Blue Dot
Northern Kentucky’s premier Political Podcast.
This is your ultimate source for in-depth analysis, lively discussion, and comprehensive coverage of the political landscape in Northern Kentucky.
Brought to you by the Kenton County Democratic Executive Committee.
Blue Dot
From Frankfort to Federal Courts: This Week in the Fight
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In this week’s Blue Dot Podcast Weekly Roundup, Natalie MacDonald and Brian Koehl cover key national and Kentucky political developments, including legislative action in Frankfort, court rulings affecting voting rights, immigration, and public media, and growing economic pressure on Kentucky farmers. The hosts discuss Democratic momentum heading into upcoming primaries, concerns over the state budget, and the impact of rising fuel and fertilizer costs. The episode wraps with updates on candidate forums, grassroots organizing, and recent nationwide peaceful demonstrations.
Welcome to the Blue Dot, Northern Kentucky's premier political podcast, brought to you by the Kenton County Democratic Executive Committee. Welcome back to the Blue Dot Podcast for our weekly roundup, where we deliver you all the news you need to know in ten minutes or less. Thanks for joining. I'm Natalie McDonald.
SPEAKER_01That's right, Natalie, and I'm Brian Cale. And uh let's see, we are still at war. Voting rights are relentlessly being attacked. The average uh price nationally per gallon of gas has hit four dollars, and Congress still has not figured out how to end the partial government shutdown over DHS funding now in its 48th day. Natalie, it's just another week in Trump's golden age. Don't you feel great?
SPEAKER_00That does not make me feel great, but what but what does is that we can see a light at the end of the tunnel as we continue on the blue dot to interview outstanding Democratic candidates who are willing to try to turn this Titanic mess around. In fact, we're almost through all of our primary candidate interviews. And one thing that I've learned, Brian, is that we have some really, really great prepatriots stepping up to run for office at the county, state, and federal levels.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we we sure do, and we're seeing this all over the country. And the Dems are winning, I mean seriously winning, since Trump took office. Democrats have flipped 30 state legislative seats, and the Republicans, they've flipped exactly zero. That's right, zero. Yeah, goose egg. And it looks to only get worse for the GOP as their House members are announcing retirement at a historic pace. They can see the writing on the midterms wall, and they're getting out while they can.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they want to get off the sinking ship. But here at the Blue Dot Pod, we want to keep the memento going, and we're going to keep you posted on all of the events, outreach, happy hours, volunteer opportunities, training, and candidate forums along the way. And I do want to take just a second to talk a little bit of business, Brian, in order to uh help our yeah, in order to help our candidates out, we are entering a pre-primary blitz.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that sounds exciting.
SPEAKER_00It's very exciting because we are setting the stage so that on May 20th, the day after the primary results have rolled in, we're ready to start helping our candidates in every way possible. And that takes a lot of blood, sweat, tears, and money, unfortunately. So we'll be raising money to fill our war chest with literature and walk cards and stamps, door hangers, money for social media exposure for our candidates, and even bigger things we're gonna keep for a surprise.
SPEAKER_01All those things really show the benefit of donating to your local county party rather to than to the Commonwealth-wide Kentucky Democratic Party or KDP. Hey, not to discourage donating to the party at the state level, but contributing locally as well keeps the dollars in your community to be invested in the slate of local candidates right here in your own backyard. Remember, local politics is where the power starts.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's kind of like what the sister state slate Davis County has been doing, but on a slightly larger scale. So if you would like to contribute, one of the ways you can do is to help fund this podcast. And you can do that by clicking on the donation link at our website. But speaking of donations, we'll get it back to the regular legislative session. And House Bill 139 has set it to the governor's desk, and it has quite a few things. One of which is that it has increased the amount that you can donate to political candidates to$3,500 individually, and county parties to$10,000, which really just puts us in line with the federal contribution limits. So good news if you're at your limit, in 2028, you can give a little more.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that is good news. But uh unfortunately, not everything in that bill is great, as it also allows judicial candidates to disclose their political party affiliation, despite those races traditionally being nonpartisan. Bill 139 also removes social security and public benefits cards from the list of valid forms of voter ID. You know, as we've talked about previously, Natalie, these advocates for so-called election integrity say that all they want is voter ID, but yet at the same time, they want to limit the forms of ID people can use. Kind of makes you wonder what their goal truly is.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, for sure. I think we know what their goal is. It's not to expand voter access. So that's for sure. That's not good. That's right. And then we have the two-year state budget bill that was passed. The final version of House Bill 500 appropriates nearly$700 million less from Medicaid benefits than what Governor Bashir had requested. It also does not fund pre-K for all, and it does not address the fact that Kentucky ranks 48 among states in starting teacher pay at rough roughly$40,000 annually for compensation. But when we look at West Virginia, their starting salary for teachers is at$50,000 and Tennessee's at$55,000.
SPEAKER_01Come on, man. I mean, we can't even compete with West Virginia and Tennessee. I mean, that right there should be enough for a public outcry.
SPEAKER_00Exactly, right? And that's what we need to do is keep being vocal. And just so you know where we are in the legislative process, Wednesday was the last of the concurrence days. And if you remember, the concurrence days are where the Senate and the House kind of get together, they try to agree on the amendments, they try to hash everything out. So that was the end of that. So now until April 13th, they're on a veto recess. And then when they return, uh they'll vote to override any of the vetoes that Governor Bashir has enacted. Stay tuned.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'll be interested to see how many of those over 1,300 bills that were submitted actually get passed, and then how many of those actually help Kentucky families. We're hearing a lot this week from Kentucky farmers who once again are really getting hit hard, at first from the terrace, now with Kentucky gas prices rising by forty percent. It seems like it's always the farmers who get hit first and hit the hardest. I mean, that is no way to treat such a noble and critical occupation.
SPEAKER_00No, and that really trickles down to everyone else. But how about some good news, Brian? We have some good news.
SPEAKER_01Oh my god. Please, I'm dying over here.
SPEAKER_00All right. I'm I'm here for you. We have some good news to share from the judicial side of things this week. The first is that a federal judge halted construction on Tuesday of the White House Ballroom Construction Project, saying it must come to a stop unless and until Congress blesses this project.
SPEAKER_01Wow. I mean I did see this decision, and right in the nick of time, in the 35-page opinion, Judge Richard Leon said that Mr. Trump most likely did not have authority to act on his own to replace entire sections of the White House, thank heavens, where the East Wing has already been demolished. Specifically, in question was Trump's attempt to finance the project with private funds from wealthy GOP donors, which is otherwise known as pay-to-play grifting.
SPEAKER_00Yes, and we keep hearing about these private donors, but they're not showing us proof of these private donors, where they are, who they are, none of that. Um, but we also had another judicial win where a federal judge wrote on Tuesday that the president's executive order barring the federal funding of NPR and PBS violated the First Amendment, which it of course did.
SPEAKER_01I love that decision. I mean, and all good things come in threes. Finally, a federal judge in Boston also ruled on Tuesday that the Trump administration had unlawfully terminated the legal status of nearly 900,000 migrants who had been allowed to temporarily live and work in the United States if they came into the country via the CBP One app. And this app was a tool that migrants could use as part of the Biden era parole program.
SPEAKER_00I'm glad that that was overturned. But unfortunately, there were a few not so good court decisions as well. First, Trump decided to once again overstep his executive authority and pay a trip to the Supreme Court in an attempt to intimidate the justices over birthright citizenship arguments. And we'll see how that turns out. But what he wants to do is very unconstitutional.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, you know, Trump never saw a constitutional amendment he didn't like. And uh but fortunately, from the feedback I've been seeing on that hearing, it looks like SCOTUS was not really that impressed with Trump administration's argument. So hopefully a win for the good guys on that one. But you never know at this Supreme Court. And then also on the not so good news side, a federal judge decided on Tuesday that the Trump administration was within its right to demand that the University of Pennsylvania turn over information about Jews on campus as part of a federal investigation into discrimination at the school. Wow. What could possibly go wrong there?
SPEAKER_00Right, there's so many things wrong with that. But to round out the trifecta of unconstitutional moves this week, Trump signed an executive order exerting federal control over states' rights and mail-in voting. This violates Article 1, Section 4, Clause 1 of the Constitution, which in short reads that states hold the authority to regulate the time, the place, and the manner of holding congressional elections. So Trump is trying to tell everyone that everything is great and not one of them. He also tried to limp through a prime time speech yesterday. Did you see that?
SPEAKER_01Oh my gosh. Actually, I did not see Trump's nationwide address. I was gonna watch it, but decided to go for something a little more lighthearted. So uh I started binge watching Breaking Bad for the third time.
SPEAKER_00That's awesome. I tried not to watch when my phone was blowing up, and then I saw it was only 10 minutes, so I rerround it and I watched it. I did. Yeah, and earlier in the day, he there was a press conferen conference of him also saying that uh we can't do health care, we can't do child care, we can't do Medica care because of the war. So they initially posted that video of him, and then I guess once they realized that it only reassures the American people that Trump and his administration do not give a hoot about the American people, they took it down.
SPEAKER_01Man. So what the idiots in the Trump administration don't realize is that we Americans have already figured out that the Trump team doesn't give a rat's posterior about us. I mean, we're not as stupid as they think we are, but finally bringing it back home, I wanted to mention that four of the seven Democrats running for the U.S. Senate in Kentucky will participate in a forum with the Courier Journal on April 7th.
SPEAKER_00Yes, and they're also we will also be holding a candidate forum for two House districts that face primary challenges. So on April 19th from two to four at the Erlanger Library, we'll be joined by candidates Nicholas Maharag and William Waitland, who are battling for State House District 64, which is currently held by Republican Kim Moosier. And then we'll also have Brian Snap and Will An Stangle who are duking it out for State House District 69, currently held by Steve Doan. All of these candidates are great. They actually all get along, so I don't think we'll be seeing any fists thrown, but it will be a chance for us to see where they stand and how they uh differ.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we really encourage everyone to come out. That's a great opportunity to hear directly from the candidates on, you know, their uh on their agendas and what they can do for us if they can get into office, which you know we're strongly supporting all Democratic candidates across the board. Um and finally, just a note on the No Kings 3 demonstrations last weekend. Let's put it straight and clearly, an estimated nine million people hit the streets across over 3,300 individual events in every legislative district in the United States, plus several other countries without violence, not a single altercation or arrest. 100% peaceful yet defiant, joyful yet determined. This is how we do it. Stay focused, stay focused, keep pushing, and overwhelm the polls in November.
SPEAKER_00And that is how we do it, and that is how we do it in ten minutes. Yes. Whoa. And that is it for the weekly round though. The news is fast and the facts are free. Until next time, stay curious, keep the facts in focus, never ever stop fighting for what matters. Peace out, everybody.