News 40 sits down with Sen. Rand Paul to discuss national and state issues

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – Debate continues to rage on in Washington, D.C., about the targeting of boats thought to be carrying drugs in the Caribbean and the legality of these strikes.

Now, new evidence suggests that during one of these strikes, survivors may have been targeted a second time. News 40 sat down with Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, who voiced his concerns about these strikes.

He says about 25% of the boats stopped do not even carry drugs, and that the question at hand is about ethics and the judicial process.

“The question should be as a moral people, should we kill people when our error rates about 25%? The other question is, let’s say 100% of them are drug dealers. Do we agree with summary execution of people who are accused of something, even if they have drugs? So if you’re caught with drugs in Bowling Green, we don’t go blow your house up. If we say, well, my goodness, we have footage, we’re positive people are going in and out of that house selling drugs. We arrest them, they get a jury trial, they even get a lawyer. It was like, well, why would we give bad people a lawyer? Because that’s what justice is, and because sometimes you make a mistake,” Paul said.

Paul also stated that he questions the orders that were given and believes that the leaders at the top, such as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and the Admiralty, should answer questions from those on Capitol Hill, and that the images from these previous strikes should be released to the public.

“Hegseth, as Secretary of Defense, is, as a political figure, a political appointee, and we need to know what his orders are, what orders were given. But also, the American people need to see the images, because I think sometimes people flippantly say, oh, they’re just a bunch of drug dealers. I hate drug dealers. I don’t care if we kill them. That’s a very callous view. But the other thing is, is we need to see people who are wounded clutching the wreckage, who then we bomb and kill. It’s never been the American way, it’s never been part of American justice, and I think a lot of Americans will be outraged if they’re able to see these images. So I’m going to advocate that the images be released to the public,” Paul said.

Closer to home, though, Paul has been challenging fellow Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell’s work in regulating hemp production. Kentucky comes only second to California in production, which is used for producing items such as clothes, furniture and even building materials. Paul says that these issues should be handled at the state level.

“He made the numbers so small that all of the things that are sold across the United States, 98% of them will be illegal under Senator McConnell’s language. So I’m still trying to overturn that. What I’ve offered is an alternative that if we passed my law, it would say if a state has a regulatory apparatus in place, they wouldn’t have to adhere to the federal rules. And this is basically common sense. States should be given a lot of latitude as to how they want to regulate this,” Paul said.

In 2024, the state harvested over 4 million pounds of hemp