School book ban blocked, sheriff sued, Wahls vs. Ernst?

March 31 edition of "KHOI's Capitol Week"

Official photos of Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird and Winneshiek County Sheriff Dan Marx

The Iowa House and Senate are focusing on committee work this week as a big legislative deadline approaches on Friday. I’ve got several posts in progress at Bleeding Heartland. You can find more Iowa politics coverage in the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative Sunday morning roundup.

If you can’t get enough Iowa political podcasts, I’m also a regular on Iowa Down Ballot, led by

Dave Price

; new episodes drop on Saturday mornings. Zachary Oren Smith leads the Cornhole Champions podcast, with new episodes released on Wednesdays.

Spencer Dirks

and

Robert Leonard

record Iowa Revolution weekly as well, with new episodes usually coming out on Wednesday.

While those shows typically focus on a few topics each week, Spencer and I try to pack as much news as possible into the 30 minutes we have together on Monday evenings. The audio file from our latest show is embedded above, or you can find “KHOI’s Capitol Week” on any podcast platform or smart speaker. The full archive (going back to February 2021) is available on KHOI’s website.

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Federal judge blocks Iowa’s school book ban, again

We began in the federal courts, because last week, U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Locher issued a new injunction blocking the state of Iowa from enforcing the book ban provisions of the 2023 law known as Senate File 496. You can read his well-reasoned and well-written opinion here.

The Iowa law said only “age-appropriate” materials can be in school libraries and classrooms, and “age-appropriate” doesn’t include any publication containing a description or visual depiction of a sex act. Judge Locher found the provision unconstitutional because the law “makes no attempt to evaluate a book’s literary, political, artistic, or scientific value before requiring the book’s removal from a school library and thus comes nowhere close to applying the ‘obscenity’ standard that is typically used to determine the constitutionality of statewide book restrictions. The result is the forced removal of books from school libraries that are not pornographic or obscene.”

Judge Locher previously blocked the state from enforcing what he called a “staggeringly broad” book ban in late 2023. But last summer, a panel of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals sent the case back to District Court and instructed the judge to use a different analysis, outlined by the U.S. Supreme Court in its 2024 Moody v. NetChoice case. That standard calls on the court to consider whether the constitutional applications of the law outweigh the unconstitutional ways it could be applied.

In his latest decision, the judge found that Senate File 496 “requires school districts to remove dozens (if not hundreds) of books that have tremendous pedagogical value,” from classic works of literature to award-winning recent publications (some by authors who were plaintiffs in this case) to non-fiction books about historical events or sex education. He could identify only one constitutional application of the law: to remove the memoir Gender Queer, which has illustrations that could be considered pornographic.

The judge hasn’t ruled yet in a separate lawsuit, in which LGBTQ plaintiffs are challenging both the school book ban and the “don’t say gay or trans” restrictions on curriculum, programs, and instruction for grades K-6.

We briefly discussed Attorney General Brenna Bird’s misleading comment on Judge Locher’s ruling. She keeps claiming the law ensures only “age-appropriate” books are available to kids. But as the judge pointed out, the law doesn’t make any age-based distinctions. Everything banned for a kindergartner is also banned for older high school students who can legally consent to sex in Iowa. Again, there is no consideration of the book’s overall value.

Governor Kim Reynolds’ office didn’t issue a statement about the latest ruling. Republican State Representative Skyler Wheeler (who floor managed Senate File 496 in 2023) posted on Facebook, “It is time to ignore these judges.” I wasn’t able to get a comment on that from Bird’s staff.

Iowa attorney general sues Winneshiek County sheriff

Here’s something you don’t see every day—or every century. Bird filed suit in Polk County District Court last Thursday against Winneshiek County Sheriff Dan Marx. The suit accuses him of violating Iowa’s 2018 law banning “sanctuary cities." In early February, Marx wrote on Facebook that he would only honor detainer requests if a judge had signed off on them; otherwise, he considered them unconstitutional.

The governor asked Bird’s office to investigate. And a review by the Attorney General’s office, released one day before suit was filed, acknowledged that Marx has honored all 21 ICE detainer requests filed in his county since 2018. He’s being sued not for refusing to work with federal immigration authorities, but for what he wrote on Facebook. According to the court filing, the sheriff’s Facebook post “included many factual and legal inaccuracies,” which “impeded and discouraged cooperation with federal immigration authorities in violation of Iowa law.”

Last week, Marx took down his Facebook post from February. But he declined to put up a statement drafted by Bird’s office, which contained language that Winneshiek County found “not acceptable.”

A statement from Bird asserted that the sheriff’s actions “left us with no choice but to take the case to court to enforce our laws and ensure cooperation with federal immigration authorities.” But you always have a choice about whether to sue someone. And the remedy the state is seeking here—stripping Winneshiek County of all state funding—seems mismatched to the alleged infraction. Again, there’s no evidence Marx has refused to honor any ICE detainer request. He posted something on Facebook the attorney general didn’t like, and refused to put up a statement she demanded from him.

I will be fascinated to see how the courts handle this case.

Grassley, Ernst not concerned about “Signalgate”

We needed to spend a couple of minutes on Iowa reaction to last week’s mind-blowing news that senior Trump administration officials discussed an upcoming military operation on the Signal app, instead of using secure communication channels.

I have to rely on other people’s reporting about what Senator Chuck Grassley said, since his staff have never allowed me to participate in his weekly conference calls with reporters. According to the Des Moines Register, he described what happened as a “screw up,” but accepted the administration’s claims that no classified information was revealed, and national security was not harmed. Amazingly, the senator who prides himself on his oversight work admitted he had not read the text messages published in The Atlantic and said he “probably won’t” do so.

There’s no way the Signal chat didn’t include classified information. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared operational details about when planes would launch and when bombs would start dropping, and President Donald Trump’s national security adviser Michael Waltz shared information about intelligence sources and methods in the city where the bombs fell.

Senator Joni Ernst, who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, didn’t issue any statement about Signalgate last week and didn’t acknowledge the story on her social media feeds. When a CNN reporter caught up with her in the hallway, she said she still had confidence in Hegseth. She clearly didn’t want to get into a long discussion about what happened. Ernst indicated that it’s up to the president to decide how to handle the situation, and said, “I think they’ve learned a valuable lesson with this.” Ernst said there would be a National Security Council review and an independent report provided to the Senate Armed Services Committee chair and ranking member. I would have expected a combat veteran to have more to say about this breach of security.

Zach Wahls may run for U.S. Senate

Democratic State Senator Zach Wahls called on Hegseth to resign last week and blasted Ernst for casting the deciding vote to confirm the “dangerously unqualified” defense secretary. In an interview with Dave Price, Wahls confirmed people have encouraged him to run against Ernst in 2026, and said he was “certainly listening to that.”

Spencer and I had just a minute or two to talk about the Senate race and whether Wahls could make it competitive. Clearly Ernst would be favored for re-election, but there are plausible scenarios where she could falter. I wrote about the Democrat’s prospects in more detail over the weekend.

Wahls won’t decide on his future plans until after the legislature wraps up its work for this year. It’s also possible that more than one person will compete in a Democratic primary.

In case you forgot, Ernst will likely face at least one GOP primary challenger (Joshua Smith). Former State Senator Jim Carlin may also compete for the Republican nomination.

State legislative news

We spent the second half of the show talking about the legislature’s work, and had to move several newsworthy items to next week’s show.

Governor Reynolds signed eleven bills into law on Friday. Most were obscure, but we’d previously mentioned a couple of them. House File 181 adds THC-infused beverages to Iowa’s open container law.

Senate File 603 started out as an uncontroversial workforce bill. As we discussed on our March 24 show, Republicans ran a last-minute amendment in the House and Senate prohibiting local governments from requiring bidders on projects to have training or apprenticeship programs. Labor unions strongly opposed that change, which is now state law.

Competing property tax proposals

Before the legislature convened in January, Republicans promised major reform to Iowa’s property tax system. Last week, House and Senate subcommittees advanced companion bills proposed by the leaders of each chamber’s Ways and Means Committee (Senate Study Bill 1208 and House Study Bill 313). Tom Barton summarized the key points well in this story for the Cedar Rapids Gazette. Marissa Payne covered highlights from the subcommittee hearings for the Des Moines Register.

Most groups are registered “undecided” on the GOP proposals. The biggest concerns are related to the 2 percent cap on growth for most property tax levies, which wouldn’t allow local governments to keep up with rising costs. Also, the state would provide about $400 million in funding for school districts to reduce the need for district to raise education funds through property taxes. But we’ve seen before that the state doesn’t always keep its promises; when the legislature and Governor Terry Branstad enacted a big commercial property tax cut in 2013, the state promised to “backfill” lost revenue for local governments. But that backfill eventually went away.

The GOP proposal is quite complicated, especially the provision that would phase out the “rollback” used to limit how much of residential property values can be taxed. In contrast, Iowa House Democrats want to give Iowans relief quickly: a $1,000 rebate for homeowners, a $500 rebate for renters, and a property tax freeze for senior citizens. State Representative Dave Jacoby, the ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, said there’s no guarantee anyone’s property taxes would go down under the complex GOP plan.

Democrats didn’t have a price tag for their property tax proposal but said it could be funded through the state’s Taxpayer Relief Fund. Republicans plan to use part of that money to make ends meet in the state budget, since income tax cuts have significantly reduced state revenues.

Why bother to introduce a plan, when Democrats can’t control the legislative agenda? I sense that Democrats are setting the stage to highlight some flaws in the GOP proposal, so they have an alternative to point to if/when many vote against the bill Republicans bring to the floor. In 2023, only one Democratic lawmaker (State Representative Elinor Levin) voted against a property tax overhaul that was negotiated mostly behind closed doors. Almost everyone agrees that law had many negative unintended consequences.

Senate approves pesticide immunity bill again

There was some drama in the Iowa Senate last Wednesday, when the chamber debated a bill giving pesticide manufacturers immunity from lawsuits (Senate File 394). Although Republicans have a 34-16 majority, this bill passed by 26 votes to 21. Six Republicans (Kevin Alons, Doug Campbell, Sandy Salmon, Dave Sires, Jeff Taylor, and Cherielynn Westrich) joined Democrats to vote against the bill. Two Republicans were absent (Mark Lofgren and Lynn Evans).

We don’t see this often in the upper chamber, where straight party-line votes are more common than they are in the Iowa House. When the Senate approved a pesticide immunity bill last year, Alons, Lofgren, Salmon, and Taylor joined Democrats to vote no. Westrich changed her vote on this idea, and Campbell and Sires are new to the Senate.

I was intrigued that State Senator Mike Bousselot led the debate on this bill. (Last year’s floor manager, Jeff Edler, did not seek re-election in 2024.) Giving pesticide companies immunity from lawsuits is extremely unpopular, even among Iowa Republicans, according to a poll commissioned last year by the Iowa Association for Justice. More than 80 percent of the Republican respondents opposed the idea.

Bousselot is widely seen as a possible GOP candidate for state auditor in 2026. It’s risky to associate yourself with a bill this unpopular if you may run for statewide office. On the other hand, a lot of corporations and business lobby groups support the immunity bill. They could be important sources of campaign financing for Bousselot next year.

During the floor debate, Bousselot denied that Senate File 394 would be a blanket ban on lawsuits against pesticide companies. That’s technically accurate, but if you believe exposure to pesticides caused your cancer, Parkinson’s disease, or birth defects, you can’t sue under the code sections related to warranties or manufacturing defects. You would need to sue under the duty to warn, which this bill specifically prohibits.

Last year’s pesticide immunity bill never made it to the Iowa House floor. Republicans have expanded their majority in the chamber from 64-36 to 67-33. But I’m not sure they have the votes to pass this, even though many groups that normally align with the GOP do support the immunity bill. Many agricultural groups are backing the bill; in that sphere, only the Iowa Farmers Union is registered against it.

House finally approves hands-free driving bill

For at least seven years, advocates have urged Iowa lawmakers to pass a comprehensive hands-free driving bill. Currently, only texting while driving is banned in the state.

Last week, the House passed Senate File 22 with strong bipartisan support. The floor manager, State Representative Ann Meyer, gave credit to the families who lost loved ones due to distracted driving, and shared their heartbreaking stories with legislators. I believe it was quite important that Governor Reynolds endorsed the idea in her Condition of the State address. Also, a broad coalition including law enforcement, insurance and business advocates, health care entities, bicyclists, and labor unions worked hard to get this through.

Although many House members had opposed the policy behind the scenes, when this bill came to the floor, only eleven House members were willing to vote against it (here’s the roll call). None of them spoke during the debate. State Representative Rick Olson, the only Democrat to vote no, told me he had some broad problems with the bill, since he believes people should be able to check their phones when stopped (for instance, at a red light). He also believes some sections were poorly drafted. One could be read to mean that Iowans are allowed to drive on the shoulder while holding a phone.

The bill contains exceptions for emergency situations, public transit workers, and farm vehicles. (Senate Democrats proposed an amendment to apply the hands-free ban to farm vehicles, but Republicans voted that down.)

Some research suggests that using a cell phone in hands-free mode is distracting for drivers, and the effects can last after you end the call. So it’s safer not to use your cell phone at all while operating a vehicle.

Trump administration weighs in against key part of governor’s energy bill

We haven’t spent a lot of time on the governor’s energy bill, which is under consideration in the Senate Appropriations Committee (Senate File 585) and the House Ways and Means Committee (House File 834). There are a lot of pieces, including provisions to promote nuclear power and reduce meaningful oversight of planning by Iowa’s investor-owned utilities (MidAmerican and Alliant).

It also includes something called the “Right of First Refusal” for electric transmission lines projects. Such contracts would not be awarded through a competitive bidding process; MidAmerican or Alliant would be guaranteed the contract unless they declined. This is a top legislative priority for the utility companies.

There’s a fraught history around this issue; lawmakers included “Right of First Refusal” language as a last-minute amendment to a huge budget bill in June 2020, and the governor signed it into law. But the Iowa Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that the policy was added in violation of the state constitution’s “single subject” and “title” provisions for legislation. Many Republicans were outraged by the court’s action, and some refused to answer questions during floor debate for a while afterwards.

Last year, the legislature did not pass stand-alone bills on the Right of First Refusal. So it was notable that Reynolds included that policy in her energy bill.

I learned on Monday that an official in the Trump administration’s Justice Department wrote to Iowa Republican lawmakers last week about this concept. The department’s Antitrust Division is concerned these restrictions on bidding for electric transmission lines would reduce competition and increase costs. (Technically, this letter was a comment on a stand-alone bill introduced by Bousselot, who chairs the Senate Commerce Committee. But the governor’s bill includes the same language.)

I’m so curious to see how this plays out. A lot of heavy-hitting business interests are lobbying in support of the governor’s energy bill. Organized labor also backs "Right of First Refusal” language, because MidAmerican and Alliant typically hire union labor for construction projects.

However, opposing the policy is a high priority for the Koch-funded group Americans for Prosperity. And to my surprise, Bob Vander Plaats turned up at a Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Monday to speak against this part of the bill. His social conservative group The FAMiLY Leader wouldn’t normally weigh in on an energy bill, but Vander Plaats claimed lawmakers need to confront “woke nonsense” from big business. He suggested that this policy would privilege energy companies that “promote drag queen story time for kids.”

I am confident that some version of the energy bill will pass, but I wonder whether an amendment will seek to remove the Right of First Refusal, especially since the Trump administration is on record against the idea.

House approves paid leave for state employees

I wanted to get to one story we didn’t have time for on last week’s show. On March 20, the House approved the governor’s proposal to give state employees parental leave (House File 889). This was one of the few Reynolds bills that stalled in 2024. But once House leaders brought it to the floor, only two members (Republicans Mark Cisneros and John Wills) were willing to vote against it.

Democrats supported the bill but made clear they believe the governor’s plan is far short of what’s needed. The bill would provide four weeks of paid leave for state employees who gave birth, one week for parents who didn’t give birth, and four weeks for new adoptive parents.

House and Senate approve Medicaid work requirements

Republicans in both chambers passed versions of Senate File 615, which would impose new work requirements for Medicaid recipients. Although Reynolds didn’t propose this bill, she supports it. The House amended the bill, so the Senate will need to approve it again to get it to the governor’s desk.

Democrats warned that a similar law in Arkansas led to around 18,000 people losing Medicaid coverage, even though most of them were working. They said the exceptions to the work requirements were insufficient to cover all Iowans who might not be able to jump through the hurdles. And they strongly objected to a time bomb lurking in the bill: if the federal government ever revoked the waiver granted to Iowa on Medicaid work requirements, the state would end the Health and Wellness Plan. That’s the Medicaid expansion enacted in 2013, which currently covers more than 180,000 people.

I forgot to mention on the show that this bill also increases work requirements for Iowans on federal food assistance (known as SNAP).

Dozens of groups representing a wide range of stakeholders are lobbying against Senate File 615. Only a few conservative advocacy groups are registered in favor.

Three Republicans (Michael Bergan, Brian Lohse, and Matthew Rinker) joined Democrats to oppose this bill on the House Floor. It cleared the Senate on a straight party-line vote.

State agency refuses to answer questions about a bill

We don’t have good data on how much it would cost to add Medicaid work requirements, or how many Iowans might be adversely affected, because the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services did not provide the relevant information to the nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency. The fiscal note on Senate File 615 contains this extraordinary statement, more than once: “The LSA has not received a response to multiple requests for information from the HHS.”

I’m told this is unprecedented, so I asked House Speaker Pat Grassley last Thursday whether he was concerned about the executive branch refusing to provide data lawmakers might need to make informed decisions on pending bills. He mostly sidestepped the question, saying it might be difficult to get the information, and for the most part, have good lines of communication from state agencies. Watch our exchange:

House passes two more eminent domain bills

For the third year in a row, the Iowa House approved legislation designed to prevent Summit Carbon Solutions from building a CO2 pipeline. We didn’t have time to get into all of the details, but Sabine Martin covered these bills for the Des Moines Register. Under House File 943, CO2 pipelines would not be eligible for eminent domain. Several policies related to eminent domain and conduct of the Iowa Utilities Commission were rolled into House File 639.

These bills had a lot of bipartisan support (see the roll calls here and here).

I’m skeptical the Iowa Senate will give any of these ideas a hearing, but some Republican senators who oppose the Summit Carbon pipeline have said negotiations are ongoing to allow a floor vote on eminent domain legislation.

House action on school chaplains and charter schools

There are so many education bills moving through the legislature this year. We had time for two that the House approved last week. House File 884 is the latest version of a bill allowing school districts to hire chaplains. The chaplains could be paid or could work as volunteers.

The biggest concern here is the lack of training or certification required for someone to work with vulnerable kids as a chaplain. Two of the House Democrats are ordained ministers, and State Representatives Lindsay James and Rob Johnson talked about how much preparation goes into counseling people as a chaplain. Seven Republicans voted with all Democrats against the bill.

Under current law, all board members of charter schools must be Iowa residents. House File 785 would allow such schools to have one board member who is a U.S. citizen living in another state. Five Republicans joined Democrats to oppose it.

House bill approves first-degree murder charge for providing fentanyl

I wanted to flag a few bills related to crime and courts, but we only had time to discuss one of them. Under House File 792, someone could be charged with first-degree murder if they provide fentanyl to someone who later dies from ingesting it.

A similar bill passed by 86 votes to 12 in 2024; this year, the House vote was 69 to 27, with six Republicans joining a larger number of Democrats in opposition.

The main objection is that this penalty is too harsh for people who may not have even known they had pills laced with fentanyl. First-degree murder usually means a premeditated successful attempt to kill someone.

I also heard concern that people might be afraid to call 911 if someone overdoses for fear of arrest.

The Senate didn’t approve this concept last year; we’ll see what happens in the coming weeks.

Thanks so much for reading or listening! We’ll be back next Monday to cover what made it through the legislature’s second “funnel” and other political news of the week.