Time now for our midweek check of some major political developments, particularly here what's happening in the capital with a good friend, Roland Barden, who's managing editor of Kentucky Public Radio.

Good to see you.

Good to see you, too, Renee.

A lot of things to cover, not enough time, But let's talk about this omnibus LGBTQ plus measure and what's inside it and what's happening with it.

So originally, the base of this bill was a bill banning certain medical therapy for minors who are, you know, gender affirming care for minors there.

This has become the bill to carry all of basically the anti LGBTQ legislation or a lot of it at least proposed during this legislative session.

Most of those provisions were added on during a during a Senate committee yesterday and afterwards.

It sounds like from some reporting from the Herald-Leader, an amendment has been filed to pare back some of those.

So this is still, you know, still has the baseline of of tweaking, of banning some gender affirming care for minors, especially medical treatment, although it will still permit puberty blockers.

And really, the sponsors rationale being that that's something that's reversible.

There's some language dealing with with therapy.

That therapy that specific to gender transition would be banned.

But other forms of therapy in terms of talking to kids about gender would not be banned so much.

Then it includes a lot of these kind of so-called parents rights legislate bills.

Also, a really kind of the similar to the bathroom ban bills that we saw years ago in the legislature that didn't advance back that we saw in North Carolina.

There's a whole hubbub about so there's still a lot that's going to that could change with this.

The Senate might be considering it today.

No matter what the Senate does today, though, they would have the House would have to agree to any of those changes for it to pass because they've got different versions of this bill moving at this point.

So this is one of the clearer times that I remember You had several Senate committee members yesterday saying, we don't like this bill.

It's too broad, but yet they voted for it anyway.

Right.

And the whole idea is that it's move the process along.

There's still other opportunities to to change the bill.

And really, we saw that, you know, they I think they they left for something like a two or three hour long recess to discuss this.

You know, they may have been talking about other things, but certainly they came out of that.

And that's where some of these changes start to emerge, which is, you know, they're paring back some of the really severe elements of the bill.

But now it encompasses the bathroom bill and the parental right.

So it's much broader than it was when it got to.

This, absolute much broader than when it got to the Senate.

And it still also includes a provision that would not allow school districts to require teachers to use kids preferred pronouns if they choose to do that.

So there's a lot of different elements of this bill, and there's a lot of things that could change going forward.

So a couple of other bills that probably aren't so full of consternation.

Medical marijuana made some strides that it had not made in previous sessions.

Got a Senate committee hearing on Wednesday, Tuesday, sorry, and could get a vote sometimes soon.

And then gray machines are banned.

That's headed to the governor's desk.

Yeah, all eyes have been on the state Senate regarding medical cannabis.

That's typically been the the hurdle that the issue has been unable to overcome in previous legislative sessions.

And so the whole issue was started there this year, passed out of committee in the Senate, first time ever.

This is a pretty restrictive version of a medical marijuana bill.

It's only doctors would only be allowed to prescribe it for certain very severe conditions.

And also it wouldn't allow the medical cannabis to be smoked and it wouldn't be go into effect until January 1st, 2025.

So the Senate could vote on it soon.

So this sounds pretty similar to what the House has approved previously.

So it seems like there might not be too many hurdles there.

This is probably a bill that we know very well might save until after the veto period because it's likely that Governor Beshear would be in favor of it.

Yes.

Since he'd already worry about it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He'd already issued an executive action for certain Kentuckians, no more.

Than the Gray Machines bill.

So this is basically those slot type machines that you see in gas stations or bars.

And this is a bill that would ban those gray machines.

This is advance out of well, this actually passed out of both the House and the Senate at this point.

So it's on the governor's desk now.

We'll see what he does with that.

But this was a a big issue for a while that some folks are trying to trying to regulate this.

Yeah.

And so back to medical marijuana.

We should point out that Majority Leader Damien Thayer voted yes to applause in the committee that erupted when he voted yes because he had been blocking this measure the previous times it had come to the Senate.

One of the few people blocking it.

You know, not the only one that was that was a big that was a big sign for sure.

Two for one of the you know, the people who had really not been in favor of previous versions to allow that to go through.

Yeah.

Last item, the governor's race, we've got to get a little plug in on that.

So the the battle over the ads between General Cameron, Daniel Cameron and Kelly Kraft.

Right.

And Kelly Kraft is still the one who's out there really putting a lot of money into two ads.

Right now.

She came out with an ad last week going after Daniel Cameron for his core policies, saying he was essentially, along with President Joe Biden, in trying to shut down coal plants.

This actually related to an Ohio Valley resource story from 2021 where he had actually had some harsh words about a West Virginia coal plant that, you know, not been doing the proper things.

And so she's going after him for that.

And really he's come back and tried to show his long record of really trying to prop up this legacy industry.

And yeah, it's going to be interesting to see how this goes forward as Kelly Craft is really on offense here, trying to get her name out there more and Daniel Cameron's on defense here, trying to fend off any challenges here while not, you know, totally turning this into a bloodbath at this point.

So where does this leave the other candidates, Ryan Corales and Mike Harman and Alan Kirk?

I mean, I think that, you know, right now there's some there's some thinking that this really could be another 2015 moment where you have the two frontrunners here kind of fighting after each other.

And there are these, you know, third place finishers who are trying to, you know, look for that moment where they can split the gap and and be the be the candidate that's not really getting into the mud with the other candidates.

We'll see if that's exactly how.

That plays out.

Well, thank you, Iowans.

Always good to see you.

Good to see you, too.