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Sarah Sanders' school voucher program ate up more than $309 million of taxpayer money in a single school year without improving a single public school in Arkansas.
Jeff Hurd declined televised debate invitations and agreed to one 30-minute session before a friendly audience instead. John McGuire says he'll debate when his opponent apologizes for raising a BlackRock sale the disclosure records in his wife's retirement account. They join fourteen Republicans we have already documented ducking the one event they can't script.
A ProPublica investigation found private schools routinely reject the disabled children who were used to sell vouchers in the first place. Arkansas built exactly that program in 2015, the University of Arkansas wrote in 2017 that such programs are 'often seen as' a foot in the door, and LEARNS swallowed it whole.
Asa Hutchinson put more than $37 million into zeroing out the CES waiver waitlist in 2021. Four years into Sanders' term it is back above 2,400 people. A Little Rock lawmaker puts the cost of clearing it at $35 to $50 million; her voucher program costs more than $367 million this year.
Three years into the LEARNS Act, Arkansas has never permanently barred a single school from its voucher program — not even the one where a 13-year-old was beaten. A former state senator lays out what the money buys, and what it doesn't.
Arkansas invented a new kind of school called a microschool, sent it voucher money, and decided it isn't a private school and doesn't get routine visits. There are 142 of them now. One collapsed three weeks before classes started.
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Sarah Sanders made the effort to strip state control of AI out of the "One Big Beautiful Bill", but was OK with cuts to SNAP that will take food assistance from 25,000 Arkansans
A new statewide survey says 37% of Arkansans don't have enough food. In the Washington Post, the governor called Trump's budget bill a win for moving welfare recipients 'off the path to dependency.'
More than 95,000 Arkansans signed a petition to protect their own right to put measures on the ballot. The state counted zero of them. The Secretary of State who made that call used to be Sarah Sanders' lawyer.
A bill in Congress would point state Medicaid fraud investigators at the people who apply for Medicaid. Right now those investigators chase companies that overbill and caregivers who hurt patients — and they bring back $4.64 for every $1 they cost.
Arkansas expects 50,000 kids on Educational Freedom Accounts this year, at a cost of more than $367 million — ten times what the program cost in year one. Only 12% of participants came from a public school.
Arkansas Republicans voted down Gov. Sarah Sanders' $750 million mega-prison five times. She recruited primary challengers against the ones who stopped her, and lost every Senate primary she got into. Now the oil-and-gas worker who helped lead the opposition is on her November ballot.
The Trump administration won't renew the Medicaid waiver that runs Arkansas's private option, citing authority from the 2025 budget bill. Every Arkansas Republican in Congress voted for that bill.
A former Little Rock superintendent spent two years predicting exactly how Arkansas's voucher program would go. In what he says may be his last column, he explains why the rising test scores in the governor's press release don't mean what she says they mean.
A legislative panel just approved a study of a $100 million state tax credit for private school and homeschool families — on top of the up to $379 million Arkansas has approved for vouchers this year, and on top of the new federal one. Even a conservative school choice group says no.
A governor, an attorney general, a state bill and a 50-member congressional caucus have all mobilized against a Sharia takeover. In Arkansas it traces back to a hate group's blog post and a small subdivision that's been there for two decades.
The Trump administration refused to renew ARHOME, the program covering more than 200,000 low-income Arkansans. The reason given comes straight out of the law Sarah Sanders spent a year celebrating.
A 1,000-mile road trip through Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee and Kentucky found people who can't afford toilet paper. The unemployment rate hasn't moved. The only thing that changed is the law nearly every Republican in Congress from those states voted for.
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Connecticut rank #1 through #4 on the 17 measures we track. Between them they send 25 people to Congress — and not one is a Republican. The four worst states send 24 Republicans.
An Arkansas private school that took state voucher money had students attack a 13-year-old and scrub floors as punishment — and Gov. Sarah Sanders' program keeps the checks coming with almost no oversight.
CNBC just ranked the 10 worst states to live in America for 2026. Every single one is a Republican trifecta — including Sarah Sanders' Arkansas and Greg Abbott's Texas.
Gov. Sarah Sanders declined to debate her two challengers in Eureka Springs. The empty chair didn't stop them from walking through her record on schools, healthcare, and prisons.
Court records show Gov. Sarah Sanders' own agriculture secretary and attorney general said a Jonesboro company was 'wrongly accused' and 'in compliance' with the law. She went on camera and called it a Communist China threat anyway.
Court records show Gov. Sarah Sanders' own staff knew there was no proof a Fort Smith factory had ties to Communist China. They smeared an American company anyway — to get a headline.
