Red Wing Daily: July 3, 2026
"the more you know...."
State
Get off the phones! Governor Sanders is serious about keeping students off cellphones while in school: Arkansas announced a pilot program to provide telehealth mental services and secure pouches in secondary schools to allow for storing phones during school hours. Statistics show a major decrease in violence and bullying in schools across the country that have implemented this policy.
LNG exports back on: “A federal judge has sided with Louisiana and 16 other states [including Arkansas] that sued to block the Biden administration’s stoppage of permits for liquified natural gas export terminals” by issuing a stay that immediately ends the U.S. Department of Energy’s hold on LNG export terminal projects.
LEARNS is growing: More private schools are applying for LEARNS Act approval in this upcoming second school year of the program.
Inaugural year eligibility criteria included foster children, children of active duty military members and first-time kindergarteners, as well as students who have disabilities, are experiencing homelessness or are enrolled in an “F”-rated school. Eligibility in year two expands to include students at “D”-rated schools and children of veterans, military reservists or first responders.
Big raises for state employees: The Legislature’s recent Act 172 went into effect July 1, raising all state salaries in significant ways. As examples, the lowest-paid GS1 salary was $22,000/year and now it’s $32,405 — a whopping 47% increase. IT entry-level IT1 employees at $48,434/year got a 10% raise to $53,278. Act 172 specifies that “employees can't receive a market adjustment to their salaries by more than 3%,” but “special compensation awards” are outlined at up to $5,000 or up to 40 hours of paid leave time.
Leading that charge: We suppose Walmart is “too big to fail,” so it has let it be known it has no plans to change its ever-expanding DEI policies, despite the market examples of Budweiser Light and Disney. The company says it wants "everyone to feel they belong” …
Taking action against China spying: “Temu is not an online marketplace like Amazon or Walmart. It's a data theft business that sells goods as a means to an end,” says AG Tim Griffin, who last week sued Temu’s parent company, PDD Holdings “over what he alleges are the company’s "deceptive tactics" that are harming consumers.”
Headwinds on hand-counted ballots: A State Board of Election Commissioners report showed “several discrepancies… that could not be reconciled” in the hand-counted Searcy County primary audit presented to the Legislature’s Joint Performance Review Committee last week, as lawmakers also heard from Saline County election officials who say hand-counting ballots “is both more expensive and less accurate than using machines to count votes.” Meanwhile, State Rep. Jimmy Gazaway took up the cause of assuring voters of Arkansas’ election security (but left off SB250/Act 350, Senator Kim Hammer’s paper ballot bill that State Rep. Wayne Long “adjusted”).
National
ICYMI Major SCOTUS Rulings last week: Of course, the immunity ruling means Jack Smith’s vendetta against our President Trump is in deep trouble, and it’s difficult to overestimate the implications across so many sectors of public life that are now in play after the Chevron ruling that unelected bureaucrats cannot make laws. On a down note, SCOTUS has also allowed the Biden regime to continue waging war on political opponents through 3rd party social channels by censoring conservative voices. Did you see the ruling on the U.S. citizen’s request for citizenship for her alleged MS-13 spouse?
Will our vote be stolen again? “… a new study by Just Facts has found that about 10% to 27% of non-citizen adults in the U.S. are now illegally registered to vote. The U.S. Census recorded more than 19 million adult non-citizens living in the U.S. during 2022….”
RNC resolves to support paper ballots: The Republican National Committee’s August, 2023 Resolution says (in part):
The Republican National Committee boldly opposes means of voting that do not have the proper safeguards in place and are exclusively electronic and calls on every county and state in the nation to use as the default ballot systems, which are fully auditable, namely hand-marked, voter-verified paper ballots to ensure every voter is memorialized by a paper record;
RESOLVED, The Republican National Committee calls on secretaries of state of each state to implement anti- counterfeit ballot printing, tracing and verification procedures…
Losing their minds over that SCOTUS presidential immunity ruling: New York’s Democrat Congressman Joe Morelle says he’ll introduce a constitutional amendment to “reverse SCOTUS’ harmful decision” to “ensure that no president is above the law. This amendment will do what SCOTUS failed to do—prioritize our democracy.” It’s clear that Democrats can’t see the difference between their unhinged threats of “Seal Team 6 assassination” and “official government acts.”
Tech
New Cyber Response law: Arkansas’ new Cyber Response Program is up and running as of July 1 to assist cities, counties and school districts bear the sometimes overwhelming cost of malicious cyberattacks that are becoming more and more common across the state.
Microsoft stepped in it and got caught: Initially trumpeted as a way to “easily find and remember” anything you have seen on your PC, the new “Recall” function Microsoft added to the new line of AI-enhanced PCs (called CoPilot+) was a PR nightmare. As users learned that the Recall function takes every-few-seconds “screenshots of your entire desktop so that Copilot could remember how you used your PC,” Microsoft desperately tried to quiet the resulting privacy concerns, saying that your data would be secure because it is not stored in the cloud.
Then a security expert found that Recall used plain-text, unencrypted logs for those screenshots, and Microsoft finally admitted it had not tested the function very well, so the original, mandatory feature in the CoPilot+ PCs is now an opt-in function. (Don’t you want to get away from the ever-present monitoring that’s built in to Microsoft devices? Go for open-source Linux!)
Media
Check out the Doc Washburn Show (on every podcast platform) as he discusses news about Arkansas Republicans and national issues.
Courtney Roldan’s new podcast (on every podcast platform) “Inside Arkansas Politics” dives “into Arkansas politics with insights from my experience, shared opinions, and the same kind of commentary you've come to expect” on her Facebook page. The first episode is here.
Dave Elswick on 101.1 FM The Answer (livestreamed on Facebook and on your favorite internet radio network) continues to discuss news and issues surrounding the Republican Party of Arkansas with Jimmie Cavin and frequent guest 2nd District GOP Chair Jennifer Lancaster (many times) on Wednesdays, Ginny Lauren-Dowden from Conduit News on Thursdays, and Clint Lancaster with fellow attorneys Chris Corbitt and Robert Steinbuch on Fridays.