Big abortion court ruling, Ernst "censured," and more
Dec. 12 edition of "Capitol Week" is online
Dennis Hart and I are closing in on our 100th episode of “Capitol Week”! Over the next two Mondays, we are going to revisit some of our early shows. When we launched in February 2021, we weren’t sure whether KHOI Community Radio would air the show beyond the end of the legislative session in the spring. But there’s always plenty of Iowa political news to talk about, so I’m grateful KHOI has kept us running year-round.
The show airs live on Mondays at 7:00 pm, with a rebroadcast on Wednesday at noon. But you can listen online anytime; all audio files are archived here.
Here’s the audio from our latest program, number 98. We had to rework the plan less than an hour before airtime, because of major breaking news:
Topics we covered:
The Polk County District Court ruling that dropped late Monday afternoon, rejecting the state’s effort to reinstate Iowa’s near-total abortion ban from 2018 (at Bleeding Heartland, I posted the ruling and discussed in more depth the points that influenced Judge Celene Gogerty’s decision);
The time frame for the Iowa Supreme Court to consider the governor’s appeal of this ruling (at a Tuesday morning news conference, the ACLU of Iowa’s legal director Rita Bettis Austen indicated that the typical schedule would lead to oral arguments during the court’s next term, which starts in the late summer);
Last week’s U.S. House vote on a bill to guarantee same-sex marriages will continue to be recognized nationwide (Iowa’s representatives voted the same way they did over the summer, three in favor, one against);
Several county Republican organizations “censuring” Senator Joni Ernst for supporting the Respect for Marriage Act last month;
The Des Moines County GOP central committee not only condemning Ernst, but calling for a primary challenger against U.S. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks, also over the same-sex marriage issue;
Final results from the recount in Iowa House district 81, which was the first Iowa legislative race I’ve ever seen where a recount produced a new winner, Republican Luana Stoltenberg. I wrote more about the troubling absentee ballot discrepancy at Bleeding Heartland;
Why a hand recount and machine recount can produce different results;
Why Democrat Craig Cooper had no real choice but to accept the outcome of the House district 81 race, despite the questions about the accuracy of the final count;
What happened in the other Iowa House races where Republicans requested recounts (more details on all those recounts are in this Bleeding Heartland post);
Why the difference between a GOP House majority of 64-36 (with Stoltenberg) versus 63-37 could be important for Governor Kim Reynolds’ school voucher proposal;
Iowa Senate Republicans and House Democrats electing new leadership, including a historic all-woman team for House Democrats;
Prospects for new gun legislation following passage of a state constitutional amendment subjecting any firearms regulations to “strict scrutiny”;
Senator Chuck Grassley’s rather weak reaction to former President Donald Trump calling for terminating election rules and the constitution if necessary (Grassley’s staff don’t allow me to participate in his press calls, but Caleb McCullough wrote up the story for the Cedar Rapids Gazette);
Unpaid bills in Sioux City related to the rally Trump headlined shortly before the November election (the Sioux City Journal’s Dolly Butz has been all over this story);
The coming end to the U.S. military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, as part of a huge defense authorization bill (Iowa’s four U.S. House members all voted for the legislation);
Worrying trends in Iowa’s COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations;
Federal prosecutors asking for a five-year prison term for Doug Jensen, one of the most recognizable faces of the January 6 insurrection.
The Iowa Writers Collaborative columnists, in alphabetical order.