Red Wing Daily: January 25, 2025
"the more you know ...."
State
J6ers freed: “On the first day of his second presidency, Donald Trump pardoned all eight Arkansans” in the group of 1,500 political prisoners who were persecuted by the Biden Administration’s Department of Justice.
Yes, here too: Raids across 12 locations in Arkansas resulted in four people arrested for promoting prostitution and sexual assault after investigators found that Chinese nationals were advertised jobs in America but were instead being trafficked, some at various massage businesses across Jonesboro, Russellville, Hot Springs, Rogers, Harrison and Little Rock. It was only a week ago that Arkansas announced” a new webpage dedicated to assisting victims of human trafficking” during National Human Trafficking Month.
No taxes for teachers? Republican state Rep. DeAnn Vaught has filed HB1190 to exempt public school teachers’ wages up to $50,000 (the minimum teacher salary set by the LEARNS Act).
Into gardening? Republican state Senator Breanne Davis filed HB1149 that would ban laws against residential gardens.
It’s a shame we have to do this: Republican state Senator Jane English filed SB90 that requires school boards to include public comment / allow the public to speak at every school board meeting.
For all to see: The 7-member Arkansas Supreme Court met last week for its first administrative meeting of 2025 where Chief Justice Karen Baker continued to rule that only she has unilateral authority over the Court’s operations and was opposed by the majority “conservative” Justices. Baker’s November opponent, Justice Rhonda Wood, set off the back-and-forth which, surprisingly, was livestreamed on the Arkansas Judiciary YouTube channel. At one point when Baker said
“I don’t understand why the court has been functioning as if there are only five members.”
Justice Shawn Womack replied
“Because the chief has been functioning as if there is only one.”
Getting it going: To align with President Trump’s recent Executive Order, Republican state Rep. Aaron Pilkington last week filed HR1010, a House Resolution “to rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America” and require all state agencies to use that name.
Pro-life Resolution again in Garland County: The Garland County Quorum Court last year postponed indefinitely a proposed Resolution designating Garland County as a pro-life county after a very long meeting where around 300 residents spoke for and against the issue. Now it’s back again on their agenda for the first meeting of 2025 on Monday (January 27).
Not over yet: AG Tim Griffin is appealing the December ruling against the 2023 library obscenity law where U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks said Act 372 of 2023 violates the Constitution.
Not if, but when: The U.S. Geological Society predicts a 25% to 40% chance of a 6.0-magnitude earthquake along the New Madrid Seismic Zone within the next 50 years.
Photo: Arkansas Geologic Survey
National
Any Republican is better than a “D”? He faked out Senate Republicans when he voted to advance Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth to the floor for the final approval vote. Former Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell made his position glaringly clear when he voted last night on the floor against Hegseth along with known RINOs Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, forcing Vice President J.D. Vance to cast the tie-breaker vote to approve Hegseth. If you were watching, you even saw McConnell cross the Senate floor afterward to shake hands with Democrats on the other side of the room! As he is now the chair of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, McConnell will still control more than half of discretionary spending going through Congress.
Small business ALERT - onerous reporting rule upheld: Here’s another one of those last onerous actions from the Biden Administration. Biden’s Justice Department won its appeal at the Supreme Court on whether 32.6 million small business owners will be forced to report personal financial information (including drivers licenses and home addresses) to the government as part of a crackdown they say is aimed at money laundering. The Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) now has a reporting deadline of January 13, 2025, but the final disposition on whether the CTA is constitutional or not depends on the underlying Texas case still winding through the courts. If you own a small business (or you are involved in other organizations that handles money — say, your homeowners association as an officer) contact your attorney or accountant NOW because you may be required to submit your personal information by January 13, 2025, even though the Texas case is still not completed. We don’t know yet how the Trump administration will approach this privacy issue; the personal financial information the government seeks is already available via a variety of other governmental resources.
Federal hiring freeze, but not for VA: Even though President Trump has declared a government-wide hiring freeze, the Department of Veterans Affairs has exempted more than 300,000 health care positions “critical to delivering care to veterans” under the category of public safety, representing roughly 75% of its 400,000-employee workforce.
Lower taxes for military families? U.S. Congressman Steve Womack is a co-sponsor of the BNA Fairness Act that would end taxes on the Basic Needs Allowance (BNA) paid to military families to align BNA “with the tax status of other military benefits, including Basic Allowance for Housing and Basic Allowance for Subsistence.”
Just gets better and better: Another one of Biden’s Executive Orders that ended this week is “a reversal of the first Trump administration’s policy to remove millions of U.S. residents without legal immigration status from the nation’s census. Prior to Trump’s move in 2020, no residents had been excluded from the national population tallies based on immigration status since the first U.S. census in 1790.” After Trump said illegal aliens would be removed from the Census (yes, that’s what we call them now!), Biden reversed the mandate in an attempt to increase the number of Electoral College votes in key states, because Electoral College votes are calculated based on Census numbers.
Our country’s terrible natural disasters: President Trump and First Lady Melania toured North Carolina and California yesterday to reassure the victims of expedited relief and federal funding to help them recover. As he has done with several actions over the entire week since his inauguration on Monday, President Trump turned legacy media coverage on its head as the White House gave “alternative” outlets such as Real America’s Voice and podcast streamers exclusive access to his landing in Asheville, North Carolina, and relegated mainstream outlets like NBC and MSNBC to the public press conferences. Not only is our President combining all our federal resources to help these victims, he is ensuring that the people who elected him get first-hand, up-front coverage of his activities free of the biased mainstream media coverage we’ve had in the past. It’s a major change in transparency; yesterday Real America’s Voice provided amazing, up-close, unfiltered access with real-time coverage. What a difference it makes!
Blowing up their heads in D.C.: Republican U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee has proposed a change to the Constitution’s 22nd Amendment to allow President Trump to serve three terms to “correct the disastrous course set by the Biden administration.”
Tech
More Chinese hacks: “The U.S. Department of Justice announced … that the FBI has deleted Chinese PlugX malware from over 4,200 computers in networks across the United States. The list of victims spans “European shipping companies in 2024, several European Governments from 2021 to 2023, worldwide Chinese dissident groups, and governments throughout the Indo-Pacific (e.g., Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Mongolia, India, Myanmar, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, and Pakistan)" as well as the U.S. government …”PlugX has been used in attacks since at least 2008, mainly in cyber espionage and remote access operations by groups linked to the Chinese Ministry of State Security.”
Nuclear power for AI: A South Carolina utility wants to restart construction on a nuclear power plant that was mothballed eight years ago as “a resurgence of interest fueled by skyrocketing power demand from AI data centers” sweeps the country. “Microsoft recently inked a deal with Constellation Energy to restart a reactor at Three Mile Island, and Meta is looking for developers to propose 1 to 4 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity.” President Trump just announced a $500 billion AI infrastructure project called “Stargate” that initially plans to construct AI data centers across the country that is projected to create 100,000 jobs in construction, energy infrastructure, and engineering.
FBI phone logs hacked: “FBI leaders have warned that they believe hackers who broke into AT&T Inc.’s system last year stole months of their agents’ call and text logs, setting off a race within the bureau to protect the identities of confidential informants…The AT&T breach was part of a broader series of hacks against users of the software provider Snowflake Inc.”
