Trump lawsuit, news from Congress, racial disparities in Iowa

Dec. 23 edition of "KHOI's Capitol Week"

Photo by Sasan Hezarkhani on Unsplash

Whatever you celebrate during this season—winter solstice, Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, or downtime at home—I wish you a peaceful and meaningful holiday. I have some projects to finish at Bleeding Heartland before the end of the year, including a recap of Iowa wildflower Wednesday posts, which will be online December 25.

Rabbi Henry Jay Karp wrote about a rare coincidence coming up this Wednesday: Hanukkah & Christmas Share a Day.

Spencer Dirks and I recorded this week’s show a few hours early on Monday, with KHOI’s operations manager Eric Blocker filling in for our regular producer, Mike Murphy. Thankfully, there was no big breaking news late in the afternoon.

The audio file for the December 23 show is at the top of this email, or you can subscribe and listen to “KHOI’s Capitol Week” through any podcast platform or smart speaker. The full show archive (going back to February 2021) is available on KHOI’s website.

Trump sues Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register

President-elect Donald Trump’s “revenge tour” stopped in Iowa last week, as he filed an absurd consumer fraud lawsuit against Ann Selzer, her polling firm, the Des Moines Register, and the Gannett corporation. Spencer and I spent a few minutes talking about the weaknesses of the case; I wrote much more about this last week.

Lyle Muller and Ed Tibbetts covered the lawsuit from different angles, which are worth your time. Lyle’s post on his new Substack column is called Goal for lawsuit against Des Moines Register, Iowa pollster is darker than winning. Ed pointed out one irony: Selzer never said Donald Trump couldn’t win the general election. But you know who did? Governor Kim Reynolds.

Drama over government funding tanks two Iowa priorities

A last-minute deal late Friday averted a federal government shutdown, but it was a wild ride in Congress last week. Two days before the funding deadline, billionaire Elon Musk went on a rampage on X/Twitter to scuttle the continuing resolution House and Senate leaders had negotiated. Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance quickly joined the effort to convince House Republicans to tank the deal.

Trump also suddenly demanded a debt ceiling increase, which had not been part of the budget negotiations until Wednesday.

Iowa’s U.S. House members fell in line and supported what Trump wanted, but that bill failed on the House floor on Thursday. Late Friday, a new bill passed that will fund the government through March 14, extend the 2018 Farm Bill through next September, and provide for $100 billion in disaster relief.

The final compromise eliminated a lot of non-controversial policy language unrelated to federal spending. Two of the provisions that were cut after the Musk/Trump onslaught had long been priorities for Iowa’s delegation: year-round sales of higher ethanol blends known as E-15, and new regulations on pharmacy benefit managers. I focused on that angle in my article for Bleeding Heartland.

More news about the Iowans in Congress

We touched on some of the big questions surrounding the next Farm Bill, which the GOP-controlled Congress will need to tackle next year. Republicans have long wanted to slash nutrition programs, but I question whether they can get their preferred bill over the line with their very small House majority. Some Republicans aren’t wild about farm subsidies, and they can’t get Democratic votes if their bill makes big cuts to food assistance. The House Agriculture Committee approved a version of a Farm Bill in May of this year, but House leaders never brought it to the floor—presumably because they knew it didn’t have the votes to pass.

I expect Iowa’s four members of Congress to remain loyal to Speaker Mike Johnson, but I have real doubts about whether he has the votes to be elected speaker again on January 3.

Iowa’s entire delegation supported the $895 billion defense authorization bill for the current fiscal year. I mentioned a few important provisions, as well as a controversial last-minute addition in the House, which banned gender-affirming care for children of military service members. I avoid editorializing on the show because of KHOI’s station policy, but I find it absolutely disgusting that Republicans used this bill to punch down on trans kids and their parents.

I was fascinated by the Social Security Fairness Act, another important bill that the Senate approved shortly before adjourning for the year. I wrote separately about that bipartisan bill at Bleeding Heartland to explain the policy and how many Iowans would be affected.

I also wanted to highlight an unusual difference of opinion: all four of our state’s House members voted for the Social Security Fairness Act, but Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst were among just 20 senators who voted against it. I don’t recall seeing the Iowa delegation divided along those lines on a major piece of legislation.

The incoming Senate majority leader announced committee assignments for 2025. No surprises: Grassley will chair the Judiciary Committee and serve on the Agriculture, Finance, and Budget panels. Ernst will chair the Small Business Committee and serve on the Agriculture, Armed Services, and Homeland Security panels. We don’t know the new House committee assignments.

Iowa election news

I wanted to flag a story I wrote up for Bleeding Heartland: Iowa is projected to maintain four U.S. House districts after 2030, according to population estimates the U.S. Census Bureau released on December 19. If that pans out, it would be our state’s longest stretch without losing a Congressional district in 100 years.

Maintaining current levels of representation in Congress after 2030 would benefit all Iowans. I also believe it would improve Democrats’ prospects for winning in the third Congressional district, as Polk County’s population continues to increase.

On Monday morning, Governor Kim Reynolds scheduled the special election in Iowa Senate district 35 for Tuesday, January 28. Voters in Clinton County and parts of Jackson and Scott counties will choose a successor to new Lieutenant Governor Chris Cournoyer. Click here to read more about the political landscape. It’s is a classic example of an Iowa legislative district anchored by a mid-sized city (in this case Clinton), which was blue for many years, but has swung dramatically toward Republicans in the Trump era.

I mentioned on the show that I didn’t know who the candidates would be for the special. After we recorded, one candidate announced: Central DeWitt School Board president Mike Zimmer will seek the Democratic nomination.

State government news

Whenever I get a press release after 5:00 pm on a Friday, I know the government doesn’t want that story to get a lot of attention. Last Friday the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services announced the first human case of highly pathogenic avian influenza had been identified in the state. According to the news release, “The individual was exposed to infected poultry while working with a commercial flock in northwest Iowa. The individual reported mild symptoms, has received appropriate treatment and is recovering.”

Last Tuesday, State Auditor Rob Sand released a report on the Judicial Branch during fiscal year 2023. It addressed a computer coding error that caused some court fees to be directed to the wrong state accounts for years. Stephen Gruber-Miller wrote up the story for the Des Moines Register. The state audit included a detailed timeline of events, which showed staff in the auditor’s office first became aware of the problem in October 2022. They were unable to issue this report until this month because the judicial branch only provided the dollar amounts of misdirected funds in late October of this year, and implemented coding changes to fix the problem in November.

We’re going to hear much more about this story in 2025 and during the 2026 campaign, because Republican politicians have set out to blame Sand for the problem.

Iowa Supreme Court hears arguments on LULAC v Pate

The Iowa Supreme Court heard oral arguments last Tuesday in LULAC v Pate. It’s an unusual case that is connected to Iowa’s 2002 law requiring most government functions to use only the English language.

Way back in 2007, U.S. Representative Steve King and four Republican county auditors (including Joni Ernst) filed a lawsuit to stop Iowa Secretary of State Michael Mauro from providing voter information in languages other than English. A Polk County judge ruled in their favor in 2008, and issued an injunction preventing the Secretary of State’s office from providing voter registration forms in other languages.

The League of United Latin American Citizens of Iowa filed suit in 2021, asking the Polk County District Court to determine that voting materials can be translated into other languages, and to dissolve the 2008 injunction that prohibits the state from providing voter registration forms in other languages. Judge Scott Rosenberg ruled in LULAC’s favor in June 2023, on the grounds that the English-only law allows “language usage required by or necessary to secure the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and Laws of the United States of America or the Constitution of the State of Iowa.” The court held that voting materials like registration forms qualify for that exception.

The state appealed, and I tried to briefly summarize the main arguments for each side without getting lost in the procedural weeds. If you’d like more details, watch the oral arguments here.

I have no idea how the justices will rule. It’s worth noting, though, that Justice Edward Mansfield recused, which means only six justices will decide the case. If they split 3-3, the lower court ruling would be affirmed by operation of law, and the Secretary of State would no longer be able to prohibit county auditors from printing voter materials in Spanish or other languages. The state needs to persuade at least four of the six justices in order to reverse the lower court ruling.

News from the Iowa Summit on Justice and Disparities

Every year, I look forward to the Iowa Summit on Justice and Disparities, which took place in Ankeny on December 17. We only had time to discuss a couple of angles on the radio show, but I hope to write more about what I learned at Bleeding Heartland.

Justice Mansfield was one of the lunchtime speakers, and he talked about a few ways the judicial branch is trying to address racial disparities and access to justice. I was stunned by one statistic he mentioned: pro bono representation (where attorneys don’t charge clients for handling a case) has dramatically declined and is about 30 percent of the level measured in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Chad Jensen, who is director of Juvenile Court Services in Iowa, gave a presentation about a youth diversion program that was implemented statewide in June 2023. (Before then, diversion was only available to youth in some of Iowa’s eight judicial districts.) Making this option available to all Iowa youth was one of the recommendations of a Juvenile Justice Task Force, which the Iowa Supreme Court appointed to improve the system.

Over the past year and a half, about 5,300 juveniles charged with low-level offenses have been diverted to counseling or other services, rather than given an intake appointment with juvenile court. Jensen said that’s about a third of all referrals they’ve had during that time, and the recidivism rate has been just 16 percent. He called that a “truly amazing number,” which shows that the vast majority of youth benefit from this “light touch” approach. Jensen also noted it’s helpful for Juvenile Court Services not to deploy resources for youth who don’t need a higher level of involvement with the justice system.

Thank you for reading or listening! Next week, Dennis Hart—”the OG,” as Spencer calls him—will join me to wrap up the year on the December 30 edition of “KHOI’s Capitol Week.”