Long-term readers of The First Street Journal — both of them — know that my trust of Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) is so great that if he told me that 2 + 2 = 4, I’d check his math. I noted his attempts to have the state Supreme Court invalidate Senate Bill 1, House Bill 1, and other legislation which would restrict his ’emergency powers’ under KRS 39A, saying that it was necessary that he have those powers as defined before the General Assembly passed, over his veto, restrictions on how they could be used. The Kentucky Supreme Court has yet to issue its ruling, but I must admit: given how the justices have bent over backward for Mr Beshear, both when he was state Attorney General and now, as Governor, I am not confident that the Court will uphold the laws.

After the court hearing, Beshear told reporters that a governor’s emergency powers certainly “have to be large enough with a one-in-every-hundred year pandemic that creates the deadliest year in our history, it has to be significant and strong enough to do what’s necessary there.”

“You look back at different things that this legislature has tried to do in the midst of this pandemic and they would have not had the courage to step up and mandate masks, which we know from the experts is absolutely necessary,” he said. “We would have looked like the Dakotas and not what we looked like here in Kentucky.”

Well, it’s certainly true that the General Assembly would not have gone along with the mask mandate, because the voters of Kentucky elected them specifically to do away with it!

But we can see the storm clouds on the horizon, as Mr Beshear is setting the table to impose restrictions again.

COVID-19 on the rise again in Kentucky after months of decline

By Alex Acquisto | July 8, 2021 | 2:34 PM EDT | Updated: 3:08 PM EDT

The number of new COVID-19 cases and the statewide positivity rate are again on the rise in Kentucky after two months of consecutive decline, the public health commissioner said Thursday.

“We had eight consecutive weeks of decreasing cases in Kentucky that was interrupted last week by an increase,” Dr. Steven Stack said during the governor’s weekly news conference. From June 20-26, 1,199 cases of coronavirus were confirmed across the state. The next week, June 27-July 3, 1,321 cases were reported.

Though the increase was just over 100 cases, the rate of people testing positive — a metric that Stack often refers to as a leading indicator of community spread — has also risen by more than 1% since June 26. On Thursday, the positivity rate was 2.87%, up from 1.83% in late June.

Several paragraphs further down:

The state has so far confirmed 26 cases — including five in fully-vaccinated people — of the more contagious Delta variant circulating in the United States, but Gov. Andy Beshear said that amount is likely a drastic undercount. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that the Delta strain of coronavirus has accounted for more than half of all new cases in the last few weeks. Its prevalence in Kentucky is likely similar and will only keep growing, Stack said.

Even though the rising positivity rate and number of cases may portend a shift in the state’s infection curve, Beshear said the state’s guidance on masking remains unchanged; recommending that vaccinated people (wear) masks again, even indoors, is “premature right now,” he said, since vaccination is overwhelmingly effective at thwarting serious infection, even from the Delta variant. Unvaccinated people are still urged to wear masks in public places around others.

“We’re always going to be flexible,” he said. “But I’m not at a point where I think we need to put in any type of mandate.”

And there we have it: Governor Beshear is lobbying the state Supreme Court not to restrict his options with that statement, and trying to make it look like he’s really, really, really trying to avoid mandating things again. But if the justices rule his way on Monday, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he imposed a mask mandate on Tuesday.

The real solution for Kentuckians will come on November 7, 2023, when they will have the chance to vote this wannabe dictator out of office.