Rural communities packed local government meetings to defeat Big Tech giants.
Medical marijuana companies vied for lucrative licenses but didn’t have any products available for purchase, while two GOP senators from the same state battled for the future of the hemp industry.
And President Donald Trump vowed to unseat a fellow Republican congressman for repeatedly defying his will.
Those are three of the major stories in Kentucky government and politics that played out over the course of 2025.
The Kentucky General Assembly passed a bill in March to give 50 years of tax breaks to data centers, hoping to entice tech companies to build their energy-intensive facilities housing artificial intelligence services. That new law set many wheels in motion, as the state’s largest utility proposed building $3 billion of new power plants to serve them and proposed projects popped up around the state — along with strong local opposition.
Medical cannabis became legal in Kentucky on Jan. 1, but no dispensaries had any marijuana on their shelves to sell to patients through mid-December — as cultivator licensees were slow to get off the ground. Hemp products have been legal in Kentucky for years, but their industry faced what they view as an existential threat in Congress, as fellow GOP Senators Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul faced off on the legislation.
Republican Congressman Thomas Massie remained a thorn in the side of Trump, defying his demands to vote for the “Big Beautiful Bill” and drop his effort to force the release of Department of Justice files about the notorious child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Trump responded by calling for Massie to be purged from the GOP, recruiting a Republican candidate to challenge him in the 2026 primary.
Here is more on those three ongoing stories from Kentucky in 2025.
Local communities and utilities respond to data center boom
The first big data center project to come to Kentucky after the legislature passed a bill to give them tax breaks statewide was a plan to build one on rural Oldham County farmland. Like other projects to come the rest of the year, the developer’s promise of millions of dollars of local tax revenue did not win over the locals, who packed government meetings to voice their concerns and decry the lack of transparency.
Oldham County eventually passed a moratorium on any data center applications and caused the mystery tech giant behind the project to flee, followed by residents pushing local governments in Simpson and Meade counties to follow suit and vote down companies’ zoning requests. The largest pending data center proposal so far is in Maysville, where local officials have signed non-disclosure agreements with an unnamed tech company who would operate the facility. The one project approved to go forward is in Jefferson County, which was announced before the legislature expanded data center tax breaks to the other 119 counties.
Louisville Gas & Electric and Kentucky Utilities responded to the statewide tax breaks by requesting permission from state regulators to spend more than $3 billion on new power plants, citing their forecast for a dramatic increase in power needs from data centers they expect to be built in Kentucky. Though consumer and environmental advocacy groups urged against this — saying the projects remained speculative and could inflate existing customers’ utility bills if an AI “bubble” bursts — the Kentucky Public Service Commission approved their request in October.
Lawmakers head into the upcoming 2026 session in Frankfort with plans to address data center issues, potentially looking to expand power generation further, while also protecting existing ratepayers from higher bills and local communities from developments they don’t want.
Kentucky medical marijuana delayed, hemp industry threatened
Patients qualified to buy medical cannabis in Kentucky at the beginning of the year were still not able to by December, as companies winning licenses to grow marijuana in 2024 were slow to build out facilities and supply that could go into licensed dispensaries.
Kentucky hemp farmers — who won none of the cultivator licenses — had warned in late 2024 that no product would be available for much of the year, saying companies from outside the state were not ready to hit the ground running with growing facilities, unlike in-state farmers.
Gov. Andy Beshear defended his administration’s lottery process for medical cannabis licenses as the fairest and fastest method available, but state Auditor Allison Ball launched an investigation of it in April, amid allegations that large, out-of-state marijuana companies were able to rig the process with a flood of expensive applications and vertically integrated licenses.
As for the legal hemp industry, Kentucky farmers and companies warned this summer they were facing serious threat from Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell — the same person whose 2018 legislation created a so-called “loophole” to legalize low-THC hemp products. McConnell wanted to close that loophole with legislation to prohibit intoxicating hemp products, saying that was needed to protect children.
After these efforts were initially blocked by GOP Sen. Rand Paul, the two faced off again on the Senate floor in November, when McConnell successfully inserted his language into the bill passed to end the federal government shutdown. Touring the opening of a hemp company’s new facility in Louisville in December, Paul said if the new law goes into effect next November, it will kill almost the entire hemp industry, including CBD products with low amounts of THC.
Trump vs. Massie
There was no other Republican member of Congress that got under Trump’s skin in 2025 more than Rep. Thomas Massie of northern Kentucky.
After criticizing Trump’s military strikes on Iran and his signature “Big Beautiful Bill,” the president declared political war on Massie, seeking out a GOP challenger to run against him and having his allies air $2 million of attack ads against him.
The ads didn’t scare Massie off, as he then launched into an effort to force the release of all U.S. Department of Justice documents related to Epstein — over more objections from Trump. After rallying with Epstein survivors, his discharge petition was successful and the administration was forced to release additional information.
Trump was eventually able to recruit a GOP candidate to run against him, but Massie picked up support from Paul, who toured his district with him in September to make the case for why he deserves to stay.
