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.

As an Iowan, a Jew, and a rabbi who has served the Quad Cities Jewish community for nearly 40 years, I was beside myself when I read Dr. Thomas Lecaque’s guest column in Iowa Starting Line about the school chaplain bill moving through the Iowa legislature. Having made its way through the House and the Senate Education Committee, it is now eligible for floor debate in the Senate.

House File 884 is an offense of the highest degree to every non-Christian faith community in our state. It empowers school districts to hire chaplains “to provide support, services, and programs as assigned by the board of directors of the school district.”

If that sounds innocuous, think again, for the Senate Education Committee has already rejected an amendment that would restrict school chaplains from proselytizing students. So much for religious neutrality in our schools!

Dr. Thomas Lecaque is an Associate Professor of History at the Grand View University.

I teach at a Lutheran school in Iowa. We have a chapel on campus. Every faculty meeting and event, every major school event, starts with our campus pastor offering a prayer. There are boats hanging in the church and also in the room in the administrative building that was the first chapel on campus, because we’re a Danish Lutheran school, and both of those traditions run deep.

I say this not because you need to know about me, or about my university, but because chaplains on campus, chaplains in schools, religion and the university, is not a thing I have a problem with. We’re a private Lutheran school, and people who come here know that when they apply and enroll, and they’ve made a choice to be here, in this environment, with everything that entails.

The key word there, of course, is private. If your kids go to a Catholic school, for example, you cannot pretend to be surprised and alarmed when Catholicism is in the classroom too. But if you send your kids to public school, like most Iowans, you have a reasonable expectation that the establishment clause, the separation of church and state, will keep specific religious ideas and doctrine out of the school. In this context, Iowa House File 884, the school chaplains bill, immediately rings alarm bells.

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

Republicans will hold 35 of the 50 Iowa Senate seats when the legislature reconvenes in 2025, a net gain of one from the 34-16 GOP majority of the past two years. The results were finalized on November 22 and November 25 following recounts in two close races.

According to the legislature’s official website, the fifteen-member Democratic caucus will be the smallest contingent for the party in the Iowa Senate since the early 1960s. Maintaining a two-thirds majority means Republicans will be able to confirm Governor Kim Reynolds’ nominees without any Democratic support.

Redistricting played a role in all three districts where party control changed. The demise of ticket-splitting was also apparent, as three incumbents lost in areas where their constituents preferred the other party’s presidential nominee.

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.

This post has been updated with unofficial results from the November 5 election, as well as the final pre-election campaign finance disclosures and absentee ballot totals as of November 2. Original post follows.

Republicans currently hold 34 Iowa Senate seats—the largest GOP contingent in that chamber since 1973. Democrats are not realistically contending to regain the Senate majority in November. So why pay any attention to these legislative races?

Although the most competitive state Senate races won’t determine control of the chamber, they could reveal a lot about each party’s strengths with certain kinds of voters. A good night for Republicans would indicate that the Trump-era realignment has moved further into Iowa’s former blue regions. A good night for Democrats could pull the GOP below the two-thirds threshold, which has allowed Senate Republicans to confirm all of Governor Kim Reynolds’ nominees without any support from the minority party.

This post highlights four state Senate districts at most risk of flipping, and another seven districts where even without a big investment by Democrats or Republicans, the results could shed light on broader political trends in Iowa. A forthcoming article will cover state House races to watch in 2024.