Bill to regulate sale of cats, dogs in Kentucky, overriding local bans, fails
FRANKFORT, Ky. (FOX 56) — An effort to bring a uniform retail pet sale law to the Commonwealth fell short in Frankfort.
At least 5 cities and 1 county in Kentucky, including Lexington, have adopted local ordinances banning any over-the-counter sale of dogs and cats in an effort to turn away businesses from 'puppy mills' and encourage buyers to purchase from rescues.
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Bill to regulate sale of cats, dogs in Kentucky, overriding local bans, fails
Executives for the retail chain Petland argued that the ordinances are threatening their stores and that they've tried to offer transparency about their breeders.
'We're just saying don't shut us down overnight, regulate us, pass more bills, give us civil penalties. We will abide by all of your rules and regulations,' Mehek Cooke, a lobbyist for Petland, told lawmakers on the Senate Agriculture Committee Tuesday.
'They do not come from regulated breeders. They come matted, covered in feces and urine. They're scared. They're shaking. They're packed in cages,' Miriam Arena told reporters following the meeting. Arena is a former employee of Petland Lexington who says she was employed there for six months.
'We have a quilt work of regulation, and that's, I think, what this legislation was trying to prevent. Just a uniform opportunity to regulate places where people can buy animals,' Sen. Robin Webb (D-Grayson) told FOX 56
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Bill to regulate sale of cats, dogs in Kentucky, overriding local bans, fails
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Webb was among those in favor of Senate Bill 122 and felt the proposal was pro-business. However, enough lawmakers had concerns that the bill could step on local control or weren't strong enough to effectively penalize puppy mills.
'I still have some concerns about the back end of the bill when it comes to regulating and what those fines look like,' Sen. Matt Deneen said while explaining his 'no' vote.
The bill failed in committee on a tie vote of 5 to 5.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Opinion - Trump and Vance are hanging out with conspiracy theorists and kooks
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As the New Yorker put it in a profile, Yarvin advocates 'the liquidation of democracy, the Constitution, and the rule of law,' and the transfer of power to a CEO-in-chief (such as Steve Jobs or Marc Andreessen) who would transform government into 'a heavily armed, ultra-profitable corporation.' This regime would sell off public schools, destroy universities, abolish the press and imprison 'decivilized populations.' Odd characters are nothing new in politics. But Trump's second term stands out for putting provocateurs into positions of authority. This starts with the president. Just last week, Trump, on his personal social media platform, called attention to a bizarre claim that President Biden is dead, having been executed in 2020 and his power taken over by an imposter, a 'soulless mindless' robot. And, of course, Trump relentlessly promoted the 'birther' conspiracy theory about Obama — that he had been secretly born abroad — more than a decade ago. 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Trump and Vance are hanging out with conspiracy theorists and kooks
President Lincoln had a team of rivals. President Trump has a team of conspiracy mongers. Do you remember when Republicans raised holy hell about the people around President Obama? They obsessed over Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor, who made inflammatory statements about race. How many conservative media segments fixated on Bill Ayers, formerly of the Weather Underground, claiming Obama 'kicked off his political career in the guy's living room?' In today's Trump-led Republican Party, there is a far more alarming cast of characters firmly in the mainstream of Trump's power. Here is a look at the views of some eye-opening players exercising actual power and making actual policy in the Trump administration. Elon Musk: Last week, Musk's alliance with Trump blew up in a memorable episode of social media back-stabbing worthy of a reality television show. The clash left them both bloodied. 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Somehow, there is no condemnation of Trump for granting Musk's team access to private information about Americans from government computers. Imagine the explosion in the right-wing echo chamber if Rev. Wright had done anything close to that in the Obama years. Laura Loomer: Last week, the conspiracy theorist and proud podcasting provocateur was spotted meeting one-on-one with Vice President JD Vance at the White House complex. As The Hill reported, this was a repeat visit to the White House grounds, as Loomer met earlier this year with Trump in the Oval Office to raise concerns about certain National Security Council staffers. They were soon fired. When Loomer is in the White House, she brings with her quite a history, including reports that she described herself as a 'white advocate' as well as having posted a video online claiming that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. were 'an inside job.' Loomer is also a leading voice pushing the conspiracy theory suggesting that U.S. law enforcement agencies knew in advance about several mass school shootings and allowed them to happen to help Democrats win elections in order to enact gun control. In thinking about Loomer having access to the president and vice president, an old saying comes to mind: We are the average of the people we spend the most time with. Curtis Yarvin: A leading influence on Vance, Yarvin has called for replacing American democracy with a 'monarch.' His proposals include calls to 'retire all government employees' and, in one especially grotesque idea, he proposed a racial hierarchy to 'put the church Blacks in charge of the ghetto Blacks.' As the New Yorker put it in a profile, Yarvin advocates 'the liquidation of democracy, the Constitution, and the rule of law,' and the transfer of power to a CEO-in-chief (such as Steve Jobs or Marc Andreessen) who would transform government into 'a heavily armed, ultra-profitable corporation.' This regime would sell off public schools, destroy universities, abolish the press and imprison 'decivilized populations.' Odd characters are nothing new in politics. But Trump's second term stands out for putting provocateurs into positions of authority. This starts with the president. Just last week, Trump, on his personal social media platform, called attention to a bizarre claim that President Biden is dead, having been executed in 2020 and his power taken over by an imposter, a 'soulless mindless' robot. And, of course, Trump relentlessly promoted the 'birther' conspiracy theory about Obama — that he had been secretly born abroad — more than a decade ago. Trump's willingness to grab attention by embracing conspiracy theories recently backfired. His critics are taking great delight in the right-wing echo chamber's backlash against Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino. They are being castigated by Trump loyalists for failing to unearth any evidence of a conspiracy by elites to kill Jeffrey Epstein. After years of being primed with conspiracy theories, Trump supporters reacted angrily to Patel and Bongino's conclusion that Epstein killed himself in prison and no one else was involved. This brand of conspiracy thinking is in line with the energy that fueled the Proud Boys' attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. It fits with Trump's repeated lie that the 2020 election was stolen. It is in line with the 'Great Replacement Theory' — that Jewish elites are importing brown-skinned immigrants to replace the white working class and the chants of white supremacists in their Charlottesville rally during Trump's first term: 'Jews will not replace us.' And it keeps going. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) recently promised to hold Senate hearings based on 9/11 conspiracy theories. 'What actually happened on 9/11? What do we know? What is being covered up?' Johnson said on a MAGA podcast appearance. 'My guess is there's an awful lot being covered up, in terms of what the American government knows about 9/11.' Johnson isn't alone. House Republicans have pledged to reopen investigations into everything from the JFK assassination to the existence of UFOs. I knew William F. Buckley Jr. a bit — from television, from D.C. and from his days as editor of National Review. He fearlessly called out the excesses of his own movement, particularly the conspiracy mongers in the far-right John Birch Society. Where is the Buckley of today? Juan Williams is senior political analyst for Fox News Channel and a prize-winning civil rights historian. He is the author of the new book 'New Prize for These Eyes: The Rise of America's Second Civil Rights Movement.'
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The hearings begin six years after ministers shelved a judicial inquiry into alleged UK complicity, which David Cameron, the prime minister who ordered it, once said was necessary as 'the longer these questions remain unanswered, the bigger the stain on our reputation as a country'. The claims before the IPT have been brought by Mustafa al-Hawsawi, who is accused by the US of aiding the hijackers behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who is alleged to have plotted al-Qaida's bombing of an American naval ship in 2000. Captured by the CIA in the early 2000s, the men were rendered between black sites, where they were systematically tortured and subjected to brutal and degrading treatment. Methods included what the CIA referred to as 'rectal feeding', a form of sexual assault according to medical experts. Related: Rectal rehydration and broken limbs: the grisliest findings in the CIA torture report After several years in CIA detention, Hawsawi and Nashiri – who were among a group of approximately 17 of the CIA's 'high-value detainees' – were transferred to Guantánamo Bay in 2006. They have been there since. Both men face charges carrying the death penalty, though neither of their cases at a special US military court have yet gone to trial. Lawyers for the men have told the IPT there is credible evidence to infer that UK spy agencies, including MI5 and MI6, unlawfully 'aided, abetted, encouraged, facilitated, procured and/or conspired' with the US in their torture and mistreatment. Working in secret, the IPT has been examining the allegations over the past two years. Led by a senior judge, the tribunal is an unusual court that can adopt an inquisitorial process and has unique powers to obtain classified information from the intelligence agencies. So far, the government has successfully prevented any findings from the investigation being disclosed, even to the complainants' lawyers. But the trial is expected to compel the government to confront, in open court, uncomfortable legal questions about what constitutes complicity in torture. 'This level of judicial scrutiny is unprecedented,' said Chris Esdaile, a senior legal adviser at Redress, an NGO that works with torture victims and which represents Hawsawi. 'Until now, efforts to lift the veil of secrecy and consider the full extent of the UK's involvement in the CIA's black site programme have been thwarted.' When Cameron announced the judge-led public inquiry into allegations of UK complicity in the mistreatment of terrorism suspects in 2010, he told parliament: 'Let me state clearly: we need to know the answers.' Nine years later, the government abandoned that commitment. This was despite parliament's intelligence and security committee concluding that British intelligence officers had been involved in 'inexcusable' activities, including hundreds of cases in which prisoners were mistreated, and scores of rendition operations. Related: Criticism mounts over UK's post-9/11 role in torture and rendition Publishing its findings in 2018, the committee emphasised its work had been 'terminated prematurely' due in part to obstruction by ministers and spy chiefs. It insisted there were 'questions and incidents' that 'remain unanswered and uninvestigated'. Among its findings, however, were key details that Hawsawi and Nashiri's lawyers used to persuade the IPT to investigate. Crucially, the committee had highlighted instances in which MI6 had supplied questions to be used in CIA interrogations of two other high-value detainees it knew were being mistreated. On the eve of the trial, evidence has now emerged that in 2003, while Hawsawi was held by the US in a black site in Afghanistan where he was repeatedly tortured, CIA headquarters sent a cable to interrogators, telling them Hawsawi should be 'pressed' for information about alleged terrorist activity in the UK. The cable, which Hawsawi's lawyers are understood to have shared with the IPT, was declassified by the US in 2017 but only recently identified by Unredacted, a research unit at the University of Westminster that investigates UK national security practices. Its director, Sam Raphael, who has spent years researching the torture programme, said the cable suggested there had been a 'clear interest in interrogating Hawsawi about specific UK-based operatives and plots at a time when he was being subjected to the worst kind of treatment'. He added: 'It raises an obvious and important question the tribunal should address: was British intelligence, which we know was directly and deeply involved in post-9/11 prisoner abuse, feeding the questions to the CIA?' The best public interest journalism relies on first-hand accounts from people in the know. If you have something to share on this subject you can contact us confidentially using the following methods. Secure Messaging in the Guardian app The Guardian app has a tool to send tips about stories. Messages are end to end encrypted and concealed within the routine activity that every Guardian mobile app performs. This prevents an observer from knowing that you are communicating with us at all, let alone what is being said. If you don't already have the Guardian app, download it (iOS/Android) and go to the menu. Select 'Secure Messaging'. SecureDrop, instant messengers, email, telephone and post See our guide at for alternative methods and the pros and cons of each. A spokesperson for the government declined to comment on the claims before the IPT. The government previously said that it 'does not confirm or deny allegations, assertions or speculation about the activities of UK intelligence agencies'. • This article was amended on 9 June 2025. The number of 'high-value detainees' at Guantánamo in 2006 was about 17, not 120 as an earlier version said.
