Red Wing Daily: March 29, 2025
State
Questions but no true MAGA solutions? Governor Sanders is texting supporters to complete her Official 2025 Priority Survey, to designate which of the following items “should be top policy priorities YOU know will make American great again AND Arkansas the best place to live, work, and raise a family” — supporting small businesses, border security and illegal immigration,
standing up to Communist China, education freedom, protecting Second Amendment rights, supporting law enforcement. It’s re-election time!
UofA probed for DEI practices: The University of Arkansas is one of 60 universities under federal investigation by the Department of Education for “allegedly engaging in race-exclusionary practices in their graduate programs” after the partnered with the PhD Project, a group that uses race to determine participants. Education Secretary Linda McMahon says schools can lose federal funding over “race-based preferences” in scholarships, admissions, and hiring practices.
Jumping on it: At a Monday presser, Secretary of State Cole Jester and state Rep. Mindy McAlindon will announce their version of election integrity legislation, following President Trump’s historic executive order last week demanding (among other things) new standards within 180 days for voting machines that generate unreadable barcodes.
And the wheels go ‘round and ‘round: “Arkansas House Speaker Brian Evans, R-Cabot, named former State Representative Duncan Baird of Bentonville to serve on the Arkansas Ethics Commission. … Baird is a director of Benefits and Wellbeing at Walmart Inc. He was executive director of the Arkansas Public Employees’ Retirement System from April 2019 to April 2022. From June 2015 to March 2019, he was state budget administrator. He was the budget director for Gov. Asa Hutchinson from November 2014 to June 2015. Baird served in the House from 2009 to 2014 and served his last term as co-chair of the Joint Budget Committee.”
Casino trial: Even though voters put a stop to the planned Pope County casino when Act 104 was passed last year, litigation continues as you know. The bench trial (originally set for 3 days) began March 25 in federal court where Cherokee Nation seeks to overturn Act 104 and determine whether Pope County must pay for a $37 million economic development agreement it signed with Cherokee Nation back in 2019. Oral arguments are over but the judge says he will need some time to make his ruling. “The judge … wants to hear more about whether amendments made to the Constitution should be presumed unchangeable.”
Meeting and talking: Rep. French Hill met with the families of those taken hostage during Hamas' October 7, 2023 attack on Israel at a recent roundtable sponsored by the House Hostage Task Force, which he co-chairs. He holds a Tele-Townhall on Thursday, April 3 at 5:30 pm (dial 866-767-0657 to join).
Arkansas auto salesman Steve Landers Jr. wants to build a new cryptomine in Vilonia through his “American-owned” company Interstate Holdings Blockchain. Landers promises a quieter facility “in a building” that
doesn’t create the noise that I think a lot of people are fearful of. We choose to make sure that we're not a nuisance. It's not a concern for the surrounding area, for residents. We will absolutely put zero extra on the power grid for the area.
National
Things that make you go “hmnnn” — Yep, a couple of weeks ago Hunter Biden dropped his 2023 lawsuit against former Trump aide Garrett Ziegler over publishing Marco Polo’s “Report on the Biden Laptop,” saying he couldn’t afford to continue. (Ziegler was a speaker at the joint District 1-District 2 GOP meeting in Cabot last year.) “But photographs show Hunter was already in Cape Town the day the case was dismissed, staying in a $500-a-night beachfront villa described on its website as an “ultra-luxurious designer home with spectacular 180 degrees unobstructed views of the sea.”
Call ‘em out: Senator Tom Cotton slapped down Code Pink protestors and called them out as “funded by Communist China” at the 2025 Threat Assessment hearing in his Senate Intelligence Committee last week. Operative Jeffrey Goldberg and the Democrats timed the release of the “Signal-gate” story so they could use the Committee’s pre-scheduled annual update on worldwide threats to browbeat members of President Trump’s intelligence community as they whip the issue up, demanding that national security advisor Mike Waltz and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth resign or be fired. (IF classified information was proved to be included in that chat, then Goldberg could be prosecuted for releasing that data publicly!)
American heroes: Seven DOGE workers — several of whom are billionaire entrepreneurs — chose to appear on Fox News with Elon Musk last week to continue highlighting the stunning amount of waste, fraud, and abuse DOGE is uncovering. In the face of death threats and unrelenting negative press, these individuals deserve our gratitude and respect because their obvious love of country displays the true character and essence of our great American heroes. Many of the DOGE workers, as special government employees, are about half-way through their assignments; TechCrunch posted this list of DOGE staffers (current as of 3/12/25):
Still a mystery? “In interviews with “60 Minutes” … two recently retired four-star Air Force generals and the Air Force commander overseeing North American airspace defense begrudgingly admitted that the “drones” that loiter in dramatic fashion over key military assets in recent years remain a confounding mystery….”
Tech
Don’t leave it in there! When you upload photos anywhere on the internet, you do know that you’re also uploading tons of information that can be collected about you, right? Stored within the picture file is data like camera settings, date and time of capture, and location if available. Just do this before you upload: on Windows, right-click the image, select Properties, then Details, and choose to remove properties and personal information; on a Mac, the Photos app can hide location data or export images without metadata.
