Iowa legislative news, abortion access, and more

April 10 "Capitol Week" is online

A quick note for readers in the Ames area: KHOI Community Radio is holding a “Book Sale Plus” fundraiser this weekend. It’s happening at 622 Douglas Avenue on April 14 (4-7pm), April 15 (10am-4pm), and April 16 (1-4pm). There will be a selection of books, music, movies, games, and puzzles. All proceeds go to the station, which offers a wide variety of talk and music programming on a shoestring budget.

Although it was a relatively slow week in the Iowa legislature, Dennis Hart and I still had plenty to talk about on the latest “Capitol Week.”

Our show was 30 minutes long, as usual. This sound file is an hour long because it includes programming KHOI aired between 7:30 and 8:00 pm Monday night: the latest episode of the Noise Filter Podcast, which focuses on public health issues; a past edition of Outcasting Overtime, which contains LGBTQ youth programming; and H2O Radio’s weekly news report, covering “the week in water.”

You can browse all of the “Capitol Week” archive on KHOI’s website. Topics Dennis and I covered on our April 10 program:

• The latest news related to Donald Trump’s indictment in New York on 34 counts related to allegedly falsifying business records;

• Parallel trends happening in public opinion: Trump is rising among Republicans, while Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has lost ground since late last year. At the same time, national polls sampling the entire electorate (such as the latest Grinnell College Poll by Selzer & Co) show Trump’s favorable numbers ticking down, and unfavorable numbers ticking up;

• Governor Kim Reynolds followed the same script as most of the GOP establishment last week. She said she hasn’t looked at the indictment, but she believes it’s politically motivated;

• Former Arizona candidate for governor Kari Lake was back in Iowa last week for an event with Story County Republicans (she’s widely seen as a possible Trump running mate for 2024);

• Former Arkansas Governor and 2024 presidential candidate Asa Hutchinson will be back in Iowa this week; he’s tried to carve out a different niche from other Republicans, saying the charges against Trump are serious;

• Reynolds signed the huge state government reorganization bill (Senate File 514) last week, and we summarized some of its key provisions, which go well beyond the “streamlining” the governor has emphasized;

• The oddly quiet week at the statehouse, with the Iowa Senate holding no floor debate at all last week;

• However, the Iowa House approved a new version of Senate File 496, the governor’s “parental empowerment” proposal affecting public schools. This combines many ideas, such as new restrictions on school library materials, a ban on gender identity or sexual orientation instruction in grades K-6, and a requirement for schools to out transgender students to their parents. At Bleeding Heartland, I walked through in more detail what has happened with Reynolds’ original proposal, and how each part changed as it moved through the Senate and House;

• Iowa House Democrats rolled out a new legislative package, combining proposals to reduce the cost of living for Iowans. You can read more here about the ideas for expanding affordable housing and child care, freezing tuition at state universities and community colleges, and lowering prescription drug costs and utility bills;

• Iowa Senate committees have begun the process of approving Reynolds’ appointees for various positions; Democrats no longer have the votes to block any of the nominees (typically they have rejected a few nominees a year);

• Dennis and I briefly discussed a few bills that are alive or dead after the second “funnel” deadline, which we didn’t have time for last week. Bills that could still be passed this year include a proposal to improve the open records process (House File 350) and an effort to change county supervisor elections in a handful of Democratic-leaning counties (Senate File 443);

• Bills that are presumably not moving forward this year include a proposal to extend the time frame for filing an open records or open meetings complaint (House File 333), and various bills related to campaign finance or election recounts (such as House File 638 and House File 356);

• Also, the Iowa Senate did not move on an “anti-SLAPP” bill (House File 177), which is designed to protect the media against frivolous defamation lawsuits;

• The latest news related to Senate Republicans’ effort to limit State Auditor Rob Sand’s authority. Last Friday, the Iowa Supreme Court unanimously ruled against Sand’s effort to enforce a subpoena against the Iowa Communities Assurance Pool. (Sand had sought to audit their spending after Ryan Foley of the Associated Press reported in 2019 on lavish expenditures on out-of-state board meetings at luxury resorts.) Senate Republicans argued this case proves its important to rein in the auditor and have asked to see all subpoenas Sand has issued since 2019;

• The nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency released a fiscal note on Senate File 478, which validated warnings from Sand and others that the bill could jeopardize billions of dollars in federal funding for Iowa;

• Why I’m skeptical the Iowa House and Senate will finish all of their work for the year by April 28 (at Bleeding Heartland I wrote more about the Senate GOP’s unprecedented action last week to advance seven blank budget bills);

• More than half a million Iowa voters have been moved from “active” to “inactive” status, because they did not cast a ballot in the 2022 midterm election (this was a predictable outcome of a GOP law passed in 2021);

• The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee released its initial 2024 target list, which includes two of Iowa’s four U.S. House districts (you can read more on this at Bleeding Heartland as well);

• The news that Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird halted a longstanding policy to reimburse sexual assault victims for emergency contraception and abortion services, if needed;

• The Iowa Supreme Court will hear oral arguments April 11 on the governor’s attempt to reinstate a near-total abortion ban, which was passed in 2018 and struck down in 2019 (I live-tweeted the proceedings; you can follow my thread here);

• The status of a main medication used for abortion is in doubt, following dueling federal court rulings last Friday in Texas and Washington state; Brenna Bird had joined other Republican attorneys general supporting the effort to revoke the FDA’s approval of mifepristone in the year 2000;

• Iowa lawmakers are unlikely to expand postpartum Medicaid coverage to 12 months, despite efforts by public health advocates (Caleb McCullough recently reported on this for the Cedar Rapids Gazette);

• The latest news related to state bans on transgender girls or women playing on sports teams that align with their gender identity; the Biden administration issued a new interpretation of Title IX, which it presented as a compromise, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to lift a stay on West Virginia’s state law, which is much like what Iowa enacted in 2022 (no one has challenged Iowa’s law in court).

• What I’m watching this week in the legislature.

Thank you for reading and listening!

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Here’s the current list of Iowa Writers Collaborative columnists, in alphabetical order. All provide content for free, with paid subscription options.

Laura Belin: Iowa Politics with Laura Belin, Windsor Heights

Doug Burns: The Iowa Mercury, Carroll

Dave Busiek: Dave Busiek on Media, Des Moines

Art Cullen: Art Cullen’s Notebook, Storm Lake

Suzanna de Baca Dispatches from the Heartland, Huxley

Debra Engle: A Whole New World, Madison County

Julie Gammack: Julie Gammack’s Iowa Potluck, Des Moines and Okoboji

Joe Geha: Fern and Joe, Ames

Jody Gifford: Benign Inspiration, West Des Moines

Beth Hoffman: In the Dirt, Lovilla

Dana James: New Black Iowa, Des Moines

Pat Kinney: View from Cedar Valley, Waterloo

Fern Kupfer: Fern and Joe, Ames

Robert Leonard: Deep Midwest: Politics and Culture, Bussey

Tar Macias: Hola Iowa, Iowa

Kurt Meyer, Showing Up, St. Ansgar

Kyle Munson, Kyle Munson’s Main Street, Des Moines

Jane Nguyen, The Asian Iowan, West Des Moines

John Naughton: My Life, in Color, Des Moines

Chuck Offenburger: Iowa Boy Chuck Offenburger, Jefferson and Des Moines

Barry Piatt: Piatt on Politic Behind the Curtain, Washington, D.C.

Macey Spensley: The Midwest Creative, Iowa

Mary Swander: Mary Swander’s Buggy Land, Kalona

Mary Swander: Mary Swander’s Emerging Voices, Kalona

Cheryl Tevis: Unfinished Business, Boone County

Ed Tibbetts: Along the Mississippi, Davenport

Teresa Zilk: Talking Good, Des Moines

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