Writing for the Arkansas Times, Austin Bailey and Lindsey Millar trashed the state's new "MAGA" governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, once former President Donald Trump's press secretary, and the GOP-dominated state legislature, saying that they "stomped on the poor" and disadvantaged groups without solving any real problems for their constituents.
"Supercharged by a mountain of MAGA money and an even bigger ego, Gov. Sarah Sanders called all the shots," they wrote. "The supermajority Republican legislature raced to do her bidding. Their rubber stamp on all of Sanders’ priorities (vouchers, prison expansion, tax cuts) marked a vast departure from the last administration, when Asa Hutchinson’s pro-gun, pro-life record failed to impress an increasingly insane right-wing extremist legislative branch. Where Hutchinson recoiled from drama, Sanders pursued it, eager to throw Trumpian blows of staggering cruelty if it landed her on Fox News. Her foot soldiers didn’t seem to mind Sanders’ obvious bid to get out of Arkansas and back on the national stage as soon as possible. It wouldn’t have mattered if they did. Republican lawmakers knew to expect a primary challenger to knock them out of office if they dared veer out of lockstep."
"Saying it’s the worst session ever feels trite, too flip to capture the brutality heaped on all but the wealthiest and most insulated," they continued. "Not only did lawmakers do nothing to protect Arkansans from our chart-topping gun death rates, they voted instead to protect the gun companies from us. A new law passed this session bars state entities from investing with firms that eschew the industry profiting off our homicide epidemic. Protecting children got lots of lip service, but no real action. Requiring proof of age and identity to get a social media account or view online porn, laws passed allegedly to protect kids, will be a boon for identity theft but won’t likely shield many innocent eyes. Threatening librarians with jail time if they allow young people to view or check out books about sex is not only a direct assault on free speech, but also a surefire way to maintain Arkansas’s spot as the state with the most teen pregnancies."
Through all of this, they noted, the state also rolled back child labor laws and refused to compromise on one of the most extreme abortion bans in the entire country — while planning to erect a "monument to the unborn" with taxpayer money.
Sanders has faced personal embarrassment throughout the session; previous reporting detailed how a job application to the state required people to describe something they admired about her, which was quickly walked back as soon as it was reported.
"Arkansas’s wealthy and its businesses are safer than ever, having easily secured tax cuts by simply pointing fingers at transgender children and woke librarians, then grabbing the cash when no one was looking," they concluded. "Most of us didn’t get much of anything beyond the insult that the schools we send our children to — schools that anchor our communities — are hotbeds of inadequacy and indoctrination that anyone with the means should flee at their first opportunity. Is this really what Arkansas voted for?"