2026 campaign news and Iowa angles on the "big, beautiful bill"

May 26 edition of "KHOI's Capitol Week"

Reflection shot of the U.S. Capitol is by Jonathan O'Reilly (Shutterstock)

The Iowa legislature’s 2025 session may be over, but there are no slow news weeks for Spencer Dirks and me! We could have spent the whole show on Iowa impacts from the bill U.S. House Republicans approved last Thursday. And there’s never a dull week on the 2026 campaign trail.

The sound file from our May 26 show is embedded at the top of this message. If you mainly want to listen, can also subscribe to “KHOI’s Capitol Week” on any podcast platform, or find it through smart speakers. If you do subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, etc., please rate and review us. The full show archive (going back to February 2021) is available on KHOI’s website.

For those who would rather read than listen, here’s your written recap. If your email provider truncates this post, you can read the whole article without interruption at this link.

Latest news on the Republican campaign for governor

Surprising no one, Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig confirmed last Tuesday that he won’t run for governor. Instead, he’ll seek a third term in his current office, and will focus on “building markets for Iowa products, defending our livestock industry, accelerating soil and water conservation efforts, and making sure rural Iowa thrives for future generations.”

I would guess that Naig’s name ID is quite low outside people who work in agriculture. As the incumbent in 2018 (appointed by Governor Kim Reynolds), he didn’t even win the GOP primary outright, securing the nomination following several ballots at the state convention. So I never saw a path for Naig to win the nomination for governor. Since U.S. Representative Randy Feenstra will likely have a lot of Big Ag support in his bid to succeed Reynolds, it makes sense for Naig to stay where he is.

At this writing, former State Representative Brad Sherman is the only declared GOP candidate for governor. Feenstra is in the “exploring” stage, but he’s clearly running, with a $400,000 TV ad buy already in place. (State Treasurer Roby Smith endorsed Feenstra for governor this past week.)

State Senator Mike Bousselot is exploring the governor’s race, with help from former Gov Terry Branstad. Iowa House Speaker Pat Grassley hasn’t ruled it out yet.

Attorney General Brenna Bird went to the border for a photo op last week, which suggests to me that she hasn’t locked down Trump’s endorsement. (I wrote more about this over the weekend.) If she had Trump’s support, I believe she would already be actively campaigning for governor.

We know U.S. Representatives Ashley Hinson, Zach Nunn, and Mariannette Miller-Meeks are not running for governor. Lieutenant Governor Chris Cournoyer is running for state auditor.

I think the field is far from set and wouldn’t be surprised if some Republican from the business community decides to run for governor.

Internal poll shows Nathan Sage with a shot against Ernst

Nathan Sage, the first announced Democratic candidate for Iowa’s U.S. Senate seat, released an internal poll last week suggesting he does better against incumbent Joni Ernst than other possible contenders. After each respondent read favorable biographies about each candidate, Sage led Ernst by 47 percent to 45 percent, “while all other candidates trailed by at least 6 percentage points.”

While we should always take internal polling with a grain of salt, Data for Progress is a real polling firm, and the bios they used for each candidate were generally positive.

A big takeaway for me was that Ernst has a net negative favorability rating, but “initially leads each hypothetical Democratic challenger by 5 to 6 points in initial head-to-head matchups, with 10 percent of the electorate as undecided.” That probably reflects her higher name ID.

They tested two different bios for Sage: one led with the fact that he was raised in a trailer park in Mason City, the other introduced him as “a lifelong independent running for U.S. Senate as a different kind of Democrat, one who actually cares about working people. Sage is a patriot, not a politician.” It’s not clear which bio performed better; that’s one reason a campaign would conduct a poll like this.

The poll tested messages about three other possible Democratic candidates: State Senator Zach Wahls, State Representative J.D. Scholten, and Jackie Norris. She hasn’t made any public statement about her plans, but is believed to be seriously considering the Senate race.

For those who aren’t familiar, Norris is the current president of the Des Moines School Board and president of a management consulting firm in central Iowa. She and her husband John Norris have been involved in Democratic politics for decades. She was the Iowa campaign manager for Barack Obama during the 2008 general election and after that briefly served as chief of staff for First Lady Michelle Obama. More recently she served as the CEO of Goodwill of Central Iowa.

I don’t think the Democratic field for Senate will be set until late summer or early fall. But I do expect Wahls and/or Scholten to announce sooner than that. State Representative Josh Turek said earlier this year he’s thinking about running for Senate, but he wasn’t mentioned in the Data for Progress poll. I would guess Turek will seek a third term in the Iowa House.

On the Republican side, the only declared candidate is Joshua Smith, the former Libertarian activist. Former State Senator Jim Carlin (who challenged Grassley in the 2022 primary) filed paperwork with the FEC earlier this year but hasn’t made any announcement. I haven’t seen any new statement on his campaign Facebook page.

I found it odd that Ernst has not announced a guest for her “Roast and Ride” fundraiser. Usually that happens in June and she starts promoting the event months ahead of time. The website indicates the event is happening in October this year, with Ernst as the special guest.

Last year Ernst told multiple journalists she was likely to run for a third term in the Senate in 2026. But that was before Trump was elected. Could she be angling for a Trump administration job?

I assume she is running again. But it would be a wild GOP primary if she doesn’t run.

Ryan Peterman running for secretary of state

Democrat Ryan Peterman announced last week that he’s running for Iowa secretary of state. He grew up in the Quad Cities, graduated from Bettendorf high school, and attended the Naval Academy before spending years as a Navy pilot. He spent a year in Washington as a fellow on the staff of Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire. There’s more background on his campaign website.

Peterman left the Navy in 2024 to move back home and be closer to family. He told me that working in Congress helped him understand “the potential for good that the government can do” when public servants work for the people. While he’s never been a candidate before, he volunteered in the first Congressional district last year and for State Senator Mike Zimmer’s special election campaign.

When I interviewed Peterman last week, he said he wants to be a voice for giving people more access and encouraging people to vote. He believes there should be fewer barriers to the ballot box, with a longer early voting window, more polling places, and more time to vote on election day. You can watch our interview:

The current Secretary of State Paul Pate served a term in that office during the 1990s, and was re-elected to the position in 2014, 2028, and 2022. He hasn’t said whether he’s running for another term in 2026 but most expect him to do so.

Iowa angles on the “big, beautiful bill”

All four Iowans in the U.S. House Republicans voted for the budget reconciliation bill that President Trump has called the “one big, beautiful bill.” Since it passed with no votes to spare, every one of them cast a decisive vote.

This reconciliation bill may be one of the most consequential pieces of legislation of our lifetimes. So we will be covering it extensively on “KHOI’s Capitol Week.” We broke down our first conversation this way:

Overall tax and budget impacts

The bill would extends most of the Trump tax cuts from 2017, adding a few more policies that Trump promised last year, such as no income taxes on tips and overtime.

Most Americans would get some tax cut. But it would be relatively small for most people–rapidly increasing as you get higher on the income scale.

The bill calls for big domestic spending cuts, but those don’t come close to paying for the tax cuts. Over 10 years, it would increase federal deficits by anywhere from 2.3 trillion dollars to perhaps 3.4 trillion.

Big cuts to food assistance

The House-approved bill would cut federal spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by around $300 billion in the coming decade. It’s worth noting that Nunn and Feenstra voted for this twice: as members of the House Agriculture Committee and on the floor, along with Hinson and Miller-Meeks.

A centerpiece will be to impose work requirements on adults between the ages of 55 and 64, and on parents with children between the ages of 6 and 17. Some food benefit costs would be shifted to states, which might prompt states to further restrict benefits.

Around 260,000 Iowans receive some SNAP benefits. The CBPP estimated that statewide, around 29,000 adults would be at risk of losing their food assistance entirely. Around 58,000 Iowans might lose some amount of their SNAP benefits. I wrote more about these assumptions at Bleeding Heartland.

The reconciliation bill doesn’t limit food choices for SNAP recipients, but last week the U.S. Department of Agriculture approved Governor Reynolds’ request for a waiver to allow Iowa to restrict food people can buy with SNAP benefits. Most kinds of candy and pop will be restricted as of January 1, 2026.

Big Medicaid cuts

The bill would reduce federal spending on Medicaid by at least $700 billion over the coming decade. Miller-Meeks voted for these cuts twice: as a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and on the House floor. (You may have seen a viral video of her running away from Alex Lawson of Social Security Works. I expect to see it in many TV ads next year.)

About 600,000 Iowa adults and children currently receive health insurance through Medicaid. That includes some 183,000 Iowans who are part of the Medicaid expansion (Iowa Health and Wellness Plan). The reconciliation bill would increase work requirements and force Medicaid recipients to prove their eligibility more frequently.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that 56,000 to 117,000 Iowans could lose Medicaid coverage, including between 14,000 and 30,000 Iowans in each Congressional district.

Republicans have defended the cuts by saying they are trying to preserve Medicaid and SNAP for people who really need it, or make sure that only U.S. citizens receive the benefits. Every nonpartisan analysis agrees that you can’t cut this amount only by targeting waste and fraud, and very few receiving benefits are immigrants.

This isn’t just an issue for people who are on Medicaid. The American Hospital Association has warned, “Hospitals — especially in rural and underserved areas — will be forced to make difficult decisions about whether they will have to reduce services, reduce staff and potentially consider closing their doors. Other impacts could include longer waiting times to receive care, more crowded emergency departments, and hospitals not being able to invest in technology and innovations for clinical care.”

Bill Bumgarner, who worked in hospital management for 41 years, wrote a Bleeding Heartland guest post explaining why Medicaid cuts could reduce health care services available to all Iowans.

Skyrocketing premiums for health insurance through the exchange

More than 136,000 Iowans (many of them self-employed) buy their own health insurance through the Affordable Care Act exchange. Many will see their premiums go way up next year, and thousands will likely be priced out of coverage. In part that’s because Republicans intend to let enhanced subsidies for these policies expire at the end of 2025. Some other wonky changes will make the insurance premiums way more expensive.

I’ve seen projections that around a third of people may drop their coverage. There’s also a chance that some insurers will leave state markets.

Clean energy tax credits going away

The reconciliation bill would eliminate most of the clean energy tax credits that were extended through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. They could only be used for projects where construction has started within 60 days of the “big, beautiful bill” going into effect.

I found this particularly interesting, because in early May, Hinson, Miller-Meeks, and Nunn wrote to the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, asking him to preserve a couple of those energy tax credits—even though all Republicans opposed the Inflation Reduction Act when it was moving through Congress.

I’m working on a Bleeding Heartland post that will cover this in more depth.

Defunding Planned Parenthood

The reconciliation bill would make Planned Parenthood ineligible to receive federal funds through Medicaid or Title X, which covers a range of family planning services including contraception, cancer screenings, STI testing, and pregnancy tests. Those provisions could affect hundreds of Planned Parenthood clinics across the country.

After the state created a new family planning program in 2017 to exclude Planned Parenthood, the organization closed Iowa clinics in Sioux City, Bettendorf, Burlington, and Keokuk. Now history is repeating itself, because Planned Parenthood North Central States announced late last week that it will close four of the six clinics still operating in Iowa (Ames, Sioux City, Cedar Rapids, and Urbandale). There would be only two Planned Parenthood clinics left in the state, in Des Moines and Iowa City.

NOTUS reported earlier this month that Miller-Meeks and one other vulnerable House Republican skipped the Energy and Commerce Committee vote on a Democratic amendment to remove the language defunding Planned Parenthood. In other words, Miller-Meeks didn’t want to be on record voting on that specific part of the bill.

Watch this space for more

I am keeping an eye out for more estimates of how the reconciliation bill will affect Iowans. The higher education funding changes haven’t gotten much media coverage but could be important.

Changes could mean one in five or maybe one in three students would lose their Pell Grants. Around 60,000 Iowans received Pell Grants in 2023.

There are also changes to student loan repayment programs that would affect lower income people especially. Some of this language may change as the Senate takes up the bill.

Miller-Meeks attended Pope Leo XIV’s first Mass

We ran out of time last week to cover this story, so I wanted to mention that Miller-Meeks was among some two dozen members of Congress who traveled to Vatican City for the First Mass of Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope. In a video posted to social media on May 18, Miller-Meeks said it was “very exciting” and “very humbling” to celebrate the event with Catholics around the world.

According to the Pew Research Center’s latest religious landscape survey, released in February, about 15 percent of Iowa adults identify as Catholic.

For those who (like me) appreciate this kind of political trivia, Miller-Meeks and Nunn are the only Catholics in Iowa’s current Congressional delegation. Feenstra attends a Christian Reformed church, Hinson is a non-denominational Protestant, Ernst is Lutheran, and Senator Chuck Grassey is Baptist.

Governor signs many new laws

The Iowa House and Senate were so busy in April and May that we couldn’t cover every newsworthy bill. We plan to report on some as Governor Reynolds signs them into law. She signed around two dozen bills last week, and we were able to mention eight of them:

• Senate File 167 increases per-pupil funding for K-12 schools by 2 percent for the coming year to $7,988 per student. The same bill also increases what families can receive for each private school student in Education Savings Account (school voucher) by the same amount. Because the income limits on school vouchers are going away in the coming year, the state will spend about 44 percent more on the program in fiscal year 2026.

• House File 472 is the “anti-SLAPP” bill, which will help people and media organizations defend against Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation. Those suits are designed to retaliate against them for exercising their First Amendment rights. Iowa is the 38th state to adopt this kind of law.

• House File 956 changes several judicial branch policies. The mandatory retirement age for judges will increase from 72 to 78. People living in counties adjacent to a judicial district will be allowed to serve as judges in that district. (This is designed to increase the number of applicants for vacancies.) A pandemic adaptation is now codified, as some court proceedings will be able to take place remotely. We mentioned on a previous show that the judicial branch budget will give Iowa’s judges a 2.5 percent raise in the coming year.

• Parts of Senate File 311 had bipartisan support, giving local government employees more due process rights if they face disciplinary action. But many Democrats voted against the bill because it prohibits cities with a population over 8,000 from having citizen review boards for the police. This will affect Ames, Cedar Rapids, Coralville, Dubuque, and Iowa City.

• House File 549 will require county attorneys to complete reports more promptly after a police shooting.

• The “right to try” bill (Senate File 233) says that if you have a life-threatening or debilitating illness and have exhausted FDA-approved treatments, with a physician’s approval, you can access individualized treatments (like a drug or a genetic-based biological product) that don’t have full FDA approval. Both chambers unanimously approved this bill.

• House File 390 was more partisan. Current law requires someone working at a licensed child care facility to get physical within the six months before they starts working. Under the new law, employees must get a physical within six months after they start working at a child care center. Democrats warned babies and young toddlers wouldn’t be able to go for help if something happened to the employee supervising them.

• Under Senate File 303, cities and counties won’t be able to prohibit people from setting off fireworks on July 3, July 4, or December 31. Earlier versions of the bill would have eliminated all local government regulation in this area.

Angel Ramirez sworn in as Iowa’s first Latina legislator

Because the legislature went into overtime, Democratic State Representative Angel Ramirez was able to be sworn in after her special election victory was certified.

Ramirez spoke to reporters on May 13, her first day of work in the chamber. Among other things, she discussed why representation is so important for Iowa’s Latino community.

In one of her first speeches on the House floor, Ramirez opposed the Republican proposed justice systems budget. She argued that the spending plan was “heavily focused on penalties” instead of looking at how to reduce crime and the recidivism rate. There was too little funding for education, mental health, and substance abuse treatment services for incarcerated people.

Notable bills that didn’t make the cut

I wanted to flag a few of the bills that didn’t get across the finish line this year, but could come back during the 2026 legislative session:

• a salary increase for state legislators and statewide officials (through Senate committee, never brought to the floor)

• a bill allowing public schools to hire chaplains (approved by the full House and a Senate committee, not brought to Senate floor)

• a bill criminalizing “smuggling” by transporting undocumented immigrants (approved by the full House and a Senate committee, not brought to Senate floor)

• a “medical conscience” bill that would allow health care providers not to provide services that went against their religious beliefs (through committee in both chambers, not brought to the floor)

• sales tax exemptions for toilet paper, vitamins, and detergent (approved by the full House, not taken up by Senate)

We had only 30 seconds to talk about an important Iowa Supreme Court ruling handed down on Friday. The justices unanimously held that the estates of four former employees at Tyson’s meatpacking plant in Waterloo, who died during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, can proceed with their lawsuits. The families can’t sue the Tyson corporation, but they can pursue claims against Tyson corporate executives as well as supervisors at the Waterloo plant, who allegedly showed reckless disregard by putting workers in an unsafe environment.

Thanks so much for reading or listening! We’ll be back next week.