Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders Signs Law Making Child Labor Easier

The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 banned the employment of kids younger than 16 in any occupation, or those younger than 18 in especially dangerous jobs. Now, in 2023, conservatives are doing everything they can to eliminate those protections. Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders has signed a bill that rolls back child labor protections.

The so-called “Youth Hiring Act” eliminates existing law that requires children under 16 to obtain an official employment certificate issued by the state’s Department of Labor. This certificate process is one of the only oversight mechanisms for child labor in the state, and verifies children’s actual age before letting them work.

The bill had passed both Republican-dominated chambers of the state legislature before Sanders signed it on Tuesday. The bill’s passage comes after Hannah Dreier’s shocking New York Times report revealing a “shadow work force” of migrant children “across industries in every state,” like 12-year-old roofers in Florida and Tennessee or 13-year-olds in Michigan making auto parts on an overnight shift that ends at 6:30 a.m, or in meat plants from Alabama to Minnesota.

The elimination of the basic accountability measure may make it easier for companies to exploit children for their labor and time. Laura Kellams, Northwest Arkansas Director for Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, told KNWA, a local station, that while she is not opposed to more kids gaining work experience, there is still a concern for their neglect.

“That paperwork is only [so that as] a parent we can ensure that a parent is aware that the child is getting the job and that the hours worked don’t violate child labor laws,” Kellams said. “For example, you can’t hire a young person under 16 to work like 6 p.m. to midnight at your restaurant. They have to be finished with work by seven and that’s all about making sure that they’re home and can go to bed in time to be able to learn the next day at school.”

Sanders’s loosening of child work protections follows the introduction of legislation in states from Iowa and Wisconsin, to Minnesota and New Hampshire all aiming to roll back child labor protections and allow companies to seep more time and work out of America’s youth.

During her response to the State of the Union—when she wasn’t pontificating on “critical race theory,” left-wing “rituals” and “woke fantasies,” or even just herself—Sanders shared her vision for what Republicans aim to do for America’s children. “Here in Arkansas and across America, Republicans are working to end the policy of trapping kids in failing schools and sentencing them to a lifetime of poverty,” she said.

It seems Republicans are working to implement policies that trap kids in meatpacking factories instead.

Aside from not attending to the website he owned after most of its basic functionality failed, and conducting a lawyer-heart-attack-inducing layoff of a disabled person via tweet, Elon Musk has spent most of the past day sharing Tucker Carlson–inspired conspiracies about January 6.

Spurred by Carlson’s exclusive blaring of footage of the January 6 attack, Musk maintained incredulity throughout the last 24 hours, tweet after tweet showing in real time the supposedly political enigma going further and further down the rabbit hole.

“Wow,” Musk tweeted in response to a tweet of a clip from Carlson’s show in which Carlson casts doubt surrounding the death of Brian Sicknick, an officer who died hours after defending the Capitol from the rioters. Musk then retweeted a New York Post article about footage showing Sicknick appearing “uninjured.”

Musk then complained about the January 6 committee “misleading the public” and withholding evidence for “partisan political reasons that sent people to prison for far more serious crimes than they committed.”

“I keep forgetting which party he belongs to,” Musk quipped in response to Charlie Kirk tweeting a video of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell criticizing Carlson and Fox for the January 6 conspiracy-peddling.

Musk—the billionaire whose companies are under constant legal scrutiny for faults like destructive self-driving cars, who happily welcomed virulent antisemites and stochastic terrorists like Nick Fuentes back to Twitter, and has allegedly paid off a sexual harassment alleger $250,000 for her silence—called the committee’s attempts to hold domestic terrorists accountable “deeply wrong, legally and morally.”

Not for nothing, on Tuesday, Musk also responded to “@MuskUniversity,” who tweeted a supposed quote of Musk saying, “Many go woke for the moral cloak.”

“So many guys who got MeToo’ed went woke for the moral cloak,” Musk propounded. Apparently $250,000 can keep the moral cloak at bay.

The Tennessee House of Representatives has passed a bill that would allow people to refuse to perform a marriage if they disagree with it.

According to the bill, which passed Monday night, “a person shall not be required to solemnize a marriage.”*

The bill, which now moves to the state Senate, is the latest in an onslaught of measures that the Tennessee legislature has passed attacking LGBTQ rights. This bill could also apply to couples where at least one partner is transgender, or to mixed race couples.

Tennessee law already says that religious leaders do not have to officiate weddings they object to. Critics say the new bill goes beyond that and would empower county clerks to refuse to certify marriage licenses, meaning that LGBTQ, interfaith, or interracial couples could be unable to get married at all, rather than just needing to find a new officiant for their ceremony.

Marriage equality is technically the law of the land thanks to the Respect for Marriage Act, which President Joe Biden signed in December. But Tennessee’s bill exploits a major loophole in that law. Critics had long warned that the Respect for Marriage Act did not go far enough. The bill had been amended during the debate process to say that religious organizations do not have to marry same-sex couples, and the law also does not require states to actually issue same-sex marriage licenses.

This latest bill was passed alongside another measure that would require drag artists to obtain a permit from the government in order to perform. Both come just days after Governor Bill Lee signed two new laws, one banning drag performances in public and another banning gender-affirming care for minors.

The Human Rights Campaign slammed Tennessee’s ongoing “obsession with anti-LGBTQ+ legislation.”

“Instead of focusing on the issues that Tennesseans actually care about, radical politicians are wasting their time and using their power to target the LGBTQ+ community,” HRC legal director Sarah Warbelow said in a statement. “These bills are not about protecting children and they are not about religious freedom.”

“They are about stripping away the basic human rights that LGBTQ+ people have fought for over decades … and labeling us dangerous.”

Supporters of Tennessee’s bills, and dozens of similar ones moving through state legislatures across the country, say their main goal is protecting children. Trans people and drag performers have become a particular target for Republicans and right-wing extremist groups, who accuse them of being pedophiles. But all these bills do is vilify LGBTQ people, including children, and expose them to more violence.

* This article previously quoted the original bill text rather than the amendment that modified this section of the bill.

After Tucker Carlson’s first clumsy attempt at his new series: Why the January 6 Riot Was Actually Just Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives: D.C., scores of Republicans have come out criticizing Carlson for running the segment, and Fox for hosting it.

The Monday-night segment came after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy gifted Fox host Tucker Carlson exclusive access to 41,000 hours of surveillance footage from the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

In the special, Carlson attempted to square a circle that led to him calling the invaders “protesters” but also just “orderly and meek sightseers.” He insisted they were not “insurrectionists,” but also chided skeptics for not understanding the invaders being “angry” in the face of a “grave betrayal.” But, Carlson assured, they also “believe in the system.”

It was so bad even Republicans have been unafraid to repudiate the display—if not on actual moral grounds, perhaps simply because Carlson did a bad job packaging something they wish he had done better. After all, as The Independent’s Eric Michael Garcia points out, none of the senators (other than Mitt Romney) voted to convict Donald Trump on an impeachment charge for inciting the insurrection. Either way, Republicans seem to be betting on it being better not to be on Carlson’s side this time.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell took issue, saying Tuesday, “Clearly, the chief of the Capitol Police, in my view, correctly describes what most of us witnessed firsthand on January 6.” McConnell was referencing the comments of Officer Tom Manger, who criticized the “opinion program” for airing “commentary that was filled with offensive and misleading conclusions about the January 6 attack.”

“It was a mistake in my view for Fox to depict this in a way that’s completely at variance with what our chief law enforcement official at the Capitol thinks,” McConnell finished, criticizing the network currently under legal fire for knowingly delivering conspiracy and lies more than news.

While Senator Thom Tillis called it “bullshit,” other Republican senators followed suit.

“To somehow put that in the same category as a permitted peaceful protest is just a lie,” said Kevin Cramer. “The best thing to do is to give it to every source at the same time and let everybody go through it and play it in its entirety,” he continued, when asked about McCarthy choosing to give Carlson exclusive access. Cramer also said that by giving to “all sources equally,” McCarthy could have avoided giving sole access to “one who is particularly good at conservative entertainment” (perhaps an admission of how much lies and conspiracy seem to entertain Carlson’s viewers).

Mitt Romney said it’s “really sad to see Tucker Carlson go off the rails like that,” calling Carlson part of the “range of shock jocks that are disappointing America and feeding falsehoods.”

“You can’t hide the truth by selectively picking a few minutes out of tapes and saying this is what went on. It’s so absurd. It’s nonsense,” Romney continued. “It’s a very dangerous thing to do, to suggest that attacking the Capitol of the United States is in any way acceptable and it’s anything other than a serious crime, against democracy and against our country,” Romney said. “Trying to normalize that behavior is dangerous and disgusting.”

Others, including Senators Mike Rounds, Lindsey Graham, and Chuck Grassley lobbed similar criticisms at Carlson and Fox.

Of course, let us not forget the still stubborn warriors, gripping on to Carlson’s coattails till their fingers turn blue.

“I’ve seen enough. Release all J6 political prisoners now,” proclaimed Representative Mike Collins on Twitter.

“In conclusion, God bless our troops.… Thank you, Tucker Carlson,” Representative Joe Wilson, famous for screaming, “You lie!” during President Obama’s State of the Union, finished in House remarks Tuesday.

On Tuesday, a U.S. federal judge ruled that a Missouri state law that made it more difficult for police to enforce federal gun laws is unconstitutional.

In Missouri, people can buy and own guns without a background check or license, they can conceal-carry them with no permit, guns don’t have to be securely stored away from young children, and domestic abusers can purchase and own firearms. There were 23.9 deaths from firearms per 100,000 Missouri residents in 2020, the most recent year where CDC data is available, making it the fourth-deadliest state in gun deaths in the nation.

Yet still, in 2021, almost every single Republican state House member voted for the “Second Amendment Preservation Act,” or SAPA, which invalidated federal gun laws and penalized officials who tried to uphold them. The bill subjected any official who would seek to uphold federal gun laws to penalties of “$50,000 per employee hired by the law enforcement agency.”

In February 2022, however, the Justice Department challenged the statute in court, noting that the “Missouri law uniquely discriminates against federal agencies and employees; impairs law enforcement efforts in Missouri; and contravenes the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution,” which states that federal laws hold precedence over conflicting state laws.

The suit argued that the bill interrupted prior collaboration between state and local law enforcement agencies with federal officers to keep residents safe. It also argued that, in addition to misleading and confusing state and local officers, the Missouri law was “purporting to nullify, interfere with, and discriminate against federal law.”

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Brian Wimes of the Western District of Missouri sided with the Justice Department and declared that the bill violated the supremacy clause of the Constitution.

“SAPA’s practical effects are counterintuitive to its stated purpose,” Wimes wrote. “While purporting to protect citizens, SAPA exposes citizens to greater harm by interfering with the Federal Government’s ability to enforce lawfully enacted firearms regulations designed by Congress for the purpose of protecting citizens within the limits of the Constitution.”