Gov. Beshear's Pre-K for All initiative aims to close achievement gap, boost workforce
According to a news release, the Pre-K for All initiative is projected to grow Kentucky's workforce by up to 70,000 people while providing a higher quality education for future generations.
State statistics showed that during the 2023 academic year, 53.8% of Kentucky's children were unprepared when they showed up for their first day of kindergarten.
Kentucky AG: Fayette County Public Schools violated law in attempted tax hike
'Before they even step through the door, they are behind. This creates an achievement gap that is nearly impossible to close,' Gov. Beshear said. 'To increase kindergarten-readiness, we need to offer pre-K for every 4-year-old across the state of Kentucky.'
Beshear noted during Wednesday's event in Louisville that 18 states, including Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, and West Virginia, offer pre-K access for all 4-year-olds.
The governor reportedly issued an executive order on Wednesday creating the Team Kentucky Pre-K for All Advisory Committee, consisting of 28 members from across the state with 'a broad range of experience in business, workforce development, and education.'
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Beshear said that data from the Cabinet for Health and Family Services shows that of Kentucky's 120 counties, nearly two-thirds don't have access to enough child care to serve each family who needs it, with the majority of those located in eastern Kentucky.
More information about Beshear's June 4 executive order, including those appointed to the PreK for All Advisory Committee, can be found here.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
A Rising Democratic Star Just Became a New Anti–Death Penalty Hero
Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. When the history of America's long journey toward the abolition of capital punishment is written, it will be studded with the names of people who, in their time, took little-noticed decisions to oppose the death penalty. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear will likely be one of those people. Beshear, a rising star in the Democratic Party, is not a prominent and outspoken abolitionist. In fact, during an October 2023 gubernatorial debate with his Republican opponent, Beshear explained that there are 'some crimes so terrible and some people so dangerous that I do believe this law needs to continue to be on the books.' With statements like that, Beshear certainly does not sound like a candidate for the abolitionist Hall of Fame. But consider what he did late last month, when he refused to authorize the execution of Ralph Baze, who was convicted of murdering two police officers and would later be the lead plaintiff in an unsuccessful constitutional challenge to lethal injection. Beshear's refusal was enormously significant in forestalling a real step backward for the abolitionist movement. And, while it is by no means the death penalty capital of the United States, the fate of capital punishment may be determined in places like Kentucky, places I call death penalty 'swing states,' and not just in states with many executions like Texas, Oklahoma, or Alabama. A death penalty swing state is one in which the death penalty remains an authorized punishment, but in which executions seldom occur and death sentences are seldom handed down. As the Death Penalty Information Center notes, 'Although the United States is considered a death penalty country, executions are rare or non-existent in most of the nation.' Right now, there are 10 death penalty states in which no one has been executed in the past 10 years. Kentucky is one of those states, along with California, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Wyoming. Three other death penalty states—Arkansas, Nebraska, and Ohio—have not carried out an execution in the past five years. The reasons why states retain the death penalty but don't use it are quite varied. Some states stop executing because of the difficulty of obtaining the drugs needed to carry out lethal injection or problems they've encountered in the administration of capital punishment. In other states, governors have declared a moratorium on executions. Still others seem disinclined to go forward with executions but have not mustered the political momentum to take the death penalty off the books. For example, Kansas has not executed anyone in almost 50 years; Wyoming has not done so since 1992. Kentucky carried out its last execution in November 2008 when Marco Allen Chapman was put to death for the gruesome murder of two children and the rape of their mother. All told, the Bluegrass State has executed only three people in the past half-century. Its death penalty history dates back to 1780, before it was granted statehood, when it carried out its first judicially authorized execution. Since then, Kentucky has gone on to set the record for the most executions in a single day. On July 13, 1928, it used the electric chair to put seven men to death, one after the other. Eight years later, it was the site of this nation's last public execution. In 1998, though, the state became the first to enact a Racial Justice Act. That act authorizes judges in capital cases to consider whether racial bias played a role in any decision to seek, or impose, the death penalty. Kentucky has not carried out an execution in more than a decade because of problems with its lethal injection protocol and various legal challenges to it. The DPIC reports that 'in 2006, death-sentenced prisoners filed a lawsuit alleging the execution protocol had not followed the proper administrative rulemaking process.' Since then, legal challenges have focused on the state's 'failure to provide a single-drug lethal injection option, inadequate protections against executing people with intellectual disability, and inadequate protections against executing those considered insane.' In 2019, a judge found the state's execution protocol to be 'unconstitutional and invalid,' and issued an injunction. But that did not stop Kentucky's Republican Attorney General Russell Coleman from calling on the governor last month to set an execution date for Baze. Coleman has been fighting to restart executions since he took office. His request put the progressive governor in a difficult spot in deep-red Kentucky. But Beshear held firm and kept his state in the group of death penalty swing states. He told the AG that he would not authorize Baze's execution because of continuing problems and unresolved legal issues with the state's execution protocol. As recently as April of this year, a Kentucky trial judge found that the state still had not fixed those problems. In response to Coleman's request, the governor would not jump the gun just to score political points. He pointed out that Kentucky 'does not currently have, nor can it obtain, the drugs necessary to carry out lethal injection executions.' So, Kentucky remains a place with 25 men on death row. The last death sentence handed down in the state was in 2014. States that move from the group that has not executed anyone in a long time to actually executing set an unfortunate example for other swing states that may encourage them to follow suit. We know that imitation is an important mechanism for the spread of policies or state actions, and this is as true in the realm of the death penalty as in any other area. As I wrote previously, 'Political leaders in one place scan the horizon looking to other places to see [what is happening] and to learn what works and what doesn't. The federal system provides the framework within which this learning and borrowing can occur.' That neighboring Indiana recently broke from the group of death penalty swing states after having not carried out an execution in 15 years makes Beshear's refusal to issue a death warrant all the more significant. It helps avoid a kind of domino effect involving other swing states, including Ohio to the north and Pennsylvania to the northeast. Beshear is an example of a political leader for whom the abstract belief that some people may deserve death as a punishment for their crimes gives way to a realistic assessment of the way the death penalty works, or does not work, in practice. It is that assessment that has fueled the substantial progress that abolitionists have made in changing the national conversation about capital punishment. For his refusal to let Kentucky restart what the late Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun once called 'the machinery of death' and for the political courage it took to do that, Andy Beshear may rightly be called an anti–death penalty hero. Solve the daily Crossword
CNBC
3 days ago
- CNBC
New York City braces for wealth flight with Mamdani's political rise
Zohran Mamdani's primary win in New York City's mayoral race and proposal to raise taxes on millionaires have touched off fears of a new wave of wealth flight from the city. Yet so far, there is little evidence of a slowdown in high-end real estate or real wealth losses in New York. Florida real estate brokers say they've seen a surge in inquiries from the New York wealthy looking to move to Miami or Palm Beach. Business owners are threatening to leave the city or close. And New York developers, caught in the crosshairs of Mamdani's rent control platform, have banded together to fund Mamdani's opponents in the November general election. At the center of the economic concern is Mamdani's so-called "millionaire tax." He's proposed an additional 2% tax on New Yorkers earning more than $1 million a year. Added to the city's current top rate of 3.876%, the tax would bring the combined New York City and state tax to 16.776%, by far the highest in the country. The combined federal, state and city rate would be 53.776%. And New York's high earners won't have to go to Florida to avoid the tax. They can simply move to neighboring Long Island or Westchester County or even New Jersey. Unlike New York state, New York City can't tax people who work in the city but have their primary residence elsewhere. "New York City can only tax its own residents," said Jared Walczak, vice president of state projects at the Tax Foundation. "A high earner doesn't need to give up the convenience of the city, they just need to move outside the five boroughs. Migration across city lines is the easiest." Importantly, Mamdani wouldn't be able to raise income taxes. The city's income tax rates are set by Albany, where Gov. Kathy Hochul has said she will block any tax hike. "I don't want to lose any more people to Palm Beach," Hochul told the New York Post. Critics also fear Mamdani's policies toward the police and public safety could make the city even more dangerous, becoming the final straw for many business owners and top earners who were already considering leaving. The top 1% of New Yorkers pay over 40% of the income taxes, so losing even a small number of high earners would set off a downward spiral of lower revenue and lower services and more out-migration. The Inside Wealth newsletter by Robert Frank is your weekly guide to high-net-worth investors and the industries that serve them. Subscribe here to get access today. New York state had a net loss of $14 billion in net adjusted income due to taxpayers leaving between 2021 and 2022, according to the Tax Foundation and IRS data. The city's revenue from personal income taxes declined between 2022 and 2024, from $16.7 billion in 2022 to $14 billion last year — although they're still above the pre-Covid levels of $13.4 billion in 2019, according to data from the New York City comptroller. At the same time, however, there are signs that New York's powerful wealth machine is constantly replenishing the ranks of millionaires and billionaires, more than making up for the rich who move out. The number of millionaires in New York City has more than doubled over the past decade — despite the Covid losses — to over 2.4 million, according to Altrata. There are now over 33,000 New Yorkers worth $30 million or more, nearly double that of Miami, according to Altrata. Whether it's measuring millionaires, multi-millionaires or billionaires, New York City has maintained its dominance as the richest wealth hub in the world. "New York remains a powerful magnet for the wealthy, offering a blend of luxury consumption, vibrant culture, high-quality education and lifestyle cachet, with the borough of Manhattan the epicenter of ultra-prime real estate," said a report from Altrata and REALM. Demand for pricey luxury apartments in New York also shows no signs of slowing, even after Mamdani's win in the June 24 primary. There were 64 contracts signed between June 23 and July 13 for apartments priced over $4 million, up 13% over last year, with a sales total of more more than $555 million in sales, according to Olshan Realty. Among the signed contracts was a $35 million, three-bedroom spread on Fifth Avenue that was first listed in December. "The luxury market is on pace for one of its best years," said Donna Olshan, of Olshan Realty, who also cautioned that any potential Mamdani-related weakness could show up in the Fall. Not only did New York's millionaire and billionaire population rebound quickly after Covid, but high earners also bounced back. While the city lost a net 5,000 households earning $1 million or more during the pandemic, their ranks have grown from 30,400 in 2019 to 34,127 in 2022, the latest period available, according to the Fiscal Policy Institute. Nathan Gusdorf, executive director of the Fiscal Policy Institute, said the narrative of wealth flight from New York is fed in part by the media, which highlights a small number of high-profile billionaires who move from New York to Florida. Stories about billionaires like Josh Harris, Carl Icahn and Daniel Och decamping to Florida ignores the broader ebb and flow of wealth in New York. New York's powerful economy, fueled by the financial services industry, continues to produce more new millionaires than it loses. "We do not have a fixed population of millionaires that just declines whenever one of them leaves," Gusdorf said. "The city regenerates that lost millionaire population." Even if Mamdani were to win the mayorship in November and raise taxes, the direct impact on wealth flight may be more limited than many expect. According to the Fiscal Policy Center's latest research, the top 1% of New Yorkers by income (those making more than $800,000 a year) leave the city at one quarter the rate of all other income groups. When the New York wealthy do move, they have most often oved to other high-tax states like New Jersey, Connecticut or California – suggesting lifestyle rather than taxes are the driver. "There is a strong indication that higher tax rates at the state level imposed on the top earners are not having real behavioral effects," Gusdorf said. Others, however, say taxes have outsized importance for the wealthy, proven by the sweeping population moves in recent years from high-tax to low- or no-tax states like Florida and Texas. A study by the California Center for Jobs and the Economy described a "taxodus," or net loss of $5.3 billion in personal income tax, from high earners who left after a 2016 extension of higher taxes on the wealthy. "High tax rates do lead to outmigration and lower income growth," Walczak said.
CNN
3 days ago
- CNN
Analysis: Democrats are making 2028 moves. Here's what to know
Democrats who will run for president in 2028 are already quietly, and not so quietly, making moves. They're visiting early primary states, workshopping material and formulating plans. This week, it's Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear in South Carolina. Last week, it was California Gov. Gavin Newsom. CNN's Edward-Isaac Dovere is closely watching all of it. We talked in DC about the list of potential candidates, their strengths and weaknesses, and what are the signs they're actually serious about stepping in the ring. The conversation, edited for length, is below. WOLF: The next general election isn't until 2028. Why are we paying attention to this right now? DOVERE: First of all, because some people want us to be paying attention. Gavin Newsom didn't go to South Carolina just as any state to go to. He picked a state — a presidential primary state — so that we talk about it, as others have done. JB Pritzker was in New Hampshire at the end of April; Pete Buttigieg went to Iowa, even though it's not quite a presidential state anymore. This is an ongoing process of the candidates trying to get people to pay attention and to workshop some of their material. But you also see among a lot of Democrats a deep desire to get past the Donald Trump era, even though the Trump era is still very new. One of the things even that Newsom was saying in South Carolina was, 'We can put an end to this in 18 months.' He's talking about the midterms, but it's that thought that Democrats don't need to just wallow in the horror and misery that they've been in since Election Day of 2024. WOLF: Biden forced a lot of changes in the primary process for Democrats, including Iowa not really being an early state for them anymore. What's the early map going to look like? DOVERE: Biden did push through some changes, especially making South Carolina first. But some of the other changes, particularly moving Iowa off of the early-state calendar, were very much supported by a lot of other people in the Democratic National Coalition. We'll see what the calendar ends up looking like. The chances that Iowa gets back to a primary position seem very low. That said, the chances that New Hampshire gets back to the first-in-the-nation spot that actually is required by New Hampshire state law seem much higher. We won't know the full answer on the calendar until at least sometime in 2026, and there is a lot of wrangling and back-and-forth among the states and among the DNC members. What is definitely true, though, is that no matter what arrangement will come, it seems that New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada will remain early. Where exactly they are is a little bit unclear. WOLF: Why could he win and why would he have trouble? DOVERE: Newsom had a real breakout moment over the response to what was going on in Los Angeles a couple weeks ago, and that very quickly identified him in people's minds as the face of the actual resistance to what Trump was doing, rather than just talking about it. He is a very skilled retail campaigner and speaker. But there are obstacles he'll have to overcome — people who think that he's maybe too California. He was the mayor of San Francisco, too liberal in some people's minds. Too slick. Just having a California air to him — all that stuff is what he needs to overcome. Other than Kamala Harris, there's never been a Democratic nominee from the West Coast. WOLF: OK, Kamala Harris. Could she do it again in a crowded primary? DOVERE: She's obviously thinking about running for governor of California, and I've done reporting that says that she's leaning in that direction. What is also clear is that she and her closest advisers realize that it's one or the other — you can't run for governor and then turn around and run for president right away. WOLF: Unless your name is Richard Nixon. DOVERE: Well, he ran for governor in 1962, lost, and then didn't end up running for president again until 1968. Her goal, if she runs, would be to win and not repeat the Nixon thing. WOLF: Moving east, in the middle of the country, there's JB Pritzker and Rahm Emanuel in Illinois; there's new Michigan resident Pete Buttigieg and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Let's start with Buttigieg, someone who actually won an early contest in 2020. DOVERE: The Bernie Sanders folks would still protest this, but Buttigieg did win the Iowa caucuses, and he came in a healthy second in the New Hampshire primary. He has spent the first six months of Trump's second presidency doing a lot of podcasts and outreach to what would be classified these days as the 'manosphere,' or the Republican-leaning or low-propensity voters. He regularly is embraced by Democrats for the way that he's able to break down Democratic arguments and break apart Republican arguments. That said, his jobs leading up to now have been to be the mayor of a pretty small city — South Bend, Indiana. And then he was transportation secretary. But part of his theory from when he was running in 2019, and he and I talked about it then, was that we are living in an age of Donald Trump's politics, where it's more about what you're able to do and how you're able to communicate what you're doing than about exactly what job you've had in government. Maybe that's an opening for him. I think that most people assume that he would be a reasonably strong contender, at least if he runs. WOLF: Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is an obvious choice, but she's said she's not running. DOVERE: A lot of people say they won't run for president until they do. Barack Obama insisted he wasn't running. Whitmer has a lot of strength in Michigan, obviously a key state for Democrats. She's won two tough races there by, in the end, pretty comfortable margins. She is quite popular in Michigan, as far as one can be in these polarized times. And she has, in these first six months of Trump, taken a different route than a lot of other Democrats. She's tried to find ways to work with Trump, and she feels like that is a good way of being the governor and also delivering for swing areas of the state. Of course, that has frustrated a lot of Democrats who feel like she's been used by Trump and turned into a prop by him, whether it was at the Oval Office when they had that meeting a couple months ago, or when he then flew to Michigan to announce this new shipbuilding investment and had her come to the podium. She would say she did get the investment, and it makes a big difference for Michigan shipbuilding. WOLF: Let's go across the lake to Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, the only billionaire on the list, yes. Would the democratic socialist wing of the Democratic Party go for a billionaire? DOVERE: I sat in New Hampshire at the end of April when Pritzker was there to speak to the big Democratic dinner there, and I asked him that exact question. When there was such a push among a lot of Democrats against the wealthy and oligarchs and all that, how would they vote for a billionaire? He said to me, it's about values, and he feels like he's been pushing the values. He's not apologetic about his family wealth. In fact, he says that he has used it toward helping other Democrats win, and through his personal political donations and a PAC he has put quite a few dollars into everything from state parties to specific campaigns to ballot initiative efforts. His strength would be that he's running for reelection now to a third term. A lot of things that he has done as governor fall into the category of Trump-proofing the state, and some fall into the category of just trying to make the state a center-left laboratory for all sorts of things. WOLF: There is a former mayor of Chicago who is clearly trying to set up the idea that he would run. Is Rahm Emanuel (a CNN contributor, former White House chief of staff, former ambassador and former congressman) actually serious? DOVERE: He is talking about running more in terms of the concept of what he would bring to the argument, or to the debate of how Democrats should be moderate and how they should talk about things in a different way than in the normal way of a potential candidate. WOLF: Moving South, what about a moderate governor from an otherwise-red state? DOVERE: That's Andy Beshear's argument: that he's won, and won comfortably, among the types of voters that most Democrats have given up even trying to appeal to, and done it in a state — Kentucky — that hasn't had a Democrat other than him and his father competitive statewide for years. He's done it while not shying away from Democratic positions on issues like abortion rights and even trans kids, but as he also spends some time in South Carolina this week, he's unabashedly starting to test how much appetite there is for his lower key — in both positions and personality — approach. WOLF: Let's go to the mid-Atlantic. Let's talk about Wes Moore (governor of Maryland), and then Josh Shapiro (governor of Pennsylvania). DOVERE: Wes Moore is clearly a very charismatic, appealing figure who has caught the eye of a lot of the Democratic intelligentsia for having a motivational, optimistic approach to how he speaks. He does not have as much of a legislative record as some of the other governors, which is notable in that Democrats have full control of the legislature in Maryland. So there may be some questions about what he has done and what he has been able to actually make happen when he's up against other governors, although he has also said he's not running for president. WOLF: Josh Shapiro clearly is somebody that everybody is watching. Will he run? DOVERE: We don't even have an official announcement that he's running for a second term as governor, although he obviously will. What he has managed to do, from when he was attorney general through when he was running for governor, through three years as governor, is have extremely high popularity ratings in Pennsylvania. That's among Democrats and Republicans, and in a state that has become such a swing state. For someone who is an unabashed Democrat to have that kind of reception is really a demonstration of the way that he approaches his governing and his outreach to the state. He has been very low-profile in terms of national politics over the course of these first six months of the Trump term. Most people probably haven't heard from him at all, other than that terrible incident with the arson of the governor's mansion when he was there with his family on the first night of Passover. That is a deliberate effort for him to stay focused on Pennsylvania. One of the questions over the next year or two, as he runs through reelection, is how much does he start to pop onto the national radar? WOLF: Usually a list like this is full of senators. Who could be on it? DOVERE: I would put Cory Booker from New Jersey, Chris Murphy from Connecticut, Mark Kelly from Arizona and Ruben Gallego from Arizona. WOLF: We've had Bernie Sanders as a very popular alternative in recent elections. He must be too old at this point. Who inherits his mantle? DOVERE: Who are we to say who is too old? He will turn 87 by Election Day 2028 — that would make him by far the oldest president that we've ever had, even outdoing the Biden and Trump records. Most people do not expect that he will be running for president again. The question of who inherits his mantle is a big one, and most people would put their money on Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is going to have some decisions coming up about whether she sets her eyes on running for president or running for Senate. There's an election in 2028 — that is Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer's seat, whether he decides to run, or she runs against him, or whether she just builds up her power by gaining seniority in the House. She's obviously quite young, and she has done more with her House seat already than almost anybody ever has in that amount of time. If not her, then I think there is a big open question about who it would be. Rep. Ro Khanna, the congressman from California who was a co-chair of Sanders' campaign in 2020, has been making clear that he is exploring a presidential run and hoping to have some of that support. If she doesn't run and he doesn't get that kind of support, then I think there would be a question of whether there's someone else that could be the right vessel for that, or whether it would diffuse between multiple candidates. WOLF: What about a complete outsider? There's a boomlet of interest in the ESPN analyst Stephen A. Smith. Is there room for a wild card? DOVERE: Trump is the first person in history to be president without having served in a military or government role beforehand. So who knows. There are a lot of people who you could see thinking that they would be that person. There was some reporting four years ago that Bob Iger, the Disney CEO, talked about maybe he should run. Whether it would be businesspeople or celebrities, Trump has made it clear that you could come from outside the political scene and do it. Other people who have thought about it have turned away because they have not wanted to have their lives picked over the way that we do to political candidates. There's even a new movie in which John Cena plays the president of the United States, and the gimmick is that he is an action hero who then just gets elected because of that. WOLF: Arnold Schwarzenegger, if he'd been born in the US. Or the Rock. DOVERE: Who was born in the US. WOLF: What sets off your spidey sense that somebody is getting serious about a run? DOVERE: The early state visits. If they start talking about national politics a lot more. Shapiro is a good example of somebody who gets talked about a lot but doesn't actually discuss national politics that much. If, all of a sudden, he's talking about Donald Trump a lot more, or what Democrats should stand for, that would be a reason to start thinking about him or whoever else is starting to do it. Then there are the things that happen behind the scenes — starting to reach out to interested donors or the sort of Democratic elders, brain trust, whatever you want to call it. As we get closer to 2027, when people will start launching their campaigns, there'll be outreach to staff and things and quiet invitations to reporters to come and meet the candidate. WOLF: So when you have an interview with one of these guys, we know that they're running. DOVERE: When I was sitting with Pritzker in New Hampshire, we were talking and at the end of the interview I said so can we just fast-forward through this and to say like you're running for president? He said, no, not yet.
