Time now for us to go inside Kentucky politics, kind of mixing it up a little bit today since we didn't get a chance to talk with Ryland Barton at midweek.

We have him with us at the end of the week to give us kind of a recap of some major political news this week.

Good to see you on this Friday.

You too, Renee.

Let's talk about some news when it comes to the disaster, of course, that all of us have been covering that and our hearts go out to those who are still trying to clean up from that.

The natural disasters and the tornadoes that hit Kentucky this week.

And the governor has made some comments, admonishments, if you will, against the Republicans, encouraging them to revisit a cap that they've put on his ability financially to respond to natural disasters.

Tell us about this.

Yes.

So this was in this is part of the budget that the legislature passed before the veto break, and it included a cap on how much the governor can spend on what's called necessary government expenses, which sometimes are used for emergency responses, which Kentucky's experienced a lot of natural disasters, especially in the last couple of years.

Governor Beshear criticized this, saying that the state would have burned right through the tap within the first few months of this year, and especially looking to previous years when there a big flooding in 2022 in eastern Kentucky and the devastating tornadoes in western Kentucky in 2021, he's saying that the governor needs to have that kind of flexibility to respond to disasters, which includes, you know, that that requires sending out money to to folks to help with the cleanup.

I will also say it's a kind of point of personal privilege.

It's a piece that we worked on in Louisville Public Media and Kentucky Kentucky Public Radio last year looking into the invasive and incomplete cleanup process after the eastern Kentucky floods showed just how much money is involved in this process and also how how difficult and tricky that oversight can be of the the massive industry of contractors that goes into the cleanup in such a difficult cleanup.

It is in places like eastern Kentucky with all the flooding and debris in the streams that were there that the contractors and others are trying to work to clean up.

So it's an incredibly important issue, and that's that story won an award just today from the investigative reporters and editors.

Agree.

So congratulations to Justin Hicks and Jared Bennett on that.

And also thank you to all the folks in eastern Kentucky who helped tell the story and helped us report out that story.

Yeah, well, congrats to them and please pass it along to Jared and Justin and to you and your capacity.

When you were managing editor at the time, so hip, hip, hooray for all of you.

Great job.

It goes to show what good journalism can do and in fact, did create some change that that came from that.

So let's move to talk about Governor Bashir has issued five vetoes so far, one, an additional one that's already been overridden by the legislature concerning the source of income.

And so that's already out of the way.

They've already written that one.

But he did veto a bill dealing with change of venue.

And people are going to think, gosh, this sounds familiar.

Didn't they already do this one time before?

But you can tell us why it's being revisited and why it's different perhaps this time around.

Yeah, this has been on the wish list for Republican leaders of the legislature for years.

A lot of times when lawsuits over the constitution of constitutionality of state laws happen, they end up in Franklin Circuit Court.

So that's the the circuit court that's based in Frankfort.

The voters of Franklin Circuit elect the judges who are there.

And Republicans say that they're unfairly treated when their bills are challenged and end up in Franklin Circuit Court.

So for years, there have been bills that have come up to try and change the venue for where this happens to this year's version of it.

House Bill 804 Governor Bashir vetoed it, saying that this interferes with the separation of powers between the judicial and legislative and executive branches.

You know, the sponsor of this bill, Republican Representative Patrick Landry, said that really this this bill was filed to try and address some changes that justices had wanted to this bill.

So the previous version of this was struck down by the Kentucky Supreme Court.

So he says that this version of the bill actually addresses some of those concerns to try and make sure that that is constitutional.

I do imagine there will once again be a challenge over this and we'll see what the courts think about it this time around.

But this has been a very difficult issue for Republican leaders of the legislature to get past legal scrutiny.

Yeah, the governor did say in his weekly presser on Thursday that he is still reviewing several bills, of course, and he was asked specifically about the SAFER Kentucky Act or House Bill five and he said there are provisions that he agrees with, but there are some when it comes to the homeless provisions that he disagrees with.

So this is still in play, perhaps, and he he still has a few more days to issue some vetoes and very well could strike this one and reject it.

Yeah, that bill, there's so many different things in it.

The one but I think one of the biggest issues is this provision that would that would ban street camping in the state and create a criminal penalty for it.

This is something that a lot of other states are considering right now and actually something the US Supreme Court is considering is a lawsuit that comes out of Grants Pass, Oregon, where they have a strict camping ban.

The federal appeals court there blocked that.

It's been appealed all the way up to the US Supreme Court now.

And really this ruling is going to change.

It's going to determine a lot of how states and cities are allowed to or to what extent they're allowed to regulate homelessness or street camping and whether they're allowed to attach criminal penalties to it.

This is something that the ACLU filed an amicus brief in that in that case, that's a friend of the court.

They're just kind of providing their opinion on on what the ruling should be and said that it would be this that would violate laws like this, violate the Eighth Amendment.

So this is this amounts to cruel and unusual, unusual punishment that states would be issuing on on on folks that are homeless and and really have no choice but to just to sleep on the street.

Yeah.

So this is going to be a big really big case for for the nation because it's going to determine a lot of what states and cities can do, including, you know, the legality possibly of this.

This part of that big sweeping anti-crime bill, House Bill five, that the legislature passed this year.

Last item, if we can, real quickly, McConnell has been back in the district, of course, which is the state, and he made a stop in Shelbyville midweek.

And he said, you know, I am a Ronald Reagan Republican and I don't subscribe to isolation policies and philosophies.

And this is kind of an admonishment to people in his party, and he gets some flak from it, from those who are saying, let's not do any more support to Ukraine.

He says it's still needed.

He's still kind of holding on to this older version of what Republicans were.

But I think we've all seen it in recent years is a big division.

And what the party thinks the United States role is in the world at this point.

A lot of there's a lot of more isolationist folks who say they shouldn't be meddling in foreign wars, even when it comes to defending Ukraine against the Russian invasion.

And this is an ongoing debate, but it very much seems, especially with McConnell's retirement from leadership and and former President Donald Trump's, you know, likely nomination as the Republican presidential ticket this year, that the more isolationist side is the side that's kind of winning out the political fight at this point.

Yeah.

Well, it's always good to see you.

Thank you so very much.

Rhode Island, Have a great weekend.

And we should say programing.

Note that there's a double dose of Rylan Barton because you're going to be on common on Kentucky tonight at 8:00 Eastern time right here on Katie.

So they'll get more of you then.

Thanks.

Thanks a lot, Renee.