Good evening to you.

I'm Renee Shaw, along with Rylan Barton, who is a senior editor of NPR's stage team.

And we are talking, as we normally do on Wednesday, about some major developments in Kentucky on the political scene.

It's good to see you, Raylan.

Good to see you, too, Renee.

So let's start with some news out of Washington.

And we know that all of Kentucky's the members of the federal delegation, when those 34 felony counts of which Donald Trump were convicted, when that was announced, they all quickly came out and denounced that and criticized the district attorney in Manhattan.

And most of them have endorsed Donald Trump for president for a second term, with the exception of two.

Who are they and why are they holding back?

You've got Republican Senator Rand Paul and also Congressman Thomas Massie.

Haven't yet endorsed the former president.

You know, I don't I don't think there's too much to read into this.

I think that likely you know, they're they both say that they're very supportive of President Trump.

But at the same time, they say that they're they're wanting to hear more from him about a few different issues, namely for Senator Paul.

He wants to hear more about the coronavirus pandemic and what the president would do to get to the bottom of what happened during the pandemic.

That's been a big focus of Senator Paul's.

Obviously, we've seen all these committee hearings between him getting into these verbal battles with with Anthony Fauci.

And also he says he wants to hear more about debt.

And these are you know, this is this is Senator Paul's position in the Republican Party.

He's always trying to pull the party in a particular direction.

You know, sometimes it can be characterized as libertarian, especially on some of these taxing and spending issues.

But, yeah, I think we'll we'll see that as time goes on over the course of this year if he ends up being satisfied by this.

But I think in the end, we're going to he's going to come out and he's already saying that he supports the former president.

But it's just whether or not we get this Rand Paul endorsement.

Right.

And the same I think the same arguments are coming also from fourth District Congressman Thomas Massie, similar kind of positions.

He wants to hear the president come out more forcefully on.

Let's move to the Kentucky Supreme Court.

So last week there were some oral arguments heard at the Kentucky Supreme Court involving a primary election case.

And the very next day, the Kentucky Supreme Court found that Louisville State Representative, a Democrat named Michael Carney, was is disqualified as a candidate in that May 2024 primary because of a filing mistake.

Remind viewers what this is about and what could be next.

Yeah, that filing mistake was that one of the official signatures on her petition to become a candidate was a was somebody from the Republican Party was a woman who had not switched her party registration switching, but it was just a little too late after the cut off point for for people to have to do that when they're signing these candidate forms.

So, you know, in some ways this really is a technicality, but it's an important one.

The Supreme Court has ruled here.

Now, we're at this point, though, we're still trying to figure out what happens next.

The Supreme Court hasn't issued its full opinion yet, so they haven't really directed what happens next of both the, you know, the petitioner in this case and and Representative Paul Carney's sides, they neither of them think that the second place finisher in this primary should end up being the nominee here.

But that still leaves questions on what happens next.

Does you know, will the local party just be able to pick a candidate, pick a nominee who would really then go on to be the the elected representative?

Because it's a there's no Republican running here?

Or would there have to be a special election?

And if there is a special action, how are the candidates for that special election picked?

So those are things that we're still waiting to figure out.

None, none of this changes will, you know, determine control of the of the party or control in the legislature or anything like that.

But it is this interesting thing that comes up every you know, every couple of years.

There's always something, some new rule we learn about what candidates have to do and what rules they have to follow in order to get and stay on the ballot.

Yeah, to be a legitimate candidate.

So it's a lesson learned about check on your signatories.

Right.

And whether party affiliations are there.

Okay.

So final item before we bid you or do.

The Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice still remains in the news.

And there was a legislative committee hearing last week.

What's more on that front?

Yeah, John, seems that the Herald-Leader who's been following this story since the beginning and really raised a lot of the concerning things going on in Kentucky's Department of Juvenile Justice or juvenile justice system or last several years.

I mean, there's been reports of abuse reports of neglect, you know, fires, riots, like there's just been all these things happening.

John did a great story pointing out, well, shining a light on what the state's new juvenile justice commissioner, Randy White, was warning lawmakers that they passed all these laws in recent years.

That's actually going to lead to this, you know, possibly lead to a surge in the number of of of kids that are ending up in the juvenile justice system.

So I'll still three from 2023, though, was a bill that requires youths who are accused of violent crimes to be detained for at least 48 hours before they even get a detention hearing.

How hostile?

Five from this year legislative session.

That was the big sweeping anti-crime bill.

You know, it had several provisions that, you know, increased penalties for.

I mean, whether it's homeless folks, shoplifters, just a lot of different a lot of different crimes.

And it's going to it's predicted that there's going to be I think what that event was, something like 400 more, more people that would end up going into the system each year, which is which is actually a really significant increase for the system that is already really overstretched.

And they have they have a they've had a lot of trouble keeping in attracting and retaining workers to it.

So this is something everybody's watching right now, especially as the Department of Justice's said they're looking into Kentucky's system.

So we'll see if lawmakers try to pause any of that or try to do anything to improve the situation.

Yeah, and I'm sure there will be more legislative committee hearings during this interim about that issue.

And we know the DOJ is under a lot of scrutiny on a lot of different fronts, and so a lot more to follow to come.

Well, thank you all.

And it's always good to see you.

Good to see you, too, Renee.