Kentucky Governor Hanged in Effigy

Republican and Democratic leaders in Kentucky have condemned gun rights and anti-lockdown protesters who hung an effigy of Gov. Andy Beshear on the Capitol grounds near the governor's mansion in Frankfort Sunday. The effigy had a note around its neck reading "sic semper tyrannis"—"thus always to tyrants"—the same phrase John Wilkes Booth shouted when he shot Abraham Lincoln, CNN reports. Witness Gerry Seavo James says that after the effigy of the Democratic governor was hung from a tree, a man "pretty upset about it" cut the figure down. "He was like, 'This has no place at this rally. We're trying to be peaceful,'" James says.

Michael Adams, Kentucky's Republican secretary of state, slammed the "disgusting" act, the Courier-Journal reports. "I condemn it wholeheartedly," he said. "The words of John Wilkes Booth have no place in the Party of Lincoln." During Sunday's protest, which was advertised as a Second Amendment rally, protesters rallied outside the Capitol, where speakers denounced lockdown restrictions, for hours before marching to the governor's mansion, where they chanted "Come out Andy" and "Resign Andy." "The act that was displayed on Capitol grounds today, near where the Governor and his young children live, was wrong and offensive," a Beshear spokeswoman said in a statement. (More Kentucky stories.)