How he's doing.

More than three weeks after Louisville's mass shooting.

An update ahead on Officer Nicholas Wilt.

I know a lot of people in those communities feel like nobody cares what Louisville is doing to recognize and fix discrimination that hit home for thousands of Kentuckians.

We're always looking for amazing people who believe in what we're doing.

And in Kentucky schools, the hiring pool is now a little deeper.

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

Good evening and welcome to Kentucky Edition on this Wednesday, May 3rd.

I'm your host, Renee Shaw.

Thank you for winding down your Wednesday with us.

Today, the ACLU of Kentucky and the National Center for Lesbian Rights filed a lawsuit over Senate Bill 150.

Specifically, the suit looks to block part of the bill that bans medical care for transitioning youth.

In a statement, Corey SHAPIRO with the ACLU of Kentucky said, quote, Under the Constitution, trans youth in Kentucky have the right to medically necessary care.

We are filing litigation today to protect against this imminent threat to their well-being and make certain they can thrive by continuing to receive medical care.

We look forward to ensuring health care providers can continue to provide transgender Kentuckians with health care consistent with the standards of medicine adopted by leading medical authorities, not radical politicians.

State lawmakers overturned Governor Andy Bashir's veto of Senate Bill 150 during the last General Assembly session.

The bill took up a lot of oxygen and Frankfort during that short 30 day session.

There were several protests against the bill, as well as groups showing support for the measure.

SB 150 is a wide ranging bill that also allows teachers to use a student's gender pronoun at birth, even if that means ignoring the student's wishes.

And it bans schools from providing instruction on sexual orientation and identity.

Today's lawsuit only deals with the ban on medical care for transitioning youth.

The ACLU has scheduled a news conference for tomorrow morning, and we'll have much more on this topic tomorrow night right here on Kentucky Edition.

There is encouraging health news for officer Nicholas Wilt.

The Louisville police officer was shot in the head during the old national bank mass shooting on April the 10th.

The family says he's breathing consistently after being taken off an ammo.

Now, that's a machine that does the work of the lungs and heart, giving the body a chance to rest after moving from the U of L Hospital to Jewish Hospital.

Officer Wilt is now back at U of well.

He is still listed in critical but stable condition and he still has pneumonia.

Wilt was one of the officers who responded within 3 minutes to the mass shooting.

Five people died in that shooting and police shot and killed the gunman.

Connor Sturgeon.

Also in Louisville, a new program looking to make up for housing mistakes of the past.

The Louisville Affordable Housing Trust Fund is offering money to 200 families whose neighborhoods were impacted by a practice called redlining.

It's a discriminatory practice of refusing loans to people because where they live is deemed too much of a financial risk.

Our Casey Parker Bell reports on the new program that could help improve areas of the state's largest city hurt by lost investment.

And the impact was devastating.

We can still trace today the negative impact for those areas that were redlined.

Christy McCray says redlining from the 1930s to 1960s changed to Louisville.

Redlining is the practice of denying loans, insurance or other benefits to people because of where they live.

This map of Louisville gives a sense of how the process worked.

In 1937, the Homeowners Loan Corporation was created by the federal government to help the housing market during the Great Depression.

It created maps to help investors make decisions in cities.

Each area of the city was assigned a grade from A to D, Areas labeled A and B as seen in blue and green were considered good investments.

Areas labeled C and D here in yellow and red were considered poor investments.

Areas with the C and D labels were often areas where black, immigrant and low income people lived.

Urban planners, different people in the banking industry found actually found maps where red lines had been drawn around entire communities to say, do not lend, do not do business in these communities.

Now, the law for Affordable Housing Trust Fund is hoping to help communities impacted by redlining $12 million, much of it from the unused American Rescue Plan.

Funds were appropriated by the Louisville Metro Council to help families and neighborhoods impacted by redlining.

So our goal is to create homeownership, greater homeownership in those areas.

Once again, those areas have been disinvested in, especially those areas in the West.

They have been disinvested.

There's a lot of blight.

There's a lot of vacant and abandoned homes.

The new program through the trust fund is called Revert or Restoring Each viable, economically redlined territory.

Forgivable loans of up to $50,000 for 200 families are available, so this money could be used for it once they purchase the home.

If the home needs a roof, needs a new furnace.

And for Richard Ballard and Kristy McCreevy, they think the river program can mean more for improved homes.

When I look at these communities five years from now, I would like to be able to show, no matter where you look at on the map, the appraisal values of what the homes are worth.

On one side of the city match or the same as any other side of the city that you look at.

I know a lot of people in those communities feel like nobody cares.

They feel like they're continuing to be stomped upon or what have you, and no one even looks their way.

I hope that this program will help them to feel hope.

Help them to feel worth and help them to feel deserving.

And that somebody cares about what happened to their ancestors in the past.

For Kentucky Edition, I'm Casey Parker.

Belle.

Thank you, Casey.

Jefferson County residents wanting to apply for the program can sign up for alerts now.

Applications for the REVERT program will open in mid-May.

And there is housing news in Lexington.

The city is expanding services for tenants facing eviction.

The new services include mediation with landlords and access to legal counsel.

The program is a partnership with the Legal Aid of the Blue Grass and the Kentucky Equal Justice Center.

Advocates say you can't have a stable life without a stable home.

Paying back rent.

Holidays isn't enough sometimes.

We need additional support and we want to make sure that our tenants in lakes didn't have a level playing field when they go into the court.

And if they get access to representation by an attorney and have an opportunity to mediate their case in seeking a more positive outcome, even if even if that outcome means they still have to move to a new place, because if they don't have an eviction on their record, that means they are going to have a much easier time finding their next apartment.

We are excited to together continue the efforts that the city has done, which truthfully few local governments in the country have ever made this commitment of imagination and commitment to their citizens to make this happen.

And housing is such an essential, foundational role for people to keep them out of poverty, you know, without an address for a job application or keeping children in the same school for that stability, it's really important to be able to have people in the housing that they choose to live in for a time without it, without it going away unexpectedly.

Legal Aid of the Bluegrass and the Kentucky Equal Justice Center are receiving almost $2 million for this program.

School districts hope new legislation will help them hire more classified staff.

The Kentucky General Assembly passed House Bill 32 this year.

Our Laura Rogers talked with people in Bowling Green who say it will benefit both schools who need workers and those who need a job.

More in tonight's Education Matters.

A school cafeteria is a busy place and requires competent staffers to keep things running smoothly.

Food service for K-12 has notoriously had a hard time hiring individuals, and I think there's a lot of untapped, really amazing people out there that will be able to help us out Now.

The passage of House Bill 32 means school districts no longer have to require a high school diploma or GED, but classified positions, which are cooks, custodians, bus drivers, teacher aides, those types of jobs.

Jackson says he talked to Warren County Public Schools about filling those positions back in January.

We had 100 classified openings at that time.

He hopes increasing eligibility will lead to more applications.

Emerson says she thinks it may encourage more applicants who had experience in the food industry.

It would be just really nice to have that life experience in our kitchens and to have that love and care for our students because we have a lot of students that could use a little extra love and care.

It also creates new employment opportunities for the international community.

They may be educated in their country, but they come here.

It doesn't come along with them.

But they would be great workers.

They would love to have a job to provide insurance and an income for their families.

Refugees face challenges like education, transportation and language barriers when it comes to finding a job.

I'm so grateful that it would pass to help so many of the refugees find jobs at different schools in your city.

School says the ability to walk to work and being on their child's schedule are also advantages.

That's a current struggle for many immigrant families.

We find that there was a disconnect between the kids and these parents because mom is working for she 35, 45 hour drive an hour come back.

When you come back, you sleep.

Mommy is going to work in the morning.

So parents are not even having time to spend with kids.

It's great for parents that are wanting to be on their kids schedule and to be present with them.

Emerson says the school district hires for a class of nine positions year round and has built 30 to help keep her cafeterias fully staffed.

It be a game changer for the Commonwealth, for sure.

For K-12.

For Kentucky Edition.

I'm Laura Rogers.

Thank you, Laura.

If an employee wants to earn their G.E.D., the school district will help them do that through the community Local college.

Their local community college, rather.

Imagine this ten year olds working at a McDonald's in Kentucky.

The U.S. Department of Labor says that's one of the violations it found as it cited three McDonald's franchises that run 62 McDonald's in four states.

With many of those McDonald's in the Louisville area.

The investigation found underage workers, workers clocking too many hours and children using a deep fryer.

Now, that's something not anyone under the age of 16 is allowed to do.

The Department of Labor fined the McDonald's franchisees a total of $212,000.

Time now for a midweek check in of some major political developments, and particularly in the 2023 primary.

That's just days away with our friend Rylan Barton, who's managing editor of Kentucky Public Radio.

Good to see you, Rylan.

It's key to winning.

So the push to the primary is getting intense, and it got intense here on Monday night.

And Katie's Kentucky Tonight program with the five Republican candidates for governor.

What did you take away from that appearance?

I mean, that was a that was a big moment.

That debate was the first time in which you had all the major candidates on the stage at the same time.

And it was the moment in which U.N.

Ambassador Kelly Craft and Attorney General Daniel Cameron finally took the gloves off in the debate and were kind of openly attacking each other.

Craft went after Cameron for a donation from a gambling machine company Peso Maddox had donated to Cameron's campaign.

Meanwhile, Cameron is also representing or defending the state legislatures new law that bans that exact company from those machines from operating in Kentucky.

Meanwhile, Cameron went after Crouch because her husband has donated about $1.5 million to a PAC that's been airing ads attacking Cameron and also supporting her campaign.

So this was kind of the first time they're directly going after each other.

Kentuckians are.

You've got a little bit more of a sense of who the candidates were.

I mean, was a 90 minute debate.

You you moderating debate went through a lot of the issues.

So I think a lot of Kentuckians got a different sense of it.

I thought another takeaway of it, too.

You know, I'm always thinking about 2015.

The last time we had a big crowded Republican primary where Jamie Colmer and how Hiner went into this big fight late in the in the in the primary season.

And, you know, a lot of the political thinkers feel like that fight opened the lane for Matt Bevin to ultimately eke out a win in that 2015 primary election.

And you could really see that that's a little bit of what Ryan calls agriculture commissioner is trying to do, staying out of the fray, you know, trying to be the kind of levelheaded person on that stage.

And we're just going to kind of see over this last less than two weeks until the primary election.

You know, and you know, how that bears out.

There really wasn't a whole lot of daylight amongst the candidates.

Right.

I mean, and that's what we've been hearing all this primary season long.

But it became really glaringly evident that they really aligned on almost everything.

Keck has what we call maybe a few outlying ideas or things about gun control or abortion, but by and large, they all pretty much agree.

Right.

He's he really seemed like really seem to be trying to take the the moderate almost like olive branch to a Democratic voters on it on some issues.

But, you know, he's really trying to provide an alternative a bit to some of the other lines of thinking on the stage.

So Craft and Cameron, of course, they are still mixing it up.

And Kelly Craft is going after Daniel Cameron because of his association and ties to Mitch McConnell.

Some people would say, so what?

Well, I thought that that was interesting, too, because Kelly Craft being, you know, one of the the most prolific fundraisers for Republicans in Kentucky over the last 20 years or so and has very much been in McConnell world.

And here she was going after Daniel Cameron for his connections to establishment Republicans and notably McConnell.

And and in this ad, you know, a picture of McConnell and Cameron side by side, you know, saying that, you know, he's just been, you know, following a following his orders in this way.

But, you know, just about any Republican who's been running in office and in Kentucky over the last oh, I don't know.

I would say ten years plus ten, 20 years, you know, is kind of in that same world.

McConnell is kind of the godfather that has created this.

You know, this Republican system that ultimately has taken over Kentucky politics after nearly a century of Democratic control.

I think that she's trying to play into a particular, you know, part of the Republican Party that, you know, has gotten you know, doesn't have as strong feelings for McConnell.

I think we saw that, too, during the during the debate on Monday where Eric Dieter's, the suspended attorney from northern Kentucky, was going after craft really hard for her, for her association with Mitch McConnell.

So, you know, these are accusations.

They're living at each other every which way.

Yeah.

And the down ballot races, as we often call them, they're pretty interesting, too.

They don't get a whole lot of play.

But state treasurer, ad commissioner, those are ones that we're seeing some more action.

Yeah, the State Treasurer race, of all of them, the Treasurer races.

You know, there was a candidate, what was it, ten, 15 years ago who ran on the, on abolishing it on the platform of getting rid of the State Treasurer's office because it doesn't really do a whole lot.

But there it can be a stepping stone for higher office.

But there's three candidates on the Republican primary for Treasurer Ogio Lake Andrew Cooper, writer and Mark Metcalf.

And this has become kind of a a heated race there.

They're up on TV with advertisement.

Austin Horton from the Herald-Leader was reporting today that Mark Metcalf, the county attorney from Garrard County, running in this race, he's supposedly has a $248,000 worth of ads up on TV right now, which that might be a record for a state treasurer.

The race in Kentucky.

Andrew Coupe, a writer who's a coffee shop owner from Lexington, who's been peddling conspiracy theories about the 2020 20 election, still saying that Donald Trump won.

He's been up with an advertising going after O.J.

like a former staffer in the Treasurer's office for his for a group that he had founded that was trying to create more unity around a lot of issues dealing with race.

So there's there's a lot of, you know, nasty accusations happening.

Yeah, something to keep our eyes on in the ad commissioner race, cause we've got kind of incumbents.

You have the former House majority floor leader Jonathan Schell, who's up against a current state representative, Richard Heath.

And so Richard Yates tried this before and was unsuccessful.

But it'd be interesting to see how things shake out in this race, too.

Yeah, he has.

Back in 2015, he though Richard Heath lost to Ryan quarrels.

He's a farmer from Graves County.

And yeah, but running against this, you know, for a time, Jonathan Schell was really considered to be a rising star in the Republican Party.

He was the House majority floor leader.

He lost in a primary election amid the teacher protests.

I want to say that was back in 2018.

And so he's trying to kind of get back on the horse and running for the statewide office.

He also helped manage Mitch McConnell's reelection campaign in 2020.

So thank you, Ryland Barton.

We always appreciate you breaking it down for us.

Thanks for naming.

A new book about a Louisville neighborhood is out.

The authors are more than two dozen residents who live there.

Our Kelsey Stark sat down with one of them.

Louisville's Russell area was once called Louisville's Harlem because of its heavy concentration of black businesses and residents.

Well, now it's undergoing a major transformation.

Almost $1,000,000,000 have gone into redeveloping this area just west of downtown.

So this book is called If you Write Me a Letter, Sent it here.

Voices of Russell in a Time of Change.

And Derek Pressley is one of 26 authors whose stories are in this book about the neighborhood.

And tell us, why is it so important to tell the stories of your neighborhood?

Because this is our history and it's my neighborhoods where I grew up.

I got over 55 years in this neighborhood, and it's just I don't know.

And it's kind of seeing everything come new and things again change.

And I just like seeing them remember us and remember our plaque.

And remember, they always remember the bad things up the park.

Is this a good spot for us?

Yeah.

Tell us about your story that's included in that.

Yeah, well, my story is it's a tree.

And then to walk on 29th Street side.

And if it's a breeze in Louisville, it's under this tree.

And I'm not kidding.

I don't care what's going on.

You go to stream.

We got a breeze, and it's a safe, safer for me.

We've been having barbecues and cookouts forever, and it's one spot and never no trouble.

And I just.

I just love just my porch.

That's Russell's neighborhood.

Yeah.

And this neighborhood has gotten a bad rap.

Yes.

Tell us what you want people to know about the Russell neighborhood and what it's really like living there.

I want them to know it's not like it's it's not all bad.

All thing you ever hear about is bad, but you don't hear about us in Tornado Report.

You'll hear about our bike crews riding every Tuesday and Thursday.

Y'all, You've seen this come.

We come to every bad stick up.

Looks like a Christmas tree.

So I know you've seen this and it's good things I like to write about.

Some good things happen.

This is a lot of good things going on.

And.

And that part can.

We can get it together.

I turn to an end street for.

Yeah.

And some of the stories in here, I mean you've got everything from stories of music, the many churches and the religi the culture.

It is the history of this part of Louisville, right?

Yes.

And so what kind of stories are people going to read about when they pick up this book?

To go read about our lives, how we lived and not just the bad, but it's the good, you know, how we live and, you know, so we have this.

So should say it is so interesting.

People in our neighborhood, it's not just like you might read about violence and it's not all that.

It is good people down who need to come down and visit and see.

Come, you come, my poor.

You make sure I'll have some food and I mean and you safe.

But it is changing.

It is changing.

What do you think is next for the Russell neighborhood?

Oh, just development.

Like I said, we got the hospital coming up.

There's some apartments growing all around the park.

And I've just seen things picked up and I'm I'm I didn't think I will be around to see us have to get in.

And I'm kind of seeing it.

I'm happy I'm going to be around to see some change, some good things for the neighborhood.

We deserve it.

Well, thank you so much for sharing your story with all of us in this this is fantastic.

And this is the 10th publication from the Louisville Story program, which brings together stories like this.

And they are marking their 10th anniversary three as a literary arts nonprofit.

Well, thank you, Kelsey.

The Louisville Story Program is a nonprofit organization committed to amplifying unheard voices and untold stories.

The book can be purchased through their website.

An international art exhibit is starting its door right here in Lexington, Kentucky, comprised entirely of photographs.

The Shades of Compassion installation strives to leaves its viewers with a sense of compassion for others.

The show features ten photographers from the state of Kentucky.

Here's more on that in today's Tapestry segment, our weekly look at arts and culture.

The Saints of Compassion exhibit is really focusing on compassion, compassion for the environment, humanity and spirituality.

And the international part comes from the Shades of Compassion Foundation.

And it is 41 internationally world renowned photographers whose collective view provides a very interesting perspective on compassion.

Compassion is the act of kindness toward all who might benefit.

The reason I say all those who might benefit, as opposed to all those who are suffering, is that I don't have to look at them as suffering that denotes or tends to bring about the idea of pity.

If we're constantly inundated through the news or whatever mediums it might be with trauma and dysfunction and through graphic suffering, that it's unhealthy for us physically and emotionally.

There's such a wealth of talent and creativity in Kentucky, and I personally and the museum have a goal of featuring and honoring our Kentucky artist.

I told Christina Bell, the curator, when she asked me to be in the show, that I don't grab my camera bag and get in the car and go out thinking I'm going to be compassionate today, but I'm a tree hugger and I love the natural world.

We live in a beautiful place.

And Kentucky, it's one of the most beautiful places in the world.

I think.

And I am drawn to nature and the play of light in nature.

I look for a radiance in the world because it makes me feel good to see the light.

I think this message is going forward for me and I hope for the community and all the visitors that we have from around the country.

It really is just to take a moment to contemplate compassion and what what that means to them and what simple things they can do moving forward to their fellow man, to their family, to their community and to make a positive difference going forward.

It's good to see Guy Mendez, a former filmmaker here from Get the Shades of Compassion Exhibit, is on display at the Haley Whitney Museum in Lexington until June 18th.

It's open to the public on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m.. A prize win for a school system showing its concern and care for the Earth.

Recognizing schools on this platform around what they're doing on the environment and how they're connecting their building and their facility in the work as teachers is another really great way to say this is a really good school and they're doing excellent work.

On why Fayette County has a special reason to brag.

Tomorrow on Kentucky edition, which we hope we'll see you for at 630 Eastern, 530 Central, where we inform, Connect and Inspire.

Subscribe to our email newsletter and watch full episodes and clips at Katie Borg.

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Send us a story idea Public Affairs at Katikati.

Thank you so very much for watching tonight.

I'm Rene Shaw.

I hope to see you right back here again tomorrow night.

In the meantime, take really good care.