Dustin Pugel 🇺🇦

Husband, dad, wonk with @kypolicy & runner, preferably on trails. Trying to bring Shalom to the commonwealth. The plural of anecdote is not data.

[Kentucky Medicaid @KentuckyDMS]

Question: How often do Medicaid members have to report work or community engagement activities?

Members must report their activities at their first Medicaid renewal in 2027 and every six months afterward.

[Katie Bergh @Katie_Bergh]

In the year after the Republican reconciliation law enacted the deepest SNAP cuts in history, SNAP participation in Florida fell by 22%. About 247,000 of the more than 647,000 Floridians who lost food assistance between July 2025 & July 2026 were children.

[Jason Bailey @jbaileyky]

The government keeps child support owed to poorest Kentuckians. GOP lawmaker seeks change. https://t.co/WKXBpMdYka

[KYTC District 7 @KYTCDistrict7]

BIG News, Lexington! The New Double Crossover Diamond (DCD) at Leestown Road and New Circle Opens Very Soon!

The new DCD is expected to open to traffic by 5 a.m. Monday, Oct. 5, bringing safer, smoother travel to one of the busiest corridors in the city.

[Joe Weisenthal @TheStalwart]

Much of the hard labor data has been fine and even improving. But the % of people who say that it's hard to get a job right now has hit its highest level since early 2021

[BLS-Labor Statistics @BLS_gov]

What’s driving school and employee bus transportation employment? https://t.co/VHK4HSEmLH #BLSdata

[Dustin Pugel 🇺🇦 @dpugel]

This is H.R. 1 (the One Big Beautiful Bill Act) working as written.
The same kinds of cuts are on the way for Medicaid starting in January.
Families are hurting across the country because of that bill and it was entirely predictable.

[Katie Bergh @Katie_Bergh]

🚨New: With data added from more states, we now estimate that about 2 million fewer kids are receiving SNAP in the wake of deep cuts enacted in last year’s Republican reconciliation law. Overall, more than 5 million people have lost SNAP since July 2025. https://t.co/HUPBlPTsII

[KY Center for Statistics @kystats]

Unemployment rates fell in 96 counties between August 2025 and August 2026, rose in 11 counties & stayed the same in 13 counties, according to the Kentucky Center for Statistics (KYSTATS), an agency within the Kentucky Education and Labor Cabinet.

Link: https://t.co/i76qTxXOcs

[Dustin Pugel 🇺🇦 @dpugel]

@lymanstoneky I feel like Richard Reeves has been documenting this for a decade now, no?

[KyPolicy @KyPolicy]

KY law requires the state to fund public school transportation. But for decades, lawmakers have suspended the law and provided an amount less than required.

In this year's budget, the state provided $93M less than its own formula called for. These are the consequences.

[Brendan Duke 🇨🇦🇺🇸 @Brendan_Duke]

The discourse around work requirements has been dominated by the image of a 20-something man lived in his parents basement, playing video games and DraftKings.

Somehow we forgot about the 46-year old substitute teacher who loses work in the summer.

[Dustin Pugel 🇺🇦 @dpugel]

Its about time.

[Chris Bailey @Kentuckyweather]

There's a chance some areas of Kentucky don't see temps rise above the 60s until Friday. #kywx

[Jason Bailey @jbaileyky]

Federal Medicaid cuts are a severe threat to rural hospitals in Kentucky, and the small rural health fund provided in HR 1 will not come anywhere close to stopping the harm. See the new @KyPolicy analysis for more 1/2

[Dustin Pugel 🇺🇦 @dpugel]

@EdwardVersaii I grew up eating pasties! My great grandfather immigrated from Slovenia to Minnesota at the turn of the century, and became a miner there. Pasties were his standard lunch and our family kept the recipe.

[Ernie Tedeschi @ernietedeschi]

This chart in particular is incredible.

[Nick Gerli @nickgerli1]

U.S. Mortgage Applications just fell back to the lowest level since 1995.

And are now down 50% from the pandemic peak.

Demand to buy with a mortgage today is shockingly at the same level as 31 years ago, even though U.S. population is 30% higher.

The reason demand is so low is due to sky-high home prices, which are in a massive bubble.

To go along with sky-high prices, mortgage rates are now back to normal at 7%.

Meaning the vast majority of buyers can't afford it, with the typical household needing to spend nearly 40% of their gross income on house payments.

This historic demand collapse will not improve until home prices drop meaningfully.

And the situation is becoming especially dire in America's highest cost markets.

Check your ZIP on Reventure to see where your market ranks: https://t.co/f4qNQ29CIP

[KyPolicy @KyPolicy]

The cost of living keeps rising, but many Kentucky teachers are seeing their pay stay the same.

Because of the continued erosion in state funding for Kentucky public schools, a third of districts gave no raise to teachers and other certified employees this year.

[Jed Kolko @JedKolko]

The 2025 American Community Survey should have come out today. But it has been delayed because of unusual political encroachment at Census.
ACS drives business and policy decisions, especially in local communities, and is the primary input to Census’s immigration estimates.

[Katie Bergh @Katie_Bergh]

Food insecurity didn't go away just because they stopped collecting the data. (Our chart will not be going away, either.)

[Liam Niemeyer @liamniemeyer]

Democratic KY Gov. Andy Beshear says he's signed an EO to direct $2.5 million to go to the nonprofit @unduemeddebt in an effort to erase medical debt for low-income Kentuckians

He said the first round of medical debt forgiven (over $100 million) will impact about 46,000 people.