Matt Chapman closely follows Iowa legislative affairs, including bills targeting people on public assistance programs. -promoted by Laura Belin

Two bills related to oversight of Iowans on public assistance were in subcommittee on January 28 at the state capitol.

Following disappointing local election results for Republicans in many parts of Iowa, GOP State Senator Zach Nunn has introduced legislation to forbid political parties or partisan committees from spending money to influence nonpartisan elections.

A free speech watchdog characterized the bill as unconstitutional censorship.

Andy Johnson works in the locally-owned clean energy transition, and farms with his wife and three daughters in rural Winneshiek County, northeast Iowa. -promoted by Laura Belin

Tis the season … for girls’ wrestling! (And yes, for presidential choices also.)

Last Friday my daughter persuaded our family to go to the girls’ state wrestling tournament in Waverly, and wow. Strength, team spirit, determination, leadership, intelligence, grit, power … and a lotta wins!

What did I expect? Sometimes society changes slowly, sometimes a bit more quickly. People too – even when we think we’re pretty enlightened.

UPDATE: House Judiciary Committee Chair Steven Holt confirmed by email on January 29, “The bill is dead. I will not assign it to sub-committee.”

Original post follows:

Nine Iowa House Republicans are trying to make it legal to discriminate against transgender Iowans in many areas of daily life, including education, employment, and housing.

House File 2164 would remove gender identity protections from the Iowa Civil Rights Act. Adding sexual orientation and gender identity language to that law in 2007 was one of the hard-fought victories of the new Democratic legislative majority.

The civil rights law bans discrimination against protected classes in “public accommodations, employment, apprenticeship and on-the-job training programs, vocational schools, or housing.” Iowa House and Senate Republicans set a terrible precedent last year by altering the code to deny gender-affirming surgery to transgender Medicaid recipients. (That law is being challenged in court.) So it’s not surprising a group of social conservatives want to deny all civil rights to trans Iowans.

It’s far from clear there are 51 votes to get this horrible proposal through the Iowa House, or that state Senate leaders would want to pass it in the upper chamber. After the jump I’ve highlighted how fair-minded Iowans can help keep this bill from becoming law.

Kyla Paterson wrote this personal endorsement. The Iowa Democratic Party’s Stonewall Caucus will not endorse a presidential candidate. -promoted by Laura Belin

I’m endorsing Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren for president, not because anyone told me to, but because I believe she is the best candidate in the race with her increasingly broad coalition of people from all walks of life. Whether they are LGBTQ+, a person of color, disabled, poor, working class, or just sick and tired of the system destroying lives.

Janice Weiner is a city council member in Iowa City and a retired U.S. Foreign Service Officer. -promoted by Laura Belin

I’m someone who makes decisions with a combination of head and heart. I learned during my Foreign Service career that I needed both, and I applied that when considering the impressive field of Democratic presidential candidates. Do they speak to me personally? Do their policies make sense? We in Iowa are so fortunate to have this opportunity – not just to see candidates at a rally and read their platforms and policies – but to get to know them as people. And they us, as well.

Like so many others, I trekked to events for countless candidates. Last May, as a part of that process, I attended the Klobuchar campaign’s mental health/addiction panel in Iowa City, screwed up my courage, and told the senator my story. I’m a retired Foreign Service Officer, and I’m raising my granddaughter because my daughter cannot, because of her struggles with dual diagnosis – mental health and addiction, rolled into one. We are not unique – how I wish we were.

What’s the opposite of statesmanlike?

If there’s a word for that, it applies to Senator Joni Ernst’s latest public remarks about the impeachment trial proceedings.

Aaron Belkin is director of Take Back the Court and a political science professor at San Francisco State University who spent 20 years working to end “Don’t ask, don’t tell” and the military’s transgender ban. -promoted by Laura Belin

With so much at stake in this year’s Iowa caucuses, the latest survey data indicate that the race is wide open, with any of the four leading candidates potentially able to win. As they seek to distinguish themselves from the pack, however, the candidates are constrained by the fact that their policy goals on health care, the economy, and the environment share many similarities. Given that they largely agree on policy, it has been difficult for candidates to distinguish themselves on the basis of distinct visions of what they would do once elected. 

Despite the similarity of their policy positions, however, there is one critical and high stakes issue—Supreme Court expansion—on which the candidates have expressed widely divergent views. Based on new polling data and new research, there is an opportunity during the waning days of the Iowa campaign for one of the candidates to break away from the pack by expressing strong support for court expansion and explaining that key Iowan priorities—in particular rural revitalization—depend on it.

Aime Wichtendahl is a city council member in Hiawatha (Linn County) and Iowa’s first openly trans elected official. -promoted by Laura Belin

A few years ago, I stopped into a gas station near my house to grab a soda. As I was preparing to pay for it, I noticed that the cost of a bottle had increased slightly so I asked the clerk about it.

“Everything goes up except the wages,” he said.

“Hopefully that wouldn’t be true for much longer,” I replied.

At that time Linn County had initiated a plan to raise the minimum wage to $10.25. I had served on the working group that made the recommendation to the Board of Supervisors. And while $10.25 wasn’t yet a livable wage, it was a start.

Jackie Norris is a former Obama/Biden administration official and experienced campaign hand. She managed Barack Obama’s 2008 general election effort in Iowa. -promoted by Laura Belin

Whoever wins Iowa needs to share our values, be ready to serve as commander-in-chief, and build a diverse coalition to win in November. That’s why I’m supporting Joe Biden.

All Republicans in the U.S. Senate are so far presenting a united front to defend President Donald Trump against any full examination of the charges against him. But more than most of her colleagues, Iowa’s Senator Joni Ernst is becoming the public face of Trump’s defense.

She is also the leading voice in Congress for a talking point Ernst floated earlier this month: Trump has more firmly supported Ukraine against Russian aggression than did President Barack Obama.

Edward Cohn lives in Grinnell and is a member of the Poweshiek County Democratic Central Committee. -promoted by Laura Belin

I’m like a lot of Democrats: when the 2020 campaign began, I loved the idea of an Elizabeth Warren presidency, but I wasn’t sure whether Warren would be a strong candidate in November. Luckily, I live in Iowa, which means that I’ve had a lot of chances to see the Democratic field in action. After seeing 47 speeches by nineteen candidates, I can confidently say Warren is exactly the leader America needs.

Republicans on the Iowa Senate State Government Committee have approved a proposed constitutional amendment that could eventually clear the way for a total ban on abortion.

Senate Joint Resolution 21 would add language to the Iowa Constitution clarifying that the document “shall not be construed to recognize, grant, or secure a right to abortion or to require the public funding of abortion.”

An earlier version cleared the Senate State Government Committee in March 2019. But for reasons they never explained publicly, Republican leaders did not bring the measure to the Senate floor during last year’s legislative session.

Governor Kim Reynolds urged lawmakers to act on this issue in her Condition of the State address earlier this month: “We must protect life by making clear, through an amendment, that our constitution does not grant a right to abortion.”

The goal is to make all future abortion restrictions immune from court challenges.

Tanya Keith is a Democratic activist in Des Moines and author of the recently published Soccer Stars on the Pitch. -promoted by Laura Belin

I am the Cory Booker precinct captain for my precinct in the River Bend neighborhood of Des Moines. When I heard he dropped out last Monday morning, I was gutted. Senator Booker was a unique candidate of hope in a sometimes angry field.

I was so firmly in his camp, I told people I didn’t need a second choice, I only needed to work hard to make him viable in my precinct. So after he left the race, I was lost, and I decided to go yell at a billionaire.

U.S. Senator Joni Ernst told Iowa reporters in October that if articles of impeachment were referred to the Senate, she would “evaluate the facts” as a “jurist.”

Senator Chuck Grassley voted to allow deposition of witnesses in President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial, explaining at the time he was supporting “a tightly disciplined legal process to get the information needed to help clear up important discrepancies on the record. Witnesses will not be called simply for the sake of calling witnesses. Seeking this information is important to a process that is judicious.”

Yet Iowa’s senators joined all of their Republican colleagues on January 21 to prevent senators from examining any documents the White House is withholding and from hearing any witness testimony about President Donald Trump’s conduct.

Shawn Harmsen is a political and social justice activist in Iowa City. -promoted by Laura Belin

I believe Senator Elizabeth Warren would make the best president out of all of the candidates. So after spending more than a year carefully listening to candidates and watching their campaigns, I am excited to commit to caucus for Warren.

I have been a fan since she first appeared on the Daily Show, back when President Barack Obama reached out to her for her expertise and integrity to help save America in the wake of Bush’s 2008 recession, a recession that hit both of my parents pretty hard.

I watched as she helped put together a new agency to protect consumers, and how she got elected to the Senate after Republican senators blocked her from leading the agency she helped create.

The first time I saw her speak, and read her book, was a half-dozen years ago.  I wanted her to run in 2016.

Paul W. Johnson is a preacher’s kid, returned Peace Corps volunteer, former state legislator, former chief of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Soil Conservation Service (now called the Natural Resources Conservation Service), a former director of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, and a retired farmer. -promoted by Laura Belin

I have reached a point in my life journey when I often wake at night and mull over the life this world and my country have given me.

Tamyra Harrison is founder and director of Iowans For D.C. Statehood. -promoted by Laura Belin

In 1978, when Congress put what was right for the American people over party interests, Republicans and Democrats came together on behalf of a large group of American citizens.  With the required two-thirds majority, they passed a proposed constitutional amendment to give full representation in both houses of Congress to the District of Columbia.

Republican Senator Strom Thurmond said it best: “The residents of the District of Columbia deserve the right to (full) representation in Congress if for no other reason than simple fairness.”  Unfortunately, only sixteen of the required 38 states needed to ratify the amendment approved it, so it failed. Iowa was one of those sixteen states.

“They took our land, they took the grocery store, they took the community center,” Joyce Bruce recalled of a project that destroyed the African-American neighborhood anchored by Center Street in the late 1950s and 1960s. “They just wiped that whole block completely out, all, all the way down.”

Bruce’s words and other personal stories are featured in a new interactive exhibit devoted to the history of racist housing policies in Des Moines. Federal government programs and city initiatives over many decades contributed to persistent, wide-ranging racial disparities in Iowa’s largest metro area.

Dan Guild: “The modern primary schedule greatly reduces the voice of African Americans in the selection of the Democratic presidential candidate.” -promoted by Laura Belin

On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, let us remember the importance he placed on African American access to the ballot box. A portion of a speech he gave in 1957 is below.  The whole text is worth reading.

But even more, all types of conniving methods are still being used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters. The denial of this sacred right is a tragic betrayal of the highest mandates of our democratic tradition. And so our most urgent request to the president of the United States and every member of Congress is to give us the right to vote. [Audience:] (Yes)

Give us the ballot, and we will no longer have to worry the federal government about our basic rights…

Give us the ballot (Give us the ballot), and we will transform the salient misdeeds of bloodthirsty mobs (Yeah) into the calculated good deeds of orderly citizens.

Unfortunately, the modern primary schedule greatly reduces the voice of African Americans in the selection of the Democratic presidential candidate.

Caleb Gates lives and works in Cedar Rapids. He provides case management to new refugee families and advocates for new Iowans. -promoted by Laura Belin

When I came to bed on election night 2016 and told my wife Donald Trump had won, she cried and asked me, “Are you going to lose your job?”

I worked with refugees. In December 2017 I learned Trump’s anti-refugee policies were shutting down the program I worked for. I lost my job the following month.

I was blessed to find another job working with refugees, but many others in that field were not so fortunate. The Trump administration has stained the moral fabric of our country and decimated our global reputation. Many lives have been damaged or even destroyed as a direct result of the actions and decisions of this President. The stakes are high, and Democrats, independents, and even many Republicans feel it.

Given the stakes, priority number 1 for election 2020 is beating Donald Trump. We Iowans have a political responsibility to send a message to the country and the world, a responsibility greater than we deserve as less than 1 percent of the U.S. population and whiter and older than the country as whole. I will vote for whoever wins the Democratic nomination, but I want my caucus vote to help choose the right nominee. After mulling this decision for the last year, the answer is now clear: Bernie Sanders is the only candidate who can beat Donald Trump.

Charles Bruner is a longtime advocate for policies that support children and strengthen families. He has endorsed Elizabeth Warren for president. -promoted by Laura Belin

Iowans like to see presidential candidates in the flesh, but sometimes their surrogates offer perspectives that deserve as much attention.

In early January, Heather McGhee spoke on behalf of Elizabeth Warren to a small group of Iowans at Smokey Row in Des Moines. Her message, however, was one that deserves to be considered and heeded by Democrats and progressives more generally.

Greg Thielmann grew up in Newton and worked for more than 30 years on nuclear weapons issues in the Office of Management and Budget, the U.S. Foreign Service, and the Senate Intelligence Committee. He currently serves as a board member of the Arms Control Association. -promoted by Laura Belin

When I was growing up in central Iowa during the Cold War, I sometimes found myself headed west on Interstate 80, imagining the way nuclear war would be likely to arrive in Iowa – a series of Soviet nuclear ground bursts in Omaha to destroy Strategic Air Command Headquarters, bathing Iowa in a heavy dose of radioactive fallout.

Now the Cold War is over, but not the nuclear threat. The Trump administration has abandoned the anti-nuclear deal with Iran and six other states. President Trump’s efforts to achieve nuclear disarmament on the Korean peninsula have fizzled. The U.S. has pulled out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia and is dithering over Moscow’s offer to extend the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), the only remaining limit on the world’s largest nuclear arsenals. 

Meanwhile, the Trump administration proposes spending trillions of dollars to build new strategic weapons.

Amanda Rex-Johnson is an activist in central Iowa. -promoted by Laura Belin

I started volunteering on presidential campaigns last year long before I had identified my favorite candidate. My goal was to support folks getting more involved in the Iowa caucuses while advocating accessibility needs directly to the campaigns.

Not all the campaigns were easy to engage with. Despite multiple efforts, I was unable to connect with a top candidate’s operation here in Des Moines. When I found out that one of his top staffers would be a guest speaker at a training I was attending, I was excited to finally have a chance to ask how to volunteer and what they were doing to make their campaign more accessible for volunteers and organizers.

Jackie Wellman is a Democratic volunteer in West Des Moines and a board member and Iowa ambassador of the Spastic Paraplegia Foundation. -promoted by Laura Belin

For years I was in denial about having a progressive, rare motor neuron disease, but the fact is that I have Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia.  Senator Amy Klobuchar is the co-sponsor of the rare disease caucus.  When someone is fighting for people like me and my son, they deserve a look. 

The senator was at my house in 2016 while stumping for Hillary Clinton.  I went to see her speak to the Asian Latino Coalition last April, walking away with even more appreciation.

After reading more about her and speaking to her, I decided she was the one I would be working for. Last June, I endorsed after trying to see as many candidates as I could.  Here are the reasons why:

Tanya Keith of Des Moines spoke to the Iowa Senate subcommittee considering Senate Joint Resolution 21 on January 16. -promoted by Laura Belin

The Iowa Senate Republican majority has proposed amending Iowa’s constitution to state that the document “does not secure or protect a right to abortion or require the funding of abortion.” I believe this is wrong on so many levels. But State Senator Jake Chapman refused to allow me to speak more than two minutes at the subcommittee meeting he chaired, even though I was the only person testifying with a personal story.

I encourage you to watch my testimony, but I hope you will honor my story by also reading the full text of what I wanted to say. I find it disgusting that this issue was pushed out of subcommittee so quickly, and that Chapman clearly has no interest in hearing from Iowans about it. Here is the video:

Emma Schmit is an Iowa organizer for Food & Water Watch. -promoted by Laura Belin

In December, U.S. Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey introduced a historic new vision for agriculture and food in the United States. The Farm System Reform Act would overhaul our unsustainable food and agriculture model and strengthen the Packers & Stockyards Act to give independent family farmers a fighting chance against monopolistic, corporate integrators. It restores mandatory Country of Origin Labeling, so consumers know where their food is coming from.

What makes it truly revolutionary, though, is that it calls for an end to factory farming. The Farm System Reform Act is the first ever national factory farm ban legislation.

Bruce Lear: The first step to healing is to elect a healer in chief who will return the White House to normal while fixing what this president has destroyed. -promoted by Laura Belin

I know we just finished a full season of Hallmark Christmas movies written to keep the Kleenex industry in business. But for a political nerd, the big-city girl coming home to find Christmas love with the flannel shirted, widowed, veterinarian just doesn’t cut it.

For me, I get emotional when I binge watch a president who never was, in a political world that I wish existed.  That’s why I recently binge-watched all seven seasons of the West Wing.

U.S. Senator Joni Ernst has brushed off as “moot” a new finding that the Trump administration broke federal law by withholding security assistance to Ukraine during the summer of 2019.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office said in a January 16 report that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) violated the Impoundment Control Act when it withheld funds from the Defense Department. “Faithful execution of the law does not permit the President to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law.”

Ernst has long advocated increasing our country’s military support for Ukraine. But speaking to Iowa media this morning (audio), she suggested the GAO findings were not relevant, since Ukraine eventually received the assistance Congress approved.

Matt Chapman is a Democratic activist in Waukee. -promoted by Laura Belin

A few years after the great recession kicked in, I was listening to the latest Ry Cooder album while mowing my lawn and came across the song “No Banker Left Behind.” It spoke perfectly to the mood of the time, and I remember shutting the mower off and going inside to listen to it a couple more times.

The Dodd-Frank financial reform bill had passed a year earlier, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was created (an idea Elizabeth Warren came up with). At that time, Professor Warren was asked to help set up the bureau, made a temporary chair, and given some liaison responsibilities. But she was never given the role of director.

Luckily for us, efforts to recruit Warren to run for the Senate instead paid off. Now she is campaigning to be our first woman president.

Stacey Walker is a Linn County supervisor who has endorsed Bernie Sanders for president. -promoted by Laura Belin

There’s a popular expression that not paying attention to politics is a privilege. In this time and moment, this is an obvious truth. Only those in the gilded classes are protected from the pervasive social and economic harms that haunt and oppress most Americans. This enormous shield of privilege allows for the bliss that comes with inattentiveness; a sedative that can lull us into ignorance and apathy.

A comparable privilege which I’ve struggled for years to articulate is the one that comes with being able to wholeheartedly support a candidate for president who espouses a politics of incrementalism. An endorsement of this sort of politics suggests an immunity to the social and economic harms I referenced earlier.

The Democrats I know supporting Joe Biden have health insurance. They have good jobs and they don’t have any fear of life or limb when interacting with the police. While this may not seem like much to some, for many Americans this basic sense of security is a Maslovian dream.

TJ Foley grew up in Clive and is a junior at Harvard College studying social studies with a focus on technology policy. -promoted by Laura Belin

On my 18^th birthday, I proudly registered to vote as a Democrat. Like my parents and grandparents before me, I believe this nation is better off when we prioritize equal opportunity, economic equality, and collective progress. My earliest political memory is sitting on my Dad’s shoulders at a frigid John Kerry rally in November 2004. I will always carry with me the memory of grandmother’s tears shed the night that Donald Trump won the presidency while losing the popular vote. I deplore this president and regard him as one of the most destructive forces on the planet.

Members of the Iowa House and Senate begin the work of the 2020 legislative session this morning. Speaking to journalists last week, GOP leaders described plans to work on a wide range of issues in the coming months, including workforce development, taxes, child care, and medical cannabis.

But top statehouse Republicans aren’t planning any oversight hearings on what’s been happening at the Glenwood Resource Center for Iowans with severe intellectual disabilities.

Before the new political year kicks off with the Iowa legislature convening and Governor Kim Reynolds laying out her agenda, I need to take care of some unfinished business from 2019.

When I reflect on my work at the end of each year, I like to take stock of not only the most popular posts published on this website and the ones I worked hardest on, but also the projects that brought me the most joy. I’ve found this exercise helps guide my editorial decisions on the many days when I have time to write up only one of several newsworthy stories.

Among the 348 posts I wrote last year, these were some of my favorites:

Ira Lacher reacts to a Des Moines Register guest editorial by an Iowan living in New York, who has encountered “ignorance toward Middle America.” -promoted by Laura Belin

As you may have guessed from my posting name, I was born closer to West Farms Road in the Bronx, New York, than to any farm in Iowa. But when I was 22, I left New York City and moved to America.

So it was with great bemusement that I noticed the give and take on social media surrounding Colleen Connolly’s op-ed in The Des Moines Register about how New Yorkers and East Coasters in general dis Iowans and other Midwesterners.

UPDATE: Reynolds didn’t pick McDermott this time but appointed him to the Iowa Supreme Court in April 2020. Bleeding Heartland covered highlights from his application and interview here.

After interviewing twelve applicants, the State Judicial Nominating Commission forwarded three names to Governor Kim Reynolds on January 9 to fill the vacancy created by Iowa Supreme Court Chief Justice Mark Cady’s passing in November.  Reynolds has 30 days to appoint one of the finalists, but there’s no suspense here: she will almost certainly choose Matthew McDermott.

A computer program couldn’t generate a more ideal judicial candidate for a Republican governor seeking to move Iowa courts to the right.

The U.S. House voted on January 9 to block further military action against Iran without express authorization from Congress.

In a written statement, Representative Steve King (IA-04) thundered against what he called “bad legislation that seeks to tie the President’s hands,” adding,

I stand with letting President Trump, our Commander-in-Chief, make the tough calls and take the swift and certain actions that he determines are necessary to protect our nation, our citizens, and our interests from Iranian acts of hostility.

King was singing a different tune when House members of both parties passed a similar resolution in 2011 to limit President Barack Obama’s military engagement in Libya.

Jake Tornholm is a city council member in Williamsburg (Iowa County). -promoted by Laura Belin

Many of the current presidential candidates are talking about the issues that matter most to me, and I hear some of them saying the right things, but there is one who currently stands out in the field. One who has demonstrated and backed her talking points with detailed actionable plans.

That’s why today I am proud to announce I’m supporting Elizabeth Warren for president.

Bryce Smith chairs the Dallas County Democrats. -promoted by Laura Belin

With the Iowa caucuses less than a month away, and millions of future voters relying on Iowa to help shape the future of the Democratic field, now is the time to hear why Cory Booker has a rapidly expanding network of caucus goers, the largest number of local endorsers in Iowa, and is ready to heal our nation.

Floyd Gardener of the Progressive Minds of Iowa and Tyler Granger of the National Wildlife Federation co-authored this commentary. -promoted by Laura Belin

Iowa experienced enormous natural disasters in 2019, and climate change accelerated the devastation. 

The National Wildlife Federation released an interactive national climate disaster report in November, which illustrated that Iowa’s historic floods and extreme heat were attributable to climate change. The report also predicted continued disastrous weather conditions as the effects of climate change continue to build.