Brian McLain chairs the Iowa Democratic Party’s Progressive Caucus.

In a letter finalized on January 14, several Democratic leaders called for a special meeting to challenge the refusal to seat the Iowa Democratic Party’s two newest constituency caucuses on the State Central Committee.

According to a letter from outgoing state party chair Ross Wilburn, the Iowa Democratic Party’s attorney and co-chairs of the Rules and Nominations Committee Co-Chairs “all reached the same conclusion”: there is no legal mechanism for the Arab-American Caucus and Climate Change & Environmental Caucus to elect representatives to the State Central Committee.

However, the State Convention of 2022, which is the party’s supreme governing body, officially recognized both new constituency caucuses last July. In the interest of transparency, these leaders have chosen to make this letter publicly available.

Iowa House Republicans are seeking to change a longstanding chamber rule, in order to make it easier to pass Governor Kim Reynolds’ school voucher plan.

Since Republicans gained control of the Iowa House for the 2011 session, every rules package has contained the following language under Rule 32:

All bills to appropriate money shall be referred to the appropriations committee, and all bills pertaining to the levy, assessment, or collection of taxes or fees shall be referred to the committee on ways and means.

House Study Bill 31 would exempt “bills assigned to the Education Reform Committee” during the 2023 session or any special legislative session from moving through the Ways and Means and Appropriations committees.

Speaker Pat Grassley created the Education Reform Committee for the express purpose of considering major legislation, such as the governor’s plan to provide state funds to families choosing to enroll their children in private schools. The panel’s five members include Grassley, Majority Leader Matt Windschitl, and Speaker Pro-tem John Wills, all of whom support “school choice.” So the Education Reform Committee is guaranteed to advance the bill, perhaps with some amendments.

Henry Jay Karp is the Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Emanuel in Davenport, Iowa, which he served from 1985 to 2017. He is the co-founder and co-convener of One Human Family QCA, a social justice organization.

I am writing this from a hotel room in Scottsdale, Arizona where I am isolating after coming down with COVID-19.

Once again, Governor “COVID Kim” Reynolds has shown us her true colors. She is governor to the rich, enabling the rich to get richer, while she works to widen the class divide in the state. She is seeking to secure a defined underclass, by undermining the public school system; a system created to provide equal educational opportunities to all and a pathway to self-advancement for every Iowan.

If she is successful, we can see similar private school voucher programs popping up in many other red states.

RJ Miller is an advocate, activist, and executive director of Greater Opportunities Inc, a Des Moines-based nonprofit. He was an independent candidate for the Iowa House in 2022.

I’m running for the at-large Des Moines City Council seat now held by Carl Voss, because I believe the council needs more diversity and more council members who come from a grassroots background, for and from the people they represent.

I’m running because our city needs real leadership. Des Moines needs someone who will unify and truly fight for the people’s best interests. Residents deserve someone who will fight against gentrification, redlining, and eminent domain. More important, the city deserves an anti-sellout, anti-establishment councilman.

This column by Daniel G. Clark about Alexander Clark (1826-1891) first appeared in the Muscatine Journal.

Do you know where your people came from? How they arrived on this continent? How they made their way to Iowa? If not, might it make a difference in your life to learn their stories?

On May 2, 2010, I posted on Facebook: “I just found a ‘smoking gun’ historical document that confirms my hypothesis (ever stronger over the past decade) about my ancestors’ role in the Underground Railroad. I am descended directly from men named as key players in Connecticut, including my great-great-grandfather who migrated directly to Durant, Iowa. Do I sound excited?”

As expected, Governor Kim Reynolds devoted a significant share of her Condition of the State speech on January 10 to her plan to divert more public funds to private K-12 schools across Iowa.

Although the central purpose of the plan remains the same—giving state funds to families who choose to send their children to a private school—the latest version is vastly larger in scope, and will be more costly.

Iowa’s four U.S. House members received good news on January 11, when the House Republican Steering Committee agreed on assignments to the chamber’s most influential committees.

Editor’s note: This post has been corrected to note that Priorities for Iowa, Inc., a group that does not disclose its donors, was responsible for the television ad buy.

Nick Covington is an Iowa parent who taught high school social studies for ten years. He is also the co-founder of the Human Restoration Project, an Iowa educational non-profit promoting systems-based thinking and grassroots organizing in education. This essay first appeared on Medium.

On January 9, Priorities for Iowa, Inc., a 501(c)4 organization in Des Moines, announced a six-figure ad buy in support of Governor Kim Reynolds’ school voucher program. The super-PAC Priorities for Iowa Political Fund is registered at the same address.

Priorities for Iowa claims to have the interests of Iowa parents at heart, but a brief look at the super-PAC’s donor disclosures tells us otherwise.

Randy Evans can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com. 

The legislature wrote Iowa’s public records law 55 years ago, and one of the statute’s tenets was the belief people deserve to know how state and local governments spend their tax money.

Another important concept in the law is that fees for copies of government records must be reasonable and cannot exceed the actual cost of providing the documents.

That brings us today to Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, where administrators appear not to grasp what “reasonable” means.

The Iowa House opened its 2023 session on January 9 with 64 Republicans and 36 Democrats, a four-seat gain for the GOP compared to last year.

Thirty-eight representatives (24 Republicans and fourteen Democrats) were just elected to the chamber for the first time in November. Two Republicans previously held other legislative offices: Craig Johnson served one and a half terms in the Iowa Senate, and David Young served two terms in Congress.

The House members include 71 men and 29 women (sixteen Democrats and thirteen Republicans), down from 31 women who served for the last two years. The record for women’s representation in the Iowa House was 34 female lawmakers in 2019.

Six African Americans (Democrats Ako Abdul-Samad, Jerome Amos, Jr., Ruth Ann Gaines, Mary Madison, and Ross Wilburn, and Republican Eddie Andrews) serve in the legislature’s lower chamber. As Abdul-Samad began his seventeenth year at the capitol, he surpassed Helen Miller as Iowa’s longest-serving Black state legislator.

Republican Mark Cisneros was the first Latino elected to the Iowa legislature in 2020, and Democrat Adam Zabner is now the second Latino serving in the chamber. Republican Henry Stone became only the second Asian American to serve in the House after the 2020 election, and Democrat Megan Srinivas was also elected in November. The other 92 state representatives are white.

Democrat Elinor Levin is the only out LGBTQ member of the Iowa House. She and Zabner are also the first Jews to serve in the chamber for more than three decades. Abdul-Samad is the only Muslim member of the House, and Srinivas is Hindu.

I’ve posted details below on the Iowa House majority and minority leadership teams, along with all chairs, vice chairs, and members of standing House committees. Where relevant, I’ve noted changes since last year’s session. The biggest change is that House Speaker Pat Grassley created an Education Reform Committee to consider the governor’s school voucher plan and other controversial education bills. The House also eliminated the Information Technology Committee.

Some non-political trivia: the 100 Iowa House members include two with the surname Meyer (a Democrat and a Republican) and two Thompsons and a Thomson (all Republicans). As for popular first names, there are four men named David or Dave, four named Thomas or Tom, three Roberts (a Robert, a Bob, and a Bobby), three Brians, three men named Michael (two go by Mike), a Jon and two Johns, two named Charles (a Chuck and a Charley), and two men each named Jeff, Ken, Steve, Matt, Austin, and Josh or Joshua. There are also two Elizabeths (one goes by Beth), an Ann and an Anne, and two women each named Heather, Megan, and Shannon. As recently as 2020, four women named Mary served in the Iowa House, but just one was sworn in this week.

The Iowa Senate began its 2023 session on January 9 with 34 Republicans and sixteen Democrats, the largest majority seen in the chamber for about five decades. Five of the last seven Iowa general elections have been Republican waves.

Fourteen senators (nine Republicans, five Democrats) were just elected to the chamber for the first time in November. Seven of them (four Republicans and three Democrats) previously served in the Iowa House.

Fifteen senators are women (eight Democrats and seven Republicans), up from twelve women in the chamber prior to the 2022 election and more than double the six women senators who served prior to the 2018 election.

Democrat Izaah Knox is the second Black state senator in Iowa history. The first was Tom Mann, a Democrat elected to two terms during the 1980s. The other 49 senators are white. No Latino has ever served in the chamber, and Iowa’s only Asian-American senator was Swati Dandekar, who resigned in 2011.

Democrat Janice Weiner became the first Jewish person to serve in the Iowa Senate since Ralph Rosenberg left the legislature after 1994. Democrat Liz Bennett became the first out LGBTQ state senator since Matt McCoy retired in 2018.

I enclose below details on the majority and minority leadership teams, along with all chairs, vice chairs, and members of standing Iowa Senate committees. Where relevant, I’ve mentioned changes since last year’s legislative session. The Senate has added a new Technology Committee and renamed what used to be “Labor and Business Relations” as the Workforce Committee.

Some non-political trivia: the 50 Iowa senators include two Taylors, a Democrat and a Republican. As for first names, there are three Jeffs and two men each named Mark, Mike, and Dan.

Brenna Bird wasted no time putting her mark on the Iowa Attorney General’s office. Big changes commenced before the Republican’s formal swearing in on January 5.

The Iowa legislature’s 2023 session begins on January 9.

Over the years, I’ve participated in some great Iowa legislative forums and some that left me with what the old commercial called an Excedrin headache. Most of the time, those headaches came because I didn’t prepare, and I left things unsaid or unquestioned. It’s a little like being in a debate with someone and knowing just the right thing to say, a few hours too late.

For that reason, I offer a simple guide for discussing private school vouchers at legislative forums. Although Iowa House Republicans have twice refused to pass Governor Kim Reynolds’ scheme, and a statewide poll last year showed 52 percent of Iowans opposed using public money for private schools, the governor seems determined to force a yes vote. Those who oppose vouchers need to be equally determined and prepared.

UPDATE: All four Iowans received coveted committee assignments on January 11, which are discussed here. Original post follows.

The U.S. House spent most of last week mired in the longest-running attempt to elect a speaker since before the Civil War. Iowa’s four Republicans stood behind their caucus leader Kevin McCarthy from the first ballot on January 3 to the fifteenth ballot after midnight on January 7.

Iowa’s House delegation lacks any long-serving members; three are beginning their second terms, and Representative Zach Nunn was elected for the first time in 2022.

As House members receive committee assignments later this month, where the Iowans land could signal how much influence they have with GOP leadership.

Traditionally, members of Congress who publicly oppose their party’s leader are punished. But McCarthy’s team made so many concessions in search of votes for speaker that several Republican holdouts could be rewarded with prime committee assignments—arguably at the expense of those who were loyal to McCarthy throughout.

This column by Daniel G. Clark about Alexander Clark (1826-1891) first appeared in the Muscatine Journal.

Sixteen historical markers across Iowa tell the story of John Brown’s last “underground railroad” trip—February 4 to March 10, 1859—from Civil Bend near the Missouri River to the Mississippi’s edge at Davenport.

The marker I know best stands outside the historic West Liberty railway depot. Its post is well cemented into ballast rock. I know, having dug much of the hole myself in June 2009. I say it’s my most “concrete” contribution to the Iowa Freedom Trail, of which the John Brown Freedom Trail is a subset.

The Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board has asked state lawmakers to approve a bill requiring donors to opt in to recurring contributions to Iowa candidates or political committees.

The agency charged with enforcing Iowa’s campaign regulations pre-filed the bill last month, after the six-member board unanimously voted to recommend the policy at its November meeting.

As the new Congress began its work on January 3, U.S. Senator Joni Ernst moved up a notch on the Senate Republican leadership team.

Ernst had held the fifth-ranking leadership position, Senate Republican Conference vice chair, for the last four years. She now serves as chair of the Senate Republican Policy Committee, the fourth-ranking position for the minority caucus. Her predecessor, Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, opted not to seek re-election in 2022.

Linda Schreiber is a member of the League of Women Voters of Johnson County.

Rural policy is an area where Republicans and Democrats should be able to find common ground (no pun intended). The new Congress presents a real opportunity as work begins to pass a Farm Bill in 2023. This legislation is renewed roughly every five years to authorize rural development programs at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The current Farm Bill will expire on September 30, 2023.

Reauthorization allows policymakers the ability to review programs included in the legislation, consider changes, and address implementation barriers that may have come up since the previous Farm Bill passed.

Ira Lacher was an assistant sports editor at the Des Moines Register during the 1980s.

Wait for it.

As Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin continues to lie, inert, connected to whatever devices keep him alive, someone is sure to call for American football, a sport unique in the world, to be banned.

Certainly what occurred on the turf of Paul Brown Stadium on Monday night, January 2, 2023, bears introspection. How are you supposed to feel when you witness a 24-year-young man almost dying, in full view of tens of thousands of spectators, and millions more watching on high-definition television?

Rachel Bruns is a volunteer advocate for quality maternal health care in Iowa.

A 2022 report from March of Dimes shows that “36% of counties nationwide — largely in the Midwest and South — constitute ‘maternity care deserts,’ meaning they have no obstetric hospitals or birth centers and no obstetric providers.” While their report does not provide state rankings, you can see whether your county classifies as being a maternity care desert here. Additionally, a report from Stacker in June 2022 ranked Iowa eleventh on a list of “states where the most people live in maternal health care deserts.”

Even if your area has maternal health care providers (OBGYNs, family physicians, midwives), finding quality care is another challenge facing pregnant and postpartum individuals in both urban and rural areas. I’ve discussed some of those problems in previous articles for this website. 

The good news is relatively low-cost, evidence-based solutions are available to make maternal health care more accessible in Iowa, which would improve outcomes. I have identified and prioritized opportunities that should be bipartisan based on successes in other states.

Note: I am not including abortion access in these recommendations, since the procedure continues to be legal in Iowa, the media regularly cover this topic, and several organizations advocate on this issue. This article from Commonwealth Fund explains how states with restrictive abortion laws have worse maternal health outcomes.