I'm Laura Rogers, joined by Ryland Barton, who is senior editor for NPR's stage team.

And Riley cause a busy week as we are gearing up for Kentucky's primary election.

Early voting begins tomorrow.

And some breaking news today that Representative Nima Kulkarni being deemed ineligible to run.

The Kentucky Court of Appeals reversing that decision based on a rule they say that was broken and her nominating papers.

Can you break that down for us?

Sunny, Michael Carney is a Democratic state representative for a Louisville area district.

Earlier this year, a former state representative, actually.

The representative previously held her seat.

Dennis Orlando filed a complaint saying that paperwork filed for companies, not a nominating papers were incorrect, that they were filed by somebody who was not of the right political party, that they were still a Republican when they signed the papers, even though this person had switched later to being a Democrat.

A lower court had initially ruled that it was fine for her to still be on the ballot.

But now the Court of Appeals has ruled that she will not be on the ballot.

This will likely be appealed and and decided by the state Supreme Court.

But it's really gone back and forth here.

And it is really a a small issue that took place of this, the signature that was not signed by the person of the right political party affiliation.

And, you know, we're seeing a lot of these contested legislative races across Kentucky and in both parties.

They're getting a lot of attention.

I know the race there in Louisville, former state Representative Attica Scott running for the state Senate seat that's been held by minority Leader Gerald Neal there since 1989.

Are you anticipating this being a close race?

It really could be.

And these are two very prominent legislators, well-known names here.

Obviously, as you said, Neal, Spin and state Senate since 1989.

And of course, Scott has been involved in local politics for a while.

She's a former metro councilperson and also is in the state House of Representatives for a bit, ran for Congress a couple of years ago, lost that race to current law.

Congressman Morgan McCarty.

And so it's a real battle of a couple of well-known names in this area.

One thing that's notable is Governor Bashir's PAC has actually gotten involved in this race and PAC.

Gerald Neal in this case is saying that his experience matters.

But this is a pretty remarkable thing.

And we'll see who ends up winning out in this race.

You know, we're seeing that argument between experience or so maybe the establishment and some might refer to it.

Then those candidates being challenged by so-called liberty Republicans.

We're seeing that in Lexington and northern Kentucky.

Do you want to talk about a couple of those races?

Yeah, And this is a this is one of the big things that's happening in the primary elections.

And there's a lot of money involved in this.

The Kentucky Chamber of Commerce is actually spending a bit of money either defending current, you know, kind of more establishment Republicans in the state legislature to try to fend off challenges from from so-called liberty candidates and also trying to help at least one candidate win back their seat.

One of the more establishment Republicans win back their seat in northern Kentucky.

A couple of notable ones is Killian Timoney for Lexington Area State District.

He's a former educator in Lexington, and he's really one of the more moderate Republicans in the legislature.

And that's something that some of the more conservative Republicans have criticized him for, that he opposed some of the anti-trans legislation that came out of the legislature lately.

He's running against somebody named Thomas Jefferson in that district.

And this could end up being a pretty close Senate race.

That could also add to being a pretty close race in the general election to that district is one that Andy Beshear actually really outperformed Daniel Cameron in last year's election in the suburbs of Lexington.

So we'll see if that's on down the line in the general election, something that Democrats could slip another one of those to watch is in northern Kentucky, as he and I see a former state representative trying to win back his seat.

He's running against T.J. Roberts again, another more conservative candidate.

This is an open seat.

The current state rep there is running for Senate.

So a little bit of musical chairs there.

There are lots of races like these around the state.

Also, Michael Meredith down in in south central Kentucky as well, trying to defend his seat there.

So we'll really get a different lay of the land after these primary elections as to that's a lot of these candidates who are were battling over control over the House of Representatives and what the Republican Party looks like in the legislature in Kentucky going forward.

Yes.

And primary elections are going to be deciding what the future is for the Republican Party as the state and the Democratic Party as well.

But as the state does increasingly become more polarized and tends to lean more toward the GOP's favor.

Another story that we wanted to delve into today is this religious freedom challenge to Kentucky's abortion ban.

This has been an interesting developing story as well.

Yeah, Kentucky is one of just a handful of states that has a challenge like this.

There's three Jewish women who are suing to to block the state's near-total abortion ban, saying that it violates their their religious beliefs.

This is not I think this is kind of an interesting application of the state's religious freedom law, which I think I don't know exactly where it passes.

Passed a couple of decades ago.

A lot of different states passed these sorts of laws.

And it's really being applied in a pretty creative way to to to say that this can, you know, conservative, anti-abortion law violates their religious beliefs.

And they because they say that that they believe that under their religion, that life does not begin at conception, which is something that is actually baked into these some of these anti-abortion laws in Kentucky.

So there's similar challenges that are playing out.

One is in Indiana that's had some limited success.

And this is that this is a real new frontier for challenges to abortion laws.

And it was heard in court earlier this week and and we'll see what the ruling is for that eventually and we'll see if that that bears out.

It is very interesting, considering most people that are pro-life, the at the root of that is their religious beliefs that life begins at conception.

And so then to see that argued for the opposite side is an interesting development.

Now.

Violent and good talking with you as always.

We appreciate your insight into these issues and especially as we get into the primary election.

Again, early voting beginning tomorrow.

Great to get your perspective on these races across Kentucky.

Thank you so much.

Thanks, Laura.

Good to see you.