Time now to check in with our good friend Rylan Barden, who is a senior editor with NPR Stage.

Time to talk about some of the week's developments so far.

Good to see your island.

Good to see you, too, Renee.

Happy Derby week.

We know that where you are.

It's just all abuzz with Derby fever.

So we'll save that for our separate conversation.

But good luck if you're betting on the ponies.

Let's talk about the new education chief who did his, I guess, first media availability earlier this week.

He talked about school choice and policies.

What are some of the main takeaways that you gleaned from his presser?

Yeah.

So this is he's the first education commissioner in Kentucky to have to go through the process of being confirmed by the state Senate, which is controlled by Republicans now.

So there's a little bit of this political dynamic of the Democratic governor nominating him and then the Republican Senate confirming him.

So, yeah, it's a new day.

The Kentucky Department of Education here and he's he laid out some of his priorities, you know, is falling for it.

He's saying thank you to the legislature for writing more funding for public education, but he's calling for more, you know, more attention for teachers as well.

He's helping you know, he's also saying that he would be in favor of sticking and saying that some of the policies that Governor Bashir has been embraced in favor of, like expanding pre-K across the state, creating a universal pre-K program and BSD also said that, you know, when it comes to LGBTQ students, that he's still he wants to make sure that all students feel welcome and that he wouldn't have a prob with students or parents in cases in which a student wants to say, use a different set of pronoun.

And that is, you know, that is what led to the previous commissioner ultimately being ousted.

But what Republican lawmakers will say as part of that is that he was really telling teachers that, you know, if you're not interested in doing that, that you need to go find another job.

So he's he's definitely having a little bit of more of a tempered line on that issue.

But I think that's part of the job here.

He's trying to appeal to, you know, both the Democratic governor who nominated him in the Republicans in the legislature who ultimately have oversight over him.

Yeah.

And even when he was asked, he said that he will vote against the constitutional amendment that is connected to school choice, but he would still do his job right and he would still ask for public dollars to stick with public education.

But, you know, he'd bowed to the will of the legislature.

Yeah, And that really could be the big political story for Kentucky this year, is that school choice amendment, which would open the door for public dollars to fund in some ways nonpublic education, because right now there's an explicit ban on that in the state constitution.

So he's saying that he's he's not going to be in favor of that.

But as you said, that if it were ultimately implemented, he would dutifully make sure that that that was implemented.

Yeah.

So moving now to some action.

Just yesterday, a Franklin Circuit court reversed alleged ethics violations against a former Democratic Kentucky secretary of State, Alison Lundergan Grimes.

This dates back a little bit for us, but this also clears her of a $10,000 fine.

So remind us what this is about and the reversal that happened yesterday.

Right.

So this this goes back to findings, allegations that that a former Secretary Grimes had improperly access the voter registration system and that that, you know, violated executive branch ethics rules, as you said, led to this $10,000 fine.

But it also led to the, you know, really the pause of her political career.

She was this rising star in the Democratic Party.

There was questions whether she would run for governor at that point and and lots of other higher offices.

And it really know it kind of it stopped that in their tracks.

So I'm not sure what the fallout of this is at this point whether this would revive her political career in this way.

But it was you know, the Democrats in Kentucky don't have a very deep bench of candidates, especially for statewide office.

And that was a really big blow to Democrats when that took place back then.

Yeah, And we know that this current governor is term limited and there's a lot to speculation about who wants to take his place on the Democratic side.

And so perhaps we could see a resurgence of Alison Lundergan Grimes on the political scene.

Final topic with day to day being May one, we are about 20 days away from the primary election here in Kentucky, and we know that all eyes are on the derby, but there's a different race that we're probably more interested in.

And it's those state House races that have some pretty contentious contests, particularly on the Republican side of the ledger.

Yeah, so much of the political wrangling at this point in the state legislature is within the Republican Party.

They control about 80% of seats in both legislative chambers.

There's not too much of a risk of them losing control of either the House or the Senate this year.

But within the Republican Party, there's a lot of you know, once you get that big, you start seeing some divisions between different factions.

One thing that we've seen play out over the last couple of years is that there's the resurgence or the emergence of this so-called Liberty wing of the Republican Party.

They've picked up a bunch of seats over the years.

Last year there was in 2022, there's a bit more of a coordinated effort for these, more conservative Republicans to try to win seats.

And they picked up some big ones, especially in northern Kentucky.

They won, defeated some incumbent Republicans who were also the chairs of a pretty powerful committees in the legislature, which once that starts happening, Republican leaders, you know, start getting a little worried about, you know, continuity of their of of their message, of their plans, of what they're working on.

And so now there is a much more conservative concerted defense of, you know, some of those more establishment Republicans.

The Chamber of Commerce has been funding some campaigns to to either defend or even win back seats that were won by some of those Liberty candidates in 2022.

One to highlight in northern Kentucky at Massey, he was the chair of the House Judiciary Committee at one point.

And you have a surprising primary loss on his primary election back in 2022.

He's trying to make a comeback.

The guy, the representative who won that seat is moving on to a race for the Senate, but he's running against another Liberty candidate, T.J. Roberts.

And so he's he's kind of he's got this, well, fan funded campaign to try and win that seat back.

So it'll be interesting to see once all the dust settles, you know, who ends up winning some of these races.

But no matter what, a lot of this has implications for what takes place once the legislature comes back into session next year when they're talking about leadership and what bills they decide to take up.

Yeah, it could make those leadership contests really interesting.

Should there be a change in some of these seats from the establishment candidates or two more Liberty candidates?

So a lot to keep our eyes on in the weeks to come.

Thank you, Ryland Barton, always for breaking it down for us.

Have a good one.

Thanks, Renee.