

Kentucky is one of the states that has not provided that information.

A spokesperson for the governor said Kentucky had not been notified that Snap benefits could be stopped.

The spokesperson said, quote, the governor believes the government should be fighting hunger, not causing it, and the president should not be using the American people as a bargaining tool for his political agenda, end quote.

Some Democrats argue that the Department of Agriculture has no authority to stop funding for Snap, since the money has been appropriated by Congress.

The Kentucky Senate majority gathered in Bardstown today for their annual retreat.

It's where the caucus is hammering out its priorities for the next legislative session that starts in January.

Our June Leffler has more on that.

>> 2026 will be the 10th year that we've had Republican majorities in the House and the Senate working together to define what we view the role of government to be.

>> Kentucky Senate now has 32 Republicans and just five Democrats.

Republicans say that speaks to what they've accomplished.

>> Healthiest budget reserve trust fund in the history of the Commonwealth.

Highest level of education.

Investment in the history of the Commonwealth.

Those sorts of things we may have been able to do at the same time that we've been paying down our pension liability.

>> Another feat lowering the state income tax.

>> Initially 6% down to 3.5% for the year that we're going to be moving into 2026.

>> A House Republican has called for lowering the rate again, despite the state not meeting certain revenue and spending expectations to trigger another cut.

The Senate president pushes back.

>> We set a policy and process, and when you set the policy and process, you should follow it and we try to follow it.

Now we know that you have to modify it on occasions in the last session we did to where it may not be as big of an incremental decline, but we set some different triggers that would still give us the ability to hit those incremental spots to make incremental declines.

I think from that perspective, we just want to keep following our policy.

If we hit it, we hit it.

If we don't, we don't.

>> Though a state budget office flagged falling revenues earlier this year, the Senate president suggests Kentucky's financial situation is not so dire.

>> We'll have five months of data in by the time we get into the session.

We'll have a half a year in.

The governor called the consensus forecast group in after two months.

If there is a need to cover it, and that the governor's office won't deal with it with some minor adjustments, we have the money to cover it.

>> The state did end the fiscal year with the surplus, partly due to reduced spending, and the state's rainy day fund sits at $3.7 billion.

Lawmakers highlight issues of urgency, one being a statewide housing shortage.

>> We've got to incentivize housing in some way, even if it's a baby step, by talking about reforms in in the in the process of approvals and things like that.

That may be a baby step, but more of a bigger step might be having a loan pool or improving tax credits.

>> These latter options would require funding.

Another urgent concern artificial intelligence.

Policymakers want to embrace this emerging technology.

It's just a matter of it's energy costs.

>> Well, this is going to be passed on to the residential consumer, say like to Grandma Lula.

Well, this is where you have what's called full cost allocation.

If you do full cost allocation, that there are any needs for additional infrastructure.

When we say infrastructure, that's your grid, that's your line, that's your transformers, that's your substations.

If that's going to be developed to service that consumer for artificial intelligence, then they have to bear the costs and it not be put back on the residential consumer.

>> The lawmakers also recognized Senator Jimmy Higdon, who will be serving in his last session in the General Assembly.

His district covers Bardstown, Lebanon and other central Kentucky communities.

For Kentucky Edition.

I'm June Leffler.

>> Thank you.

June.

The 60 day lawmaking session begins January the 6th.

Two wrongful death lawsuits have now been filed following the UPS cargo plane crash at the Louisville airport last month.

An attorney representing the families of two victims who were killed says UPS put profits over safety and that the plane involved in the crash should have never been allowed to fly that day.

More.

And this UPS crash update federal officials say the MD 11 jet's engine detached during takeoff.

Cracks were later found where the engine was connected to the wing.

All three crew members on board and 11 others on the ground were killed in the fiery crash.

UPS said safety is a top priority and that they're fully cooperating with the federal investigation.

Downtown Lexington is about to change in a big way.

The Urban County Council just signed off on a $152 million contract to relocate City Hall, the Lexington Herald leader says the council voted 8 to 7 last night to approve a contract with the Lexington Opportunity Fund.

The deal means the city will buy the Truist Bank building on West Vine Street and build a 10,000 square foot addition.

The new government center is expected to open in 2028.

Finding a new city hall has been in the works for decades.

The city moved into its current building on Main Street in 1982.

The move was intended to be temporary.

The city estimates the current building needs about $55 million worth of maintenance and repairs.

Kentucky's chief justice is winning national praise.

Chief Justice Deborah Lambert just won the Judge Stephen F Goss Lifetime Achievement Award for 2025, for her work in improving court responses for people with behavioral health needs.

The award is from the Council of State Governments Justice Center, the American Psychiatric Association Foundation, and the National Center for State Courts.

Justice Lambert received the award yesterday.

She was praised for her leadership, compassion and enduring commitment with work through the Drug Court, Mental Health Court, and the Kentucky Judicial Commission on Mental Health.

Chief Justice Lambert stopped by our studios earlier today to discuss her work on mental and behavioral health, and her history making role with the state's highest court.

Chief Justice Deborah Lambert, it's a pleasure to have you.

>> It's a pleasure to be here.

>> First of all, congratulations on winning the judge Stephen S Goss, a lifetime achievement award for 2025 for your work on improving behavioral health.

>> Thank you so very much.

It was quite the honor.

>> Yes.

Let's talk about your work in behavioral health and mental health.

We know this is really been a passion, not project, but a commitment of yours over very many years.

Talk to us about why this is so important to you.

>> Well, of course, my history is as a family court judge, and I saw lots of folks under stress as both as an attorney and in the courtroom.

And I knew that mental health was was very important.

And we know that as individuals too, don't we?

We do.

But a few years ago, in about 2015, I think I had some friends who died by suicide, and I was encouraged to be trained through an organization called QPR Institute.

So I became a suicide prevention trainer.

And so that worked predates my work on the court, but is somewhat related to that.

So when Chief Justice Minton, former Chief Justice Minton, asked me to lead the Judicial Commission on Mental Health in Kentucky, it seemed a perfect fit.

>> You mentioned QPR and that's question persuade and refer.

>> Yes.

>> Very nice.

And so that is like a mental health first aid kind of approach.

Is that right?

>> It is.

You know we think of CPR for medical emergencies when our heart stops and the acronyms QPR, you can actually save a life with being trained.

And it's not it's not as if the training is some exotic or difficult curriculum to learn.

A lot of it is just about making people comfortable with following their instincts and pausing long enough to ask the question, are you thinking of taking your life and knowing kind of the steps that you can take after that to persuade them to get treatment and to actually find the treatment, offer to go with them?

>> So let's talk a little bit more about you when you became chief justice and your investiture, which kind of got moved because of some circumstances you talked about during that investiture, which we carried on.

KET being a native of Bell County and eastern Kentucky with parents who didn't have ideal circumstances or maybe, perhaps opportunities that that you've been able to enjoy about how that has really rooted and grounded you and made you the person you are today.

Talk to us a little bit more about that.

>> Well, growing up modestly, but with hard working parents who believe that education was just the key to everything, and perhaps maybe they over idealized that because they did not have that opportunity.

And I just always knew that that was the direction I was going to go.

And and when you're raised modestly to you require the, the idea or, or you have to have the idea that if the playing field is level, you can succeed.

And so I'm very much a rule follower.

So I guess becoming a judge was was a natural for me, but I had so many caring adults who surrounded me, who did know a little bit more than my parents about getting into college and what I needed to do, and they were so very helpful.

All it takes is just an adult or two in your life who can who can really make a difference.

I'm sure everyone has had that.

>> Absolutely.

The power of mentorship and we can all be mentors, right?

Regardless of our station in life and our age.

It also historic in all of this is the fact that you being the first female Supreme Court justice, but also there's a lot more women on the bench as well.

So talk to us about that dynamic.

And do you feel it even makes a difference and how law is exercised or decisions are come to to be made?

>> I really don't think it makes a difference.

You know, I've said it's not as if we all show up to work with casseroles or cookies or anything.

We just work the same as the men and and gender really hasn't had any effect.

I don't think, on any of our opinions.

I would like to perhaps come up with some way of explaining that that's a little bit more clear, but we just show up and go to work.

>> Just do the work.

>> We do.

It's the same lift for all of us.

We don't.

We get the same assignments and we all work very well together.

But we are excited to be part of the first majority of women.

It is of note, I think.

>> Right.

>> But, you know, it's I don't think that many people realize we hadn't had a female chief Justice until I became chief.

>> So where is there a between interpreting the Constitution as a justice activism on such issues that may not seem to be controversial, such as mental or behavioral health?

Do you ever struggle with where your activism can lie?

>> Perhaps.

But one of the things that we focus on with the Judicial Commission on Mental Health is where the public intersects and their behavioral health and mental health needs intersect with the court system, and how we can put together better processes.

It's not about one case or one type of case.

It's how we can better serve the needs of any party that comes before us, or any victim who comes before us as well.

And so it isn't that hard a lift to if you're just focusing on the processes and on the Judicial or judicial Commission for Mental Health.

We have all types of people.

We have state legislators, folks.

We have people from the various cabinets.

We have professional organizations from social work, all types of people are there.

We're trying to break down the silos of communications, of communication.

There are lots of good things going on in the state of Kentucky surrounding mental health, but sometimes those ideas could easily be used throughout the state.

But they're only being used in a region or in a county or in a courtroom.

So the more we have these conversations together, the easier it will be to promote the good ideas.

>> The Kentucky Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments on a few cases next week that you can see exclusively online, as it happens, at ket.org, and I'll have more of my interview with Chief Justice Lambert in the coming days as she talks about the budgetary needs of Kentucky courts, and more ways the courts are trying to help justice involved offenders with substance use and mental health issues.

So look for that on a future edition of Kentucky Edition.

The so called Grand Canyon of the South just got a little bit bigger breaks.

Interstate Park has acquired Southern Gap Outdoor Adventure, according to the Appalachian News Express.

The deal includes 35 acres of land, a campground with cabins, RV and tent camping sites, and access to ATV trails.

The Lexington Herald-Leader says this is one of the park's largest land deals in 75 years.

Breaks.

Interstate Park straddles the Kentucky Virginia border and is managed by both states.

It's one of just two state parks in the US.

Adventure tourism in eastern Kentucky was a topic on a recent episode of Kentucky Tonight.

Hope you catch it.

But you can catch it again.

You can see how the region is trying to make the most out of its mountains.

That's available online and on demand at ket.org.

A Christmas play that premiered on radio in 2011 is making its way to the stage for the first time.

Rat a tat man, which can still be heard on the radio during the holiday season, will be at the Grand Theater in Frankfort.

We had a chance to learn more about the play and talk with some of the artists, bringing the play to life more in our Arts and Culture segment we call tapestry.

>> I was listening to the radio.

Gloria Stefan was on there playing Turn the Beat Around.

Turn the beat around.

He goes, rat tat tat tat tat tat on the drum.

So he must be a rat a tat.

Man.

That was.

You know, you talk to yourself when you're driving down the road in your car.

I said, well, I guess when he was a kid, he was the little drummer boy.

There's a story there, and I couldn't get that out of my head.

>> Oliver Denton, the character that I'm playing, is a very tortured kind of soul.

He was nine years old.

He was playing his drum, and he believes that he heard gunshots behind his drum.

And his drum may have masked someone getting away with murder.

So he's kind of lived with that for the last 30 years, and he keeps reliving those memories over and over in his head.

And I thought it was kind of unique to dig into a character like that.

So this is my first acting gig.

It was my first audition, actually.

I have a little bit of experience being on stage.

I was the lead singer of a local rock band for a while.

We started when I was 12.

So this is a lot more memorization, a lot more hitting cues.

It's been a little challenging in that sense.

Before, all I had to do was remember lyrics and that was it.

So it's been fun, though.

I've really appreciated the challenge.

It's been different and I like it.

>> The characters in this play, they really bring it out.

They read the script, they absorbed the roles.

They know the the magnitude, the weight that this play carries touchy subjects here and there.

>> I want a story that has some substance to it, that has some interest to it, and this play has that.

The storyline has that.

And it was really an honor to get to collaborate with Charlie to to expand it and turn what was a 45 minute radio drama into an hour, 45 minute stage play.

The opening scene of the movie, or the stage play of It's a Wonderful Life, is the George Bailey character literally standing on a bridge, contemplating ending his own life.

You know, that's the opening of of the play, of the story.

And if you look at like A Christmas Carol, you know, the Ebenezer Scrooge character has a scene where he's standing over his unmourned body in a grave, you know, when he's, you know, looking at the Ghost of Christmas yet to come.

So there's some pretty dark themes that happen in Christmas stories, but they all have a redemptive quality, and this one very much has a redemptive quality.

>> A lot of Christmas stories are dark.

All those things can have redemptive qualities even though they're dark.

So I think that's ultimately his character arc is just how does he find redemption and peace through this tortured existence that he's been living for the last 30 years?

>> Christmas for all of our Denton.

It wasn't about getting gifts.

It was about finding the truth.

>> Our story of that man harkens back to 1969.

As Oliver Denton settles in the fourth grade at Saint Michael's Parish School.

>> I've been a writer for 40 years, and it's nice to see somebody else say out loud and commit to memory words.

I sat in my lazy-boy chair with a laptop, writing that maybe it's pretty good after all.

Maybe there is a story there to be told.

Maybe it's worth telling.

>> This is new.

I mean, audience has never seen seen this before.

And even if a lot of people have heard it as a radio drama, it's it's evolved a lot since then.

So it's going to be different than what they've heard.

And I feel, I guess, a particular, a particular responsibility and pressure to do justice to the show on Charlie's behalf.

I mean, this is his baby, you know, he wrote this more than 15 years ago and has wanted it to be on a stage production for many years, and I felt an enormous amount of pressure to to do it right, to, to do it justice.

So I trust we will.

>> The show will run at the Grand Theater and Frankfort from Thursday to Sunday.

Tickets are available online at the theater's website now.

You can't learn if you're not there.

And in Kentucky, one out of every four students is considered chronically absent.

The Kentucky General Assembly wants the courts more involved in the lives of students and their families.

Tomorrow on Kentucky Edition, part one of a series Beyond the Bench.

As family Court judges go from the courtroom to the classroom.

We'll tell you all about that tomorrow at 630 eastern, 530 Central on Kentucky Edition, where we inform, connect, and inspire.

We hope that you will connect with us all the ways you see on your screen Facebook, Instagram and X and other social media channels.

We are there on YouTube as well, and we encourage you to send us a story idea by email to Public Affairs at ket.org and look for us on the PBS app that you can download on your smart devices, the KET app, and the KET legislative coverage app.

All good sources to keep you in the know.

I'm Renee Shaw, thanks for watching and have a great ni