By Linda Blackford | Editor
Happy Thursday! Last Friday, hundreds of Medicaid recipients and their families came to Frankfort to ask, demand, beg that proposed 4% Medicaid cuts be reversed. On Wednesday, Gov. Andy Beshear did just that. Reporter Sarah Ladd was there.
Meanwhile, Beshear is in a virtual social media firestorm over what he should or shouldn’t do about the ailing senior Sen. Mitch McConnell, who has been incommunicado for a month. Reporter McKenna Horsley tried to untangle the legal and political issues.
Speaking of Mitch, one of his legacy items was to close a loophole that allowed hemp-infused products, like drinks and candy, to be sold to children. On Wednesday, Congressman Andy Barr announced a bill to create a regulatory framework that would more closely monitor those products without killing the market, as reporter Liam Niemeyer explains.
Also, a judge denied a UK law professor’s lawsuit to block federal Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove from taking his new job at UK law school dean.
And in Commentary, a writer contrasts explains why mining in Crittenden County in the 1930s never turned into a Bloody Harlan
It was a busy Wednesday but the Kentucky Lantern has you covered. If you like our work, tell a friend to subscribe for free, fair and fearless coverage . Thanks!
Hundreds of Kentuckians with disabilities and their loved ones and advocates came to Frankfort and pleaded with elected officials to find a way to protect the services they receive through Medicaid waivers. July 17, 2026. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Sarah Ladd)
By Sarah Ladd
FRANKFORT — Thanks to an “unanticipated” corporate income tax payment and revenue surplus, Gov. Andy Beshear announced Wednesday that Medicaid providers will not suffer a 4% reimbursement cut after all.
By Liam Niemeyer
U.S. Representative Andy Barr, R-KY, is sponsoring a bipartisan effort, backed by Kentucky’s hemp industry, to regulate intoxicating hemp-derived products ahead of an effective ban of such products spearheaded by Kentucky’s senior U.S. Senator, Mitch McConnell.
UK Provost Robert DiPaola, left, and incoming Law dean Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove, right, speak to reporters. (Kentucky Lantern photo by McKenna Horsley)
By McKenna Horsley
A federal judge denied a motion to temporarily prevent a federal judge from starting as the next dean of the University of Kentucky College of Law.
A newspaper story about the Bloody Harlan uprising. (Wikimedia Commons)
COMMENTARY
When the boss sat in the same pew: Crittenden County and the mining that didn’t turn bloody
By Robert Ordway
In the 1930s, as Harlan County, Kentucky, erupted into one of the most violent labor conflicts in American history, a quiet reality was unfolding two hundred miles to the west. In Crittenden County, men went into the ground every morning to dig fluorspar—a mineral essential to building the steel for Allied ships, the aluminum for wartime aircraft, and eventually the uranium for the atomic bomb. They put in the sweat equity, doing dangerous physical labor for modest wages during a decade of historic economic catastrophe. And yet, the guns stayed holstered. The National Guard never came. Florence Reece never wrote a protest song about Marion, Kentucky.
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