Hello and welcome to the latest edition of the Punch Bowl News Readback podcast. I'm your host,

congressional reporter Max Cohen, and this week I'm joined by portal author, policy expert,

Samantha Handler. Sammy, how you doing?

Great, Max. How are you? Oh, we're just great. You know, the Senate has been acting up all week and we're still covering the Senate because the Senate is not on recess. The House is, but the Senate's in. So let's talk about the Senate. Let's talk about Senate appropriations, which is one of your areas you cover closely. And let's talk about the hemp industry in Kentucky.

Lead us off, Sammy.

What should we know about something that went down during the appropriations process that

shined an interesting light on the industry that's pretty fascinating, I think?

Right, Max.

Yes, it was very interesting this week.

You know, something I love about appropriations is that you get to know all these

smaller issues or seemingly smaller that, you know, come up that really affect certain states,

industries, you name it.

And this was one of those instances where we saw Rand Paul earlier this week. Senator from Kentucky came out and he was saying he was one of the

holds, he was holding up the minibus that senators have been trying to get a deal on, you know,

combining the FY 2026 ag, milk on, and it's been changing a few times.

I think at the time it was the Commerce Justice Science Bill.

But, you know, as we speak today, it's looking more like a ledge branch deal going into

that package.

But Rand Paul had a problem with the ag bill.

And that was that it contained language that closed a loophole regarding the hemp industry in Kentucky.

And that's really interesting because it's actually been a priority of Senator Mitch McConnell, the senior senator from Kentucky, his delegation partner, to close that loophole.

And it's always interesting when we see home state senators from the same party on opposite

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