Family Council

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette recently reported that released time continues to expand in public schools throughout the state.

Released time makes it possible for students to be excused from school so they can attend Bible studies or other religious classes during normal school hours. Thanks to federal court rulings, released time programs have been in operation for decades — including in Arkansas.

Generally speaking, released time in Arkansas requires three components:

1. A church or other organization that wants to fund and conduct a released time program off-campus.

2. School board approval for a policy authorizing students to leave campus for released time during school hours.

3. Parental consent for the student to participate in the program.

Once a church or other group properly plans and prepares to operate a released time program, they can go to the local school board to seek approval and then collaborate with the school district to set the best time in the day for a released time program.

As long as the program meets off-campus, obtains parental consent, and is privately funded, then the school board may authorize the program.

The private entity that oversees the released time program is encouraged to work with the local school district and school board to set up a mutually agreeable schedule that benefits students. If planned correctly, released time programs generally do not conflict with a student’s core courses like math or English.

Earlier this summer, the organization LifeWise Academy shared ways it is expanding released time opportunities for students in Arkansas. LifeWise serves more than 1,200 students at approximately a dozen locations across the state. The program is expected to continue to grow in the coming year.

Family Council hopes to work with state and local policymakers in the future to promote released time programs and help pass a law formally recognizing released time in Arkansas.

If you are interested in starting a released time program in your community, you are welcome to contact our office at 501-375-7000 for more information.

Last week, attorneys for TikTok served subpoenas on public school officials in Northwest Arkansas requesting documents and testimony that may be relevant to a lawsuit over the social media giant’s operations.

TikTok boasts approximately one billion users worldwide — including upwards of 135 million in the U.S. — making it one of the most popular social media platforms on the planet. Its Chinese-based parent company, ByteDance, has been valued at $300 billion.

But TikTok has come under fire for struggling to protect private user data from entities in China — including the Chinese Communist Party — and the platform has been accused of serving users a steady “diet of darkness” online.

In 2023, Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin filed a consumer protection lawsuit against TikTok in Cleburne County Circuit Court.

The A.G.’s legal complaint calls the TikTok app “a Chinese ‘Trojan Horse’ unleashed on unsuspecting American consumers,” and notes that “tens of millions of minors use TikTok in the United States.”

Once on the app, the Attorney General’s office writes that TikTok’s algorithm “force-feeds” objectionable content to users.

The lawsuit says some of the objectionable content TikTok promotes to teens includes “illegal drug use, s*x, violence, and self-harm,” and alleges that TikTok deceptively labeled its app as being appropriate for ages 13 and up when it really should have been rated 17+.

Last Tuesday, attorneys for TikTok served subpoenas to public school officials in Springdale requesting research, studies, communications, policies, programs, public statements, complaints, and other records concerning TikTok and other online platforms — particularly the effects these platforms allegedly have on Arkansas youth.

To be clear, the Springdale schools and officials are not being sued and are not accused of any wrongdoing in these documents. Rather, the subpoenas appear aimed at obtaining documents and deposition testimony that the attorneys may use in defending against Attorney General Griffin’s lawsuit.

As we have said repeatedly, there is growing evidence that social media platforms may deliberately addict users, promote objectionable content, and put people’s personal information at risk.

Social media platforms are more than just phone apps or websites. These are multibillion-dollar businesses, and the adults who profit from them need to be held to the same standards as other business leaders.

The following is a press release from our friends at Alliance Defending Freedom.

Thursday, Aug 6, 2026

The following quote may be attributed to Alliance Defending Freedom CEO, President, and Chief Counsel Kristen Waggoner regarding the Protect College Sports Act (S. 4668), a bill currently in the U.S. Senate that could be voted on this week:

“For nearly a decade, Alliance Defending Freedom has worked with courageous female athletes, state and national lawmakers, and allies across the country to protect fairness, privacy, and safety in women’s sports. That work led to President Donald Trump’s Executive Order last January reaffirming biological truth and recognizing that men don’t belong in women’s sports. And it culminated with the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decisions in Little v. Hecox and State of West Virginia v. B.P.J., upholding Idaho’s and West Virginia’s laws ensuring men cannot compete in women’s sports. The Supreme Court affirmed that states can protect women’s sports—a massive win for the 27 states that have passed laws doing just that.

“The Protect College Sports Act, which addresses issues such as Name, Image, and Likeness agreements and student athlete transfers, creates an unnecessary risk of undermining the Supreme Court win, President Trump’s Executive Order, and many other hard-earned victories for women and girls. The bill sets general eligibility rules for college athletes and then preempts states from maintaining their own eligibility rules, which could include laws saying men are ineligible for women’s teams. For weeks, ADF has warned Congress that activists could misuse the bill’s existing preemption language to argue that states’ women’s sports laws can no longer be enforced.

“Every senator who cares about women’s equal opportunity should act immediately to clarify that this bill does not preempt states’ laws protecting women’s sports. There is a simple fix available: Ensure the preemption of state laws is narrow. We are living in a moment where lawyers can’t even define what a woman is. There’s no room for ambiguity. Let’s not undo the hard-fought gains or pass permanent legislation that could jeopardize these victories. We are thankful for President Trump’s legacy of protecting women’s sports to date and we don’t want to see it undone.

“It’s time to keep girls on the field, not sideline them again.”

Alliance Defending Freedom is an alliance-building, non-profit legal organization committed to protecting religious freedom, free speech, parental rights, and the sanctity of life.

We are sounding the alarm: the Senate should FIX the Protect College Sports Act so it doesn't jeopardize women’s sports.

Special Election Senate District 1 Voters Guide – Tuesday, August 18, 2026

A special election is being held to fill Senate District 1 position. Two candidates filed to succeed Sen. Ben Gilmore. The Special Primary Election will take place on August 18. Candidates Laura “Missy” Wardlaw and Harrell Wilson filed to run in this special election. Both candidates filled out the Arkansas Voter’s Guide Survey. Click the link below for their survey answers!

Special Election | Arkansas Voter's Guide Special Election Special Election Senate District 1 – Tuesday, August 18, 2026 Senator Ben Gilmore resigned his Senate position for District 1 to work for the Attorney General’s Office. He was serving his second term in the Arkansas Senate. A special election is being held to fill his seat for t...

President Calvin Coolidge once said that “the business of America is business.” Too many Christians think of business as either inherently bad, immoral, or perhaps amoral, something set apart from their faith. At best, it pays the bills and support the missionaries, but many fail to see it as also under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

Recently, Colson Center COO Pete Marra challenged a group of business leaders to rethink business according to a Christian worldview, especially in light of emerging cultural challenges:

I believe there’s one thing that changes the world, and that’s the Church. There is no plan B. There’s no alternative to that. It’s the Church. But I also believe that there’s something that is equally under it, so not exactly equal, but equal and under, and I would say that is enterprise. Enterprise being business.

What we have at our disposal through business, the ability to organize, to solve problems, to create value, to deploy capital, to steward the things that God has given us, is something that’s very unique to enterprise itself. … So, with that kind of framework, I want to talk a little bit about calling and think about place.

There’s a reason that we use the idea, “You are here.” This can’t be missed on us in this cultural moment, particularly as business leaders—leaders of enterprises—that you were brought to a time and place that God has called you to and God has brought you to. And it’s now.

[I]t’s not an accident. I believe not only has God brought you to this place and called you to this space, but he’s equipped you for it. [T]here’s something that’s happening inside the world that we’re speaking to in theological spaces, and philosophers and some politicians and business leaders are talking about it, and that’s the age of AI.

But AI is just a new tool for a bigger problem. The bigger problem that we’re facing—and one that I think is going to impact business and enterprise in a way that we have never seen, at least in my short lifetime—is the fundamental question of, “What does it mean to be human?”

I know that sounds a little bit heavy or like I’m trying to make a bold statement, but I just want you to think about something like your corporate culture. I want you to think about how you use enterprise when you have an opportunity to become more efficient, make more money, which generates more profit, which gives you more to steward, which is the reason we get into business.

Let’s not be confused. I’ll stand here and tell you, I love profit. I am never confused about for-profit. In fact, I’ve often joked, I sometimes prefer for-profit businesses over nonprofit, because no one’s confused about what we’re doing.

But here’s the challenge we’re facing: What happens when that idea of profit and the deployment of capital face a maybe once-in-a-generational upheaval to where we no longer need a workforce? What if the ways we used to think about automating production factory lines, we can now automate everybody?

Now, is that going to happen next year? No. But these are questions I think business leaders have to start wrestling with now so that they can do that. We need a framework to be able to think through that. That framework is something you’ve seen inside the Truth Rising: The Study, which is that idea of hope, truth, identity, and calling.

[W]e must remember through these things that that idea of hope is what drives us. Our hope is in Christ, and Christ alone. Never be confused. If that is where we find our hope, then the truth of the world, the truth of God’s story of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration is the thing that gives us not only meaning, but it helps us anchor the why we do business.

The Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper famously said that “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’” This is as true about business as about anything else.

Copyright 2026 by the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Reprinted from BreakPoint .org with permission.

C.S. Lewis, when writing the final book of his interplanetary science fiction series, decided on a name for his climax book based on a poem by sixteenth century Scottish poet David Lyndsay. In this poem, Lindsey referenced the shade of the biblical Tower of Babel as “the shadow of that hideous strength.” When Lewis wrote his book That Hideous Strength, he had already faced a tumultuous twentieth century. Two world wars had torn through the world and the hearts of thousands of battle-worn soldiers across the globe. The twentieth century also brought about a significant rise in industrialization and technocratic society which dehumanized society in ways that were new and disturbing. Politics became controversial as totalitarian measures like emergency private property seizures were taking place and a new technological reproduction preventative called contraception was on the rise. Dictators like Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin, and Adolf Hi**er dominated the national picture of the century with the mass killing of millions.

As Lewis predicted, man’s technological advances took on a dramatically different result than its original intent. Technology was supposed to make life easier, provide additional protections for national security, and improve the health and quality of life for all humanity. Thankfully, many of these advances did result in a better livelihood for millions of people across the world. On the other hand, technological advances, in many ways, have resulted in the loss of understanding of what it means to be human. As ethics and morality, stemming from Christianity, have been set aside for secularism and postmodernism, the advances that were supposed to advance and help humanity have also dehumanized it. This can be seen in the advancement of radical abortion as a form of birth control and transgenderism as a way to express yourself, ignoring biological reality.

In his new book The Desecration of Man, Dr. Carl Trueman describes this radical drifting away from God when he writes, “We have desecrated that which should be sacred and yet failed to fulfill either the Marxist goal of true liberation or the Nietzschean goal of creating our own rich, sacred meanings to replace those we have destroyed.” In other words, secularism, postmodernism, Marxism, and other false ideologies failed humanity and dehumanized it in the process. Only a return to Christianity and what built the West will direct humanity in the right direction again. This is a return to truth worth fighting for.

Lee County in east Arkansas is one step closer to being the state’s first county to become 100% Pro-Life.

In 2021, the Lee County Quorum Court declared itself a Pro-Life County, and since then nearly every incorporated city and town in the county has passed Pro-Life resolutions as well.

In June, the City of Rondo became the latest community in Lee County to pass a resolution affirming that it is Pro-Life.

This really is something worth celebrating.

In 2021 the Arkansas Legislature passed Act 392 affirming that cities and counties can designate themselves as Pro-Life. Two years later lawmakers passed Act 699 by Sen. Joshua Bryant (R – Rogers) and Rep. Kendon Underwood (R – Cave Springs) expanding the law and letting other political subdivisions of the state pass Pro-Life resolutions as well.

To date, about half of all Arkansans live in a Pro-Life City or Pro-Life County.

The pro-life landscape in Arkansas is very different today from 2021, when lawmakers passed Act 392.

Today, Arkansas law generally prohibits abortion except to save the life of the mother, and it is a crime for an abortionist to mail abortion drugs like RU-486 into the state.

But under President Biden, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration loosened its safety protocols to allow mail-order abortion drugs. Pro-abortion states have also enacted “shield laws” protecting abortionists who mail abortion drugs into states like Arkansas.

To make matters worse, the U.S. Department of Justice has opposed federal court cases from pro-lifers who want to stop mail-order abortion.

Americans do not support mail-order abortion drugs. Polling data shows seven in ten likely voters support the in-person doctor’s visit requirement for abortion pills.

In June, Family Council launched a grassroots effort in Arkansas calling on the Trump administration to end former President Joe Biden’s dangerous mail-order abortion policies. Pro-lifers can contact their congressmen by visiting abortioncrimebymail .com.

Pro-lifers must continue standing against abortion. We can do that through public policy work — like contacting elected leaders in Congress and elsewhere about abortion drugs. We can also do that by building a culture of life at the local level — such as by passing resolutions affirming our communities are Pro-Life.

Family Council has created a free toolkit to help pro-lifers who are interested in passing a pro-life resolution in their communities. You can be a part of this growing movement and help your community pass a pro-life resolution!

An Arkansas judge recently denied a motion by Temu seeking to dismiss Attorney General Tim Griffin’s lawsuit against the online company. Attorneys representing Temu reportedly have until August 28 to respond to the A.G.’s allegations that Temu violated the Arkansas Deceptive Trade Practices Act.

Temu is an online shopping platform similar to Amazon or Walmart .com. In 2023, Temu was reported to be the most widely downloaded app in the U.S., and its multibillion-dollar marketing campaign — which included a Super Bowl ad in 2024 — contributed to its success.

But as a Chinese-based tech company, security and privacy experts have raised concerns about Temu.

Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin sued Temu in 2024, alleging Temu uses bargain pricing as a lure so the company can secretly harvest users’ private information — including precise location, installed apps, online accounts, microphones, and cameras — and then funnel that sensitive information to servers subject to Chinese laws.

The A.G.’s team has also alleged that the Temu app is able to bypass phone security systems, potentially granting Temu access to a user’s private messages.

The Arkansas Attorney General’s office says all of this is unconscionable under the Arkansas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, which carries a penalty of $10,000 per violation.

In response, Temu’s attorneys asked the judge presiding over the case to dismiss the A.G.’s lawsuit. On July 15, Judge Meyer in Little Rock denied that motion to dismiss.

The judge’s order notes that the Attorney General has made specific, factual allegations that Temu’s app is intentionally designed to hide its data collection and that Temu has unjustly enriched itself at the expense of Arkansans.

The judge’s order does not mean Attorney General’s team will win the lawsuit, but it does mean their case is clear to proceed. In a separate order, the judge agreed to give Temu’s attorneys until August 28 to respond to the A.G.’s allegations.

It’s worth pointing out the A.G.’s allegations against Temu are very similar to points the A.G.’s office has made in its lawsuits against TikTok — another widely popular internet platform owned by a Chinese company.

Family Council is not aware of any attorney general in America who is doing more to hold tech companies accountable than Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin.

As we always say, tech companies are more than just phone apps and websites. These are multibillion-dollar businesses, and the people who operate them must be held accountable to be sure they do not harm their users.

We appreciate Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin’s office for continuing to pursue these cases so seriously in court.