A years-long effort to expand the federal judiciary faltered this week when President Joe Biden vetoed the Judicial Understaffing Delays Getting Emergencies Solved Act of 2024. The JUDGES Act would have increased the federal district court bench by about 10 percent over the next twelve years, adding 63 new permanent federal judgeships in thirteen states, along with three temporary judgeships in Oklahoma. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa was slated to receive one of the first eleven positions to be created in 2025.

The veto leaves Iowa’s Northern District with two District Court judges (Chief Judge C.J. Williams and Judge Leonard T. Strand), along with Senior Judge Linda R. Reade and two magistrate judges. That number hasn’t changed since 1990, when the last major expansion of the federal bench allocated a third judgeship to Iowa’s Southern District. The 1990 law also assigned a judge who had previously divided his time between the state’s two districts to the Northern District on a permanent basis.

Biden may not have the last word on this subject, given the Republican Party’s commitment to putting more conservatives on the bench.

They were so close.

After weeks of negotiations, U.S. House and Senate leaders had agreed on a year-end spending bill that would fund the federal government through March 14, extend the 2018 Farm Bill through next September, and provide more than $100 billion in disaster aid. The legislation included numerous other policies, including at least two that had been priorities for Iowa’s members of Congress. The bill would have legalized year-round sales of higher ethanol blends known as E-15 in all states. It also contained new regulations for pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), which could have saved consumers billions while helping small pharmacies.

All of the Iowans in Congress have talked up E-15 as a path to U.S. energy independence. (In reality, only about 3,400 of some 198,000 gas stations across the country dispense higher ethanol blends.) Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-01) and Senator Chuck Grassley have been among the most vocal proponents of PBM reform, calling for action on prescription drug middlemen in draft bills, press releases, news conferences, House and Senate hearings, floor speeches, and taxpayer-funded radio ads.

Little did they know that President-elect Donald Trump and his billionaire buddy Elon Musk were about to blow up the deal.

Iowa’s all-Republican delegation voted the same way on almost every bill that came before both chambers during the 118th Congress, which wrapped up its work in the early hours of December 21. But one of the last bills sent to President Joe Biden, the Social Security Fairness Act, revealed an unusual disagreement among the Iowans serving in the U.S. House and Senate.

When the House approved the bill by 327 votes to 75 in November, U.S. Representatives Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-01), Ashley Hinson (IA-02), Zach Nunn (IA-03), and Randy Feenstra (IA-04) were part of the bipartisan majority.

When the Senate passed the bill by 76 votes to 20 shortly after midnight on December 21, Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst were among the 20 Republicans who voted no.

The Iowans’ comments on the Social Security Fairness Act illustrate how differently politicians with similar ideologies can view a complex public policy fix.

President-elect Donald Trump followed through this week with his threat to sue pollster Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register over the final pre-election Iowa Poll, which showed Vice President Kamala Harris leading Trump by 47 percent to 44 percent.

Many others have pointed out that Trump’s lawsuit is part of his broader “revenge tour” and “war on journalism.” In Greg Sargent’s words, the case is “putting people in the media and polling on notice that they will face real legal harassment if they anger or criticize Trump.” The president-elect admitted during a December 16 press conference that he will use lawsuits to influence news coverage: “I think you have to do it, because they’re very dishonest. We need a great media, we need a fair media.”

This post will focus on the legal, factual, and logical problems with the court filing.

“They don’t make them like Jim Leach anymore,” posted the elections analysts at The Downballot after learning Leach had passed away on December 11. They were commenting on his extraordinary warning to the Republican National Committee chairman that he would not caucus with Republicans in the next Congress if the Iowa GOP continued to fund direct mail attacking his 2006 Democratic challenger.

Among Iowans who have served in Congress, Leach was unique in many ways.

The House Majority PAC, one of the biggest spenders supporting Democrats in U.S. House races, has confirmed Iowa’s first and third Congressional districts are among its “top targets” for the 2026 election cycle.

The PAC also put IA-02 on a list of sixteen House districts that “could become competitive” in 2026.

Sixth in a series interpreting the results of Iowa’s 2024 state and federal elections.

The 2024 elections could hardly have gone worse for Iowa Democrats. Donald Trump carried the state by more than 13 points—a larger margin than Ronald Reagan managed here in either of his campaigns, and the largest winning margin for any presidential candidate in Iowa since Richard Nixon in 1972. The GOP swept the Congressional races for the second straight cycle and expanded their lopsided majorities in the legislature.

Support for Democrats has eroded in Iowa communities of all sizes—from large metro areas like Scott County (which voted for a Republican presidential candidate for the first time since 1984) to rural counties that were always red, but now routinely deliver more than 70 percent of the vote to GOP candidates.

This post highlights the growing problem for Democrats in Iowa’s mid-sized cities. I focus on eleven counties where Democratic candidates performed well in the recent past, but now trail Republicans in state and federal races.

Changing political trends in mid-sized cities explain why Democrats will have smaller contingents in the Iowa House and Senate than at any time since 1970. Voters in six of these counties also saved U.S. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks from a strong challenge by Democrat Christina Bohannan in the first Congressional district.

U.S. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks has not officially been re-elected in Iowa’s first Congressional district, where Democratic challenger Christina Bohannan is seeking a recount in all 20 counties. But a message to fellow House Republicans indicates the IA-01 incumbent is already worried about the “tough road” facing members from swing districts during the 2026 election cycle.

Miller-Meeks failed in her bid to become House Conference secretary, the sixth-ranking GOP leadership position. It’s not clear how many Republicans supported her on November 13, when she finished third of three candidates on the first ballot. Caucus members then elected Representative Erin Houchin of Indiana over Mark Alford of Missouri. Both represent safe GOP districts.

A “Dear colleague” letter Miller-Meeks circulated on November 12—enclosed in full below—warned Republicans will struggle to expand their majority without including members from “battleground districts” in the party’s leadership.

Fourth in a series interpreting the results of Iowa’s 2024 state and federal elections. This post has been updated with certified results as of December 2.

As ticket-splitting has declined in recent election cycles, few Iowa candidates have managed to win where the other party has a big advantage at the top of the ticket. So it was in Iowa’s 2024 Congressional races: former President Donald Trump outpolled Vice President Kamala Harris in all four U.S. House districts, which helped GOP incumbents hold off their Democratic opponents.

But one challenger massively outperformed Harris, and Trump barely pulled one underachieving incumbent over the line.

Election analyst Drew Savicki was first to publish the 2024 presidential vote and swing in Iowa’s U.S. House districts. I later confirmed his calculations, using unofficial results from the Iowa Secretary of State.

Third in a series interpreting the results of Iowa’s 2024 state and federal elections.

Ed Tibbetts, a longtime reporter and editor in the Quad-Cities, is the publisher of the Along the Mississippi newsletter, where this article first appeared. Find more of his work at edtibbetts.substack.com.

Donald Trump’s mastery of Iowa in the 2024 election is no more apparent than his performance in a batch of counties that border the Mississippi River.

For the last eight years, this region has been clearly in Trump’s corner. But it shifted even more decisively in his favor Tuesday.

Trump won these ten counties by more than 34,000 votes, according to unofficial results.

There were still a small number of ballots to be counted, but Trump’s victory in this region approached Barack Obama’s historic wins in 2012, at least in numeric terms. And, compared to four years ago, Trump won this stretch of Iowa by more than double the number of votes than he did against Joe Biden.

Second in a series interpreting the results of Iowa’s 2024 state and federal elections. This post has been updated with certified results as of December 2.

The successful Republican effort to knock Libertarians off the ballot in three U.S. House districts may have influenced the outcome in at least one of them.

All three affected Libertarian candidates—Nicholas Gluba in the first Congressional district, Marco Battaglia in the third, and Charles Aldrich in the fourth—indicated that they would continue to run as write-in candidates. Unofficial results show write-in votes for Iowa’s four U.S. House races this year totaled 3,616—about 0.23 percent of the 1,602,409 ballots cast for a Congressional candidate.

When Libertarian candidates have been on the ballot for recent Iowa Congressional elections, they have typically received 2-3 percent of the vote.

AN IMPORTANT FACTOR IN THE FIRST DISTRICT

In IA-01, unofficial results show Republican incumbent Mariannette Miller-Meeks leads Democratic challenger Christina Bohannan by 796 votes (49.98 percent to 49.79 percent). Bohannan has not conceded, and the race has not been called. But it’s unlikely that enough provisional ballots remain to be counted for her to overtake Miller-Meeks. Iowa no longer counts absentee ballots that arrive after election day.

First in a series interpreting the results of Iowa’s 2024 state and federal elections.

Two years ago, Iowa appeared to be on a different trajectory than much of the country. As Democrats won many of the midterm election races, including in our Midwestern neighboring states, Iowa experienced yet another “red wave.” Six of the last eight general elections in Iowa have been GOP landslides.

On November 5, Donald Trump improved on his 2020 performance almost across the board: in blue states like New York and New Jersey, swing states like Pennsylvania and Georgia, and red states like Texas and Iowa. He gained in rural counties, suburban counties, and urban centers, in states where both presidential candidates campaigned intensely, and in states where there was no “ground game” or barrage of political advertising. He gained among almost every demographic group except for college-educated women. He may become the first Republican presidential candidate to win the popular vote since George W. Bush in 2004, and only the second GOP nominee to win the popular vote since 1988.

The Trump resurgence isn’t unique to Iowa, or even the U.S.—grievance politics has been winning elections all over the world lately.

But that’s no comfort to Democrats here, who probably won’t win back any Congressional districts and suffered more losses among their already small contingents in the Iowa House and Senate.

Randy Evans is executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that promotes openness and transparency in Iowa’s state and local governments. He can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com. 

It’s a challenge, but not impossible, to find topics on which Republicans and Democrats share the same view these days. Here’s one: election day means we can all celebrate the end of those infernal television commercials. 

My tolerance for these ads has never been high. One reason is the way their assertions oversimplify the pluses (or the minuses) of one candidate’s or the other’s stand on some issue.

It is not really a surprise, however, because politicians have long claimed they will solve some problem or their opponent is to blame for that problem.

Marty Ryan previously published a version of this essay in the November 2024 issue of the Prairie Progressive.

Campaign strategist Jim Carville coined the phrase “[It’s] the economy, stupid” back in 1992 when he worked on Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign. That phrase “was directed at the campaign’s workers and intended as one of three messages for them to focus on.”

Evidently, the intent, if not the quote, has come back to the 2024 campaign. U.S. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks has been insisting in one of her campaign’s television commercials that “we gotta bring these prices down.” Good luck!

As misinformation about the federal response to natural disasters hampers relief efforts in the southeast U.S., several Iowa Republicans have seized the opportunity to spread lies about the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Echoing “pants on fire” claims from former President Donald Trump, U.S. Representatives Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-01) and Ashley Hinson (IA-02) have repeatedly asserted that FEMA lacks the resources needed to help those harmed by Hurricanes Helene and Milton, because it has spent too much supporting undocumented immigrants. Representative Zach Nunn (IA-03) and U.S. Senator Joni Ernst have likewise claimed Americans are being shortchanged due to FEMA’s allegedly excessive spending on migrants.

Those lies are part of a national effort by Trump supporters and the leading pro-Republican cable news network to assist Trump’s campaign. For Iowa Republicans as well, the false talking points direct voters’ attention toward immigration and border security, topics perceived to boost GOP candidates up and down the ballot.

Nunn, Miller-Meeks, and Hinson all invested in election-year messaging about immigration long before the hurricanes made landfall.

We often hear that Iowans like to re-elect their incumbents. But when it comes to members of the U.S. House, Iowa’s office-holders have less job security than many of their peers.

Across the country, voters have re-elected more than 90 percent of U.S. House incumbents in most elections over the past five decades. Here in Iowa, where our four districts are not gerrymandered, challengers defeated two sitting members of Congress in 2018, two in 2020 (one in the primary, one in the general election), and one in 2022.

Incumbents still enjoy inherent advantages in a Congressional campaign: higher name recognition, larger contributions from political action committees, more opportunities to generate news coverage, and an official budget that can fund outreach to constituents. But not all House members use the available tools the same way.

This post, the first in a series, will explore how Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks has used her office to boost her re-election chances in Iowa’s first Congressional district.

Notably, Miller-Meeks has spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on messages to constituents, with much of the spending going through her top campaign vendor. She has also built up goodwill by being one of the chamber’s most frequent floor speakers, and has used the earmark process to help fund projects in her district.

Members of Congress averted a federal government shutdown this week, approving a continuing resolution to keep funds flowing after the current fiscal year ends. Large bipartisan majorities in both chambers (341 to 82 in the House, and 78 to 18 in the Senate) voted on September 25 to fund the federal government at current levels through December 20. The bill also contains an extra $231 million in funds for the U.S. Secret Service to step up protection of presidential candidates.

All but one member of Iowa’s Congressional delegation supported the spending measure. Representative Randy Feenstra (IA-04) has not publicly explained why he was among the 82 House Republicans who voted against the last opportunity to prevent a shutdown.

National Democratic groups are investing significant funds in Iowa’s first Congressional district race, suggesting they believe Christina Bohannan has a solid chance to defeat two-term Republican incumbent Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks.

The House Majority PAC, a super-PAC connected to House Democratic leadership, has reserved another $2.3 million in television advertising time for the IA-01 race, Ally Mutnick reported for Politico on September 9. Those funds will be divided among the Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, and Quad Cities markets, which collectively reach seventeen of the district’s 20 counties.* Mutnick noted the super-PAC “reserved just $350,000 in that district in July.”

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), which also spends heavily to influence U.S. House races, has already reserved $1,551,000 in tv air time in Des Moines, $534,000 in Cedar Rapids, and $438,000 in Davenport. Much of the DCCC’s Des Moines market buy will be directed toward the third Congressional district, where Democrat Lanon Baccam is challenging first-term Republican incumbent Zach Nunn.

The planned spending is a huge contrast to the 2022 cycle, when Democratic-aligned groups spent less than $100,000 on the IA-01 race, while GOP-aligned groups spent more than $2.7 million on messaging that supported Miller-Meeks or opposed Bohannan. Ad reservations on this scale indicate that internal Democratic polling shows Miller-Meeks is vulnerable.

Kevin Virgil, who gained nearly 40 percent of the vote in the Republican primary to represent Iowa’s fourth Congressional district, has encouraged his supporters to consider splitting their votes: Donald Trump for president and Democrat Ryan Melton for Congress.

Virgil shared one of Melton’s posts on X/Twitter on the evening of August 23, praising the Democrat for opposing “land seizure for CO2 pipelines” and “corporate capture in Iowa and in DC,” while asking “hard questions about Iowa’s sky-high cancer rates.”

“If you care about our children’s future,” Virgil wrote, “then it’s time to think about voting for a split-ticket with Trump and @melton4iowa.”

U.S. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-01) is among eighteen House Republicans who asked Speaker Mike Johnson last week “to prioritize business and market certainty as you consider efforts that repeal or reform the Inflation Reduction Act.”

Miller-Meeks was the only Iowan in the U.S. House to sign an August 6 letter, first reported by Politico’s E&E News. Like others who signed, Miller-Meeks is on record twice opposing the energy tax credits: first, when she voted against the Inflation Reduction Act in August 2022, and next, when she voted for repealing many of that law’s provisions as part of a House Republican debt ceiling bill in April 2023. The language on tax credits wasn’t part of last year’s final deal to raise the debt ceiling.

Clean energy investments have skyrocketed in the two years since President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act. But as Jamie Dupree reported in the August 8 edition of his Regular Order newsletter, House Republican leaders call incentives for projects including solar, wind, aviation fuel, hydrogen, and electric vehicles “Market Distorting Green Tax Credits.” That has raised concerns the credits could go away if Republicans control both chambers of Congress next year.

The August 6 letter warned,

U.S. women have had phenomenal success at the Olympic Games in Paris. Simone Biles has won more Olympic medals than any other American gymnast. Katie Ledecky has won more Olympic medals than any other American woman in any sport. Lee Keifer became a three-time gold medalist in fencing and competed against Lauren Scruggs in “the first All-American final in the individual foil in Olympic history.” U.S. women also won their “first-ever team fencing gold in women’s foil” and their first medal in rugby.

At this writing, more than two dozen women competing for the U.S. have won medals in events ranging from cycling to diving, shooting, and canoeing. Laura Kraut became “the oldest American woman to win an Olympic medal since 1904” as part of a team equestrian event. More medals are likely coming in swimming and gymnastics, and the track and field events are just getting started.

Instead of celebrating the successes of American women in France, Iowa Republicans joined the stampede of conservatives who used a boxing match between an Algerian and an Italian to push their anti-trans agenda.

Top Iowa Republicans complained this week that Democratic voters were “disenfranchised” by President Joe Biden’s decision to step aside as his party’s nominee.

Days earlier, they had celebrated the nomination of Donald Trump, who tried to nullify millions of Americans’ votes after losing the 2020 presidential election.

What should have been an ordinary presidential campaign rally in Butler County, Pennsylvania turned into a horrifying scene on July 13. A man shot at Donald Trump from a nearby rooftop, killing one person and wounding several others, including the former president.

Iowa political leaders reacted quickly to the assassination attempt, and their comments reflected several distinct themes.

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.

This week, I shared an article about U.S. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks claiming in a televised interview that President Joe Biden would step onto to the debate stage, high on drugs to cover up his “cognitive decline.” I described her comments as “dirty politics scraping the bottom of the barrel,” and her efforts to curry favor with Dictator-for-a-day Donald as a sign of her own “moral & ethical decline.”

Well, after anguishing through Thursday night’s debate, I have to admit that Miller-Meeks had it partially right. It was obvious that Biden was on something when he stepped onto the debate stage: cold drugs. His hoarse, gravely voice, his obvious congestion, his partial brain fog gave ample testimony to every speaker’s and performer’s nightmare of falling ill and being medicated just before having to step on stage before an audience.

Even so, while Biden failed to deliver the knock-out punches that Trump deserved, he was able to counter the litany of outrageous lies with facts—feebly delivered, but facts nonetheless.

As disgusted as I was by Miller-Meeks’ defamatory attacks on the president the day before the debate, I was equally disgusted, if not more so, by the many commentators, journalists, and fellow Democrats who were so quick to throw Biden under the bus after the debate. Many floated or demanded his removal as the Democratic presidential nominee.

The president of the Congressional Leadership Fund (the main super-PAC aligned with U.S. House Republicans) congratulated U.S. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks on her “resounding victory” in the June 4 primary to represent Iowa’s first district.

U.S. Representative Randy Feenstra hailed the “clear message” from fourth district voters, saying he was “humbled by the strong support for our campaign.”

They can spin, but they can’t hide.

Pulling 55 to 60 percent of the vote against an underfunded, first-time candidate is anything but a “resounding” or “strong” performance for a member of Congress.

Ed Tibbetts, a longtime reporter and editor in the Quad-Cities, is the publisher of the Along the Mississippi newsletter, where this article first appeared. Find more of his work at edtibbetts.substack.com

In some parts of Iowa, road signs greet visitors with our new state slogan: “Iowa, Freedom to Flourish.”

Some Republican lawmakers obviously don’t get the concept.

U.S. Representatives Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Ashley Hinson and State Representative Taylor Collins have all been wringing their hands recently over trips that some students and staff from Muscatine High School took to China.

China apparently paid the costs, according to a recent article in the right-wing British newspaper, the Daily Mail, and that has triggered the Iowa Republicans. Now, there’s talk of stopping these visits.

Jim Chrisinger is a retired public servant living in Ankeny. He served in both Republican and Democratic administrations, in Iowa and elsewhere. 

Character once counted in Iowa Republican politics. We could take pride in Governor Bob Ray, U.S. Representative Jim Leach, and the early U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley. They led with integrity. They willingly crossed the aisle to achieve bipartisan goals. They served as role models for our children, standing up for democracy, truth, and accountability. Our state enjoyed a reputation in public administration circles as a “good government” jurisdiction.

Donald Trump has upended all this. He is the antithesis of character. He’s the skunk at the church picnic. He lies incessantly, bullies, commits fraud and adultery, sexually assaults women, mocks wounded veterans, and cheats contractors. He’s a racist. He puts his attempt to overthrow a free and fair election at the center of his campaign. Donald Trump is everything we don’t want our children to be.

In this historic moment, Iowa’s representatives in Washington—Chuck Grassley, Joni Ernst, Ashley Hinson, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Zach Nunn, and Randy Feenstra—are failing the character test.

The appropriations bill President Joe Biden signed into law on March 9 includes $74.36 million in federal funding for designated projects in Iowa, Bleeding Heartland’s analysis of a 605-page earmarks list reveals. Another $8 million earmark for Dubuque Flood Mitigation Gates and Pumps was part of the Homeland Security bill Biden signed on March 23, completing work on funding the federal government through the end of the current fiscal year on September 30.

All four Republicans who represent Iowa in the U.S. House—Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-01), Ashley Hinson (IA-02), Zach Nunn (IA-03), and Randy Feenstra (IA-04)—were among the 339 members who approved the “minibus” spending package on March 6. Miller-Meeks, Hinson, and Nunn voted for the second minibus on March 22; Feenstra voted against that package with no public explanation.

Hinson is the only Iowan now serving on the House Appropriations Committee. Her projects will receive a combined $27.54 million; she had requested $37.06 million. Projects submitted by Miller-Meeks will receive about $28.38 million in earmarked funding; she had requested $40.15 million. Earmarks for projects Nunn submitted will total $26.22 million; he had asked for $41.25 million.

The 36 counties in IA-04 will receive none of the earmarked funding, because for the third straight year, Feenstra declined to submit any earmark requests.

Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column.

Congress finally got it together.

Overruling a few outspoken far-right Republican members, on April 20 the U.S. House belatedly approved crucial aid for nations and peoples that desperately need it.
 The wide vote margins reflected bipartisan support for all three measures. Here are the numbers:

Before Iowa politics kicks into high gear with a new legislative session and the caucuses, I want to highlight the investigative reporting, in-depth analysis, and accountability journalism published first or exclusively on this site last year.

Some newspapers, websites, and newsletters put their best original work behind a paywall for subscribers, or limit access to a set number of free articles a month. I’m committed to keeping all Bleeding Heartland content available to everyone, regardless of ability to pay. That includes nearly 500 articles and commentaries from 2023 alone, and thousands more posts in archives going back to 2007.

To receive links to everything recently published here via email, subscribe to the free Evening Heartland newsletter. I also have a free Substack, which is part of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. Subscribers receive occasional cross-posts from Bleeding Heartland, as well as audio files and recaps for every episode of KHOI Radio’s “Capitol Week,” a 30-minute show about Iowa politics co-hosted by Dennis Hart and me.

I’m grateful to all readers, but especially to tipsters. Please reach out with story ideas that may be worth pursuing in 2024.

All four Republicans who represent Iowa in the U.S. House voted on December 13 to formally authorize an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. The chamber’s 221 to 212 vote fell entirely along party lines.

House Speaker Mike Johnson wrote in a December 12 op-ed that the vote will allow the House Oversight, Judiciary, and Ways and Means committees to “continue investigating the role of the president in promoting the alleged influence-peddling schemes of his family and associates […].” He said the formal inquiry “puts us in the strongest legal position to gather the evidence” as the House seeks to enforce subpoenas.

Critics have noted that while focusing on business activities of the president’s son Hunter Biden, House Republicans have yet to uncover evidence of any criminal activity involving Joe Biden, and are using unsubstantiated or false claims to justify their inquiry. Democrats have charged that Republicans are pursuing impeachment at the behest of former President Donald Trump.

None of Iowa’s House members spoke during the floor debate, but three released public comments following the vote.

Quite a few U.S. House Republicans have stirred up trouble for their party’s small majority this year. But the four House members from Iowa—Representatives Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-01), Ashley Hinson (IA-02), Zach Nunn (IA-03), and Randy Feenstra (IA-04)—have generally aligned with the preferences of GOP caucus leaders. It has been rare for to even one of the Iowans to vote differently from top Republicans in the chamber, and they have never done so as a group.

That streak ended on December 1, when Miller-Meeks, Hinson, Nunn, and Feenstra all voted to expel U.S. Representative George Santos.

Santos is only the sixth U.S. House member ever to be expelled, and the 311 to 114 vote (roll call) divided Republicans. While 105 GOP members joined almost all Democrats to remove Santos from their ranks, 112 Republicans opposed the resolution, including the whole leadership team of House Speaker Mike Johnson, Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Majority Whip Tom Emmer, Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, and Republican Policy Chair Gary Palmer.

U.S. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks officially has competition in the 2024 Republican primary to represent Iowa’s first Congressional district. David Pautsch, best known as the founder of the Quad Cities Prayer Breakfast, filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission this month and held a news conference on November 16 to lay out his vision.

Based on what we’ve heard so far, Pautsch won’t give Miller-Meeks anything to worry about. She defeated several well-funded opponents as a non-incumbent candidate for Congress, and will take more advantages into next year’s race as an incumbent.

UPDATE: All four Iowans voted for Mike Johnson for speaker on October 25. Original post follows.

Iowa’s four U.S. House members didn’t want to be here.

Representatives Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-01), Ashley Hinson (IA-02), Zach Nunn (IA-03), and Randy Feenstra (IA-04) were Kevin McCarthy loyalists from day one of the new Congress. All voted against the motion to vacate the speaker’s position early this month.

Nineteen days after the House of Representatives removed a speaker for the first time in history, the Republican majority is no closer to finding a way out of the morass. A plan to temporarily empower interim Speaker Patrick McHenry collapsed before coming to the floor. House Judiciary chair Jim Jordan was unable to gain a majority in any of the three House votes this past week. Republicans voted by secret ballot on October 20 not to keep Jordan as their nominee for speaker.

At minimum, the House will be without a leader for three weeks. Members went home for the weekend with plans to return for a “candidate forum” on October 23, and a possible House floor vote the following day. More than a half-dozen Republicans are now considering running for speaker; none has a clear path to 217 votes. McCarthy has endorsed Representative Tom Emmer, the current majority whip. But former President Donald Trump, a close ally of Jordan, doesn’t like Emmer, who voted to certify the 2020 presidential election results. Most Republicans in public life are afraid to become a target for Trump or his devoted followers.

The Iowans have adopted distinct strategies for navigating the embarrassing crisis.

Gerald Ott of Ankeny was a high school English teacher and for 30 years a school improvement consultant for the Iowa State Education Association. Laura Belin contributed some reporting to this article.

Like all Iowans of good will, I was painfully alerted to the Hamas invasion of Israel on October 7. Many have compared the events to the 9/11 al-Qaeda terrorist attack, in both its surprise and savagery. The scale of deaths and human loss is enormous; Israel’s total population is around 9 million.

The United States and European Union have designated Hamas a terrorist organization because of its armed resistance against Israel. Hamas has sponsored years of suicide bombings and rocket attacks against Israel, claiming Jewish presence in Palestine is illegitimate, which is counter-historical and denied by the United States.

Photo of Christina Bohannan at the Polk County Steak Fry in September 2022 is by Greg Hauenstein and published with permission.

The latest batch of Federal Election Commission quarterly filings from Congressional candidates contained one Iowa surprise: Democratic challenger Christina Bohannan substantially outraised U.S. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks during the third quarter.

Bohannan’s campaign for Iowa’s first district reported raising $663,417.54, of which nearly all ($644,805.03) came from individual donors. Five political action committees donated a total of $12,012.51, and the candidate gave $6,600.

Miller-Meeks’ campaign reported raising $467,286.85, but only $225,385.34 of the total came from individuals. As was the case during the first and second quarters of 2023, the majority of funds donated to the incumbent’s campaign came from PACs or other political committees.

Two of Iowa’s four U.S. House members laid down their marker early in the battle to elect a new House speaker.

U.S. Representatives Ashley Hinson (IA-02) and Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-01) announced on October 5 that they will support current House Majority leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana for the chamber’s top job.

The House cannot conduct normal business until members elect a new speaker, following the 216-210 vote on October 3 to declare the office vacant. As expected, all four Iowa Republicans opposed the effort to remove House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, but the resolution succeeded as eight Republicans joined all Democrats present to vote yes.

Scalise’s main competition appears to be House Judiciary Committee chair Jim Jordan of Ohio. Others considering the race include Republican Study Committee chair Kevin Hern of Oklahoma. Several House members have vowed to nominate Donald Trump, but the former president told one of his supporters on October 5 that he is endorsing Jordan for speaker.

At this writing, Representatives Zach Nunn (IA-03) and Randy Feenstra (IA-04) have not publicly committed to a candidate for speaker. Iowa’s House members have voted in unison on most important matters this year. In a statement to the Cedar Rapids Gazette, Nunn said, “I’m waiting to make a decision until we have the opportunity to hear from everybody running about their vision to take on the D.C. bureaucracy, balance the budget, secure the border, and support the critical programs — like Medicare and Social Security — that Iowans rely on every day.”

Every member of Congress from Iowa voted on September 30 for a last-ditch effort to keep the federal government open until November 17. The continuing resolution will maintain fiscal year 2023 spending levels for the first 47 days of the 2024 federal fiscal year, plus $16 billion in disaster relief funds for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is the amount the Biden administration requested. In addition, the bill includes “an extension of a federal flood insurance program and reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration.”

U.S. Representatives Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-01), Ashley Hinson (IA-02), Zach Nunn (IA-03), and Randy Feenstra (IA-04) were among the 126 House Republicans who joined 209 Democrats to approve the measure. (Ninety Republicans and one Democrat voted no.) House leaders brought the funding measure to the floor under a suspension of the rules, which meant it needed a two-thirds majority rather than the usual 50 percent plus one to pass.

Iowa’s Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst were part of the 88-9 majority in the upper chamber that voted to send the bill to President Joe Biden just in time to avert a shutdown as the new fiscal year begins on October 1.

House members considered several other federal budget bills this week and dozens of related amendments—far too many to summarize in one article. As I watched how the Iowa delegation approached the most important votes, a few things stood out to me.

Photo of Christina Bohannan at the Polk County Steak Fry in September 2021 is by Greg Hauenstein and published with permission.

Christina Bohannan is hoping to join Neal Smith, Tom Harkin, and Berkley Bedell in the club of Iowa Democrats who were elected to Congress on their second attempt.

Challenging an incumbent is usually an uphill battle, and recent voting trends favor Republicans in southeast Iowa, where Bohannan is running against U.S. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks. The Cook Partisan Voting Index for Iowa’s first Congressional district is R+3, meaning that in the last two presidential elections, voters living in the 20 counties that now make up IA-01 voted about three points more Republican than did the national electorate. The Daily Kos Elections team calculated that Donald Trump received about 50.5 percent of the 2020 presidential vote in this area, to 47.6 percent for Joe Biden.

The Cook Political Report and Sabato’s Crystal Ball rate IA-01 as “likely Republican” for 2024—potentially competitive, but not among the top two or three dozen U.S. House battlegrounds across the country. Inside Elections recently moved this district to the more competitive “lean Republican” category.

That said, no one should write off this race. Miller-Meeks ran for Congress unsuccessfully three times and was considered the underdog against Democrat Rita Hart in 2020. Many factors contributed to the Republican’s six-vote win that year, and I’ve been thinking about what would need to happen for Bohannan to prevail in next year’s IA-01 rematch.

A massive organizing effort paid off for Kimberly Sheets, as the Democrat won the August 29 special election for Warren County auditor by a two-to-one margin. Unofficial results first reported by Iowa Starting Line show Sheets received 5,051 votes (66.56 percent) to 2,538 votes for Republican David Whipple (33.44 percent). Turnout was more than three times higher than the previous record for a Warren County special election (a school bond issue in 2022).

Republicans haven’t lost many races lately in this county, but they pushed their luck by nominating Whipple. Not only was he lacking experience in election administration—one of the duties of Iowa county auditors—he had shared Facebook posts espousing conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election and other QAnon obsessions.

The county’s previous auditor, Democrat Traci VanderLinden, retired in May and wanted Sheets (the deputy in her office) to succeed her. Whipple’s appointment by an all-Republican county board of supervisors generated lots of statewide and some national media attention, because of his now-deleted social media posts. Local Democrats collected about 3,500 signatures over a two-week period demanding a special election.

County GOP activists could have picked a less controversial nominee for the auditor’s race, but they stuck with Whipple. The move backfired spectacularly.