[MUSIC] More health concerns for Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, who was hospitalized this week.

As Kentucky marks Juneteenth, governor, Beshear pardons 43 people who helped enslaved people escape to freedom, Kentucky's education commissioner says it will be a while before high schoolers know if they'll be taking the A, c, t or the SAT college entrance exam.

UK s new athletics director gets two titles on this Father's Day weekend.

[MUSIC] Comment is next on KET.

Good evening.

I'm Bill Bryant and we welcome you to comment on Kentucky.

A look back at and some analysis of the week's news in the Commonwealth and the guests on our panel of working Kentucky journalists tonight are Alex Acquisto politics and health reporter for the Lexington Herald.

Leader Keely Doll state politics reporter for the Courier-Journal and Laura Cullen Glasscock editor and publisher of the Kentucky Gazette.

We taped this program on Thursday evening, June 18th, in observance of the Juneteenth holiday.

Recognized by the executive.

Branch of state government under an order of Governor Andy Beshear.

Let's get right to the news of the week.

Senator Mitch McConnell was hospitalized again this week, and this time, there were scant details about the health of the 84 year old senator, who has spent half his life in the Senate.

Kentucky's other senator, Rand Paul, said early in the week that he believed McConnell was improving, but he knew little else.

>> I've only kind of heard through the grapevine.

I haven't talked to him directly, but I've heard that he is doing better today, and so we're hoping he gets out of the hospital soon.

>> Laura.

Sometimes the lack of information leads to speculation that can be inaccurate, but the updates were few on Senator McConnell this week.

>> That's right.

I think, like Senator.

Paul, a lot of us are hearing things.

I reached out to the senator, to Senator McConnell's office on Thursday morning, and his staff said that when there's an update, they'll let everybody know.

But at this point, we just have to have good wishes for the senator and and hope that he gets through this in a in a timely manner.

>> And again, we do know taping this program on Thursday night, some news could come during the airings over the weekend, but certainly Kelly McConnell led the Republican majority, as we know, for several years, a few years ago.

But for longer than any party leader ever led a party in the Senate.

But in recent years, he has clearly struggled with his health.

>> Yeah, he's been hospitalized last year for flu like symptoms.

And every time this happens or when this has happened, not only with McConnell but with other members of Congress, it really just brings up a lot of questions around term limits and the age of Congress.

We have the third oldest Congress right now in history with an average age of 59.

And it's also important to note that Mitch McConnell is not the.

Oldest member of Congress.

At 84, he's not even the oldest member of the Senate.

He's got Chuck Grassley and Bernie Sanders of Vermont ahead of him.

Also, it's important to note that Hal Rogers is 88 and still running for reelection.

>> And I think to what's hard about this, and I didn't realize that Senator Bernie Sanders was older than Mitch McConnell.

But when you age in the public eye, it seems like most of the time when we see Mitch McConnell's name in a headline, it's because of something health related, which is unfortunate, but it's also part of public service.

As you get older, you know, again, to the term limits point.

And I think it's a fine line between when something does happen and the public knows about it.

Health Wise how much do you reveal or do you sort of exercise discretion?

And we've kind of.

Seen both from Mitch McConnell.

He's had public falls and talked about them.

He's had other moments where his campaign, or rather, his staff has been less clear about what's happening with him because, again, health related things are personal, but it's also happening in the public eye.

So how much do you reveal?

>> And to your point, you know, 42 years in the Senate, most of those years, he was making headlines for policy initiatives and all of that.

And now often for for his health these days, Laura assuming.

And of course, we're all hoping that the senator recovers and returns to work, McConnell will leave office.

Nevertheless, at the end of this year, he's not running again.

You know, obviously, Democrats are have often been at odds with Senator McConnell, but even Republicans have been.

But in recent months, it seems that people are giving him his due for how he built the Kentucky Republican Party, for instance.

>> Well, outside of campaigns, perhaps they're giving him his due there.

There was a lot of McConnell bashing during the May primary campaigns.

We saw plenty of that.

But you're right that he did build the party, the the building, the the headquarters building in downtown Frankfort.

Bears his name.

He started methodically building the party when he was first elected in the mid 1980s.

And if you remember, in 1999, the Senate, the state Senate became majority Republican for the first time in generations.

And it took another couple decades before.

But almost two decades, 17 years before the state House became a majority Republican body.

And so he just was very methodical.

He was very focused, and he was very professional in how he moved the party forward.

When I first started covering the legislature for the Kentucky Gazette back in 1998, the the numbers were flipped.

In the state House.

There were 25 Republicans and.

75 Democrats.

Greg Stumbo was speaker of the House.

The Senate, of course, was majority Democrats as well.

And so here we have it.

But it's that that, again, methodically focused strategy for getting the party where it is today.

>> He literally encouraged party switching.

There were some it would be that they would switch parties.

>> Sanders.

>> Larry Sanders absolutely.

>> He was the one who flipped the Senate.

>> Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

And we all know that the senator has dabbled in state politics often and in state policy at times, even to the extent that he was involved in how a senator is to be succeeded if they are unable to complete their term for some reason.

>> Yeah.

In 2021, he was put pressure on the Kentucky legislature to change the law that would require the governor to pick from a set of three candidates that had been chosen by the outgoing senator's party that was then later repealed.

That's no longer the process, but he's been involved within his own succession plans.

If it comes to that.

>> And the law now is that the governor would have to call a special election to fill to fulfill the end of the unexpired term.

>> And again, we all, of course, hope it doesn't come to that.

Well, Kelly Republicans are gathering in Lexington this weekend.

They're having their statewide Lincoln event, Lincoln Day event.

Andy Barr, who is their nominee for the Senate, is the keynote speaker.

He's up against Democrat Charles Booker.

So they're hoping to have a weekend of rah rah, right?

>> Yeah, it's kind of come full circle for Andy Barr last year.

He was at the event hoping to get support to Phil McConnell's seat to be the nominee.

Now he's coming back as the keynote speaker and the nominee.

Obviously, he's still got the general election to go.

But historically, if Kentucky goes at it has and stays Republican, he will.

Phil McConnell's shoes, which pretty big shoes to fill.

>> And then he's leaving his seat open in the sixth.

And you recently looked into that sixth district race, the open seat where Republican Ralph Alvarado is facing Democrat Zach Dembo.

And that could be the one to watch in Kentucky.

>> Yeah, I think it's I think it's the one that we're going to see the most interesting race or story out of come November.

Zach Dembo has raised almost just under $1 million.

According to the latest FEC filings, and Ralph Alvarado's outpaced him just a tad at about 1.1, 1.2 million.

So they're pretty close.

And we know that this is a race that both parties have their eye on as something that could flip Democrat, or the Republicans really want it to stay red.

>> Well, there's going to be a lot of outside money coming in for that district or that race as well.

Excuse me.

The Vote vets, for example, has endorsed Zach Dembo, and they spent $50 million in the two governors races for Virginia.

And was it Maryland last year that.

So they have the resources.

And so I think we'll see a lot of national interest in this race.

Competitive congressional seats are rare with the gerrymandering that goes on in redistricting.

So competitive races are definitely ones like Kelly said to keep an.

>> Eye on.

Yeah.

And the battle for the majority seems.

>> To be.

>> On this year, for sure.

Well, as we said, this program, of course, is airing on Juneteenth on Friday night and throughout the weekend, also known as Emancipation Day.

It is not a state holiday, even though leading lawmakers indicated a few years ago that they would make that happen.

And so, Alex, during the turmoil of 2020, especially including the the the death of Breonna Taylor, the Covid pandemic, there was unrest and there were promises to make Juneteenth a holiday that has never happened, despite it being repeatedly introduced in the legislature.

>> Right.

It never quite got over the finish line.

And so then at some point, after President Joe Biden made it a federal holiday in 2021, Beshear essentially did the same thing.

The difference really is that when you as a legislature make something a state holiday, typically most workplaces obey it.

It becomes a sort of paid holiday.

Right now, it's a observed holiday in the state.

It's an executive branch holiday.

So you'll probably find disparate places of work that aren't off tomorrow.

But generally it's observed in Kentucky.

And I think the thinking behind it was it's long overdue.

We need to do it.

And so Beshear just went ahead and did it well.

>> And it is a federal holiday, as you said.

So banks are closed.

So it kind of stands to reason that a lot of places might be closed in recognition of the federal Wright aspect.

>> Of it.

And Kelly we noted Governor Beshear did declare June 19th as Juneteenth National Freedom Day in Kentucky.

He did that with the executive pen.

He posthumously also pardoned 43 people who were imprisoned for helping enslaved people escape.

He clearly wanted to make a statement.

>> Yeah.

I think that this is his way of reaffirming his support for this.

Although it wasn't able to get passed, the legislature passed that final hurdle.

He wants to make sure that this is definitely something that he has seen.

Supporting people know that he supports this.

And yeah.

>> This is an interesting year in Kentucky politics, competitive races for seats in Washington and Frankfort and at the city halls and courthouses, but also maybe just the quiet before the storm of a governor's race, the Democratic lieutenant governor, Jacqueline Coleman, the only declared candidate for governor next year.

But now, Laura, you've been looking through some records and have found some folks that are interested in the job as well.

>> Yes, there are two Republicans who have who have opened accounts with the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance and have started raising money.

One is a gentleman named Rick Hardin.

He's a Louisville lawyer, and he actually has a website up.

And it's a nice looking website, if you ask me.

The other is a man named Charles Bruiser Martin, and he's from Clay County, and he actually was on Discovery Channel's Moonshiners.

And what's it called?

Moonshiners master distiller program.

>> Okay.

>> So those two Republicans are are on the also, the registry records show that Jonathan Shell is planning to run for reelection as AG commissioner, Allison Ball as editor.

And then, as you mentioned, Lieutenant Governor Coleman.

>> And governor, and then the attorney general, Russell Coleman.

>> Russell Coleman.

>> As well.

I think he plans to make an announcement in this week ahead.

>> He has just I'm sorry to interrupt.

He has half $1 million already in the bank.

>> Yeah.

So that's scare people away money, you know.

Oh, yeah.

Oh yeah.

Does anybody get a sense of how long the lieutenant Governor Coleman will have the field to herself?

>> I do.

Oh I have I have an idea.

I think I don't think anyone will get in until after the next campaign finance filing deadline, because they're going to want to see what she's coming up with.

And it doesn't do anybody any good.

Like Rocky Adkins, the governor's senior advisor or anyone like that, to jump in now and then only raise money for a few months.

It makes you look weak if you don't have a good report going in.

So I personally don't think anyone will jump in until after July 1st.

>> And on the Republican side.

And you mentioned the two other candidates there, but Congressman James Comer has been out saying he's interested in the job, Alex, in fact, that he intends to run.

Secretary of State Michael Adams says if he runs for anything, it will be for governor.

And Senate President Robert Stivers has made it clear that he is very much taken note of the open primary next year.

>> Yeah, people are still sort of Republicans.

These sort of high ranking Republicans are still mentioning it seriously, explicitly, but still kind of in passing.

No one has said definitively I am doing this.

But yeah, I mean, you have three.

What would be three top contenders for that position if they were all to actually file?

>> Yeah.

All right.

We mentioned the attorney General, Coleman.

He's been very visible in his job.

And this week he decided to file suit against companies that operate prediction markets.

Kelly.

He's accusing Polymarket and Kashi of operating outside the rules of Kentucky has laid out.

>> Yeah.

So it's kind of a question that I think a lot of the nation is dealing with, and it boils down to our prediction markets gambling.

To you and me looking at someone betting on the outcome of a basketball game or an election, or the weather might seem like gambling, but these markets are saying that they're actually contract events traded between users, and that only the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, which is federal, can regulate them.

And they seem to have very little interest in doing that.

But a lot of the states and elected officials think that this is gambling and therefore should be subject to state gambling laws.

So it's something we'll have to see going forward.

>> Meanwhile, some of the prediction markets are suing Kentucky for trying to collect a tax on what they do.

>> It's a pretty hefty tax.

It's I think 14.25%.

So they're saying that yeah that it's not it doesn't it doesn't apply to them shouldn't apply to them.

And Kentucky is hitting back saying yes, it absolutely does.

>> Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner Jonathan Schell told me this week that farmers always have to keep an eye out for threats from the weather, from invasive species and even world events.

How do you balance it all?

I mean, I understand right now even the fact that the Strait of Hormuz has been blocked has been impactful in Kentucky.

>> Absolutely.

30% of the world's nitrogen comes through the Strait of Hormuz.

And thankful that President Trump has got a a memorandum of understanding and agreement with Iran to to open that straight back up.

Hopefully, that will alleviate some of the pressures that we're seeing in our fertilizer markets, and especially around input costs on diesel and things that we use in a tremendous way in agriculture.

But all of this stuff that can create chaos in the world affects agriculture very directly.

>> Alex, it is interesting that the world is so connected these days that events on the other side of the planet can have direct impacts on farmers here.

>> I remember soon after the Strait of Hormuz was blocked, one of the first stories that I heard on NPR was about farmers and how the rising cost of gas directly affects them, because they primarily rely on diesel fueled machinery.

And when that goes up, you know, obviously you're paying a lot more.

You have to do that work.

So you just have to eat that cost.

But I think farming, almost more than any industry, is very subject to these global markets.

And in Kentucky, obviously we have a bustling farming industry.

>> There are some new developments involving the founder and owner of Addiction Recovery Care.

You've been covering that.

Tim Robinson pled not guilty to federal charges this week.

>> He did.

He pled not guilty to three charges of money laundering and wire fraud related to him basically selling the same IRS tax credits to two companies.

His company, which used to be the largest drug treatment company in Kentucky, has really been in hot water for the last two years.

They've shrunk in size dramatically.

They've borrowed millions of dollars from loan agencies.

And yet earlier this month, he was federally indicted for federal crimes.

He faces prison time.

Potentially.

The trial was set for early August.

>> And then there are some civil lawsuits also that have revealed.

>> There are there are close to half a dozen different civil lawsuits related to him defaulting on repayment plans for money that he borrowed on behalf of the company to essentially keep it afloat, which is just indicative of the financial woes he's facing.

>> Kentucky's education commissioner, Doctor Robbie Fletcher, told me this week that it is unclear when high school students will even know which college entrance exam they'll take.

Until last year, students took the a c t for nearly 20 years, but last year the state switched over to the SAT to save up to $350,000 a year.

Well, now some lawmakers want to return to the a c t and so the contract is out for bid again.

>> So they don't know now which one is going to be and won't know to as at the earliest October.

>> And they're different.

>> And they're different.

They're very different.

But again, they are college admissions exams.

We administer the Kentucky Summit of assessments KSA, which are content assessments.

And so we we assess science, math, reading at the high school level.

These are college admissions, entrance exams that say, what's your aptitude for being successful at the college, at the college point?

>> Or part of the reason that some lawmakers want to return the act is to be able to compare those scores over the years.

>> Well, that's right.

You want to be able to compare the apples to apples, to use the cliche, but either one would still be fine for students who want to apply to college.

Obviously, a lot of schools take both or either states across the nation have different requirements for their their students.

But I think it's interesting to note the one school that has that has had this directed at them.

Kentucky State University.

Senate Bill 185 that passed this last session said in the language SAT or Act scores for admission into K state.

So I'm kind of belaboring that point.

I'm sorry.

The Senate Bill 185 set standards for students to apply at K state.

They have to have 17 on their Act test or the equivalent.

So it's interesting to see that that those admission standards are being mandated at that level.

But regardless, schools will take either one for the.

>> Doctor, Fletcher noted the state does its own assessment score.

So they basically know how students are doing and how they're learning.

But these college entrance exams are predictive of how they might might do in college.

For the first time, more than 25,000 students graduated from the 16 colleges of the Kentucky Community and Technical College this week, so it's a milestone for them.

58% of Kentucky's undergraduate students.

>> Yeah, that's a lot.

>> I didn't know that.

>> It's a lot of kids and a lot of them had no debt.

I think you mentioned earlier, yes, I.

>> 74% have no debt.

>> That's a lot of students in the community colleges go part time.

So that helps them, you know, with being able to work and pay for school.

And I personally think it has to do with the increase in dual credit college or high school kids can take college classes.

Now, I have a friend whose daughter graduated high school with 40 college credit hours, you know, so she started at Morehead as a sophomore when she left Henry Clay.

So I think you're seeing more of that.

The it helps the kids and helps the families.

>> Yeah.

The Town of Liberty and Casey County put on some tight restrictions for water use.

No watering of lawns, no filling up swimming pools, no washing cars at home.

Mayor Sam Haddad talked about the challenge.

>> And now we're.

The lake is down significantly.

It's almost 15ft low at this point, so it's very critical.

That's the only source of water supply we have for our entire county, city and county.

And we basically had to declare emergency so we can decrease the amount of water used.

At the same time, we can seek help and to find other sources of water supply.

>> Alex.

They really have a problem.

Not enough water in the reservoir.

And the city acknowledges that Lake Liberty, which is their impoundment, was only built for the city and now others draw from it.

So that is a major part of the issue in addition to drought.

>> And it's a complicating factor because there are many Kentucky towns that don't have a sort of regionalized water system.

Liberty is a town of, I think, 16,000 people.

Lake liberty, I think the mayor just said, is down 15ft.

Hopefully the rain this week helped with that.

But yeah, they have a state of emergency from a combination of lack of rainfall and just aging infrastructure that leaks water into the ground when it's carrying it to people's homes.

And I think it's like it's a problem for people living there.

But this is also a community that has a really big farming reliance.

There's a lot of cattle that rely on that water.

And so they're trying to find sort of ad hoc fixes in the meantime until they can find a more permanent fix in the future.

>> It's challenging when you're asked to shorten your showers, right?

I mean, that's what's happened there.

Well, the University of Kentucky has hired Jay Bad as its new athletics director, notably said that he will also be heading up Champions Blue, a nonprofit LLC created to house the athletic department at the state's flagship university, Laura.

More and more college athletics operating like a business.

And obviously UK wants the new ad to reflect that.

>> That's right.

So his job title is athletics director and CEO of Champions Blue, and that's an LLC that houses that is the athletics department.

Now it's been separated from the university.

As you pointed out, his contract has been made public.

He makes $2.6 million the first year he's here.

And that goes up to 3.2 million the fifth year.

And he gets bonuses for reaching certain milestones.

For example, if teams make championship level or the student athletes reach and maintain GPAs at a certain level.

>> All right, Kelly, another sports note tonight.

Apparently Churchill Downs won't be allowed to buy the Preakness.

>> Yes.

So it was a big talk leading up to the 152nd Derby.

But the governor of Maryland has stepped in, Wes Moore and said that the state has the right to offer first.

And so they've put up that $85 million to keep the Preakness.

>> So that will be something that has to shake out over in Louisville, right?

Yes.

Another Kentucky city has put a moratorium on data centers.

The city of Versailles is joining Lexington and Louisville in pausing data centers until they get more information.

Keely, this issue is obviously attention getting for the public and even policy makers who just feel they don't have enough information to make decisions.

>> Yeah, it's we're kind of seeing a disconnect between, I think, some of our federally elected officials and state and local officials.

And I think it comes down to that these data centers, at times can be very controversial.

People are concerned about their environmental impacts.

Their quality of life impacts, the cost of energy and what that can do.

Brett Guthrie has said that he has asked the FBI to look into if China has something to do with this opposition to data centers, but we've seen two counties within his own district, Breckinridge and Daviess County up, put a one year moratorium.

So it's just something that's really going to have to shake out between local officials who don't seem to want these and federal officials who who do.

>> Kentucky based Yum brands is selling off Pizza Hut almost $3 billion transaction when you include the restaurants in the U.S.

and in China.

Janet Patton story for the Lexington Herald-Leader noted that the chain has struggled in recent years, but some operators have done well by returning to a retro look, Alex.

>> I mean, Pizza Hut's heyday was when I was a kid, when they had the big buffet, you know, these Tiffany stained glass lamps.

And so some Pizza Hut's have kind of adopted what they used to look like in the 90s for the purposes of nostalgia.

And it works to a degree.

And so we're seeing that maybe not as a dying breath, but they're trying to pull in an audience that I think once liked Pizza Hut a lot more to sort of revisit, you know, get some of that support.

Again.

>> It was a place to be back in the day.

>> I remember those red cups.

>> I'm sure Kentucky environmental journalist James Bruggers is being remembered after his death this week.

Bruggers won several awards for his reporting during nearly two decades at the Courier-Journal.

After that tenure, he reported for climate news, former colleague Deborah Yetter called Bruggers soft spoken and respectful but also detailed, dogged and well respected.

James Bruggers was 68, and throughout this weekend, many Kentucky communities will be continuing to have Juneteenth events.

There's a list of some of those on Kentucky tourism.com, and we also wish all the best to the dads out there for Father's Day that's comin on Kentucky.

Have a good week ahead.