On Feb. 24, I was heading north on Highway 127 to Frankfort when I saw three black SUVs with gold ICE insignias speeding south towards Lawrenceburg. For the rest of the week, Anderson County Facebook feeds were lit up with photographs and warnings: ICE is here.  Some of the photos looked like AI a nd were from unrecognizable accounts, but it did not matter. Panic set in, and panic stayed.  I thought about this on March 5 as I watched state Sen. Stephen Meredith on the Senate floor, encouraging his colleagues to vote yes on Senate Bill 137, allowing physicians who are licensed in another country to obtain a provisional license to practice medicine in the commonwealth. “We have a physician shortage crisis,” Meredith said, in the United States and more particularly in rural Kentucky. “It is projected that by 2030 we will have a shortage of 3,000 physicians in Kentucky.” You can read more about SB 137 and the senate floor debate here. Meredith said one obvious solution is to recruit more foreign medical school graduates without requiring them to repeat their residency, while also voicing his concerns about the pervasive anti-immigrant rhetoric these days and how “it’s become almost fever pitch in some communities.”  Well gosh golly, Senator. I wonder how that happened? While I applaud Meredith for bringing this bill, he curiously fails to acknowledge his Republican Party’s decade-long drumbeat to demonize immigrants — starting with President Donald Trump’s Muslim ban within days of his first taking office a decade ago — and his own chamber’s years-long anti-DEI focus that has created the anti-immigrant and anti-other “fever pitch” he now describes as destructive.  And it’s not like Meredith has been on the sidelines when it comes to the fever pitch of rhetoric regarding medical care.  He has been right in the thick of it. Just last year, Meredith repeatedly interrupted and shouted down Fairness Campaign Executive Director Chris Hartman during Hartman’s committee testimony on House Bill 495, prohibiting the expenditure of Medicaid funds on cross-sex hormones. Hartman calmly advised committee Chair Meredith, “You will cost lives. This was not the original intent of this bill at all,” and as he left the table saying he was disappointed in the chair’s decision not to allow testimony and debate, Meredith snapped, tight-mouthed, “Wouldn’t be the first time.” Rest assured, U.S. citizens and educated professionals get the message: Don’t start a family in Kentucky. And if you DO settle in Kentucky, pray that you and your family can get proper, unimpeded, cost effective medical care should you have a pregnancy complication or an LGBTQ child. Sen. Lindsey Tichenor, R-Smithfield. (LRC Public Information) This year, a handful of senators in Meredith’s own party voted against his bill to stem Kentucky’s physician shortage, including Sen. Donald Douglas (a doctor) and Sen. Lindsey Tichenor (the face of the Senate chamber’s pervasive anti-LGBTQ and anti-DEI efforts).   It boggles the mind. So I asked AI for the definition of chickens coming home to roost: Often used to describe the consequences of long-term bad behavior, such as lying, injustice, or political actions.  Normally I would not ask AI for such a thing, but since Sen. Gex Williams announced on the Senate floor that he was voting no on SB 137 after asking Grok AI about Sudanese doctors, adding, “I don’t tend to trust the World Health Organization” or the United Nations, I figured, why not. Williams closed his argument against the bill by saying that people in our rural communities have other options … without indicating what any of those options are. Kentucky’s Republican politicians love to brag about our state’s overwhelming allegiance to President Donald Trump, a man who regularly bleats out sentences like this on his social media platform: “I want our brave ICE officers to know that REAL Americans are cheering you on everyday” and “You don’t hear about Sanctuary Cities in our Heartland!” Is this supposed to make immigrants want to come to the U.S. or work in a Trump-dominated state like Kentucky? On Feb. 24, for instance, it did not matter if ICE was or was not targeting Anderson County. Maybe they were just driving through. No matter. The flurry of fear that pervaded the county, where I live, simply on the assumption that ICE was in town, was overwhelming. One Hispanic friend (a U.S. citizen) told me how family and friends spent days monitoring social media while calling and texting each other to warn against driving on main roads, going to the grocery store or gas stations, and with pleas to stay out of sight. If our own citizens are afraid of ICE, what makes GOP lawmakers think immigrant doctors would even want to come to Kentucky? Would those doctors feel safe here? Would their children?  Instead of asking AI, how about we go old school and consider these wise words from Trappist monk Thomas Merton, who lived at the Abbey of Gethsemani near Bardstown from 1941 until his death in 1968. “Each individual in the mass is insulated by thick layers of insensibility. He does not care, he does not hear, he does not think. He does not act, he is pushed. He does not talk, he produces conventional sounds when stimulated by the appropriate noises. He does not think, he secretes cliches.” Our GOP lawmakers are huddled in the mass. Anti-immigration rhetoric has become so loud, so cliched, so entrenched in the halls of Frankfort — our lawmakers so insulated by thick layers of insensibility — it is like they have lost the power to think rationally.   Year after year of cruel, ignorant bills filed by Republicans in our state legislature, aimed at dehumanizing everyone from the LGBTQ community to women seeking private health care to Black and brown Kentuckians to immigrants, was bound to have dire consequences. Today — and for at least the next decade, according to Sen. Meredith — those consequences will be manifest in a critical physician shortage, which affects all of us. Those darn chickens.  They always come home to roost. YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE. SUPPORT The post GOP’s hateful rhetoric comes home to roost as KY to be short 3,000 physicians by 2030 appeared first on The Lexington Times. ...read more read less