Commentary

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.…

Andy Barr’s Senate campaign this week tried to project inevitability.Instead, it projected Microsoft Excel. The headline brag was impressive: more than 100 House endorsements. Triple digits. A show of force. A campaign press release flexing like it just finished leg day. Then NBC News started calling people. And suddenly the endorsement list began behaving…

As Lexington heads toward the 2026 mayoral election, the outlines of a familiar but still-fluid contest are beginning to emerge. At its core, the race is shaping up as a test of whether voters want to double down on experience and continuity—or whether the city’s growth pressures, housing costs, and civic frustrations create an…

The superintendent stood at the podium this week and did that thing administrators do when they want gravity without fingerprints. “These are tough decisions,” Demetrus Liggins said, as families pleaded for their schools, programs, and communities. Mergers. Closures. Right-sizing. The whole greatest-hits album of institutional sorrow. And yet — funny thing — none of…

Some weeks, Lexington feels less like a city and more like an invitation-only club — velvet rope, bouncer, and all. This week’s guest list: the people who can actually afford to stay in public office. Hannah LeGris left the stage recently. Not for lack of love for the job, but because the numbers simply…

Tonight at 5 p.m., in a too-small council chamber inside a too-old former hotel, Lexington’s leaders will decide whether to move City Hall into a gleaming bank building on Vine Street. If they vote yes, we’ll get a renovated “Government Center” at 200 West Vine — and a whole new generation will finally get…

If you listened closely at last week’s press conference—the one where Vice Mayor Dan Wu announced $12.6 million in medical debt had vanished from Fayette County—there was a faint sound underneath all that civic cheer. A tiny ka-ching. Because by the time the Herald-Leader’s Adrian Paul Bryant peeled back the wrapping paper, Lexington’s feel-good…

It takes real talent to look at the summer FCPS just had — the audit, the budget fiascos, the public fury, the payroll-tax side hustle in a trench coat — and decide the next big move should be silencing elected officials. But here we are. Again. The latest stroke of genius arrives in the…