Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders addresses Arkansas’ 95th General Assembly in the House chamber on Jan. 14, 2025. (Photo by Mary Hennigan Arkansas Advocate)
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders named higher education, public safety, immigration and children’s mental health as her policy priorities for the 2025 legislative session in her annual State of the State address on the House floor Tuesday.
In a nearly 40-minute speech, Sanders called Arkansas “the vanguard of a national conservative revolution” and said she looked forward to next week’s inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump, for whom Sanders served as White House press secretary from 2017 to 2019 during his first term.
“Arkansas has led the nation on common-sense conservative reforms for the past two years, and 2025 will be no different,” Sanders said. “The good news is that we now have a partner and ally in the White House.”
She touted policies she championed during the first two years of her administration, particularly income tax cuts and overhauling the state’s prison and K-12 public education systems.
One of Sanders’ many special guests in the House gallery whom she mentioned during the speech was a student whose family uses taxpayer funds to attend St. Theresa’s Catholic School. Sanders said the Education Freedom Account program, created by the LEARNS Act of 2023, has helped several Central Arkansas families afford the Little Rock school’s tuition.
Sanders also highlighted a single mother of three from Beebe, Tiffany String, who overcame social and economic obstacles to obtain a nursing degree despite not graduating from high school. State leaders should ensure that Arkansans of all backgrounds have access to higher education, Sanders said, introducing one of her signature policies for the session, Arkansas Access.
“We will make it so that you can submit one application, pay one fee and use the same application for any state-supported college or university in Arkansas,” Sanders said, receiving much applause.
The policy package will include “funding college credits while students are still in high school,” changing the higher education funding model to support “all types of degrees” and allowing scholarships to fund associate’s degrees and non-degree credentials in addition to bachelor’s degrees, she said.
“For far too long, students have been told a lie that the only way to be successful is to get a four-year degree right out of high school,” Sanders said.
Arkansas Access will also allow for the firing of college and university instructors who “waste time indoctrinating” students during class time, she said.
“Arkansas students go to our colleges and universities to be educated, not to be bombarded with anti-American, historically illiterate woke nonsense,” Sanders said.
The LEARNS Act includes a ban on “indoctrination” in K-12 schools but does not define the term. Sanders also signed an executive order creating a similar ban on her first day in office two years ago.
Little Rock Central High School students, their parents and a teacher filed a federal lawsuit last year over the LEARNS Act’s indoctrination ban, claiming it violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
Education, maternal health, mental health will spark debate among Arkansas lawmakers in 2025
A preliminary injunction is currently in place partly granting some of the plaintiffs’ demands. In October, a federal judge delayed a decision in the case, which is also being heard in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
In a post-speech press conference, House Minority Leader Andrew Collins, D-Little Rock, said Democrats are supportive of career and technical training generally, but not at the expense of traditional higher education.
Collins said he looks forward to reading the governor’s higher education bill once it’s filed, but noted Sanders’ proposal to fire “woke” professors seemed like “a solution in search of a problem.”
“To create a pathway to fire professors for perceived woke nonsense seems like it invites a lot of politicizing of the profession, which is something that higher education is trying to avoid,” he said. “So I think that’s a risky proposition.”
Children’s health issues
Sanders has made reducing child hunger a priority. Unlike some of her fellow Republican governors, Sanders announced in January 2024 that Arkansas would participate in a federal program for children to receive food assistance during their summer break from school.
Summer EBT served more than 260,000 children statewide in summer 2024, Sanders said Tuesday, and the program will continue this year. She announced three new policy proposals regarding the state’s food industry and children’s access to meals:
- Eliminating the state’s 0.125% tax on groceries
- Encouraging schools to purchase their food within the state
- Using revenue from the state’s billion-dollar medical marijuana industry to make Summer EBT and schools’ free lunch and breakfast programs “financially sustainable for years to come,” as well as making school breakfast services “completely free for any student that chooses” to participate.
Democrats applauded Sanders’ proposals to eliminate the state’s grocery tax and provide breakfast for Arkansas students.
“I think we have obviously a huge hunger crisis in our state, particularly among kids,” Collins said. “Anything we can do to help alleviate that is a good thing. Free breakfast and lunch is something that is proven to have a big impact on kids’ educational achievement, as well as their health, so I’m fully supportive of that.”
Sanders also reiterated her December announcement that Arkansas will seek permission from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to prohibit food stamp recipients from purchasing highly processed foods and encourage consumption of more nutritious, locally grown foods.
Reducing minors’ access to cellphones and social media has also been a priority for Sanders, and she said Tuesday that the Legislature should pass a law this session banning students’ access to phones during the entire school day.
Sanders and Education Secretary Jacob Oliva announced in July a pilot program that restricts phone use in schools and broadens students’ access to mental health services. In August, lawmakers allowed the Department of Education to distribute $7 million among school districts to pay for pouches or lockers where students can store their phones during class time.
The Social Media Safety Act of 2023, which Sanders supported, would have been the first in the nation to require minors to receive parental permission before signing up for a social media account. A federal judge blocked the law in August 2023 before it was set to take effect.
The Legislature should amend the law this session “so that it’s no longer held up in court and can begin to be enforced,” Sanders said.
Democrats share an interest in making sure kids’ mental health is protected and will do what they can “to move the needle forward,” Collins said. Arkansas Democrats have filed two bills addressing kids’ online safety and privacy that mirror bipartisan federal bills, he said.
Chinese bans
Sanders also advocated for legislation allowing parents to take legal action against technology companies if their children experience mental health crises, such as suicidal ideation, tied to social media consumption. One of her special guests was Centerton mother Jennie DeSerio, who sued a social media company after her son’s suicide, alleging that TikTok’s algorithm gave him instructional videos on how to end his life.
TikTok is a short-form video platform popular with young Americans. A federal law unlikely to be blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court will effectively ban TikTok if its Chinese-owned parent company does not divest from the platform by Sunday.
Sanders said the state must pass a law divesting state resources from the Chinese government and banning foreign “adversaries” from purchasing farmland in certain areas. In 2023, she and other state officials ordered a Chinese-owned seed company to sell farmland it had purchased near Jonesboro.
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Law enforcement and prisons
The governor also expressed support for allowing property owners to enlist their local sheriff’s offices to remove squatters from their land.
Sanders said she hopes the Legislature will pass the Defense Against Criminal Illegals Act to give “violent illegal immigrants” harsher penalties for criminal offenses and “remove them from our state.” One of Trump’s promises for his second presidential term is “mass deportations” of undocumented immigrants, and the U.S. Senate this week took steps to expand the reasons immigrants can be detained.
In her speech, Sanders also touted a plan to build a 3,000-bed prison on 815 acres the state purchased in Franklin County, where community members have expressed frustration about the project. The Legislature has set aside $330 million for the prison project, with another $75 million in reserves, and lawmakers are expected to debate the project’s funding this session.
Arkansas typically spends roughly $30 million a year to house thousands of state inmates in county jails, and Sanders and the Department of Corrections have worked to relieve the backlog by adding beds to existing prison facilities.
Senate Minority Whip, Fred Love, D-Mabelvale, criticized the lack of transparency from the state regarding its plan to construct the prison, and said Arkansans deserve better.
“Public safety is paramount to Democrats, but budgeting responsibly and being transparent through the process is also,” Love said. “Folks, people in this administration are not being straight with you.”
In November, Sanders announced a revamped state employee pay plan that includes raises for hard-to-fill jobs, including corrections officers and state troopers. She mentioned the plan in Tuesday’s speech, and the Legislature will be responsible for approving the revamp as part of Sanders’ proposed fiscal year 2026 budget, which totals $6.49 billion and raises spending by 2.89%.
Sanders’ emphasis on law enforcement during her speech included awarding the first Arkansas Medal of Freedom to Dallas County Sheriff Mike Knoedl for his quick response to last summer’s mass shooting at a grocery store in Fordyce that left four people dead and nine more injured.
“These victims weren’t just citizens in Mike’s county; they were his neighbors, his friends, people he knew by name,” Sanders said. “For him to have found the energy and the courage to lead his community after this terrible, terrible event shows the strength, the courage, and the faith of this great hero.”
Knoedl received a standing ovation from the Legislature, state Supreme Court justices, state constitutional officers and members of the public as he accepted the medal.
Democratic priorities
Collins said Democrats are willing to work with the governor on issues on which they agree, but also vowed to push back on harmful policies.
“Every session, nice-sounding ideas give way to harmful, extreme culture war attacks on people in our state,” he said. “Teachers, immigrants, minority groups, our neighbors and friends, they do not deserve our demonization, they deserve our support.”
Collins also noted it’s healthy to have differences of opinion because the legislative session is about bringing different perspectives together to develop “the best ideas that will bring about a better Arkansas.”
“As Democrats, we are in the minority, but we will not shy away from our role as policymakers and advocates, giving voice to the needs and aspirations of the people of Arkansas,” he said. “We’ll do this by emphasizing people, policy and pushback.”
On Tuesday, Collins reiterated the party’s “Better Arkansas” agenda, first announced last fall, that focuses on defending democracy, public education, mental health and maternal health. Collins said while the governor mentioned it briefly in her speech, he’s glad she shares Democrats’ interest in improving maternal health in Arkansas, a state that has some of the highest maternal mortality and infant mortality rates in the country.
“We’ll be pressing to make sure that the governor pursues policies that will actually make a difference for mothers and families in the state,” he said. “If she wants to take some of our proposals and make them her own, that’s great. All that matters is that the good policy that we have proposed gets done.”
One such bill filed by Collins is House Bill 1008, which proposes requiring Medicaid coverage for postpartum mothers for one year after giving birth. Arkansas is also the only state that has taken no action to adopt the federal option of extending postpartum Medicaid coverage from 60 days to 12 months after birth. Sanders has said this policy would be “redundant,” since the state has other insurance coverage options for postpartum low-income Arkansans.
The government has become disconnected from the people that it serves and Arkansans deserve better, Love said. In addition to transparency and accountability, Love said Arkansans deserve to have full discussions around proposed legislation instead of bills being quickly pushed through the Legislature, as was the case with the LEARNS Act in 2023.
“You deserve legislation that isn’t rushed through, unlike what we saw with the LEARNS Act in the last session, which was passed into law days after being introduced…we cannot rush through legislation without a full discussion, not again,” he said.
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