Former State Senator Hutchinson Released from Federal Prison Sentence

Pardoned by President Trump

Former state Republican Senator Jeremy Hutchinson, key player in a massive Medicaid-based bribery and wire/tax fraud scheme from 2014-2017, has received a full and unconditional pardon from President Donald Trump, releasing him from an eight-year federal prison sentence and removing the conviction from his criminal record… read more on Red Wing Post

State

• Sold! Chinese-owned Syngenta has sold its 150 acres in Craighead County for $760,000 after the Legislature passed Act 636 in 2023 that forbids foreign ownership of public or private land. Afterward AG Tim Griffin immediately targeted property of Northrup King Seed Co., a subsidiary of Syngenta owned by Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-controlled ChemChina. Griffin also enforced on the company a $280,000 fine because it did not report the original land purchase to the Arkansas Department of Agriculture, as also required by state law. Arkansas is the first state to enforce provisions barring foreign ownership of U.S. land.

• COVID bites Tyson: Survivors of Tyson Foods workers who died from COVID can sue company officials under Iowa’s gross negligence standard, says the Iowa Supreme Court. That Court also upheld the dismissal of Tyson Foods Inc and Tyosn Fresh Meats Inc. from the claims now aimed only at 14 individual executives and supervisors.

• Not all bad: U.S. District Judge Jeannette Vargas will allow DOGE to access the U.S. Treasury payment systems, after refusing Democrat AGs who sued to block access in February. “In April, Vargas allowed one DOGE employee to begin accessing the system.” She noted in Tuesday’s ruling that the Administration now has a proper training system to prevent improper disclosures. The AGs had not objected under the condition that DOGE employees were properly trained.

• Reality or just for show? Former reality TV show star Josh Duggar wants to have his 2021 child porn conviction vacated, and has filed a pro se motion in the Western U.S. District Court asking to be provided “counsel for the limited purpose of reviewing the record, evaluating possible constitutional claims, and, if meritorious grounds exist, preparing and filing a motion” to vacate. Duggar formerly starred in TLC’s reality show “19 Kids and Counting” about his family in Arkansas; he was sentenced in 2022 to 12 years plus 20 years supervised release and a $10,000 fine for possessing child porn. Duggar says he cannot afford an attorney because he is incarcerated.

• Will be missed: Former KTHV Channel 11 Chief Meteorologist Ed Buckner has passed away at the age of 59 after a battle with cancer. Buckner was on the air and served as the station’s chief for 25 years before he stepped back in early 2020, citing his Tourette Syndrome diagnosis.

National

• One way or the other: After HHS Secretary Robert f. Kenndy Jr. Dr. Anthony Fauci’s wife, Christine Grady, to an Indian Health Service regional office in in Alaska along with three other close Fauci associates, she chose instead to resign from her position heading up bioethics at the National Institute of Health Clinical Center, where she and Fauci had successfully kept their marriage a public secret as Fauci rained gain of function/COVID on the U.S.

• “Free Tina Peters!” Here’s why President Trump can’t make that happen.

• Right track: Rasmussen Reports pollster Mark Mitchell says “For the first time in our polling history, a majority says the country is on the right track.” In September, Rasmussen found the right-track number was 34%. Mitchell also notes that Biden’s approval never hit higher than Trump’s current 42% approval rate.

  

• Low-hanging fruit? Even though Elon Musk’s 130-day special government employee status expires this week, DOGE reports that more than 25,000 federal contracts and grants worth around $175 billion have been cut, mostly from the Department of Health and Human Services, the General Services Administration, the Education Department, the Office of Personnel Management, and the Department of Labor.

Tech

• AI on the way: “An artificial intelligence model created by the owner of ChatGPT has been caught disobeying human instructions and refusing to shut itself off.” AI safety firm Palisade Research says ChatGPT’s “smartest and most capable to date” o3 model sabotaged, on its own, the computer code meant to cause an automatic shutdown despite explicit instructions to allow the shutdown. Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini and xAI’s Grok were also tested but passed the shutdown test conditions.

“The gradual increase in Arkansas’ unemployment rate has been driven by persistent increases in the number of unemployed. Interrupted by only a slight decline in December, the number of unemployed has risen by 4,855 over the past 12 months.” - Dr. Michael Pakko, chief economist and state economic forecaster with the Arkansas Economic Development Institute.