I'm honored to be in this fight with you.

Let's go win this thing.

We catch up with Daniel Cameron as he campaigns for governor in Bowling Green.

What we now know about three of the 12 horses that died at Churchill Downs.

The longer you put off health care, the worse it's going to be when you do eventually have to get care and the more expensive that's going to be to the system and why people who need health care are going to school.

Production of Kentucky Edition is made possible in part by the KET Endowment for Kentucky Productions, the Leonard Press Endowment for Public Affairs and the KET Millennium Fund.

Good Tuesday evening to you.

I'm Renee Shaw.

Thank you for joining us for Kentucky Edition on this Tuesday, June the sixth.

So glad you're with us.

Still five months to go until the November 7th election, but the candidates aren't waiting to campaign.

Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron started the week with campaign stops in his native Elizabeth Town and then on to Warren County.

Our Laura Rogers brings us more from his appearance in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

Attorney General Daniel Cameron making a campaign stop in Bowling Green Monday, where support from Republican state lawmakers who represent the area of Cameron with strong words for his opponent.

At the end of the day, the contrast between me and Andy Beshear will be very clear.

I'm going to be the law and order candidate and he is the catch and release candidate.

And it's evident by the fact that in 2020 he led a folks bunch of folks out of jail, roughly 2500 or so, and a third of those have already committed offenses.

That's referring to an executive order Governor Beshear signed during the coronavirus pandemic to ease overcrowding in prisons and jails.

You all we all make the difference between a win or a loss in November.

The attorney general also blaming Beshear for other pandemic era issues and decisions, including school and business closures and a dip in the labor force.

Right now we have a governor who, since he became governor, there have been 27,000 fewer Kentuckians working since he became governor.

Violent crime has been high and the workforce participation rate has been low since he's been governor.

He decided he was going to shut down churches, he was going to shut down small businesses and he was going to shut down our schools.

And because of that, we have learning loss by our kids.

Cameron says he hopes to gain the support of teachers, many of whom voted for his opponent in 2019.

You're going to have a governor who is not hostile to teachers who haven't bought into the gender ideology curriculum.

Right now we have a governor and a commissioner at the Department of Education who says that if you have any concerns about that curriculum, that you need to find another job.

That is what Andy Beshear hand-picked commissioner of the Kentucky Department of Education, says.

He also hopes to have the backing of those in policing and says he has the endorsement of more than 100 law enforcement officials across the state.

We need a governor who's going to fight with and stand with our law enforcement community.

And that's not been Andy Beshear.

He's beholden to the far left of his party.

One thing Cameron did not disclose, who will be his running mate for lieutenant governor.

We're in the process of considering who that person might be and when we have a decision, you'll know.

One thing is for certain, it will be a busy 22 weeks leading up to Election Day on November 7th.

I'm honored to be in this fight with you.

Let's go win this thing.

For Kentucky edition, I'm Laura Rogers.

Thank you, Laura from Bowling Green.

Cameron traveled to Owensboro, where he met with voters at Reed's Orchard.

So Cameron's opponent, Democratic incumbent Governor Andy Beshear, picked up the backing of more than 35 law enforcement officials today.

The governor was on hand late this afternoon as law enforcement for Beshear formally announced its support for his reelection.

The group is chaired by Sheriff John Hunt of Floyd County and Sheriff John Ward of Hardin County.

Kate was there.

We'll have much more of this tomorrow night on Kentucky Edition.

What can be done about gun violence in Kentucky and for that matter, across America?

We talked about the April 10th mass shooting in Louisville.

Red flag laws and the need to balance gun rights and gun safety.

Last night on Kentucky tonight, one viewer asked if more could be done to require people to keep their guns locked up so they don't fall into the wrong hands.

I grew up respecting firearms and fearing firearms.

A healthy fear.

I think they were kept in a secure location and I couldn't get that without permission from mom or dad.

And and that's the kind of home that I'm bringing my children up in.

But that's not the case everywhere.

I think that's worth having a conversation about.

If there are proposals and there have been in the past, for instance, I know Senator Neal has found one.

He may.

I don't think he's filed in every single year, but I know he's followed a number of times in the past regarding a safe storage.

I think that's a conversation worth having.

It gets tricky, though, because you don't want to interfere with one's ability to defend your home if you require that a gun be stored in such a way that it becomes cumbersome to access when you need it the most than you've you've hurt a homeowner or someone that needs to use environmental perfectly lawful and justifiable way.

So again, there's a difficult balancing act there and you've got to find the middle course.

Now, the problem that we see is so many guns are not properly stowed.

People keep them in their car.

They don't lock their car.

The guns get stolen.

The guns end up in Baltimore and New York and Chicago.

And people die because nobody's willing to properly stole their guns and legislature.

Just doesn't.

They don't want to push that.

They they they leave behind the Second Amendment.

Again, that that's an infringement which it is not.

But it suggests that they're more interested in laissez faire when it comes to guns and an absolute opposite when they're discussing some other socially significant subjects.

And that's very frustrating to see because proper storage, if you quit, you know, I'm sorry if you if you have properly stowed guns, two things happen.

You have fewer stolen guns and you have fewer children who find daddy's gun that he didn't lock up and they blow their face off.

So we have fewer of those.

And I'm kind of of the opinion that we need fewer kids shooting themselves with daddy's gun because then doesn't want to properly stop it.

There's a reason that the law enforcement, whereas are going on there because it needs to be readily quickly available.

But I do agree with somewhat it needs to be with the new technology.

If you don't have to punch in buttons and things, they got new safes that you can hit your thumbprint and it'll pop open.

You're like that in the man.

I don't know the statistics, but the amount of home invasions where you would really need to get that gun, what could he split?

And when somebody is on top of you are probably very slim.

We also heard from Whitney Austin, who you see on the screen.

She's a survivor of a mass shooting in Cincinnati in 2018.

She says easy access to guns comes at a time when youth suicides are surging.

You know, in all these conversations about where we can meet in the middle, it's important to remember that we just live in an entirely different environment than we did relative to guns, relative to mental health than we did in the past in the 1980s, in the 1990s.

We know that we are in the midst of a youth mental health crisis and we've seen firearm suicide rates with our youth increase 66% in the last ten years.

Marcus already told you about the increased levels in mass shootings.

We're just not where we once were.

And so gun owners, who I truly believe are mostly responsible, you need to be thinking about those gun owners amongst you who are irresponsible, that are falling down on their job and they're allowing their firearms to be picked up by their suicidal youth for purposes of suicide.

They're allowing their firearms to be picked up by troubled youth that end up in a position of wanting to commit an act of mass violence.

You can see more of last night's discussion on gun laws online on demand and Kate Dawgs, Hey, why tonight?

Next Monday on Kentucky.

Tonight, we'll talk about horse racing safety.

A big topic these days.

That's after 12 horses died at Churchill Downs in a one month period.

WAGA in Louisville reports the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission has some findings about three of the deaths.

The report says neither take charge, Brianna, nor parents.

Pride showed signs of any illegal drugs.

The trainer for freezing point, though, track conditions might have contributed to that horse's fatal injury.

But the commission says an analysis of the track found nothing unusual.

Churchill Downs moved its meat to Ellis Park in Henderson because of the recent deaths.

Equity and Lexington reports that's left hundreds of Churchill track workers without jobs a month early.

That meat ends July 3rd.

Kentucky is holding off on paying $21 million in economic incentives to electric battery maker Micro fast.

After the U.S. Department of Energy rejected a $200 million loan for the company.

The company planned to build a plant in Hopkinsville, just north of another micro based plant in Clarksville, Tennessee.

The Department of Energy rejected the loan after congressional Republicans complained.

The Texas based company has improper ties to China.

The company denies that the state wants more information from the company before moving ahead with incentives.

Monday, a leak caused a water pump failure and Brandenburg, that's in Meade County that forced a cut back in water use.

People were asked to use water for essential purposes only.

WDR B reports crews found the leak.

People are now asked to boil their water and the city is bringing in bottled water for thousands of people who don't have water at all.

Here's a story from Florida with a connection to Kentucky.

A federal judge is temporarily blocking part of a new Florida law that bans transgender minors from receiving puberty blockers.

Judge Robert Henkel says the state has no basis for denying treatments to patients.

This ruling does not affect Kentucky, but a new Kentucky law also bans transgender minors from receiving puberty blockers.

The ACLU of Kentucky is suing over that law and says it looks forward to a similar ruling here.

Now turning now to education news.

Members of the Kentucky Department of Education were in Frankfurt today to update lawmakers on the state of education in Kentucky.

Jim Flynn, the executive director of the Kentucky Association of School Superintendents, gave a presentation on the Kentucky Education Reform Act, or KERA for short.

KERA was passed more than 30 years ago with the goal of closing gaps in academic performance and funding for school districts.

Flynn told the Interim Joint Committee on Education there were a few barriers getting in the way of that goal, mainly the high stakes accountability testing and assessment systems that are put and that have been put in place over the years is that it isn't always the best way to provide information about how district schools and the state are meeting the education standards.

Senate President Republican Robert Stivers said he thought high stakes testing could be useful.

I think high stakes accountability with an appropriate assessment is the direction we should go.

But we haven't had what I feel is a good assessment tool to determine what should be done in various school systems.

Take those kinds of assessments, take a good quality assessments that measure, you know, reading and math and those kinds of things, but integrate it with those community based accountability systems that matter to the people in those community around the expected benefits of our kids.

And when Commissioner Pruitt was here and was working on that big accountability initiative during his tenure, one of the things he talked about was, you know, a local component to the state accountability.

And now I think it could be more than a local component component so that it really does give you a picture of of the whole child, not just a thin slice of how they did on a test one day.

That can be one piece of evidence.

But we need more evidence for educators and students and families and communities and the legislature to know how the investment that's being made by the taxpayers of our commonwealth is giving a return on that.

Also discussed at today's meeting, proficiency standards, Representative Tim Truet, a Republican from McKee and an elementary school principal, said many don't understand what it means for a student to be, quote, proficient in a subject.

It would be hard for me to be proficient.

11th grade reading student.

You know, now my math, I'm good.

But proficiency is tough.

And I think we kind of need to be honest about that.

Proficiency.

I know it looks bad sometimes to say that we're not, you know, at a proficient level that we need to be, but we also need to realize that proficiency is above the 50th percentile.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, it's, you know, somewhere around the 70th percentile might be 70 feet all the way up to the 80th percentile.

Then you get into a distinguished category.

So my next question is, I just want to kind of elaborate, let people understand kind of what that means to be proficient and how hard it is, especially at these upper grade levels, to be considered proficient.

You could be a good reading student and not be proficient.

You could be a good math student or not be proficient.

Proficiency is is above and beyond the State Department or State Education Department officials and committee members agreed that the state is seeing some positive improvements in the education system, but they admit there is still a lot of work ahead.

A town is losing its bus service and a county has too many weeds that add more.

And this week's look at headlines around Kentucky.

After July 1st, residents of Madisonville will no longer be able to ride on the city bus.

The Dawson Springs Progress says that's because the city has decided to stop operating the Go.

Madisonville Mass transit system.

The city said it has seen a large downturn in the number of riders and could no longer afford to keep up the service.

Road crews are trying to beat back the weeds in Pike County.

The Appalachia News Express reports road crews are struggling to keep weeds off county roads.

The head of the Pike County Road Department tells the newspaper the department is already short staffed and crews are still trying to repair roads after four floods in 17 months.

He said crews are mowing every day, but they're having a hard time covering the entire county and the nuisance they're facing.

Water weeds can grow almost six inches in a day and, quote, spread like wildfire and quote.

27 Kentuckians from 20 different countries took the final step to becoming U.S. citizens while hundreds of feet below ground.

WQ said the naturalization ceremony took place at Mammoth Cave National Park as part of a partnership between the National Park Service and U.S. Immigration Services.

A spokesperson for Mammoth Cave said it's a way to welcome and expose new citizens to their state's national park system.

Some old tombstones in Hopkinsville were scrubbed as clean as new by more than a dozen volunteers last week.

The Hop Town Chronicle said it's part of an event known as Tombstone Tuesday.

The volunteers clean grave sites at the Union Benevolent Society Cemetery, an African-American cemetery established by formerly enslaved people a year after the Civil War ended.

The Hop Town Chronicle said the first tombstone cleaning day was organized in June of 2020 as an outdoor activity during the pandemic.

More Tombstone Tuesday events are planned through September, with headlines around Kentucky on Shelby Gibbs.

Thank you, Toby Gibbs.

Monday, June 19th is the day observed as Juneteenth.

Now that's the federal holiday that commemorates the end of slavery in the U.S. as union troops freed enslaved people in Texas on June 19th, 1865.

A couple of weeks ago, we told you about observances planned in Louisville today.

Lexington leaders announce plans that began on June 10th and continue through the 19th.

You can see a list of the planned events by going to Lexington, Ky. Why not?

Gov.

An elementary school in Hazard is doing double duty.

It became a multipurpose medical facility over the weekend as a nonprofit group called Remote Area Medical brought a wide variety of free health care services to the underserved region.

More in tonight's look at medical news.

Ram is a nonprofit organization, and we provide free health care, vision, dental and medical.

And we go to places that the Community Hope Group community host Group invites us to.

We have around 300 volunteers throughout the weekend, so anywhere between 250 to 300.

What we look for is location, who we can serve and what providers can help us serve the community.

We're just looking for remote places that really can use our services.

And if we're disinvited, we're happy to go anywhere that feeds us.

Back in 2018, we started having these clinics and it was an idea of one of area residents, and we just picked it up and took it on, recruited a lot of folks from the community to help us out and jump on board with volunteers, with the venue here, with Perry County schools, financial support from local businesses.

Universities have been great as far as providing the volunteers to actually perform the services.

And we're here today to just try to help as many folks as we can.

Come on, come on.

Type situation, you know, no questions asked.

We found a lot of interest and a lot of community just being really thankful that we're here helping the community out.

We've had a lot of great schools and community help us set us up here.

Being underserved know it creates access.

She's been able to actually go to a provider when you need something and it's just like anything else.

The longer you put off health care, the worse it's going to be.

When you do eventually have to get care and the more expensive that's going to be to the system.

We're here to help.

We want to help.

And it's it's providing a place that people can come get the services they need, get checkups that they need, get eyeglasses that they need.

And, you know, you're so glad to do it.

And Mayfield, Kentucky.

I lost three family members to the tornado and we went out there.

We helped the community clean up.

And it really touched me that there is a need for helping others.

You know, being in a health care background, just the need for Dennis.

Dr. Optometrists, there was a lot of need in a lot of different areas.

And being there to help volunteers help patients really drove me to be a part of remote area medical.

We have a couple more clinics in Kentucky that come in this year.

We have Bowling Green and Lick Creek, Kentucky, which will be around the August.

And the Mayfield, Kentucky will be the first weekend in December through Saturday and Sunday.

Remote area medical saw 226 patients doling out $190,000 and free health care.

Recent earthquakes in western Kentucky have some residents wondering if there are more to come.

Our Kristie Dutton spoke to a geologist to find out if this is a sign that seismic activity is on the rise.

Last week, there were three earthquakes in western Kentucky.

There was one in Hopkins County, McLean County, and then later another one in Hopkins County.

Joining us now is Dr. Mike May from Western Kentucky University, a geology professor.

Hello, Dr. May.

Hello, Kristie.

Thanks for inviting me.

Yeah, So a lot of people are wondering, is this unusual to have three earthquakes in western Kentucky in such a short amount of time?

It's not really unusual.

Humans tend to put it as something unusual because they'll see two or three things within a short period of time.

But apparently this these earthquakes, three, as you mentioned earlier, were all pretty much associated with what we call the Rough Creek fault zone, the Rift Creek fault zone.

It's kind of an eastern extension of, what's more, a famous fault zone, the New Madrid fault zone, which is associated with a bunch of earthquakes for four months long.

Back in 1811, 18, 12.

But certainly we've had a lot of moderate earthquakes and little bitty ones which are still felt like the ones we've had this last week.

You've mentioned that there's a trend that sort of suggests that it might be a little different than that big earthquake on the New Madrid fault that a lot of us are taught about and concerned about.

Yes, that's true.

Over the last 55 years, approximately.

There apparently has been more activity, what we call moderate earthquakes, something like a four or five even magnitude, which certainly people feel over white areas, hundreds of miles, actually, just because of the local geology.

It kind of rings like a bell.

The faults break up the earth's crust, but overall, are that crust in this area is fairly solid.

That's why it kind of resonates as energy resonates.

And so over the last 55 years, it looks like the Wabash Valley, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky region to the east appears to be where most of the seismic activity is occurring.

So what's happened over the last week or so, late May, early June in Western Kentucky, it's it's probably a series of readjustments along the Rift Creek fault zone, which really parallels kind of the Ohio River Valley.

So it's that Eastern oxygen.

But it appears that there are more energy releases further east than toward the Mississippi Valley.

Okay.

So is there any accurate way to predict when an earthquake is going to happen?

We we don't predict.

We just know that they're kind of like these were kind of forecast, like we know we know in the wintertime the weather, it's going to be cold in the summer, it's going to be high, but you're not going to tell someone what temperature it's going to be or what the, you know, day to day is until you get close to that day.

We can't do that with earthquakes, although we're getting closer to be able to look at stresses that are built up.

And then the response to that would be an earthquake.

And so we can measure that from space, actually.

So we can't really predict.

We say, well, the stress is building or the stress has been released.

And so we do have an idea of an area being reawakened, if you will.

And if we already have mapped fault zones, it's not surprising then that we do have these little tremors along them.

And that's what's what happened the last week or so.

Well, thank you so much.

We will stay prepared in any case.

So thank you so much for being with us today.

Thank you.

And thank you, Christy Dutton.

The strongest earthquake in recent history was in 2008.

A 5.2 magnitude tremor centered in eastern Illinois was felt throughout most of the state.

It was a history changing day 79 years ago today, from midnight, skies over Normandy are suddenly alive with the shapes of men who will bring the first buyers of D-Day to fortress Europe.

This is the anniversary of the allied invasion of Nazi occupied France, better known as D-Day on June 6th, 1944.

The National World War two Museum says of the 16 million Americans who served during the war.

About 167,000 are still with us.

About 2400 Kentuckians who served are still alive.

Kentucky salutes a military pioneer with the Brigadier General Charles Young Memorial Historic corridor.

The name change kicked in last week.

The corridor stretches from Camp Nelson and Jessamine County to the Kentucky Ohio border and Mays Lick.

General Young was born in Mays Lick in 1864 to enslave parents.

His parents escaped to Ohio when Young went to West Point.

He served in Haiti, Liberia, Mexico and Nigeria.

He was eventually promoted to colonel and he was posthumously promoted to Brigadier general.

In 2021, the Mac Theater in Irvi but it shut down in the 1990s and fell into disrepair.

Now there is an effort to bring back the Mac.

Meet the people doing it and find out why it means so much to them.

Tomorrow night on Kentucky Edition, which we hope to see you for at 630 Eastern, 530 Central.

Thank you so much for joining us tonight.

I'm Rene Shaw.

Keep in touch with us all the way as you see on the screen, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

And I will see you hopefully right back here again tomorrow night.

In the meantime, take good care.