Rogers pushes back on Trump administration to keep $500M Eastern KY prison funding
A long-debated new federal prison in Eastern Kentucky could move one step closer to fruition if Washington breaks its gridlock.
Under the current U.S. House version of an appropriations bill, Congress would deny the Trump administration’s request to rescind funding for a $500 million federal prison project in Letcher County.
The bill also includes language that limits lawsuits over the project to just one jurisdiction.
The bill is one of 12 traditionally passed during a normal appropriations cycle. However, thus far during the Trump administration and GOP trifecta control of the White House, Senate and U.S. House, Congress has only passed a continuing resolution and the federal government is shut down because of its failure to pass another. Continuing resolutions keep the government funded at previous levels without making changes.
The bill was introduced last month and has yet to get a vote on the House floor, which has been tied up in fights over the continuing resolution and the ensuing government shutdown.
To fund or not to fund has long been a back-and-forth between Rogers’ efforts in Congress and presidential administrations of both major political parties, but the question of exclusive jurisdiction over lawsuits is a relatively new push.
The language included in the bill would divert all lawsuits to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky, which serves the proposed prison site and where all five senior federal judges in that district were appointed by either former President George W. Bush or President Donald Trump, both Republicans.
Rogers said the language, which was also in last year’s version of the bill that was passed over in favor of a continuing resolution, is necessary to keep challenges in a district “which serves the people living in Letcher County, not the residents of Washington, DC.”
Federal government actions are often challenged in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, whose ranks are filled with a mix of Democratic and GOP appointees.
In 2019, the Bureau of Prisons reversed its approval of construction on the site after the Abolitionist Law Center sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, arguing the facility would damage the environment and expose inmates at the facility to toxic pollutants at the former mining site.
What’s happening with the prison?
Rogers said in a statement it’s time to start moving on the project, which began in 2006 when he got money included in the federal budget to begin a feasibility study.
“The people of Letcher County have invested nearly 20 years of planning and preparation for a new federal prison to bring more than 300 much-needed jobs to our region... The proposed prison has surpassed multiple environmental studies and every ounce of red tape that has been doled out,” Rogers wrote in a statement.
The proposed Letcher County prison has long been a source of controversy, lauded by supporters as an economic boon for a county hit hard by job losses in the coal industry but decried by opponents as an unnecessary boondoggle.
Both iterations of the Trump administration have tried to scotch funding for the project, and, in between, the administration of President Joe Biden did as well.
Early this year, a nonprofit called The Appalachian Rekindling Project bought 63 acres of land for $160,000 inside the boundary of the site the Federal Bureau of Prisons identified for the prison. It intends to use that acreage for a bison restoration project. Tiffany Pyette, cofounder of the group, told the Herald-Leader in a statement the organization just received funding for a fence on the property and other “initial infrastructure.”
“This will allow us to pay local people to help us get things started in construction, along with our amazing volunteers. The bison effort for us continues to be a plan for ecological restoration and sustainable economic opportunities in Letcher County,” Pyette wrote.
Part of the idea behind The Appalachian Rekindling Project’s purchase was to block the development of the prison. A line from the group’s website claims “what was nearly a site of captivity will now be a place of kinship and care.”
But Rogers and other local proponents’ think it’s possible to build, even with that acquisition. Elwood Cornett, chairman of the Letcher County Planning Commission and a longtime advocate for the prison, told the Herald-Leader “the Bureau of Prisons tells us not to worry about” The Appalachian Rekindling Project’s purchase.
He also expressed full faith in Rogers to make it happen.
Rogers, the longest continuously serving member of the U.S. House, has been on the Appropriations Committee since taking office in 1981. He chaired the committee from 2011 to 2016, and has a long reputation of siphoning federal funds toward projects in Eastern Kentucky — particularly prisons. He secured the $500 million for the project at the end of his time as committee chair.
Federal prisons in Clay, Martin and McCreary counties have all been built on Rogers’ watch, and have been billed as a way to bring jobs and stem population loss. That conclusion is contested by a report from the progressive-leaning Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, which found neither poverty rates nor median incomes improve in counties that built prisons.
But in an area hungry for jobs, local economic development leader Jeffery Justice, who leads the Pine Mountain Partnership, said the employment bump is welcome.
“Any time you add 300 jobs making $50,000-plus to a community, that has a lot of spillover effects. There would be a lot of positive benefits to the community,” Justice told the Herald-Leader.
Cornett added that improvements near the site, which is situated in the Roxana community about five miles west of Whitesburg, have already been made in anticipation of the project. Rogers echoed that point in his statement.
“Years of investments have also been made in good faith to support this project at the federal, state and local levels. For those reasons, the House Appropriations Committee has voted not to backtrack on our progress, blocking all requests to rescind funding for this critical facility,” Rogers wrote.
“Additionally, development of the facility will significantly stimulate the local and regional economy, which has declined with the loss of the coal industry, and a strong regional workforce exists to fill the positions necessary for the facility.”
This story was originally published October 21, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
