“Our 2020 caucus plans remain unchanged,” Republican Party of Iowa Chairman Jeff Kaufmann confirmed on September 6, amid news that state parties in South Carolina, Nevada, Arizona, and Kansas will not hold presidential primaries or caucuses next year.
I wouldn’t bet the farm on the traditional straw poll happening at GOP precinct caucuses on February 3, 2020.
Ira Lacher: “To save America and perhaps the world, the media must shuck off its outmoded approach of how to treat the president.” -promoted by Laura Belin
Why does the mainstream media not get it? Why do they continue to publish fake news?
No, not that kind of fake news. The kind that insists that we have a president who is able, competent, and dealing with 12 eggs per dozen.
Jon Muller: The Trump administration’s two stated goals “are incompatible to the point of being mutually exclusive in a peaceful world.” -promoted by Laura Belin
There is a consensus in the U.S. that China is a bad actor. It is not so much my goal to destroy that consensus, though most of its underpinnings are based in fantasy, nationalism, and the convenient politics of fear.
Rather, this essay is a critique of current U.S. policy, and the absurdity of the disconnect between what we say we want versus what we’re asking for.
Bruce Lear: “In this election cycle, I’d offer a different approach to dealing with the Bully in Chief. I’d laugh at him.” -promoted by Laura Belin
Remember when First Lady Michelle Obama told Democrats, “When they go low, we go high?” I’d like to revise that just a bit, to say, “When they go low, we laugh at them.”
As school begins, the message has to be, “Bullying is never OK.” Well, President Donald Trump and his ilk has made bullying in politics the norm, and that’s also not OK.
Iowa Safe Schools executive director Nate Monson has been hearing more reports of bullying incidents in Iowa schools since the 2016 election. -promoted by Laura Belin
The end of August means the start of another school year. For many students, it is a time of reconnecting with their peers, teachers, and engaging in the educational process.
But for some students, school can be a terrifying experience because of bullying.
Republicans have recruited a strong candidate for what should be one of the top-targeted Iowa House races in 2020.
Before State Representative Andy McKean switched parties in April, he had served in the Iowa legislature for 27 sessions as a Republican. Now House district 58 is the reddest Iowa House seat currently represented by a Democrat.
GOP officials hope Dr. Steve Bradley, a dentist in the area, will prevail among Iowans who heavily favored Donald Trump and Governor Kim Reynolds in the last two elections. Next year’s race in House district 58 will be a fascinating test of whether voters’ growing affinity to Republicans matters more than their longtime support for McKean.
When U.S. Representative Steve King thinks out loud, national headlines often follow.
The Des Moines Register’s Robin Opsahl was first to report on King’s musings at the August 14 Westside Conservative Club breakfast in Urbandale.
“What if we went back through all the family trees and just pulled those people out that were products of rape and incest? Would there be any population of the world left if we did that?” […]
“Considering all the wars and all the rapes and pillages taken place and whatever happened to culture after society? I know I can’t certify that I’m not a part of a product of that.”
To many, the comments seem indefensible. But I suspect many conservative Republicans in Iowa approve of King’s uncompromising stance on abortion, even if they don’t like how he talked about the issue.
Linn County Supervisor Stacey Walker has ruled out running for U.S. Senate in 2020, he announced in a post published on his website on August 8. He made the “quite difficult decision” mainly because the Democratic primary “was already heavily skewed in favor of one candidate.”
I’ve read a lot of statements by politicians bowing out of a campaign. Few have spoken as frankly about their reasons as Walker.
Matt Whitaker will become a managing director for the Kansas City-based Clout Public Affairs consulting firm, Jennifer Jacobs of Bloomberg News was first to report on August 1. Whitaker served as chief of staff for U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions for a little more than a year before President Donald Trump named him acting attorney general in November 2018, flouting a federal law and a constitutional requirement that anyone holding that position be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
Whitaker stepped down as acting attorney general in February, after the Senate confirmed William Barr. He was “counselor in the associate attorney general’s office” for just a few weeks before leaving the Justice Department in early March. Jacobs tweeted on August 1, “There was speculation Trump would appoint Whitaker to another admin job, but the president so far hasn’t made any moves to do so, I’m told.”
In this essay adapted from his book No Longer Newsworthy: How the Mainstream Media Abandoned the Working Class, Christopher Martin notes that “the whole of the working class is hardly ever presented or imagined by the U.S. news media,” and that Donald Trump benefits from how the media typically cover labor issues. -promoted by Laura Belin
Three weeks after his surprising victory on election day, November 8, 2016, Donald Trump had what might be known one day as the best day of his presidency. And with his swearing-in ceremony still weeks away, he wasn’t officially even president yet.
On November 29, Trump confidently tweeted hints of a dramatic conclusion to reports that he had been in discussion with executives at Carrier Corporation in Indiana to save hundreds of jobs that were scheduled to be exported to a new assembly facility in Mexico: “I will be going to Indiana on Thursday to make a major announcement concerning Carrier A.C. staying in Indianapolis. Great deal for workers!”
That Thursday, December 1, Trump arrived in Indianapolis. The video, which was frequently replayed in TV news stories, shows him among more than twenty men in suits, striding triumphantly through the Carrier furnace assembly floor with his black overcoat and too-long red tie. Trump took the platform in front of a white backdrop dotted with oval blue Carrier logos and announced he was saving a lot of jobs: “Actually the number’s over 1,100 people, which is so great, which is so great.”
Although Trump has been quick to blast the mainstream news media as “fake news” whenever it does not serve his interests, he has greatly benefited from two problematic ways in which the news has recently and historically framed its coverage of the working class. First, the news media usually look at the working class only through the lens of a political news story, not through the lens of a labor or workplace story. Second, the news media typically consider the “working class” not in its entirety, but just in the stereotypical white male form, which nicely serves the purposes of divisive politicians who seek to exploit this image and divide working-class people on every other dimension: race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, and citizenship.
Amy Adams reports on “Mueller book clubs” organized in Cedar Rapids and Red Oak this summer and efforts to educate Senator Joni Ernst about the special counsel’s findings. -promoted by Laura Belin
Like many others across the nation, Iowans are eager to hear what Special Counsel Robert Mueller will say in his Congressional hearing, now rescheduled for July 24. All eyes and ears will be tuned in to hear the normally tight-lipped Mueller as he is questioned by both the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees.
The Justice Department has warned Mueller that his testimony “must remain within the boundaries of your public report.” Will he provide more answers than questions about evidence pointing to obstruction of justice by the president?
Ira Lacher reflects on a dispiriting week in U.S. politics. -promoted by Laura Belin
We have a racist president. He heads a racist party. So what do we do about it?
The U.S. House voted on July 17 to kill a new resolution seeking to impeach President Donald Trump for “racist comments that have legitimized and increased fear and hatred of new Americans and people of color […].”
Iowa’s Representatives Abby Finkenauer (IA-01), Dave Loebsack (IA-02), and Cindy Axne (IA-03) were among 137 Democrats who voted to table the resolution (roll call). So did all 194 Republicans present, including Steve King (IA-04), and independent Justin Amash, even though Amash has previously said Trump engaged in impeachable “conduct satisfying all the elements of obstruction of justice.”
Months have passed since Special Counsel Robert Mueller released hundreds of pages of findings from a two-year investigation. About 1,000 former federal prosecutors signed a statement saying “the conduct of President Trump described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting President, result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice.”
Various Trump administration officials have flouted Congressional subpoenas to produce documents or testify. President Richard Nixon’s failure to comply with the House Judiciary Committee’s subpoenas in 1974 were the basis for one of the three articles of impeachment against him.
Yet only about 80 of the 235 U.S. House Democrats are now on record supporting formal impeachment hearings.
None of Iowa’s three Democrats in Congress are among them.
President Donald Trump has ordered a military parade and flyover in Washington, DC to celebrate Independence Day. He’s been wanting to stage this kind of display since his first year in office.
The production will cost millions of additional dollars and shut down air traffic to and from Reagan National Airport for hours. Republican donors and VIPs will get special passes to watch the festivities in a restricted area. Traditionally, all July 4 events in the nation’s capital have been free and open to the public.
The National Park Service is diverting $2.5 million “primarily intended to improve parks across the country” to cover a “fraction of the extra costs,” the Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin, Josh Dawsey, and Dan Lamothe reported on July 2. The “entire Fourth of July celebration on the Mall typically costs the agency about $2 million,” a former Park Service deputy director told the newspaper. Costs could escalate if the heavy military equipment damages streets.
Editor’s note: Hy-Vee’s PAC provided a comment on June 24, which is enclosed in full at the end of this post.
Great catch and great digging by Gwen Hope. -promoted by Laura Belin
Hy-Vee is one of those companies we often associate with small-town, everyone-knows-everyone “Iowa Nice” culture. Yet it’s important to remember that while some major Iowa businesses started small, many are no longer those small-town startups of yesteryear. Hy-Vee is no exception, having just made a conveniently-timed donation that was its largest single political contribution in a decade.
Like many livestock farmers, state businesses fill their animal troughs with corn and silage, but the resulting pork is of the political persuasion variety. In this vein, I looked into the fundraiser1 for the Republican Party of Iowa (RPI), held at Hy-Vee’s Ron Pearson Center in West Des Moines. President Donald Trump headlined the June 11 event.
Des Moines resident Jon Muller has worked in public policy analysis for 27 years. -promoted by Laura Belin
While I will be voting for whoever wins the Democratic nomination for president, Andrew Yang stands out among the nearly two dozen candidates.
There are two fundamental questions most Democrats are considering, broadly, and I’m not much different.
1. Which candidate has the best chance of winning in 2020?
2. Which candidate best conforms to my sense of the best direction for this nation?
In my view, Andrew Yang is the answer to both of those questions. Let’s take the second question first.
Abshir Omar “made a decision — I would not stand idly by as the ladder was pulled up behind me and refugees across the world lost a chance at a better life.” -promoted by Laura Belin
There are many times in my life where I’ve stopped to take a moment and reflect on how far I’ve come from my war-torn neighborhood in Mogadishu, Somalia. Today, on World Refugee Day, I’m taking a moment to reflect on my journey of fleeing from a civil war to seeking asylum in America and now, accepting a job to be Bernie Sanders’ Iowa Political Coordinator.
On Bernie Sanders’ Iowa team, I’ll be working to not only win the caucus in February, but to complete a political revolution that started right here in Iowa back in 2016. This political revolution is close to my heart because it is about more than just winning an election, it is about transforming our political system into something more inclusive. Where young Muslims have national leaders who support them. Where refugees see America as a place of opportunity, not xenophobia and hatred. Where working families don’t fear that their children might go hungry or without a good education.
When was the last time an Iowa lawmaker voluntarily gave up a powerful committee chairmanship? State Senator Randy Feenstra did it this week.
President Donald Trump reportedly considered pardoning Americans accused or convicted of war crimes on this Memorial Day. Fox News personalities, not military officials, have pushed for the pardons, which “could erode the legitimacy of military law and undercut good order and discipline in the ranks.”
Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Glenn Kirschner wrote, “These contemplated pardons represent a degradation — not a celebration — of Memorial Day.” Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, who served in Afghanistan, commented that Trump’s “idea that being sent to fight makes you automatically into some kind of war criminal is a slander against veterans.”
Since Memorial Day (first known as Decoration Day) is supposed to be about honoring Americans who died during military service, let’s take a moment to consider those soldiers.
Iowans awaiting federal flood relief money will have to wait a little longer.
Congressional leaders thought they had a deal to approve $19.1 billion in disaster aid before the Memorial Day recess. The U.S. Senate passed the bill on May 23 by 85 votes to 8. (Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst both supported the measure and said they’d worked to secure “specific relief for farmers whose grain bins busted because of flooding.”) President Donald Trump was willing to sign the legislation. House passage seemed assured, so most representatives left town for the holiday weekend.
Then a first-term Republican from Texas used a procedural move to hold up the bill on May 24. While most of the blame lies with U.S. Representative Chip Roy and the GOP leaders who failed to dissuade him, top House Democrats should not have put themselves at the mercy of any member of the minority.
Governor Kim Reynolds issued her first item veto of the year this week, rejecting part of a budget bill that sought to limit Attorney General Tom Miller’s authority to sign on to multi-state lawsuits. However, she did so only after Miller agreed not to join any such litigation without her permission, ensuring that he “will not be suing the Trump administration” anymore. In addition, the governor’s veto letter praised the “Legislature’s leadership on this issue.”
While not the worst-case scenario, the resolution of this conflict could invite more Republican bills encroaching on the authority of statewide elected Democrats. The governor and her staff could then pressure those officials to cede some of their power in exchange for a veto.
Midwesterners who supported Donald Trump for president may be open to policies that would “improve environmental conditions while also addressing jobs and the economy, clean water and air, and renewable energy,” even if they are not highly engaged in those issues or convinced that climate change is a global emergency.
Extreme local weather events or threats to area drinking water are good conversation starters, with potential to tap into “pent-up goodwill” rather than reinforcing the “resistance” such voters may feel when confronted by alarming rhetoric.
Those were among the notable findings from twelve focus groups Selzer & Company conducted recently in Michigan, Illinois, and Iowa.
Bruce Lear: “Swinging for the bleacher seats every time will often leave a player sitting in the dugout with a sore back. The same is true for candidates.” -promoted by Laura Belin
I love baseball. It’s a game of chess with four bases on a field instead of knights and rooks on a board. The object is to defend against runs and advance your runners around the bases. An easy game? No!
It has no clock, so the game isn’t lost until the final out at the plate or in the field. It’s slow. It’s methodical. It’s a game of statistics. The season is 162 games, so there are times of utter despair and utter joy.
James Earl Jones sums it up best in the now 30-year-old Iowa epic Field of Dreams:
“The one constant throughout the years, Ray has been baseball. America has rolled like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time.”
For me, baseball is a lot like politics. Winning is based on a strategy about finding that sweet spot in a very long season. It’s slow. It’s methodical. It’s based on statistics we call polls.
This year’s crop of Democratic candidates could perhaps learn from baseball hitters through the ages. Remember, Babe Ruth led the league in home runs but also in strike outs. In politics when there is a binary choice between candidates, too many times waving or watching a fast ball or curve might get you a gig on CNN or Fox instead of the Presidency.
North Carolina Republican lawmakers started the trend after losing the governor’s race in 2016. GOP legislative majorities in Michigan and Wisconsin followed suit late last year, seeking to hamstring newly-elected governors and the Michigan attorney general. Kansas Republicans are now trying to limit the appointment power of that state’s Democratic governor.
Iowa House Republicans took their own step toward “banana-republic style governance” on April 23, voting for unprecedented restrictions on Attorney General Tom Miller’s ability to make legal decisions.
The bill’s floor manager, State Representative Gary Worthan, admitted his proposal stemmed from political disagreements with Miller, whom Iowans elected to a tenth term last November.
Thomas Nelson of the Waterloo/Cedar Falls Courier was first to report last week that former U.S. Representative Rod Blum’s campaign has spent $11,365 on polling this year. Blum’s quarterly filing with the Federal Election Commission showed two disbursements to the candidate’s longtime pollster in early January.
The payments exceeded the $4,119 Blum for Congress owed The Polling Company at the end of December, indicating that Blum commissioned new surveys in the first district and wasn’t merely settling debts left over from the 2018 campaign.
While I have not been able to find details about the questions asked, his campaign likely tested voters’ views on key issues as well as approval and favorability numbers for himself and Representative Abby Finkenauer. Blum hasn’t ruled out running for office again. Nelson noted that he appeared at a Jones County GOP event on April 11.
No Republican has confirmed plans to run against Finkenauer. I see Blum as a weaker challenger than State Representative Ashley Hinson, who has said she’s considering the race and will make her intentions known after the legislative session ends.
John Webb is a writer in Des Moines. Please read these guidelines if you would like to contribute to Bleeding Heartland’s coverage of the Iowa caucuses. -promoted by Laura Belin
Julian Castro has not yet caught fire in the mainstream media, and I think part of the reason is that he is not easily defined in neat and tidy terms. He is a product of public schools who went on to graduate from Harvard Law. He is the grandson of a woman who came to the U.S. at age 12 following the death of her parents. He is progressive and pragmatic in equal measure, yet he stresses bold policies to address big issues.
The U.S. Department of Justice on April 18 released a redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s “Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election.” I’ve posted the full document after the jump. You can download it here or look through a searchable versions here or here.
Dozens of reporters and analysts have posted valuable takes on various aspects of the findings and Attorney General Bill Barr’s brazen lying about the Mueller team’s conclusions. This post will focus on angles of particular interest to Iowa readers: the roles of Sam Clovis, a former statewide candidate here who became a top foreign policy advisor for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, and Barbara Ledeen, a senior staffer for U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Ira Lacher: Lawmakers in Canada, the UK, and Germany “have accepted the premise that if you drop a hammer from the 15th floor of a building, you don’t need to look down to know the hammer has fallen.” -promoted by Laura Belin
There’s a new law in Iowa. Under the guise of promoting free speech, it’s intended to give free reign to those who, under cover of the First Amendment, deliver hate language on college campuses.
The legislation reads, in part: “[I]t is not the proper role of an institution of higher education to shield individuals from speech protected by the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which may include ideas and opinions the individual finds unwelcome, disagreeable, or even offensive.”
The law permits colleges to restrict hate speech only if that speech contains “a threat of serious harm and expression directed or likely directed to provoke imminent unlawful actions.” But there’s the problem: America, unlike other countries, does not define such language, much less outlaw it.
All four Iowa Congressional districts will likely be competitive in 2020. Republicans were already targeting the first and third districts, where Representatives Abby Finkenauer and Cindy Axne defeated GOP incumbents last November. Democrats could make a play for IA-04, if Representative Steve King wins the GOP nomination again (as I expect).
Representative Dave Loebsack announced on April 12 that he will retire from Congress after completing his seventh term, rather than running for re-election in the second district. Both Sabato’s Crystal Ball and the Cook Political Report immediately changed their ratings on IA-02 from “likely Democrat” to “toss-up.”
A close look at Loebsack’s last two elections shows why that’s the right call.
For many years, the Des Moines Register regularly published dispatches from Washington on what the Iowans in Congress were doing. Coverage deteriorated after the newspaper laid off Jane Norman in 2008. To my knowledge, no Iowa-based news organization has had a correspondent in the nation’s capital since the Register let Philip Brasher go in 2011.
In a wide-ranging review of the Register’s political reporting four years ago, I commented, “If a member of Congress didn’t brag about it in a press release, conference call, or social media post, the Register’s readers are not likely ever to learn that it happened.”
The newspaper’s recent coverage of U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley illustrates that problem.
Amy Adams is an organizer with Progress Iowa. -promoted by Laura Belin
On Thursday, April 4, Iowans rallied in four locations across the state (Indianola, Red Oak, Cedar Rapids, and Dubuque) as part of a nationwide day of action to demand a full release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report.
Attorney General William Barr has released only a four-page summary of more than 400 pages submitted to the Department of Justice regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election and contacts between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russian operatives.
Ira Lacher weighs in on the Mueller investigation report (based on the limited information currently available). -promoted by Laura Belin
No collusion.
Well, what did we expect?
Matt Sinovic is the executive director of Progress Iowa. -promoted by Laura Belin
This week, the Trump administration released its proposed budget for fiscal year 2020, which revives a call to repeal the Affordable Care Act and lays out massive cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, and the Department of Health and Human Services. The administration’s budget reveals just how steadfast it remains in trying to take away Americans’ health care.
Here are five things you need to know about Trump’s Health Care Sabotage Budget:
President Donald Trump will soon cast his first veto. The U.S. Senate approved on March 14 a resolution disapproving of Trump’s declaration of emergency powers. All 47 members of the Democratic caucus and twelve Republicans voted for the resolution (roll call). Iowa’s Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst were among the 41 Republicans to oppose terminating Trump’s power grab.
Gwen Hope examines the deeply-embedded racism surrounding President Donald Trump’s “Wall” and those who typically advocate for and support it. -promoted by Laura Belin
The president’s emblematic “Wall,” while envisioned to become physical, is more accurately a political symbol – an ideological device. It is a symbol of power and might for the traditionally quintessential U.S. citizen – the white Protestant.
This especially goes for men, who have traditionally led the patriarchal U.S. society. This illusory power is summoned and bolstered to defend against what that quintessential citizen typically fears the most – diverse, multicultural society, and those they see as the harbingers of their fall from power most typically – the Latinx and the Muslim. This originates from an ethnocentric and racist mindset of a group of people would would prefer a homogeneous society.
The U.S. House voted on February 26 to terminate President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to build a wall that Congress repeatedly declined to authorize or fund. All 232 Democrats present, including Iowa’s Representatives Abby Finkenauer (IA-01), Dave Loebsack (IA-02), and Cindy Axne (IA-03) backed the resolution, joined by thirteen House Republicans (roll call). Representative Steve King (IA-04) was among 182 Republicans who opposed the joint resolution.
In statements enclosed in full below, Finkenauer, Axne, and Loebsack highlighted the need to defend the checks and balances prescribed by the U.S. Constitution, which grants spending power to Congress.
The National Emergencies Act requires a U.S. Senate vote within eighteen days on any House-approved joint resolution to terminate a presidential declaration. Three Senate Republicans have already pledged to vote for the resolution. More than half a dozen others criticized Trump’s decision and seem open to formally rejecting it.
Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst are not seen as potential supporters of this bipartisan effort. They have never defied the Trump administration and had little to say about the president’s power grab. But given their stature in the Republican caucus and their forceful denunciations of President Barack Obama’s executive actions, Iowa’s senators have an excellent opportunity to show some principles matter more to them than political loyalty.
Ira Lacher reflects on the stakes for presidential candidates, nearly a year before the Iowa caucuses. -promoted by Laura Belin
“It gets late early out here.”
Yogi Berra is credited with that observation about the final month of the baseball season, when the lower-in-the-sky sun of early fall casts longer shadows over more of the field.
Managers will tell you a win in April is just as important as a win in September. But when you don’t win in September, you have fewer opportunities to make up those losses.
Heading into March, there are about eleven months to go before Iowans tell the world why so-and-so should be the Democrat to oppose Donald J. Trump. Eleven months may seem like a long time. There are unanticipated world and national events to come, revelations to be made, gaffes to occur.
Dan Guild reviews past polling data for clues on how Democratic voters will pick a favorite presidential contender. -promoted by Laura Belin
“I am for him/her because they can win”. I have been active in New Hampshire and Iowa presidential primary politics for over 30 years. In that time I have found if you ask someone why they are for a candidate, likely as not they will say “because they can win.” The press mirrors this and will write often about which contender is “electable”.
I am skeptical electability is ever decisive.
Iowa is not among the sixteen states that filed suit yesterday to block what they called President Donald Trump’s “unconstitutional and unlawful scheme” to declare a national emergency in order to divert federal funds toward building a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico.
Attorney General Tom Miller has joined dozens of multi-state legal actions challenging Trump administration policies, and his office has not ruled out joining this lawsuit, communications director Lynn Hicks told Bleeding Heartland on February 19.
