X owner Elon Musk endorses former President Donald Trump during a campaign rally on Oct. 5, 2024 in Butler, Pa. It was the first time Musk joined one of Trump's rallies and, writes columnist Teri Carter, evidence of their growing alliance in the final stretch of the presidential election.(Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Back in June, I deactivated my X (formerly Twitter) account.?

At the time this felt like a meaningless gesture. I often deactivated when I needed a break from the maddening masses. But I was always conscious about needing to reactivate within 30 days so as not to lose my account altogether; so conscious that I would mark my calendar “Turn Twitter Back On” about three weeks out, fearful I would forget and lose my (yes, measly) 7,000-ish followers and my public voice.

But come July, I let my “Turn Twitter Back On” warning pass with an obvious realization: Quitting X felt a lot like when I quit drinking. Deleting my account was surprisingly difficult. Our addictions to our phones and social media are real.?

As someone who writes about local, state and national politics, could I cut the cord? Could I know everything I needed to know without the immediacy of X? I was about to find out.

Last weekend, billionaire X owner Elon Musk appeared onstage at a Donald Trump rally. Musk touted the importance of free speech, adding, “this will be the last election” if Trump doesn’t win. Wearing a cap with the “Make America Great Again” slogan of Trump’s campaign, Musk appeared to acknowledge the foreboding nature of his remarks. “As you can see I am not just MAGA — I am Dark MAGA,” he said. It was the first time that Musk joined one of Trump’s rallies and was evidence of their growing alliance in the final stretch of the presidential election.”?

Here in Kentucky, our GOP legislators often complain on their social media about the media, accusing news organizations and journalists of bias. Yet they do not seem to mind that the owner of one of the biggest media companies on the planet is openly campaigning for Trump.?

I wonder why.

When Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, was being considered as VP Kamala Harris’s running mate, Republican electeds and their spokespeople poked fun at him, repeatedly saying he’d been born with a silver spoon. But these same legislators seem to have no issue with Trump’s golden spoon and are proudly supporting him.?

Funny how that works.

Ask many of the Trump voters here in rural Kentucky and they will tell you right off that all of us in the media — except Musk, I guess — no matter how local or nationally recognized, are liars; are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome; are infanticide enablers, gun grabbers, school sex groomers, open border advocates, God haters, suppressors of free speech. The “enemy of the people” Trump has railed against since 2015.?

Meanwhile, Musk’s purchase of X, with his creeping control of who and what gets amplified or suppressed on X — one of the biggest media companies in the world — has been the proverbial icing on Trump’s cake.

It is telling that Trump did not even need to come back to X and claim his old megaphone because the political journalists he regularly calls “enemy of the people” (and worse) post screenshots of his all-caps, hateful, Truth Social lies and rants on their own X accounts like an army of free press secretaries.

Writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, who famously left Twitter before it became X, is back in the news with his latest book “The Message.” Coates had about a million followers when he disappeared from the platform. In an interview prior to his departure he was asked if he ever thought about leaving Twitter. His reply: I wake up every day hoping for the courage to leave.

I quit X because I, too, had long been awaiting the courage to leave.?

How many of us have become addicted to scrolling, to news alerts, to watching the endless supply of two-minute videos, overwhelmed by the scope of bad news? And then there is the building of a platform, especially if you are a young person in the news business. Can you build a career — especially if you are in a smaller state like Kentucky — if you are not on X with a brand and a following?

I knew I was finished with X when I started overthinking and censoring my own posts. There is no greater death knell for a writer than censorship. The same goes for democracy. And don’t we keep saying we are worried about democracy?

X is no longer a democratic space. That train done left the station long ago.

X is not Twitter, the platform of old where we found extended community and camaraderie.?

X — for all of Musk’s pledges of his love of free speech — is a killer of free expression, political heroin curated by a billionaire controlling our discourse and stumping at presidential campaign rallies for another billionaire, the man who branded journalists as the enemy of the people.

X is the symbol with which one signs their name when they cannot read nor write. An ominous sign.

Sen. Lindsey Tichenor, R-Smithfield, told University of Louisville President Kim Schatzel, "I don't like that word, equity." (Getty Images)

If you want to witness firsthand how systemic racism works, you need only have been in Capitol Annex Room 154 on Tuesday, Sep. 17, for the Interim Joint Committee on Education, as Kentucky’s lawmakers (who are, by-far, majority white) lorded over a hearing to allegedly discuss DEI: diversity, equity and inclusion in postsecondary education.

I say allegedly, because a good half hour into the testimony of University of Kentucky President Eli Capilouto (who is white), the woman next to me (who is white) whispered what I (a white lady) had been thinking. “Why are we here? What is the purpose of this meeting?”

Capilouto emphasized that UK is making strides to be more nonpartisan, saying at one point “we should welcome discomfort in hearing ideas. But we can’t tolerate indoctrination, intimidation or disrespect. The lectern serves learning, and is not a pulpit for proselytizing.”

And yet Capilouto said these words in a legislative hearing where you could feel the tension of intimidation permeate the room, and the pulpit of proselytizing was monopolized by lawmakers like Sen. Lindsey Tichenor (who is white) as she condescendingly lectured University of Louisville president Kim Schatzel (who is white) about how much she dislikes that pesky word “equity.”?

“Our Constitution talks about equality,” Tichenor said, “I don’t love that word, equity.”?

Last year, the University of Louisville changed the name of its Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion to the Office of Institutional Equity in an apparent mad scramble to get ahead of potential anti-DEI legislation.?

Schatzel responded by defining equity, but her clear answer was not clear enough for Tichenor to drop it. Equity, Tichenor said, “assumes that there’s an overall that everybody can have or comes in, you know, it leaves the same way. That’s just impossible. We’re all different people. So I guess my question to you would be, why would you choose … the Office of Institutional Equity, as opposed to the Office of Institutional Equality, because that truly is more of our founding in the United States of America, that we’re all created equal.”

Hold up. What now?

The dictionary defines equity as “the quality of being fair and impartial.”?

The dictionary defines equality as “the state of being equal, especially in status, rights, and opportunities.”?

Listening to Tichenor dig in was like listening to someone demand you acknowledge the difference between stepping out to use the restroom vs. the bathroom. But of course this back and forth was not about a word, it was about power. Tomato, tomah-to, use the word I want you to use to show your deference to me and prove publicly that I am the boss, that I hold the purse strings, that you report to me and will do as you’re told, thank you very much.

Ah yes, this. Groveling publicly before the legislature. This is why we were all there. This was the purpose of the meeting.

There was also the unfortunate but predictable, oh-gosh-we’re-running-short-on-time remark from committee co-chair, Sen. Stephen West (who is white), after allowing such a big chunk of time up front for UK and U of L that they had to call the presidents of Eastern Kentucky University (who is white), Western Kentucky University (who is white), and Murray State University (who is white) to testify together and in a hurry.?

Rude, dismissive, and humiliating.

Remember, this is the same GOP supermajority (of mostly white folks) who, for the second year in a row, could not be bothered to pass the Crown Act out of committee “which would have outlawed discrimination on the basis of a hairstyle historically associated with a person’s race.”

And sitting front and center was Rep. Jennifer Decker (who is white), primary sponsor of an anti-DEI bill this past session, who, earlier this year, told an NAACP audience with a straight face that her white father was a slave.

It was a crushing disappointment to witness this two-hour hearing.?

It was a crushing disappointment to watch silently as, one by one, five powerful university presidents (all white) groveled at the feet of majority-white lawmakers, promising that they have, of their own accord, already dismantled diversity offices, vowing that they are behaving — No DEI being practiced here, ma’am! We don’t even say ‘DEI’, sir! — and will continue to fall in line. Did a Black lawmaker say a few words here and there? Sure, but nothing consequential.?

It was a crushing disappointment to witness the cowering and cowardice on display from the leaders of our top universities, the very institutions we trust to teach our children to be bold and brave in learning as they grow into adulthood.

And it was embarrassingly obvious that in a legislative hearing alleging to address diversity, equity and inclusion, not a single person of color was handed a microphone and asked what they thought, even as one brave Black woman sat right there in the front row wearing a bright red t-shirt that read in bold white letters, “Make America Not Racist for the First Time.”

This is systemic racism at work.

Randy Adams, once a teacher in Anderson County, speaks in an ad promoting Amendment 2. The ad is paid for by a political action committee affiliated with U.S. Sen. Rand Paul that is largely bankrolled by Jeff Yass, a billionaire options trader who lives in Pennsylvania. (Screenshot from KET)

When I saw the first, big money PAC ad promoting Amendment 2, the so-called “school choice” bill coming to your Kentucky ballot this November, it was no surprise to see preacher and former Anderson County Schools teacher, Randy Adams, in the starring role.

Do not be fooled.?

Adams has been a chaos agent, sowing division and animosity about public education in Anderson County, where I live, for the last two years.?

In the fall of 2022, just before the November midterms, Adams posted a (since deleted) manifesto on his Facebook page which led to a standing-room-only school board meeting. The vast majority of attendees in that meeting were not there to help; they were there to make fearmongering, religious statements against our public schools and/or applaud those who did.

I know because I attended this meeting; I noted the seemingly-odd-at-the-time attendance of David Walls, executive director of The Family Foundation, a registered lobbying group that says it advocates for “policies based on Biblical principles.” I stayed for the public comments, which were so outrageous that our local newspaper’s front-page headline quoted one of the speakers, who said, “The devil is trying to destroy the family unit.”

A year later, during the fall election season of 2023, Adams was back at it. He was a preacher at Ballard Baptist Church at the time and invited Brad Briscoe, an Anderson County Schools parent, to come to the pulpit to share a story about his daughter and our public high school with the congregation. Adams then posted the video of that church meeting on Facebook, writing, “Share this message if you support the Briscoe family and want to protect children” with an edict to attend our next school board meeting with a list of what to say.

Hundreds of citizens showed up at that Anderson County school board meeting in what appeared to be an effort to oust a school counselor and the superintendent and, like the meeting a year earlier, quote Bible verses and toss a blowtorch into an otherwise peaceful community.?

It is no exaggeration to say the Adams roadshow has worn out its welcome here. And yet, in a video posted on The Family Foundation’s Facebook page, Adams said, “Over the last couple years, how many Twitter or YouTube videos have you seen of parents going to school board meetings and giving impassioned speeches and there’s no reply? It’s like talking to a blank wall … I believe educational freedom is the solution.” He also claimed the guidelines he was given as a teacher meant “Christians aren’t welcome as public servants in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. We’ve got to really address that as a form of persecution.”

What a bunch of hooey.

There is zero proof that Kentucky Christians are being persecuted or are not welcome as public servants, a truly ludicrous statement. Many of us are active members in the churches in our towns, whether we’re talking about big Jefferson County or little rural Anderson County, and some of our fellow congregants are the teachers who teach our kids and grandkids in our public schools.

Billionaire TikTok investor, charter school advocate puts $8 million into Paul affiliated PAC

This basic fact, sadly, has not stopped Adams from working with The Family Foundation to spin a political message in an ad that’s paid for by a PAC bankrolled by Jeff Yass, a billionaire options trader and TikTok investor from Pennsylvania.

So when you see a smiling Adams in today’s expensive, political TV ads, hawking Amendment 2, know that you are not listening to some random, sweet teacher they just happened to come across and film in a classroom. You are being conned. You are being coerced by a man who has repeatedly created unnecessary chaos, turning neighbor against neighbor in a small, rural Kentucky county, seemingly for his own benefit and the benefit of a registered lobbyist.

Amendment 2 is not about school choice.?

Amendment 2 is just the latest gizmo being sold by opportunists like Randy Adams to change the Kentucky Constitution today so that tomorrow they can use your tax dollars for their church schools — where there are no standards, no public accountability, and where they can handpick the kids they want to teach.

The legislature convenes on the third floor of the the Kentucky Capitol in Frankfort, photographed here the night of Jan. 4, 2023. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Arden Barnes)

When Rep. Daniel Grossberg’s attorney, Anna Whites, said that he has no plans to resign after multiple sexual harassment allegations, my first and only thought was: He deserves due process, and he should resign.

The Legislative Ethics Commission is investigating Grossberg’s alleged behavior unbecoming a state representative. There is additional Lexington Herald-Leader reporting that three more women — ages 26 to 28 — came to them directly with detailed allegations, including text messages, of unwelcome, sexually explicit comments and behavior.

Louisville Democrats — his own party — issued a statement on Aug. 29 asking that Grossberg “temporarily refrain from participating in LDP events and meetings while the Legislative Ethics Commission investigation is in process.”

And still, he has no plans to resign. Why would he? Powerful men behaving badly, arrogantly and even offensively in the Kentucky legislature is today’s norm. And there are not enough watchdogs to consistently call it out.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us got so used to viewing meetings online, at our leisure, that we gladly traded long commutes and time away from home for a video screen. But what we see/hear on legislative video feeds is extremely limited, kind of like being locked in your cabin on a cruise ship where all you can see of the expansive and potentially treacherous ocean is what’s visible through your one, tiny porthole.

One, tiny porthole is not enough.

After the Old National Bank mass shooting in April 2023, I spent as much of the next year in Frankfort as I could. I learned what it feels like to be there, to be present; that there is a staggering difference between being inside the Capitol Annex meeting rooms and in the Senate and House galleries in person vs. following online; that not everything happens on camera.

To give credit where credit is due, at least House Democrats have shown integrity by suspending Grossberg from their caucus and interim committee meetings during the ethics investigation.

The last couple of columns I filed about the 2024 General Assembly — one on sexism, one on racism — centered on what it felt like to be in those rooms, to experience the steady offensiveness that permeates the GOP supermajority in our legislative body. The sexism and racism are features, not bugs, and not even a little bit hidden.

You might remember the shocking photo of Senate President Robert Stivers and Floor Leader Damon Thayer scowling, shaking fingers, losing their tempers at Sen. Karen Berg for questioning data supporting House Bill 5, arguably the most consequential bill of the session. What if that photo had not been taken??

There was the Senate Committee on Veterans, Military Affairs, and Public Protection meeting, led by Sen. Rick Girdler, in which a little, dark-skinned girl sitting with Sen. Gex Williams witnessed nothing but 21 minutes of a good old boy, misogynistic, frat-house-like romp masquerading as legislative work. I remember turning to the person sitting next to me, in a meeting I almost skipped because it had such a short agenda, and saying something like, My God, there is an entire story in this one awful meeting.

There was a snarling Rep. Ryan Dotson on the House floor, finger-pointing and raising his voice as Rep. Sarah Stalker dared — yes, a woman, dared — to ask him the most basic questions about a discriminatory housing bill, to the point that House Speaker David Osborne stopped Dotson and advised caution. And then everyone carried on as if nothing happened.

Is it any wonder that a male legislator like Grossberg, working in this same Capitol Annex, feels like he can do whatever tickles his fancy in such a consistently vulgar, unrepentant, frat-boy atmosphere??

I have often found myself looking around a committee room and wondering, did you guys hear that? Where is leadership? Is someone going to stop this, call it out, say something, say anything at all??

In one — just one! — of the many allegations, reported by the Herald-Leader, against Grossberg, “Woman B, who is 26 and involved in Democratic politics, shared several different occasions in 2024, both in person, through texts and in other messaging apps where he repeatedly made comments she considered harassing or threatening. He asked questions about her sexual orientation and expressed serious romantic interest, she said. Woman B also said Grossberg told her if she were to learn what his porn preferences were, “I would never forgive him,” she recounted in a text to a friend. He also “relentlessly” asked for nude photos.”

Please tell me what can be misconstrued or misunderstood here?

Ah well. Grossberg says he is not resigning, that he will continue working, so Woman B will also go back to her job and things will be … the same?

And then we wonder why women do not report.

After sine die in April, I needed a break from being in Frankfort in person, so I took the summer off. When people asked why I wasn’t there, why they did not see me in this meeting or that, I said with all honesty, “Because being there feels like drinking poison.”

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has condemned his Democratic opponent for her laugh, which he told a Fox News interviewer is "a laugh of a crazy person." (Getty Images)

In the hours after Vice President Kamala Harris became the de facto Democratic nominee for president and Gov. Andy Beshear was lauded as a potential pick for vice president, I received a text message about Beshear from a MAGA man in my family: Maybe he can control her.

Words I do not recall hearing, in my lifetime, about any male candidate for president.

When asked about a potential Harris-Beshear ticket, state Sen. Damon Thayer, the Kentucky Senate’s floor leader, told Isaiah Kim-Martinez of WHAS11, “I don’t know if Kamala Harris is dumb enough to pick Andy Beshear, but maybe she is.”

Harris graduated from college and law school; served as a prosecutor; was elected attorney general in one of the most populous states; was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2017; and was chosen as the vice presidential nominee in 2020, a role in which she has honorably served for three and a half years.

A hardworking, accomplished woman reduced, in the parlance of Thayer, to dumb.

In former President Donald Trump’s Republican Party (and it is his party now) childishness and cruelty and pettiness reign, the primary focus long ago shifted from policy to ad hominem name-calling, and women’s accomplishments are relegated to irrelevance.?

And then there is her laugh.

In a sit-down interview with Laura Ingraham on FOX News, the GOP presidential nominee said about Harris, “She’s crazy. That laugh, that’s a laugh of a crazy person.” Ingraham tried to help him out by cutting him off and saying, “I like laughter,” but Trump wasn’t budging. “Not her laughter,” he said.

This, on the tails of a laughable Republican Party convention lacking in gravitas and in which Hulk Hogan and Kid Rock were headliners and none of the conservative, standard bearers with names like Cheney, Bush or Romney played the smallest part while Mitch McConnell was booed.

As Heath Mayo, Christian conservative and founder of Principles First, wrote about today’s GOP, “The breathless outrage at the folks in drag from the same people who just last week eagerly cheered a porn star, a man who hit his wife in the face, and an adjudicated rapist who cheated on his wife with a stripper… is quite something. Selective morality is not morality.”

The Republican Party is no longer the party of family values or even a political party. That ship done sailed.

Today’s Republican Party is a steaming, smoldering cult of one personality, of a man found guilty of fraudulently paying a porn star to help his 2016 political campaign, who consistently calls women nasty and crazy or worse, was recently held liable in a court of law for sexual abuse, and laughs off his own old jokes about grabbing women by the p***y.

As my Grandma Ann would say with an eye roll, he’s a real knee-slapper, that one.

When Martha Raddatz at ABC’s This Week asked New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu about Trump’s rally comments indicating that Christians would no longer need to worry about voting four years from now, he chuckled — yes, chuckled — and said, “I think that’s a classic Trumpism.”

On CBS’s Face the Nation, Sen. Lindsay Graham was giggling — yes, giggling — before host Robert Costa could even ask about the voting remark. Graham’s giggling continued as Costa asked a serious question about the right to vote, so much so that Costa said, “You’re laughing, what do you believe he’s trying to say?”

And not to be outdone, Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., told Neil Cavuto on FOX News that Harris “needs to prove to the American people that she’s a serious person. Margaret Thatcher didn’t giggle. Golda Meir didn’t giggle. … Many Americans think that the vice president is a little bit of a ding dong.” Cavuto tried multiple times to direct Kennedy to talk about policy, saying, “Doesn’t it look petty to judge her on this level?” but Kennedy, like his cult leader, dug in, doubling down on “she’s a bit of a ding dong.”

Funny, I haven’t heard any GOP complaints about their powerful, supposedly serious, elected men laughing or making comments about ding dongs or calling the vice president dumb.

I wonder why.

I also haven’t heard anyone, including my Trump-voting family member, call for Trump’s VP choice to control him.

It’s a real mystery.

A candle is held up during the July 9 vigil for the Florence mass shooting victims. (Photo by Hailey Roden | LINK nky)

Over Fourth of July weekend, there was a mass shooting at a 21st birthday party in Florence (northern Kentucky, Boone County); four people were shot to death; three are recovering, including a 19-year-old girl.?

According to news reports, the 21-year-old shooter was on probation with a criminal history that included sexual assault of a 13-year-old.

Community unites in mourning for victims of Florence mass shooting

The 19-year-old girl’s father, while thankful for community support, said, “I mean, I’m not very hopeful for the future. I really am not after this has happened. I love the support, but it’s just so devastating. Now I’m worried about things like this happening again. If it happened to me, it could happen to anybody. And I hate to see that other families are going to have to go through situations like this.” He says guns are too easily accessible to people who shouldn’t have them.

According to Everytown for Gun Safety, Kentucky has the 15th highest rate of gun violence in the United States, and we continue to do not one damn thing about it.?

While we await more information on how a man with this criminal history had seemingly easy access to firearms and ammunition, here is your reminder that our Republican supermajority in Frankfort continues, year after year, to kick this deadly can down the road.

We have some of the most free-for-all gun laws in the country: open carry, concealed carry, gun sanctuary, etc… During the 2024 General Assembly, the GOP rammed through House Bill 5, a multifaceted, complex, omnibus addressing punishment of crimes after the fact while staggeringly leaving out gun crime prevention altogether.?

The American Civil Liberties Union called HB 5 “an extremely bloated collection of regressive policies and regurgitated ideas,” and if you spent any time following this year’s session, you could not miss the absolute, stubborn refusal of leadership to allow hearings, much less public votes, on simple, straightforward solutions like Senate Bill 13 — crisis aversion, allowing firearm removal from people experiencing a mental health crisis — or Senate Bill 56 to require safe storage of guns.

During session, sponsors of HB 5 were repeatedly asked how HB 5 prevents gun violence **before** it happens.?

Primary sponsors like Reps. Jason Nemes and Jared Bauman never gave a clear answer.?

House and Senate leadership did not seem to care.

Following the Old National Bank mass shooting in Louisville last year, the Kentucky Medical Association designated gun violence a public health crisis. “Two of the KMA’s proposals related to gun safety include barbed criticisms of Kentucky’s GOP supermajority, which, as one resolution notes, “has denied protection of our school children, citizens and police officers by ignoring control measures for assault rifles and killing enhancements by avoiding enactment of effective background checks and ‘red flag’ laws.”

But as Senate Floor Leader Damon Thayer posted during KYGA 2024 on Mar. 4 on Twitter/X, “Just because it is sent to committee doesn’t mean it is on the move. On the contrary, it lacks the votes in committee & on the Senate floor. As the only legislator to win @NRA “Defender of Freedom Award,” I am opposed to SB 13 & all red flag laws. #kyga24”

Of course, the very reason these bills lack votes in committee and on the Senate floor is because, as leader, Sen. Thayer ensures they are never heard in committee and do not make it to the floor.?

What a clever trick this is.?

Maybe if the KMA handed out look-at-me awards he could brag about on social media, Sen. Thayer and his caucus might be more amenable to listening to medical experts, the people on the front lines of gun violence, instead of the NRA.?

After the Florence mass shooting last week, Sen. John Schickel posted his condolences on Twitter/X, stating that everyone is in his thoughts and prayers.?

Two questions for Sen. Schickel:? How would HB 5 — which he vociferously championed just a few months ago— or any of his own proposed bills while in office, have thwarted this kind of tragedy? What has he done during his lengthy time in the legislature to address gun violence?

Like Sen. Thayer, Sen. Schickel is leaving office at the end of this year, but he made sure to boost Twitter/X condolences from state Rep.-elect TJ Roberts of Boone County, who posted a Bible verse and referred to the Florence mass shooting as “unfathomable evil.”

But don’t expect much from Rep.-elect Roberts in addressing gun violence. You need only have followed his Twitter/X account the last few years to note his seeming obsession with guns.?

I have never met Roberts, but this time last year, after I’d begun writing regularly about the Old National Bank mass shooting, it was no surprise to see him post, “Kentucky ‘journalist’ Teri Carter has to be the biggest Karen in Kentucky. Show off your guns and make her mad” with photos of what appeared to be his guns.

I tell you this not because men like Roberts sometimes behave childishly and irresponsibly on social media — as law enforcement will tell you, responsible gun owners do not flash photos of their guns at strangers — but because this kind of behavior, along with that of leaders like Sen. Thayer blocking discussion of potential gun laws, represents the mindset in our GOP supermajority, the people we count on to make laws, to behave responsibly, to keep Kentuckians safe.

Gun violence is not “unfathomable evil” and will not be stopped with thoughts or prayers or burying good gun legislation in the basement of the Capitol.?

Gun violence is fathomable and preventable, and it continues to go unchecked here in Kentucky because our GOP supermajority, in their unfathomable cowardice, refuses to grow up and address it.

As the father of Florence’s 19-year-old shooting victim said, guns are too easily accessible by people who shouldn’t have them.?

What are we — what are our GOP supermajority lawmakers — going to do about that?

Guests at the Old Town Pour House watch a debate between President Joe Biden and presumptive Republican nominee former President Donald Trump on June 27, 2024 in Chicago. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

As everyone opined in the aftermath of the Biden-Trump debate, our grandchildren (ages 4 and 5) were arriving to spend the Fourth of July holiday week with us, so we were careful in how we discussed the debate within their earshot. And we were certainly not tuning into TV pundits who, I later learned, spent most of the last week poking fun at old age and excusing rampant lying.

Are these the American values we’re teaching our kids these days??

Joe Biden is 81. Donald Trump is 78. This is not new information. Had we not all, prior to the debate, posited that younger candidates should have been considered? Making this point moot??

According to fact-checker Daniel Dale at CNN, Trump told at least 30 falsehoods during the debate, which, in a 90 minute program, constitutes a lie every three minutes. A blip, compared to Biden’s advanced age, in the news cycle.

In his July 4 speech, Trump said, in part, “Those who seek to erase our heritage want Americans to forget our pride and our great dignity, so that we can no longer understand ourselves or America’s destiny,” and “My fellow Americans, it is time to speak up loudly and strongly and powerfully and defend the integrity of our country.”

Would you teach your kids and grandkids that telling a lie every three minutes is integrity? And what should we make of his line about “our heritage”??

Weeks after Trump’s “very fine people on both sides” dismissal of white men marching through Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 carrying tiki torches and chanting “Jews will not replace us!,” historian and MacArthur Fellowship recipient Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote in The Atlantic to remember that Trump is “the first president to have served in no public capacity before ascending to his perch.”

Coates wrote, “The mind seizes trying to imagine a black man extolling the virtues of sexual assault on tape (“When you’re a star, they let you do it”), fending off multiple accusations of such assaults, immersed in multiple lawsuits for allegedly fraudulent business dealings, exhorting his followers to violence, and then strolling into the White House. But that is the point of white supremacy — to ensure that that which all others achieve with maximal effort, white people (particularly white men) achieve with minimal qualification.”

Much has happened since, including Trump’s conviction on dozens of criminal counts, liability for sexual assault, and then some. To say the bar has been lowered (and lowered and lowered and lowered again) since Trump first came down that escalator in 2015 and declared his candidacy is an understatement of mass proportions.?

He has still not conceded he lost the 2020 election, something we say so often the meaning disappears into the ether, even as he continues to insist the last presidential election was stolen (it wasn’t), that our elections are rigged (they’re not), and that there was massive voter fraud in 2020 (there wasn’t).?

Lies, lies and more lies.

In his July 4 speech, Trump also stated what seems, like so much of his bluster, a throwaway lie. “I am here as your president,” he said.?

I am trying, as I write this, to imagine President Barack Obama claiming, years later, in a public speech, that he was still president. We would wonder if he’d fallen and hit his head.

So many of our historical norms have been shattered by one old white man, and his name is not Biden.

Recall that the Trumps did not invite the Bidens, as is customary, to the White House during the transition period.?

Recall that Trump did not attend the 2021 inauguration. The NPR headline that day: “For 1st Time In 150 Years, Outgoing President Doesn’t Attend Inauguration.”

Recall that, due to substantiated threats, Washington D.C. had to be fenced off and locked down in 2021 in order to hold a public inauguration at all.

Recall how, on Jan. 6, Trump sat in the White House for hours, watching his supporters on TV as they ransacked the Capitol and fought police officers, pouting and angry because Vice President Mike Pence had refused to help him illegally overthrow a federal election.

What have we taught our kids in these Trump years?

Biden is old. He is a lifelong public servant who often mumbles or misspeaks. Should we ask questions about his competency? Absolutely.

But Trump is also old, and he has spoken in rambling gibberish for years. He posts his rage and pettiness almost daily on social media. His singular entree into politics was birtherism, the years he gleefully sowed racist lies about our first Black president.?

It is beyond irony that Trump’s Republicans — as they resoundingly demand the old white Democrat disappear — has firmly defended their old white man even as he repeatedly insisted our first Black president was illegitimate (while that president was in office) while having the temerity to falsely declare on July 4, 2024,”I am here as your president.”

Do you have to be a racist to support Trump? No. But you have to be comfortable with his felonies, his lies, his hatefulness, his racist dog whistles; you have to be comfortable with Charlottesville and Jan. 6 and the trashing of norms; you have to be comfortable with a leader whose political power began in, and survives today in, the roots of racism.?

Where is the competency test for that?

If the Republican Party had an ounce of the pride, integrity and dignity that Trump spoke of on July 4, they would have demanded his removal as their leader long ago. So why haven’t they? Because that, my friends, would be something worth teaching to our kids.

These men should be on the golf course. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

"The news media, contrary to Sen. Mills’ Twitter/X post and Trump’s unfounded 'enemy of the people' refrain, serve as the voice for people who, unlike our lawmakers, do not hold positions of power," writes columnist and gun safety activist Teri Carter. (Getty Images)

Last Friday, I ran into the Anderson County judge-executive at Five Star where we were both getting gas. I had not seen him in a year. He smiled big and said, “Well hello, Miss Carter!,” walked around his truck to give me a hug, and stayed to chat about our families.?

On Saturday, a couple I used to go to church with yelled a big hello to me as they were walking into the Lawrenceburg Kroger and I was looking for a parking spot. Seeing them was a bright spot in my afternoon.?

The next day I texted a former magistrate to tell her I’d been thinking about her in Sunday school. The word ‘love’ was used in our exchange.

I tell you this because I am an outspoken Democrat, the above folks are all lifelong Republicans, and these encounters are both routine and antithetical to what we see from too many GOP supermajority leaders and communications personnel in Frankfort who, if you follow their public comments and Twitter/X feeds, would have us believe real life in Kentucky is as snarky as they are.

It is not.

Just this week, Sen. Robby Mills — who ran for lieutenant governor alongside Daniel Cameron — posted, “Watching @KyTonightKET and listening to the leadership of the Frankfort media ‘out themselves’! They are simply not balanced…that is why our citizens are confused as to what the truth is.”

Click to watch: State of the Media on KET’s “Kentucky Tonight”

No, senator. No one outed anyone and Kentuckians are not confused. But you do have to wonder why people like Sen. Mills are so bent on creating this illusion. Does he speak in person, in this tone, to his constituents who do not agree with him politically? Does he speak to anyone in this manner??

One of the destructive habits Donald Trump ushered in with his presidency was constant, off-the-cuff, Twitter whining by elected officials, as though being in a protected, elite position were an unbearable burden. Poor, poor me, they seem to be screaming.

When I see powerful Kentucky lawmakers on Twitter/X and elsewhere complaining about their coverage, I am reminded of the wise words of writer Anne Lamott: “If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”?

The reason I have not seen our judge-executive in so long is because, after the Old National Bank shooting in April 2023, I decided to spend the entire next year outside of Anderson, up the road in Frankfort, to learn, in person, how things really work in state government, to spend hours upon hours in rooms with Republican lawmakers, and to see if the most basic firearm legislation stood a chance.?

While I am sorry to disappoint recent GOP Twitter/X hullabaloo, I am nothing so glamorous as a? lobbyist. I am just a citizen, mother, grandmother, and volunteer — read “unpaid” — trying to find a way to keep people from getting shot to death at work, school, church, etc… A timely reminder that one of the fundamental differences between real news and social media is fact-checking.?

As to potential gun legislation, what I learned this past year is that the chasm between doing what many in our GOP supermajority know (they know!) is right — like that people in the midst of a mental health crisis should not have access to guns — and the powerful seats they hold in our Republican supermajority is Grand Canyon-esque.

The seat itself must be held at all cost, and that cost, let’s be blunt, includes lives.

With the exception of Sen. Whitney Westerfield (who, it must be said, has an affable Twitter/X presence but is unfortunately leaving office at the end of this year) even the most rudimentary discussion of laws to stem gun violence in Kentucky will not occur in any public setting where it could be video recorded and, in turn, shared on social media. It is simply not done.?

Call it fear of the Trumpian social media mob; call it fear of the uninformed voter; call it fear of the constituent who gets most of their political information from non-fact-checked social media (including lawmakers and pundits who regularly post Trump-like snark); call it fear of being ousted from the Frankfort fraternity.?

But call it what it is at its core. Fear.?

And the news media, contrary to Sen. Mills’ Twitter/X post and Trump’s unfounded “enemy of the people” refrain, serve as the voice for people who, unlike our lawmakers, do not hold positions of power.?

Earlier this month Bill Kristol, founder of The Weekly Standard, posted a quote from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn that stuck with me: “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts.”

I am a Democrat living in a rural county that voted resoundingly for Donald Trump in both 2016 and 2020, but I am also the person who purposely goes to Kroger on a Saturday because I want to run into folks I have not seen lately and talk to my neighbors, no matter their political affiliation.?

I spent the last year in Frankfort, attending every meeting I could and talking primarily to Republicans to, as I wrote in a recent article about Senate Bill 2, “meet with the senator because I wanted to understand both him and his bill. Was I missing something?” All it cost me was time.

The line separating good and evil is not party affiliation, it is fear of the other.??

I encourage lawmakers like Sen. Mills and anyone else who feels stuck in an echo chamber to remember that social media and professional, fact-checked news are not the same — kinda like a Mustang convertible and barbecued ribs are not the same — and that talking to people, in person, who disagree with you politically is healthy for you, healthy for Kentucky and free of charge.

The worldview exposed in Margaret Atwood's novel is eerily similar to that of Trump's defenders, writes Teri Carter. Protesters, above, dressed as Handmaids in 2018. (Getty Images)

For a literary, nonpolitical project, I recently had to reread Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel and re-watch the Hulu TV series of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” a dystopian story about a new United States which adheres not to the Constitution but to a strict, twisted, patriarchal interpretation of the Bible.?

In this new U.S., all women are subjects of the regime and, since the wives of powerful men are unable to reproduce, fertile females known as handmaids are held prisoner for the sole purpose of producing babies.?

As I watched the TV version, it occurred to me that Kentucky Republican legislators like Sen. Lindsey Tichenor, Reps. Josh Calloway and Nancy Tate, and all of those in our Republican supermajority seemingly obsessed with religion as it relates to sex, sexual deviance and public education, should be required to watch at least seasons one and two and then explain what is so appealing about this worldview that seems so eerily close to their own.

I again considered this as I watched Kentucky’s GOP response to former president and presumptive 2024 presidential nominee Donald J. Trump’s conviction on all 34 felony counts related to secretly paying hush money to a porn star (a campaign finance violation) in order to hide the story from voters days before the 2016 election.

Here are some of those statements from the alleged party of family values and the rule of law:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell: “These charges never should have been brought in the first place. I expect the conviction to be overturned on appeal.”

Congressman James Comer: “ … another example of Democrats being relentless in their pursuit to weaponize the courts … and target President Joe Biden’s political opposition.”

Congressman Andy Barr:? “ … corrupt New York district attorney … sham trial … outrageous.”?

Kentucky House GOP primary winner TJ Roberts reposted Alex Stone on X, whose lengthy statement began, “It’s a sad day where we can no longer sing certain lines of ‘God Bless The USA’? without it being true. We aren’t free. This isn’t what freedom looks like. I know that this is cliche and so many people have said it before, but we ALL need to rise up against this evil, tyrannical system that has plagued the United States of America.”

State Sen. Lindsey Tichenor: “ … circus of a trial and verdict … political witch hunt … veil has been pulled back for the world to see clearly. They’re running out of options and growing Trump’s base of support every move they make.”

Retiring state Sen. and longtime Republican Floor Leader Damon Thayer: “ … best described by invoking … the horse who finished second to Secretariat … #Sham.”

A lengthy statement from the Republican Party of Kentucky began, “Today is a shameful day in American history that should send chills down the spines of anyone who respects a fair and impartial judicial system.”

Chills are running down spines, all right, because Donald J. Trump, the national leader of the Republican Party, is now a convicted felon.?

And, lest we forget, that is not all.

He tried to overturn a federal election that he lost, seemingly not caring that his followers attacked U.S. Capitol Police and chanted about hanging his vice president, while he continues to falsely claim the election was stolen.

He took boxes and boxes of sensitive national security documents when he left the White House and, when politely and quietly asked for months, refused to return them, resulting in federal agents having to go and get them.

It was just months ago that Trump was found liable in civil court for sexual abuse and defamation of E. Jean Carroll for which he owes a judgment of more than $90M.

And it is not like Trump’s behavior is new.

Early in his first presidency, a judge awarded a $25 million settlement to students of Trump University, “which was not an actual university but a for-profit seminar series, and former students waged a years-long battle claiming the course misled them with claims of teaching real estate success. The program ended in 2010. Some elderly plaintiffs who paid $20,000-plus in tuition died waiting to receive their checks from the settlement.”

At some point — and, based on initial lawmaker reactions to his conviction on 34 criminal counts, we are now at that point — we have to assume that what the Kentucky Republican Party most reveres in their leader is his sexual debauchery and blatant, nose-thumbing criminality.?

Not a bug but a feature, as the kids say.?

I recommend Kentucky lawmakers watch, at minimum, the first two seasons of “The Handmaid’s Tale” and let us know which parts of the story do not apply or appeal to their quickly evolving, biblically twisted, women are second class citizens, laws are for other people platform.?

But if they continue watching into season three, they might most enjoy the episode in which the Washington Monument is converted into a cross under which hundreds of subservient handmaids — with their mouths now stapled permanently shut — kneel before their corrupt commander and silently pledge allegiance to him.

I promise it will sound familiar.?

Sen. Max Wise indicates he had received zero requests to meet about his school "guardian" bill. The author is seated behind him. (LRC screenshot)

Near the end of this year’s legislative session, a week before lawmakers recessed for the 10-day veto period, I met with state Sen. Max Wise in his office for about 15 minutes.

We both agreed to speak off-the-record so that we could speak freely. And so we did.

I am not one of Sen. Wise’s constituents, so you could argue he had no reason to meet with me at all. But for the last month I had been writing about and actively fighting the passage of Senate Bill 2, which he was sponsoring, to allow school boards to bring unpaid, volunteer, armed “guardians” — in lieu of school resource officers that schools either could not find or could not afford — into our schools.

I wanted to meet with the senator because I wanted to understand both him and his bill. Was I missing something? Who was Max Wise, the person? Why this bill and why now? Why no funding allocation in a budget year with a surplus? Why not just fund more SROs instead? Did he understand, from a rural perspective, who might apply for these volunteer “guardian” positions? Could I, a rural citizen, help?

SB 2 was filed late, on Feb. 22, and yet it was blessed with the No. 2, indicating this special number had been saved for its “specialness.”?

Senate President Robert Stivers showed up in committee just in time for Sen. Wise’s introduction/presentation of the bill, and it has been my experience that Stivers is rarely in committee. His appearance seemed to indicate to committee members and any citizen not in favor: get on board, we are passing this bill.

And yet, I continued — still continue — to ask, why this bill? And why now?

Contrary to how it looks on paper, it is not necessarily easy for a citizen — even a citizen like me with many published columns about Kentucky policy and politics — to get meetings with lawmakers.

And getting 15 minutes of Sen. Wise’s time was not without drama.

I had written about the fact that, even though Sen. Wise raised his fist in committee to indicate that zero people had asked to meet with him about SB 2, this was not true.

On Sept. 11, I had emailed Sen. Wise about gun violence prevention, closing with, “You will often see me sitting in committee meetings, even in the interim, wearing my red ‘Moms’ shirt. If there is anything I can do to help you, please ask.”

He did not ask.

On Oct. 30, I emailed Sen. Wise again. The subject line read: “On potential firearm legislation in 2024” and I closed the email with, “If you are open to discussing potential firearm legislation for 2024, I would love to talk to you. Please tell me what I can do to help.”?

He did not tell me what I could do to help.

And in his defense, we had never met and knew nothing about each other. Fair enough.

Sen. Wise and I exchanged long emails and agreed to meet.?

This seemed simple. It was not.

When I talked to his secretary — who was extraordinarily helpful, bless her — she first let me know that she had no record of me contacting the office for a meeting. This was true, I told her, I had never called the senator’s office. I had emailed him directly.?

She then said she’d been working diligently on getting together the massive amount of information I’d demanded. What information? I told her this was not true and unnecessary, that I had not asked for any records or information. That, in fact, I had no interest in any records. I simply wanted to meet with Sen. Wise to discuss his bill.

She said she could get me on his calendar for 15 minutes in about 10 days. It was end of session. He was busy. I said I would gladly come anytime that worked for him. I also indicated that I might bring someone with me, to which she said I would have to let her know in advance because the senator’s office is very, very small and, if I brought anyone, even one other person, the meeting would have to be moved.

This seemed … odd. Wise is a long-time senator. How small could his office be?

Days later a fellow gun violence prevention activist emailed the senator about SB 2 and said she looked forward to seeing him at our meeting. This prompted some hoopla, as I had not yet called his office to say I would be bringing her. When I called, I was again told about his very, very small office and that, if another person was coming, we would just have to reschedule for a time after the session was over, maybe in the summer.

Again, this made no sense to me — how small could the man’s office be? — but I agreed to come alone to keep my meeting time, even as I predicted SB 2, with all of its flaws, lack of funding, and obvious questions, would pass as is because it checked all of the right boxes of not doing nothing.?

The day of my meeting with Sen. Wise, I had no other reason to be in Frankfort, but I prepared in advance like I would for any meeting with a legislator, put on a nice suit, and drove to Frankfort and back, all to meet with a state senator for 15 minutes and share my concerns about a bill that we both knew would easily pass.

In the end, SB 2 passed minutes before midnight on the last day before the veto period, with each side given only three minutes for floor arguments.

Three whole minutes.

This is how it works, folks. If our system, such as it is, sounds absurd, it is because it is.

On May 20, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported that Rep. Josh Calloway “helped broker a deal regarding Senate Bill 2… “We were like — I won’t use the word ‘threatened’ — but they wanted Senate Bill 2 bad. I kept being asked, ‘please, will you not call your amendment?’ … Finally, about eight o’clock that evening I was taken off the floor and asked, ‘What would you have to get in order to not call your amendment?’ I said ‘House Bill 278.’” Both Senate Bill 2, without Calloway’s amendment, and House Bill 278 passed that night.”

After reading this story, I immediately texted Rep. Calloway. Can you tell me who kept asking you not to call your amendment? I asked. And who took you off the floor to ask what it would take to get you not to to call your amendment?

I received a “read receipt” before noon on May 20. As of this writing, Rep. Calloway has not responded.

Remember all of this next time you are told to call or write or meet with elected officials because you are concerned about a bill.?

Remember that I emailed the Education Committee and my representative about SB 2 multiple times; exchanged long emails with Sen. Wise; attended Sen. Wise’s school safety task force meetings over last summer and fall; published columns; testified in committee; met with the sponsoring senator.

None of it mattered.?

They wanted SB 2 bad.

Well. They got it.?

And Sen. Wise’s office is not remotely small.?

You can’t turn on the news, open an online newspaper, or scroll social media without seeing Trump’s name and/or picture, though cable TV — from CNN to MSNBC to FOX — might be the worst. Merchandise featuring the former president was sold at a Trump rally at Big League Dreams stadium in Las Vegas. (Photo by Jeniffer Solis/Nevada Current)

One morning during the 2024 legislative session, I walked out of a meeting about Senate Bill 2 — putting armed guardians in lieu of fully-trained school resource officers in our schools, with no budget allocation — and ran into a familiar lawmaker and two interns waiting for the elevator.?

“I was just saying how all of us know how we’re going to vote before going into committee meetings,” the lawmaker said to me, both interns looking puzzled. The lawmaker continued explaining that leadership drives the bills they want, that bill sponsors know they have the votes to get out of committee before they testify or present their bills, and that nothing is a surprise.?

I joined the conversation to express, as a citizen, how infuriating this is. The young interns shook their heads in disbelief, but this is how it works.?

So much is predetermined. And it is all performance.

The day before primary voting began, I ran into a longtime, Chamber of Commerce-style, Anderson County Republican and asked for his thoughts on our state Senate primary, a three-way race among Adrienne Southworth (incumbent), Ed Gallrein and Aaron Reed.?

I pointed out that Reed, with his cowboy hat and giant signs around town, seems to be making the biggest splash, and our conversation circled around to the current state of GOP politics: Our three candidates are all basically the same — Trump loyalists, election and/or vaccine deniers — and leaning far enough right that none would have qualified as a normal conservative prior to 2016 and Donald Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party.

What stands out is not policy, but performance.

Watching Trump on trial for hush money payments (potential campaign finance violations) to a porn star, I’ve come to realize how blinded I have been about the former president, and current presumptive nominee, as far back as the Access Hollywood Tape.?

To refresh your memory, and mine, here is a transcript of the audio/video, which opens thus: “WARNING: This video contains language that some may find offensive.”

“I moved on her, and I failed. I’ll admit it. I did try and f—- her. She was married…,” and then, “You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful, I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the p—-. You can do anything.”

From 2016 on, I was so focused on the “grab them by the p—- part that I missed the point that appealed, and continues to appeal, to many Republican voters. “When you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything.”?

Trump might have been a TV star with “The Apprentice” leading up to the 2016 election, but that pales in comparison to today. You can’t turn on the news, open an online newspaper, or scroll social media without seeing Trump’s name and/or picture, though cable TV — from CNN to MSNBC to FOX — might be the worst.

It’s like watching the O.J. Simpson white Bronco chase circa 1994 on a never-ending loop. We can’t take our eyes off of it, even though nothing new ever happens. We are transfixed, not by breaking news but by the outlandishness of the constant, over the top performances.

Republicans voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 for the same reasons they will vote for him in 2024. He is the ultimate American celebrity; an obsession on the right and the left; the big middle finger to liberalism; the rule-snubbing blowhard voters wish they could be in their boring, restricted, church-going, law-abiding lives; their hero; their definition of what it means to be a man.

If Adrienne Southworth loses her reelection bid, I suspect it will be less about policy differences than the fact that, because she talks back and has refused to fall in line with Republican leadership in Frankfort, they redistricted her away from her own voting base.?

Gallrein and Reed, both loudly touting their Navy Seal credentials in next door Shelby County, where GOP voters almost double those in Southworth’s original Anderson, will be more appealing to the Trump voter looking for the man with the biggest hat.?

Agree or disagree with Southworth — and I disagree with her on all policy — the fact is that more than a few times she has been less than deferential, therefore displeasing, to leaders in the Frankfort Frat House.?

But the bigger than life, Navy Seal he-men? Military retirees more likely to fall in line and take orders from leadership? Check and check!?

It’s the same way committee meetings work. Leadership has already chosen winners and losers and what happens is 100% based on what those men can sell as tough enough, as man enough, in a Trump-dominated election year.

I can see now, for example, that Senate Bill 2 — sponsored by leadership darling Sen. Max Wise, and a bill that I followed and fought in good faith — was one of those bills blessed with passage long before it ever saw its first committee meeting, which was nothing more than a formality.?

If the Republican Party is not yet dead, it is a five o’clock shadow of itself. The GOP goal, at the state and national level, is not governing. The goal is getting the most time on stage.

If you’re a star, they let you do it, you can do anything, even if it’s driving nail after nail in the coffin of your own party.

Senate Majority Floor Leader Damon Thayer, R-Georgetown. (LRC Public Information)

In an April 21 KET interview, GOP Senate leader Damon Thayer was asked to define the term “normal Republican.”

“Someone who wants to help put the fire out that’s burning in America today,” he said, adding that he is “tired of the jokers,” only to add this minutes later: “I don’t think that President Trump is the problem, but I do think his style of politics exacerbated the situation and made it appear to be a more ugly and dirty and, yeah, by the way I’m voting for Donald Trump for president in November.”

This is the same Donald Trump currently sitting a courtroom every day, the one who vows to use his next presidential term to exact punishment on perceived rivals and, according to his latest interview with Time magazine, “uses crime as a cudgel, painting urban America as a savage hell-scape even though violent crime has declined in recent years, with homicides sinking 6% in 2022 and 13% in 2023, according to the FBI” even as he personally “faces dozens of felony charges, including for election interference, conspiracy to defraud the United States, willful retention of national-security secrets, and falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments” to a porn star prior his 2016 election.

I apologize, Kentucky

In what political dystopia is Trump not one of the jokers to be tired of??

How did we get here?

As recently as a few years ago, there was a clear, two-way split in the Republican Party of Kentucky. Normal Republicans claimed the conservative, chamber of commerce-style party of Ronald Reagan while, flipping over the table, Trump Republicans bucked all tradition.

Today, there are three, very different and competing factions of Kentucky Republicans: Conservatives (in the tradition of Reagan), Trump’s MAGA group, and the Liberty Party.?

We should therefore disabuse ourselves of the notion that there is one, big Republican supermajority in Frankfort. There is not. If anything, that supermajority is rotting from the inside out, and, like at the building of Frankenstein’s monster, leadership seems both stunned and in denial at their own creation.

In the same April 21 KET interview, Thayer gleefully points out that Kentucky’s Democratic Party “failed to field candidates in a majority of House seats,” conveniently failing to explain why so many “normal Republicans” are also taking a hard pass at running for office.?

Why are the normals not running? The very real dangers, to themselves and to their families, in a Trump-dominated state where political candidates who do not pledge blind fealty to Donald Trump become a target of the violence-hungry, gun-obsessed, MAGA and Liberty-fringe embraced and emboldened by Trump and his allies.

Let’s be clear. If you are voting for Trump or supporting Trump’s policies — such as they are, no thinking person believes he has actual policies any more than they believe he has read the U.S. Constitution or the bibles he’s now hawking to pay his legal fees — you are a Trump Republican.

What Thayer, the state Senate’s majority floor leader, either does not realize or cannot yet admit is that he is as responsible for building the monster and setting the Trumpian political fire — the one he now claims he wants to put out — as anyone, selling his Reagan card on the black market long ago in exchange for anyone labeling themselves with an “R” to fill seats so that he could, in turn, declare the current supermajority as his personal achievement and legacy.

Congratulations, I guess?

In this respect, departing Senate floor leader Thayer is no different than Newt Gingrich who, when he resigned his speakership decades ago, said about the new-school Republicans he himself ushered into power, “I am not willing to preside over people who are cannibals.”

Or, as historian George Packer wrote about Gingrich on page 24 of his National Book Award winner, “The Unwinding”:? “Whether he ever truly believed his own rhetoric, the generation he brought to power fervently did. He gave them mustard gas and they used it on every conceivable enemy, including him.”

Listening to Thayer’s obvious — or maybe oblivious — disconnect between insisting he is dedicated to dousing Trumpian wildfires while also voting for Trump, I am reminded of Mr. Magoo, the bumbling, near-sighted cartoon character who goes happily about his daily routine while leaving a trail of chaos and destruction behind for others to clean up.?

Thayer was right when he said there are fires burning in America today.?

What he fails to do is take responsibility.?

Thayer will be gone at the end of this year, leaving regular, everyday Kentuckians who are suffering and will suffer for decades to clean up the mess and the monster he helped create.

Some legacy.

Republican lawmakers and the families of crime victims join GOP Secretary of State Michael Adams for a ceremonial signing of the omnibus crime bill, House Bill 5. (Kentucky Lantern photo by McKenna Horsley)

If there is a photo that defines Kentucky’s 2024 regular session, it is a smiling Secretary of State Michael Adams signing House Bill 5 — a sprawling, data-questionable, pro-incarceration bill with an unknown, sky’s-the-limit budget, overriding the governor’s veto — on the House steps, surrounded by more than two dozen applauding supporters and lawmakers. All white.

Adams quipped, “I feel safer already!”

A few days earlier, I had been speaking at a dinner about frustrations with our GOP supermajority legislature on HB 5 and failed firearm legislation when a Black man in the audience asked about the Crown Act.

Could I explain this to the audience? he wanted to know.

I tried, twice, and realized I could not.

Not logically.

How do you logically explain the outright dismissal of a bill that would allow Black people and marginalized others to wear their natural hair, the hair God gave them, in the workplace?

What stands out to me, now that the 2024 regular session has come to a close, is not the many faceted and cruel HB 5, which stole much of the spotlight. What stands out to me is the consistent, ugly undercurrent of racism.

Some of that racism was big and bold and overt, like Senate Bill 6 and House Bill 9 which aimed to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion — DEI — in our education system, but there were others that poisoned the Frankfort drinking water, too.

House Bill 18, for instance, passed with a veto override, keeping landlords from having to accept Section 8 housing vouchers. Discrimination based on source of income.

I will not soon forget watching the bill sponsor, Rep. Ryan Dotson, on the House floor as he presented his bill, growing frustrated to the point of snarling and raising his voice as Rep. Sarah Stalker dared to ask the most basic questions about his overtly discriminatory bill.

To say Dotson was snarling is not an exaggeration. I watched it live, and it was so shocking in the moment I took a screenshot and paused as House Speaker David Osborne stopped him, advising caution.

While Rep. Jennifer Decker’s anti-DEI House Bill 9 failed to pass, who can forget the story of her telling an NAACP audience that her white father was a slave. “So, if you’re asking, did we own slaves? My father was a slave, just to a white man and he was white.” And then she doubled down on the claim when asked to explain.

Many bills are filed every session, assigned to committees, and never see the light of day. But notably this year, of the hundreds of bills filed, only two did not receive a committee assignment.

One was Sen. David Yates’s abortion exceptions bill. No surprise there, with a GOP supermajority who can’t decide if it’s politically expedient to allow exceptions or not.

The other was Sen. Gerald Neal’s proposed Crown Act, “which would have outlawed discrimination on the basis of a hairstyle historically associated with a person’s race.”

Republican state Sen. Whitney Westerfield, who will leave office at the end of this year, recently told WKYT’s Bill Bryant about HB 5, “We are doing things that are shortsighted, very expensive, and don’t have a return on investment that actually improve public safety.”

Westerfield, who is white, has also sponsored a version of the Crown Act, twice, this year and last, telling Bryant, “Last year when I filed the bill, I think there were 18 no votes in my caucus” and yet even after robust discussion and filing amendments to address concerns, he got no traction, going “from 18 no votes to 17 no votes.”

He went on to explain the damage, both physical (due to chemicals) and mental. “Harm is being done just so that Black men and women, particularly Black women, can look more like the Euro-centric, white woman look, and they’ve been punished for that. Black men have been punished for not looking more like this,” Westerfield said, pointing to his hair. “The hair God gave you ought to be the hair you get to wear … and why there’s not more support for that, I’ll never understand.”

I don’t understand either.

But in an attempt to understand, I went back to the 2023 committee discussion of Westerfield’s Crown Act / Senate Bill 63, relating to discriminatory practices against a person. What follows is Sen. Phillip Wheeler’s questioning in that committee.

“You say this applies to everybody, right?” said Wheeler. “So if my secretary decided to come in tomorrow with a pink, spiked [hair]do into the office, and wearing a shirt that says “F.U.,” and I know my secretary would never do that, but if she did, could I say this is not the image I want to present for my business? You need to come in with, you know, a more traditional look, and a professional look, similar to the dress code that we adopted on the senate floor?”

Westerfield responded that an employer can certainly impose an office dress code, but that this is not germane to the bill, which specifically protects hairstyles “historically associated with race.”

This prompted Wheeler to say, “I guess if she had Irish heritage, and if you’ve ever watched the movie “Druids,” there’s some pretty wild [hair]do’s, so she could come in there and argue something like that” and then “I guess if you had an African-American working there, that would probably imply that you didn’t have a problem with African-Americans working there just by the fact that they’re present, would it not?”

Wheeler’s legislative bio states that he is a Christian, an attorney, and a Fulbright Scholar. And yet his convoluted argument — which I watched four times to ensure accuracy in quoting him — was like watching a mosquito ride a tricycle in a hailstorm.

I watched one more time and gave up.

In an April 15 report upon the close of session, Senate President Robert Stivers was asked about DEI and replied: “I know some people (don’t) like to report this, but I think this caucus has been very good about being race neutral. What we seek, and what some people don’t want to portray us as, is ‘treat everybody fairly.’ ”

So let’s talk about popular perceptions and how those perceptions come to be.

There is that photo of power — celebrating HB 5, a pro-incarceration bill resurrected from the ashes of discrimination and bad ideas of the 1990s — on the steps of the Capitol Rotunda, where the statue of Jefferson Davis was only recently removed.

There was Rep. Jason Nemes (who is white) ranting in anger at Rep. Derrick Graham (who is Black) for daring to tell the truth on the House floor: that the Jefferson Davis statue was “taken out for a reason,” that being that he led the Confederacy and the “insurrection taking place when the Civil War started.”

There were bills in both chambers — one wasn’t enough? — to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion in education.

There was housing discrimination.

There was funding for university building projects, except for Kentucky State University, the state’s only historically Black public college.

There is a newly-created task force to see if Jefferson County Public Schools should be “broken up.”

And there were bills that could not get to the floor that would allow — ALLOW — Black people to wear their own hair.

I wonder if anyone has ever told Senate President Stivers he could not “wear his own hair” to the office.

To the Black man who asked me to explain the failure of the Crown Act two years running, I still have no logical explanation. This is what systemic racism is, and there is no logic to it. There is just willful ignorance and fear and control and, in our GOP supermajority legislature, continued denial.

I can’t explain it.

I can’t excuse it either.

And no bill, no matter how sprawling or expensive or punitive, is going to make us “safer already” until we address it.

It’s right there in the Frankfort drinking water, poisoning all of us.

From left, Gov. Andy Beshear, Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg and Dr. Jason Smith spoke to media about a mass shooting in Louisville on April 10, 2023. (Photo by Michael Swensen/Getty Images)

April 10 marks one year since a mentally unstable 25-year-old walked into Old National Bank in Louisville and shot five people to death — Thomas Elliott, James Tutt Jr., Juliana Farmer, Joshua Barrick, Deana Eckert — and injured eight, including Nickolas Wilt, a young police officer who was shot in the head and miraculously survived.

Dr. Jason Smith, the chief medical officer at University of Louisville Hospital, called on lawmakers to address gun violence. “To everyone who helps make policy, both at state, city, [and] federal levels – I would simply ask you to do something. Because doing nothing — which is what we’ve been doing — is not working.”

Listening to Dr. Smith, I was certain — absolutely 100%, no doubt, certain — that a gunman waltzing into an upscale office and shooting bankers to death during a staff meeting might be the nightmare scenario to move our powerful Republican supermajority, in the words of Dr. Smith, to do something.?

I have bad news.

They did nothing.?

Frankfort is a mirage; a big, marble-floored, rock on a hill; a fraternal house of optical illusion where mostly men come together ostensibly to make policy, to debate in good faith, but are really there these days to sling culture wars clickbait and craft an annual slogan small enough to fit on a cereal box.

This year’s slogan: Safer Kentucky!

House Bill 5 was titled the “Safer Kentucky Act” (see what they did there?) and was both sprawling and simple: just lock everyone up until they’re dead.?

I remember sitting through an evening committee hearing on HB 5 — the one where we found out the data supporting the bill came from Georgia, not Kentucky — and telling a friend on my drive home from the Frankfort mirage, “If those bill sponsors worked in the private sector, they’d all be fired for cause.”?

Senate Bill 20 said kids should be tried as adults if “they were at least 15 years old at the time of an alleged crime and used a gun while committing a Class A, B or C felony — whether or not the gun was “functional.””

Senate Bill 2 will put armed, volunteer ‘guardians’ in schools. In pushing back on this absurd idea, I have been patted on the head and repeatedly told that this bill is flawed and will be “fixed later.” How can anyone with a half-functioning brain pass a bill to arm strangers in our kids’ schools on the vow to “fix it later?”?

But hey, these are our lawmakers — they make THE LAWS — even as this year’s crime bills are nothing more than an eat-your-Wheaties-style sales pitch. Safer Kentucky!?

You will not be any safer, and your lawmakers know it, but they desperately need you to believe, like in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, that you and your kids will be safer … until the November elections are over.?

As we mark one year since the Old National Bank mass shooting, let’s take a look at two gun bills side by side, both filed in this regular session by Republicans.

There was Sen. Whitney Westerfield’s CARR bill — crisis aversion and rights retention — which specifically addressed mental health and firearm access.

CARR was talked about and written about for months before the senator ever presented his bill to the public. When he finally introduced CARR in the Interim Joint Judiciary Committee on Dec. 15, the room was so bursting with hope that two overflow rooms were needed.?

Families of the victims of Old National Bank were there. Whitney Austin, a woman who survived being shot 12 times at a bank in 2018, and others testified in favor. Many hard questions were asked by lawmakers.?

The day Westerfield filed the bill in late January, he and co-sponsor David Yates, a Louisville Democrat, held a standing-room-only press conference. Notably Sen. David Givens, president pro tempore of the Senate, stood in the back of the room. Surely, if for no other reason than out of respect to Westerfield, the CARR bill would be assigned to the Judiciary Committee he chaired, placed upon the agenda, and discussed.

But CARR — presciently assigned unlucky Senate Bill 13 — met its fate on March 1 when it was assigned to Veterans, Military Affairs, and Public Protection and never saw the light again.

In chilling contrast there was Senate Bill 2 — volunteer “guardians” to carry guns in our schools — which sprung from nowhere on Feb. 22 and got its first hearing a week later. The only person who testified in favor was the sponsor himself, Sen. Max Wise, and his bill passed with ease out of committees and in the Senate. Look Ma! No hands!

On the last day of the session, I waited at the Capitol from 8 a.m. until dinnertime to see if this “guardian” bill would get its final passage. I watched the board all day. It was never posted. I assumed it was dead and went home. In the final hour, between 11 pm and midnight, SB 2 was called for a vote on the House floor, debate was limited by leadership to three minutes per side, and it passed. Poof!

So if you’re playing along, the bill vetted and discussed for months that would have given loved ones a legal avenue to remove firearms from someone suffering a mental health crisis, endangering themselves or others, was left in the trash bin. Too hard to sell.

The flawed, not fully thought out, “we can fix it later,” last-minute bill to put armed volunteers in our schools passed as easy as plucking a blade of bluegrass. A Safer Kentucky!?

After the Old National Bank mass shooting a year ago, Dr. Smith addressed the media. “To be honest with you, we barely had to adjust our operating room schedule to be able to do this. That’s how frequent we are having to deal with gun violence in our community,” he said. “I’ll tell you personally, I’m weary … I’m more than tired, I’m weary. There’s only so many times you can walk into a room and tell someone their [loved one] is not coming home tomorrow. And it just breaks your heart when you hear someone screaming mommy, or daddy, it just becomes too hard, day in and day out, to be able to do that.”

What did lawmakers — our powerful Republican supermajority — do to address Dr. Smith’s concerns??

Nothing.?

It will remain easy in Kentucky for a mentally ill person, intent on doing harm, to buy guns and ammunition minutes before walking into an office and shooting innocent people to death during a staff meeting.

The Safer Kentucky Act was just an act.?

Frankfort has become nothing but a swirling mirage of scare tactics to drive voters to the polls, a place where culture wars and sound bites suck up all of the oxygen in lieu of real lawmaking.?

The big GOP legislative priority this year was to scream “Safer Kentucky!” over and over and over again — He likes it! Hey Mikey! — to feed the electoral Beast come November. That’s all.

The goal was never to make you safer.?

The goal was simply to keep themselves in power so they can come back and do nothing again next year.

Men of the legislature gathered with Senate President Robert Stivers to talk to media after overriding Gov. Andy Beshear's veto of a bill that preempted housing discrimination ordinances in Louisville and Lexington. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Liam Niemeyer)

A week before the end of this regular session, the Senate Committee on Veterans, Military Affairs, and Public Protection — commonly known as VMAPP and chaired by Sen. Rick Girdler — met for 21 minutes. I attended this meeting.

After the prayer, pledge of allegiance and roll call, Sen. Gex Williams kindly introduced a little girl, his page for the day, and the meeting began.

When Rep. Killian Timoney brought his bill to the table, he was flanked by law enforcement officers. Afterward, chair Girdler joked, “When you bring the police with you, we’ll agree to anything …” ?

After bills presented by Rep. Matthew Koch and Rep. Chris Freeland, both of whom had the same retired general at the table with them, Girdler said, “General, have you noticed that when you’re talking, we don’t interrupt you with anything like a motion … as long as you’re talking, we’re listening,” to which the General responded that he’s been in the role for 32 years and said it’s “a joke that all I need to do is throw on my uniform or throw out the military flag and you all will give me your first born son. It’s a very nice advantage.” ?

When Girdler called Rep. Mary Beth Imes to the table, he said, “Finally got a pretty lady up here instead of all of these old, ugly men.” Chuckles leaked through the room. After the vote on her bill, he added, “You didn’t even have to bring a cop or a general with you. (10:30)?

Throughout these exchanges, I kept glancing at the little girl accompanying Sen. Williams, wondering what she was thinking as she witnessed what powerful men value: that when policemen or military men are at the table, lawmaking is a good-old-boy slap on the back; that even a female elected official, supposedly their equal, holds primary value as a “pretty lady.”

There will be those who read this and roll their eyes, dismissing my observations as partisan nitpicking. But imagine a panel of female legislators goofing off and giggling like this in an official, public meeting about issues that affect law enforcement, the military, or public safety.

You can’t imagine it, so I’ll move on.

I have been re-reading Peggy Noonan’s 1990 memoir, “What I Saw at the Revolution,” about her years working as a speechwriter in the Reagan White House. “Everyone is happy, but not everyone is good,” she writes on page 46. “There is a split, a difference, between how people act and the dreadful things they are doing…”

Preach, Peggy. And while we’re here, let’s take a look at our white, male-dominated, Kentucky GOP supermajority, and see what they’ve done these last few months.

In the beginning, there was rousing support for the Momnibus bill, created in the interim by a bipartisan group of women legislators. There were cheers all around to eliminate the diaper tax. Near the session’s end, we got Sen. Danny Carroll’s ambitious and thoughtful Horizons Act child care bill.?

And they all lost steam. They lost steam because helping women/mothers is not popular with GOP voters — nothing is free, ladies; buck up, pay your own way — and this is an election year.

There was House Bill 513 which removed authority from the governor and gave it to the legislature to decide what gets displayed in our Capitol Rotunda. It appears Gov. Andy Beshear’s removal of the Jefferson Davis statue, a powerful symbol of the Confederacy and the defense of slavery, still has many of our Republican legislators rankled.

And though it did not receive a vote before the veto period — will it come back in April? — lawmakers and lobbyists spent an exorbitant amount of time and resources trying to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) from our public universities. And hey, who needs diversity? Or equality? Or inclusiveness? Apparently, not our GOP supermajority.

There was the common sense Crown Act, Senate Bill 231, which would have allowed Black people to wear their natural hair and cultural hairstyles in the workplace and got absolutely no traction. Imagine voting against “allowing” your neighbor to “wear” their natural hair at work and still walking proudly into church on Sunday, Bible in hand, claiming to love your neighbors.

House Bill 5 — the sprawling, tough-on-crime, let’s just lock everyone up bill — passed as we all knew it would, even as it carried a truckload of controversy, including over where primary sponsor, Rep. Jared Bauman, got the data to support claims. These questions remained unanswered, leading to rising irritation at continued demands for data, culminating in the shocking photo of Senate President Robert Stivers and Floor Leader Damon Thayer losing their tempers at Sen. Karen Berg for daring to demand answers.?

Imagine Stivers and Thayer shaking fingers and openly chastising a male senator on the floor in this manner. But by God, they taught her a lesson.

HB 5 has the distinction of addressing a kitchen-sink list of crimes, much of which includes gun violence but never directly addresses access to guns.?

Senate Bill 56 called for safe storage of firearms — keeping guns out of the hands of children, locking guns in cars so they cannot be easily stolen and used in crimes, etc. — and was assigned to VMAPP on Jan. 3. It disappeared from radar.?

Senate Bill 13, commonly known as the CARR bill and filed by a Republican, allowing for temporary removal of firearms from someone experiencing a mental health crisis, was also assigned to VMAPP and never seen again.

Meanwhile, according to statistics from Everytown for Gun Safety, “By 2021, 72 percent of veteran suicides involved firearms—the highest proportion in over 20 years.” But what interest would VMAPP, a committee on veterans affairs, have in this.

As we rest during the veto period, look at where our lawmakers invested their time and energy these last few months, on what they fought hardest for and ignored, on where they shut down debate, and the priorities of Kentucky’s white, male-dominated, GOP supermajority become blindingly clear.

Hint: It’s not women and children, education, equal rights, or taking care of the most vulnerable. These are the same folks, after all, who rebranded homelessness in HB 5 as “street camping,” as if the homeless are happily outdoors all night, sleeping on concrete by choice, grilling hotdogs and singing campfire songs.?

Maybe if the sponsors of bills for safe gun storage, crisis aversion, child care, the Crown Act and others promised to bring uniformed police officers, a general, or enough pretty ladies to the table, good bills could get a fair shake.?

Remember the little girl — dark-skinned, with naturally curly black hair — who attended the Senate VMAPP meeting as Sen. Williams’ page and witnessed nothing but a good old boy, misogynistic, frat-house-like romp masquerading as serious lawmaking.?

To paraphrase Peggy Noonan, not everyone is good and they are doing some dreadful things. Set your expectations accordingly.

A child crosses under caution tape at Robb Elementary School on May 25, 2022 in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 students and 2 adults were killed. Dozens of officers from various agencies stood in the hallways for over an hour, reportedly confused about chain of command. If a school district has guardians, writes Teri Carter, what is the chain of command with SROs, the police, etc.? (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

Let’s start here: Republicans have an overwhelming supermajority in the Kentucky legislature. We also have a record surplus. If a Republican-sponsored bill is a priority, if leadership wants it, there is nothing to stop them from fully funding and passing that bill.

In 2019, the year after the deadly Marshall County High School shooting, our general assembly passed legislation asking public schools to have armed school resource officers (SROs) onsite, a request that subsequently became a requirement. Despite that requirement, five years later, hundreds of our schools do not have an SRO because of lack of funding, lack of workforce participation, or both.?

Enter Senate Bill 2 — the “guardians” in schools bill that is quickly moving through the legislature — which proposes to fill the gap though it does not contain a request for funding.

Even as Sen. Max Wise, sponsor of SB 2 and chairman of the school safety task force that met in 2023, stated in his opening comments on March 11 on KET, “We’ve demanded funding, but we have not seen that funding.”

Sen. Wise made it a point to say the proposed guardian program is not a mandate. School boards would have the autonomy to decide if they want to hire a guardian — which is not an SRO but could be a retired law enforcement officer or honorably discharged veteran —? and that the expenses associated with a guardian would be decided by school districts “if they wish to have a stipend or not,” said Sen. Wise. “We are looking at a volunteer base for this.”?

This is a budget year for the General Assembly. If having qualified SROs in every Kentucky school is a top priority, why are we asking for volunteers? Why is there no funding?

There are Kentucky school districts that have their own police departments, funded by the counties in which they serve. Joining Sen. Wise on KET, for instance, was Chris Barrier who serves as Director of Law Enforcement for Montgomery County Schools.?

Woodford County has a dedicated SRO program funded by the district. Its website lists a school police chief and six officers.

As a law enforcement officer recently told me, police officers are not one size fits all. In the same way you would not send an algebra teacher to teach a Latin class, or a dentist to do a knee replacement, there are officers who are a perfect fit to be SROs and there are officers who are not.?

So while the idea presented by Sen. Wise sounds good on the surface, being retired law enforcement or an honorably discharged veteran does not, in itself, make someone the right choice to carry a gun in a school setting.

And let’s consider chain of command. One of the contributing factors to the abject failure in Uvalde, where 19 students and 2 teachers were shot to death and 17 were injured, was that dozens of officers from various agencies stood in the hallways for over an hour, reportedly confused about chain of command. If a school district has guardians, what is the chain of command with SROs, the police, etc. …?

At the 43 minute mark of the KET interview, a school shooting survivor submitted a question that host Renee Shaw read on air, ending with, “What assurances can we have that retired military and law enforcement, even with training, will be able to adequately handle this type of situation if they are faced with it?”

Sen. Wise answered, “There is no piece of legislation that can combat evil.”

We can’t legislate evil. I hear this talking point regularly from Republican lawmakers, to which I say: Please stop repeating this falsehood. You are lawmakers. Murder is evil, rape is evil, child abuse is evil. Lawmakers make laws to combat evil every day.?

Your literal job as lawmakers is to “legislate evil.” Do your job.

Which brings me back to the beginning. Republicans have an overwhelming supermajority in the legislature. If school safety is a priority, there is nothing stopping leadership from passing a bill to fund SROs for every single school in Kentucky. So why aren’t they?

Meanwhile, these same lawmakers refuse to address the herd of elephants charging through the room: gun violence.

School shooters often exhibit warning signs. There are currently two bills filed with the General Assembly that could keep guns out of the hands of a school shooter. SB 56, sponsored by Democratic Sen. Gerald Neal, asks for safe storage of guns in the home. SB 13, sponsored by Republican Sen. Whitney Westerfield, allows for temporary removal of guns from someone experiencing a mental health crisis.

And yet both of these bills are languishing, unheard, in the Senate Veterans and Military Affairs committee, even as data indicates that 72% of veteran suicides are by firearm.?

In the Judiciary Committee discussion this week on House Bill 5, a sponsor argued that saving even one life was worth the 10-year, $1 billion price tag on that bill.?

?Kentucky has the funds to fully fund our SRO program for all of our schools. And yet, I predict SB 2, with all of its flaws, lack of funding, and obvious questions, it will pass as is. It checks all of the right boxes of not doing nothing.??

Meanwhile, Republican leadership in Frankfort, in the face of increasing gun violence, continues to bury their heads in deep, wet sand, refusing to talk about guns and address the root causes of gun violence.

If only our Republican supermajority had an ounce of our first responders’ courage.

Flowers, plush toys and wooden crosses are placed at a memorial dedicated to the victims of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School on June 3, 2022 in Uvalde, Texas. Nineteen students and two teachers were killed on May 24 after an 18-year-old gunman opened fire inside the school. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

According to research gathered by Sandy Hook Promise, “An estimated 4.6 million American children live in a home where at least one gun is kept loaded and unlocked. These improperly stored weapons have contributed to school shootings, suicides and the deaths of family members, including infants and toddlers.”

Senate Bill 56 — sponsored by Sen. Gerald Neal, requiring safe storage of firearms — was assigned to the Veterans, Military Affairs, & Public Protection Committee more than eight weeks ago. It has not been heard.

This is in stark contrast to Senate Bill 2 — sponsored by Sen. Max Wise, asking for armed “guardians” in our schools — which was filed, assigned, discussed, and voted on in one week.

On Feb. 29, I sat in the front row for the Senate Standing Committee on Education to witness the discussion of SB 2, which purports to fill a void for the hundreds of Kentucky schools that do not have an armed school resource officer (SRO) due to lack of funds or lack of qualified applicants.?

As the bill stands today, “guardians” are unpaid positions. Yes, you read that right. Unpaid volunteers, possibly retired law enforcement officers (LEOs) or military, who will receive training to carry guns in our schools.?

I can’t believe anyone needs to say this, but it is wildly unrealistic to make an unpaid volunteer responsible for protecting hundreds of kids and staff from a surprise attack by someone on a suicidal shooting rampage.

Sen. Reggie Thomas made a salient point. “When I read this bill, all I envision is that our children are going to begin going to fortresses, armed fortresses, and that we are moving further and further away from learning centers and moving further toward armed camps.”?

Is this where we are headed, schools as prisons?

I looked around the committee room and noted that no one from law enforcement or school safety was testifying in favor of this bill.?

Jon Akers, executive director of the Kentucky Center for School Safety, was sitting behind me. He did not testify.?

Ryan Straw, vice president and government affairs director for the Fraternal Order of Police, was standing in the back of the room. He did not testify.

Cathy Hobart, a long-time gun safety advocate, testified in opposition to SB 2, saying in part, “Sen. Wise brought up Uvalde. How many guns were in that school? How many armed people were there that day, standing outside the door where the shooter was? And those kids were dying inside that room. There has to be a different solution to this problem…” and “Sen. Neal has a bill that you’ve never considered that has to do with safe storage of guns. The kids that are shooting kids in school get their guns at home.”

Sen. Danny Carroll, a former police officer, acknowledged that we all have the same goal — and he is 100 percent right about this — to keep our kids safe. But “I’m troubled by some of this …,” he said, and that “the liability part of this concerns me. We are asking somebody to come in for no pay (and) we can’t completely protect them from civil liability. We protect officers, and they still end up in courts being sued from time to time.”

And then there was this exchange.

“I have an open door policy and always have,” Wise said. “For those organizations that have not yet scheduled or come to my office, I hope they do know also that open door policy is for everyone, regardless of opposition or support of this bill,” and that the bill was filed a week ago, Feb. 22nd. “You know how many associations have came [sic] to me to talk about their concerns with the bill, Senator (Carroll)?”?

Wise gave a sign for “zero.”

Until Wise filed SB 2 a week ago, I did not know it existed. But back in the fall, I attempted to talk with him twice about potential firearm legislation.?

On Sep. 11, I emailed Wise. The subject line read: “Mental health and gun violence prevention — we need your help,” and closed with, “You will often see me sitting in committee meetings, even in the interim, wearing my red ‘Moms’ shirt. If there is anything I can do to help you, please ask.”

He did not ask.

On Oct. 30 I emailed Wise again. The subject line read: “On potential firearm legislation in 2024.” I thanked him for a question he’d asked in an interim committee and closed with, “If you are open to discussing potential firearm legislation for 2024, I would love to talk to you. Please tell me what I can do to help.”?

He did not tell me what I could do to help.

Wise’s bill to arm unpaid volunteers in our schools passed out of committee as easily as blowing the puff off a dandelion.

Meanwhile SB 56 — keeping firearms safely stored and out of the hands of kids — rots in a drawer.

This is your Kentucky GOP supermajority at work.

Rookie Police Officer Nickolas Wilt was shot in the head as he approached the building in Louisville where a mass shooter lay in wait after spraying his coworkers with automatic weapon fire on April 10, 2023. Officer Cory Galloway, who was training Wilt, killed the gunman and also was wounded. Louisville Police Chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel gave Wilt a fist bump as he left Frazier Rehabilitation Institute in late July of 2023. Five people died in the shooting at Old National Bank. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Sarah Ladd)

On Feb. 9, Sen. Matthew Deneen, R-Hardin, sent out a press release that began, “It’s an unfortunate time here in the commonwealth as we must address a pressing issue, and that is gun violence …”

Yes! I wanted to scream. Finally!

But Deneen was not talking about the epidemic of gun violence that ends hundreds of Kentucky lives every year, shattering our families and our communities. He was hawking one specific bill — Senate Bill 20 — like a carnival barker, addressing “gun violence being committed by juveniles,” even though anyone who is remotely sentient, conscious, or half-sober and awake knows juveniles are not the only perpetrators of gun violence in Kentucky.?

Six days after Deneen’s press release, I was at the capitol with Moms Demand Action to meet with lawmakers about gun violence and a number of potential bills, including CARR (Crisis Aversion and Rights Retention), safe storage, etc.

I knew that Moms had requested a meeting with Deneen, so I checked the official notes:? “Response to email sent on 1/29 stated that Senator Deneen didn’t have any time in his schedule to meet with Moms group.”?

The senator didn’t have time.

The dunderheaded irony of a state senator so het up about gun violence perpetrated by juveniles that he has no interest in meeting with moms who have raised … checks notes … juveniles.?

But I digress, and I have a confession to make.?

The most frustrating thing about meeting with Republican lawmakers to discuss gun violence is not the men (and they are mostly men) who are rude and dismissive, or who seemingly enjoy wrestling you, an unpaid volunteer mom, down to the mat with circular KRS language and legalese.?

No. It is the Republican lawmaker who agrees with you that hurts most. The one who says, you’re right, but I can’t help you or I’ll lose my seat. The one who says, I’m on your side but please keep that confidential. The one who lacks the courage to say what he really thinks to his constituents, even if that something could save their lives. The one who says, I have this problem in my own family but voting for a bill like this would kill me politically.?

Kill me.?

Interesting word choice.

Sen. Whitney Westerfield, R-Fruit Hill, has filed Senate Bill 13, commonly called the CARR bill for Crisis Aversion and Rights Retention, specifically addressing mental health and access to firearms.

Isn’t that the conservative talking point after every mass shooting? That it’s not the guns, that what we need to address is mental health?

In a few short weeks, we will mark the one year anniversary of the Old National Bank mass shooting in Louisville. The day before he killed five people and injured several others, the shooter wrote, “OH MY GOD THIS IS SO EASY. Seriously, I knew it would be doable but this is ridiculous. Walked in and bought a gun, 4 mags, and 120 rounds for $700. Got some glasses and earplugs…” He fired more than 40 rounds in eight minutes. He used an RF-15 that he had bought just a few days before.

Westerfield filed SB 13 four weeks ago. As of this writing, SB 13 has not been assigned to a committee for a hearing.

Back on Sep. 26, 2023, Rep. Jason Nemes tweeted, “Let’s talk about guns. We have too much gun violence in Kentucky. If you commit a crime while unlawfully possessing a gun, under the Safer Kentucky Act you won’t be getting out on probation or parole.”

Yes! I remember thinking. We have too much gun violence in Kentucky. Let’s talk about guns.

Which leads me back to the opening words in Deneen’s press release. “It’s an unfortunate time here in the commonwealth as we must address a pressing issue, and that is gun violence …”

Is there no more creative or courageous argument other than to lock everybody up, including kids, for this “pressing issue”? And where are the arguments from lawmakers like Deneen and Nemes to stop gun violence **before** someone is shot to death, before it is too late?

Where is their public outcry, their press release, their support for bills like SB 13’s CARR to keep those who are suffering from a mental health crisis, like the shooter at Old National Bank, from having access to guns in the first place?

Six years ago, on Feb. 24, 2018, Nemes tweeted, “I’m for mandatory safe storage when loaded gun is accessible by kids; I’m for red-flag laws for domestic violence, hate crime convicts, relevant mental health issues; bump stocks should be regulated same as automatic since they are designed to artificially speed rate of fire 1/”.

This tweet was posted one month after the Marshall County High School shooting where a “15-year-old boy and a 15-year-old girl died.?Kentucky State Police said 20 people were affected by the shooting, 15 of whom suffered gunshot wounds. The victims ranged in age from 14 to 18 years.”

The General Assembly was in session in 2018 when the Marshall County High School shooting occurred. Old National Bank occurred days after the 2023 General Session ended. Which begs the question: Would lawmakers’ calls for action, for legislation, have been different if the bank shooting had happened during the 2023 General Assembly instead of after?

Where is the courage of that 2018 statement today?

How many Kentucky lives might be saved but for one missing trait in too many of our lawmakers: the courage to speak the truth.

Rep. Nancy Tate's proposed perinatal palliative care mandate in case of nonviable pregnancies has been added to a maternal health bill that had enjoyed broad support. (LRC Public Information)

On Jan. 31, I began my day reading a story that opened with a stunning sentence. “Some residents of a county in Kentucky are going on two weeks without running water, forcing them to use public toilets and catch rainwater to bathe.”

As I was reading this news, a 7:31 a.m. tweet popped up from Rep. Josh Calloway. “Actually, what it means to be a good parent is to tell your children the truth. The truth is men are men, women are women, and neither can become the other. The truth is, they were not born in the wrong body, they are perfect just the way God made them. It is Evil to lie to children.”

Yes, this is anecdotal, but it is also reflective of a maddening reality. We are one-third through the all-important budget session of our 2024 General Assembly, and the GOP supermajority in Frankfort is wasting their days focused on problems we do not have and, well, sex. Always sex.

Sen. Lindsey Tichenor and Rep. Nancy Tate called a press conference to talk about bills they have filed to move simultaneously “to keep children away from sexually explicit content.” Rep. Tate said, “Children should be given the opportunity to develop … without thinking about sex or sexual preferences. It is our responsibility as adults to protect the innocence of their minds and bodies.”

Is this not already the responsibility of parents and guardians? Or is the party of small government saying it is government’s job? Because it sounds like the latter. And where are the statistics to show that parents are not already protecting the innocence of their children??

Perhaps if Calloway, Tichenor and Tate spent more time out in the world talking with teachers, caregivers, kids and parents, and less time overthinking sexuality and regurgitating Tucker Carlson’s talking points, they could make better use of their time and the salary we are paying them.

There is also an odd push by lawmakers against their own party’s secretary of state to eliminate no-excuse voting and to cut voting back to a single day.?

In a bill aimed inexplicably at ending early voting, state senator John Schickel, the bill’s lead sponsor, justified the absurdity of this bill saying, “Election Day is special; I would even say sacred. That is why it was established to be special. So those who say that we should worship at the altar of convenience and casualness, I say voting is a privilege and it’s an awesome responsibility that should never be taken as an afterthought.”

Sen. Schickel appears uninterested in the fact that Kentucky voters overwhelmingly appreciate being able to vote outside the hours of 6 a.m and 6 p.m. on one day. Would Sen. Schickel also snicker at those of us who attend church on Saturday evening vs. Sunday morning as “worshipping at the altar of convenience and casualness?”

Continuing on the path of Republicans strapping on their pads and donning helmets to tackle problems that do not exist, Rep. Michael Meredith filed House Bill 341 to keep noncitizens from voting in our elections.?

Excuse me, sir. Non-citizens are not allowed to vote in Kentucky.?

Could someone — maybe someone in, ahem, leadership? — pull folks like Schickel and Meredith aside and tell them about real problems like, I don’t know, the need for potable water, and to stop fixing what ain’t broke?

And yet, because none of the above dumbness is dumb enough, we also have multiple Republican lawmakers filing toothless, irrelevant resolutions that have little to do with Kentucky and everything to do with playing follow-the-leader in national political theater.

There were three separate resolutions filed in support of the Texas governor — that’s right, Texas, which is not Kentucky — to secure its southern border: House Resolution 57, sponsored by Rep. Richard Heath; House Resolution 63, sponsored by Rep. Savannah Maddox; and Senate Concurrent Resolution 111, sponsored by Sen. Johnnie Turner.

I realize many of our representatives disagree with and/or dislike our newly reelected governor, which is their prerogative, but when did it become their job to waste our time and our tax dollars filing multiple resolutions supporting a governor in another state??

Meanwhile, on a cool and partially sunny January morning, “Some residents of a county in Kentucky are going on two weeks without running water, forcing them to use public toilets and catch rainwater to bathe.”

And our GOP lawmakers are all het up about sex, Texas, and too much voting.?

There are a handful of Republican lawmakers doing good work. One can always find a few good eggs in an infested, rotting nest.?

But collectively, Kentucky’s massive GOP supermajority is as consumed as Narcissus by its own image. They are silly and unserious. And they appear unconcerned by the many real problems faced by real Kentuckians as they bustle about the halls of the Capitol filing bills that go nowhere and help no one.?

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds speaks at a press conference in Perry, Iowa, on Jan. 4, 2024, following a school shooting in which a high school student killed a sixth-grader and wounded five others. (Photo courtesy of Douglas Burns/Iowa Capital Dispatch)

Kentucky’s 2024 regular session opened with lawmakers insisting leadership consider rules changes to make the legislative process more transparent. Rep. Savannah Maddox, R-Dry Ridge, was one of those lawmakers, saying, “Proposing rules changes, having a discussion in this body, having a conversation, is not an act of aggression.”

She was right.

And yet this is the same Rep. Maddox who — in anticipation of Sen. Whitney Westerfield, R-Fruit Hill, presenting a bill to address mental health and access to firearms — just a few weeks ago told WHAS TV, “it’s unconscionable that with a supermajority of 111 (Republicans) out of 138 (state legislators) that we’re even having a discussion about gun control legislation.”

Which is it, Rep. Maddox? Is discussion a core tenet of the legislative process, or no?

On Jan. 2, the General Assembly’s first day in session, I received an email from the NRA, titled “Kentucky: 2024 Legislative Session Convenes Today,” that read in bold red letters “Your NRA will continue to fight to promote and protect your right to keep and bear arms and hunting heritage. Our members remain the most powerful political force in American history, and together, we will secure the Second Amendment for present and future generations.”

Last session, our lawmakers made us a Second Amendment sanctuary. Was this not gift enough for the NRA?

This is the same NRA who, when I was kid in the 1970s, focused on firearm safety, but it has sadly become nothing more than a lobbyist for gun manufacturers to sell more guns. Follow the money.

This is the same NRA whose leader for more than three decades, Wayne LaPierre, resigned last week in the midst of a lawsuit alleging that he and three other NRA officials “violated nonprofit laws and misused millions of dollars of NRA funds to finance lavish lifestyles for themselves.” Again, follow the money.

This is the same NRA that Rep. Maddox pandered to on Dec. 18 when she posted on X (formerly Twitter), in part, “House leadership has indicated to the NRA that the Red Flag proposal will not advance this Session.”

Why does House leadership need to “indicate” anything to the NRA?

Follow the money, honey, and that powerful NRA mailing list.

Last week, I was driving from Lexington to Lawrenceburg when I heard there had been a school shooting in a small Iowa town. A sixth- grader was shot to death and seven were wounded by a 17-year-old who then turned the gun on himself.

By the time I got home and opened the news app on my phone to see what had happened, this shooting was not even the top story. I had to scroll halfway down the site’s homepage to find it.

Within hours of the Iowa school shooting, LEX18 reported, “Rowan County Sheriff’s Office says that a 12-year-old student was arrested after bringing a handgun to school.” The gun, thankfully, was not loaded but this was, as we have learned the hard way, dumb luck and a toss of the dice.

When Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley was asked about the Iowa school shooting she said, “That is why we have literally got to take control of the cancer that is mental health. Everybody talks about it as an issue. We have to deal with it as a cancer.”

Haley is right. Most Republicans talk about it, but rarely does a Republican propose a bill to address mental health, which is exactly what Sen. Westerfield is trying to change. On Dec. 15, he presented the basics of his CARR bill — crisis aversion and rights retention — in the interim judiciary committee. He is expected to file the bill soon. CARR specifically addresses mental health by creating a process for temporarily removing firearms from individuals who are at risk of harming themselves or others.

And isn’t mental health the singular talking point that Republican lawmakers trot out every time there is a shooting?

According to data provided by the Whitney/Strong Organization, the majority of Kentucky gun deaths are suicides. Almost 80 percent of veteran suicides are by firearm. And there is this key fact: “Studies show active shooters experience three to five “mental health stressors” in the lead-up to their acts of violence.

With CARR, Westerfield is courageously offering Kentucky Republicans their moment in the sun, the chance to lead, their easy opportunity to make good on the continued insistence that gun violence is about mental health.

If our lawmakers are serious about addressing mental health — if they, in fact, work for our families and not the NRA — they must be open to discussion about CARR and any other legislation aimed at reducing the number of preventable gun deaths in Kentucky.

As Maddox said herself during the opening week of this regular session, “having a discussion in this body, having a conversation, is not an act of aggression.”

Having this discussion will save lives.

Rookie Police Officer Nickolas Wilt was shot in the head as he approached the building in Louisville where a mass shooter lay in wait after spraying his coworkers with automatic weapon fire on April 10, 2023. Officer Cory Galloway, who was training Wilt, killed the gunman and also was wounded. Louisville Police Chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel gave Wilt a fist bump as he left Frazier Rehabilitation Institute in late July of 2023. Five people died in the shooting at Old National Bank. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Sarah Ladd)

The day before he killed five people and injured several others, the Old National Bank shooter wrote, “OH MY GOD THIS IS SO EASY. Seriously, I knew it would be doable but this is ridiculous. Walked in and bought a gun, 4 mags, and 120 rounds for $700. Got some glasses and earplugs…”

On April 10, 2023, the shooter fired more than 40 rounds in eight minutes. He used an RF-15 that he’d bought just a few days before. He was able to shoot a young police officer in the head from a distance. And he had written a list of grievances that included lack of mental health care, how easy his plan was thanks to the NRA, and that politicians aren’t interested in helping people. All of this according to the Louisville Police Department’s 65-page report.

In Thomas Abt’s 2019 book titled “Bleeding Out,” he writes on page 210, “Americans have become accustomed to shootings and killings. They happen daily, even hourly. We might muster some outrage when children are executed in their own classrooms or when parishioners are assassinated as they pray in church, but beyond that, little seems sacred. … This nation is in need of a moral reckoning.”

In August I attended a conference on gun violence prevention where I listened to mothers whose children had died or been severely injured because of our American addiction to, and blasé attitude toward, guns and gun safety.

There was the mother who thought she’d done all the right things, she said. She and her husband were professionals. They lived in the suburbs. They sent their daughter, who was accomplished academically, to an elite college. But when her daughter was home for a holiday break, she was gunned down while standing on a sidewalk, talking to friends.?

There was the mother who described, because they had had recent gun deaths (plural) in their family, her middle-schooler’s panic attacks during and after active shooter drills that also left her child feeling ashamed for having the attacks in front of classmates.

?There was the mother whose toddler found a loaded gun at her in-laws’ house — the loaded gun was sitting out in the open, on or near some children’s books — and accidentally shot himself in the eye while curiously looking into the barrel.

An estimated 2,000 people, mostly women, attended this conference. We traveled there from all over the country to discuss ways to save our kids and communities from the plague of gun violence, the irony being that the exact location of our conference was unknown to us — we were given only the city name and dates to arrive and depart — until a few weeks before. Why? Concern for attendee safety from gun rights extremists.

This is a common and reasonable fear. On Nov. 3 I received an email from a group that had, shortly after the Old National Bank shooting, asked me to come speak to them about potential solutions. They were writing to cancel, they said, because they feared having a meeting about gun violence would expose them to gun violence.

We say we live in the land of the free, the home of the brave. But here in Kentucky our GOP supermajority continues to rally support behind open and concealed-carry of firearms, which also endangers law enforcement, with no limitations for the mentally ill.?

What is free about living this way??

What is brave about doing nothing?

But there is hope. On Dec. 15, state Sen. Whitney Westerfield, R-Fruit HIll, is expected to present, in the Interim Judiciary Committee which he chairs, a bill titled Crisis Aversion and Rights Retention (CARR), a tool for temporarily removing firearms from someone suffering from a mental health crisis.?

Not surprisingly, Westerfield’s proposal is already receiving opposition from Rep. Savannah Maddox who tweeted, in part, “You can call it a Red Flag, you can call it an ERPO, or give it any other clever acronym to make it sound less like a violation of your constitutional right to keep and bear arms – but it’s gun control and I will NOT stand for it.”

This is the same Maddox who proposed a campus concealed-carry bill (that thankfully failed) during the 2023 General Assembly. In committee, Travis Powell, vice president and general counsel at the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education, spoke first, saying “current legislation allows campuses to restrict the carrying of deadly weapons, and given that option all campuses have chosen to do so and want to maintain that flexibility. All campus chiefs of police are united in their opposition to this bill … because it decreases their ability to keep their campuses safe.”

It is time for a moral reckoning in Kentucky. The General Assembly will soon be back in session. Lawmakers have the opportunity to learn from the LMPD report on the Old National Bank mass shooting and enact legislation to prevent easy access to firearms for those who are a danger to themselves or others.?

The only question is, will they have the moral courage to save lives??

Or will they cave to the NRA and gun rights extremists, and leave us to read the next shooter’s manifesto that screams, yet again, “OH MY GOD THIS IS SO EASY”?

Photographs of the 18 victims of the Lewiston shooting shared by Maine Department of Public Safety. (Maine Morning Star)

As we watched the aftermath of the mass shooting in Maine last week and listened to vacuous comments from newly-elected U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, my mind kept turning over the title of a famous Roxane Gay essay, “No one is coming to save us,” like a dystopian mantra.

“The problem is the human heart, not guns,” Speaker Johnson said about the 565th mass shooting in the United

States so far this year, arguing “that it was inappropriate to discuss gun control “in the middle of the crisis,” and that he believes, “it’s not the weapon, it’s the underlying problem.””

Speaker Johnson carries a Bible, quotes scripture, and spouts platitudes. He is not coming to save us.?

After the Old National Bank shooting in Louisville last April, I felt so angry and helpless I told a friend I was going to stage a sit-in at the Kentucky Capitol until our legislature addressed firearm laws. This was completely implausible, but like many bad ideas it eventually pointed me in the right direction.

In the last seven months, I have gone to Frankfort — unpaid, on my own time — and attended dozens of interim committee meetings from the judiciary to veterans affairs to education to school and campus safety. Guess what they never talk about, even as gun violence continues to plague this country and the commonwealth? Potential gun laws.

Our do-nothing Republican supermajority is not coming to save us.

In addition to committee meetings, I have also sat patiently in the offices of Republican legislators — again, unpaid and on my own time — privately asking about their plans to address gun violence. If they mention a potential bill (which is rare), they typically follow with the impossibility of such a bill getting a hearing, much less making it to the floor for a vote. One lawmaker pointed out that he carries a gun to work every day and said we should expect the campus concealed-carry bill, which was roundly panned by law enforcement and did not make it out of committee in 2023, to come back in the 2024 General Session. “And this time it will pass,” he said, as if it were a fait accompli.

GOP lawmakers — who risk losing their seats if they dare vote for even the most benign gun laws — are not coming to save us.

As news of the Maine mass shooting unfolded, I was reading “American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15” by Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson, which opens with the October 2017 Las Vegas concert shooting. “In about ten minutes, (Stephen) Paddock fired 1,057 bullets. He killed 58 people that night and wounded 413 others. Another 456 were injured trying to escape the mayhem.”?

In his hotel room high above the concert venue, Paddock had smuggled in “fourteen AR-15 semiautomatic rifles and eight similar guns called AR-10s. He had dozens of fully loaded hundred-round magazines. The rifles were civilian versions of guns invented in the 1950s by a tiny company in Hollywood, California. The company created a revolutionary rifle for the U.S. military. It was a light, easy-to-use weapon to help soldiers fight Communist insurgencies in the developing world. The futuristic rifles were designed to achieve a simple goal: fire a lot of bullets fast to kill or maim as many enemy soldiers as possible.”

It is estimated that Paddock spent $95,000 on guns, ammo and accessories, and so, as in all investigations, we should follow the money.?

“Gun companies have spent the last two decades scrutinizing their market and refocusing their message away from hunting toward selling handguns for personal safety, as well as military-style weapons attractive to mostly young men,” The New York Times reports. “The sales pitch — rooted in self-defense, machismo and an overarching sense of fear — has been remarkably successful. Firearm sales have skyrocketed, with background checks rising from 8.5 million in 2000 to 38.9 million last year. The number of guns is outpacing the population.”?

The firearms industry is busy selling fear for profit. They are not coming to save us.

Roxane Gay’s original essay is about the Trump presidency and racism, but her words form the baseline of a sickening drumbeat that continues to grow louder, broader, and more persistent. “What I’m supposed to do now is offer hope,” Gay wrote, “I’m supposed to tell you that no president serves forever. I’m supposed to offer up words like ‘resist’ and ‘fight’ as if rebellious enthusiasm is enough to overcome federally, electorally sanctioned white supremacy…. But I am not going to do any of that. I am tired of comfortable lies.”?

Comfortable lies, like thoughts and prayers and it’s too soon to talk about guns.

In response to our 565th mass shooting this year, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said simply, “I was devastated to hear the news last night of a deadly shooting in Lewiston, Maine. I know the entire Senate stands behind our colleagues, Senator Collins and Senator King, as they help their state marshal its response. We pray especially for the victims of this senseless violence, for their families, and for the law enforcement personnel working tirelessly to save lives and bring the suspect to justice.”

In his broader remarks about the mass shooting in Maine, newly-elected House Speaker Johnson said, “”This is a dark time in America. We have a lot of problems and we’re really, really hopeful and prayerful. Prayer is appropriate in a time like this, that the evil can end and this senseless violence can stop….” Johnson, a staunchly conservative evangelical Christian, declined to take any questions, including about the possibility of any gun violence legislation from Congress.”

Our leaders are not coming to save us. They won’t even take questions.?

President Donald Trump left the White House for Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Oct. 2, 2020. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump had both tested positive for coronavirus. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

A month ago, on Sept. 17, I had a terrifying car accident in southern Illinois.?

It was a sunny, Sunday afternoon. I was returning home to Kentucky following my 40-year high school reunion in Missouri. I was alone. And I was driving about 50 mph when a woman made an illegal turn in front of me. I hit her at full speed.?

We were both driving SUVs. And miraculously, she and I both walked away from the accident, no ambulance needed, with only minor injuries.

I tell you this story because, as often happens after a catastrophic event, we think about the ripple effects of our decisions, about how things might have gone differently. What if, I wondered, I had not stopped for gas? Left a day earlier? Not stayed so long at my sister’s house? What decisions led me to that Illinois intersection, to that moment, and how might the result have been far different, far worse, than two totaled SUVs?

In the Oct. 12 gubernatorial debate in Paducah, Attorney General Daniel Cameron made his oft-repeated assertion that “it’s crazy to have a governor who would shut down your churches,”? referring to the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. This is not a new talking point. Cameron has consistently made the shutting down of in-person church, specifically Easter services in 2020, a cornerstone of his campaign.?

But what would Cameron have done differently if he had been governor in 2020??

In an address from the White House Rose Garden on March 13, 2020 — exactly one month prior to Easter Sunday — President Donald Trump declared Covid-19 a national health emergency. “To unleash the full power of the federal government … I am officially declaring a national emergency,” Trump said. “Two very big words. The next eight weeks are critical.”?

The next eight weeks takes us to mid-May 2020, an entire month after Easter.

Trump spoke again from the Rose Garden on March 29, 2020, advising Americans to continue to social distance and to avoid gathering in groups of more than 10 for at least another month and perhaps until June.

Are we to believe that Cameron, had he been governor and responsible for the safety of the citizens of this commonwealth, would have outright refused guidance from the president, the leader of his own Republican Party, at the outset of a once-in-a-hundred-years pandemic?

Is this plausible?

No. It is not plausible. But he keeps repeating the claim, so we should consider the potential consequences of a Governor Cameron defying the president during a national emergency. How many more Kentuckians might have died in 2020 after such a decision? How disastrous might the ripple effect have been? And what of his own political peril in making such a rogue decision?

Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the ripple effect as “a spreading, pervasive, and usually unintentional effect or influence.” I use my recent car accident as an example. In June 2021, I gave up alcohol. Seems unrelated, right? But more than two years later, when it came time to make the six hour drive to Missouri for my reunion, I decided to leave my small, fun-to-drive, two-seater car in the garage and drive our SUV. Why? Because I would be sober, a designated driver, responsible for getting my childhood friends home safely, and I needed room for as many people as possible.

If I had been driving my small, two-seater, I cannot imagine the extent of my injuries, or if I even would have survived. One seemingly tangential decision, with a ripple effect two years later, saved my life.?

Our decisions, even the small ones, have consequences.

What Cameron continuously proposes with his but-my-opponent-closed-churches argument is that he would have made a diametrically different decision — in defiance of President Trump and all medical guidance at the time — with the unspoken caveat that innumerable lives would not have been lost.

Hogwash.

Cameron claims to be pro-life, but expects us to believe he would have enthusiastically thrown the dice and encouraged us to gather in large crowds in the first months of the pandemic; that he would have thumbed his nose at President Trump’s declaration of a “national emergency;” that he would have risked the ripple effect of his decision on the lives of the most vulnerable Kentuckians: newborns, preemies, the elderly, those in cancer treatment or with chronic lung diseases, etc.

His story is not only implausible, it is beyond comprehension. And he owes us an explanation.?

Republican attorney general candidate Russell Coleman's first ad is titled "Lawman." (Screenshot)

With a month to go before Election Day, GOP attorney general candidate Russell Coleman launched his first ad titled “Lawman.” It opens with an image of Coleman looking menacing on a shooting range: dark sunglasses, black ear protection, black vest, black handgun firing.

While the attorney general is often referred to as a state’s top law enforcement officer, he or she is a prosecutor, an attorney. Last I checked, attorneys wear suits and shined-up shoes, work in an office, argue in court; they are not taking calls direct from 911 and rushing with sirens blaring to an active crime scene, ready for a gunfight.?

In Malcolm Gladwell’s latest season of “Revisionist History,” a podcast, he focuses on Americans’ fascination with firearms and our pop culture obsession with iconic TV lawman Matt Dillon of “Gunsmoke,” a symbol of morality, law and order. The good guy with a gun. Gladwell points out how each show, for the 20 years it aired from 1955 to 1975, most always began “with a shot of Dillon squaring off against a bad guy on the main street in Dodge. He outdraws him, shoots the bad guy dead. Then, after the credits, we see Dillon walking through a cemetery where all the many dead are buried and in voiceover delivering a little homily about the enormous weight on his shoulders.”

This is the image Coleman seemingly longs to evoke in his ad, a modern Matt Dillon, here to save the day.

Tuesday, Oct. 10, marks six months since the Old National Bank mass shooting in Louisville, and our Republican supermajority has long since gone silent on thoughts, prayers, and any public discussion of how it happened and might have been prevented.?

In Pike County this weekend, two people were found dead from gunshots with another person injured. The last sentence in the LEX18 article reads, “An investigation into what exactly happened is still ongoing at this time.”

What exactly happened is that firearm deaths have become so common they are but a drip in the firehose of news of firearm deaths. And what our lawmakers have learned is that the public grows quickly weary of talking about gun violence. It’s too uncomfortable, too politically fraught. We move on.

But you know who does not move on? The families and friends of the dead — dismissed and ignored as they deal with the long-term aftermath of sudden, inexplicable, violent death. Our lawmakers owe them so much more, so much better, than this.

I spent this past weekend with my grandsons, ages 3 and 4. They are not old enough for scary movies or old Westerns like “Gunsmoke,” but they are required to do active shooter drills in preschool, hiding in the dark, practicing being very, very quiet to hide from bad guys with guns who could wipe out their entire classroom in seconds.?

It is a sickening irony that we keep our littlest ones from scary movies while nonchalantly fueling their nightmares about real-life gunmen out to kill them.

Last year, NPR found that false reports of school shootings — called “swatting” — are now commonplace. “Swatting incidents can be particularly dangerous, as officers often enter with force, guns drawn… some entering with their rifles and pistols drawn, running breathlessly through the hallways to find the right classroom. But there was no shooter. Students had been placed on lockdown, police units deployed and school staff were plunged into minutes of terror as a hoax unfolded.”

And we wonder why our kids, from toddlers on up, suffer from overwhelming anxiety.?

Last week in Wisconsin, a man asking to see the governor was arrested for open-carrying a gun inside their Capitol, where open-carry is illegal. After posting bail, “he returned to the outside of the Capitol shortly before 9 p.m., three hours after the building closed, with a loaded assault-style rifle and a collapsible police baton in his backpack… demanded to see the governor and was taken into custody.”?

I recently found myself inside the Kentucky Capitol Annex with a Republican legislator who talked about feeling safe because guns are not allowed there. I was dumbfounded. Guns — open carry and concealed-carry — are legal in the Capitol and the Annex. I could have been carrying a gun and the lawmaker would not have known.?

How long until someone with ill intent does carry a gun into the Capitol, into a lawmaker’s office, unbeknownst to anyone until it’s too late?

What then?

What. Then.

In the last episode of “Revisionist History,” Gladwell recalls Jim Keenan from Boston College telling him, “In the story of the Good Samaritan, a man is beaten and robbed and left for dead at the side of the road, and one by one men of faith, holy men, pass by without stopping and move to the other side of the road. They aren’t complicit in the attack … they choose to look the other way, and that, Keenan says, is the sin. The sin is indifference. Sin is the failure to bother to care.”

From the Old National Bank mass shooting in April to daily gun violence to preschoolers and kids forced to prepare for an active shooter, too many of our elected officials and those running for office are blasé.?

To our lawmakers and those campaigning for our votes: We know the difference between a TV character like Matt Dillon and real life. Your gun videos, your gun photos, your Second Amendment posturing, your pandering to the gun lobby, your pretense that you’re tough on crime because you can shoot a gun on the range, are insulting to everyone you represent, and most insulting to every victim of gun violence and their loved ones.?

This ain’t “Gunsmoke,” and you are not a fictional TV lawman. You have real power. We need you to talk some sense. We need you to find your spine, draft some bipartisan bills, whip the votes, educate your followers, and lead us out of this violent, gun-obsessed mess.?

Your sin is indifference. We need you to bother to care.

Republican Rep. Jared Bauman speaks about an omnibus anti-crime plan backed by Louisville GOP state representatives, Sept. 26, 2023. (Kentucky Lantern photo by McKenna Horsley)

After watching the Sept. 26 news conference held by Louisville House Republicans to introduce their proposed 18-point Safer Kentucky Act, I pulled out my scribbled, contemporaneous notes from a Sept. 19 meeting of the legislature’s Task Force on School and Campus Safety.?

An hour into that meeting, I wrote: “These meetings are a way for adults to pretend they’re doing something.”

This shiny, new 18-point Republican plan to make us all allegedly feel safer used the same window dressing: a public gathering of lawmakers with a checklist. See! they seem to be saying. We’re doing something! We’re even staged at the police lodge to prove it!

Here is your reminder that these are the same lawmakers who continually vote to promote and protect firearms. Just a few months ago, they passed a Second Amendment Sanctuary bill to protect guns, not citizens, which complements our already-absurd and irresponsible list like open carry, no training, no certification, no waiting limits, no safe storage requirements, no crisis aversion (red flag), no addressing of mental health, etc.

I recently spent a day at the Capitol Annex with Moms for Kentucky, a self-described group of women (and one man) who met on social media and scheduled meetings with Republican lawmakers to discuss the scourge of gun violence and potential, reasonable laws.

The meetings were private, so I am not allowed to share lawmakers names or discussion details, but a few of the Moms for Kentucky asked that I share what they told lawmakers about why they were there.

Rachel:? It was important to me to meet with legislators about gun violence because I lost a friend to gun suicide when we were in our early 20s. Then, as a teacher, I had students who asked me, “What if a shooter shoots us right through the glass windows?” and I was unable to answer them. Now as a mom of children ages 5, 2, and 1, I fear for their safety and I want to work to ensure we build a safer future for them.

Sarah:? I am from a rural community and gun ownership was a part of our community culture. I remember most kids hunting with family growing up, but I also remember the first time another kid in my hometown committed suicide using a gun. I was about 13. This turned out to be the first of many people who I knew who died from a gunshot wound.?

I have lived in three different towns and in each community there has been a mass shooting. This has affected the way I feel in public places. It’s now common practice for me to note all exits and other features of public spaces I am in, and to be alert as to how the other people in those spaces feel. I’ve left playgrounds with my children due to erratic behavior by an individual that has made me worry they could have a gun. I don’t love parades and other large gatherings.?

My 5-year-old started kindergarten this year, and as the summer came to a close I found myself losing sleep at night wondering if I should tell him about school shootings in case that knowledge could save his life. I weighed protecting his life against protecting his innocence, and that’s when a fire lit in me.

Melissa (pseudonym):? I came to speak with legislators because they need to hear there are many, many Kentuckians tired of gun violence, tired of our children and grandchildren having lockdowns in schools, tired of looking over our shoulders at any public gathering, afraid of gunfire erupting anywhere. If a reasonable bill for gun safety comes up in the next session, they will remember us showing up and hopefully remember that their constituents do care about gun safety and violence prevention. Also, they work for us, not for the gun lobby.

I sat through these meetings between the moms and Republican legislators, some of which lasted an hour. A chill ran through me as for the first time I heard the moms’ personal stories about why they were there, what they want, and why they had taken the day off work and/or away from their kids to be there. It felt like lawmakers were listening.

And yet, the disconnect between these meetings and what I heard in the Louisville press conference was staggering.

In the event to promote their Safer Kentucky Act, we were given a long list of punishments for crime after-the-fact. Where are the proposals to address prevention? To address the fact that Kentucky has become a free-for-all when it comes to guns? And I heard nothing to show House Republicans are listening to constituents — to people like Moms for Kentucky — who are scared for their kids and communities and want simple, reasonable laws to address gun violence.?

Rep. Jared Bauman, R-Louisville,? said in the press conference, “My constituents are fed up. They don’t feel safe in their own homes and neighborhoods.”?

Moms for Kentucky are fed up, too. They’re tired of lawmakers making lists and pretending they’re doing something. They’re fed up with the window dressing.

A woman wearing a “Moms Demand Action” shirt responds to a speaker during the community vigil for victims of the Old National Bank mass shooting, April 12, 2023, at the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Abbey Cutrer)

I woke at 5 a.m. last Thursday thinking about the victims of the Old National Bank shooting in Louisville and googled their names so I could say a specific prayer: Thomas Elliott, James Tutt Jr., Juliana Farmer, Joshua Barrick and Deana Eckert; plus the six who were injured, James Evans, Julie Anderson, Dana Mitchell, Darrin McCauley, Dallas Schwartz and Officer Nickolas Wilt.

Sunday, Sept. 10, marked five months since this shooting. After every massacre, it’s the same talking points — too soon to talk about solutions; first we mourn the dead — and then it’s radio silence. Dear Kentucky GOP: Is 150-plus days enough time? Can we talk now?

When I typed in Old National Bank, the search engine directed me to an article explaining how the shooter’s family told lead investigator Detective Kevin Carrillo that he had attempted suicide about a year earlier and that his “mental health disorder may have played a part during this criminal act.”

I recalled visiting with my state representative, James Tipton, in his office last February, trying to discuss the gun violence epidemic here in Kentucky. He towed the tired Republican company line, doing the aw-shucks-gosh-what-can-you-do dance and pivoted to “but mental health.”?

So I asked about mental health initiatives. What were Rep. Tipton and his colleagues doing to address gun violence as it related to mental health?

Nothing. They were doing nothing.

As I prayed at 5 a.m. on Thursday, I received a news alert: ?“BREAKING: I’m on South 40th St. in Louisville, where it has been confirmed an officer has been shot. It appears the call came in around 2:28 am. At this hour the condition of the officer is unknown. Police in tactical gear are on scene.”? This was followed by another alert: “There is a heavy police presence here at 39th and Garland. Neighbors told me they heard 40-50 gunshots this morning, and say police told them an officer was shot.”?

This is how we live here in Kentucky, daily news alerts that there has been yet another shooting, this time a police officer. And we are fed up.?

A group in Franklin County wrote a letter to the State-Journal on Aug. 31 stating “after the mass shooting at the Old National Bank in Louisville in April, several friends with long years in public service began to meet and ask what could be done to prevent gun violence,” inviting fellow citizens “to participate in a Conversation on Building a Community Safe from Gun Violence on Sunday, Sept. 24, at 2:30 p.m. at the Paul Sawyier Public Library River Room.”

I spoke with men and women in the group of 10 who signed their names to the letter. They are unaffiliated with any group; they have been meeting regularly since May; they are fed up; and they have determined that if our elected officials don’t have the courage to address the plague of gun violence in Kentucky, they will.?

In my work with Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, I know there are many groups, formal and informal, having discussions like this all over Kentucky, and that there will be a reckoning — like the fed up Covenant School moms at the Tennessee Capitol for their special session — during our 2024 General Assembly.?

Our kids are dying and doing lockdown drills and being told about the pleasures of bulletproof backpacks as our lawmakers preen and pass unenforceable, unconstitutional Second Amendment sanctuary bills. We are so fed up with the plague of gun violence, we are fed up with being fed up. And we are angry.

There is one bright light here in Kentucky. Sen. Whitney Westerfield, R-Fruit Hill, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is working on CARR, which stands for Crisis Aversion and Rights Retention. His bill would give law enforcement the due process tool they need to temporarily take a person’s gun if deemed in crisis and a risk to themselves or others.

“It really comes down to how you can protect against a potential break, which in a lot of cases is actually a suicide,” Westerfield said, telling WHAS11 catastrophic events like the Uvalde mass shooting and the mass shooting at Old National Bank in Louisville have “moved the needle.””

A bill like CARR might have saved every life at Old National Bank.?

Last Thursday, I said my prayers in remembrance of the victims at Old National Bank. I prayed for the police officer who was shot at dozens of times that morning for simply doing his job, and for the surgeons who saved his life. I prayed for Sen. Westerfield, for his courage and his thoughtfulness.?

And later in the afternoon, I prayed after the next news alert: “A 2-year-old boy has died after being accidentally shot in the head by another toddler in his home, according to Whitley County Sheriff William Elliotte.”

Is this pro-life? What civilized society would tolerate this?

I’m praying. You’re praying. But at some point — at this point — thoughts and prayers without action are an insult.

Photo by Terry Vine/Getty Images

LAWRENCEBURG, KY — The library director swiveled her chair to the right, reached into a desk drawer, and showed me her gun.

“Have you always carried a gun?” I said.

“No,” she said, demonstrating how she tucks it up underneath her arm when she walks to and from the library parking lot. “I started carrying a gun on June second, the day after we put up the pride display and all the threatening phone calls.”

I was at the library to talk with director Demaris Hill about the recent appointment of a man named Bobby Proctor to our library board. Hill has lived and worked here in Lawrenceburg for only a year and a half, but she was aware that Proctor had led a raucous protest to ban books and the Pride display in June 2021.

As I recently wrote, Proctor did not file an application; he simply called up a magistrate he knew on the Anderson County Fiscal Court and was chosen over four excellent candidates who had applied.

The Cambridge Dictionary defines this as “cronyism” — the situation in which someone important gives jobs to friends rather than to independent people who have the necessary skills and experience — but per Kentucky Revised Statute (KRS) 173.730, enacted into law by the legislature in 2022, county judge-executives can decline applications and appoint whomever they choose.

Anderson Public Library director Hill is new to Kentucky. In her office, she puts the gun back in the drawer and tells me she was born and raised in Indiana, and most recently worked at the library in Gainesville, Florida.

“Why did you choose to come here, not only to Kentucky but to Lawrenceburg?” I said.

“I had choices,” she said, “job opportunities in other states and larger cities, but I love horses and had that dream of moving to a small, rural town, you know, the slower pace and the peace and quiet.”

I shared that I moved here for the same reasons. We both laughed (uncomfortably) at the irony.

With regard to the library appointment, she explained how she had worked hard to get the best possible candidates to apply for the open board position. She posted information on the library website and Facebook page, encouraged people to apply, and attended Fiscal Court meetings to present the applications and answer questions.

“You should have heard how dismissive they were of everyone in those [Fiscal Court] meetings,” she said. “I wish they’d have just told me how they were going to do it so I wouldn’t have wasted everybody’s time. ”

I obtained the audio recordings of the meetings Hill described. This is what transpired in the July 18 meeting after the Fiscal Court had rejected all four applicants for the board position.

Magistrate Rodney Durr says Bobby Proctor reached out to him and makes a motion for his appointment. Susan Akers, a 72 year-old woman who had applied for the position, interrupts and asks if she can ask a question.

“The applications that have been turned in so far,” Akers says, “… what qualifications do they not meet and what qualifications are you looking for? I’m just asking, what is it about the ones who have been turned in? Why do they not qualify and what are you looking for?”

Judge Executive Orbrey Gritton mentions his beliefs and the beliefs of the court a few times. Ms. Akers states that this is pretty general and asks what he means. Gritton replies that [the new board member] should “have the beliefs that we have.”

Akers asks what those beliefs are.

“Ms. Akers,” Gritton says, “you’ve been pretty tough on us in the past. You get on the opposite side of us ….”

There is garbled cross-talk on the recording, and Gritton apologizes for his tone. “If my name is associated,” Gritton says, “I’m going to make sure they stand for what I stand for. And I’m not talking politics ….”

I called Gritton to ask about the library board appointment. He did not return my call.

I sent an email asking if he was aware that Proctor led a protest to ban books in 2021 and to define what he meant in the July 18 meeting by his “beliefs” and “what I stand for.” What did he mean when he said to Akers, “You get on the opposite side of us…”? He did not respond.

Meanwhile, thanks to the the Republican supermajority in Frankfort, local elected officials can appoint their cronies to local boards based on their “beliefs.”

Thanks to Kentucky Republicans, we now have a book banning preacher on our library board, and due to the ignorant vitriol they stirred up with Senate Bill 150, the library director carries a gun to work.

Thanks to Kentucky Republicans, the dream of moving to a small, rural, Kentucky town for the slower pace and peace and quiet no longer exists.

The public library in Anderson County has a new board member. (Getty Images)

On Friday, July 28, after learning that a man named Bobby Proctor had been appointed by Anderson County Fiscal Court to our public library’s board of directors, I stopped by the library and asked to see a copy of Proctor’s application.?

His application does not exist.?

He did not apply.?

Library director Demaris Hill told me that Proctor had come in recently, 10 days after his appointment, to pick up a blank application and to get his library email and an iPad.?

The application Proctor did not fill out asks about education, work experience, goals for the library and areas of expertise that could benefit the board, like finance, legal, public relations, technology, long range planning, etc.. Topping the first page in bold letters: Applications received after the closing date will not be considered.

Does the GOP supermajority in the Kentucky legislature realize the bills they pass as enthusiastically as freshmen frat boys at their first party — like Senate Bill 150 — create real division, real fear, and unchecked concentrations of power in small, rural communities like mine?

Take Kentucky Revised Statute (KRS) 173.730, enacted into law by the legislature in 2022. County judge-executives can now decline, for no reason, applications for library board appointments and appoint whomever they choose.?

Our weekly newspaper reports that Magistrate “Rodney Durr recommended Bobby Proctor, who reached out with interest to be appointed to the board. Durr made the motion to appoint Proctor.” Magistrate Mike Riley seconded the motion, and? “County Judge Orbrey Gritton stated … they strive as a whole to choose someone that represents Fiscal Court and their beliefs.”

Let’s consider Proctor’s “beliefs.”

In June 2021, The Anderson News posted on its Facebook page, in part: “Bobby Proctor, pastor at Beit Ohr Messianic Congregation, says he and others stand opposed to the library posting the (gay pride) display. … “I’ll be there,” he said. “As a Christian, I’m not in favor of this display and don’t feel like it is conducive to the county we live in.”

Proctor’s words prompted a standing-room-only crowd to descend on the library’s board meeting to protest the display. I was there, too, and spoke in favor of the small, tasteful display. Protestors talked graphically about sex and read from the Bible. Afterward, I stood in the parking lot talking to the police chief while a group argued on the sidewalk and one woman, for no apparent reason, repeatedly gave the chief the finger.?

“Is she on drugs?” I kept thinking. The whole protest was a juvenile spectacle, much like the frat boy party I mentioned earlier, only with less booze and more Bible.

Fast forward to June 1 this year, the first day of Pride Month. Library employees were inundated with offensive, threatening phone calls. Concerned for staff safety, they contacted law enforcement. The display in question? One, small, muted shelf near the rear doors, celebrating historical literary giants like James Baldwin, Truman Capote, bell hooks and Walt Whitman.

Here in Anderson County, it is no longer unusual to see a hateful protest led by a preacher who then receives a board appointment because the judge-executive feels he represents the fiscal court’s personal “beliefs.” Can you spell d-i-s-c-r-i-m-i-n-a-t-i-o-n?

It is not unusual to see, as in October 2022, a preacher/teacher like Randy Adams whip up a protest at our school board because a few kids asked to be addressed by their chosen pronouns. I was there. It was a lesson in ignorance and cruelty. The front page headline in our newspaper quoted one speaker in bold letters: “The devil is trying to destroy the family unit.”

It is also not unusual for this fiscal court to lack transparency and vote in lockstep. I have been trying for almost a year to get the court to livestream meetings. They have refused. To see what they seemingly do not want seen, I file open records requests. In 11 of their first 13 meetings of 2023, there have been more than 150 votes, but only twice has a magistrate dared to vote in opposition to the judge executive.?

Why bother electing magistrates? Why have meetings at all?

I reviewed the library board applications that were declined. They are outstanding. Two of the four applicants are prior library board members! And yet fiscal court appointed Proctor to a four-year term.?

Who needs to fill out an application when you can just call up the frat house directly.

I called Judge Executive Gritton, Magistrate Durr and Magistrate Riley to ask if they knew Proctor had led a bigoted protest at our library in June 2021? Could they tell me what Proctor’s qualifications were since he did not file an application? How often do they go to our library, check out books, visit with staff? What are some books they’ve read recently??

They did not return my calls.?

I recommend James Baldwin, Truman Capote, bell hooks and Walt Whitman.

Flowers rest on steps at a makeshift memorial for victims of an April 10 mass shooting in Louisville. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Abbey Cutrer)

Today, July 10, marks three months since the Old National Bank shooting in Louisville that killed five and injured eight, including a young police officer who was shot in the head.?

And yet when was the last time you heard elected Kentucky Republicans, the ones who love to brag about their powerful supermajority, mention this shooting or the epidemic of gun violence? Where are the discussions? The proposals? The solutions? Even the pronouncements of thoughts and prayers are done and gone.?

Our GOP lawmakers do not dare discuss reasonable waiting periods (which might have prevented the Old National Bank mass shooting), safe storage, background checks, the dangers of concealed carry, or the fact that, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, gun violence is the number one cause of child death since 2020.

Why?

In Bowling Green last week, Police Officer Matt Davis “was shot multiple times and was airlifted to a trauma center.” He was in critical but stable condition. Another man is dead.

Last week, a Kentucky “social studies teacher and assistant wrestling coach at Oldham County High School in La Grange was shot to death on the campus of a Catholic university in Washington, D.C. — and authorities are still searching for his killer.”?

A few weeks ago, a “7-year-old child fatally shot a 5-year-old child at an eastern Kentucky home … Life-saving measures were attempted, but the child was pronounced dead by a coroner at the scene on Coal Road in Jackson County.”?

Remember the Easy Bake Oven? “The first recall came in with the model made in 2006. Children would get their fingers and hands stuck in the oven door, causing serious burns. 29 reports came in of children being injured 5 of them were from serious burns that the toy oven caused.” Hasbro did an immediate redesign.

But citizens and children being shot to death daily? No recalls. No discussions. No laws. Nothing.

Over the July 4 weekend, a child was shot to death in Florida after an altercation involving jet skis. Yes, jet skis. “The grandfather of 7-year-old Yitzian Torres Garcia tried to protect his grandson by pulling him into a truck, but a bullet went through and struck the grandfather’s hand before hitting the child in the head.”

Like many families, we had loved ones visit from out-of-state over the holiday week. When we took the 4-year-old to the Lawrenceburg Walmart, he spotted the rack of guns for sale and said something like, “Mommy, look! Guns to kill animals and people! Why are they in here?!” I was reminded of a recent story I heard about an aunt taking her young niece clothes shopping. When the aunt suggested cute shoes that light up, the girl was adamant she could never wear blinking shoes because if she was hiding in school and moved her feet, a gunman would see the lights and shoot her.

Truth from the mouths of babes, even as our Kentucky GOP supermajority — the self-professed “pro-life” contingent — ate up the 2023 General Assembly with cruel, worthless bathroom bills, a proposal for concealed carry on college campuses, and passed a Second Amendment Sanctuary protecting not our children but our guns.

This is not normal. Shame on all of us for tolerating it.

As former gun company executive Ryan Busse points out in his book, “Gunfight,” there is nothing normal or traditional about gun ownership being encouraged for the masses or sold in megastores like Walmart. Laws allowing open carry and concealed carry are new and were put on the books for one reason: to help gun manufacturers with lagging sales make money. Until the late 1990s, he writes, “Open carry was rare because social norms made it taboo to walk around with a loaded gun. In keeping with those norms, no one really encouraged open carry because neither responsible gun owners nor gun companies wanted to frighten average citizens with other regular people carrying loaded guns in, say, a mall or grocery store.”?

Busse goes on to say about concealed carry that, until the late ’90s, gun culture was rooted in the Old American West. “Back then, a gun worn on a hip was common and unthreatening, but slipping a gun into a boot or hiding it inside a coat pocket was what criminals did.”?

Gun-obsessed elected officials like Rep. Savannah Maddox (R-Boone, Gallatin, Grant, Kenton counties) and her concealed carry bill for campuses make a mockery of the word “lawmaker.”

Three months ago, a mentally unstable 25-year-old, whose parents said they’d never owned guns and saw no warning signs, walked into a store, legally purchased a firearm and ammunition, and days later shot five people to death – Thomas Elliott, James Tutt Jr., Juliana Farmer, Joshua Barrick, Deana Eckert – and injured eight.

Less than a week later 17-year-old David Huff and Deaji Goodman were killed and four others injured when someone shot into a crowd in Louisville’s Chickasaw Park.

Gun violence and gun death top the daily news. It is the number one killer of kids. And here in Kentucky, our Republican lawmakers — with the power of a supermajority — lack the courage to do a damn thing about it.

Johanna Hawley (left) and Ava Donnis hold a sign that says “May peace prevail on earth” during the community vigil April 12 honoring victims of as mass shooting in Louisville two days earlier. (Kentucky. Lantern photo by Abbey Cutrer)

Gun violence is preventable. And yet, when there is a mass shooting — or any shooting — we mostly hear the same tired, do-nothing messages: It is too soon to talk about it, thoughts and prayers, and then comes the next shooting or mass shooting and it’s wash, rinse, repeat, and move on.?

I am tired of moving on.?

For years, I’ve worn my red t-shirt and been part of the crowd with Moms Demand Action,?a grassroots organization started by Shannon Watts after the Sandy Hook school shooting in 2012, where 20 six- and seven-year-olds and six adults were murdered in minutes.

But after the mass shooting at Old National Bank in Louisville, preceded by the mass shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville and paired with seemingly daily gun deaths in Kentucky, I called Cathy Hobart, the leader of Moms Demand Action in Kentucky, and asked what I could do to help. Communications! she said.

Here is what you need to know about upcoming community gatherings to honor survivors and those whose lives were stolen by gun violence. Wear Orange is an annual, national event to bring awareness to the epidemic of gun violence.

Lexington: Saturday, June 3, 2 p.m. at Woodland Park, 601 East High St., near the gazebo. Speakers include Police Chief Lawrence Weathers, Sheriff Kathy Witt, Devine Carama from One Lexington, Moms Demand Action leaders, and survivors of gun violence.

Louisville: Saturday, June 3, 1:30 p.m. at Chickasaw Park. Speakers include a family member of Tyler Gerth; Sherita Smith, the mother of 16-year-old Tyree Smith who was gunned down at the bus stop; District 3 Councilman Kumar Rashad; and District 1 Councilwoman Tammy Hawkins. We will join the moment of silence at 2:30 p.m. in conjunction with an event at Louisville Slugger to honor all victims of gun violence and the shootings at Old National Bank and Chickasaw Park. This event is co-sponsored by The ACE Foundation and the Kentucky Chapter of Moms Demand Action.

Frankfort: Thursday, June 1, 11:30 a.m. on the Franklin County Courthouse steps, 222 St. Clair Street. Mayor Lane Wilkerson and Judge Executive Michael Mueller will sign a joint proclamation declaring Friday, June 2, as National Gun Violence Awareness Day in Frankfort and Franklin County.?

Elizabethtown: Friday, June 2, 5 p.m. at the Pritchard Community Center, 404 S. Mulberry St. We will be making Care Cards to send to survivors and Bags of Belonging (decorating tote bags with fabric paint for local police departments, used to hand over the belongings of someone who has passed away).

To find a Wear Orange location near you, text Orange to 644-33.

I spent most of February and March at the State Capitol and Annex where I had a front row seat to what our GOP supermajority did, did not do, and how they behaved. I found so many of their actions shocking and irresponsible that I testified for the first time, twice — against college campus conceal/carry (which, thankfully, failed) and against Kentucky becoming a Second Amendment sanctuary (which passed).?

Meanwhile guns — not books, not transgender youth, not bathrooms, not rainbow-themed toys — are the number one killer of children.

According to a recent FOX News poll, the majority of Americans want new laws:??

• Criminal background checks on gun buyers (87%)
• Improve enforcement of existing gun laws (81%)
• ?Raise the legal age to buy a gun to 21 (81%)
• Mental health checks on gun buyers (80%)
• Allow police to take guns from those considered a danger to themselves or others (80%)
• 30-day waiting period for all gun purchases (77%)

And then there is the AR-15, a weapon of war, not sport. Data suggests “that since many gun owners have multiple weapons, the total number of AR-15s in American hands could be as high as 44 million.”??

As I was writing this column,, it was reported that a 16 year-old in Mississippi “was armed with what police called an “AR-15 rifle” and an 80-round-capacity magazine.”

That our GOP lawmakers were so keen in the 2023 General Assembly to make laws protecting guns and hurting human beings was, in a word, repulsive.?

My work for the rest of this year will be to help teach my fellow, fed up Kentuckians how to show up and lobby legislators in Frankfort for common sense gun regulations. Please, please join me in this fight to save lives. We can do more. So let’s do it.

We often hear we can’t stop all gun violence, a nonsensical argument. We can’t stop all people from drinking and driving either, but we have effective laws that vary state to state. When Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) “was founded at a kitchen table in 1980, 25,000 people died in these preventable crashes every year. Today, drunk driving kills about 10,000 people a year.”?

Just because we can’t save every life does not mean we can’t save most lives and change the way we live with and think about guns.?

Two years ago, a good friend died by suicide with a firearm. She was in crisis and there was the gun. Without immediate and easy access to that gun, we believe she would still be with us today. In her honor, I will attend the Wear Orange gatherings in Frankfort and Lexington. I hope to see you there.

Betsy Bryant signs a makeshift memorial display for a victim of the mass shooting in Louisville during the community vigil on Wednesday, April 12, 2023, at the Muhammad Ali Center plaza in Louisville, Kentucky. Kentucky Lantern photo by Abbey Cutrer

The morning after Kentucky’s primary elections, when all talk centered on newly-minted GOP nominee Daniel Cameron and whether or not he would pick Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles as his running partner, I was sitting on my back porch, reading about the recovery of Louisville Police Officer Nick Wilt.

Wilt was shot in the head five weeks ago during a mass shooting at Old National Bank, and survived. He is 26 years old. According to WDRB news, “Wilt has remained in critical condition and battled pneumonia before he was able to be taken off a ventilator. He was moved to Frazier Rehab on May 10, where he has “shown signs of improvement during his first week.”

I also came across an article about the one-year anniversary on May 24 of the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, so I went inside, poured another cup of coffee, and went back out onto the porch to read about that, too.

That is when I realized I had forgotten the details (19 children and two teachers were murdered, plus 17 wounded) and I felt a sick pit in my stomach. It was only a year ago. How is it possible to forget something like this?

And yet, we know how we forget, don’t we?

We forget because there are so many shootings and mass shootings we can’t keep up.

— BREAKING NEWS —

As I write this, I receive the following alert. “Law enforcement officials are working the scene of a possible active shooter at the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet building” after “dispatch received a call just before 3 p.m. Wednesday that there was an active shooter in the building.”

I immediately call a friend who works in the Transportation Cabinet. By dumb luck, she is working at home today. I receive a text from another friend saying her niece works nearby and heard shots fired. Another message tells me school kids are on the Capitol grounds and have been evacuated to a nearby church for their safety. A friend who lives in Frankfort emails that there are helicopters. I am told people are being led out of the building with their hands up. A reporter tweets that Frankfort police have no confirmation of an active shooter, casualties, or anyone injured.

Everyone is confused and speculating and panicking. But no one is surprised.

This is how we live.

While I waited for more information, I pulled up Kentucky Educational Television’s May 1 gubernatorial debate and looked for the discussion about guns.

When asked, Cameron responded that the Second Amendment is “sacrosanct” and that he is not interested in discussing anything related to gun control.

Meanwhile, Officer Wilt continues to recover from a gunshot wound to the head. And as I write this, our Transportation Cabinet building is being evacuated because of a suspected shooter. I am no longer interested in how we got here. I am only interested in how we get out.

In the last few days, an 18 year-old killed three and wounded six (including two police officers) in Farmington, New Mexico, after he opened fire on random cars and houses with an AR-15.

In Harris County, Texas, ?a preschooler found an unsecured pistol and shot his 1-year-old sibling. The injuries were not life threatening.

Outside Dallas, “a 12 year-old and a 20 year-old are both facing a murder charge after a restaurant employee was gunned down during an altercation with a customer Saturday night.”

In Shively, Kentucky, on Mother’s Day, a person was shot at an animal hospital. “Police said a fight happened at the animal hospital resulting in the shooting of a 20 year-old man. He was taken to UofL Hospital where he later died from his injuries.”

At a shopping mall in Allen, Texas, “a gunman shot and killed eight people, including three children, and injured at least seven others.” As a mom, I can’t stop thinking about the mothers who were shot to death protecting their children.

In the KET debate, Cameron used the word “sacrosanct” when asked about the Second Amendment. Cameron also says he is pro-life.

Now that he has secured the Republican nomination for governor, he should should be required to tell Kentuckians which is more “sacrosanct”: unfettered access to unsecured firearms with no regulations? Or living, breathing, human beings, including our children?

I dread his answer.

This column was updated to clarify that May 24 is the one-year anniversary of the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

(Aristide Economopoulos for New Jersey Monitor)

In January 2020, a standing-room-only crowd gathered in Anderson County Fiscal Court to debate our becoming a Second Amendment Sanctuary. The comment I most recall from that morning was made by the brother of a man who had died by suicide with a firearm. He argued on the side of guns. His brother, he said, would have found a way, with or without easy access to guns.

Three years later, I remain stunned by this man’s statement. When did it become normal for us to throw up our hands, to value guns above all else, including the safety of our own troubled family members?

A few days after the Louisville bank mass shooting, WKYT’s Bill Bryant sat down with Republican gubernatorial candidate Kelly Craft. He asked, “Would you say red flag laws would be a nonstarter in Kentucky?”?

Craft pounced. “I am not going to touch the Second Amendment,” she said. “That is part of our constitutional rights, and I’m not going to touch that. But what I am going to be focusing on is making certain that our law enforcement also has all the necessary resources because they, too, have been affected by what they have seen. And you and I both know if our law enforcement were there within three minutes, our medics, I mean how many lives were they able to save and prevent from further tragedy. And our citizens, I don’t know if you read that, where they were there helping.”

Imagine the absurdity of hearing this same statement in response to the opioid and fentanyl crisis: It’s a free country, so I am not going to touch that (drugs). I am focusing on giving law enforcement more tools (Narcan) and resources (therapy). Medics and citizens can help, too.

In one of her first ads, Craft made the “empty chair” due to drug overdose a staple of her campaign. Why do gun deaths not warrant an equal “empty chair” campaign?

In 2021, 2,250 Kentuckians died from drug overdose, and according to Everytown for Gun Safety, Kentucky has the 14th highest rate of gun deaths in the U.S. with an average of 823 gun deaths per year, 61% of which are suicides.?

Craft and every Republican running for or holding office should have to explain the exponential difference in their focus on these crises.

In her statement, Craft also gave the standard Republican talking points about law enforcement, saying she wants to ensure they have all the necessary resources. What additional resources are there? Tanks? Armed guards on every street corner, like in a? war zone??

Our police already carry weapons of war because they are met with citizens who (legally, with no waiting limit and no training required) own and carry weapons of war. This time, a newly sworn-in police officer was shot in the head with an AR-15. What new resource would have prevented this?

Police arrived at Old National Bank within three minutes. What if it had taken (an also reasonable) nine minutes? What if the gunman had continued through the building, shooting during those additional minutes instead of waiting, as was reported, to ambush police? Would it have changed Craft’s automated talking points, even a little, if there were 50 victims? A hundred?

On April 18, Louisville Metropolitan Police Department reported, ”Last week, 14 people died as a result of homicides in Louisville. Any homicide in our city is unacceptable, but 14 in one week is unconscionable and should cause all of us, as a community, to be outraged.”

The question is, why aren’t all of us — every last one of us, regardless of political party or where we live — outraged? Marching in the streets? Demanding legislative action that prioritizes people over guns? Laughing politicians out of interviews for every tired “Second Amendment” talking point?

When did the American gun become untouchable, as revered and worshiped as Jesus on the cross?

In May 2021, a good friend of mine was feeling low. She was in her late 50s, in the midst of a divorce she did not want, suffering from long COVID, and there, right there in the safe, was her loaded gun. The one she kept for her safety.

Could a law have prevented my friend’s suicide? Maybe not. But could a law have saved the life of the brother I heard spoken of in 2020? Yes, since it appeared his family knew he was struggling and a law might have given them the tool they needed to keep him safe. Could a law have saved the 14 lives lost in Louisville last week, or some of the firearm suicide deaths in Kentucky annually? Possibly.

Laws are not perfection; laws are safeguards.

For example, making it illegal to drink and drive does not keep all people from drinking and driving, and laws vary state to state. But when Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) “was founded at a kitchen table in 1980, 25,000 people died in these preventable crashes every year. Today, drunk driving kills about 10,000 people a year.”?

We are not asking for guarantees with new laws. We are asking for new tools to help save lives.?

Aren’t the “empty chairs” due to gun violence worth saving, too?

A makeshift memorial outside the Old National Bank in Louisville, where five were killed April 10, 2023 in a mass shooting. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Abbey Cutrer)

About 48 hours after a mass shooting in a Louisville bank left five victims dead and eight injured, including a young, newly sworn-in police officer fighting for his life with a gunshot to the head, I was standing in the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky airport security line, witnessing massive waste in the name of safety.

The frail, elderly gentleman in front of me had a walker. He was traveling alone. The long, rush-hour line came to a halt. Could he walk with a cane instead? the TSA agent wanted to know, easing the walker from his grip, handing the man a wooden cane that was almost comically too tall for him. And did he have any metal plates that would set off the metal detector? A phone or change in his pocket? Metal belt buckle??

The man rubbed the back of his neck, explaining a surgery. He then patted his shirt and pants pockets and lifted his sweater vest to show the TSA agent he was not wearing a belt. Still, when he walked unsteadily through the detector with the too-tall cane, alarm bells rang. He backed up and walked through two more times, confused and flustered, before he was finally allowed to retrieve his walker.

Then, I set off the alarms as well. I was randomly selected for TSA to check my cell phone (yes, only my cell phone) by a machine looking for traces of explosive materials. Like mice stuck in a maze, I waited and people waited behind me.

This is how we spend our energy and tax dollars in the name of safety.

I am an optimist to the bone, one of those odd, wide-smiling people who runs to hug strangers because isn’t everyone a potential new friend? This suffocating hopelessness I feel is new. I can not remember a time when my heart — in a very literal sense — has felt so heavy. Spending the last few months with our petty, cruel, do-nothing Kentucky GOP supermajority in the legislature did this, I believe. Then came the Nashville school shooting, with an AR-15, and the bank massacre in Louisville, with an AR-15, followed by the standard, cut-and-paste, thoughts and prayers from elected Republicans.

Do they not feel the heaviness the rest of us feel? The overwhelming need to grieve, to think, to talk, to try something new, to scream??

I have written so often following mass shootings that I title them like this in my laptop: Gun column after Parkland shooting; Gun column after Covenant School shooting; Gun column after Louisville bank shooting.?

“And so it goes,” Kurt Vonnegut wrote in “Slaughterhouse Five,” “and so it goes.”

Once through security, I waited to board my flight while reading articles in my news feed. One was titled, “The Grim Truth: The War on guns is Lost.”?

Another, by Maria Popova in The Marginalian, read “we only live once, with no rehearsal or reprise — a fact at once so oppressive and so full of possibility that it renders us, in the sublime words of Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska, ‘ill-prepared for the privilege of living.’ All the while, we walk forward accompanied by the specters of versions of ourselves we failed to or chose not to become.”

There is so much I am failing to do, I thought, with my heavy heart, so much I am not doing to help stop the plague of gun violence. What can I do??

In mid-February I met with my representative in the Kentucky House, James Tipton, to talk about common sense gun legislation. He basically shrugged and said “but mental health” as casually as spitting out a mustard seed.?

I testified in committee against Kentucky becoming a Second Amendment sanctuary state, which passed through our Republican supermajority without so much as a blink, ironically providing the sanctuary for guns that the self-described “pro-lifers” continually refuse for human beings they’ve dubbed “illegal.”

The day after the Louisville mass shooting, I called my best friend with a frantic idea. What if, I said, and this is going to sound crazy, but what if I did a sit-in at the Capitol every single day until the legislature does something? I could get people to join me, do interviews, film it, write about it.

God love her. She listened. Who among us hasn’t thought of this, and more? And then she stated the obvious, with grace and under the weight of her own heavy heart. That’s a huge commitment, she said. What about your work, your life, the summer, your grandkids? The fact that the legislature isn’t even back in session until next January?

She’s right. And yet how many more shootings, including mass shootings, will there be before next January? Before the Kentucky Derby? During the summer? After school starts??

Meanwhile, as Popova wrote, we will continue “forward accompanied by the specters of versions of ourselves we failed to or chose not to become,” insisting that elderly gentlemen be stopped and scanned at our airports under the witless guise of safety.?

We will mindlessly cooperate when chosen at random for extra screening and pretend we are safe.

Our hearts will grow as heavy as the great grey whale while watching Republican politicians go on TV to regurgitate party-line bullet points — Bullet. Points. — about the sanctity of their beloved Second Amendment with an arbitrary Bible verse or two thrown in.?

There will be a push for more armed security guards with bigger guns and the building of fences around our schools to, as one politician recently described, make them into fortresses.

And I will open up my laptop and title a new document, “Gun column after ____________ shooting.”

A rally for LGBTQ rights March 29 on the steps of the Kentucky Capitol Annex. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Sarah Ladd)

Since I was giving a favorite book of poetry, Adrienne Rich’s “The Dream of a Common Language,” to a young friend for their birthday, I re-read it to make sure it was appropriate. It was. The 1978 collection of poems opens with this epigraph by H.D. (Hilda Doolittle’s nom de plume): “I go where I love and where I am loved, into the snow; I go to the things I love with no thought of duty or pity.”

I spent much of the 2023 Kentucky legislative session thinking about love, a word we heard over and over again from Republicans in the supermajority — oh how very much they love our kids, they insisted — as they worked like pack mules to haul one of the most hateful, anti-transgender bills through committees and the House and Senate until it became law.?

Sadly, our GOP lawmakers seemed to have little concern this year for children who are abused, neglected, born unwanted, homeless, hungry, in foster care or gunned down in schools, focusing instead on keeping them from learning about gender and sexuality.?

Where a child uses the bathroom and making Kentucky a Second Amendment Sanctuary, along with gambling, got top billing.

Don’t get me wrong, these lawmakers seem to love their own kids, and kids who are like their kids. It’s all those “other” kids, the kids they made zero effort to understand these last months, who they can’t quite get around to loving or tolerating. Even if they had done so little as listen to certified medical experts who testified before them or used that mysterious search engine we call Google, they would have learned enough to say: We should stop, we don’t know enough, we need to think about this.

But they did not stop, they did not think, and they would have you believe they hammered this hateful law into the coffin of existence because they love … wait a minute, hold up, I need to check my notes on who was it they claimed they loved so much again??

Oh right. Kids.

I have been thinking about Kentucky’s LGBTQ kids and Adrienne Rich (1929-2012) lately because, in her time, she was considered one of the most courageous voices of her generation. She wrote more than 30 books in which she openly addressed gender, sexuality and race, her mission being “the creation of a society without domination.”?

While Rich’s life was certainly more complex and controversial than this statement, her work, and the work of H.D. before her, addressed issues that the 2023 Kentucky GOP insists, decades later, are still too brand-spanking new to try to comprehend.

I attended the LGBTQ rally for equal rights outside the Capitol last Wednesday, where a huge, vocal crowd was already gathered by 9:30 a.m. The sun was shining. Every speech was more inspiring than the last. Dance music played on the speakers. I hugged and talked with the courageous people I have seen in the halls and in committee meetings over the last few months. And what I saw was joy; what I saw was acceptance and shared humanity; what I saw, what I felt, was love.

Also on Wednesday, The Family Foundation held a rally in the Capitol rotunda, so I made my way there, too. I wanted to hear what they and the GOP lawmakers they lobby had to say.

As people mingled on the marble floor, waiting for speakers to begin, the break in atmosphere from the crowd outside was stark, like the difference between a birthday barbecue and one of those big money, rubber chicken dinners at a country club.?

I had just finished taking several pictures when a blonde woman in a white jacket approached me, smiled big, and reached out to shake my hand. She told me her name was Margaret ________ , and though we have never met I immediately recalled her inflammatory, political comments from social media. One example: On Nov. 2, 2022, just before the midterm elections, she wrote about my column on Amendment 2: “this blogger spins many things – her “false narratives” promotes [sic] hatred and division, her tall tales are manipulative.”?

Margaret explained that her church, Ninevah Christian in Anderson County (which I have written about for the pastor’s abhorrent, running commentary against the LGBTQ community) was all about love. “We pray for and love everybody,” she insisted.

Then Margaret looked me dead in the eye and said with emphasis, “I love you.”

I stood there, stunned, thinking about the hundreds of families and kids outside in the sunshine asking, begging, to be accepted, to be loved, while this woman and the lawmakers in the Rotunda with her refused to see them, much less love them. What kind of twisted version of “love” is this??

I stayed for some of the speeches and noted that Margaret was sitting with Randy Adams, the former Anderson County teacher whose Facebook manifesto about pronouns had roiled our school board and town for weeks last fall. Mr. Adams spoke. David Walls, executive director of The Family Foundation, spoke. Lawmakers spoke. It was like listening to a battalion of bullies.?

To all of the incredibly brave people who fought for your rights during this General Assembly, I applaud you. You have so much courage, you are right, you are loved. And as Adrienne Rich wrote in her poem titled “Power” — “her wounds came from the same source as her power” — you have power, too. Remember that.

It will be a blight on Kentucky’s history that misguided and mean-spirited Republicans decided that destroying kids’ and families’ lives was paramount this year. Not education, not abuse, not neglect or homelessness or hunger, and not the fact that our teachers and children have to regularly practice how to not get shot to death in their classrooms.?

Along, of course, with making Kentucky a Second Amendment Sanctuary state; keeping the guns they love, above all else, safe.

May we all remember our power and our love, and their priorities, at the ballot box.

A Metro Nashville Police vehicle heads to The Covenant School. Three children, three adults and their shooter were killed there Monday. (Photo by John Partipilo)

LAWRENCEBURG — About the same time a person opened fire inside The Covenant School, a Christian elementary and preschool in Nashville, Tennessee, killing three nine-year-old children and three adults, I was sitting at a stoplight behind a blue Chevy truck with a bumper sticker that read, “No airbags. We die like real men.”?

That’s a new one. Mostly what I see around these parts are Trump 2024, Three Percenter logos — the one with the skull — and little stick figure families on the bottom corner of SUV windows, one of which depicts an AR-15 style gun for the dad, a rifle for the mom, and handguns for the kids.

A day earlier, I was at church for the 8:45 a.m. service. I go to “the gay church,” as locals who disapprove call it, because it remains the only church in Anderson County that not only supports but welcomes the LGBTQ community. All are welcome at our table, we say, and we mean it. This also makes us a target.

?I did not sit in my normal pew this week, which is close to the side door, as I’d been wandering around talking with folks before the service started. About ten minutes in, I heard someone open the big doors in the back vestibule and my head spun around. My first thought was not, I wonder who’s here; my first thought was, I should have sat by the side door. Because as our pastor reminds us, “If you ever see me start running down the center aisle, get down or get out.”?

This is how we live.

On the ground in Nashville, reporter Anita Wadhwani tweeted Monday at 1:16 p.m., “This is awful – I’m working while tuning into Channel 4, where the reporter standing outside Covenant School is describing how difficult this is for her to cover because she herself is a survivor of a school shooting in 8th grade.”

This is how we live.

In September 2021, a man named Richard Cook openly wore a 9mm Smith and Wesson on his belt to an Anderson County school board meeting. I was there. He was removed before the meeting started, put his gun in his vehicle in the parking lot, and returned for the meeting. Not long after this, our state senator began working to make our schools, when students are not present, gun-welcome zones.?

“Senate Bill 31, from Sen. Adrienne Southworth, R-Lawrenceburg, would also repeal gun-free zones at colleges and local government buildings but would allow K-12 schools to continue gun limitations if they display a sign at their entrances.” The bill did not become law (this time).

This is how we live.

I was walking my dogs in town when I ran into a friend who described how the men’s fellowship at his church was told to bring guns to a weekend outing. “They call it Shootin’ with the Savior,” he said. “I’m 70 years old! And I am not going to march into the woods with a Bible and a gun, and line up for target practice. It’s pure nonsense is what it is.”?

We had stopped to talk on the County Park trail. He belongs to one of the biggest churches here. And though he has been an active member in this church for decades, he was still unsure, post-Covid, whether he would go back. “Remember that church shooting they had down in Texas a few years back?” he said as we stepped aside for two women to pass. “It wasn’t two weeks ’til we had the whole church strung up with security cameras and men carrying guns inside and outside Sunday service. But the virus? The one that could actually kill me and my wife? Our pastor hardly mentions it.”

This is how we live.

In a story for The Washington Post last summer, after a gunman opened fire from a rooftop on a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois., killing seven parade-goers and wounding more, I wrote that “the (now former) editor of our weekly newspaper regularly voices his full-throated support for guns. On June 14, 2022 he wrote, “Even in a nation so thoroughly divided by the 2nd Amendment, it’s nearly impossible to find anyone who doesn’t think schools need to be protected by trained professionals with guns and hardened as well as possible against intruders.”And “in the previous week’s newspaper, the same editor wrote that when we reelected our county attorney “in last month’s primary, there isn’t a question that his pro-gun campaign messaging had something to do with it.”?

This is how we live.

When I got home from church on Sunday, my husband had saved a recording of CBS Sunday Morning for me. There was a David Sedaris segment he wanted me to see. I watched the Sedaris commentary, but before I could turn it off, the TV screen flashed with “Gun Related Deaths 2023” at the top.?

Mass Shootings: 122.?

Children killed by guns (17 and under): 388.?

I keep thinking about the bumper sticker I saw around the same time as the Nashville shooting, pasted proudly on that blue Chevy truck, “No airbags. We die like real men.” From Newtown to Uvalde to Nashville, our kids are dying like real kids, gunned down, with their teachers, in their classrooms, with AR-15 style rifles.?

This is what we call living?

A sticker adhered to marble on the Kentucky Capitol's mezzanine. (Kentucky Lantern photo by McKenna Horsley)

In the penultimate courtroom scene in 1993’s “Philadelphia,” Denzel Washington’s character demands the court acknowledge the subject they have danced uncomfortably around throughout the trial. “Your honor, everybody in this courtroom is thinking about sexual orientation, sexual preference, whatever you want to call it,” he says. “Who does what to whom and how they do it …. So let’s just get it out in the open. Let’s just get it out of the closet. Because this case is not just about AIDS, is it? So let’s talk about what this case is really all about: The general public’s hatred, our loathing, our fear of homosexuals.”

Kentucky’s Republican legislators spent much of the last month in Frankfort working to ban drag shows, books, medical care (against medical advice) and more while struggling literally to find words, from the continually mispronounced ‘prurient’ to insisting they could not or should not speak the words aloud from the very books they were insisting on banning.

If you are a lawmaker who has spent so little time with written material that you are unable to find words — words that are right there! in writing! — take that as a red flashing sign that you do not understand enough about your subject matter to make a cogent argument.

This lack of word-finding was repeatedly evidenced by my own representative, James Tipton, R-Taylorsville, who appeared to struggle late last Wednesday evening to describe what exactly is in the school library books he finds so pornographic and objectionable.

Midday Thursday, with the legislative clock ticking down, I then watched Rep. Tipton chair the shortest, final hour House education committee hearing I have ever seen. The 23 minute-long hearing? was held solely to shove through a new version of Senate Bill 150, sponsored by Sen. Max Wise, R-Campbellsville, taking omnibus House Bill 470 back to its more original language to make it one of the most extreme, anti-trans bills in the country.

As I watched online, stunned, I recalled the 15 minutes I’d had with Rep. Tipton in his office a month earlier. I had gone there to speak with him about common-sense gun laws. He kept mentioning our senator, Adrienne Southworth, R-Lawrenceburg, which seemed nothing more than a benign way to talk about anything other than guns. I did not find this unusual.

What I realize in retrospect, however, is that I have been continually coaxed into seeing Rep. Tipton in this light, often witnessing him hide behind Sen. Southworth’s skirts these last few years as if to say, ‘Aw shucks, don’t look at me, I’m harmless. She’s the extreme one!’

He is not harmless. Around Thursday noon, with his slick-and-quick management of the clock to get SB 150 out of committee and to the House floor, I now see how Rep. Tipton has conveniently held up Sen. Southworth as a red herring. His urgency to subject some of Kentucky’s most marginalized kids and families to irreparable harm, simply because he and his colleagues seem to not understand their sexuality or their physical and emotional needs, is not only clueless and philistine but beneath the office he holds.

Within the hour, SB 150 was on the House floor for a vote, with Rep. Keturah Herron, D-Louisville, rightfully decrying that this horrific bill was purposefully rushed, and for what reason? Rep. Josie Raymond, D-Louisville, argued, “We are about to legislate something we don’t understand,” and Rep. Sarah Stalker, D-Louisville, added, “Clearly we need to protect our children from some of the people in this room who are voting for hate.”

As the afternoon and evening progressed, and legislators in both the House and Senate debated and cast votes to easily pass this bill with their Republican supermajority, a number of impassioned speeches stood out. But one that struck a chord with me personally for its laughable naiveté was Rep. Bill Wesley, R-Ravenna, as he told the story of his cheerleading daughter and fellow cheerleaders asking him to make sure boys could not use their bathroom.

I was once a 15-year-old cheerleader, too; a happy-go-lucky cheerleader until I quit the squad?because I felt sick and exposed at games, jumping around in a short skirt in front of the heterosexual, much-adored man in my community who was grooming me (and likely others) to give him oral sex.?A term Rep. Tipton?would surely avoid speaking aloud.

It is the ultimate irony that lawmakers like Reps. Tipton and Wesley, who distract and falsely conflate sexual grooming with their so-called “bathroom” issue, are the gift that keeps on giving to the very real pedophiles in our communities.

I have watched the debate about SB 150 from the start. I have been witness to its unfortunate journey, both in person and via video. This bill will harm children.

I repeat: This bill will harm children.?

And history will be deservedly unkind to every lawmaker who shoved this ignorant and hateful bill down Kentuckians’ throats.

Thirty years ago, “Philadelphia” received a Best Picture Oscar nomination for being a leader, for being one of the first blockbuster films to address homophobia and portray homosexuals positively, as welcome in American society.

Kentucky is not only not leading, our GOP elected officials mortify the majority of us every time they open their mouths. Unlike places like Michigan, where they just passed legislation to protect the LGBTQ community, the majority of our lawmakers remain woefully behind the times in their willful, fundamental misunderstanding of language and of people — of children — whom, let’s be honest, they fear, find disgusting, and do not understand.

To paraphrase Denzel in “Philadelphia,” how about we just get it out in the open, get it out of the closet. Kentucky’s Republican leaders refuse to acknowledge facts or find words because it keeps them from having to admit their hatred, their loathing, their fear of homosexuals and non-cisgendered people.

Theirs is the very definition of bigotry.

Protesters chant "shame, shame, shame" after a Kentucky legislative committee advanced anti-trans legislation, March 2, 2023, in the Kentucky Capitol Annex. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Sarah Ladd)

Five days before Christmas, I was in an Anderson County government meeting I had been attending regularly for a year and a half. We stood for the prayer. We pledged allegiance to the American and Kentucky flags. The meeting was called to order.

As elected officials made motions and went through basic procedure to approve minutes and hear department head reports, I suddenly found myself looking around at the faces in the room, a heavy, sickening chill running through my gut.

?“If I died tomorrow,” I thought, “not one of these people would come to my funeral. Why in the world do I keep coming here?”?

I have not been back since.

Last Thursday, I arrived at the Capitol Annex more than an hour before the House Judiciary Committee’s hearing on House Bill 470 was set to begin. The room was already filling with folks both for and against what has been labeled one of the worst of the many anti-transgender bills in legislatures around the country. I spotted an open chair between two women and asked if the seat was taken.?

“Yes, of course, what side are you on?” one woman asked. I said I was on the side of treating all people equally and with respect, to which she said something about this being the side that was there to protect God’s children from pedophiles and the sexual mutilation of children.?

I chose to sit elsewhere.?

Over the next hour, the room filled to capacity. People kept arriving, trying to squeeze through the crowd. At noon sharp, the doors closed on a crowded hallway. The meeting was brought to a quiet order.

If you do not attend meetings of local or state government, one of the key things you miss is the energy in the room. As much as we think we can see what is happening on our TVs or computer screens — I say this as someone who often watches the Kentucky legislature on my laptop while doing other things — it feels very different to be physically present.?

In the case of HB 470, the hearing’s cold formality of procedure, alongside lawmakers fixation on sexuality, while the people testifying begged only to be seen as human beings, made this a meeting like none I have ever seen before and hope to never see again.

The atmosphere in that room at the Kentucky Capitol Annex was not of elected officials arguing differences in policy, which is what we elect them to do.?

The atmosphere in that room was a sickening display of GOP lawmakers using their power to dehumanize and deny health care to some of our most vulnerable families and children.?

I have never felt so much palpable pain during a government meeting. I have never witnessed so many people, particularly young people, quietly sobbing in an effort to hold it in, to not disturb official proceedings, as our elected officials overwhelmingly passed the bill out of committee.?

I have never been so ashamed to sit silently, to maintain “order,” in the face of such blatant human disregard.

In one of the last statements before the meeting gaveled to a close, Rep. Keturah Herron, D-Louisville, summed up what it felt like to be in the room. “I think that this piece of legislation is shameful. I do not believe that legislation such as this belongs in this committee or any other committee. It is very interesting to sit here and listen to testimony and read a bill that we want to insert ourselves in peoples’ lives. We want to make decisions for peoples’ health care … What makes this piece of legislation okay, to be engaged in the lives of individuals?”?

And then finally, “Being a masculine-centered individual who identifies as queer, I am letting you know that this is a very dangerous and harmful piece of legislation. We are going to lose kids’ lives. They will die. I had a friend text me last night and said to me … you cannot let this piece of legislation pass. People are going to die.”

HB 470 passed easily out of committee and later passed by a vote of 75-22 on the House floor.

I am cisgendered, a person whose gender identity corresponds to the sex assigned at birth, and I am a white woman past childbearing age with unquestioned access to health care, the platform of a published opinion column, and general acceptance, even among the many who disagree with me politically in my own community. With the exception of misogyny, I move easily through this world. If I do not feel welcome, I can simply choose to be elsewhere. But I still exist.

In denying health care services, in denying that transgender people are even real people, HB 470 seems aimed to eliminate existence itself.?

And so I ask the Kentucky GOP: If I can feel so bone-chillingly unwelcome in a government meeting, with my privilege, that I think “if I died tomorrow, not one of these people would come to my funeral,” what must it feel like to be a transgender child, or the parent of a transgender child, in the political crosshairs of elected officials??

When you ran for office, did you dream of spending your political capital on such horrific cruelties?

Rep. Herron is right. HB 470 is a dangerous and harmful piece of legislation. We are going to lose kids’ lives. They will die. And rare is the elected Republican in the state of Kentucky who seems to give a damn.

When Grandpa Pete died in November 2011, I was in a car full of family members as we drove from the funeral service to the cemetery when someone said, “I’ve never read more than three pages in any book.” This 40-something college graduate went on to tell us that any book worth reading would be made into a movie, and why would anyone in their right mind spend days reading a book when they could watch the movie in two hours?

I remember not bothering to respond, because how do you even begin to argue with ignorance like that??

I thought about this person’s logic, or lack thereof, as I listened to Kentucky GOP legislators last week trying to explain why certain kinds of books should not be available to students in a classroom or school library.?

Senate Bill 5, which is sponsored by Sen. Jason Howell, passed 29-4 and now heads to the House. The bill aims to formalize a complaint process for schools to filter materials that parents consider inappropriate for their children.?

Obvious questions arise: What happens when a kid who is banned from checking out a book has a friend check it out for them? What are the consequences? And do those consequences apply to the kid, the friend, and the teacher? What happens when one teacher handles this one way, and a teacher down the hall handles it differently?

What if a kid needs to read a banned book to write a paper? Does this mean the teacher has to carefully assign different books for the same assignment? And what happens when the kids who have read and written about the banned book read their papers aloud in class in front of the kid who was not allowed to read the book?

I am reminded of schools where lunch still costs money and kids whose accounts are in arrears are handed a separate “free” lunch. I see an adult in the cafeteria pulling the child aside to say, possibly in front of other students, “You are not allowed to have the same nourishment that everyone else is having.”?

Is the fear truly that a child might read a book containing subject-matter they are not prepared for — about race, sex, gender, religion, abuse, substance abuse, etc — or that they might read these books and begin to think and ask hard questions of the adults in their lives about the environment that they, their friends, and their family members are living in??

And then there is this. School children of all ages and their teachers are forced — they can’t opt out, can they? — to routinely practice active shooter drills in our schools. Where is the concern that practicing lockdown or how to escape a mass shooting or learning how to apply combat-level first aid might be harming our kids?

Hardly a week goes by without news of a child being shot. In October, a 12-year-old boy in Knott County fatally shot a 4-year-old girl.?There are so many reports about kids being shot to death (including in their classrooms) that it barely registers as breaking news anymore. “Thoughts and prayers” are often tweeted by Republican lawmakers while they use the power and influence of their offices to do absolutely nothing.?

But books. Yes, right. Books are dangerous.

According to Dr. Sabrina Brown, associate professor and researcher at the University of Kentucky and the Kentucky Injury Prevention Research Center, “The leading cause of death for people ages 1 to 19 is firearm related.?… Children averaged 19 ER visits per year for unintentional firearm related injuries from 2016-2021, with a spike in 2020. Children ages 4 and under accounted for 34%; 5-7-year-olds accounted for 31%; and 8-10-year-olds accounted for 35%.”?

I listened last week as Sen. Stephen Meredith, who seems hellbent on pushing SB5, say, “I never imagined in my life we would have drag queen story hour at a library for children… What’s next? Do we bring prostitutes to school for career day?” and I felt the same as I did back in 2011, in the crowded family car on the way to the cemetery. What does any of this have to do with reading? And yet, how do you even begin to argue with a fundamental level of ignorance like this?

When was the last time Sen. Meredith and his GOP colleagues read more than three pages of a book? Have any of them fully read — other than a few excerpts — the books they support banning?

And unlike the massive number of American children who die every year by firearm, when was the last documented account of a child reading a book that contained information about the human body — a woman’s breasts, masturbation, buttocks, same-sex parenting? — that resulted in the death of that child?

The answer is: never.

The tradition of rubbing Abraham Lincoln's toe for good luck leaves his statue's boot shiny and worn. During the Kentucky Fairness Rally for LGBTQ Rights, the colors of the Progress Pride flag shared the Rotunda with Lincoln, who once famously said, "With malice toward none and charity for all." (Kentucky Lantern photo by Sarah Ladd)

This past Sunday, I did what many of my fellow Kentuckians do: I went to church.?

I live way out in the country, so on the drive to town I called to check on my dad. He told me my stepmother’s little dog, Magic, had died and that he had taken Magic’s ashes to the cemetery and dug a little hole by my stepmother’s grave so they could be together.?

In church, I said a special prayer for my sweet dad. The pastor’s sermon was “Focus on Community.” I served communion with my fellow deacons. In Sunday School, we talked about baptism. I attended the church board meeting where I learned that Backpack Buddies — a countywide program that sends hundreds of bags of food home with kids in need on weekends — is suddenly serving an additional hundred kids a week and running out of money.?

Later in the afternoon, I was making a tuna casserole for dinner when I saw a Twitter post by Kentucky gubernatorial candidate and current Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles. It was a photo of a handgun and ammo clips in an open gun case that read simply, “Sunday Funday!”?

His photo was such a stark disconnect with how I had spent the day. How most Kentuckians spend or think of a Sunday. And yet, it was not the photo of a firearm that rankled me. Come on, now, I live in a rural area. I see guys with guns all the time. It was the performative desperation of the photo; the childishness of the words “Sunday Funday!” alongside; the way the gun seemed so deliberately posed with Commissioner Quarles’ tossed-off aviator sunglasses as if to say, Look at how cool I am!?

The word “cringeworthy” came to mind, particularly after last week’s cringeworthy GOP-controlled legislative display in which Republican state senators spent much of their time and our tax dollars publicly disparaging LGBTQ kids with Sen. Max Wise’s SB150.

I was inside the packed Capitol Rotunda on Wednesday afternoon for the LGBTQ rights rally. In stark contrast to what was happening in committee hearings and on the floor of the legislature, what I witnessed was grace, joy, compassion and love. Speakers from Gov. Andy Beshear and Lt. Gov.? Jacqueline Coleman to Democratic lawmakers to novelist Silas House and our beautiful, brave kids, this was a gathering that mirrored what most of us do in church on Sundays, where we vow to love our neighbors as ourselves.

The next morning, Thursday, I was back at the Capitol for Moms Demand Action Advocacy Day where we have the opportunity to talk with legislators about how to make our communities safer from the threat of gun violence.

I met with my representative, Republican James Tipton, for about 15 minutes and asked for his support to create a state-level Office of Safer Communities (federally funded) which would collect/share data and coordinate efforts directed at violence prevention, including gun violence. I also asked him to support the Crisis Aversion and Rights Retention Bill which protects the rights of gun owners while providing law enforcement with a process to temporarily suspend access to guns to someone who is an imminent danger to themselves or others.?

He nodded politely.

Rep. Tipton and I live in the same small community, which means we see each other on a fairly regular basis. I am comfortable talking with him. This, however, is where I tell you that it was still impossible to move him off the standard GOP talking point: Kentuckians are big on their Second Amendment rights.?

So let me say to Commissioner Quarles — with his “Sunday Funday!” gun tweet — something akin to what I said to Rep. Tipton in his office: Guns are not toys and should not be used for “Look at me! I’m cool!” social media posts. I am not anti-gun — our police chief himself taught me how to shoot — I am anti gun-violence, and there is a difference. And as someone who lives out in the country and sees folks carrying guns everywhere from Kroger to Walmart, I do not need politicians to lecture me on gun culture, nor do most Kentuckians.

While I was in Rep. Tipton’s office, he tried to move our conversation to the subject of murders in Louisville (another favorite talking point of the Kentucky GOP) and I reminded him of a young man in our rural community who died recently by gunshot. A man who was clearly in crisis and might well be alive today if he had not been carrying a gun.

And thus our meeting ended.

From the way our GOP legislators use the power of their offices to not address gun violence to the Quarles gun post to the casual cruelty of fighting for a bill that does nothing but promote the bullying of LGBTQ school kids, I am at a loss.?

Where is the focus on community and loving your neighbor, like the sermon I heard in church on Sunday? Where is the courage to address very real gun violence like a normal, caring human being? Where are the plans to solve food insecurity for families and kids who rely on programs — programs wondering where to find funding — like Backpack Buddies??

Where? Summed up in the pandering, witless tweet of a GOP gubernatorial candidate. Kentuckians are struggling in more ways than I can count, but hey, I’m running for governor and it’s “Sunday Funday!” with my gun.

A pro-Trump mob breaks into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

I recently spoke at a nonpartisan event at the Paul Sawyier Public Library in Frankfort. During the Q&A, a man asked a question I’ve been grappling with ever since. “What are you doing as a writer to offset the naysayers and the people who believe that elections are rigged and don’t count?”

At the time, I answered that having Sen. Adrienne Southworth, one of Kentucky’s most flagrant election deniers, living in and representing Anderson County, also my home, makes this a lot more difficult. When I talk to locals, I ask them straight out if they think our county clerk (who most of them know, respect or like personally) cheats or rigs elections and, if not, what makes them think other county clerks are cheaters?

Not one person has ever answered this question and they often look at me skeptically, like it’s some kind of trick.

The most accurate and unfortunate answer to this man’s question is that election deniers probably aren’t reading what I write, about elections or anything else, because I am not in their silo. They do not trust me as a source.

I first started writing about politics in 2016, with the release of the Access Hollywood tape. https://www.kentucky.com/opinion/op-ed/article107845782.html? Donald Trump had not yet become president, but he easily convinced millions of Americans that the tape was nothing but “locker room talk,” a coordinated effort by Hillary Clinton and the so-called liberal, coastal elite, media machine who looked down on them and their “way of life.” A month later, he won the presidency.

What does the Access Hollywood tape have to do with today’s election deniers? Everything.

Throughout his candidacy and presidency, Trump used Facebook, Twitter, FOX News, and the dozens of media microphones pointed his way before he boarded Marine One as his personal, free, 24/7 marketing blitz to drive home that writers like me are “fake news” and being paid to dupe them.

Sure, his Facebook and Twitter accounts, as well as all of those microphones are now gone, but it is too late. The cake is baked. How do we un-bake it?

Whether they are Trump loyalists or what I now call regular Republicans, even my own family members, lifelong friends, and my own father do not read what I write. They never ask about my work or acknowledge that I am a columnist. Even for those who love me, I am the embodiment of “fake news.” And why would they read fake news?

Case in point: Last July, I wrote a widely circulated argument for abortion rights that opened with the line, “The day before Roe v. Wade was overturned, I opened the door to a funeral home in Missouri and locked eyes with the man who molested me when I was a teenager.” https://www.kentucky.com/opinion/op-ed/article263252808.html#storylink=cpy I have only told this story to a handful of people back home, so as soon as the story ran, I assumed I would hear from both childhood friends and family members, including my father, asking not only what happened but who the perpetrator was. I braced myself for these difficult conversations.

And then, nothing. Not a single friend or family member contacted me about this story. Why? Because they do not read newspaper articles written by Democrats, the “fake news” media, or people with so-called “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” and they certainly do not read stories about abortion rights.

Election deniers tend to be conspiracy theorists generally. They believe Dr. Fauci is a criminal, that President Biden is not really the president, that the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021 was a hoax or, if real, led by Antifa. Trying to convince them that elections are not rigged, that dead people are not voting, that voting machines are not being remotely controlled by Hillary Clinton using Hunter Biden’s laptop in the basement of a Washington D.C. restaurant called “Swamp Pizza” — as comical as it sounds — is impossible.

To answer the man’s question from the Paul Sawyier Public Library in Frankfort, the sad news is that I could write a weekly column challenging Sen. Southworth’s dangerous, absurd, election conspiracies and not make a dent because the true believers don’t want to hear it. I am reminded of my husband’s grandmother who, when she did not want to hear what we were talking about in the kitchen, would just turn off her hearing aids.

The most critical answer to the man’s question is this: As long as former President and current GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump continues to insist his election was stolen, that all of our elections are rigged, and as long as powerful, elected Republicans repeatedly state, on the record, that they will vote for him if he is the nominee, I can write about election fraud being a fraud until my fingers bleed, and it will not matter one iota.

From the Access Hollywood tape to today, people like me trying to correct the volume of disinformation being spread by everyone from Sen. Southworth to Mr. Trump is like trying to catch a fish with your bare hand.

From a speed boat.

On the ocean.

Until elected Republicans join forces and come out en masse to repudiate Trump for his many, many lies and desecration of democratic norms — and I do not see this happening, do you? — we can expect the population of election naysayers and deniers to keep on growing. This is now the legacy of the Republican Party.

A candle with a message burns at a makeshift memorial near the Club Q nightclub on Nov. 20 iin Colorado Springs, where a 22-year-old gunman entered the LGBTQ nightclub opened fire, killing at least five people and injuring 25 others before being stopped by club patrons. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

LAWRENCEBURG — With the election just three weeks away, my small, rural Kentucky town was suddenly “ate up,” as Grandma Ann might say, not with politics but with sex and sin.?

The Oct. 17 meeting of the Anderson County school board was standing room only, and the vast majority were there to make fear-mongering, religious statements about the LGBTQ community.?

Randy Adams — a teacher in the Anderson County schools and, it turns out, pastor of his own congregation — had published a Facebook manifesto explaining his refusal to follow Kentucky Department of Education guidelines regarding pronoun usage.

He wrote, in part, “As a Christian, I cannot call a person a gender other than their biological gender. That is a sin against God,” and, “Staff members who morally object, I ask you not to follow this guidance. I know this is scary but our community needs us to stand tall for truth.”

We also had Christy Franklin — a school board candidate highlighting her membership at Ninevah Christian Church as a job qualification — who wrote on her campaign Facebook page, “These issues are right here in Anderson County whether we like it or not: Critical Race Theory (CRT), using incorrect pronouns, transgenders, furries (students that think they are animals), and medical freedom. I’ve heard some people say this will happen ‘when pigs fly!’ Well, the pigs are flying, my friends.”

Ironically abortion, the pig that usually flies during election season, was barely on the radar here. Why? Because as Election Day snuck up, those in power could see that Amendment 2 (which would constitutionally ban abortion) was not creating enough fear to drive Republican votes and, in a last minute panic, rightwing politicians and their preachers became hellbent on scaring folks into the voting booth.?

Looking back, none of this was a coincidence. The issues that whip voters into a frenzy and drive them to the polls — Does “They’re coming for your way of life!” sound familiar? — are the same issues that fill church pews.?

We would be wise to consider perfectly-timed religious outrage on political issues, mirroring the American zeitgeist of fevered, right-wing political rallies, as two sides of the same coin.?

Ms. Franklin did her part by pushing absurd, rightwing conspiracy theories, and while Mr. Adams was temporarily suspended from teaching, with pay, he hosted a revival of sorts at Sand Spring Baptist Church on the dangers of the LGBTQ “agenda.” A welcoming prayer and introduction was given by Sand Spring Reverend Mike Hamrick, and The Anderson News reported that state Sen. Adrienne Southworth,??who represents Anderson County in the legislature, “encouraged those in attendance. ‘We need to hear from you. Action time is now.’”?

What a religious and politically timed … coincidence.

The day before Election Day, the Lexington Herald-Leader published a story that opened, “On a recent Saturday afternoon, on the steps of the Kentucky Capitol, Bishop John Iffert wanted to make something clear: Christians have a duty to publicly advocate on behalf of unborn fetuses ahead of the November election.”?

The article went on to quote Terry Cooper, Ms. Franklin’s pastor at Ninevah Christian Church, one of the largest congregations in Anderson County. “One week after the call to arms from Bishop Iffert, on October 9, Minister Terry Cooper issued a dire warning to his Lawrenceburg congregation. He was preaching from the book of Jeremiah, when the Old Testament God told Jeremiah to stop praying for the people of Judah, because their sexual and idolatrous transgressions were too far gone for redemption. God was poised to destroy their city as punishment. Can America be compared to ancient Israel?” Cooper asked his congregants.?

Cooper said America’s own irredeemable sins have come in the form of the “godless LBGT agenda,” materialism, and abortion rights. It’s a ‘spirit war,’ he said.”

We could laugh about phrases like “sexual and idolatrous transgressions,” but hateful rhetoric like this gets people killed.

In 2016, 49 people died and 53 were wounded after a mass shooting at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando. Two weeks before this year’s election, five were shot to death and 19 injured at Q Nightclub, a well-known LGBTQ bar in Colorado Springs. Words matter.

I often watch sermons by pastors Hamrick and Cooper online, so I knew that Cooper’s Oct. 9 warning was no anomaly.

On May 22, a week following the Republican Primary, Cooper preached, “Our governor of the state of Kentucky vetoed a bill in April that simply stated that boys couldn’t play girls’ sports,” and that “the president of the United States came on television just about a week before our governor vetoed that bill and said that the U.S. government supported and intended to pay for youths, children, to change their genders based upon their feelings.” Minutes later, he added, “Yesterday I noticed this, Walt Disney. The headline is Gay Pride Themed Disney Plush Toys. I’m going to tell you before I read it, they’re coming for your children.”??

And gosh, who has time to worry about “woke” issues like mass shootings in bars, schools, churches, grocery stores, concerts, etc. when we can get all het up about colorful stuffed animals and S-E-X.

In his July 3 sermon — Happy Independence Day, everyone! — Cooper opened with a story about how President Lincoln feared the war between the states might break the nation. “Social issues are what divided the states in Gettysburg in the Civil War, and social issues are what are dividing the nation again,” he told his congregation. “Issues like abortion, LGBTQ rights, the gender wars, religious freedom, all of these social issues are dividing our nation into a civil war.”?

I am reminded of the final, shocking scene in Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.” Like the LGBTQ community, Tessie Hutchinson has done nothing wrong, and yet everyone, including her own children, are called upon by the powerful men of the town to stone her to death. ““It isn’t fair, it isn’t right,” Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her.”?

We must stop listening to those in power who demand that we hurt our neighbors.

The November midterms are over. Randy Adams has gone back to teaching, his lengthy manifesto long? gone from his Facebook page; Christy Franklin lost her bid for school board; Sen. Southworth is scheduling town halls to talk about the 2023 legislative session; and as a friend and member of Ninevah Christian Church told me about his pastor’s recent, post-election sermon, “The message was all about hope. It was so normal!”?

What an, ahem, coincidence.