Time now for a midweek check in of some major political developments in Kentucky so far this midweek with our good friend Roland Barton, who's a senior editor with NPR.

Good to see you.

It's been a minute, as we say.

In seats to Renee.

So let's get down to it.

First item that we'll talk about.

We know that in the House yesterday, the House passed a resolution saying that they support and they are urging Governor Andy Beshear to support Governor Greg Abbott's actions in Texas dealing with the southern border crisis.

And we know that the attorney general of Kentucky is also getting involved in this conversation.

Tell us more about this.

You know, this is a really interesting topic for this year.

This might be the main issue that folks are looking at in the presidential election with the conservatives criticizing President Biden's handling of migrants crossing the border and and and then also conservatives in the border in Texas doing a whole lot of different things, including setting up hundreds of miles of concertina wire to try and prevent people from crossing the border and also getting into this big dispute with federal officials over who has the rights to detain riots in these cases and also occupy the space around the border.

This is a big fight that gets to kind of the root of of federalism in this country, of states rights, What powers are afforded to states versus the the federal government?

Who has the power to regulate the the national border, which which, you know, up until this point in time has been pretty clearly a power that's been relegated to the federal government.

But Texas officials say that this is the federal government isn't doing a good enough job on this.

And so they're zooming in here anyway.

Kentucky politicians are starting to weigh in on this issue and trying to throw their support behind Republican governor, Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott in this case.

You know, it's interesting not only because Kentucky's thousand plus miles from the Texas border, but it's this is just this is what politics looks like this year.

And also they're trying to make this case that this is not only a you know, this is not just a Texas issue, that this Attorney general, Russell Pullman, was saying, you know, Kentucky is effectively a border.

It's a border state because of this, which I think is a little bit hyperbolic, but that is that's that's kind of the rhetorical moment right now.

Governor Beshear responded saying that this is a that he's troubled by by what's going on in the border right now, that he's sent Kentucky National Guard drivers to the border to help out previously.

And but also he's worried about this legal precedent of that.

It was essentially used to support secession and the rebellion during the Civil War, and that this is really reminding us of some other era, other other times, too, in which the federal government had to intervene with the with desegregation in Little Rock in the 1960s.

These are there's a lot of different issues going on right now with where the federal powers start and end and and how states are responding to it.

There was in the legislature yesterday, I believe it was a press conference between us by by camera, if you will.

Representative Nancy Tate in the House and State Senator Lindsey Tickner have this public protection measure, as they have billed it, which deals with adult oriented businesses and could have some implications perhaps for drag shows.

Yeah, this is a a little bit of a rehashing of a bill that was proposed last year and that has passed and other states have been struck down by federal courts that would be restrictions on adult oriented businesses and sexually explicit performances, which does the definitions do include drag shows.

That's something that the bill sponsor, Lindsey touched, said that this isn't really targeting drag shows, but this is this is something that's included in here.

It's worries about about minors interacting with encountering, you know, sexually explicit performances or other information that they are not ready to handle.

And it's trying to it's trying to target that.

This is something, again, that is it's written very, very broadly of require a lot of interpretation by courts to to determine what actually counts is sexually explicit and tries to define some of these.

But it's a really kind of wide sweeping bill.

And again, similar measures have been struck down in other states and Tennessee.

There is one and it's it's something that I think a lot of legislators think that they can get a lot of support around.

And they're standing up for family values.

And in these instances.

But it's also something that I don't think a lot of people have seen, a lot of of a lot of problems around this particular issue.

The sponsors do say that there's there are a couple instances of a drag reading performances taking place in libraries, and that's something that they want to.

They wanted to cut down on.

But yeah, we'll see how far it makes it this time around.

It didn't advance too much in the legislature.

I think lawmakers see that in other states.

This hasn't really advanced too far and, you know, might end up leading to some expensive lawsuits.

And our last item that just came out right before we started to speak today is about an audit of Kentucky's juvenile justice system.

And John Cheese, the report I'm citing, he's been on this issue for a long time.

I've been covering this for many, many, many years.

What does this audit say about these persistent problems in our system of juvenile justice?

Yeah, we've read this over the years in the Herald-Leader about all the problems in Kentucky's juvenile justice system.

Lawmakers have tried to start passing some reforms last year, putting a little bit more money and resources into the system.

But yeah, this independent audit came out and says there's still a lot of problems in the juvenile justice system even after some of the reforms last year.

Corrections are juvenile corrections officers, overusing at Hairspray and isolation practices really focus a lot on how a juvenile of juveniles who are in the in the system are being treated and mistreated.

A lot of critics have said so far that there hasn't been a focus yet on on actually trying to reform some of these policies of how kids are being treated in the juvenile justice system, which when they're mistreated, it does lead to a lot of more problems that we've seen in recent years in these high profile escapes, assaults, fires, riots that have taken place.

So that's one side of things.

But then the other side, there's, yeah, you know, far too much solitary confinement taking place.

There's not a behavior management model for for kids who are in the system.

So a lot of that needs to be addressed with that.

Yeah.

And we'll see what happens, if anything, during this legislative session.

Well, thank you.

Rowland Barnes, always good to see you.

Appreciate you.

Good to see you.

To rename.