News from the South - Arkansas News Feed
Proposed maximum reading level for citizen-led ballot measures stumbles but passes Arkansas House
Proposed maximum reading level for citizen-led ballot measures stumbles but passes Arkansas House
by Tess Vrbin, Arkansas Advocate
March 20, 2025
A proposal mandating citizen-led ballot measures be written at an 8th-grade or lower reading level cleared the Arkansas House of Representatives Wednesday after three attempts to pass its emergency clause.
House Bill 1713 passed the House on Tuesday with 60 votes; a separate vote on the emergency clause received 63 votes. Emergency clauses require a two-thirds vote in each chamber, meaning at least 67 House votes, and allow laws to go into effect immediately upon the governor’s signature. HB 1713’s emergency clause received 70 votes Wednesday and will next be heard in the Senate Committee on State Agencies and Governmental Affairs.
HB 1713 narrowly passed the equivalent House committee on March 12 after lawmakers and members of the public raised concerns that proposed ballot measures are too complex by default to be written at or below an 8th-grade reading level.
Bill sponsor Rep. Ryan Rose, R-Van Buren, said the bill should help Arkansans “make informed decisions when asked to sign a petition, without confusion, without legalese, without any deceptive wording.”
Republican lawmakers this year have introduced a wide range of bills that would add regulations to Arkansas’ direct democracy process. The 2024 election cycle saw a wide range of proposed citizen-led ballot measures, only one of which qualified for the November ballot, and supporters of the direct democracy regulations have made allegations of deceptive practices by supporters of last year’s measures.
Many of the bills have had emergency clauses, and some have required multiple votes in either chamber before meeting the two-thirds threshold. Several of those bills have been signed into law, and most were sponsored by Sen. Kim Hammer, R-Benton.
Two bills to change citizen-led petition process pass Arkansas House, but without emergency clauses
Hammer will run next year for Secretary of State, the office that oversees elections. He is a co-sponsor of HB 1713.
Rep. Nicole Clowney, D-Fayetteville, voted against HB 1713 in committee and on the House floor. She said Wednesday that she supported “a readability standard of some sort” for ballot measures but did not believe HB 1713 was the right mechanism for creating one.
The bill mandates the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level readability test as the determinant of compliance with the policy.
“It’s just an algorithm that spits out a readability level based on sentence length and word length,” Clowney said. “If a word has five syllables, a word like ‘constitutional,’ you are automatically penalized by the parameters of this test.”
Committee chairman Rep. Jimmy Gazaway, R-Paragould, said the bill does not acknowledge that “it can be difficult to convey complex ideas or concepts with small words.” His vote to pass the bill out of the committee was the deciding vote, but he voted present on the bill and the emergency clause Tuesday. He voted for the emergency clause Wednesday.
HB 1713 would not apply the same readability standards to legislatively proposed constitutional amendments, which drew concerns from lawmakers and members of the public March 12. Voters approved an amendment last year that the Legislature placed on the ballot, allowing trade-school students to benefit from scholarship lottery funds.
Clowney pointed out Wednesday that this amendment had a college graduate-level reading level, according to the Flesch-Kincaid readability test.
Proposed amendments are required to begin with “an amendment to the Arkansas Constitution.” House Minority Leader Andrew Collins, D-Little Rock, told the committee last week that this phrase is also deemed college-graduate level by the reading test.
So is the title of HB 1713 itself, said Gail Choate, a political scientist and civics educator who spoke against the bill March 12.
“What I’m concerned [about] with this bill is that it does nothing to address civic education,” Choate said. “It does nothing to address the ability of people to understand even what a ballot initiative is or what it works… It dumbs down the process, it lowers the standard under which we’re presenting information under the guise that people aren’t able to understand.”
Jerry Cox, president of the conservative Family Council, spoke in favor of the bill before the committee, while attorney and direct democracy advocate J.P. Tribell spoke against it.
HB 1713 is likely to be considered by senators after the Legislature’s spring break next week.
Arkansas Advocate is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sonny Albarado for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com.
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News from the South - Arkansas News Feed
Grant Hardin used black marker & soup can to create disguise that allowed his escape
SUMMARY: Grant Hardin, a convicted murderer, rapist, and former police officer, escaped a medium-security prison in Arkansas using a disguise he crafted from kitchen materials. He dyed a shirt with a black marker, fashioned a makeshift badge from a soup can, Bible cover, and button, and used an apron as a bulletproof vest. The escape, lasting 12 days in the woods, revealed serious staff failures: a kitchen worker let Hardin unsupervised for over an hour, and a guard left a gate open unattended. Two prison employees were fired, but lawmakers remain unsatisfied. Hardin’s threat level was reportedly too low for his offenses, prompting ongoing investigations.
Grant Hardin used black marker & soup can to create disguise that allowed his escape Subscribe to 40/29 on YouTube now for …
News from the South - Arkansas News Feed
Re-live the Beatles epic 1964 tour stop in Cincinnati
SUMMARY: The Beatles’ 1964 Cincinnati tour stop featured lively interactions and candid remarks. The band discussed their trip, politics—expressing skepticism about Goldwater—and addressed rumors about being banned in the U.S., dismissing them as baseless. They talked about novelty merchandise like mugs but denied inventing such items. The Beatles shared impressions of American movie stars like Burt Lancaster and Gordon, describing encounters as mixed but mostly positive. Their unique hairstyles were playfully explained as natural. The clip captures the group’s playful, down-to-earth nature amid their historic U.S. visit, blending humor, music, and cultural observations.
The Beatles came to Cincinnati to play a show in August 1964 as part of a 25-city North American tour. In this rare footage, see John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr as they land at the airport to the delight of throngs of die-hard fans. The Fab Four also chatted with local media about whether they should be banned, what they knew about the upcoming presidential election and how they felt about American movie stars.
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News from the South - Arkansas News Feed
US Education Department to revive student loan interest for borrowers in SAVE program
by Shauneen Miranda, Arkansas Advocate
July 9, 2025
WASHINGTON — Interest accrual on the debt of nearly 7.7 million student loan borrowers enrolled in the Saving on a Valuable Education plan will resume Aug. 1, the U.S. Education Department said Wednesday.
The Biden-era income-driven repayment plan better known as SAVE saw legal challenges from several GOP-led states beginning in 2024, creating uncertainty for borrowers who were placed in an interest-free forbearance amid that legal limbo.
The SAVE plan, created in 2023, aimed to provide lower monthly loan payments for borrowers and forgive remaining debt after a certain period of time.
In February, a federal appeals court upheld a lower court injunction that blocked the SAVE plan from going into effect. The department said Wednesday that it’s instructing its federal student loan servicers to start charging interest Aug. 1 to comply with court orders.
When the SAVE plan forbearance ends, “borrowers will be responsible for making monthly payments that include any accrued interest as well as their principal amounts,” the department said in a written announcement.
“For years, the Biden Administration used so-called ‘loan forgiveness’ promises to win votes, but federal courts repeatedly ruled that those actions were unlawful,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement alongside the announcement.
“Congress designed these programs to ensure that borrowers repay their loans, yet the Biden Administration tried to illegally force taxpayers to foot the bill instead,” she added.
McMahon said her department is urging borrowers under the SAVE plan to “quickly transition to a legally compliant repayment plan.”
“Borrowers in SAVE cannot access important loan benefits and cannot make progress toward loan discharge programs authorized by Congress,” she said.
‘Unnecessary interest charges’
Mike Pierce, executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center, blasted the department’s decision in a statement Wednesday.
“Instead of fixing the broken student loan system, Secretary McMahon is choosing to drown millions of people in unnecessary interest charges and blaming unrelated court cases for her own mismanagement,” he said.
“Every day, we hear from borrowers waiting on hold with their servicer for hours, begging the government to let them out of this forbearance, and help them get back on track — instead, McMahon is choosing to jack up the cost of their student debt without giving them a way out.”
The agency has taken heat for its sweeping actions in the months since President Donald Trump took office as he and his administration look to dismantle the department.
The department is also mired in a legal challenge over some of its most significant efforts so far, including laying off more than 1,300 employees earlier this year as part of a reduction in force effort, an executive order calling on McMahon to facilitate the closure of her own agency and Trump’s proposal to transfer some services to other federal agencies. These actions have been temporarily halted in court.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump signed a massive tax and spending cut bill into law last week, part of which forces any borrower under the SAVE plan to opt in to a different repayment plan by July 1, 2028, or be automatically placed in a new, income-based repayment plan.
Arkansas Advocate is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sonny Albarado for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com.
The post US Education Department to revive student loan interest for borrowers in SAVE program appeared first on arkansasadvocate.com
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Center-Right
This article presents the developments around the federal student loan SAVE plan primarily through a critical lens toward the Biden administration’s policies, emphasizing legal challenges and statements from Education Secretary Linda McMahon, a Trump appointee, who frames the administration’s actions as unlawful and fiscally irresponsible. It includes critical commentary from conservative officials and frames the Biden-era policies as politically motivated. Although it also quotes critics of the Education Department’s decision, the overall tone and source choices suggest a center-right leaning, reflecting skepticism of progressive loan forgiveness policies while focusing on legal and fiscal accountability.
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