Time now for a midweek check in of some major political news, which is all about the end of the 2024 Kentucky General Assembly and regular session with our good friend Rylan Barden, who is a senior editor with NPR States.

Tim, good to see you.

Good to see you, too, Renee.

So we as people say, which is not correct, we certainly died on Monday, around a quarter until nine Eastern time, and lots of bills passed, including a budget.

But there are some bills that did not pass, like the contentious anti-Dean bill.

Break down what you see as the most important measures passed by state lawmakers this session.

Yeah, the big anti-gay bill was you know, that was one that we we figured some version of it was going to pass because there are about at least three different versions of it that were considered throughout the session.

The last ones that they were considering really were targeting a D programs in higher education.

And this is something that a lot of state legislatures are considering right now.

And it just I think that really a lot of the disagreement was between different factions within, you know, Republican leaders in the in the legislature, just not being able to come to terms with exactly what they wanted the final version of this bill to look like.

There were some versions of this bill that would target K-12 education as well.

I think another big surprise at the end, possibly, or at least that everybody was kind of watching, is whether or not that that bill to curtail elements of the the state's open records law that that bill didn't end up passing, even though it seemed like there's a lot of momentum and even support from Democratic Governor Andy Beshear.

There was a this is kind of a bipartisan effort here.

But there's so many worries about this race from just open up government advocates, journalists worried about how this would allow potentially lawmakers, state officials to use their personal devices and personal e-mails to do work business.

And that wouldn't be we wouldn't have any access to that through open records requests.

So I think those are some of the surprises of the last minute, you know.

And, you know, another thing just kind of harkening back of something that happened during this session to pay attention to the the big charter schools amendment passed.

So at least passed the legislature.

That means voters will weigh in on this during the election this year.

And that's that is a bill that would, if approved by voters, would give the legislature the power to, you know, there have to be some enabling legislation, but it would give the legislature the power to use money that is otherwise dedicated for for public education or for other purposes.

So one of the big efforts has been for private school scholarships.

That's a bill that has repeatedly been tried to pass out of the side of the state legislature by creating a tax credit that could go towards those private school scholarships and has been knocked down by the courts.

So this is the entry point to that possibility happening down the road.

And we know that there were attempts on the last day to resurrect a bill that would provide for exceptions to the partial abortion ban here in Kentucky, exceptions for rape and incest.

That discharge petition by Senate Minority Whip David Yates was not successful.

So there were some attempts to resurrect, I like to call them Lazarus bills to to come up to the floor that were not successful, along with what you mentioned.

But medical marijuana also got a little bit tweaking.

Again, this time around.

What's that about?

Right.

So last year Kentucky passed that the big medical cannabis bill.

There's still some work that needs to be done, or at least there was some work that needs to be done to really authorize that to create the licensure process for folks or businesses to to to begin applying to grow in and dispense with with cannabis in the state.

This is supposed to be legal January 1st of next year.

And with the things that were passed out of this, that that can start to happen.

It's probably unlikely it's going to really happen January 1st.

But now businesses will be able to start applying for this clarified some language, allowing localities to have a little bit longer to consider whether they want to opt out of allowing this to happen in their area.

And yeah, but I think another notable thing is that this did not expand any of the conditions that medical cannabis could be prescribed for in Kentucky.

That was something that a lot of advocates have been wanting because this as it stands, this is like the most restrictive cannabis legal cannabis law in the nation.

It's just allowed for so very few conditions.

So there were some advocates who wanted to expand it to a few more.

That didn't happen.

It could in the future, on down the line again, you know, come next year's legislative session.

But this will have, if everything goes according to plan, just have started rolling out.

So I do imagine lawmakers might take another look at this when they come back in next January.

And if we can shift to Washington now and talk about the fourth congressional congressman, Republican Thomas Massie, made news yesterday as he is going after the House speaker, Mike Johnson.

What is this all about?

Yeah, I mean, this is one of those things.

Thomas Massie is able to to to find his light every now and then, find the spine, the spotlight and is he's the second Republican to join and call for the resignation of the House speaker and this comes at a critical time in which the Congress is trying to is considering a bunch of different funding measures, whether it's, you know, Israel funding for for Israel, funding for Ukraine and a bunch of budgetary matters on down the road.

So he is trying to, as he puts it, this is the more organized way for Republicans to go about trying to create some unity and hopefully and identify a new speaker.

But his critics are saying that, well, actually what this would do is create more chaos.

And so Andy Barr, even Kentucky sixth District congressman in Lexington, he's he says that, you know, he's really taking the other side here and defending Speaker Johnson, saying that to oust him at this point would just throw the party into further chaos.

Yeah, Well, thank you, Raelyn, from covering the Frankfort Fun front and a little bit of the Washington, too.

We appreciate it.

Take good care.