Time now for a midweek check in of some major political news this week so far in Kentucky with Rylan Barton, who's managing editor of Kentucky Public Radio.

Good to see you.

Good to see you, too, Renee.

So let's start with the Kentucky Republicans.

Many of them have unveiled this kind of omnibus anti crime plan, 18 points to it, 18 different provisions.

Tell us about the timing of this and maybe some of the substantive matters they want to propose.

Yeah, the timing of it, obviously, this comes right before or a month before the gubernatorial election on November 7th.

So there's you know, this has implications for, you know, all these Republican legislators are campaigning against Governor Andy Beshear and also in favor of Attorney General Daniel Cameron for for taking over that spot.

But also, this is a bit of a preview of what, you know, they're trying to lay out their priorities ahead of next year's legislative session, some of the things that they want to put their stamp on.

So, yeah, this is a huge sweeping bill, has a lot a lot in it.

I think one of the things that rise to the top is creating a three strikes program that would basically, if somebody is convicted of three separate felonies, then it would lead to on that third felony would lead to life in prison without parole.

There's a few other.

A lot of them are just kind of enhancing charges that are already on the books to make them more severe.

One of them involving a carjacking.

If there's a fatal carjacking that could lead to the to the death penalty.

If somebody kills kills, a police officer is convicted of that, that would be a capital offense on its own.

These are things that are already kind of in a possibility of somebody getting charged with, but they just want to further make that a stricter.

A couple elements of this really echo what Republican gubernatorial candidate Daniel Cameron has advocated for earlier this summer, wanting to set up a Kentucky State police post in Louisville being one of them.

Something that he and the governor kind of went back and forth over whether there were the you know, whether that would take resources away from one local law enforcement efforts and whether that means that they're going to boost just the number of active duty troopers in the state, which the state has really set aside money for that at this point.

So a big old plan.

A lot of this is kind of a conversation starter, but I do think that we will see some version of this once the legislative session starts in January.

And is this all about or stem from the violent crime rates in Louisville?

Is this all about what's happening in Jefferson County, or is this really trying to take a statewide approach and answer a crime that's happening all over the state?

So much of it seems to be directed towards Louisville.

I mean, obviously, there are there there's so many different parts of the state.

Yeah, you can say that.

Some of them are directed statewide.

One of them in particular, north boosting charges for people who traffic fentanyl.

If that sale ends up leading to a fatal drug overdose and that person could be charged with a capital offense.

So and that's something that's a statewide phenomenon.

But yeah, some of that some of this is really directed towards Jefferson County, the carjacking.

Carjackings have been on or at least for a while.

We're on the rise in Jefferson County.

So, yeah, they're trying to put a little at the center of this.

And these were Louisville lawmakers who proposed this as well.

All right.

So now let's talk about some federal action that has some major implications for Kentucky, and that's a possible federal government shutdown as we get ever closer to the end of the fiscal year for the federal government.

One program in particular could have some major implications for Kentuckians.

The week program, the Women, Infants and Children's Program.

Talk to us about the possible dangers here for that population.

Yeah, so there's there's so many things that the government shutdown would affect.

One of the reporters at law, Public Media did he karthikeyan did a story about how we would be affected because, I mean, there's 120,000 Kentuckians who are receive with benefits.

And this would really create a, you know, a little bit of a ripple effect for this program as it seeks to continue providing benefits for people.

Yeah, this is one of the one of the programs that would be affected by the shutdown.

I think it's something that wouldn't happen immediately.

But it says as it continues to go on, this would end this would end up hurting both.

And we really it's it's you know, it's an important institution in supporting a program.

You know, if everybody remembers the baby formula shortage, what was that last year which played an important part in trying to making sure the folks who really needed it and couldn't easily access baby formula had a little bit easier time, provide it that way.

So it's just another one of the, you know, fears of of what would actually happen if if a government shutdown takes place, which we're getting closer and closer to.

We only got three more days left in the month.

But, you know, there's a lot of different other programs as well that would be affected.

And most notably, the folks who work for the military, especially civil servants who work in the military, they would be put on furlough.

There's still some question as to what exactly would happen with TSA agents, because we still need to keep planes in the sky and safe and folks go through security trainings and they would be put on furlough.

So there's there is widespread implications for what would happen if the government shutdown takes place.

So a final point to mention Kentucky State University, which is the only publicly funded HBCU historically black college or university, Simmons College is another one, but it's not publicly funded.

It has been It's been found that through the US Department of Agriculture and the Education Department, that it has been underfunded.

What's happening here?

Yeah, they did.

They released a report and sent it to a few different states that have HBCUs in them.

And part of the reason the Agriculture Department is involved in this is that these are land grant institutions, especially Cassie was set up in the late 19th century.

And yeah, so the federal Government has some stake in the success of these institutions, but of funding still for the most part comes from the states.

They said that the state has underfunded KSU over the last 30 years to the tune of $172 million, which is really, really remarkable, especially when you know anybody is paying attention to the news of KSU.

Over the last decade or so, they've really struggled with a lot of different criteria, whether it's enrollment, graduations, tests.

But then some of their financials are really, really been in trouble in recent years.

The legislature set aside a $23 million bailout for them to try and get them back on track last year.

So and really how this all fits within the larger conversation of state funding of higher education, that's something has dropped off significantly, especially since 2008 and the and the recession then.

Higher education was one of those, you know, biggest areas that were that that was cut from state funding.

And these institutions have relied a lot more on tuition in the in the process of doing that.

So I think that this has struck up a conversation among among lawmakers about how about the future of KSU and about how much the state needs to invest to kind of make sure that they continue to be on track and obviously that the federal government has a stake in this and they're going to be paying attention to how the state takes care of KSU going forward.

Yeah, well, thank you.

Ron Barton, always good to see you.

Thank you for breaking everything down for us.

Good to see you.

Too many.