• The small, tight-knit community of Glendale, Kentucky, is mourning the loss of the well-liked young man.
• Pennington was an Eagle Scout and high school athlete who joined the Army in 2017 after graduation.
• Pennington was a decorated soldier assigned to the 1st Space Brigade and will be posthumously promoted to staff sergeant.

GLENDALE, Ky. – The text message arrived on Mike Bell’s phone early on March 1. It was brief: Benjamin Pennington, the son of Bell’s close friend Tim Pennington, had been seriously injured in an attack at a U.S. air base in Saudi Arabia.

Bell hadn’t seen Benjamin Pennington in a while, but the executive minister and retired pastor of Glendale Christian Church clearly remembered the bright, ambitious boy who attended church every Sunday with his parents before enlisting in the U.S. Army.

Bell asked the Sunday school students gathered before him to pray for the 26-year-old Glendale native. Over the following week, he and Tim talked or texted daily, praying and hoping for the best.

There were signs of hope on March 5. Pennington asked the medical staff for a Pepsi, which his family saw as a positive sign. But by March 7, Pennington’s condition had worsened.

That night, after calling a basketball game at Central Hardin High School, Bell received a call from Tim. Benjamin had died from his injuries.

Bell said Benjamin was about to be moved from Saudi Arabia to Germany when his blood pressure dropped. 

Bell ached thinking about Pennington’s family not being able to be with Benjamin in his final moments.

“Their hurt is so real and so powerful. I can’t fathom the loss of their son,” Bell said. “That distance made a real difference.”

As the conflict between the U.S., Israel and Iran enters its second week, Glendale and the larger Hardin County community are now mourning one of their own. According to those who knew him best, Pennington was a well-liked, confident young man who made friends easily. 

An Eagle Scout and high school athlete, Pennington was enrolled in an automotive technology career pathway at his alma mater, Central Hardin High School. However, he changed his career plans and joined the Army in 2017 right after graduating. 

At the time of his death, Pennington was a sergeant assigned to the 1st Space Brigade at Fort Carson, Colorado. The U.S. Army said in a news release that Pennington will be posthumously promoted to staff sergeant.

Glendale is a typical small town — a Mayberry of today, as Bell likes to say. It’s quiet, with plenty of antique shops and family-owned restaurants lining its historic boulevard. Residents here take pride in how long they’ve lived here, and many have never dreamed of leaving the community they’ve built.

“I moved here 20 years ago, and I’m considered a young-in,” said Sherry Creek, owner of The Mercantile, a home goods store on East Main Street.

Some, like Eddie Best, trace their roots back to the 1800s. On March 10, Best was inside The Whistle Stop, a southern-style family restaurant that has only changed hands twice in its 50-year history. It was a Tuesday, which meant he was picking up his family’s regular order of two open-faced roast beef sandwiches, a side of greens and baked apples.

“Family, that’s why I stayed all these years,” said Best, 45.

The ties that bind this close-knit community make Pennington’s death even more impactful for the town of about 2,000 residents, located about an hour south of Louisville. In the few days since the news broke, Bell said his and others’ phones have been ringing nonstop.

“The people are wanting to know what to do, how to do,” Bell said. “Everybody is struggling in darkness, trying to figure out how to bring a little light to the Pennington family in their struggle and transition.”

The Penningtons, by all accounts, are active and involved community members. Tim Pennington has been a long-standing member of the town’s Lions Club and coaches cross country and track at Central Hardin High School.

WASHINGTON — President Trump will use his stop in Kentucky on Wednesday to try to get his congressional nemesis out of office.

His target is Rep. Thomas Massie, a seven-term congressman who the White House has named the “Democrats’ favorite member.”

Trump endorsed Massie’s primary opponent, Ed Gallrein, who will be at the event in Hebron, Ky., per his campaign. The president will also be making a stop in Ohio.

Hebron is located in Boone County, Ky., just south of Cincinnati.

The White House made its feelings on Massie clear.

“You can have differences, but you have to be constructive.  He is not constructive. In fact, he’s the Democrats’ favorite member,” a senior administration official told The Post. 

Massie has outraged the White House on multiple occasions: he refused to support Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which was the president’s signature domestic policy agenda; he criticized Trump’s foreign policy and accused him of executive overreach on the attacks on drug boats and Iran; and he led the charge on demanding the Justice Department release all its files in the Jeffrey Epstein case.

Now Trump is going to Massie’s district along the Ohio River to campaign against him, with the primary election just a little more than two months away, on May 19th. 

Massie won’t be there.

“Congressman Massie will not be attending as he has a previously scheduled official event,” his campaign told The Post. 

Trump has railed against Massie as “the worst Republican.” 

He took a swipe at his biggest naysayer when he spoke to House Republicans at their retreat at Trump Doral on Monday.

“The Republican Party has fantastic spirit, the level I don’t think has been seen before,” Trump said. “We have to get a couple of people on board, which at least one case is virtually impossible. I wonder who that might be, sick person.”

It’s believed he was talking about Massie, who was not seen in the audience. 

In contrast, Gallrein, a former Navy SEAL, has praised Trump, his policies and his handling of the war in Iran.

For his part, Massie has been posting Trump’s videos and comments attacking him, hoping to turn the criticism from the president into support from voters.

The May primary will be a test of Trump’s power with Republican voters. It’ll also be seen as a barometer of Trump’s messaging on the economy. 

The White House has argued the cost of living is down but rising gas prices – from the attack on Iran – have dominated the news. Still, the president will tout his work on the issue. 

“President Trump will visit the great states of Ohio and Kentucky on Wednesday to tout his economic victories and detail his administration’s aggressive, ongoing efforts to lower prices and make America more affordable,” White House spokesperson Liz Huston told The Post. 

FRANKFORT, Ky. — If the current legislative session was the Kentucky Derby, we’d be coming around the final turn and entering the stretch.

Feb. 9 marks the 42nd day of the 2026 Kentucky General Assembly, with 18 to go. Lawmakers will continue to meet daily for the next three weeks until the veto period begins in early April, with two more days at the Capitol after that for legislators to vote on overriding potential vetoes.

The filing deadlines for new bills were last week, and many pieces of legislation are moving quickly in Frankfort. Here’s a quick look at bills that advanced last week that will be worth watching:

SB 8 — A reworked PSC

Senate Bill 8 would change the member requirements for the Kentucky Public Service Commission — which regulates more than 1,100 utilities operating statewide — and add two new members who would be appointed by the state auditor, effectively diluting the governor’s power or oversight of PSC membership.

Under the bill, the chair of the commission would be elected amongst the commissioners, not appointed by the governor. The chair’s salary? Also determined by the commissioners.

Sen. Brandon Smith, R-Hazard, the bill’s sponsor, said the legislation will help support Kentuckians in reviewing utility rate cases and hopefully hasten the process.

Critics of the bill raised concerns about a section that would make the attorney general the sole representative for customers, requiring advocacy groups to prove a “special and unique” interest in the case — likely cutting advocacy groups out of the picture and preventing them from intervening in cases.

The legislature is heating up: Stay informed with our weekly politics newsletter.

While on the floor, Smith introduced an amendment removing that section and creating a framework to allow advocates and organizations with legitimate interests to intervene.

Although the bill has passed the Senate, it will likely receive pushback from the governor’s office. In a Team Kentucky press conference, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear criticized the bill and the Republican-led legislature’s attempts at moving power from the governor’s office to the state auditor.

“They’ve done these shenanigans for six straight years,” Beshear said. “This is my sixth session as a governor, four as attorney general and a couple of special sessions. I’ve never seen them try to move something from a Republican officeholder to a Democratic officeholder, but I’ve seen them try to move a whole lot in the other direction.”

The bill passed 30-5 through the Senate on March 6. It now heads to the House.

SB 199 — Pesticide warnings

Senate Bill 199, sponsored by Sen. Jason Howell, R-Murray, would make any pesticide registered with the Kentucky Department of Agriculture or the Environmental Protection Agency that has an EPA-approved label automatically fit Kentucky’s warning label requirements. If passed, that would make it much more difficult for Kentuckians to sue pesticide manufacturers for adverse health risks later on.

Although it might not seem controversial at first glance, the bill united both hardline Republicans and Democrats on the Senate floor, with many raising concerns about the health risks of pesticide use. Several Republicans, including Sen. Lindsey Tichenor, R-Smithfield, Sen. Philip Wheeler, R-Pikeville, and Sen. Shelly Funke Frommeyer, R-Alexandria, spoke against the bill and questioned the lobbying power of chemical companies that manufacture pesticides.