Arkansas
Arkansas governor appoints 2 justices to Supreme Court, and new secretary of state
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Friday named a top attorney for the state and a state Supreme Court justice to vacancies on the court, and her deputy chief legal counsel as secretary of state.
The Republican governor’s appointments will give conservatives a 5-2 majority on the technically nonpartisan court, which has been targeted over the years by outside conservative groups.
Sanders named Justice Cody Hiland and state Solicitor General Nicholas Bronni to the court, effective Jan. 1. Sanders last year named Hiland to a vacancy on the court that expires at the end of this year.
“When I came into office nearly two years ago, we had a liberal supreme court. Not anymore,” Sanders said at a ceremony at the Capitol. “Our supreme court is now solidly conservative.”
Bronni has represented the state in several high profile cases, including one that narrowed the scope of the Voting Rights Act and another over the state’s requirement that contractors pledge not to boycott Israel. Bronni will replace Justice Karen Baker, who was elected chief justice this year.
“I come to the bench recognizing that a judge plays an important, but limited, role in our constitutional system,” Bronni said.
Hiland had been nominated as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas by President Donald Trump in 2017 and served in that position through 2020. Before being named to the court, he was state GOP chairman and served as an adviser to Sanders’ 2020 campaign for governor. Hiland will replace Justice Courtney Goodson, who was elected to another seat on the court.
“We have a special state, and the thing that makes us special is our people. So to continue serving in such a critical role is a blessing,” Hiland said.
Sanders also named Cole Jester, her deputy chief legal counsel, to succeed Secretary of State John Thurston, who will take office in January as state treasurer. Before working in Sanders’ office, Jester was an appellate clerk for Chief Judge Lavenski Smith of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
“As your secretary of state, I will fight to keep Arkansas the best state in the country by keeping our elections the most secure in the country,” Jester said.
LITTLE ROCK (KATV) — A major milestone has been reached in Arkansas’ highly anticipated lithium boom—its first customers.
Smackover Lithium has secured the first binding offtake agreement with a commercial client for lithium extracted in Arkansas.
“So this lithium from Arkansas will find its way into global markets, ex China,” said Jesse Edmondson, Standard Lithium’s director of government relations.
Commodity trading firm Trafigura Trading has just signed a 10-year agreement to buy 8,000 metric tonnes of battery-quality lithium carbonate per year from Smackover Lithium’s South West Arkansas Project, a joint venture between Standard Lithium and Equinor, a Norwegian company.
For context, the U.S. as a whole only produces about 5,000 tonnes of battery-grade lithium a year.
“The SWA project, once in full production, will produce 22,500 tonnes per year,” Edmondson said. “So this 8,000-tonne-per-year agreement is significant, right? That’s over a third of our annual offtake.”
Last year, Standard Lithium received a $225 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to advance lithium extraction from the Smackover Formation, a briny aquifer beneath southern Arkansas that many hail as what could be America’s best domestic source of the critical mineral.
Beating companies like Chevron and Exxon to the punch, Standard Lithium pioneered direct lithium extraction and since 2020 has operated a demo plant in El Dorado. The company is building a larger facility in Lafayette County that is set to begin operation in 2028.
“We’ve got the only proven technology that works in the Smackover that’s been done through our commercial demonstration plant in El Dorado since May of 2020. And really that has been the proving ground which has unlocked a lot of the federal opportunities for us. So we’re the largest recipient of a DOE grant in the critical mineral space in this hemisphere,” Edmondson told KATV.
“So [we’re] really excited to bring lithium production to the state of Arkansas and really back to the United States. The U.S. used to be a leader in lithium production 40, 50 years ago. So it’s time to reclaim that status,” he said.
The market price of a tonne of battery-grade lithium is volatile, but has recently ranged between $10,000 to $12,000, so the value of what Standard Lithium alone is expected to produce could exceed a quarter of a billion dollars annually.
That’s not counting what Exxon, Chevron, and other companies may produce once they get up and running.
Arkansas
Congressional subcommittee to hold hearing in Little Rock on ‘failures’ of local housing authority | Arkansas Democrat Gazette
Joseph Flaherty
Joseph Flaherty covers the city of Little Rock for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. A graduate of Middlebury College and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, he has worked for the newspaper since 2020.
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