Matt Bevin

Kentucky's Governor is meeting Monday night with the Chinese Ambassador to the U.S.

Matt Bevin and Cui Tiankai will discuss economic development at the meeting in the Governor’s Mansion in Frankfort.

The meeting comes at a time of increasingly strained relationships between Washington and Beijing.

President Donald Trump has pursued an aggressive trade policy against China, slapping billions of dollars in tariffs on imported Chinese products, such as solar panels, washing machines, flat-panel televisions, and medical devices.

Teachers got a lot of love from speakers during the Fancy Farm political speaking event.

U.S. Congressman James Comer made a point to thank teachers who showed up to Fancy Farm, saying that they “deserve the respect of our highest elected officials.”

The comment is a dig at Gov. Bevin, who has made several inflammatory statements about teachers, including a claim that teachers left their students vulnerable to sexual assault and drug abuse by protesting in Frankfort earlier this year.

The annual Fancy Farm political speaking event takes place this weekend, signaling the unofficial kickoff of the fall election season in Kentucky.

The festival is a fundraiser for St. Jerome’s Catholic Church in the Graves County town of Fancy Farm in far-western Kentucky.

For more than a century the event has attracted Kentucky politicians trying to sway voters and in recent decades has evolved into a raucous affair where speakers insult and tease opponents while the crowd heckles and chants.

Amid a shortage of skilled workers, Gov. Matt Bevin says that the state and country need to focus on training young people to fill jobs in high-demand industries like manufacturing, health care and transportation.

“Everything that is being done with taxpayer money in this state should be focused on delivering what the purpose of an education is,” Bevin said. “It’s not to have a piece of paper. Because a piece of paper with no skill behind it is of no value.”

Bevin made the comments after a roundtable discussion in Shelbyville Thursday with the head of the federal Small Business Administration, Linda McMahon, the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment.

The cost of Governor Bevin’s ongoing investigation of former Governor Steve Beshear’s administration has doubled to $1 million, with Kentucky taxpayers footing the bill.

Bevin initially approved a two-year, $500,000 contract for an Indianapolis law firm in 2016 to search for corruption in the Beshear administration.

The Herald-Leader reports the Bevin administration has now approved a two-year, $500,000 extension of the contract.

Kentucky Attorney General Andy Beshear is trying to capitalize on Gov. Matt Bevin’s unpopularity with school teachers. He’s focusing his run for governor on public education and has selected a rural high school administrator as his running mate.

Beshear, a Democrat, announced that he would run for governor on Monday after months of speculation that he would challenge Republican Gov. Bevin, who he has sued eight times since taking office in 2016.

“As your governor, I will listen especially to those who disagree with me and together we will move forward and these days of bullying, name calling and ‘my way or the highway’ will be in the past,” Beshear said in his announcement.

Attorney General Andy Beshear will launch a run for Kentucky governor this week and his running mate will be Jacqueline Coleman, an assistant high school principal and political recruiter.

Beshear, a Democrat, sent out a press release on Sunday promoting a series of speaking events across the state on Monday and Tuesday in order to make an “announcement concerning the future of Kentucky.”

Gov. Matt Bevin said last week that he thinks parents should be responsible for locking up guns when they have children in the house, but he wouldn’t say whether he thinks that should be mandated by law.

Bevin made the comments to reporters after a meeting of the Federal School Safety Commission — a group of federal officials tasked with coming up with safety recommendations after a string of school shootings earlier this year.

A federal judge on Friday struck down Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin’s plan to put in place “community engagement” requirements for Medicaid coverage that were set to go into effect in some parts of the state on July 1.

That also includes the entirety of the new program, premiums, co-pays, loss of automatic vision and dental benefits and lock-out periods.

“In doing so, [the court] grants Plaintiffs full relief,” U.S. District Judge James Boasberg wrote for the court. “Because the Court invalidates that approval, it need not tackle Plaintiffs’ alternative bases for vacating some or all of the components.”

Gov. Matt Bevin says in order to put an end to school shootings, parents need to stop over-medicating their children and steer them away from cell phones and violent video games.

The governor’s comments came during a listening session hosted by the Federal Commission on School Safety, which was created by President Trump earlier this year.

Gov. Matt Bevin says the judge who struck down Kentucky’s pension law is “not a very competent attorney,” predicting that the ruling will be overturned because the legislation “doesn’t do much.”

Franklin County Circuit Judge Philip Shepherd ruled on Wednesday that the law is unconstitutional because state lawmakers rushed the bill to passage and didn’t have enough votes to send it to the governor’s desk.

A judge has struck down changes made to Kentucky’s pension systems earlier this year, ruling that lawmakers violated the state constitution by rushing the bill to passage in a matter of hours.

The challenge is the latest in a series of legal disputes between Democratic Attorney General Andy Beshear and Republican Gov. Matt Bevin.

On Wednesday Beshear called the ruling a “win for open, honest government.”

During a hearing on Thursday, the judge presiding over the lawsuit against Kentucky’s new pension law questioned why state lawmakers were able to pass the measure out of the legislature in just one day.

State law requires bills to be formally presented on three separate days before they are eligible to be voted on in the state House and Senate, though lawmakers frequently vote to override the rule.

Gov. Matt Bevin’s general counsel Steve Pitt argued the speedy process is necessary late in the legislative session.