Ahead, more bad weather for a part of Kentucky that saved more than its fair share of ground this morning.

So now State Senator Robbie Mills of Henderson as my running mate and the Republican candidate for governor makes his choice for the state's number two job.

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Good evening and welcome to Kentucky Edition for this Wednesday, July the 19th.

We're midway through the work week.

Ahmad Shah, thank you so much for spending some time with us tonight.

Western Kentucky is again coping with dangerous, destructive storms.

In December of 2021, deadly tornadoes hit the region.

Well, today it's when rain and flooding.

Take a look at this mess on that map showing rainfall totals the last 24 hours.

Notice the very dark section of the map in western Kentucky.

Some areas received more than seven nine or even 11 inches of rain.

The result of all this?

Reports of flooding in grades, county and in the town of Clanton and Hickman County.

There are reports of flooded roads and some closed roads throughout the area.

Caldwell County reports wind damage and there have been numerous emergency rescues.

The state is still trying to determine the exact number.

Almost 6000 people were without electric power as of noon today.

1400 of those were in Callaway County.

Governor Andy Beshear has declared a state of emergency.

And today he urged people to continue watching for more dangerous weather.

It's still raining and the flood waters are still there.

Be careful.

We can replace stuff.

We can repair buildings.

But we cannot and should not lose any lives.

Knowing what this weather is doing, the fact that we are not through it yet.

So just be careful.

Be careful.

We'll be there to help with the cleanup will be there to help get people back on their feet.

But we want you there.

So as we work through the rest of this weather event, be safe.

Don't drive through currents.

If you are in a safe area, just stay there until we fully get through the event.

The governor also ordered use of Kentucky's price gouging law, preventing anyone from taking advantage of the crisis and jacking up prices.

So far, there are no reports of any deaths or anyone missing.

For more perspective on the western Kentucky flooding, our Christy Dutton spoke to Kentucky state climatologist.

When heavy rain turns into historic flooding, it starts to raise questions about Kentucky's climate and what this means for us in the future.

Joining us is Jerry Brodsky, Kentucky state climatologist and the director of the Kentucky Metronet.

Jerry, what is the significance of the flooding that we saw?

Well, this is a once in a lifetime event for those living in that area.

You know, with with we now have more weather stations across the state.

So in some sense, we have a greater chance of recording events like this.

But this is a pretty big one.

And when we look back on the records, you know, we see occasional instances of eight inches in a 24 hour period.

And then first, the record is as close to ten and a half inches.

This is truly historic.

And so Graves County had over 11 inches of rainfall in a 24 hour period.

What does that do for.

What the what the normals are now for rainfall, climatological speaking?

Well, that's a quarter to a fifth of all the rainfall that we get in in the whole year here in Kentucky.

So so, you know, we're just not you can prepare for a flooding event, but it's another one that occurs and so it's tough to prepare for something like this.

You know, there are there are several ingredients that came together to produce this event.

We had a stationary front over the region.

We had a very strong, low level jet.

We had a lot of moisture in the air and an unstable atmosphere.

Then you had where this old frontal boundary laid over the region.

You had what we call training, where you had continued precipitation over that same area for a long period of time.

So is this an event we're going to see play out more often now?

Well, with as the atmosphere warms, it is able to hold more water.

And so and we have seen over the past decade on average, more rainfall all over Kentucky.

It's difficult to measure.

Will we have more flooding events?

Are we seeing more?

But it does seem like, at least for now, we are seeing more of these types of events.

So if more flooding events are going to occur in Kentucky, then we all need to be prepared for that.

So what are the best ways that we can prepare?

Well, it really takes a long time to prepare in a lot of ways because it goes back to engineering and designing your water management systems and storm wastewater systems to be able to handle larger amounts of water at a single time, as you see the.

But in some ways, it's really tough to prepare for ten inches in 24 hours now.

Absolutely.

Well, thank you so much, Jerry, for your time.

Thank you.

And thank you, Christy, as well.

The catastrophic flooding in western Kentucky broke an all time 24 hour rainfall record for Kentucky.

The previous 24 hour rainfall record was ten and a half inches set in Louisville back in March of 1997.

Now turning to politics, the tickets are set for the fall.

Yesterday, on the Democratic side, Lieutenant Governor Jacqueline Coleman filed to run for reelection.

And today, Republican candidate for governor Daniel Cameron made his pick for the state's number two job.

When I was searching for the right person to serve beside me as your next lieutenant governor was looking for a true conservative with a strong track record of getting things done.

Someone who shares our values and fight for what is right.

And that's why I'm proud this morning.

So now State Senator Robbie Mills of Henderson as my running mate.

Senator Mills wasted no time in going after the opposition.

There's fewer people working today than when he took office.

He vetoed my bill to stop boys from competing in girls sports because of his shut downs.

Remember this?

Because it shutdown's Students are now suffering extreme learning loss right now.

He released thousands of violent offenders from jail and many of those have committed crimes.

And he brags about his support of Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton with this record.

You might think Andy Beshear was the governor of California and Kentucky.

So exactly who is Robbie Mills?

Well, he was elected to the Kentucky State Senate in 2018 after defeating a Democratic incumbent by less than 500 votes.

He serves and the fourth District representing Henderson, Hopkins, Union and Webster Counties and Western Kentucky.

Mills also served one term in the state House, and he was a city commissioner in Henderson.

Mills went to Oral Roberts University, and he's helped run his family's dry cleaning business.

Mills chairs the Senate State and Local Government Committee.

This year, he sponsored a bill that makes it harder for utility companies to retire coal fired power plants.

A ban on TikTok on state owned devices and a bill that makes hazing a felony.

Last year, he helped usher through legislation banning transgender girls from participating in women's sports.

There is now new legal action about Kentucky's ban on gender affirming care for transgender or youth.

The ACLU of Kentucky and others are once again asking a judge to stop part of Senate Bill 150 from being implemented.

The group argues that if the court does not act, SB 150 will cause what they call irreparable harm.

Last week, a U.S. district judge lifted his injunction allowing that medical ban to take effect.

A similar law in Tennessee was also allowed to proceed.

A judge is expected to hear oral arguments in the matter in the coming weeks.

A new crime report out today shows a decline in many violent crimes in Kentucky in 2022.

The reports says out of 23 categories, crimes were down and 18 and arrests were down in 16.

This includes fewer reports and arrests for homicides, drug offenses and robberies, Animal cruelty reports and arrests were up, though state police say increased enforcement is bringing more animal related crimes to light.

Time now for a midweek check in of some major political happenings so far this week with Rylan Barden, who is the managing editor of Kentucky Public Radio.

Good to see you, Rutland.

Good to see you, too, Renee.

So today, Wednesday, we finally got what we've been waiting for.

And that's the announcement.

As we've already reported in this newscast, that Attorney General Daniel Cameron, Republican nominee for governor, has made his selection for lieutenant governor, and it is a current state senator, Rob Mills.

What do you make of all this and what are you hearing about this particular selection?

Yeah, I think a lot of us expected Herman to pick somebody from the legislature to just show that he's got that connection between, you know, the executive office and the legislative branch.

That's a big thing.

Republicans want to show that they can forge move forward together with a, you know, a totally Republican Frankfort.

Robby Mills has been in Frankfort for the last six years, I believe, and and kind of quietly amassed a long list of conservative bills that he shepherd through the legislature, ranging from abortion restrictions.

One policy that would require doctors to to tell abortion patients that they were that they can reverse medically assisted abortions, which is kind of an unproven practice that is now moot because abortion is all but banned in the state except in some extreme cases.

He sponsored bills to make it harder for coal fired power plants to to retire.

This is something that actually the utility industry has actually warned against, saying that it's going to make it more expensive for ratepayers.

And also the voter I.D.

bill from a couple of years ago.

So he's really become, you know, at the vanguard of some of the conservative legislation moving through the legislature in recent years.

Also being from Henderson in western Kentucky, I think it shows Daniel Cameron kind of trying to shore up that part of the state.

Andy Beshear actually barely won that county in in 2018 on his way to beating Matt Bevin in that year.

So, you know, probably trying to shore up that bit of the vote.

That's also something Beshear has been very explicit about trying to shore up his western Kentucky presence and hoping to build on the successes that he did, that he made outside of Lexington in Louisville in 2018.

So an interesting pick here.

I think the main takeaway there is that, you know, Robin Mills has legislative experience, but also now Kentucky will have a Cameron Mills ticket, which also kind of harkens back to the U.K. basketball player, Cameron Mills, from the mid to late nineties.

The thing is, last season was in 1988 and U.K. is championship season that year.

So some Kentuckians will find that name very familiar.

Yeah, and it may resonate with some who are not really following the campaign very closely.

They may be enticed to pull that lever for Cam mills and perhaps I have heard of that person.

They've heard of him.

Right.

But the former U.K. basketball stand standout Cameron Mills did have a very clever tweet that we're putting up on the screen right now shortly after the announcement that says, is there a trademark lawyer out there who wants to help me cash in on my upcoming non-existent gubernatorial campaign?

So he's having some fun with it.

And I'm sure even Robin Mills is probably having some fun with it, too.

And Daniel Cameron.

Yeah.

Cameron Mills said that he wanted to stay out of it.

He wasn't going to endorse any candidates in the race.

He's he's a minister.

And he said that because of his role in the ministry, he couldn't stay in it.

But I'm sure that the campaigns are going to try it both ways to to get him on stage to try and endorse them.

But he said he's going to stay out of it.

Yeah, well, what someone is not staying out of and that's Attorney General Daniel Cameron is once again this fight over abortion and transgender issues.

We know that he wants the ability, as was reported by Alex Acosta of the Herald, later, to search medical records of patients who get out of state abortions.

And so tell us about this and why this is so critical and what federal role he's trying to argue against, along with 17 other state attorneys general.

Yeah, this is a really interesting development that, you know, really goes all the way back to last year's Dobbs decision, which really kicked to the abortion issue back to states.

But now that there's a patchwork of abortion policies across the country, where there are some states where abortion is totally outlawed, in some states where it's permitted, that there's there are people who are crossing state lines to seek abortion care.

The federal government has proposed a rule to to shield folks who are doing that, to shield their records from being accessed by, you know, local state governments who are trying to prosecute those folks.

If laws were to happen to, you know, to incriminate those people for seeking abortions by crossing state lines.

Daniel Cameron has joined a group of 19 Republican attorneys general around the country trying to seek make sure that that rule doesn't take effect.

So he is really joining some of, you know, other attorneys general in trying to make sure that they have access to see who is seeking abortions across state lines.

You know, this is something that, again, the rule hasn't been proposed there, but it's going to continue playing out.

And I think that as soon as the decision happened, this is kind of the fight that was inevitable to start happening.

People are going to still seek out this procedure.

People are still going to need to access it.

But the but a lot of the Republican led states that have been trying to ban abortion out of existence, you know, want to make sure that doesn't happen.

And I want to be able to keep tabs on the folks who are still trying to seek it.

Well, the Kentucky state legislature had a chance perhaps to even take that up and make that part of Kentucky law right.

By the to criminalize women who had sought abortions out of state, where their abortions were legal.

And they didn't do that this time.

No, they didn't do that this year.

They really didn't you know, they didn't do anything really related to abortion.

You know, a lot of it was they're still waiting on that ruling from the state Supreme Court.

But then I think at that point, they just didn't want to touch it at this point in time.

I do think that especially after the governor's race, that something is going to come back more in the future.

And once this issue takes a little more focus and knowing what the legislature's role is at that point, whether or not they want to, you know, do something like make it harder or maybe even, you know, there's been talk of trying to add some exceptions to the near-total ban on on abortion in the state.

But it's lawmakers are kind of all over the place on it.

So I think at this point, they just have decided to not do anything until they figure it out.

And we should also mention that this action that the attorney general Cameron, is doing with these other attorneys general, it's also affirming or about gender affirming care.

So it's not just even just abortion.

It's about gender forming care for trans youth.

Correct?

Right.

And I mean, that's something that we're we're still watching as that makes its way through the court system in Kentucky.

And you know, I've been to the federal appeals court last week.

We saw the federal judge reverse his ruling that initially blocked parts of Kentucky's anti-trans bill, the parts of it that that ban of minors younger than 18 years old from having a hormone or therapy or puberty blockers.

So he's reversed his decision on that.

And we're still awaiting appeal to the sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to see what they have to say about it.

But this is really going back and forth.

But once again, after that recent ruling, it's that's banned in Kentucky.

Yeah.

Well, thank you, Ryland Barton, as always, for breaking it down for us.

It's good to see you.

Good to see you, too, Renee.

If you're a victim of interpersonal or domestic violence, you have a higher chance of developing diabetes.

Now, that's according to a new study.

And Coker, a professor with the UK College of Medicine, was a principal investigator of the study.

She said both violence and type two diabetes are common and preventable.

More on that and today's medical news.

What we've studied is the association between interpersonal violence.

We're including in that definition, intimate partner violence, physical, sexual and psychological and child abuse and neglect.

Both of those constructs measured over a person's life and that person's risk of developing diabetes.

What we find in this study is a really similar pattern, meaning that in women who experience violence as either as an adult or as a child, as well as in men, we see an increase about a 20 to 35% increased risk of developing or getting diabetes as an adult and we see a very similar pattern, as I said, in men and women in black individuals as well as white individuals.

And this is additionally important because both diabetes and violence are prevalent in our society, so that prevention of violence could reduce the risk of diabetes development.

And that's really from a public health point of view, really, really important that this is information that individuals can use to say, is it possible that I have an increased risk of diabetes, period, regardless of exposure to violence?

And if we do have an increased risk of or arrive experienced violence, it may be important for me to talk with my clinician or to find a clinician and to have my blood sugars monitored from that perspective.

According to the National Institutes of Health, diabetes costs to the U.S., almost $330 billion annually, and interpersonal violence nearly $4 trillion.

Yesterday, we talked with entomologist Jonathan Larson about avoiding tick bites and what to do if you get one.

Today, we continue the discussion exploring the red meat allergy caused by the most common tick in Kentucky.

Our Christy Dutton has more alpha gal.

It sounds like a cool name, but it's actually an allergy to red meat.

A lot of times brought on by giving a tick bite.

Joining us now is Dr. Jonathan Larson, UK's Department of Entomology.

Okay, Dr. Larson, what kind of tick is doing this and what do we need to watch out for?

This is a result of Lone Star tick bites.

Lone Star ticks are now the most common tick in the state of Kentucky.

The female is the one that gives them their species name, the common name.

She has a white dot on her back.

The other, the male.

He doesn't have the dog.

And when they're immature, they don't have the dot.

But they're rounder than most ticks.

These are the ones that most people are going to get a bite from if they get a tick bite here in Kentucky.

And sometimes they pick up a sugar molecule in their saliva and then when they bite you, they pass that sugar molecule alpha go into you.

And then when you eat red meat, your body will react because it's built up this allergic response in your and basically in your blood.

Now it's going to happen in your stomach, which can cause some intestinal distress.

So any red meat, correct?

Yes.

This will mean that beef, pork, venison, all of that will be kind of off the menu.

LAMB even will be off the menu for people who are impacted by this allergy.

And from what I've read in kind of the immuno immunology literature, the only cure is time.

Some people get better over the ensuing years, but for some people they've been suffering it for quite some time.

So unfortunately there's no cure as far as I know.

Okay, so if the Lone Star tick is the most common tick in Kentucky, and that's the one that causes the alpha gal syndrome, which is that red meat allergy.

Oh, is everybody getting this red meat allergy or just a small percentage?

It used to be thought of as kind of a rare thing that it didn't happen all that often.

But I know that I travel the state quite a bit and give a lot of tick talks.

And I tend to be at least one person in every county that I go to that is experiencing this.

So I think it's on the upswing.

I'm not an immunologist about an allergist, so I can't speak to the numbers in the state.

And I also know that we don't necessarily report these numbers to some place like the CDC, like we do with Lyme disease or Rocky Mountain spotted fever.

So I can't speak to the absolute number of people that have it in Kentucky, but it seems like it is on the rise.

Yes.

Okay.

Ten years ago, I had never even heard of the term alpha gal or anybody allergic to red meat and beef and pork.

Is this a new thing?

And how did it come about?

Relatively speaking, yes, it is new.

I don't know the origins of it.

It seems like it is associated kind of with this upswing in Lone Star tick populations.

They're the only known, quote unquote, vector for this at the moment.

There is some concern that this new invasive tick that's been found in the United States and in Kentucky, the Asian longhorned tick, it could possibly be a vector in the future for alpha gal.

It's done it in other countries.

But right now, it seems associated just with this Lone Star tick for us.

Okay.

We will try our best to avoid this.

Thank you so much for being with us.

Dr. Larson.

We thank Dr. Larson for that.

Tick tock Alpha Gal Syndrome.

Like most allergies, can be mild to severe in addition to red mate.

It can also cause allergic reactions to dairy products or gelatin.

A blood test can be used to diagnose alpha gal syndrome.

What started out as a hobby has since become a great connection to the past.

Rick Howard began with a barn full of old radios and no expertise or idea of what to do with them.

But now he has grown not only into a collector but a radio repairman and historian.

Stay tuned to hear more in our weekly arts and culture segment we call Tapestry.

People that come in that a lot of people just come in thinking this is a make next or what it is.

But there has failed and I very golly, I can't believe this is like a museum in here.

And so, you know, it's the people have been really receptive.

The way I got started was I retired from the fire department and they're in Richmond.

And so I well, I have something to do.

So I started collecting antiques and that sort of thing.

And this fella called me one day and said, I have about 80 old radios up in the barn, will be interested in buying them.

So I didn't really know anything about radios.

It's been about ten years ago.

So I called a friend of mine and he said, Yeah, that's a really good deal.

So I went and picked up these radios and brought them back and I thought, Well, what am I going to do, Just clean them up and mess around?

So I pulled one out of the pack and that looked pretty good.

So I messed around to get a pardon.

And I got on YouTube and found that radio and somebody was repairing it.

So I got it repaired where I could hear it.

So after that, I was hooked in there for a year or two about it and finally had a cold on it.

Okay, This is a 1939 zenith and it's a World's Fair.

They made this specifically for the World's Fair in 1939, and that's one of my radios I'm not going to sell.

The more I got into the the the radio, how the radio actually works, how they get their electromagnetic waves out of the air through your antenna and goes to the radio and comes out a speaker.

It was really interesting to me.

And so that the more I learned, the more I got, you know, more interested.

I'm still not a very I'm not an expert by any stretch is lots of people know more about how to repair radios than I do.

But it's a fun it's when you get noise out of one that I hadn't played in 30 years.

It's pretty neat.

What one of the main reasons I really like their old radios is, is all the history that's been through the radios, all the presidential speeches of sports and and, you know, just all of the history that's been through the radios because that was the only form of news besides the newspaper.

I wish I had kept a journal or a list of everybody that's been through here, The different states, I think all 50 states and probably four different countries are represented by somebody just to look at radios.

Hmm.

Howard says most people are worried their antique radios are too far gone to be repaired.

But he says these machines were made to last.

And you would be surprised how easy it can be to fix most of them.

Well, we've got a lot that we're fixing up for you tomorrow night on Kentucky Edition at 630 Eastern, 530 Central, where we inform, Connect and Inspire.

And we hope to see you right back here then for some great storytelling.

Connect with us all the way as you saw on your screen, and we'll see you again tomorrow night.

Take good care.