Red Wing Daily: February 13, 2025
"the more you know..."
State
Going under: Canoo, the electric vehicle manufacturer that never produced a vehicle while located in Bentonville, has filed Chapter 7 total liquidation; they’re gone.
ICYMI: Little Rock attorney/blogger Matt Campbell of Lectern-gate fame, and lately writing for Arkansas Times after giving up his Blue Hog Report exposé, filed Chapter 7 liquidation on January 8, under the gun for owing the IRS and state of Arkansas for taxes from 2016 through 2022 and being the target of several pending malpractice lawsuits plus his unpaid student loans of almost $176,000.
Ramming through: State Senator Kim Hammer rammed through five of his six “election integrity” bills by running them through the Senate on Wednesday, the day after they were approved in the Senate State Agencies Committee. SB207, SB208, SB209, SB 210, and SB211 add even more restrictions to signature gathering and canvassers for citizen-led initiatives and referendums. One bill creating a new law enforcement arm in the Secretary of State office (SB212) failed this week but Hammer intends to reintroduce it before the 95th General Assembly is finished.
Change the Constitution: Wednesday’s filing deadline for constitutional amendments saw at least 28 proposals ranging from the always-filed rank choice voting amendment to one designed to “protect the right to keep and bear arms”by banning restrictions on ownership of ammunition, for example. Interestingly, two of the proposals deal with identifying judicial races by party, one of the issues the historic Republican State Convention approved in 2024 that was totally ignored and rejected by the Republican Party of Arkansas. All 13 Senate proposals are considered today in Committee after the Senate meets this morning. The Legislature will approve only three (or fewer) of the proposals for the November 2026 ballot.
Continuing to ignore the people: Our state’s all-red government machine is ignoring Franklin County residents who oppose Governor Sanders’ ill-conceived 30,000-bed prison in their rural part of the state. On Wednesday, state Senator Bryan King and opponents attended a Board of Corrections meeting to ask that site development be paused, but the Board voted on architectural design work for the prison before they could even speak.
Power struggle stops ‘em cold: What has the Arkansas Supreme Court been doing? The Court has “averaged 22 issued opinions in the first six weeks of the calendar year,” based on the last ten years, but it has issued no opinions to date in 2025. After Chief Justice Karen Baker took office in January the Court seems totally involved in its internal power struggles.
National
Another reprieve in the works? Small business owners could get another reprieve in the onerous back-and-forth Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) war, now that the House has unanimously passed (!) a bill extending the CTA’s reporting deadline to January 1, 2026. HR736 next goes to the Senate as critics decry the CTA’s overreach in requiring personal identification (including drivers licenses) of any “beneficial owners” and “any individual who files an application to form a corporation, limited liability company, or other similar entity”—information already available elsewhere in government databases. The CTA is promoted as anti-money laundering legislation.
Look who’s pushing back: “More than two dozen groups of various denominations and faiths have filed a lawsuit … seeking to block the Department of Homeland Security’s decision” to not exclude churches and schools from possible raids and arrests of illegal aliens. Plantiffs include “mostly liberal denominations, such as the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Episcopal Church, and the Unitarian Universalist Association,” but “no conservative Christian denominations have joined the legal action.”
GOP vs GOP: When President Trump took office just a few weeks ago, the GOP-led Senate and GOP-led House insisted they would work together to pass legislation codifying the over 500 executive orders our President has now signed. However, now “Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said his committee will begin drafting a budget resolution that authorizes two bills,” as Speaker Mike Johnson continues to insist the House—with its tight majority—will only be able to pass “one big beautiful reconciliation bill.” Graham’s bills include $325 billion for the military and border security without specifying corresponding spending cuts.
Guilty plea: Steve Bannon has pleaded guilty in the “We Build the Wall” lawfare case based on New York state charges brought against him after President Trump pardoned Bannon in the same federal case. His plea agreement includes three years of probation but no jail time.
Unintended results: Tone-deaf Senate minority Leader Chuck Schumer “launched a tip-line for whistleblowers to report "abuses of power" in the Trump administration” but the new portal is seeing more of its complaints outlining the Democrats’ abuse of power.
Tech
Surveillance state? A new Bentonville firm is marketing its “new approach to cybersecurity,” patented “Smart Eye” technology that operates as a Google Chrome extension to “immediately block[s] screen access if an unauthorized person views the screen, the camera is blocked or if the authorized user steps away” by use of continuous facial recognition.
Just stay away from that Chinese chatbot: “A third-party analysis has found DeepSeek's chatbot app can capture login information and share it with China's largest state-owned mobile firm” and now a bipartisan bill’s been filed in Congress seeking to ban DeepSeek from all government electronic devices.
“They are all vetted to be constitutionally sound. The AG is ready to defend these bills.”
-- Republican Senator Kim Hammer on his citizen petition signature bills now awaiting Governor Sanders’ signature.
“The legislative power of the people of this State shall be vested in a General Assembly, which shall consist of the Senate and House of Representatives, but the people reserve to themselves the power to propose legislative measures, laws and amendments to the Constitution…” (emphasis added)
-- Article 5, Section 1 of the Arkansas Constitution
