Tom Cotton

Over the past year, actions on the part of the president and his administration run the gambit from unconstitutional to illegal (as determined in courts) to just inexplicable. If the press were to ask Congressman French Hill or Sen. Tom Cotton if they supported or opposed these actions, I believe they would hide in the men's room to avoid answering the questions.

The problem is the press is not asking them the questions, so they have been able to remain silent and take no positions. Do they deserve this free ride in an election year?

Let's examine questions that should be asked, and call what follows a survey that might be sent to our congressional delegation by an enterprising reporter. The public has a right to know where they stand.

1. The president acknowledged last month that his administration had canceled federal grants to "blue states" and upheld grants to "red states," all solely upon how the voters in those states cast their ballots. Do you support or oppose this policy?

2. It was reported that the president plans to sell, apparently to Wall Street executives, access to his social media posts in advance of the general public. Do you support or oppose this plan?

3. You supported the Big Beautiful Bill last year. Because of the loss of marketplace premium subsidies and Medicaid changes, thousands of people are losing health coverage, which among other things is hurting Arkansas hospitals. Are you open to revisiting this bill to make changes to lessen the negative impact?

4. The president is putting his image on U.S. currency and new passports. Do you think this is appropriate?

5. The president publicly accused a former Olympic athlete of vandalism in ruining the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool. His Justice Department said that was not true, dropping charges and saying faulty workmanship on the part of the contractor the president picked was the cause of the liner defect. Should the president publicly apologize to the man falsely accused?

6. Was launching the war on Iran a good idea in retrospect?

7. The law seems to require that 60 days into a war the president must come to Congress for authorization to continue the war. You opposed the effort to comply with that law. Why?

8. The administration removed the names of four service people killed in the Middle East from the official war dead because they were killed during a brief "ceasefire." Do you support that decision?

9. The president has more than once demanded Denmark give the U.S. Greenland. Do you support him on that?

10. The president and his family earned at least $2 billion last year. Do you see any problems with that?

11. The president signed a "settlement agreement" (now rescinded) with his own IRS creating a fund to pay people who thought they were wronged by the government; he declined to rule out paying Jan. 6 Capitol attackers who injured police. Did you support this?

12. The "settlement agreement" exempted the president and his family from IRS audits, apparently wiping out a reported $100 million in money owed the IRS. Did you support this policy?

13. The president is reportedly draining the maintenance budget for the National Park Service to pay for his D.C. projects, like a giant arch and the botched reflecting pool. Do you support his action?

14. The president finalized sweeping rollbacks essentially doing away with the Endangered Species Act, saying it's OK to destroy the habitat of endangered species, no permit needed. Do you support that action?

15. The DOGE project fired many of the FDA food safety inspectors; disease outbreaks from tainted foods like lettuce have ensued. Did you support these firings?

16. The courts ruled the president's tariffs, in the absence of congressional approval, were illegal. Apparently many millions of dollars of refunds are in process. The president has since tried to reinstate many tariffs, which seem inflationary. Do you support his tariffs?

17. The president accepted a "free" $400 million plane from Qatar, vowing no public money would be needed to convert it to Air Force One. We now know millions of dollars must be spent on the plane. Did you support accepting the plane?

18. Press accounts say since the U.S. took over Venezuela, some $13 billion in oil sales have occurred; the money initially was reportedly deposited offshore in Qatar, outside government accountability. Did you support this?

19. The president had his name added to the Kennedy Center, since removed by court order. Did you support adding his name?

20. The president has pardoned a long list of people convicted of financial crimes, including a man in Florida that diverted millions away from a chain of nursing homes employees' withholdings. According to press accounts, the pardon came after the man's mother donated $1 million to a Trump fund. Did you support pardons like this?

21. Any nightly newscast showing the Oval Office finds it now gilded in large amounts of gold on door frames, the fireplace screen and so forth. Presumably this has been done at taxpayer expense. Do you support the gilding of the office?

22. The Trump administration just announced elimination of many regulations for Head Start eliminating things like medical screenings, math and literacy curricula, class sizes and even a requirement the kids brush their teeth. Do you support these changes?

The public and voters deserve answers.

Ray Hanley of Little Rock is a retired health-care and IT executive and an Arkansas historian.