The Louisville shooting comes just two weeks after three children and three adults were killed at a Christian elementary school in Nashville. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said that one of the victims, Cindy Peak, was friends with his wife Maria.
“What happened at Covenant School was a tragedy beyond comprehension. Like many of you, I’ve experienced tragedy in my own life, and I’ve experienced the day after that tragedy. … Cindy was supposed to come over to have dinner with Maria last night after she filled in as a substitute teacher yesterday at Covenant,” Lee said in an address the day after the shooting.
After both shootings, local police confirmed that the shooter was dead.
[ad_2]
#Kentucky #Tennessee #governors #lost #friends #mass #shootings
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
In news just coming in, five people, including three children have been killed at a bank in Louisville, Kentucky, United States. The suspected shooter is reportedly dead.
According to the Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD), the shooting happened in Old National Bank at about 8:30 am ((12:30 GMT)). Six people, including an officer, have been injured.
BREAKING: Five people were killed and six wounded, including a police officer, in a shooting at a downtown Louisville bank. The shooter is dead. pic.twitter.com/owKJ7dtw0X
“The shooter was confirmed to be dead on the scene. We do not know exactly the circumstances of his death at this time,” Deputy Police Chief Paul Humphrey told reporters.
There is NO active aggressor at JCTC at 8th Chestnut streets. We are confirming that there was a shooting outside, and the suspects fled prior to police arrival.
In an emotional statement, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear said he lost two friends in the shooting. “This is awful. We got to do what we have done in the last three years. We got to wrap put hands around these families,” he said.
(This is a developing story. Refresh for the latest updates)
“Right now our focus is on the Soldiers and their families who were involved,” the statement added.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear had said earlier that fatalities were expected, adding that police and emergency officials were responding.
“The crash occurred in a field, some wooded area,” Kentucky State Police Trooper Sarah Burgess said at a news briefing. “At this time, there are no reports of residence damage.”
Fort Campbell is located near the Tennessee border, about 60 miles (97 kilometers) northwest of Nashville, and the crash occurred in the Trigg County, Kentucky, community of Cadiz.
Nick Tomaszewski, who lives about a mile from where the crash occurred, said he saw two helicopters flying over his house moments before the crash.
“For whatever reason last night my wife and I were sitting there looking out on the back deck and I said “Wow, those two helicopters look low and they look kind of close to one another tonight,’” he said.
The helicopters flew over and looped back around and moments later “we saw what looked like a firework went off in the sky.”
“All of the lights in their helicopter went out. It was like they just poofed … and then we saw a huge glow like a fireball,” Tomaszewski said.
Flyovers for training exercises happen almost daily and the helicopters typically fly low but not so close together, he said.
“There were two back to back. We typically see one and then see another one a few minutes later, and we just saw two of them flying together last night,” he said.
Members of the Kentucky Senate stood for a moment of silence Thursday morning in honor of the crash victims.
“We do not know the extent of what has gone on, but I understand it is bad and there has been a substantial loss of life of our military,” Senate President Robert Stivers told the somber chamber.
Last month, two Tennessee National Guard pilots were killed when their Black Hawk helicopter crashed along an Alabama highway during a training exercise.
[ad_2]
#killed #Army #Black #Hawk #helicopter #crash #Kentucky
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Nineteen people were arrested and charged with third-degree criminal trespassing, Kentucky State Police said. Officers gave each person “the option to leave without any enforcement action or be placed under arrest,” said Capt. Paul Blanton, a police spokesperson.
Republican House Speaker David Osborne later said it was a decision by state police to remove and arrest protesters.
“I think it’s unfortunate that it reached that level and certainly they were given, as I’ve been told since then, multiple opportunities to either quiet their chants or to leave voluntarily,” Osborne said.
The bill’s opponents framed the issue as a civil-rights fight. Democratic Rep. Sarah Stalker declared: “Kentucky will be on the wrong side of history” by enacting the measure.
The debate about the transgender bill will likely spill over into this year’s gubernatorial campaign, with Beshear’s veto drawing GOP condemnation as he seeks reelection to a second term. A legal fight also is brewing. The American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky reaffirmed that it intends to “take this fight to the courts” to try to preserve access to health care options for young transgender people.
“While we lost the battle in the legislature, our defeat is temporary. We will not lose in court,” said Chris Hartman, executive director of the Fairness Campaign, an LGBTQ+ advocacy organization.
In praising the veto override, David Walls, executive director of The Family Foundation, said the bill puts “policy in alignment with the truth that every child is created as a male or female and deserves to be loved, treated with dignity and accepted for who they really are.”
Activists on both sides of the impassioned debate gathered at the statehouse to make competing appeals before lawmakers took up the transgender bill following an extended break.
At a rally that drew hundreds of transgender-rights supporters, trans teenager Sun Pacyga held up a sign summing up a grim review of the Republican legislation. The sign read: “Our blood is on your hands.”
“If it passes, the restricted access to gender-affirming health care, I think trans kids will die because of that,” the 17-year-old student said, expressing a persistent concern among the bill’s critics that the restrictions could lead to an increase in teen suicides.
Bill supporters assembled to defend the measure, saying it protects trans children from undertaking gender-affirming treatments they might regret as adults. Research shows such regret is rare, however.
“We cannot allow people to continue down the path of fantasy, to where they’re going to end up 10, 20, 30 years down the road and find themselves miserable from decisions that they made when they were young,” said Republican Rep. Shane Baker at a rally.
[ad_2]
#Republican #lawmakers #override #veto #transgender #bill #Kentucky
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
“I think he’s the favorite,” said Scott Jennings, a prominent Republican consultant in Kentucky. “Do I think he can be beaten? Yeah, I do. But I think it’s going to be expensive, and it’s going to take a while.”
Beshear will have all the advantages generally granted to incumbent governors: the power of the bully pulpit, sky high name ID and approval, and a deep warchest — as of the end of last year, he had over $4.7 million in the bank. A late January survey from Mason-Dixon Polling found that 61 percent of voters in the state approved of the job he was doing, and he had notable leads over potential challengers.
Beshear has hosted regular “Team Kentucky” updates and has been ever-present for Kentuckians, who during his tenure in office have navigated the coronavirus pandemic and a string of natural disasters.
And Democrats in the state point to a boom of economic growth during his tenure in office. A page on Beshear’s official website brags about delivering “the highest and second-highest revenue surpluses in the history of Kentucky, thanks to strong fiscal management and a hot, record-breaking economy,” which is anticipated to be a major theme in his campaign.
Beshear is trying to follow the playbook of a handful of other recent successful Democratic governors in red states, who were able to secure reelection by casting themselves as competent, good-government-minded bureaucrats focused on fixing kitchen-table problems. They also look to avoid national politics — Beshear said in an interview with the Associated Press in December that President Joe Biden likely wouldn’t be appearing on the trail with him — and hot-button culture war issues.
“I think the through line there is you have a popular Democratic governor who’s managed the economy well, and has the economy roaring. Those are difficult to beat,” said Eric Hyers, who is managing Beshear’s campaign. Hyers pointed to the success of Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly — who won reelection last year — and former Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, who won in 2012 and 2016 and whose campaign he previously ran.
Republicans are expected to spend heavily to try to bring Beshear back to earth. But first the party must land on a nominee, with a major pileup of candidates vying in a May 16 primary for the right to face Beshear.
The Republican field is taking shape
There are a dozen Republicans running, but many in the state generally think three candidates have a shot at the nomination: state Attorney General Daniel Cameron; Ryan Quarles, the state agricultural commissioner; and Kelly Craft, who was Trump’s second (and final) United Nations ambassador.
A protégé of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Cameron first won statewide office in 2019, succeeding Beshear as attorney general. He has been widely viewed as a rising star in the state and nationally and is generally viewed as the early frontrunner to win the Republican nomination.
He also scored an early endorsement from Trump in the contest, who got behind his bid last summer. No other potential 2024 hopeful has weighed in to the primary yet, and it is unclear if they would do so before the general election, which could potentially turn the race into a messy proxy battle.
Quarles is a former state lawmaker who has been serving as the state’s agricultural commissioner since 2016. His campaign launched with a long list of local endorsees in the counties, and would likely rely on that bench of support to try to carve a path to the nomination.
Craft, a longtime GOP activist and donor who is married to the coal billionaire Joe Craft, is the biggest x-factor in the race. Despite her role in the Trump administration, she was almost entirely unknown across Kentucky before she launched her run. To solve that, she has barraged Kentucky airwaves with advertising — already spending at least $1.4 million, according to data from the advertising tracking firm AdImpact, with hundreds of thousands more already booked and almost assuredly much more on the way.
“Two months ago nobody knew who we were, and we were able to go on TV” and change that, said Kristin Davison, a senior adviser to the Craft campaign.
That Mason-Dixon poll from January showed Cameron with a yawning lead in the GOP contest. He was at 39 percent, to 13 percent for Craft, 8 percent for Quarles and 5 percent for state Auditor Mike Harmon, with the rest of the field not breaking two percent. Republicans in the state say the race has likely shifted since then, given that Craft has had the airwaves to herself over the last month, and still has room to move as the primary heats up.
Some of Craft’s ads have looked to nationalize the race. Her most recent ad was about standing up to China and made a passing mention to the spy balloon that captivated the country earlier this year, while the one before that had Craft saying “Joe Biden and Andy Beshear are ignoring the border crisis” while standing at the country’s Southern border.
The Republican Governors Association plans on continuing its policy of neutrality in primaries and does not intend to get involved in the race.
But other outside groups are. On Monday, an organization called Commonwealth PAC — which identified itself in state paperwork as being pro-Craft — launched new ads, the first major outside spending of the race. The spots attack Cameron as “nice, but he’s no strong Kentucky conservative,” using a stretched metaphor of a grizzly bear.
A handful of the candidates met for the first debate of the primary on Tuesday. Cameron, Quarles, Harmon and Somerset Mayor Alan Keck met on stage for a debate hosted by the Jefferson County Republican Party and Spectrum News. Craft declined to participate in this debate, citing a travel conflict. But she has committed to participate in at least two future debates. A mid-April debate is planned with the four candidates who appeared on stage on Tuesday and Craft, moderated by Kentucky Sports Radio’s Matt Jones, who floated a 2020 Senate run — as a Democrat — before deciding against it.
But regardless of who emerges with the nomination, Republicans are feeling bullish about challenging Beshear despite his overall popularity in the state. Several pointed to the fact that Republicans passed Democrats in voter registration over last summer — the end of a years-long inevitability in the state as ancestral Democrats abandoned the party in everything but registration — as a strong sign for their prospects, and they argued that even center-right voters who personally like Beshear would come home to the GOP in November.
Part of the calculus, Republicans say, is that they don’t anticipate any of the three leading candidates for the nomination to be anywhere near as polarizing as Bevin.
The former governor, who teased a comeback bid before bailing on filing day, was a deeply unpopular governor during his tenure in office. He was a caustic proto-Trump in the state who relished lobbing bombs at any given opportunity.
“I think all three of our candidates would be well liked by Republicans and would be more than acceptable to the center-right independents, who obviously gravitated away from Bevin toward Beshear,” said Jennings, the GOP consultant.
[ad_2]
#Democrat #favorite #Kentucky #governor #race
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
That win on Election Day set up the abortion providers in the state who are challenging the laws to argue on Nov. 15 that both the state’s near-total ban on the procedure beginning at conception and a separate law banning abortion after six weeks of pregnancy violate provisions of the state constitution adopted in 1891 — namely, the “right of seeking and pursuing their safety and happiness” and freedom from “absolute and arbitrary power.” Both bans, which the state legislature passed in 2019, criminalize abortions with no exceptions for cases of rape or incest, with a narrow exception for life-endangering complications.
During oral arguments in the case, the American Civil Liberties Union in Kentucky argued on behalf of clinics in the state that the abortion restrictions are causing “irreparable harm” to patients who are undergoing the “pain and trauma” of being forced to bear children they don’t want or having to search for ways to travel out of state for the procedure.
Justice Lambert ruled Thursday that the clinics don’t have standing to challenge the laws on behalf of their patients, but do have standing to argue that the state’ s abortion bans violate protections in the state’s constitution.
Several justices dissented in part from the decision, with some accusing the court’s majority of ignoring arguments made by the challengers that the bans are causing such “irreparable harm” in the state that an injunction is warranted.
Justice Angela McCormick Bisig lamented that the court decided to “retreat from the duty of judicial review by failing to evaluate whether Plaintiffs present substantial allegations that the bans unconstitutionally prohibit the women of this Commonwealth from obtaining reproductive healthcare.” Citing recent reporting about Kentucky “women placed in untenable positions due to severe fetal anomalies” who had to travel out of state for an abortion, Bisig argued the court should have backed the Circuit Court’s decision to block the law temporarily.
The ACLU and other groups that brought the case said they were “extremely disappointed” in the decision and vowed to keep fighting on the merits in the lower court. Pointing to the results of the November ballot referendum, they argued the state Supreme Court went against the will of the people in leaving the bans in place.
“We’re elated, but we know that it’s not the end. There will be more litigation in the courts and we have more work to do,” said Addia Wuchner, a former Republican representative in the Kentucky Statehouse who led the unsuccessful Yes for Life ballot measure campaign last year. “For now, however, this means the abortion facilities will remain closed.”
[ad_2]
#Kentucky #Supreme #Court #leaves #abortion #ban #place
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
