Another impeachment, Republican abortion politics, and more

Sept. 18 "Capitol Week" is online

Sep 19, 2023

Greetings from the “Great Lakes” region, where I’m attending the third annual Okoboji Writers’ Retreat. Some highlights from Monday: We heard two spoken word poets, Caleb Rainey and Kelsey Bigelow, at the opening session. I attended a great session on social media led by Iowa Starting Line’s Ty Rushing, and talked about writing for Substack on a panel with Doug Burns, Cheryl Tevis, Art Cullen, and Chris Jones. (Click the links and please consider subscribing if you’re not already receiving their newsletters.)

The main evening attraction was a screening of the Des Moines Register’s RAGBRAI documentary “Shift.” But before heading to the Pearson Lakes Art Center for the movie, I skipped the group dinner to set up my computer in my car, so Dennis Hart and I could record “Capitol Week” at the usual time (Mondays at 7 pm). Fortunately, the internet connection through my phone hotspot did not fail us!

Here’s our September 18 show. Remember, the whole “Capitol Week” archive is available for free on KHOI’s website.

1×

0:00

-30:02

Topics we discussed:

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s about-face on impeachment, ordering an inquiry into President Joe Biden without putting the matter to a vote of the full House. Bleeding Heartland guest author Rick Morain sees the impeachment as a sign of McCarthy’s weakness, and I tend to agree;
Former President Donald Trump has already endorsed impeaching Biden; most of the other Republican presidential candidates have said they favor the inquiry, but some have indicated they don’t yet see evidence justifying impeachment;
All four of Iowa’s U.S. House Republicans have expressed support for the impeachment inquiry (Radio Iowa published the direct quotes). None served in Congress at the time of Trump’s first impeachment in 2019. Dennis thinks we’re in an era where every president is going to be impeached;
The president’s son Hunter Biden faces new criminal charges for lying about his drug use while purchasing and owning a firearm. These offenses are rarely prosecuted as stand-alone crimes;
We spent several minutes going over highlights from the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition event in Des Moines on Saturday night. You can watch any of the ten candidate appearances on C-SPAN. I wish the organizers of these cattle call events would ask all the candidates roughly the same questions;
For me, the big takeaway from the evening is that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has decided the abortion issue is his ticket to denting Trump’s support among the important bloc of social conservative voters. Notably, he endorsed Senator Tommy Tuberville’s months-long holdup of military promotions over what DeSantis called an “abortion tourism” policy;
Former South Carolina Governor and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley continues to express a pragmatic position on abortion. She emphasized that a federal ban is not realistic, and criticized Tuberville’s actions. I see this as a shrewd way to appeal to pro-choice Republicans, even though Haley is not pro-choice;
Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird interviewed several of the candidates, and pressed Vivek Ramaswamy on his pledge to shut down the FBI. He sought to clarify his position by explaining that the FBI’s field agents would be assigned to other law enforcement agencies;
The abortion issue continues to be the most interesting fault line in the GOP presidential field. Former Vice President Mike Pence has emphasized his long support for the “pro-life” position, and has endorsed a federal 15-week abortion ban, as has Senator Tim Scott. Talk show host Larry Elder surprised me by saying abortion should be regulated at the state level;
Trump gave DeSantis a gift during his interview with new “Meet the Press” host Kristin Welker, when he described Florida’s six-week abortion ban as a “terrible mistake.” I have a Bleeding Heartland post in progress on whether this may finally be the issue that drives white evangelicals away from Trump;
Trump seems to be pivoting to a general-election position on abortion, which makes sense given his dominant position in the primary field. I also see his stance as a convenient narrative to explain Republicans’ underwhelming performance in the 2022 midterms;
The Iowa Democratic Party’s governing body has agreed to hold in-person caucuses on January 15, the same day as the Iowa GOP. We talked about the competing concerns facing Iowa Democrats as they considered whether to hold precinct caucuses on the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday;
We still don’t know when Iowa Democrats will announce the results of the mail-in presidential preference voting;
The Iowa GOP will almost certainly continue to allow same-day voter registration for the 2024 caucuses. I found this intriguing, since State Representative Bobby Kaufmann was pushing legislation this year that would have required caucus-goers to be registered with a party 70 days before caucus night;
Senator Chuck Grassley has been critical of the FBI since Trump’s presidency, but he’s not on board with eliminating the agency;
The lack of a declared Democratic candidate in Iowa’s third Congressional district has generated some recent coverage in the Des Moines Register and Cedar Rapids Gazette. Democrats also don’t have any candidate in the second district, covering most of northeast Iowa;
I wrote a deep dive last week on an interesting GOP primary shaping up for an Iowa House seat in Warren County, and Dennis and I explained why I’ll be keeping an eye on the Samantha Fett/Garrett Gobble race;
Dennis thinks the Iowa Public Information Board’s proposal to address “vexatious requesters” of public records might be targeting people like me. The board members claimed during a meeting last Friday that they didn’t have journalists in mind, but I was alarmed by the idea, and the Iowa Freedom of Information Council flagged some obvious constitutional problems;
The Iowa Utilities Board may try to finish its hearing on Summit Carbon Solutions’ proposed CO2 pipeline in September. We briefly updated listeners on where things stand, but I recommend following Jared Strong’s pipeline coverage for Iowa Capital Dispatch. Later this week I’ll be publishing another article by Nancy Dugan, who has done great original reporting on under-covered aspects of Summit’s proposal, especially the massive water usage a carbon sequestration project would entail.