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Since taking office in late 2015, Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin has been on a mission to roll back the state's Medicaid expansion. And honestly, that shouldn't surprise many people. Bevin campaigned on the issue. He said making changes to the system — including charging some Medicaid recipients monthly premiums and requiring them to work or volunteer to maintain coverage — would give them “dignity and respect.”

The Trump administration agreed with the Republican governor and in January approved his proposed changes, making Kentucky the first state to get the go-ahead to institute a work requirement for Medicaid recipients.

But not long after Bevin won approval, a group of 16 Kentuckians filed a lawsuit arguing the Medicaid changes were illegal. On June 29, a federal judge ruled in favor of the group and overturned Bevin's Medicaid changes. In turn, Bevin took away dental and vision coverage from all Medicaid expansion recipients, about 460,000 people.

That brings us to present time. So, where do we go from here? Kentucky Public Radio Capitol Reporter Ryland Barton breaks it down today on Recut.

They city of Louisville owns about 400 pieces of public art. One of the most well-known — and most controversial — is the John Breckinridge Castleman statue in the Cherokee Triangle. Castleman was integral in developing Louisville’s park system — and he also served in the Confederacy.

Following a violent white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last August over the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee in a public park, cities around the country began removing and relocating their own Confederate statues, including in nearby Lexington. Just five days after Charlottesville, the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council voted unanimously to move two Confederate statues from prominent places in the downtown area.

But in Louisville, the process to address monuments linked to the Confederacy has been much slower.

Mayor Greg Fischer formed a committee to create principles and criteria for evaluating all of Louisville’s public art, including the Castleman statue. Since then, the Castleman statue has been vandalized three times.

After almost a year, the committee released its official recommendations on principles and criteria for evaluating Louisville’s public art.

Reporter Ashlie Stevens has been covering this story for WFPL. Today on Recut, we’ll talk about the long debate over Castleman and why Louisville hasn’t been as decisive as other cities when it comes to this issue.

Dosker Manor is a three-building public housing complex for older people and people with disabilities on the eastern edge of downtown Louisville. When it was inspected by the federal government last year, the complex scored 39 out of a possible 100. Of 6,924 public housing complexes in the United States, only about 100 scored worse than Dosker.

And the residents of Dosker Manor could probably give you some ideas why.

City records show that residents in nearly half of the almost 700 units at Dosker Manor have complained to the city about bedbugs in recent years, and many have complained multiple times. Despite their calls for help, the complex is infested with bedbugs.

Earlier this month, Jake Ryan with The Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting wrote a story about the conditions at Dosker Manor and he spoke with residents about what it’s like to live there and deal with bedbugs every day. Jake joins us today on Recut.

Black youth make up less than 27 percent of Louisville's population, but more than 75 percent of youth jailed in Louisville last year were black.

To put it another way: 3 out of 4 kids in Louisville's detention center are black, but only 1 out of 4 kids in Louisville are black.

Over the last year, Kate Howard with the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting looked at the state's juvenile justice system and she found that black kids are not only locked up more often than white kids, but they are also given harsher punishments.

Kate joins us today on Recut to talk about her reporting and she tells us about some families and teenagers she met in the process.

When you're hired by the state of Kentucky, you may have to take anti-harassment training — or you may not, it depends on which agency you work for. Another variable? Whether you're sent to training after you've been accused of harassment on the job....and whether you're forced to repeat the exact same training if you're accused again.

According to state records, Kentucky employees have filed about 250 formal sexual harassment complaints over the last five years, though some experts agree that number probably represents only a portion of total incidents.

A report from the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting earlier this year found inconsistencies from state agency to state agency regarding the depth of sexual harassment investigations, how offenders are punished, and even what the state calls the behavior.

There are also major differences in how each cabinet trains its employees about harassment. That got WFPL reporter Ashlie Stevens wondering...does the state's anti-harassment training actually work? Ashlie looked into it, and she joins us today on Recut to talk about it.

Coal ash is a byproduct of burning coal for electricity. We burn a lot of coal in this country, leaving behind a lot of coal ash, which contains mercury, arsenic, lead, and other dangerous substances. And it all has to go somewhere.

For the last several decades, that somewhere has mostly been in huge ponds, where it’s doused with water to keep it from blowing away. When you drive by or fly over a power plant, you’ll see big, black lakes — that’s coal ash. Sometimes it’s pretty close to residential neighborhoods. Many of the ponds are unlined, so the water seeps into the ground underneath.

Until 2015, there were no federal regulations about coal ash at all.

WFPL Environment Reporter Ryan Van Velzer did a story looking at new coal ash regulations, and how Kentucky companies are following them. It’s part of a three-part series from WFPL and the Ohio Valley ReSource called “Coal Ash Uncovered.”

Ryan joins us on today’s Recut, along with WFPL News Director Erica Peterson.

On Election Day, Kentucky voters will choose representatives for Congress and the statehouse. And they'll also be asked if they want to change the state constitution to include Marsy’s Law, a constitutional amendment that would give protections to victims of alleged crimes. On today’s episode of Recut, host Jonese Franklin talks with Kentucky Public Radio Reporter Ryland Barton. Ryland this week wrote a story about a planned challenge from defense attorneys to keep Marsy’s Law off the ballot in November. Jonese and Ryland talk about the arguments for and against the law, and check in with an attorney on the language of the ballot measure.

Welcome to the debut episode of Recut! After months of planning, we're very excited to finally share this podcast with you.

On this episode, host Jonese Franklin speaks with WFPL Education Reporter Roxanne Scott about Jefferson County Public Schools' plan to address teacher diversity. We also talk about why having a teacher that looks like you is important, and about our own experiences with teachers of color.