Time now for a midweek check in of pretty much all things Frankfurt, too, with our good friend Roland Martin, who is a senior editor with NPR States.

Good to see you.

For me, it's Happy New Year to you because I haven't seen you in a few weeks, so it's good to lay eyes on me.

It's been a minute.

Has it?

That glad you're doing well and glad you're still with us.

That's the most important thing.

So let's talk about some of the action in Frankfurt so far this week when we spoke.

School choice has a measure.

There has been filed a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow for the state to help nonpublic education.

Tell us about this and you know how fast this could get going.

You know, this is one of the thing that Republican lawmakers said that they were definitely going to bring up this session.

A lot of people said it was going to be a big priorit a lawsuit over a so-called school choice law in Kentucky.

There's a law that passed a couple years ago that would have allowed people to and corporations to contribute to scholarship funds for private schools and get a and get a tax break for that, be able to write it off on their taxes.

This ended up failing in court.

Judges struck it down, saying that it would have diverted public funds that are meant to go to public schools and it really allowed them to go to nonpublic schools.

There's a provision in the state constitution that prevents money that's dedicated to common schools from being spent on other things without voters specific approval.

So lawmakers are trying to undo that provision in the state constitution to provide some flexibility of how these education dollars can be spent.

They say that there's a lot of support among Kentuckians for something like this that would have that would allow, you know, kind of a more supportive public support for educational institutions outside of the normal K-12 system.

But this is something that's been really hard politically to even get out of the legislature in the past.

A really narrow margins, the times that they passed.

And it's really unclear what would happen if if this did end up passing in the legislature, because then voters would have to approve or deny it during a referendum, which would take place in November of this year during a general election.

And some of these Republican sponsored constitutional amendments just haven't had the success that supporters have thought that they would have had in recent years.

But a lot of different topics.

We've been talking about abortion, providing the legislature with more powers.

This is a whole different topic.

We're talking about public education, whether and how those public education dollars should be spent.

So it will be interesting to see if they can get it passed out of legislature.

And then if Kentucky voters would ultimately even approve it.

House Speaker David Osborne, when he was here in the studio on Monday night, said he believes, of course, he has a super duper majority.

But in you said it's been razor thin margins before, but he believes he's got 60 votes there, which would be higher than how it's done, how it's gone in previous session.

So we will see about that.

Speaking of abortion, there have been a couple of abortion related measures that have been filed this week.

Let's start with the Senate minority whip, David Yates of Louisville, who's filed what's called Hadley's Law.

And that name will be familiar to a lot of our viewers.

Yeah.

So this is a Democratic proposal to add exceptions to Kentucky's near-total ban on abortion.

It would create exceptions allowing people to get abortions in cases of rape and incest.

And the sponsor or one of the supporters is Hadley Duvall, who was featured in that really powerful political ad as governor this year, last year.

She was really only out Republicans or Republican Attorney General Cameron for not supporting exceptions to rape or incest.

She had been sexually assaulted when she was when she was a child by her stepfather and was criticizing why politicians wouldn't support allowing abortions in these really, really critical situations.

So they're pushing for this.

There's obviously there's Democratic support for it.

Democrats only have 20% of the seats in the legislature right now.

They really need a lot more Republican support in order for that to pass.

It's something Republicans, some Republicans at least have said that they are willing to consider, but that, you know, that movement has really yet to materialize.

And in the state legislature and during the session this year, and it's unclear if Republicans are going to get on board and get a majority of votes to be able to pass something like that.

Politically, I think it's still very fraught for Republicans.

They're worried about getting primaried, being challenged by Republicans who are more conservative than them on that issue.

So, again, another we'll wait and see.

You know, this also comes as Senate Judiciary Chair Whitney Westerfield, a Republican.

He's proposed his own you know, it's not an abortion related measure, but it is focused on trying to help kids and families who with with services.

You know, after once when kids are born.

There's been a lot of criticism on that side that if if Republicans are pro-life, they need to be pro-life after birth as well and need to kind of bolster state services for kids and and families who have trouble raising kids.

It's a big, expensive bill.

And so I think there's some support for it.

But, you know, a lot of discussions during this budget writing year on how to spend state money.

And we'll see if that's one that gets any more support.

Yeah, a half a billion dollar price tag, 551 million to be exact, on that Alpha Act, as it's called shorthand.

Last item real quickly, in about 45 seconds, Governor Andy Beshear is raising his national bona fides even higher by establishing and creating a PAC, a political action committee.

Why and what's it for?

And does it even help him?

Yeah, this is one of those hints that Andy Beshear is trying to elevate his national profile.

This federal PAC allows him to raise money and also invest in other campaigns around the country.

He said that he would be looking to support, you know, any candidate, that he believes in it for the right reasons.

So pretty broad.

But he said he would be interested in supporting the Democrat running for North Carolina governor this year.

And also legislative races around the country and possibly even races in Kentucky.

So just another one of those moments after he won a reelection last year.

A lot of folks have had their eyes on him seeing how he's going to try and present himself on the national stage and how he's going to try and build his profile across the country.

Yeah, we'll have to keep our eyes on there.

We can't even get through with one election before we're talking about the next.

Right.

But that's just how it works here in Kentucky.

Thank you, Rylan.

It's always good to see you.

Take good care and see you next week.

Good to see you, too, Renee.