Fallout from January 6, news about the Iowans in Congress, and more
Fallout from January 6, news about the Iowans in Congress, and more
Dec. 19 "Capitol Week" is online
On Monday night, Dennis Hart and I collaborated on our 99th episode of “Capitol Week”. We spent about the first 20 minutes on our usual format, covering news from the previous week. We spent the last part of the show revisiting our first program, which aired on February 1, 2021.
KHOI Community Radio broadcasts our show 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:
Topics we covered:
The final televised meeting of the House Select Committee on January 6, and the criminal referrals the committee is sending to the U.S. Department of Justice;
The recent sentencing of two Iowans who were part of the attack on the U.S. Capitol;
Ross Wilburn stepping down as chair of the Iowa Democratic Party (he will remain in the Iowa House, representing part of Ames);
The lack of publicly declared candidates to lead the Iowa Democratic Party after a difficult election cycle;
President Joe Biden signing the Respect for Marriage Act;
Senator Chuck Grassley indicating he won’t endorse a presidential candidate before the 2024 Iowa caucuses, and the Republican Party of Iowa’s State Central Committee calling for neutrality;
The legal questions surrounding U.S. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks voter registration change, listing her address as State Senator Chris Cournoyer’s home (Pat Rynard was first to report this story for Iowa Starting Line last week, and I delved into the legal issues in more depth at Bleeding Heartland);
Governor Kim Reynolds and other Republican politicians, including U.S. Representative Ashley Hinson, targeting the TikTok app;
The decline in Iowa’s expected state revenues as tax cuts phase in;
State Auditor Rob Sand’s report on the University of Iowa’s billion-dollar utilities deal (Vanessa Miller wrote a good piece on this for the Cedar Rapids Gazette; Sand had to go to the Iowa Supreme Court to get information his office subpoenaed from the university regarding the arrangement);
The latest COVID-19 trends in Iowa (please mask up in indoor public spaces, if you’re not doing so already);
The federal government sending another round of free COVID-19 tests to Americans who request them;
Governor Reynolds joining other Republicans in asking President Biden to formally end the public health emergency and why it matters;
A recap of our very first show, during which Dennis and I discussed the Iowa House passing a state constitutional amendment on abortion, and both chambers passing a state constitutional amendment on guns, a new law requiring public schools to offer 100 percent in-person instruction, and the early stages of the battle over the governor’s school voucher program.
My scoop from January 2021, in which I exclusively reported, “Governor Kim Reynolds authorized using state resources to conduct COVID-19 tests at a workplace that had only one confirmed case after the company's owners reached out to her” in May 2020 (the firm was tied to major GOP donor Bruce Rastetter).
Next Monday, Dennis and I will record our 100th edition of “Capitol Week,” and near the end we will revisit our first program from early January 2022.
The Iowa Writers Collaborative columnists, in alphabetical order.