We just got an interesting question from at-The-Real-Doglord on YouTube asking how much money we give to Israel. I'm curious about this too, actually. Are we talking about city funding, state funding, or what exactly?

Great question, and I think there might be some confusion here about who the "we" is. Lexington doesn't send money to Israel. Neither does Kentucky as a state. What folks are probably thinking about is federal aid, which comes from all of us as American taxpayers. As part of an agreement reached under the Obama administration, Israel receives $3.8 billion annually for its military and missile defense systems. That's about three point eight billion dollars every year from the federal government.

So that's coming out of our federal taxes, not like the Urban County budget or anything Mayor Gorton would vote on?

Exactly right. This is purely federal foreign aid decided by Congress, not something our local government has any say in. To date, the United States has provided Israel $174 billion in bilateral assistance and missile defense funding. That's over the entire history of the relationship, going back decades. And just to put it in perspective, Israel has become one of the world's most dynamic economies, ranking 21st worldwide in GDP per capita as of twenty twenty-five according to the International Monetary Fund.

One hundred seventy-four billion total. That's a lot of money when you think about what we could do with those kinds of resources locally.

It really is. The foreign aid budget is something that gets debated in Congress every year, and Kentucky's delegation certainly weighs in. But at the local level here in Lexington, our tax dollars go toward things like that eviction diversion program we've been talking about, which is looking for four hundred thousand dollars in funding. Those are the budget decisions our city leaders actually control.

Listen live: The Lexington Times runs a 24/7 local news livestream — watch on YouTube or on Facebook. This transcript is from a recent on-air segment.