>> The Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Kentucky releases a controversial campaign video.

If you want to fill her tank to get ready to empty your wallet, the price of gas tax.

Another job.

How long will this last?

>> Expecting a classroom teacher to have this responsibility and then carry execute it carried out in a hostile situation was a little far fetched more than a little farfetched.

>> After the tragedy in Texas, Kentucky's education commissioner talks about the idea of arming teachers.

>> You're only limit is basically the limits of your physical loom and Cassidy of your donation.

>> Made some college students or going back in time to create their own works of art.

>> Production of Kentucky Edition is made possible in part by the Kaye E T and Aument for Kentucky Productions.

Leonard Press Endowment for Public Affairs and the Kaye E Team Millennium Fund.

♪ ♪ >> Welcome to the inaugural edition of Kentucky EDITION.

Today is Wednesday, June.

1st, I'm your host, Renee Shaw.

All welcome and thank you for joining us.

Let's get right to the headlines.

Our top story tonight, a political video so strong and comes with a content warning.

Charles Booker, the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate is out with a new campaign video about race.

It includes images of lynchings involving the candidate himself.

Viewer discretion is advised here's part of it.

>> The pain of our past.

Persist to this day.

>> And the video Booker says Senator Rand Paul held up legislation in 2020 that would have made lynching a federal hate crime in the United States.

A different version of the bill did pass in 2022.

With Senator Rand Paul support and the video which will show you in its entirety later in the broadcast, Booker is seen with a noose around his own neck.

He also says Paul was opposed to the Civil Rights act of 1964. and once compared expanded health care coverage to slavery, he says in November, Kentucky will choose healing and he rejects efforts to drive us apart.

We have reached out to the Booker campaign for comment.

We have not heard back from them, but we will keep on it.

Senator Rand Paul's campaign team is responding in a statement the campaign says Doctor Paul has worked diligently to strengthen the language of this legislation.

And it's a co sponsor of the bill that now ensures that federal law will define lynching as the absolutely heinous crime that it is any attempt to start otherwise is a desperate misrepresentation of the facts, unquote.

The statement goes on to note that Senator Paul wrote a piece for the Courier Journal and March describing his desire to strengthen the bill and work for its passage.

And that op Ed Senator Paul said the original version of the bill was worded in such a way that lynching would have covered many other crimes that did not involve physical harm.

He says a protest of the George Floyd murder, which led to the defacing of a church, would have been a lynching, according to the old Bill.

Senator Paul says his amendment improved the final version.

We'll have more on the new book, a commercial with dry Lynn Barton later in the program.

And Owensboro yesterday workers moved a Confederate statue that stood outside the Davis County Courthouse for more than a century.

Judge Executive Al Mattingly told the Messenger Enquire the statue is now at the road department and will stay there until a decision is made about what to do with it.

The president of the Owensboro, NAACP pushed for the statue's removal.

She said she wanted to promote the truth about history without romanticizing the antebellum period.

Ryan Quarles has formally launched his campaign for governor corals are Republican is finishing up his second term as Agriculture commissioner.

He's touted himself as the candidate for the working class and he took a swipe at the current Democratic Governor, Andy Beshear.

>> Our commonwealth.

>> So desperately needs unity.

During his store times of division when vetoes instead of cooperation.

But a black eye on Frankfurt.

And we have a governor who refuses to work and in some cases refuses to speak.

The people from the other party.

I know I can be the governor that unites the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

>> Cole says he plans to visit every county in the state.

Corals join state Auditor Mike Harmon and Attorney General Daniel Daniel Cameron.

The Courier Journal reports State Representative Savannah Maddox.

Also Republican is expected to join the race next week.

A well-known Kentucky Republican will not be running for attorney General Whitney Westerfield, a state senator from Crofton in Christian County says he has decided not to seek that office.

In a statement he says the office is important and he trusts.

Kentuckians will choose an attorney general wisely since the current attorney General Daniel Cameron is running for governor.

He is not seeking a second term as a G former U.S. attorney Russell Coleman is seeking the Republican nomination and secretary of state Michael Adams hasn't ruled out a run.

If you tried to buy gas last night or today, you undoubtedly noticed it.

The price of gas is up again and many parts of Kentucky.

A jump to $4.59 a gallon for unleaded regular.

Prior to that, it was averaging $4.30 a gallon in Kentucky, according to Triple A we all want to know.

How long will these high gas prices last and when should we expect some relief?

We spoke to Kenya Stop executive director of the Kentucky Energy Policy Organization on a recent edition of Kentucky tonight.

And she says the pandemic caused a drop in production and the Russian invasion of Ukraine made matters worse.

>> They did have a huge to natural gas and petroleum with the crisis in Ukraine.

We've had some seasonal challenges and stuff watching challenges as well.

But we are expecting to come up and meet supply.

Or supply to meet demand.

And look at lower gas prices coming in the 2023.

>> Some more of our conversation with Kenya.

Stop about gas prices can be seen and heard on our website at KITV Dot Org Slash K Y tonight.

Lieutenant Governor Jacqueline Coleman says she's tested positive for COVID in a tweet.

She says she tested positive yesterday.

She says she has been vaccinated and boosted and that her symptoms are minor.

She says no one else in her family has tested positive.

COVID cases are on the rise.

The state says 4 counties are back in the red or high category for COVID cases.

They are McCracken and Western Kentucky and green up Lawrence and Boyd counties in the northeast.

21 counties are in the yellow or medium category.

The remaining 95 10 counties are still low as of Monday.

The state's positivity rate was more than 11%.

That's up from 10 and a half a week ago.

Last week, state and federal officials announced the one Clayton County, one Clay County initiative, almost 8 million dollars will be invested to improve the downtown area of Manchester and improve economic development in Clay County.

Our Casey Parker-bell was at the announcement.

>> Were there too?

There is hope.

>> Coordinated investment between the state and federal government seeks to revitalize downtown Manchester and bolster the region.

>> We need to come together to figure out how we get jobs in here.

Every way we can get a job.

The Inter is the hot ticket.

And with that are like I said, my students, my children, we have the opportunity to say here.

>> The one Clay County initiative will use 2.2 million dollars of federal money to develop a farmers market in landscape.

The downtown area for a quarter million dollars from the state.

We'll go to funding new housing and business creation.

So I believe our responsibility moving into this Ryder, historic home.

>> Is to make sure no one is left out of that prosperity.

And that means bringing more jobs right here.

The Clay County Senate President Robert Stivers says the initiative could lead to as many as 200 jobs.

>> And volunteers of America is making an investment to provide transitional housing for individuals and recovery.

>> Many of the people leave this community to go get help and they stay somewhere else and they don't come back.

So by providing treatment here as well as new job opportunities and places to live, we believe that this is creating a holistic community change.

>> And eastern Kentucky University announced a new program at the Manchester campus to alleviate the state's more than 8,000 nurse shortage.

>> Starting in the spring of 2023 students in and around this community.

We'll have the opportunity to get associate's degree in nursing right here.

We have removed the barriers to our educational institution to get more nurses in the pop want.

2 huge 4 K E T I'm Casey Parker-bell.

♪ ♪ >> Each Wednesday here on Kentucky EDITION will get political insights from Rye Lynn Barton, the managing editor of Kentucky, Public Radio and Ohio Valley Resources.

We spoke with him today about the new Charles Booker, political video.

The race for governor in 2023 and U.S.

Senator Mitch McConnell's response to the Texas school shooting.

So a lot happening today on our June the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate Charles Booker has dropped a video.

Now we're going to show viewers this video.

We do advise that viewer discretion is advised because of the gratuitous and graphic nature of the imagery that you're about to see.

And Robin and I will talk about it on the other side.

>> The pain of our past.

Persist to this day.

A Kentucky like many states throughout the south, lynching was a tool of It was used to kill hopes for freedom.

It was used to kill them.

My now in a historic victory for our Commonwealth, I have become the first black can s*** in to receive the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate.

My opponent.

The very person compared expanded health care slavery.

The person who said he would have opposed the Civil Rights Act.

The person who single-handedly blocked an anti lynching act from the federal law.

The choice couldn't be clearer.

Do we move forward together?

Where do we let politicians like Rand Paul forever?

Hold us back and drive us apart to in We would choose he'll win.

>> We will ♪ >> so Rylan, what have you heard about this video?

Any response feedback about the imagery about the approach?

What are you hearing about it?

>> You know, one thing that he does not mention is that the so Rand Paul actually did end up sponsoring another anti lynching bill that actually passed out out of Congress this But that he thought that that original bill was too broad, that there could have been could have captured other people who, you know, shouldn't have you know, convicted under a hate crime charge or lynching charge.

So that that's a little bit of background to that.

But nonetheless, this is a very different kind of video from a statewide Democratic candidate in Kentucky.

I think this is a real preview of Charles Booker wants his campaign to be like.

This is something that, you know, more progressive Democrats have really wanted from their candidates for a long time to not be running to the middle, so much to try and be picking you know, the kind of moderate or more conservative Democrats.

But to just lay it all out there and try take one of these pieces that a lot of progressives really, really dislike Rand Paul So it's a it's certainly an interesting video.

It's striking.

I think anybody watches that and they're going to kind of remember this for a long time.

I'm in and it's been it's been getting picked up on and a lot of different places.

>> But we don't know if it's going actually be run on television, right?

It does have a kind of an odd run time and have we heard at the time of our conversation around 3.30, have we had any reaction from state Democratic Party officials or from the governor or anyone else?

In regards to the video.

>> I heard anything from the governor but other Democratic officials are supportive of a lease.

The progressives and mobile were coming out in favor of It's yeah.

It is the runtime.

It's probably not something that we're going to see on TV unless it's a much shorter version of it.

You kind of compare it to any McGrath's roll out in 2020 year ahead of 2021, she had these long of very long video ads that are very they're very much made to be viral to get shared a whole lot in her as she was going after Mitch McConnell for, you know, not writing her back when she was young and trying to, you know, get rid trying to make it easier for women to fight in combat in the U.S.

So I think that this is that's kind of what this big videos tailored I have not seen response from Senator Paul at this moment yet.

>> Let's talk about some other The AG commissioner held his official announcement.

Is that what you would call it today in announcing his run for Governor?

>> Yeah, I think it's ceremonial announcement that he did.

He did announce a little against last month.

The was when he officially launched his campaign.

But it's becoming increasingly crowded on the Republican side.

There Ryan made this announcement on the courthouse steps and leave in Georgetown.

His home had some local public officials out there stumping for him ahead of his speech.

He said that he's going to be the working class there's one quote, they took away from this immediately, which was we shop at Walmart.

We shop at Dollar General.

So he's trying to take that particular corner of of of the It's going to be hard to get any particular quarter among Republicans this time We already have several candidates in there could be more getting into the race and more well-funded candidate getting into the race soon.

So the this is going to be very interesting run going into a 2023 in Mae.

And, you know, he's promised that this is going to be a civil campaign.

But these there are Republicans months, each other, their friends and that they're all they're just to Andy Beshear of the incumbent governor out of office.

yeah, and we will see who ends up on top of that aisle.

>> Ron Barton, we thank you for your time to go on and on.

Lots to cover.

But we'll be talking to you again very soon.

Thank you.

Thanks, Renay.

♪ >> And you can see Ron Barton each Wednesday here on Kentucky.

Addition for a breakdown of the goings on in politics in Kentucky.

Students and staff will not be returning to the school in Uvalde, Texas where an 18 year-old gunman opened fire last week killing 21 people.

19 children and 2 teachers died in the attack and Rob Elementary school and May 23rd the district announced today that the school would remain closed and plans are being made on where students will attend classes in the fall.

The Texas Department of Public Safety says the investigation into how you've all day police and the school district responded to the school shooting is under way.

The school district police chief served as an on-site commander during the shooting.

A Kentucky county will spend almost a half million dollars to make its schools more secure.

The Lexington Herald-Leader reports Morgan County's fiscal court voted Friday to give the school system $480,000.

The plan is to use that money to provide school resource officers to the high school, the middle school and the county's elementary schools.

The school courts don't usually provide money for school.

Police county Judge Executive John will.

Stacey says the county had to do something.

He says the county can expect someone from Washington to protect children.

His quote.

Jason Glass was one superintendent of the Colorado school district that included Columbine High School that suffered a horrific mass shooting in 1999.

You may remember he told us yesterday how the grieving in the trauma recovery continued years after as now the commissioner of the Kentucky Department of Education.

He talked with us about how Kentucky is trying to keep kids, teachers and staff safe and what more needs to be done.

>> For many parents and educators who watch this unfold in school was just letting out here in Kentucky as well.

What would you say to reassure them that Kentucky schools are safe or perhaps?

>> statistically school is one of the safest places in a child can So we look injuries or how children get hurt in school.

In spite of the sort epidemic of school shootings continues happen.

Schools are really safe place for students and Kentucky's done some good things when it comes to school safety a couple of years ago in the wake of the Marshall County the Legislature passed the Senate bill, one of the school Safety and Resiliency Act which took a lot of steps statewide to put in place a system of support and ensure that we have basis of school safety around That was that was a good step.

They continue to look at elements school resource officers who I think can be a tremendous positive impact on school.

Clearly we've seen from the Stoneman Douglas shooting.

They're not a There are lots of things that can go wrong.

All of these systems have weaknesses that can be exploited, especially if people don't follow through on what they are supposed to do.

So the SRO by itself is not a panacea, but even this past session, while the legislature took action to get an SRO in buildings, they failed to put the funding with that to make it actually happen or the supports that are necessary to train police officers to be to sorrows.

You can just take any cop and put them in the building and expect that to be successful to different mentality and mindset.

If you have a police officer that becomes part of a school community and he's a supportive part of the kids and the staff in the building.

It's a different mindset that requires a different kind of training.

So we need to supports to create sorrows and we need the resources to actually put them in building if we want to achieve the results that I think the Legislature hope for with the bill last year.

>> There may be some renewed calls to arm school personnel, teachers, administrators.

What do you think of that?

>> I really don't like this idea on a number of And I think it starts we're not hearing from teachers that they want responsibility it is a perishable skill to have to this on a continuous basis.

Know if we look at shootings that I'm a trained law enforcement have on a regular basis.

They don't always hit their targets.

And so you have someone who has minimal training and minimal and not the mindset to be carrying a gun into a hostile situation that you're asking to pull that out and engage with the shooter I think a lot of things can go The other thing is law enforcement after Columbine, one of the one of the lessons that we learned in Columbine that I think was repeated an error that was repeated in Texas is that law enforcement is trained when there's an act of sheer you breach the building and you engage the shooter.

That was something that happened in Columbine.

You can remember of those hours.

We watch that unfold and students climbing out of windows and trying to get out of the building that change the procedures for law enforcement after that.

Now their top, you engage.

That clearly didn't happen in Texas.

But one of the problems that you can have a the staff inside the building is when the law enforcement peers and breaches the building, you have a bunch of people with guns inside.

They don't know who the shooter is and who isn't.

That is a significant problem that I don't think you have an answer for.

I think weapons and protection and hardening schools has a place that an important part of this conversation.

In addition to getting upstream and thinking about how we can prevent the situation from happening in the first place, hardening schools and an important part of the conversation but I think I'm expecting a classroom teacher to have this responsibility and then carry executed, carry it out in a hostile situation.

There's a little far fetched more than a little farfetched.

>> This issue is is complicated and it often pulls people in opposite directions and it's a gun control versus a gun rights issue.

How do you see it?

Well, I think if you look at >> the number of mass murders and school shootings that take place in the United States compared to any other country in the There's something different happening here.

I was listening to international news broadcasts.

They were talking about school shootings in the United States and really the commentators were flabbergasted that this continues to happen in United States.

And I thought, oh, they must think we're barbarians that we continue to allow this to occur and then we do nothing.

I understand the outrage and I understand it's it's really comes an extremist interpretation of the Second Amendment that talk about the right to bear arms shall not be and French.

Well, that also comes with a and the context of a well-regulated militia.

This is not well regulated.

What we have right now.

And then when the founders wrote that Second Amendment, it was in the context of the country was under threat from a tyrannical who invading a and trying to or the beginning of the country.

You have to imagine that if the founders were having people walk into buildings and shoot their children, they may have frame that a little differently.

So I think we've got to not look at the constitution and automatically it needs to be at a document that evolves and changes over time.

That's why there's an amendment process associated with.

And I think the founders we're counting on us to adapt and not look on their just automatically.

♪ ♪ >> Weaving as a craft as old as Time.

Iberia College students are learning the craft by weaving in and some old techniques with a few new ones.

>> I appreciate any new relationship that leaving his brought me with the world around me.

We still have that common connections bins throughout the entirety of human history of making things too fill.

Some needs whether it be physical needs for fabric and close or emotional needs to create.

I think it's just beautiful.

>> This particular studio is not really a classroom and it's not really a workshop.

It's a production studio.

It's a collective space where everyone is working together to design and make products that are then sent to local shops and on our Web store where we saw.

>> We make sure that there's plenty of opportunity for everyone with the different ways that they think with their different stories with their different lifetime of experiences to use this studio as a way of telling their own story.

>> I have been waiting I started here in the weaving studio student about 4 and a half years ago.

I like how many possibilities there are.

Your only limit is basically the limits of your physical loom and capacity of your imagination.

>> The traditional floor room, you have a lot more limitations, which for me is really exciting because I like to try to push the boundaries of what the limits able to do on the I like that.

There's very few limits and being able to do kind of whatever I imagine and figuring out how to technically make that work is also really exciting to me.

>> We're using in many cases, traditional techniques.

But using those techniques to express contemporary sought and the identities and the ideas of our current students.

>> We think of craft objects as utilitarian.

So a place mat or a wooden table or ceramic cop.

Those are often the things that we think of as craft and then fine art doesn't necessarily have that sort of utility.

So that would be a painting or drawing.

But I think that.

Kraft is definitely fine.

Art.

>> There's just so much value to any and mean item that hours that went into it and the detail that was put into it, a lot of the beauty and weaving I find is from the diversity of stories that can be told through a piece of cloth.

>> A place mat has as much storytelling possibility as a picture, a blanket as much as up home or a cutting board as much as a short story.

We really encourage our students to recognize that and to seal like the artists that they are and we recognize that artistic potential and artistic ability that they come here with.

People do say that.

>> Whenever you read something or make anything, you put a piece of yourself in it.

I think it's interesting because I make such a variety of things, but I think no matter what I make, there is somewhat of a reflection of me and who I am.

And it.

>> I have this need to create and not just for myself, but as a way to connect with all of human history and I appreciate being able to do that.

>> We picked an appropriate day to kick off our birth Kentucky edition today.

Kentucky's birthday.

The Commonwealth is 230 years old.

Kentucky join the union on June.

First 17 92 becoming America's 15th state.

So happy birthday, Kentucky.

We hope you'll join us again tomorrow night at 6.30, Eastern 5.30, central for Kentucky edition where we inform connect and inspire subscribe to our weekly Kentucky addition, e-mail news letter and watch full episodes and clips at KATC Dot Org.

>> You can also find Kentucky addition on the PBS video app on your mobile device and smart TV and followed it up on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to stay in the loop.

Thank you for watching tonight.

Take good care and I'll see you tomorrow night.

♪ ♪ ♪