Red Wing Daily: December 18, 2024
"the more you know ..."
State
Arkansas for Trump: Our state’s 6 presidential electors — including 2024 State Convention Chair Jennifer Lancaster — gathered at the State Capitol on Tuesday to formally cast Arkansas’ electoral college votes for President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance.
Let ‘em all go! One of Biden’s criminals who got their sentences commuted this week is Jaqueline Mills of Helena-West Helena, who along with co-conspirators, was found guilty in 2017 of 39 counts of stealing $10.5 million in federal funds from a summer feeding program for underprivileged kids.
Election audits: The State Board of Election Commissioners voted last week “to send complaints for violations of state election law to seven of the 11 Arkansas counties that were monitored during the 2024 general election,” and “randomly selected the next round of counties to have their election audited.” The SBEC also outlined its legislative priorities for January’s General Session of the Arkansas Legislature at its December 11 meeting.
National
Establishment Republicans do it again: House Speaker Mike Johnson has again picked more spending over holding the line as he tries to negotiate a stopgap spending bill now that we’re on top of the December 20 “government shutdown deadline” yet once again. And, the Freedom Caucus is demanding 72 hours to review Johnson’s 1,550-page bill “as well as two votes on conservative priorities, one on huge non-defense funding cuts and another on an amendment meant to preserve unused border wall material.” UPDATE: Just this evening, President Trump has posted his strong opposition to Johnson’s plans, and word is Johnson is seeking a “plan B.”
Lots of uncertainty for small businesses, still: The Corporate Transparency Act (“CTA”) is in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals awaiting pleadings on December 19. The judge will rule on December 27 on whether the intrusive financial reports from small businesses mandated in the CTA are due by January 1, 2025 or not.
Democrats file useless data broker bill: Senators Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders joined other Democrats to filed a bill last week that would bar data brokers from “marketing, reselling, trading, licensing, transmitting, disclosing, or otherwise making accessible location information, health information, and other categories of sensitive information discovered by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).” Too little, too late? With no pending action and passage unlikely, the bill dies at the end of this 118th Congress.
Tech
Cryptocurrency developments: Not only is bitcoin trading at over $100,000 — Tucker Carlson interviews Roger Ver, “facing life in prison for revealing how the US government worked secretly to subvert cryptocurrency and prevent economic freedom.” Meanwhile, industry leaders have learned that Biden’s administration “instructed banks not to engage in cryptocurrency business. … cryptocurrency tech founders were being "debanked" under a program known colloquially as "Operation Chokepoint 2.0."