Benjamin Hardy

1 week ago | arktimes.com | Austin Gelder |Benjamin Hardy

President Donald Trump’s recent string of pardons for prominent white collar criminals continued on Wednesday with clemency for Jeremy Hutchinson, the disgraced former state senator from Little Rock who was at the center of a bribery scandal at the Arkansas Legislature that ensnared multiple lawmakers, lobbyists, health care executives and others. Jeremy Hutchinson, the nephew of former Gov. Asa Hutchinson and son of former U.S. Sen.

1 week ago | arktimes.com | Benjamin Hardy

Police and prison officials are searching for an inmate who escaped from a north Arkansas prison while “wearing a makeshift outfit designed to mimic law enforcement,” the Arkansas Department of Corrections said Sunday. Grant Hardin, 56, escaped from the North Central Unit in Calico Rock (Izard County) around 3:40 p.m. Sunday. He’s been an inmate at the prison since 2017, where he is serving a 30-year sentence for first-degree murder and a separate sentence for rape.

3 weeks ago | arktimes.com | Benjamin Hardy

Big news for Pulaski County politics: Wendell Griffen, the retired circuit judge who’s become a vocal activist for progressive causes, will run for Pulaski County judge in 2026. The first thing to note here is that “county judge” in Arkansas is the title for the chief executive of a county, similar to a mayor in city government. It’s not a judicial role and has nothing to do with a court of law.

3 weeks ago | arktimes.com | Benjamin Hardy

U.S. House Republicans on Sunday finally released their plans to cut Medicaid — the safety net program that provides health insurance to tens of millions of Americans and more than one in four Arkansans — as part of the catchall budget reconciliation bill the Trump administration hopes to push through Congress on a party-line vote in the coming months.

4 weeks ago | arktimes.com | Benjamin Hardy

Two more people have been diagnosed with measles in Faulkner County, the Arkansas Department of Health confirmed Friday, bringing the total number of cases in the state this year to six. Of those six confirmed cases, four have been in Faulkner County and two in Saline County. All were reported since the beginning of April. The most recent three cases have been in Faulkner, and none of the infected individuals had recently traveled out of state.