The word that should stand out for us as we look at states like Arkansas, which are now dominated by one-party Republican rule, is the word corruption.
The corruption we see on full display among Republican leaders in states like Arkansas or Texas now is unparalleled in recent history and points back to the corrupt 1890s.
Marine Glisovic reports that after Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders appointed Jamol Jones to the state Board of Corrections, it was found he had been fired by the Benton, Arkansas, police department for having sex with a 17-year-old girl.
As Austin Bailey reports, Sanders' spokesperson Alexa Henning is defending the appointment because Jones talks about God and family.
Here's Mark Jacob criticizing the Times' downplaying of Sarah Huckabee Sanders' lectern scandal, where her office spent $19,000 on a lectern with little accounting of where that money went. The issue here isn't just this one bit of wasteful spending, but a pattern of abuse throughout.
Mark Jacob is a former editor at the Chicago Sun-Times.
An #endorsement from #SarahHuckabeeSanders is worth about as much as a wet fart on taco night. And why do we even need an article telling us that she's endorsing #Trump? Were there people biting their nails, wondering if she would endorse #Biden? The #internet is a series of tubes, and we don't need our tubes tied up with this bullshit.
Josh Marshall tells you everything you ever wanted to know — and then some — about Arkansas' "Podiumgate" story. Sarah Huckabee Sanders! Money! Secrecy! Circumvention of FOIA requessts! Lies!
And corruption galore! The kind of corruption that can only be conjured up nowadays in a state totally controlled by Republicans, especially bible-belt ones. The kind of corruption the US hasn't seen since the gilded age.
Mary Hennigan reports on what members of the Little Rock Nine just told Arkansas high school seniors about Sarah Huckabee Sanders' "educational" initiatives and her attempt to wipe out education about any history touching on slavery, race, and so on:
Minnijean Brown Trickey stated,
“I think we exist in this country with a disease called profound intentional ignorance."
#HuckaBS#Arkansas “Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed law restricting release of her travel & security records after Legislature wrapped up special session marked by a fight to more broadly scale back state Freedom of Information Act.
"If you vote for Sanders to run your state, then your punishment could very well become Sanders running your state. Now Arkansas has a governor who’s world-famous not for her keen mind or nuanced policy stances, but for her dedication to being the most prolific bullshit factory in politics."
How any of Sanders’ edicts actually help her constituents is unknown. #Arkansas is the fourth #poorest state in the nation, with a mounting affordable #housingCrisis and massive #food#insecurity. A recent Scholaroo survey found the state ranks 49th in the nation for quality of life and 50th in the nation for quality of health.
Rather than fix those problems, Sanders wants to hide her movements from public view.
@realTuckFrumper
🎵 🎶
Who can turn the world on with her smile?
Who can take a nothing day
And suddenly make it all seem worthwhile?
Well it's you girl and you should know it.... #SarahHuckabeeSanders
A bill #Arkansas lawmakers will take up during a special session next week would hide all information about where Gov. #SarahHuckabeeSanders travels on the state dime and with whom, retroactively to before she took office. The proposal comes the same week a lawsuit was filed over the #ArkansasStatePolice’s ongoing refusal to share the names of the governor’s travel companions and some of her travel expenses.
"To obscure the violence undergirding MAGA nostalgia, and perpetuate the myths, Arkansas Republican Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders is driving an Advanced Placement African American Studies course out of Arkansas schools before any politically adverse learning can take hold. …
Huckabee Sanders, who as Donald Trump’s White House press secretary was a brazen and documented liar , is not an especially subtle politician."
"It's still hard to get the mind around the fact that Sarah Huckabee Sanders is the actual governor of an actual state in the actual United States of America. Still, it's a sad fact of democracy and we can't avoid it if we're going to understand how Arkansas became ground zero for book banning and other assorted manifestations of our delicately tailored modern fascism."
"On Sunday, a federal judge named Timothy Brooks slapped a temporary hold on one of Sanders' pet project— a law that would criminalize librarians and bookstore owners who provide 'harmful material' to minors, 'harmful' being defined by luxuriously financed pressure groups, ambitious conservative politicians, and the members of the First Church Of Christ, Nuisance."
"Over 311 statements of fact were established in the Arkansas gender affirming care ban case. Not a single fact was found in the state's favor, and several major talking points were debunked."
"A federal judge in Arkansas on Tuesday struck down the state’s law forbidding medical treatments for children and teenagers seeking gender transitions, blocking what had been the first in a wave of such measures championed by conservative lawmakers across the country."