Commentary

The word is everywhere — hurled as an insult, invoked as a warning, debated by scholars who can’t agree on its meaning. But tracing fascism to its roots reveals patterns that are harder to dismiss than any definition. You hear it everywhere now. On cable news, in congressional speeches, in arguments at Thanksgiving dinner.…

The LexArts audit tells us everything about the value of art in Lexington — and nothing about its meaning. At Tuesday’s Budget, Finance and Economic Development Committee meeting, Council heard a slick presentation from Sound Diplomacy on their audit of Lexington’s “arts and cultural economy.” The slides were gorgeous. The charts were clean. The…

VisitLex wants more of your money. The publicly funded tourism bureau is asking the Urban County Council to approve a new Tourism Improvement District — a 2% assessment on hotel rooms that would funnel an estimated $2.1 million per year into marketing, consultants, and destination branding. Before the Council votes, it should ask a…

State Representative Ryan Dotson wants you to know that he is running for the United States Congress. He wants you to know he’s a veteran, a pastor, and a God-fearing man. But above all else (truly, above all else) he wants you to know that he has thought very deeply about penises. Not his…

There’s a familiar sound drifting through downtown Lexington right now. It’s the soft whir of feasibility studies spinning up. The polite clink of champagne glasses. The reassuring phrase world-class landing just so. And behind it all, a chorus: Trust us. The Herald-Leader’s recent tour through Lexington’s blossoming arts proposals reads like a city finally…

I’ll admit it: it’s kind of refreshing to see a candidate show up with energy. In a city where too many campaigns feel like they were workshopped by a consultant who’s never paid rent, the enthusiasm is honestly… enviable. Lexington needs candidates who want to swing at big problems instead of politely circling them.…

Like many Americans, Saturday morning I woke up with a sense of déjà vu. Footage of military strikes against Venezuela, authorised by President Donald Trump, gave me flashbacks to the “shock and awe” I witnessed when we invaded Iraq. My stomach turned, not just as a sometime-foreign policy analyst, but as an Appalachian. I’ve…

Cities don’t always wake up by shouting. Sometimes they wake up by squinting. In 2025, Lexington didn’t revolt. It didn’t storm City Hall. It just started connecting dots—and once that starts, it’s hard to stop. What looked like a handful of unrelated controversies slowly revealed a pattern: big promises, glossy presentations, and a governing…

On Dec. 5, a group of engineers, planners, academics, and consultants gathered to talk about Lexington’s stormwater future. They discussed wetlands, sewer capacity, growth plans, pollution data, and manuals that will quietly shape how the city grows for decades. They also did it without a publicly posted agenda. That absence wasn’t a clerical oversight.…