music Assembly means what they said, that I have flexibility, or if it was just meant to shift blame for the cuts they know they were making.

[MUSIC] >> The governor says Republican lawmakers gave him the power to move money in the budget, and he's doing it.

>> Mitch McConnell is a bad guy, and he's he's an.

I thought he was lousy at his job.

>> What else the president says about Kentucky's senior senator?

>> The cost of farming is just keeps climbing up and up and up and up.

>> And what one Central Kentucky farm is doing to save time, energy and money.

[MUSIC] Production of Kentucky Edition is made possible in part by the KET Millennium Fund.

[MUSIC] Good evening and welcome to Kentucky Edition.

You made it to Friday.

It's June the 12th.

I'm Christy Dutton in our KET studios here in downtown Louisville, filling in for Renee Shaw.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Governor Andy Beshear says he can and will take action to ease the impact of upcoming cuts to Medicaid and the foster care system and other social programs.

Last week, the governor said cuts were necessary under the budget passed by the General Assembly and this year's session.

During his news conference yesterday, the governor said the General Assembly gave him the authority to move money from ineffective programs, and he's using it.

>> Given this new flexibility.

We are going to direct those funds towards the services, especially for foster care and foster care children that otherwise would have seen deep and difficult cuts.

I want to admit these are extraordinary measures, and we'll see if the General Assembly means what they said, that I have flexibility, or if it was just meant to shift blame for the cuts they know they were making.

We'll get our answer based on whether they challenge this in court.

But if legislators or the attorney general do this, the money's already moved.

All they'll be doing is taking it away from foster families and foster care residential providers that desperately need it.

>> Of that, 30 million, 25 million will come from an economic development project.

That didn't happen and 5 million is from a housing project at EKU that fell through when the state didn't get a federal grant.

Kentucky's Legislative ethics commission has dropped its investigation into State Senator Julie Raque Adams.

The Kentucky Lantern reports the commission dismissed a complaint against the Louisville Republican.

The Louisville Democratic Party alleged Senator Raque Adams and a political nonprofit she leads called Kentucky Strong, were being paid by lobbyists and corporations that had business before.

A Senate committee chaired by Adams.

Adams denied any wrongdoing and said the accusations were only being brought up because it's an election year.

The three term Republican state senator will face Democrat Sarah Cole McIntosh in November's general election.

Folks across the state continue to talk about the need for more housing, but one regional group says it's taking action.

Our Emily Prince has more on the brand new Northern Kentucky Housing Fund, and how those on the hunt for a new home could benefit.

>> 50% of northern Kentuckians cannot afford a new home.

They cannot afford to move into a new home in northern Kentucky.

>> That astounding statistic is a problem across much of the nation, but especially in the northernmost part of the state.

Leaders across the region are making it a top priority.

However, to find solutions to the housing issue.

Launching the Northern Kentucky Housing Fund, which seeks to provide low interest loans to housing developers.

>> This is intended to create more housing, not just subsidize, but to create more housing across every income category, with the goal of ultimately approaching our housing problem through a supply side economic solution.

>> When we talk about incentives to developers, it's not to line their pockets, but it's to make the numbers work.

>> So what numbers does Northern Kentucky need when it comes to new homes?

A study by the Kentucky Housing Corporation laid out the deficit.

>> And just Boone, Kenton and Campbell counties alone.

It identified a need for 24,000 units.

>> And Joe Clair, chief operating officer of the catalytic Fund, said if the region continues to grow as it has, they might need up to 37,000 new homes by the year 2030.

>> 20, 30 years ago, it was a build it and they will come strategy for new major developments.

But now jobs follow people.

And if we don't have the resources to house those that house that workforce in Northern Kentucky, we're going to have a really hard time continuing the really great growth we've experienced over the last decade.

>> The goal for the new housing fund is to secure a $25 million revolving loan fund, which will be financed by regional partners like banks and private investors.

>> We hope to raise $5 million per year for the next five years.

We believe that that can create about 500 new units per year.

>> Even though the fund is brand new, Claire said they've already received $1.5 million.

>> This isn't a pipe dream.

This is something we're hoping to actually pull off within the next six months.

>> And when we say affordable housing, what does that really mean?

Claire said the goal is for someone to find a home that cost 30% or less of their total income, which looks different across different career fields.

>> An entry level educator in Kenton County makes about $36,000 a year.

That's somebody with a master's degree.

You know, they're going to be living in their parents basement at that price point.

They can't find apartments that they can afford when they start their career here in Northern Kentucky, the average wage is about $64,000.

And those people can't find places to live near the airport.

>> Boone County Judge Executive Gary Moore emphasized that the need for housing price points goes across the spectrum, including even higher income homes for Kentucky Edition.

I'm Emily Prince.

>> Northern Kentucky is the third metropolitan area in the state to form a housing fund.

Both Louisville and Lexington also have similar funds.

Casey County says it's facing a drought emergency because of dwindling water supply.

You can see the problem on the latest U.S.

Drought Monitor map.

And you can see that's Casey County area right there in that dark red, which means extreme drought.

Lake liberty, which is 88 acres in size, has dropped more than 14ft this year, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader.

There's concern it could be depleted in 2 to 3 months, and that's the only drinking water supply for the county and for the City of Liberty.

Liberty's mayor and Casey County's judge executive plan to meet Monday to discuss the crisis.

Governor Andy Beshear says the state will work with Casey County to address the short term problem, while also working on Long-Term solutions to prevent this problem in the future.

The Trump administration is warning hundreds of hospitals that they're not giving the public basic pricing information.

Eight Kentucky hospitals are on the list.

Five have received a warning notice.

The other three have been asked to submit a plan for transparent pricing.

The Trump administration says the lack of transparency is contributing to higher health care costs.

Penalties for failing to comply could cost hospitals up to $2 million a year.

Officials with Pikeville Medical Center in Hazard, AR told WYMt TV that technical issues were the reason some of their prices weren't available online.

Both hospitals hospitals say the issues have been fixed and that they are in full compliance with all price transparency requirements.

President Trump bashed U.S.

Senator Mitch McConnell yesterday in remarks from the Oval Office.

A reporter asked Trump about McConnell's view that it would be difficult to pass a supplemental bill paying for the Iran war.

This was Trump's response.

>> McConnell's an angry man.

He got thrown out of his position.

He's angry guy.

You know, he should be very thankful to me because if I didn't win, he wouldn't have gotten to a point.

I appointed the judges.

He didn't.

He gets credit for appointing judges.

He didn't appoint anybody I did.

You know how I did.

I won the election and then I picked judges, and the judges ended up getting approved and they said, oh, didn't he do a good job?

He didn't do a good job.

What the hell did he do?

I won the election.

He's an angry man who's very disloyal to John Thune.

John Thune is a good man.

He was a loyal worker for Mitch McConnell.

He worked for Mitch McConnell.

He worked very hard.

He was very loyal to him.

I disagreed with him a lot because Mitch McConnell gave so much money to Democrats.

He gave them money.

I had to go get the money from the military.

I just took it out of the military because that guy wouldn't do anything.

He gave it.

No, Mitch McConnell's a bad guy.

And he's he's a I thought he was lousy at his job, lousy at his job.

But when they gave him the only thing they gave him a lot of credit for judges.

But I'm the one that got the judges.

You know why I won the election.

If I didn't win the election, he wouldn't have had any judges.

So, yeah.

>> President Trump had nicer words for U.S.

Senator Rand Paul.

He said Paul had, quote, come a long way.

Russell Coleman, Kentucky's attorney general, says he is seeking a second term.

Coleman is a Republican.

In an email, he says he will formally kick off his reelection bid in Pewee Valley.

That's in Jefferson County next Thursday.

A Kentucky legislative leader is the toast of Hollywood.

The Motion Picture Association has given state Senate President Robert Stivers the 2026 Champion Award.

The MPA is praising Stivers of Manchester for his leadership and strengthening Kentucky's growing film and entertainment sector.

The Mpa's chairman and CEO, Charles Rivkin, says Stivers plays a big behind the scenes role in making Kentucky an attractive place to make movies, which means more jobs and investment in Kentucky.

Kentucky today has this quote from Stivers.

Our investment is in television and film production are creating opportunities for talented Kentuckians, supporting small businesses and generating economic activity in communities across the Commonwealth.

I am honored to receive this award and remain committed to ensuring Kentucky continues to be a place where creativity and innovation can thrive, end quote.

[MUSIC] Driverless technology isn't just showing up on streets and highways, it's also making its way into one Kentucky farm field.

One farmer in Nelson County says an autonomous tractor is helping him do more with less.

Our Clayton Dalton shows us how he's fielding a challenging economy in a segment we call rooted.

>> In early 2024.

Quint Pottinger was looking to invest in a new project on his farm, turning spent mash from bourbon distilleries into pellet feed for livestock.

There was an international market for the product, but his accountant suggested a financial stress test to see if the farm could reasonably handle it.

The results were not good.

>> We didn't make it 18 months before we went bankrupt in that model.

It scared me.

It scared my business advisors.

We took a step back.

We analyzed the numbers, everything check out, and it was at that point we decided to put that project on pause.

Pause.

>> Later that year, the agriculture economy was actually worse than their predictive modeling.

>> We started cutting everything seed costs, fertilizer, shifting up crop rotations, trying to figure out where we need to invest to make sure we can make it through this downturn.

And we had cut everything we could cut.

And the last thing was equipment cost, CapEx, CapEx, expenditures on equipment.

And the farming sector is massive.

And so I just sat down at my desk in July of 25 and googled autonomy on the farm.

>> A company that outfits tractors with autonomous driving technology caught his interest.

Some were skeptical, but he was serious.

>> So I said, well, let's bring out a tractor to demo.

Let's hook it up to a ten foot drill we had, and let's see if it actually can work in Kentucky, because where they have been testing this stuff was out in Montana, fields were wide open square.

You could let a tractor run if it could work in Kentucky, where the field boundaries are mapped by creek bottoms, it could probably work anywhere.

And my dad, I talked to him about it.

He said, Quint, there are at least ten years out from bring autonomy to the farm.

It probably won't work.

And we had the demo out.

My dad rolls up to the demo site, watches the tractor run for ten minutes, turns around, looks at me and says, I don't care how you got to make it work, just make it work.

>> And so he did.

Today, he uses the autonomous tractor to plant in all seasons.

>> So we've planted wheat, rye and barley using a seed drill.

An old John Deere 750 seed drill with updated monitoring technology.

And we've been able to plant 840 acres of corn.

We're the first farm in the world to implement autonomy at full scale on a row.

Crop farm, first farm in the world to plant a row crop like corn autonomously at a commercial farm level.

There's actually three different farms here in this massive block we keep.

We plant them all separate.

So when it gets done with one farm, it message pops up on my phone.

It sends me it's got four cameras.

It sends me the front, rear and side view cameras said, hey, I'm done.

I'm at this transit point to the next field.

AM I clear to cross?

Yes.

It crosses into the next field, says, okay, I'm in the next field.

Can I start planting now?

Yes.

And then it goes.

>> With his old system, Pottinger used two tractors to plant his crops.

Those machines average 6 to 8 hours in the field per day.

Now, this single driverless tractor is outperforming them.

>> In the fall.

When we did the the drilling, we were averaging 12 hours of planting a day.

So we knew that we gained enough efficiency.

And this spring, what we found is that we needed to plant our crop in 19 days to beat the 22 day average that we have with two for 240 foot planters.

We planted our entire corn crop in ten and a half days.

This is the best stand of crop we've had, and this is the most caught up we've been at this point in the season, and we cut our planting capacity by three quarters.

>> The financial impact of this technology has been significant.

>> Being able to not have to go to a bank and borrow 70 or 80% of our operating need returned in the interest cost alone, about $300,000.

>> At the end of the day, Pottinger says being adaptable is crucial to a farm's success, and for him, it's not just about his own success, but his community's too.

>> We know if we are going to conserve our community in New Haven and Nelson County, we have to steward our resources we have, and that includes the soil, but it also includes the dollars.

How do we keep the dollars here so they don't get exported somewhere else to support the community?

>> For Kentucky Edition, I'm Clayton Dalton.

>> Pottinger says he would like to see Kentucky as a national leader in the use of autonomous technology on farms.

Kentucky's agriculture commissioner, Jonathan Schell, says autonomous technology could be the key to solving another problem.

Farmers in Kentucky and really across the U.S.

are facing a worsening labor shortage, though there is growing concern about AI replacing workers across several industries.

Schell says he doesn't see it eliminating agricultural jobs, but rather filling in the labor gaps.

>> Every farmer that I know, if you talk to them, they could nearly double their operation.

If they could get enough help, that's reasonably priced to be able to do the work that they need done.

And so that's a major issue that we're facing currently, whether it's in the dairy industry, the tobacco industry, whether it's in our vegetable and fruit industries in the state, even row crops, etc.

having people in bodies, on tractors or in the fields doing the work is an extremely big problem right now all across America, and especially here in Kentucky, with a lot of labor intensive crops that we have.

And so it's not a matter of getting rid of jobs that are currently there.

It's a big part of filling jobs that we currently need filled.

And to be able to move those employees to other labor intensive jobs rather than things that can be taken from automation, may be a fix.

In order to help some of our farms across the state of Kentucky.

>> The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports agricultural employment fell by 155,000 workers last year, and according to a report by the University of Michigan, a majority of farms in the U.S.

are operating at a 20% labor deficit.

[MUSIC] Thousands of records dating back to the 18th century were recently uncovered inside the Louisville Mega Cavern.

Marriage licenses, deeds, loans and more have been stored by the Jefferson County Clerk's office.

Now, the clerk's office is partnering with the Filson Historical Society to preserve and digitize these documents, potentially giving some families clues into their ancestry.

In Louisville from long ago, Kelsey Starks takes a deep dive into this project on the next inside Louisville.

>> I'm particularly excited about the community rollout pieces of this.

You know, there are just so many opportunities to share these stories and not just create, you know, some online databases and things like that where people can come and find these at their own pace.

I'm really looking forward to as we get more and more of this information ready, doing some workshops, doing some school integrations, working with some students.

We have some really great conversations with some folks at UofL.

How can we get students involved in helping tell these stories?

I think it's such a wonderful exercise for, for, for anybody, but especially for students to take these little scraps of information that we find about these people and, and learn and research, research more broadly, see what else we can find, what what fuller picture can we fill in about the lives of these folks?

I think that's going to be the really exciting piece, you know, working with, and we've seen already just looking at deeds and mortgages, we've seen some of the origin stories of some of the congregations for for Brown Memorial, for Quinn Chapel buying their first buildings for these, these independent African-American congregations in the 1850s.

You know, how amazing is that to be able to to share those with those congregants still today?

I think we're going to be able to do that with businesses, with neighborhoods, with individual families.

You know, the Filson is, is really lucky as, as part of what we do, sometimes we, we get invited to family reunions just as, as the record holders of the, as the people who might have helped a researcher be able to connect themselves into this, this wonderful group and, and find a community for themselves.

So I think there's a lot more of that to come over the next few years.

And really celebrating that belonging is, is what makes all this worth it.

>> Yeah.

That's so cool.

And you know, I think as you mentioned, students, it's just so different than just reading a history book when you can see those real documents and see how you and your family play into it.

>> That's exactly right.

And I think, you know, the skills we're practicing them in this, in this sandbox of, of the, the 18th and 19th century.

But they're the skills that we need today going forward to analyze bits of sometimes conflicting information where you don't have the full picture and you yourself, the burden is on you to go and find out and learn more and fill in this, this fuller picture that helps inform what you're going to think and what you're going to do.

You know, the skills that we need for the 21st century are best practiced, I think in, in the past, because again, it gives us this, this grounding in this timelessness to be able to move forward.

>> Hear more about this unique project, the process, and what else happens inside the county clerk's office on the next inside Louisville that Sunday at noon, 11 central, right here on KET.

[MUSIC] NASA introduced the Artemis three crew on Tuesday, and one of those four crew members has a Kentucky connection.

Commander Randy Bresnik was born at Fort Knox, Kentucky.

Although he considers Santa Monica, California, his hometown.

The Courier Journal says he's 58 years old and is a retired marine colonel who flew combat missions in Kuwait.

>> We are certainly humbled as a crew to be able to be your crew that executes this Artemis three mission in space.

Being that unifying link between the Artemis two mission we just had two months ago, and the Artemis four mission that will follow ours, where we will again be the first to land humans on another celestial body.

That celestial body being our neighbor in the sky at night.

The moon.

>> That is awesome.

Bresnik has been in space twice as part of a shuttle flight in 2009, and a 139 day stay at the International Space Station in 2017.

Well, Juneteenth, the start of summer and are now they're just around the corner.

Our Toby Gibbs has a look at some of the activities planned throughout Kentucky in tonight's.

Around the Commonwealth.

>> Newport is offering a pizza The Good Life with Italian Fest at Newport Festival Park.

The four day festival features authentic Italian cuisine and music and family friendly activities.

There will also be a display of photos from local Italian families honoring heritage and tradition.

The free event runs through Sunday.

It's the blues with a side of barbecue in Henderson at the W.C.

Handy Blues and Barbecue Festival.

The multi-day event honors the man known as the father of the blues, W.C.

handy, and features live music, local barbecue vendors and a variety of community activities, including the annual Street Strut.

The festival fires up next Thursday.

Freedom, culture and community are at the heart of the annual Heart of Kentucky Juneteenth celebration, taking place in Harrodsburg with special guest speakers, music, kids activities, food vendors, a golf scramble, cornhole tournament and car show.

The two day celebration starts next Friday.

It's a celebration of a distinctly Kentucky culinary creation in the place where it was born.

[MUSIC] As downtown Winchester hosts its annual Beer Cheese Festival, sample a variety of beer, cheese recipes and vote for your favorite music vendor booths, kids activities and a 4K run to help burn off the beer.

Cheese are also part of the festival that takes place Saturday.

The past is setting up camp this Sunday in Barren County, with the Fort Williams Living History encampment.

Reenactors portray members of the ninth Kentucky Volunteer Infantry Regiment with historical presentations throughout the day that explore the experiences of the Union Regiment and the sacrifices they made during the Civil War.

The event is free.

Pikeville is tuning up for a weekend of live music in the mountains with the Laurel Cove Music Festival.

The event highlights up and coming and underground musical talent from Appalachia and beyond.

[MUSIC] The festival goes on through Sunday.

This Saturday, the front porch becomes the front row in Owensboro as Porchfest transforms the historic Griffith Avenue neighborhood into a walkable music venue.

Local performers take the stage on front porches throughout the area, with styles ranging from bluegrass and country to jazz, rock, folk and soul, creating a self-guided musical tour.

And that's a look at what's happening around the Commonwealth this week.

I'm Toby Gibbs.

>> The governor's budget moves, the Fayette County School situation and always a big talker.

Data centers.

Those are some of the topics on comment on Kentucky.

In about an hour, join Bill Bryant and a panel of work in Kentucky reporters at eight eastern seven central right here on KET.

And we hope that you will join us again on Monday night at 630 eastern, 530 central for Kentucky Edition, where we inform, connect and inspire.

Subscribe to our Kentucky Edition email newsletter and watch full episodes and clips@ket.org.

You can follow us on social media.

We invite you to do that.

Thank you so much for spending a part of your evening with us.

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