October 3 edition of "Capitol Week" is online
Budget surplus, court cases, Iowa campaigns, and more
Every week, my co-host Dennis Hart sends me a list of possible topics for Monday night’s show. We never get through them all during our 30 minutes on the air, but we try to cover as much ground as possible.
During our October 3 broadcast, we may have set a record for how many topics we discussed. We didn’t quite reach the end of the list, though, so you’ll have to visit Bleeding Heartland to find my exclusive reporting on changes at the Public Employment Relations Board, and the Iowa campaign regulator’s new guidance on political texts.
The full archive of “Capitol Week” is available on KHOI Community Radio’s website, so anyone can listen to any of the 80+ shows we’ve recorded anytime.
Here’s the rundown from our October 3 broadcast (audio file):
The state’s record $1.9 billion surplus at the end of the last fiscal year, and the implications for tax rates;
How the budget surplus may figure during the remainder of this year’s campaign;
Key arguments from the state’s latest court filing seeking to reinstate Iowa’s 2018 abortion ban, and the time frame for this litigation;
Recent comments by some Republican members of Congress about the Hyde amendment (which mostly bans the use of federal funds for abortion) and any exceptions to the nationwide abortion ban they support;
The lawsuit Iowa joined last week at Governor Kim Reynolds’ insistence, which challenges the Biden administration’s student loan relief plan, and whether the states will be able to show they have standing to sue;
The latest Iowa residents sentenced in connection with the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol;
The effort by Pieper Lewis’ attorneys to get a Polk County District Court to remove her obligation to pay $150,000 in restitution to the estate of the man she was convicted of killing (if they are unsuccessful, the funds raised through a GoFundMe page should be more than sufficient to cover the expense);
The latest internal poll released in the third Congressional district race, which showed GOP challenger Zach Nunn slightly ahead of Representative Cindy Axne, and current challenges of polling a representative sample and modeling the November electorate;
Last week’s news that Axne designated a proxy to cast her vote for the Inflation Reduction Act in August, while she was vacationing in France, and possible implications for the race;
How often other U.S. House representatives from Iowa have used proxy voting, which has been allowed since early in the COVID-19 pandemic;
Two upcoming debates scheduled for the same time on the evening of October 6: Axne vs. Nunn on KCCI-TV, and Senator Chuck Grassley vs. Mike Franken on Iowa PBS;
Last week’s Iowa PBS debate between the first Congressional district contenders, GOP incumbent Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Christina Bohannan, and the state of play in that race;
Whether the pushback on Governor Reynolds’ latest tv ad, which the Des Moines Register editors among others have condemned, will affect her re-election bid (I can’t editorialize on the air due to KHOI’s non-commercial license, but I wrote a second post at Bleeding Heartland about the racist tropes in that ad);
The new digital ad by Rick Stewart, Libertarian candidate for governor, which focuses on legalizing marijuana in Iowa;
Which Democratic statewide candidates are advertising on television or will be soon;
The latest Iowa visit by former Vice President Mike Pence;
Yet another federal court ruling striking down part of an Iowa “Ag Gag” law, which was designed to prevent people from unauthorized recordings in livestock facilities;
The state of play in former Iowa Department of Human Services Director Jerry Foxhoven’s wrongful termination lawsuit (he will appeal the District Court ruling that dismissed all of his claims);
Lawsuits filed against landowners by Summit Carbon Solutions, one of the companies seeking to build a carbon dioxide pipeline across Iowa;
The State Judicial Nominating Commission interviewing applicants and selecting a short list of candidates for the Iowa Court of Appeals vacancy created when Governor Reynolds appointed David May to the Iowa Supreme Court.
The link to the whole 30-minute program is here. You can listen to this week’s show and any past editions of “Capitol Week” at your convenience on KHOI’s website.
This Substack is part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, which Julie Gammack spearheaded. Here are the writers involved with the project, in alphabetical order: