Red Wing Daily: March 12, 2025
State
And you’re still shopping Temu?? Governor Sanders “blocked Chinese-based platforms DeepSeek, RedNote and Lemon8 across executive branch devices,” while AG Griffin has joined 20 other AGs to “urge Congress to ban DeepSeek on all government devices,” saying the powerful AI platform “is a Trojan horse sent by the CCP to spy on America.”
Over-the-counter, not so fast: The Senate voted 31-4 last week to approve SB189 to “authorize ivermectin for human use to be sold without a prescription or consultation with a healthcare professional.” However, Senator Missy Irvin says
…this bill will not suddenly lead to ivermectin appearing on the shelves at Walmart or Walgreens because that's a FDA determination as to how it is packaged by the manufacturer of the medication, and how it is marketed and placed on the shelf.
Pearl-clutching or savings? KARK provides a list of ten federal agencies with offices in Arkansas that had their leases terminated as part of DOGE, including SSA offices in Batesville, Texarkana, and Forrest City. “Nearly 750 leases across the country have been terminated as of March 3 with savings of $660 million, DOGE claims.” DOGE says closing these Arkansas locations will save $1,529,278.
Let’s just keep the fraud & abuse: “A well-mannered cluster of protesters gathered at Arkansas 2nd District Congressman French Hill’s Little Rock office”on February 27 — one of the first planned weekly protests — to complain about USAID cuts and other aspects of President Trump’s mandates, reports the Arkansas Times. Given all the questions swirling around Senator Tom Cotton’s position on the IRI Board, we sometimes wonder why the other side of the aisle isn’t protesting about that as well!
- Arkansas Times, February 27, 2025 We’re gonna need more tax dollars: The Arkansas Times reports that an email obtained by the FCRVC (Franklin County & River Valley Coalition) opposing the state prison project “shows new prison build was first priced at $1.2 billion,” almost three times higher than Governor Sanders’s March 2023 estimate of $470 million. “Corrections officials have since backed off the $470 million” and now a “preliminary estimate” from Vanir Construction Management “based on current market conditions” places the “estimated maximum cost” at $825 million.… and Senate pro tem Bart Hester insists “a prison can be built” for that price.
Needs to happen: For a few years now — after Arkansas decided to be part of the Super Tuesday primary cycle — our primary election dates have fluctuated between March and May, confusing voters. This week the Senate State Agencies Committee amended SB353 that would move all primaries to March. You’ll be glad to know that “Lindsey French, legal counsel for the Association of Arkansas Counties, told the Senate committee that the county clerks support the consistency in the bill…”
National
Stopped ‘em: Citing February stats, President Trump says the invasion of our southern border is over. The Border Patrol recorded only 8,326 apprehensions last month, the lowest monthly total in recorded history.
Very welcome relief for small biz: After jerking some 35 million small business owners back and forth several times as litigation plays out over the invasive and onerous Corporate Transparency Act (“CTA”), the Treasury Department announces it will suspend “any penalties or fines associated with the beneficial ownership information reporting rule [CTA] under the existing regulatory deadlines,” and will issue a new regulation to apply the CTA only to foreign reporting companies only.
What does “public meeting” really mean? To the Senate State Agencies Committee it can be either one of two things: Senator Clarke Tucker’s SB227 outlines items that members of governmental bodies supported by public funds can discuss between themselves privately (outside of FOIA), while Senator Alan Clark and Rep. Mary Bentley’s SB376 states that a public meeting is any gathering of more than two members of a public body (which allows “daisy-chain” deliberations one-on-one throughout the body). The Committee passed both bills on Tuesday.
Tech
Do you record? As digital expert Kim Komando points out, sometimes you really need to record a call, like a billing dispute or maybe a doctor or medical call, for example. If you have an iPhone, you now should see a button in your upper left screen to automatically record the call; the built-in service also notifies the caller and saves the recording for you. (On Android, however, Google routinely blocks most phone recording apps.)
Watch those nudies: Google is looking at your incoming and outgoing pictures (but users do not see this service on any regular list of running applications). When Android updated to implement “Sensitive Content Warnings for Google Messages,” — an optional feature that blurs images that may contain nudity before viewing — it added this service that also reminds users of the risks of sending nude imagery and prevents accidental shares. You may be able to disable it by following these steps.
Data privacy losing ground quickly: While privacy is recognized as a universal human right, data protection is not. Countries are increasingly seeking to obtain encryption backdoors that allow access to your cloud backups and encrypted messaging apps — backdoor “hacks” that, once implemented, “can and will eventually be found” by bad actors “we absolutely didn’t want to snoop around in our backups and chat logs.” Sweden, for example, is pushing a new law to force Signal and WhatsApp to create technical backdoors, leading Signal President Meredith Whittaker to say the company will leave Sweden if the bill becomes a reality.
