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That hello again everyone and thanks very much for joining us.

It is over for now.

After almost four months in session, the Arkansas General Assembly began a lengthy process this week to return in the early fall to take on legislative redistricting, congressional reapportionment, and the governor is planning a special session to propose some tax cuts.

The meeting just ended, saw a $6 billion budget approved that includes an extension of the Arkansas Medicaid program.

And to an unprecedented extent, it was a session involved with social and cultural issues.

Gun rights, abortion, gender identity matters, religion and a session.

That's all legislators push back against a governor of their own party for the next half hour.

A review of the session view from the right with Republican analyst Bill Vickery from the left Democratic operative Michael Cook.

And straight down the middle with Andrew de Millo, the AP's capital Bureau chief.

Gentlemen as always, thanks for coming in Andrew.

Let's start with you session ended.

Well theme of this session and certainly it ended on.

What do we call it?

The 10th Amendment on steroids?

Yeah, that's that's exactly right.

You know this.

The session kind of ended the way the whole way it's been going, which is focused on a cultural issue and focused on an issue that there's been a lot of pushback from from the right over an that was on on on gun issues.

We saw the legislature meet in a midnight session to pass legislation that's aimed at preempting any new or future.

Federal gun restrictions in the state, and it was really kind of scaled.

Back version of legislation that the governor had vetoed, that he had expressed concerns about in terms of the impact that it would have on the state's cooperation with federal authorities.

The impact it would have on on funding for Wildlife Conservation and they they narrowed it down.

It still still faces some of the same criticism as before, which is.

You know how?

How do you do this in a constitutional way?

How do you get around the Supremacy clause and also the kind of question of this legislation prohibits local and state level off service from enforcing new or future gun restrictions that infringe on the Second Amendment.

Part of the question is going to be who's going to make that determination and kind of what kind of message does it send?

But you know, it was kind of a signal of what the session has been like and as you said, you know.

Books a lot on culture, war issues, guns being a major part of it.

Bill.

There was almost it seems almost erase some of the members were almost in a race with one another to see who could propose, who could who could take the session farthest to the right?

Well, my dad used to tell me that nothing good ever happens past midnight.

In this particular instance, I do think that something good did happen.

The legislature together, because of the constitutional issue and not being able to have a building 2 houses on the same day having to meet after midnight in the wee hours of Wednesday morning.

And I think did sort of thread the needle with the particular piece of legislation they were focused with dealing with guns and the 2nd Amendment.

In a broader sense, though, what you see happening in Arkansas is happening in a lot of other quote red States and that is legislate legislatures jumping out in front of the federal government for fear of a lot of these cultural issues being taken away by the federal government.

I think this is a reaction to the bite administration to the extreme left wing sort of perspective that you see them taking early on inside the 1st 100 days and so I think you saw a legislature that is reflective of the state itself.

Meeting and sort of proactively preemptively jumping ahead and saying, look, we're going to deal with these things on the state level.

We're going to try to put some markers in place to prohibit the federal government from infringing on what we believe to be our rights.

Alright, Michael cook.

This was, you know, the ultimate hold my beer legislative session.

Meaning each one of these legislators on the Republican side.

We're trying to one up each other trying to do, you know, the craziest right wing kind of legislation they can get their hands on.

And because so many of these legislators are are terrified of their base, they went along with bad bills that they knew were unconstitutional.

They supported things that they know were just wrong, but they were just terrified of their base as been talked about already.

Bye.

Andrew and Bill the just this ridiculous last minute scramble over the over the sovereignty so called sovereignty bill, which frankly is unconstitutional once it goes into effect.

They'll be a lawsuit more than likely will go through.

The courts would be struck down eventually, so you had all these legislatures up to in the wee hours of the night fighting for a bill that's unconstitutional and frankly doesn't really need is not even needed.

But that's sort of the way of our legislature right now.

It's cultural issues all the time.

You know people trying to grandstand every every chance they get and it's it's to the detriment of our state.

Yeah, well I've Andrew I think those of us who care something occasionally you and I are over there at the federal courthouse.

But those who cover the federal courthouse on a regular basis going to be kept busy or so says the ACLU and some other interest groups which have have vowed to take action against issues not only on on firearms, but particularly on abortion and gender issues.

Yeah, that that's that's right.

And actually a good Marker Institute Institute which tracks abortion legislation and all the states they came out with a report today that you.

Arkansas enacted 20 abortion restrictions this year, which is which ties a record that was last set in 1978.

So that gives you an idea of just how busy things are and you're going to see a lot of a lot of these laws laws facing challenges in court.

Now you know the most notable ones.

Will be the near total abortion ban that's not supposed to take effect until late July, and so I think we'll likely see a lawsuit challenging that and trying to get that blocked.

We're also going to going to see a lawsuit over the state's ban on gender confirming treatment and surgeries for transgender youth.

That also doesn't take effect until late July an I think a lot of the next next several weeks is going to be kind of dominated by some of these legal challenges and some additional concerns that are going to be raised by it, but.

I think you're gonna see a lot of this being sorted out now.

You at the at the court level.

Yeah, and Bill, I think too.

Well, the Senator Rapert was and his allies were were just open about it.

I mean this bill, the total ban that that Andrew just mentioned.

Right now would not stand, but that's before it gets the Supreme Court.

Plainly, they're hoping that a different Supreme Court, a Supreme Court that is now 6 three I think on the conservative side will take a fresh view at of fresh look at Roe.

Yeah, that's a very good point.

I I was having a little hard time hearing Microsoft.

Couldn't hear exactly what he said but but the reality is, this is the process now.

You see legislation passed at the state level and all that.

That is a test case to see what the courts will take up and see what they'll deal with.

And so I think you're exactly right, Steve.

Listen Senator Apron made no bones about it.

This was a bill that was being passed so that it could work its way up to the Supreme Court level to test the constitutionality.

And so this is.

This is the way things happen now.

These things typically happen on the state level and so off to off to federal court.

And ultimately I think, as you point out to the Supreme Court for probably well for.

For most of these bills, I would imagine well how much method and how much madness though.

Is it possible to to judge from going in?

Well listen, I. I think there is no doubt that Arkansas is culturally very conservative state.

And I say this quite often.

These folks they get elected and they get reelected and reelected.

So somebody like Senator Rapert's very popular in his district and so they don't.

It's not as though they're taking extreme stands and they will pay a political price for it.

Just the opposite.

I think they are reflective of the districts that they represent.

And so I think to some degree you know, listen, they're trying to pass legislation.

For for public policy purposes.

But there is this element of we gotta work these things through the Federal court at some point.

Yeah, Andrew Michael, I'm hard pressed to think of a single member of 135 who is in danger of losing his or her seat, either in a general or in a primary based on any vote they cast in the past four months.

Can you?

You know that that's one thing we'll see in a in the November 22 election.

But you know right now this this session was just full of just meanness and just sort of madness.

I mean, we're talking about some of the abortion bills.

I mean, they passed a bill that now, if it is ultimately upheld by the Supreme Court, is going to work through the courts would require women who are victims of ****** assault to give birth to their ****** baby, the bill would.

If a young young care young child is raped by a family member, they are would be forced to give birth to that child.

That's just horrific and mean, but that's what this legislature wants to happen.

I mean, it's more than a test case.

That's their statement of principles in this sort of lack of empathy toward people who you know are going through these horrific times.

This lack of empathy from the Arkansas Legislature is disheartening to see, but whether it pulls up in the polls and November 2222, it's you know, too far away to know.

Well, Andrew, that the primaries of glassware and all of you, the primaries last spring, seemed to tell us something when when two or three moderates so Republican moderates or mainstream used to be called mainstream Republicans, lossed in the primaries.

Yeah, that's yeah, that's that's right.

Yeah, one of the things that we're seeing is that.

You've got Republicans who are being judged based on just just one one vote or just kind of a sliver of 1 issue, and you can't even see that going on with Governor Hutchinson where he was getting pushed back over his veto of the transgender treatment Bill.

And it's it's, you know, he's not.

He's not really a moderate on on social issues.

Yeah, he had signed two other bills that restricted the rights of trans transgender people.

But you know he was getting the pushback for kind of this nuans of focusing on just part of this issue and kind of trying to put the brakes on it some what an I think you're seeing some some other Republicans kind of fuel as well to where it's harder to kind of kind of pull pull out, pull out on one part of the issue and try to make make distinctions some what.

I think there's a concern that there are going to be targeted in primaries just based on one bill rather than kind of there.

Record as a whole.

Yeah, it's a pretty high fence to straddle, but there have been a number of stories in national political journals over the last really month, and that is a breach.

Bill vickrey.

Let's go to you first.

Breach of sorts between the business, the corporate community and the Republican Republican Party.

An I was struck in the past session when Walmart has in the last two or three sessions made its influence felt in matters of social legislation.

Involving gay rights.

I think in particular, when it asserted itself, say this is not good for corporate and business development in Arkansas.

And yet one of the gentleman from Jonesboro, Mr Lady, Man, I believe in this past session took the Florence that I'm tired of hearing from.

I don't know.

I don't recall if he said Walmart in particular, but I'm tired of hearing the Chamber of Commerce and other corporate interests tell me what's good for the state.

Are we going to see more of that?

Well, I do think you gotta have a significant number of legislators that look to say every time business is trotted out as a as a rationale to either oppose or support something.

You like that you've got a growing number of Members who say hey look, you know what they really are concerned about their concerns about tax rates?

They're concerned about transportation.

They're concerned about these meat, potatoes things, so I'm sick of hearing from these companies about issues that I know.

Really, they're parading around to sort of virtue signal, but in reality, what they really are concerned with, you know, we're talking about lowering the tax rate or or some sort of money from the governor's quick action closing fund things of that nature.

There is a level of frustration.

From members after their own in that particular vein, and I think you know, Jack Wegmans are fairly principled.

Guy in a very well liked man in the House of Representatives.

And you know, he's he's not a an extremist by any stretch of the imagination like he's fairly in the middle of the road and very much a champion of corporate Arkansas.

So for him to say that is, I think it's indicative of the frustration level that a lot of these Members feel with the quote business interests.

Yeah, Michael.

Cook you know a Corporation, no matter what Corporation is, has one purpose make a profit, and I think a lot of these corporations are looking at some of these social issues and other issues that are being pushed and they're seeing how it makes it more difficult to make a profit.

Mean if you're Walmart and you're trying to attract new young people to move to northwest Arkansas to work for at the Walmart headquarters and they see these just mean you know bills against transgender against women and against working class Arkansans.

It makes it tougher for them to recruit this high tech talent that's needed for them to grow.

Or if your Corporation that's considering you know, moving to another city in another state, opening up your operation, and you have employees that might be transgendered or have transgendered kids, are they going to want to move to state like Arkansas that has, you know, made it a point to punch down on these people?

Or were they just go to list, go to another state so all of this, you know it's you can debate it, but at the bottom line is these corporations?

Want to make a profit?

And these laws that the Arkansas Legislature has passed has made it more difficult for them to attract new talent to potentially consider moving to Arkansas because a lot of people just don't want to move here because it's seen as just too far right in some ways.

Just backward thinking well onto and onto another type of pushback that we saw in this session.

And frankly, in the months leading up to it, Andrew and that was let's not call it a rebellion or a revolt because there weren't any.

Really, fangs or knives drawn, But anyway, Mr Hutchinson's own party in the General Assembly House and Senate pushed back against him.

Yeah, that's that's true.

We saw it in a lot of areas, most notably a lot of the pushback and frustration that we've been hearing before the session from some Republicans about the state's response to the coronavirus pandemic.

We saw a lot of legislation trying to kind of push back on that pushback on that and try to kind of rain the governor in, you know, even this past week we saw us all the governor sign measures that would.

Prevent the state from from issuing a mask mandate mask mandate again that would prevent vaccination requirements or vaccine passports.

We saw the Emergency Powers Act of amended to give the legislature more power to end an emergency, and so a lot of it focused around covid.

But you also saw it going beyond that as well to one of the constitutional amendments that is going to be referred out to voters.

Would give the legislature power to call itself in for a special session, which would be a major expansion of legislatures powers.

So you definitely definitely saw saw this happening.

You saw the governor able to able to resist some.

Some of this are able to defend against some of this somewhat well.

You one example is the confirmation of Doctor Romero, the health secretary.

We had very unprecedented confirmation fight.

For him that focused on on covid and on the response to Covid an where you had some legislators kind of using that as a chance to vent frustration with him.

So there were areas where the governor was able to push back on on some of these on some of these changes, but it definitely was a session where you saw the legislature trying to flex its muscle Moran, trying to expand its powers.

And of course the the authority to call itself into a into session is just Bill Vicarius, an estimate every Governor Ivey.

No, but no governor wants that.

You're exactly correct.

I mean constitutionally, our governor is fairly weak in terms of once the legislature is in.

They can override vetoes, as we've seen fairly easily.

So governors, the governors rather than the Republican or Democrat, tend to like to operate outside of the legislative bounds and.

And as far as the legislative sessions go, I let me let me touch on this very quickly.

This is not anything that's really new to a governor that's in his final.

Terminal really in his final legislative session and I'll go so far as to say this.

You especially look at other states.

This legislature has been in fairly regularly, if not constantly dealing with pandemic issues dating back to June may of last year and and the governor has been very aggressive in trying to deal with these issues.

As far as the pandemic is concerned, there's naturally going to be a level of frustration that bubbles up here at some point in time, frankly.

You look at what's happening in Arkansas.

It's a lot better than some states where you've seen legislators go after governors their primary, and there's.

There's a lot of political acrimony.

Yeah, I mean, there's a little bit of cousins yelling at one another across the dinner table, but, but in reality, I think both the legislature and this governor have handled the situation extraordinarily well.

Ann, and we're better.

We're all for it, and I think the further removed will realize that more and more.

Yeah, Michael Cook and this is institutionally, the governorship in Arkansas is not an especially compared to other states.

It's not especially muscular.

Correct, you know in in the legislature you know we talked to Andrew Luck came out.

Some of the vetoes as we all know the.

Arkansas is a simple majority to override any governor veto, which gives them immense power.

This session was had.

They had a lot of power, plays, a lot of vetoes and overrides on various issues.

You know, in two of these constitutional amendments, two of the three, the constitutional amendments that will be put forth by the legislature this coming year and next year are more examples of power play.

Allow the legislature to call themselves back into session whenever they feel like it, and to allow themselves to pass more bills, more regulations, or whatever they want to do.

Which is why I think that probably will be defeated come the come November of next year, and then the second one dealing with making it tougher for Citizen LED petitions to be voted on.

That we're raising the requirement that for a new constitutional amendment or referendum to pass it would take 60% of the vote.

You know there again, they don't want.

They don't want citizens to vote on issues that they care about or you know it.

Take charge of certain issues.

So these are just two examples of these power plays.

This Arkansas Legislature is trying to trying to push forward.

Yeah, an Andrew prior to the social issues weren't the only thing that were addressed in the session.

We ought to mention that the Medicaid expansion with a yet another new name was approved.

It took a few votes, but we got it done.

Yeah, that's that's right, and the thing that actually is notable is how little of a fight or how muted of a fight this this really was compared to recent years.

Yes, it took, I think five votes in the House to approve the budget, which basically basically reauthorizes the expansion program, but you never really got a sense that this was a fight about expansion.

You got more of a sense that this was getting caught up in other other issues.

Other other disagreements.

There never really was a sense that the expansion program was in jeopardy, or that Medicaid was in jeopardy as well as the the overhaul of the program.

You know, moving from the work requirement, which has been blocked by the courts and by the Biden administration, two more of a work encouragement type program.

So there really wasn't that them that much of a fight on either one, so you kind of try it.

You know the question is, you know, is this kind of the future of it where it's not going to be kind of a knock down drag out fight that we've seen in previous years?

Well, I thought it was telling to that Senator Ballenger before ever as the session began or before it began.

Senator Ballenger Long, a vociferous opponent of it.

But when he says look that cake is been baked, I think his term was boats, left, the pier, whatever.

It is a part of the budget we're going to live with.

It's just a question of how we manage it.

Yeah, listen, I think the fever has broken on fighting that from now on and I think Andrew hit the nail on the head.

He got caught up in some other issues an and so it was being used as a tool now as opposed to this philosophical death match that has occurred over the last few years.

You know one of the things that's interesting that we don't talk about those city is look back at the number of laws that were passed that codified the day-to-day business operations of stuff that the governor may be issued an executive order on.

Or we maybe there was some type of emergency declaration dealing with food delivery, or you know, contact with this or a lot of that stuff.

I think when we look back 10 or 12 years from now, you'll see.

Eat **** fundamentally because of all of these that shift in business and how Commerce is conducted in Arkansas.

Because most of these executive orders and emergency declarations have been codified now.

So you can sit at home and order food and get a cocktail with it at some point in the near future.

So I say that's just one example, but a lot of these things that were done in this session, I think you'll see there will be just regular part of life in a decade.

Alright couple things a couple of months left on a couple of things.

We will be, but General Assembly will be back again.

We've got to address or the governor wants to address tax policy translation tax cuts later this year.

And also we've got new congressional districts.

They probably won't.

Well, they could change a great deal.

Michael.

You know, right now the Republicans excuse me, have control of the entire process.

The congressional reapportionment and the legislative redistricting, you know, we clearly know what they're going to do.

Everything they can to maximize their, you know their seats.

Which look.

Democrats did the same thing.

We do the same thing all across the country.

It's a flaw in our American system, but that's another side, but I'm I'm curious to see, though, because the census data is going to be so late.

Getting to us in late September.

Usually we have it by early spring to see if they will push the primaries back deeper into the year, because, you know, it's going to take time for these, you know.

Legislative lines to get drawn and public comments and run through all the process.

So I'm wondering if we'll actually have a May 22.

Primary will be pushed back to June or July to give more time.

Bill is not a whole lot of Republicans can do.

Is there in fact to redraw districts?

I mean the the 1st and the 4th are going to get measurably bigger, but in terms of legislative redistricting?

Yeah, listen, I think Michael made a good point.

There.

You know Democrats had control for a long time.

Now Republicans have control.

It is tough when you look at the overwhelming majorities in both the House and the Senate.

I do think though, if the sort of rule Democrat that might become endangered species don't know how many of them are really left anymore.

But I think if it's possible, you'll see you know you'll see some districts drawn in a way that probably favor the Republicans in rural areas, and you could conceivably see you know some House members have to run against one another at some point in time just simply because of the way the population is shifting.

Yeah, I'm thinking South Arkansas especially, but at any rate we're out of time gentlemen, thank you for yours.

As always, come back soon as always.

Thank you for watching and we'll see you next week.

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