Josh Calloway doesn’t just want to legislate his beliefs. He wants to embed them into the very foundations of Kentucky’s public education system. Through a calculated mix of religious fundamentalism, state-sponsored surveillance, and a fetish for authoritarian control, Calloway is helping to lead the charge in transforming schools from places of learning into instruments of ideological enforcement. Faith-Based Counseling Without Accountability It begins with the deceptively soft pitch of “pastoral counselors” in schools. On the surface, this might seem like a compassionate gesture toward addressing student trauma and mental health. But these counselors aren’t licensed professionals. They’re faith-based actors, selected not for their credentials in psychology or therapy, but for their alignment with a narrow, sectarian worldview. And under current proposals, they would be embedded directly into public institutions, paid with public funds, and granted access to vulnerable students, witho...

  From Pulpit to Power The Rise of a Kentucky Culture Warrior Rep. Josh Calloway isn’t just another small-town lawmaker. He’s the spearpoint of a growing movement to fuse Christian fundamentalism with state power, and Frankfort is his pulpit. If you’ve never heard of Rep. Josh Calloway, that’s by design. He doesn’t showboat like some of his far-right colleagues. He doesn’t need to. While others chase cable news hits, Calloway quietly builds a theocratic infrastructure, one bill, one board appointment, one fire-and-brimstone soundbite at a time. Calloway’s rise from pulpit to power reflects a broader strategy playing out across red states: reshape public life to reflect a narrow, often authoritarian brand of Christianity. The stakes for Kentucky? Public schools, LGBTQ+ rights, reproductive freedom, and the very idea of secular government. Who Is Josh Calloway? To understand Rep. Josh Calloway, you have to understand his mission: this is a man who didn’t run for office to govern. He ...

Kentucky’s legislative session took a hard turn this summer. Not to audit overspending, but to purge diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) from our campuses. HB 4, passed this year, was sold as a cost-cutting, viewpoint-neutral reform. But when state officials leaned on universities about DEI and courses like UK’s Gender & Women’s Studies, the conversation suddenly shifted from policy to political fear-mongering. DEI Didn’t Cost the State Much But They Still Targeted It Let’s get something straight: this wasn’t about saving money. At the July 15 hearing , representatives from Kentucky’s public universities reported how much money was "saved" by complying with HB 4’s DEI restrictions, and the numbers are laughable. Western Kentucky University reported just $13,000 in savings. The Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS) redirected about $2.5 million (>1% of the total budget) from DEI programs to generalized student support. Not cut, just reallocated. ...