Mitch McConnell

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell defended President Trump on Tuesday, days after the president tweeted that a group of Democratic congresswomen should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

McConnell declined to directly address Trump’s statement, instead saying that political rhetoric has gotten “way overheated all across the political spectrum,” focusing on statements made by Democrats.

This week in Kentucky politics, retired Marine fighter pilot Amy McGrath announced she'll  challenge Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in next year’s race for U.S. Senate. But the launch had a rocky start.

Also, Gov. Matt Bevin might be a little closer to calling a special legislative session on pensions this summer.

Jean West from member station WFPL talked to Ryland Barton for this week’s edition of Kentucky Politics Distilled.

Former Marine fighter pilot Amy McGrath had had a tough rollout of her U.S. Senate campaign this week, showing some of the difficulties of running a statewide campaign as a Democrat in increasingly Republican Kentucky.

In interviews with the Courier Journal and Insider Louisville on Wednesday, McGrath said she would have voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court, quickly drawing ire from some of her more liberal supporters.

“You know, I think that with Judge Kavanaugh, yeah, I probably would have voted for him,” McGrath told the Courier Journal.

The woman hoping to challenge U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell in this fall’s general election is off to a record-setting fundraising start.  

Amy McGrath, a former Marine fighter pilot, took to MSNBC Tuesday morning to announce her bid for the Senate seat held by McConnell since 1985.

Within 24 hours, McGrath’s campaign raised $2.5 million. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee says that dwarfs the previous record of $1 million dollars raised during the first 24 hours of a Democratic Senate bid.

The Trump administration is reversing its decision to close two job corps centers in Kentucky, which provide services to at-risk youth in rural areas.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is praising the Trump administration for keeping open Job Corps Civilian Conservation Centers in McCreary and Menifee counties.  The centers provide education and job training to disadvantaged youth. 

A protégé of Sen. Mitch McConnell and a state senator are facing off in this year’s Republican primary election for attorney general.

Daniel Cameron, 33, and Sen. Wil Schroder, 36, don’t differ much on policy issues — they both want to combat Kentucky’s opioid addiction epidemic and make the attorney general’s office less of a barb in the side of the Republican-led legislature.

Retired coal miners joined lawmakers from the Ohio Valley on Capitol Hill Wednesday for another attempt to protect miners’ pensions. Pensions are at risk because of a downturn in the coal market, the lingering effects of the 2008 recession, and coal company bankruptcies which have all reduced the amounts companies paid into a shared, or multiemployer, pension plan. The United Mine Workers of America is pushing Congress for legislation to shore up those retirement benefits.