By Linda Blackford | Editor
If you have to build a data center, is it better to dig up farmland or reignite an old aluminum smelter? That’s the question that reporter Liam Niemeyer asks today in the wake of Paducah’s nuclear enrichment plant being turned into a hyperscale data campus.
Last week’s hearing with Sen. Rand Paul and Anthony Fauci was, well, many things, but top among them a glaring example of problems in public health. Here are some ideas for improvement.
The Trump administration is not planning to have armed ICE agents at polling places in November. At least that’s the plan for now.
And in Commentary, the most broadcast person in Kentucky journalism has closed her notebook after 29 years, and so we asked her some questions about her career, Kentucky, and journalism.
Happy Monday! Hope you have a great week.
The former Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in McCracken County. (U.S. Department of Energy)
By Liam Niemeyer
Electrical infrastructure — high-voltage transmission lines, substations, transformers — that allows a hyperscale data center to access massive amounts of electricity is something that’s in high demand and in short supply across the country as technology companies spend billions of dollars on data center construction.
And these data center developers are increasingly looking to Kentucky’s idled industrial sites — former coal mines, a former aluminum smelter, a former steel mill, industrial parks — to find it.
U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., is shown on a monitor as Dr. Anthony Fauci, left, testifies before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on July 29, 2026 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
By Sarah Ladd
As politicians in Washington D.C. and Dr. Anthony Fauci butted heads over the latter’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, a nonpartisan commission — which includes a former Kentucky governor — is pushing for better relationships between elected and public health officials.
Voters fill out their ballots at a Sioux Falls, South Dakota, polling place during the South Dakota primary election on June 2, 2026. (Photo by Makenzie Huber/South Dakota Searchlight)
By Amelia Twyman
WASHINGTON — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is not planning an aggressive campaign at voting sites during the upcoming midterm elections, the Department of Homeland Security said Thursday in response to a States Newsroom inquiry about a letter from U.S. Senate Democrats voicing concerns about armed federal agents at polling places.
KET journalist Renee Shaw (Photo courtesy of KET)
COMMENTARY
By Linda Blackford
Renee Shaw has announced she is retiring from Kentucky Educational Television, where for the past 29 years she has covered innumerable stories, anchored thousands of shows, interviewed hundreds of people, and overall, brought Kentucky’s public policy issues into our homes and consciousness. It seemed like a good time for a trip to her KET office for an interview looking back on her career, on journalism, on Kentucky itself.
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