Arkansas voters haven’t elected a Democratic governor in over a decade. Same with its two U.S. senators. And with all four of its U.S. representatives. Donald Trump won the state in the 2024 presidential election with nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of the vote — even more than he took in 2020. For more than a decade, Republicans have controlled both chambers in the state legislature — now with a veto-proof supermajority. And as of the 2024 election, more than eight out of 10 Arkansans live in solid Republican counties.

So perhaps it’s surprising to see an anti-Trump letter to the editor in one of the state’s top newspapers.

“Is that patriotism?” asks Doug Barber in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the state’s paper of record.

“I recently read an article that stated Republicans are more patriotic than Democrats or independents. I question that assertion,” Barber argues.

“How can someone claim they are patriotic when they support a president who regularly ignores the U.S. Constitution?” he asks. “For example, in 2021, Donald Trump did everything in his power to prevent the duly elected president from taking office.”

“Under the Trump administration, freedom of the press and freedom of speech is only as long as you aren’t too critical of the president (CBS News is an example),” Barber continues. “How about the separation of powers? Trump tried to appoint his Cabinet without the approval of Congress. He threatens judges who decide against him with impeachment. He regularly uses executive orders to bypass Congress and impose his will.”

Barber scorches Trump’s pardons of January 6 rioters.

“And let’s not forget how he treats protesters,” he posits. “If you violently protest for Trump, you get pardoned and possibly get financially rewarded (if Trump gets his way). If you protest against the president, you get harsh sentences (see Minnesota) or perhaps even killed.”

“If supporting this kind of president is what it takes to be patriotic,” Barber concludes, “count me out.”

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A tense Oval Office meeting last week put President Donald Trump in the middle of a clash between Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s team and a top agriculture lobbyist over pesticides, farmers’ health, and the U.S. food supply.

“The confrontation, which one attendee called ‘shocking,’ exposed a sharp fault line in Trump’s coalition — the push by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s MAHA movement to reduce conventional pesticides vs. farming interests determined to preserve them,” Axios reported.

Secretary Kennedy and his MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) movement see pesticides as a product that is making Americans sick, while the farmers largely warn that restricting the use of pesticides would make food prices more expensive for consumers and cost farmers — who are already struggling — billions of dollars.

Trump had planned to sign an executive order later that day to promote alternatives to conventional pesticides and to study their effects, Axios reported. American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall opposed the signing of the order, expressing concern that it would send a signal that would undermine Americans’ confidence in the safety of the U.S. food supply.

Duvall represents more than 5 million farming and ranching members.

South Dakota farmer and former USDA official Jonathan Lundgren was also present at the Oval Office meeting and supported the president’s executive order.

“One of the take-home messages I really wanted [Trump] to understand is that the farmers were sick right now,” Lundgren told Axios. “We’re literally killing our farmers with these food systems.”

“It was intense in there,” Lundgren told Axios. “They were arguing. It was back and forth.”

Axios added that “Lundgren said Duvall’s decision to forcefully confront Trump was ‘shocking,’ and that the president appeared concerned and ‘wanted to understand why Zippy was so worried.'”

“Several other farmers at the meeting echoed Lundgren’s support for regenerative agriculture, a farming approach focused on improving soil health and reducing reliance on pesticides.”

Trump asked aides for their advice on signing the executive order. Ultimately, he decided to sign it. Later, Duvall agreed to support it.

“Mike Tomko, an American Farm Bureau Federation spokesperson, disputed the idea Duvall wasn’t in favor of exploring pesticide alternatives,” Axios reported. “He said Duvall’s concerns about the executive order centered on the ‘insinuation that our food supply is not safe.'”

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President Donald Trump has a plan to steal the midterm elections, argues The Philadelphia Inquirer‘s Will Bunch, and he’s “screaming it out loud.”

Bunch writes that “nothing is scarier than when the 47th president speaks the truth about what’s really on his mind. Because the only thing that’s in Trump’s brain right now is stealing the November midterm election, by changing the rules in his favor…or worse.”

It should not have been surprising that Trump called the bipartisan housing bill he is now refusing to sign a “big yawn,” before he embarked on promoting his SAVE America Act legislation, which critics call a voter suppression bill.

Trump has made clear that that bill is his top priority, and has said so repeatedly. He’s even declared that if the SAVE America Act becomes law, Republicans will not lose an election for the next 50 years.

On top of the SAVE America Act are Trump’s executive orders, Bunch notes, which include effectively ordering an end to most mail-in voting.

“That effort suffered a bit of a setback Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states can continue to count mail-in ballots that are postmarked before Election Day but arrive after the polls have closed,” writes Bunch. “But that will not stop the Trump regime from politicizing the U.S. Postal Service ahead of November.”

“Last week, Postmaster General David Steiner told Congress that USPS plans to not deliver mail-in ballots in states that don’t turn their voter rolls over to the Trump regime, a demand that many governors have resisted so far.”

Then there is Trump’s use of the Intelligence Community.

“The Trump regime has been signaling for months that it sees the U.S. intelligence community — spy agencies like the CIA — not as a tool for finding out what comes next in the Persian Gulf, or if or when China is invading Taiwan, or when Vladimir Putin’s Russian empire will fall,” says Bunch. “No, Trump wants secret agents who can creatively invent theories of foreign-born election fraud that would demand a strongman response.”

Bunch points to then-Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s appearance in Fulton County, Georgia, “to oversee an FBI raid of voting materials from the 2020 election that Trump, with no evidence, continues to dispute. That link made clear that the regime is looking to create links to foreign actors.”

Gabbard’s replacement, Bunch notes, is Bill Pulte, who has no requisite experience for the job. Pulte “showed up Monday and immediately began firing current staffers, with a rumored list of hundreds. The steep reduction in eyeballs on the world’s trouble spots is disturbing, but what’s even more alarming is the one person Pulte has hired.”

Bunch points to the newsletter SpyTalk, which describes Pulte’s new chief of staff, Christina Norton, as “a party-loving MAGA activist with no background in national security issues” who previously ran what she called “the largest election integrity operation the Republican Party has ever seen.”

He surmises that Pulte and Norton “will have one job: investigating fantastical ‘foreign election plots’ that will be cited to justify radical measures like sending troops to polling places, seizing voting machines, or worse.”

“Now Trump is not only staging another coup, but he is yelling about it, in your face,” Bunch concludes, writing that there is nothing Trump will not do to prevent Democrats from “investigating how he and his family have made billions of dollars off the American presidency.”

Image via Reuters