Tariffs, trial balloons, and the Iowa legislature's second funnel week
April 7 edition of "KHOI's Capitol Week"
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I’ve been co-hosting a weekly show about Iowa politics on KHOI Community Radio since February 2021. Spencer Dirks and I keep things moving because of the live radio format. We’ve made an editorial decision to cover as much as we can during our 30 minutes together on Monday evenings.
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Iowa Congressional reaction to Trump’s tariffs
We began with the biggest story not only in Iowa, but globally: President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs, which sparked a huge stock market sell-off and fears of a global recession.
Senator Chuck Grassley is the only member of Iowa’s Congressional delegation to propose doing anything to reverse the policy. Although he hasn’t directly criticized Trump, Grassley co-sponsored a bipartisan bill that, in his words, would “restore Congress’ constitutionally authorized role in setting and approving U.S. trade policy.” Key points: Within 60 days, Congress must pass a joint resolution of approval on the new tariff, otherwise all new tariffs on imports expire after that deadline. Congress has the ability to end tariffs at any time by passing a resolution of disapproval.
So far only six other Senate Republicans have signed on as co-sponsors of the bill. And House Speaker Mike Johnson has told his caucus that Republicans need to trust the president and stay the course.
The other Iowans in Congress haven’t gone out of their way to comment on the tariffs. For instance, Senator Joni Ernst hasn’t issued a statement on the topic and isn’t co-sponsoring Grassley’s bill.
Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-01) also hasn’t issued any statement about the tariffs but on April 1 announced that “she has officially joined the bipartisan Congressional Agricultural Trade Caucus to advocate for trade policies that benefit Iowa’s farmers, ranchers, and producers.”
Representative Ashley Hinson (IA-02) also hasn’t issued any statement about the tariffs but seemed to defend the policy during a telephone town hall last week, according to the Cedar Rapids Gazette’s reporting.
Representative Zach Nunn (IA-03) hasn’t posted about the tariffs on his social media but seemed to praise the policy in an interview with KMA Radio on Friday.
I haven’t seen anything from Representative Randy Feenstra (IA-04) about the tariffs either. His weekly newsletter didn’t mention them, other than in the unscientific “poll” he includes at the end.
Reynolds cheers “Liberation Day” tariffs
I was surprised to see Governor Kim Reynolds out with a written statement on April 2 cheering the ruinous policy. After trying to blame the Biden administration for supposedly ignoring farmers, Reynolds claimed, “President Trump is using tariffs as leverage - to force our trading partners to the table and put America’s farmers first. My job is to protect Iowans, and I’m working directly with the administration to ease the short-term impact, keep our ag economy strong, and open the door to new export opportunities.”
You can say a lot of things about tariffs but they certainly aren’t a way to “put America’s farmers first.”
I don’t understand why Reynolds would be out in front praising tariffs. It makes more sense to wait and see if Trump backpedals. Administration officials have made a lot of contradictory statements to the media in recent days, and it’s far from clear the president is using tariffs for “leverage.”
Ag Sec promises help for Iowa farmers
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins visited Iowa last Monday, two days before Trump rolled out the new tariff regime. She promised the USDA would help Iowa farmers if they are hurt by the tariffs, and said she plans trade missions to half a dozen countries this year to open up export markets for agricultural commodities.
There are a few problems with this scenario. The fund the first Trump administration used to provide about $28 billion in payments to farmers, the Commodity Credit Corporation, now has only about $4 billion on hand. That’s mainly because Congress is a year and a half overdue on passing a new Farm Bill.
Also, economists say tariffs could cause an extensive and long-term loss of export markets—not something Rollins can fix with a few trade missions. Dan Piller, a longtime business reporter who formerly covered agriculture for the Des Moines Register, wrote more about the tariffs’ impact on Iowa’s economy in a guest post for Bleeding Heartland.
Iowa Democrats blast tariffs, warn of state budget impact
During a press conference on Thursday, Democratic leaders warned that Trump’s “extreme tariffs” were a tax increase on working Iowans that could damage Iowa’s already soft ag economy and won’t bring back manufacturing jobs.
Iowa Senate Minority Leader Janice Weiner noted that Iowa had the second-worst economic growth in the country in 2024, and 47 states saw higher personal income growth than Iowa. In addition, more Iowa kids qualified for free or reduced-price school lunch this year. Layoffs continue, most recently at Whirlpool, which is shedding 651 jobs in Amana.
Weiner also reminded reporters that during the first Trump administration, Iowa farmers lost part of their soybean export market to Brazil. She said she was “flabbergasted” by what she called the governor’s “cheerleading” about the tariffs.
House Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst said Iowans need to “be realistic” about how the “chaotic tariff policy” is going to affect our economy. She said Iowa is the third most negatively impacted state in the country from retaliatory tariffs, especially from Iowa. She mentioned “we have to stop playing politics with Iowa’s budget” because revenues will be down and spending on school vouchers will increase.
Speaking to reporters last Thursday, House Speaker Pat Grassley and Senate President Amy Sinclair didn’t sound worried about how tariffs could affect state revenues for the coming year.
Incidentally, the legislature is pretty far behind schedule on the budget work. We don’t even have spending targets for large areas of the budget yet, which used to come out well before the end of March.
U.S. Senate confirms Matt Whitaker
The Senate voted 52 to 45 (mostly along party lines) last week to confirm Matt Whitaker as the U.S. ambassador to NATO. It’s the most senior position for an Iowan in the second Trump administration.
Both Grassley and Ernst spoke in favor of Whitaker. Democrats largely opposed the nomination of a diehard Trump loyalist with no diplomatic background.
During his confirmation hearings, Whitaker said he would push for NATO members to increase their defense spending to 5 percent of gross domestic product (the U.S. isn’t close to that level).
We don’t typically hear much about the U.S. ambassador to NATO, I couldn’t remember who held that position in the last several administrations. However, Whitaker may be in the news from time to time. If Trump is serious about trying to assert control over Greenland, that will cause problems within the NATO alliance, since Denmark has been a member since the beginning.
More Democrats considering U.S. Senate race
On last week’s show, we talked about State Senator Zach Wahls as a possible challenger to Ernst in 2024. The Des Moines Register’s Stephen Gruber-Miller talked to Wahls and two other Democratic lawmakers who are considering the Senate race: State Representative J.D. Scholten of Sioux City and State Representative Josh Turek of Council Bluffs. Scholten has been an outspoken critic of economic concentration in many areas of life, and Turek has been a leading voice for people with disabilities.
I am skeptical that either Scholten or Turek would run against Wahls in a Democratic primary. That they are floating this trial balloon signals that Democrats are not going to give Ernst a pass in the next cycle, even if Wahls decides not to run. (There has been some speculation about an independent running a Dan Osborn-style campaign, but the math only works for that if there is no Democratic nominee.)
Other Democrats may enter the field. For example, Richard Sherzan reached out to me last week to say he is considering the race. He served a term in the Iowa House in the late 1970s, then spent most of his career in Arizona before returning to Iowa in retirement in 2021.
Bernie Sanders has a staffer on the ground in Iowa
We briefly discussed a topic I covered in more depth over the weekend. Evan Burger is working for the Bernie Sanders campaign again, focusing on Iowa’s first and third Congressional districts. The senator from Vermont is putting staff on the ground in battleground U.S. House districts represented by Republicans, with three goals in mind:
Pressure these Republicans to vote against the budget reconciliation bill or at least make it harder for them to vote for cutting safety net programs to pay for tax breaks for billionaires
Defeat some of these House Republicans in 2026, so Democrats can stop the Trump agenda
Longer term, build a strong grassroots movement to support policies backed by Sanders
The first organizing calls Burger held last week drew more than 800 volunteers in the first and third districts (I described the calls here). They aren’t going to focus on electoral politics for now. In addition to generating turnout for public events like the “Hands Off” rallies from this past weekend and empty chair town halls, they are trying to educate Iowans about what’s in the reconciliation bill.
It’s not clear how long Burger will keep working for the campaign, but his job will run at least for the next few months.
Another Iowa House special election coming
We are going to have a third special election for the Iowa legislature this year. Democratic State Representative Sami Scheetz resigned from House district 78 last Tuesday in order to become Linn County supervisor.
This seat covering part of southeast Cedar Rapids should be an easy hold for Democrats; Kamala Harris got about 65 percent of the vote in this area last November.
John Deeth pointed out that Linn County officials made this appointment just in time. Any day now, Governor Kim Reynolds will sign Senate File 75. The centerpiece of that bill is the new requirement that counties containing a Regents university (Johnson, Story, and Black Hawk) elect county supervisors by district, rather than in county-wide at-large elections. Another part of the bill requires special elections (rather than appointments) to fill county supervisor vacancies in any county that either contains a state university or has a population greater than 125,000.
I noticed last week that State Representative Austin Baeth replaced Scheetz as one of the Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee. Last month, Baeth confirmed his possible interest in running against Nunn in 2026.
Maybe I’m reading too much into things, but I don’t think a legislator would join the Ways and Means committee if he were planning to run for Congress. While most House standing committees are done meeting for the year by the end of March, Ways and Means gets very busy in March and April—just as a candidate for Congress would need to step things up before the June primary election.
Newly-elected Wisconsin justice has Iowa connection
I wanted to let listeners know that Susan Crawford, who had a resounding victory in last week’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race, went to the University of Iowa law school. After earning her degree there in 1994, she worked in the Iowa Attorney General’s office for about three years before moving to Wisconsin to work for that state’s attorney general.
Probably not many of my readers or listeners have ever voted in a state Supreme Court election. Iowa did away with those by constitutional amendment in 1962. Since I love political trivia, I couldn’t resist noting that as a first-term member of the Iowa House in 1959, young Chuck Grassley did vote for that judicial reform bill.
I wrote in 2019 about the legislature’s work on judicial reform in 1959 and 1961; it was one of my all-time favorite Bleeding Heartland projects.
DOGE task force holds first meeting
Fellow statehouse reporters and I were annoyed last week to learn that Governor Reynolds’ “DOGE” task force held its first meeting with no meaningful public notice. Apparently they posted something on the DOGE website, but the governor’s office did not put the meeting on a public schedule, which they had done with the governor’s special committee to review state boards and commissions in 2023.
Until last Wednesday, Reynolds’ staff hadn’t announced any of the task force members, other than the chair, Emily Schmitt of Sukup manufacturing. The panel includes a bunch of business people (many have donated to Republican campaigns), and some GOP elected officials. There are no Democrats, even though it’s customary to include legislators from both parties on a state task force.
Senate Minority Leader Weiner criticized the governor for not including any public employees. She also noted that no one from the State Auditor’s office is involved (I forgot to mention that on the radio show).
We don’t know much about future plans but I think many reporters will be checking that DOGE website frequently for announcements of upcoming meetings. In theory, they are supposed to submit a report to the governor within 180 days of their first meeting, which happened on April 2.
Governor signs hands-free driving bill
Advocates tried for years to convince legislators to enact a hands-free driving bill. Reynolds signed Senate File 22 last Wednesday. It goes into effect on July 1, but law enforcement will be issuing warnings rather than citations until January 1, 2026.
The law requires Iowa drivers to keep their phones in voice-activated or hands-free mode while driving. You can’t use your phone, other than with a single touch or verbal commands. If you use navigation, set it up so your phone talks to you while you’re driving.
Drivers won’t be able to pick up their phones while stopped at a red light or stop sign. Your car will need to be off the roadway and at a complete stop.
Senate finally moves school funding bill
On Monday afternoon, Senate Republicans finally debated a K-12 school funding bill (Senate File 167), following weeks of negotiations with House leaders and Reynolds’ staff. They met in the middle of what the House and Senate wanted in terms of increased funds.
I misspoke during the program: the final deal involves a 2 percent increase in state funding per pupil (that was what Reynolds and Senate Republicans had wanted). Although the House Republicans didn’t get the 2.25 percent bump they were looking for, they did get some one-time funding and other provisions related to transportation and “operational sharing” of staff for smaller school districts.
Democrats sharply criticized the funding as inadequate; they have maintained that state funding needs to increase by 5 percent just to help districts keep current staff and programs.
This bill also funds the second part of the teacher pay increase included in last year’s overhaul of Area Education Agencies. As of July 1, the minimum starting salary for Iowa teachers will be $50,000, and the minimum salary for a teacher with twelve years of experience will be $62,000. Those provisions help teachers in some districts but will do little for those who were already earning more than the minimum levels.
The House debated the school funding bill today (April 8). That’s just seven days before school districts are required under state law to certify their budgets. State law also requires the legislature to finalize K-12 school funding within 30 days of the governor submitting her budget—a deadline that passed in mid-February.
A big picture look at the second funnel
April 4 was the “second funnel” deadline for Iowa lawmakers. In theory, to stay alive most policy bills (that is, not related to taxes or spending) need to have cleared one of the chambers, and a full committee in the other chamber. I don’t like to make too much of the funnel, because many “dead” ideas get resurrected as amendments to other bills.
House and Senate leaders moved dozens of bills to the “unfinished business” calendar last week. That keeps them eligible for debate, even if they didn’t get through the funnel. The Senate already debated a few of those bills on Monday, and we will talk about them on next week’s show.
One big takeaway: the House has passed many more bills than the Senate this year, which is consistent with what we’ve seen over the past few years. A lot of those House bills didn’t make it through committee in the upper chamber. And the House was oddly quiet last Thursday, which is usually a very busy day in funnel week. In part because the Senate sent down fewer bills, all of the House standing committees finished their work for the week on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Pesticide immunity bill is dead
Last year, there was a lot of suspense around whether the House would take up a Senate-approved bill giving pesticide manufacturers immunity from lawsuit over health problems caused by exposure (Senate File 394). The Bayer corporation (which acquired Monsanto, manufacturer of Roundup) has spent heavily to promote this legislation.
The House didn’t end up debating the pesticide immunity bill last year, and House Speaker Grassley confirmed last Thursday that the proposal will not move forward in 2025 either. To put an exclamation point on it, House leaders delayed for a week after the Senate passed the bill on March 26. Then on April 3, they referred the bill to the House Judiciary Committee—which had already held its last meeting for the year the day before.
If House leaders were seriously thinking about bringing up this bill later, they would have sent it to a committee not subject to funnel deadlines (Appropriations or Ways and Means).
Speaking to reporters, Grassley sounded sympathetic to the proposal, and referred to a “narrative” that affected public perceptions of what he called a “labeling bill.” But he said there wasn’t enough support for it in the GOP caucus. Senate President Amy Sinclair was clearly unhappy, telling reporters that the House was "entitled to their wrong opinion" about the bill.
I don’t think this story is over. State Senator Mike Bousselot floor managed the pesticide immunity bill, and that could become an issue in next year’s campaign–whether Bousselot seeks re-election to the Iowa Senate (from his Ankeny-based district) or runs for state auditor, which some believe he’s planning. I found it strange that an ambitious young politician hitched his wagon to such an unpopular bill.
Last-minute drama with pipeline bill
Bousselot was at the center of another major legislative story last week. He’s now chairing the Iowa Senate Commerce Committee, which for the first time has advanced a bill addressing eminent domain and pipelines. But what Bousselot has in mind for House File 639 doesn’t closely resemble what House members approved in late March.
His amendment would take out the language preventing companies from using eminent domain to build CO2 pipelines. He would allow companies to go around the existing corridor to get voluntary easements, which would help Summit Carbon Solutions in some counties where landowners have resisted. He would leave in some House-approved reforms for Iowa Utilities Commission.
For several years, the Senate Commerce Committee would let eminent domain bills die with no action. Bousselot clearly wants to be seen as doing something. His spin during last week’s meetings, and on social media, was that his amended bill would address “all property owners’ rights” and not just one pipeline project. But the anti-pipeline activists were not fooled; Bousselot’s Facebook page was filled with negative comments.
There’s no guarantee this bill will be debated in the full Senate. I thought this was very telling: when Zach Wahls questioned him during the Commerce Committee meeting, Bousselot did not rule out amending House File 639 again on the Senate floor. He also didn’t rule out using a procedure that would prevent other proposed amendments from getting a vote.
If the full Senate approves something like Bousselot’s amendment, I’m not sure the House will take it up. Although it includes a few reforms to the Iowa Utilities Commission, House Republicans want to stop this CO2 pipeline from being built. This amendment wouldn’t do that.
Last-minute drama with judicial nominations bill
There weren’t a lot of surprises during the second funnel week, but one got a lot of people talking. A long-running effort to change how Iowa judges are selected finally got a subcommittee hearing in the House.
Senate File 407 would remove the senior judge from Iowa’s district judicial nominating commissions. The governor would get an extra appointee to those bodies, allowing her appointees to outnumber the elected attorneys. The judicial branch, Iowa State Bar Association, and several other groups oppose this idea.
House Judiciary Committee chair Steven Holt has said in the past that he doesn’t support the measure, and many House Republicans share his view that a judge should be represented on commissions that send finalists for judgeships to the governor.
So why did Holt assign this bill to a subcommittee, on which he served? To me and many others, it looked like a possible trade: Senate Republicans were advancing a pipeline bill, perhaps in exchange for the House moving their bill to increase the governor’s power over judicial selection.
Republicans did move the bill out of subcommittee, and it was on the House Judiciary Committee’s final meeting agenda last Wednesday. But Holt didn’t bring it before the committee. So in theory, it is dead for this year.
We’ve seen with other bills—most recently the transgender discrimination bill—that sometimes a bill moves ahead even if it had been stopped previously. So I think it is very significant that the House Judiciary chair assigned this to a subcommittee. To me it suggests this is an issue House Republicans may be willing to trade with Senate counterparts. It could even come up in negotiations over the judicial branch budget in a few weeks.
Notable bills that got through the second funnel
We couldn’t talk about all of the bills that are still in contention, of course. We’ll make time for more of those as they come to the floor in one chamber or the other. Some bullet points on bills that could still get to the governor’s desk:
allowing public school districts to hire chaplains (House File 884)
allowing private school students to participate in extracurriculars at their local public school district (House File 189)
the governor’s proposed restrictions on cell phone use during the school day (House File 782)
the governor’s math education bill (House File 784)
the governor’s proposal on integrating child care with early childhood education (Senate File 445 and House File 623)
several bills restricting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs in public institutions, including community colleges, local governments, and school districts. Senate Republicans plan to remove language from House File 856 that would revoke access to the Iowa Tuition Grant for private colleges and universities that have DEI staff or programs.
requiring schools to show students fetal development videos (Senate File 175 and House File 391)
the governor’s energy bill (House File 834 and Senate File 585)
the governor’s paid family leave proposal for state employees (House File 889)
a couple of election bills (House File 954 and House File 928)
the attorney general’s proposed constitutional amendment allowing children to testify remotely at some criminal trials (House Joint Resolution 9 and Senate Joint Resolution 9)
Quick hits on bills that didn’t make the cut
Hundreds of bills did not get through the second funnel. We flagged some that I thought would interest listeners. Although there’s always a chance language from a few of these bills could be resurrected, all of the following are “dead” for now.
removing the obscenity exemption for public libraries (House File 521)
making libraries ineligible for certain state funds if they belong to library associations (House File 880)
allowing homeschooling parents to teach more unrelated children and charge tuition for doing so (House File 888)
medication abortion restrictions (House File 775)
allowing more community solar programs (House File 404)
new regulations for payday lenders (House File 878)
a ban on “chemtrails,” also known as geoengineering (House File 927)
Many thanks for reading or listening! We’ll be back next week.
Could someone explain to the governor that the president’s expressed policy of rehoming manufacturing would require maintaining high tariffs for the long term, ie, not using them as “leverage.”
I always try to read up on issues regarding both state and federal legislation and avoid relying on just one source. But if I had to pick just one regarding state issues (and heaven knows, legacy media is failing us bigly here), your Substack column would serve that purpose well.