KHOI's Capitol Week now available on podcast platforms!

Feb. 12 progam is online

I’m excited to share the news that our weekly radio show is now available as a podcast. If you would like to download your 30-minute dose of Iowa politics in that format, search for “KHOI’s Capitol Week” on your favorite platform (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, etc). Thanks are due to our producer and KHOI’s station manager, Mike Murphy, as well as the station’s chief of operations, Jim Popken.

Please also consider becoming a member/supporter of KHOI. Probably many of you are Iowa Public Radio members, as my family has been for decades. KHOI provides diverse music and talk programming, with no revenue from advertising. And whereas I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve been invited to talk about political happenings on Iowa Public Radio, KHOI has provided a platform for my reporting and analysis for more than three years.

The whole “Capitol Week” archive is always available for free through KHOI’s website. (For now, podcasting platforms only have our episodes from calendar year 2024.)

On to the recap of our February 12 program:

Dennis and I moved quickly to get to as many topics as we could going into the busy funnel week.

• We began with some national news: a brief discussion of last week’s U.S. Supreme Court oral arguments on whether the state of Colorado can remove Donald Trump from the GOP primary ballot;

• Trump appealed the DC Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that rejected his claim to have presidential immunity from prosecution related to his efforts to subvert the peaceful transfer of power following the 2020 election;

• Special counsel Robert Hur released a report last week recommending no criminal charges against President Joe Biden over retention of classified documents after his vice presidency. The report drew criticism for its editorial comments about Biden coming across as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” There’s an Iowa connection here: Deputy Special Counsel Marc Krickbaum was U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Iowa during the Trump administration;

• Most U.S. Senate Republicans, including Iowa’s Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, voted against a compromise bill including aid to Ukraine and Israel and various border security provisions;

• Over the weekend, a bipartisan Senate majority including Grassley and Ernst voted to advance a bill containing aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, with no immigration provisions. (That bill received final approval in the Senate shortly after 5 am on February 13);

• All four Iowans in the U.S. House voted last week to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. That vote failed, but on February 13 the House did impeach by one vote. Mayorkas is only the second cabinet member to be impeached and the first since 1876;

• There’s an Iowa connection here as well: Secretary of War William Belknap, who was impeached during the Ulysses Grant administration, was an Iowa Civil War veteran who previously served in the Iowa legislature. He was impeached over a classic bribery and corruption scheme, whereas Republicans have not produced any evidence Mayorkas committed a crime;

• On to Iowa legislative news, where we spent most of our time this week. We explained what this Friday’s “funnel” deadline means;

• Governor Kim Reynolds’ plan to reorganize mental health and substance abuse services is advancing. The Des Moines Register’s Michaela Ramm and Galen Bacharier explained the goals and key provisions of House Study Bill 653;

• House Study Bill 621 would increase criminal penalties for non-consensual ending of a pregnancy, and changes the code language from “human pregnancy” to “unborn person.” Reproductive rights advocates see the bill as a backdoor way to bolster the state’s efforts to ban abortion;

• The House Education Committee advanced the governor’s latest anti-LGBTQ legislation last week (now renumbered House File 2389). The committee removed a section requiring transgender Iowans to reveal that fact on their driver’s licenses, but many discriminatory provisions remain;

• The House public hearing on the anti-trans bill was ongoing while Dennis and I were on the air. You can watch the video here;

• A House subcommittee advanced House Study Bill 655, which would codify policy changes from 2022 that make it harder for jobless Iowans to continue to collect unemployment benefits;

• Voting along party lines, a House subcommittee advanced House Study Bill 670, which would repeal Iowa’s law requiring gender balance for most boards and commissions. A Senate subcommittee had already approved a companion bill;

• House and Senate subcommittees have also advanced the governor’s proposal to extend Medicaid postpartum coverage from 60 days to 12 months. I listened to the subcommittee meeting on House Study Bill 643; almost everyone who spoke urged lawmakers to extend coverage without changing the income threshold in a way that would kick many pregnant Iowans off Medicaid;

• House and Senate committees have advanced a bill that proponents call the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and opponents call the right-to-discriminate bill. The business community has long opposed this legislation (currently numbered House File 2454 and Senate File 2095), but this year Republicans seem inclined to pass it anyway;

• On a party-line vote, with Democrats opposed, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved Senate Study Bill 3084, which would require incarcerated people to be in prisons according to their sex assigned at birth;

• Democrats strongly criticized another bill that got through last week Senate Judiciary. The medical and public health community universally oppose Senate Study Bill 3006, which allows health care professionals, institutions, and insurers to refuse to provide or pay for certain services, based on their “right of conscience”;

• The House Education Committee approved House File 2457, which would require K-12 schools to teach students about the Holocaust, without mandating any specific curriculum;

• A House subcommittee advanced House File 586, which would require drivers to yield to bicyclists in crosswalks, just as they already have to yield to pedestrians;

• House Study Bill 691 would seek to improve training of nursing home staff;

• Several bills are seeking to regulate children’s use of social media and especially keeping minors off pornography websites;

• Three different library bills have become flashpoints during this year’s session. Each would give city councils more control over public libraries. Dennis and I discussed a Senate version that made it through a subcommittee Monday, but it appears to be dead now after the Senate Local Government Committee didn’t bring it up Tuesday;

• Senate File 2260 would shorten student teaching requirements. Democrats have some reservations;

• There’s bipartisan support for Senate File 2259, which would expand the 529 college savings plans so they could be used for more apprenticeship programs;

• House Democrats introduced House File 2352, which would seek to keep tuition costs from increasing for students at Iowa’s state universities. A wide-ranging Republican bill, House File 2327, would make many changes to the Iowa Board of Regents and would cap state university tuition increases at 3 percent a year;

• Here’s an unusual one: House File 2221 would allow local governments to impose rent controls. Usually Republicans try to reduce local government authority;

• The Senate Natural Resources Committee approved House File 572, which restricts flying drones around livestock facilities;

• The House Judiciary Committee has advanced House Study Bill 608, which would empower a relatively small group of legislators to block eminent domain proceedings;

• A House subcommittee rejected House File 2104, the latest attempt to restrict land acquisitions by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources;

• We spent some time on the raccoon bounty bill approved last week by the House Environmental Protection Committee. I wrote in more detail at Bleeding Heartland about how this bill prompted House Democrats to criticize the do-nothing environmental panel;

• House Education Committee chair Skyler Wheeler wants to make local elections partisan. A subcommittee advanced House Study Bill 633, but I’m skeptical there is much appetite for this change;

• We closed out with a brief recap of my exclusive report from last week about Iowa State University acquiring a new $5 million airplane. Read more at Bleeding Heartland. On Monday afternoon, ISU President Wendy Wintersteen began her presentation to the Iowa House Education Appropriations Subcommittee by explaining the rationale for the purchase.

Whew! Thanks for reading or listening. Next week’s show is sure to be equally action-packed, as Dennis and I review bills that got through the legislature’s first funnel, and bills that are dead for the year.

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Daniel Finney is the newest member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative! Find his work at The Paragraph Stacker. Full roster, in alphabetical order:

Nicole Baart: This Stays Here, Sioux Center

Ray Young Bear: From Red Earth Drive, Meskwaki Settlement

Laura Belin: Iowa Politics with Laura Belin, Windsor Heights

Tory Brecht: Brecht’s Beat, Quad Cities

Dartanyan Brown, My Integrated Life, Des Moines

Doug Burns: The Iowa Mercury, Carroll

Jane Burns: The Crossover, Des Moines

Dave Busiek: Dave Busiek on Media, Des Moines

Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, Roundup

Steph Copley: It Was Never a Dress, Johnston

Art Cullen: Art Cullen’s Notebook, Storm Lake

Suzanna de Baca: Dispatches from the Heartland, Huxley

Debra Engle: A Whole New World, Madison County

Daniel Finney: The Paragraph Stacker, Des Moines

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

Arnold Garson: Second Thoughts, Okoboji and Sioux Falls

Joe Geha: Fern and Joe, Ames

Jody Gifford: Benign Inspiration, West Des Moines

Rob Gray: Rob Gray’s Area, Ankeny

Nik Heftman: The Seven Times, Los Angeles and Iowa

Beth Hoffman: In the Dirt, Lovilia

Chris Jones, Chris’s Substack, Des Moines

Pat Kinney: View from Cedar Valley, Waterloo

Fern Kupfer: Fern and Joe, Ames

Robert Leonard: Deep Midwest: Politics and Culture, Bussey

Letters from Iowans, Iowa

Darcy Maulsby: Keepin’ It Rural, Calhoun County

Tar Macias: Hola Iowa, Iowa

Alison McGaughey, The Inquisitive Quad Citizen, Quad Cities

Kurt Meyer: Showing Up, St. Ansgar

Vicki Minor, Relatively Minor, Winterset

Wini Moranville: Wini’s Food Stories, Des Moines

Jeff Morrison: Between Two Rivers, Cedar Rapids

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 Politics Behind the Curtain, Washington, D.C.

Dave Price: Dave Price’s Perspective, Des Moines

Steve Semken: The Pulse of a Heartland Publisher, North Liberty

Macey Shofroth: The Midwest Creative, Norwalk

Larry Stone: Listening to the Land, Elkader

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

Kali White VanBaale, 988: Mental Healthcare in Iowa, Bondurant

Teresa Zilk: Talking Good, Des Moines

To receive a weekly roundup of all Iowa Writers’ Collaborative columnists, sign up here (free): ROUNDUP COLUMN

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