U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. traveled to Lexington on Wednesday to announce his office is firing a Kentucky organ donation organization accused of pursuing critically ill patients for their organs. Kennedy said the decision to decertify the nonprofit was reached after numerous reviews. “Federal reviewers found serious deficiencies in nearly […]

LEXINGTON — Kentucky is still not building nearly enough homes across all incomes, but especially for lower-income people, to bridge the state’s large housing supply gap that’s burdening some Kentuckians with severe housing costs, according to a state housing executive.  Kentucky would need to build more housing at a higher rate than currently just to […]

This story was published through the Appalachian News Exchange, a regional media collaboration.  Respiratory therapist Marcy Freeman doesn’t need a research study to confirm for her a return to the dark days of coal mining. She finds evidence in a stack of more than 150 funeral programs, all for former patients at her pulmonary rehabilitation […]

In the late summer of 1974 somebody set fire to the Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg. The blaze took the offices, the files, the bound archives — most of the institutional memory of Letcher County that Tom and Pat Gish had been accumulating since they bought the paper in 1956 and changed its masthead from “A […]

The mayor of Kentucky’s largest city is calling on city council members to pass a temporary ban or moratorium on data center construction within the city while the local government mulls over potential regulations restricting the siting and impacts of large data centers.  In a Tuesday afternoon press conference, Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg said that […]

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear joined a coalition of Democratic state officials in suing to block the Trump administration from getting access to sensitive data of families receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) benefits.  Filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., the lawsuit said that the Administration for Children and Families had issued a notice […]

New research — which Kentucky participated in as a trial site — shows a combination of cannabidiol (CBD) and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) can help late-stage dementia patients feel less agitation.  Dr. Greg Jicha, the director of clinical trials at the University of Kentucky’s Sanders-Brown Center on Aging, said this combination, given to patients all over the […]

Character. The word seems antique in these rancorous times, as rare as truth.  As rare as objectivity and nuance in our political discourse. I recently came across Thomas Jefferson’s reminiscence of his fellow Virginian and nation-builder, George Washington: “I think I knew General Washington intimately and thoroughly; and were I called on to delineate his […]

A construction contractor says a hyperscale data center developer asked him to continue to clear Bell County land where a data center is planned, despite a two-year temporary ban on data center construction passed by the county government.  Lexington-based Murray Industries wants to use land with leftover electrical infrastructure for coal mining along the Bell-Knox […]

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with the Lexington Herald-Leader.  By the end of 2020, Kentucky’s newly elected Gov. Andy Beshear had one goal above all others: Keep people alive. The state was battling two merciless threats. COVID-19 was killing hundreds of people each month, and deadly drug overdoses were among […]

Paducah Mayor George Bray calls the former Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in McCracken County the ideal site for a hyperscale data center.  When the plant was enriching uranium, initially for the nation’s stockpile of nuclear weapons and then for nuclear power plant fuel, it had the ability to use over 3 gigawatts of power and […]

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.  The “Good Health is Good Governance” toolkit, released in July, challenges leaders to commit […]

Editor’s Note: One of Kentucky’s most familiar faces is leaving our television screens. 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. […]

FANCY FARM — After fueling speculation about a run for governor, Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams said he wouldn’t step into the ring next year and instead was backing U.S. Rep. James Comer.  Ahead of the annual Fancy Farm Picnic, Adams told the Lexington Herald-Leader he was thinking about launching a campaign for governor at […]

A woman who was detained by federal immigration agents at the Louisville airport a couple of weeks ago has been released from custody Friday.  A federal judge ordered the release of Sarafinah Bukirwa and her family paid her bond, according to media reports. Earlier this week, Bukirwa’s brother, Isaac Kabunga, appeared with Democratic U.S. Rep. […]

I grew up in Bell County, which means I grew up hearing two promises. The first was jobs. The second was that whatever created those jobs would not hurt anybody. We got pretty good at believing the first one. The second one, not so much. So when hundreds of people packed the old courthouse in […]

A state economic development board voted Thursday to give state tax refunds to an international renewable energy company looking to invest $307 million to build a 188-megawatt solar installation in Fleming County.  The Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority awards most financial incentives including grants, tax breaks and more to companies through the Cabinet for Economic […]