Category Archives: Uncategorized

Arkansas250 playing part in America’s 250th birthday party

Arkansas250The United States is celebrating its America250 semiquincentennial, and Arkansas is joining the party through its Arkansas250 efforts.

The semiquincentennial (pronounced simee-quin-centennial) marks 250 years since the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. 

It’s the second major national milestone during my lifetime. The country’s 200-year Bicentennial in 1976 was a huge deal. An American Freedom Train featuring historical artifacts rolled past our house in Wynne. I went to school one day dressed as Abraham Lincoln with a stovetop paper hat that Mom painstakingly had made, and which I ditched in favor of some flimsy headgear I glued together in class.

Now it’s 50 years later, and another party is in the works.  Continue reading →

Womack speaks in House while heart is at home

Steve WomackBy Steve Brawner, © 2026 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

U.S. Rep. Steve Womack spoke in the House of Representatives on Jan. 22 in support of a $1.2 trillion spending package he had helped create. His voice cracked twice, but only briefly and for a very good reason. Four days earlier, he had lost his wife.

Terri Womack, his wife of 41 years, had died on Jan. 18 at age 68.

The spending package passed the House with bipartisan support, 341-88. It would provide funding for the Departments of Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Defense, Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education.

Continue reading →

Predictions for 2026

On KARK-TV’s “Capitol View,” Steve Brawner and Roby Brock discuss …

– The upcoming primary elections

– Whether legislators will fund Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ prison in the fiscal session

– And what will happen in the November elections. (Steve says Democrats narrowly win back the U.S. House, while Libertarians hit 3% in the governor’s race.)

One Ph.D’s dent in plastic pollution problem

By Steve Brawner, © 2025 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

You probably don’t need another huge global problem to worry about. At least Shannon Speir is doing something about this one. 

Speir recently helped lead a study of how microplastics travel through streams, and how storms affect that process. She’s a Ph.D. and assistant professor of water quality in the University of Arkansas’ Topsoil and Environmental Sciences Department.

Plastics pollution may or may not be on your radar screen when there are so many other big, potentially terrible things happening. But it’s a very real problem nonetheless. 

The world is producing hundreds of millions of tons of plastic each year, and it doesn’t biodegrade. Instead, it slowly disintegrates over many years into microplastics and smaller nanoplastics. These get into the food we eat, the water we drink, and the air we breathe.

As a result, these tiny plastics particles exist throughout our bodies. They get into our bloodstreams. They travel through a pregnant woman’s umbilical cord into her unborn baby. One recent study led by the University of New Mexico found that the microplastics found in deceased people’s brain tissue had increased by 50% from 2016 to 2024, and that people who had been diagnosed with dementia had more plastic than people who hadn’t.  Continue reading →

Blytheville now U.S. home to Cold War’s story

By Steve Brawner, © 2025 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

For Americans over age 45, our childhoods were defined in part by the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. We grew up knowing the next war could destroy the world, and it could happen with the press of a button.

Now Blytheville is becoming the central place to remember that era as the home of the National Cold War Center.

The center still has a long way to go from being constructed, but it’s making progress. Dr. Christian Ostermann, the new executive director, said it has raised $7 million of the initial goal of $75 million. It soon will start a major fundraising campaign. Continue reading →