Just Plain Evil
By 
DOGE cuts will hit rural counties the hardest.
Kentucky Department of Education officials said federal education officials won’t be reimbursing $56 million in federal coronavirus relief money that it had previously told schools it would cover. On March 28, the U.S. Department of Education sent state education officials notices that it wanted to claw back unspent coronavirus relief funding dollars. However, federal education officials told states in September 2024 that it had extended the deadline for unspent COVID relief dollars to be spent until March 2026, said Jennifer Ginn, a spokeswoman for the Kentucky Department of Education. That means that the federal government won’t reimburse $18 million to the Kentucky Department of Education and $38 million from 14 school districts that had allocated or had spent the money, according to information provided by state education officials. Almost all the $38 million for 14 local school districts was set aside for construction or new school buses, Ginn said.
Letcher County Public Schools had used some of its $3 million in COVID money to buy 25 new buses after multiple buses were destroyed during the 2022 flooding. It’s now scrambling to figure out how to pay for them after the federal government abruptly cut off the funds, according to the Mountain Eagle, which first reported on the COVID relief money cuts. The $18 million state education department had remaining from those federal relief dollars was set to go to various programs that benefited multiple school districts. Those programs include enhancing technical education for students with disabilities, after-school tutoring programs and additional funding for Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts this summer, according to documents provided to the Herald-Leader.
Many school districts had not been able to spend all of its COVID relief money during the initial time frame due to construction and other delays. It can take a long time to order some equipment, including school buses, school officials have said.
Trump won Letcher County with 81% of the vote. As with much of what he does, the striking part is just how unnecessary it all is. Lotta stuff here that’s gonna find its way into Andy’s campaign material, and that should also fuel the 2026 race for McConnell’s seat. On that point:
The race in Kentucky to succeed Senator Mitch McConnell, an omnipresent force in Republican politics for 40 years, is shaping up to be one of the biggest and most expensive G.O.P. clashes of 2026.
Representative Andy Barr, a Republican who was first elected to Congress in 2012, announced on Tuesday that he was running for the seat that will be vacated by Mr. McConnell’s retirement. Mr. Barr’s candidacy sets up a Republican primary battle against Daniel Cameron, a former state attorney general and a protégé of Mr. McConnell’s.
While Mr. Barr and Mr. Cameron are the only official G.O.P. candidates so far, several other well-known Kentucky Republicans, including Nate Morris, a wealthy businessman with ties to Vice President JD Vance and Donald Trump Jr., have indicated an interest in the seat.
The Republican primary race will revolve around two party titans — President Trump and Mr. McConnell — whose approval among conservatives has sharply diverged. The candidates will feel compelled to demonstrate their pro-Trump credentials as they jockey for the president’s coveted endorsement. That battle is poised to lead to increased public criticism of Mr. McConnell, whose popularity among Republican voters has taken a nosedive…
Six years ago, an endorsement from Mr. McConnell probably would have ended any primary race for his seat before it began, with the powerful senator who shaped the modern Supreme Court able to anoint a successor and shape the next generation of Republican leadership in the state.
But now it is Mr. Trump’s endorsement that could effectively end the primary contest. He has repeatedly decided Republican races across the country in recent years, and his word will carry great weight in Kentucky, which he won last year by 30 percentage points.
The point about McConnell’s endorsement is oft made but is almost entirely wrong; GOP primary voters went against McConnell’s endorsement in 2010 (Rand Paul won) and in 2015 (Matt Bevin won). The McConnell Machine was important in Kentucky politics but it has not been decisive for quite some time.
BTW, before we have any trouble I’ll remind you that there are rules about how we talk about rural Kentucky in this comment section. I understand that folks may not like those rules but they will be enforced.
Photo credit: By Nyttend – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32368876