Jason Benell lives in Des Moines with his wife and two children. He is a combat veteran, former city council candidate, and president of Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers.

Christian Nationalism has seen so many victories with the makeup of the highest courts at both the state and federal levels. Time and again right-wing courts seem poised to enact theocracy by privileging religious belief over equality under the law and even basic human and civil rights.

These rulings and opinions are never based on reason or evidence but rather are special pleading for some vague “sincerely held belief” that seems to act as a get-out-of-jail-free card for religious individuals and organizations that circumvent civil rights laws. There are many examples in the not-so-distant history that point to this creeping assault on equal treatment under the law, but also rulings just this year that many people would likely be surprised to hear about.

Douglas Burns is a fourth-generation Iowa journalist. He is the co-founder of the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation and a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, where this article first appeared on The Iowa Mercury newsletter. His family operated the Carroll Times Herald for 93 years in Carroll, Iowa where Burns resides.

Council Bluffs Mayor Matt Walsh, a Republican, joined others in his party and independents to support Democratic State Representative Josh Turek, a gold medal-winning Paralympian in wheelchair basketball, at a September 26 event in this southwest Iowa city. Former U.S. Senator Tom Harkin, an Iowa icon, headlined the fundraiser for Turek, who captured his state House district by just six votes in 2022 and faces a challenging re-election bid in the November election.

Walsh said he crossed party lines for the event—and a public endorsement of a Democrat—for one reason: Turek is a respected and effective voice at the statehouse.

“While I am a registered Republican, I strongly believe the best candidate should win,” Walsh said in an interview at the Hoff Family Arts and Cultural Center. “Without a doubt in my mind that’s Josh Turek. He cares about Iowa, he cares about people with disabilities, and he cares about Council Bluffs. You can talk to Josh. Josh listens. Josh understands. Josh is responsive. He’s everything you look for in a candidate. Josh is that guy.”

James Larew is an attorney in Iowa City who served as general counsel and chief of staff for former Governor Chet Culver. Chris Jones is retired from the University of Iowa where he worked as a Research Engineer at IIHR-Hydroscience & Engineering. Prior to that he worked at the Des Moines Water Works and the Iowa Soybean Association. He is author of the book The Swine Republic, Struggles with the Truth about Agriculture and Water Quality. He lives in Iowa City. 

Iowa law should recognize access to clean water and clean air as a fundamental right.

The Iowa Constitution should be amended to assure that right is protected, and to guarantee that governmental actions conflicting with this right are subjected to strict judicial scrutiny.

A further constitutionally-imposed duty should be placed on state government: to affirmatively protect our precious natural resources for us, and for all future generations.

Brooklyn Draisey is a Report for America corps member covering higher education for Iowa Capital Dispatch, where this article first appeared.

The Iowa Board of Regents is working with board staff and state universities to analyze diversity, equity and inclusion programs and positions and ensure their compliance under a state law set to take effect next summer.

President Sherry Bates said during the September 19 board meeting that she, along with Regents Greta Rouse, David Barker, and JC Risewick started this summer ensuring compliance with both DEI directives put in place by the board and Senate File 2435 at the University of Iowa, Iowa State University, and University of Northern Iowa.

What might have been a slow news week in state government took an unexpected turn on September 3. Governor Kim Reynolds announced that Lieutenant Governor Adam Gregg was resigning, effective the same day. Minutes later, the Iowa Bankers Association revealed that Gregg would join the association as president and CEO, beginning on October 1.

There’s a lot to unpack here.

Jack O’Connor is a States Newsroom Fellow for the summer of 2024. He wrote this article for Iowa Capital Dispatch, which was first to publish it.

After past failed efforts in the Iowa legislature, drug activists believe the next session will deliver legalized fentanyl test strips as support for the movement grows and the drug epidemic continues.

Fentanyl test strips are small strips of paper that can test drugs to see if they contain any fentanyl. Activists argue that by legalizing these strips, lawmakers could save lives by preventing accidental overdoses from fentanyl. Under state law, fentanyl test strips are considered drug paraphernalia and therefore illegal.

The previous effort to include the legalization of fentanyl test strips in a 2023 law fell short but gained some bipartisan support, said the amendment’s author, Democratic State Representative Megan Srivinas of Des Moines. Srinivas and activists are prepping to introduce legislation to legalize the strips next session.

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

Republicans, who control the Iowa House, the Iowa Senate, and the Iowa governorship, make no secret of their intent to entirely eliminate the state’s income tax. It probably won’t happen this coming year or the next, but the plan is now on a glide path. If the Iowa GOP remains in power for the rest of the present decade, we should probably count on the demise of the Iowa income tax by the end of the 2020s or before.

Even though those rates have already started to drop by dint of Iowa legislative actions in the past few years, the state income tax still makes up a huge chunk of the state’s budget. In fiscal year 2022-23 the figure was 46.8 percent—nearly half of state budget revenues. That percentage is now no doubt somewhat lower due to legislation that has dropped individual state income tax rates to a flat tax figure of 3.8 percent next year, but Iowa still depends on billions of state income tax dollars each year for its budget.

At least ten candidates who identify as part of the LGBTQ community are running for the Iowa legislature this year. The previous high water mark was seven LGBTQ candidates in 2022.

The majority of Iowa’s gay, queer, or transgender candidates are Democrats, as has been the case in previous election cycles. This year’s cohort also includes the state’s first openly gay Republican lawmaker and an independent candidate for a House seat.

The candidates profiled below are mostly not highlighting issues of special concern to LGBTQ Iowans. Like others running for the legislature, they are campaigning on topics such as public education, reproductive rights, mental health services, and economic development.

At the same time, several candidates believe LGBTQ representation at the statehouse is particularly important now, in light of the many bills targeting the community that Republicans enacted or attempted to pass in 2023 and 2024.

All voter registration data mentioned below comes from the Iowa Secretary of State’s office. Figures for the 2020 presidential vote in each legislative district come from maps Josh Hughes created in Dave’s Redistricting App.

Democratic State Senator Liz Bennett is the only out queer member of the Iowa Senate and the second out LGBTQ person ever to serve in the chamber (after Democrat Matt McCoy, who retired from the legislature in 2018). Bennett is not up for re-election this year, having won a four-year term last cycle in Senate district 39, covering part of Cedar Rapids.

Robin Opsahl covers the state legislature and politics for Iowa Capital Dispatch, where this article first appeared.

Iowans using wheelchairs through the state Medicaid program will no longer need a prescription and in-person doctor visit to get their wheelchairs repaired after a policy change by Iowa Department of Health and Human Services.

Democratic State Representative Josh Turek said in an August 13 interview that the measure proves advocacy can make a difference. Previously, Iowa Medicaid members were required to get a prescription and have a meeting with a health care provider in order to repair wheelchairs—a requirement Turek said was unnecessary, as wheelchair users have already been prescribed the equipment when they received it.

“This was just an unnecessary barrier that was causing an enormous amount of harm and suffering to the disabled population, delaying the process weeks or months for people to just be able to get a wheelchair repair,” Turek said.

Ryan Melton is the Democratic nominee in Iowa’s fourth Congressional district. These are his prepared remarks for the Iowa Democratic Party’s Liberty and Justice Celebration in Des Moines on July 27. You can listen to the speech as delivered here.

At the Mills County Fair Democratic party booth in Malvern a couple Saturdays ago, a high school freshman to be asked me what motivates me to keep going despite the odds in our district, so he too could buy in and join the effort.

Here’s what I told him:

“Running as a Democrat in Rural Iowa just got so much more hopeful,” Iowa House candidate Tommy Hexter posted on X/Twitter on July 22, shortly after Vice President Kamala Harris secured enough support from delegates to win the Democratic nomination for president. “I am so grateful to Joe Biden for capping off his service to our Country by passing the torch to someone who can truly energize voters here in the Heartland.”

Many Iowa Democrats shared Hexter’s sense of relief and excitement after Biden announced he would stand down as the party’s candidate.

Iowa’s no longer the swing state it was for every presidential election from 1992 through 2012. Few doubt that Donald Trump will have little trouble winning Iowa’s six electoral votes.

Even so, the Harris campaign could help Democrats competing for other offices.

Republicans currently enjoy large majorities of 64-36 in the Iowa House and 34-16 in the Iowa Senate. But seven Democrats got a boost last week from the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), which works to elect Democrats to state legislatures around the country.

Iowa House Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst joined the DLCC’s board of directors in January—a signal that the group is not giving up on Iowa, despite the losses over the past decade. Although Democrats are not in a position to regain control of the House or Senate this year, making up ground in every cycle matters—especially in the House, where GOP leaders struggled to find 51 votes for some of this year’s controversial bills.

The DLCC’s seven “spotlight” candidates in Iowa include a mix of incumbents and challengers. They are running in different types of communities, from suburbs trending blue to onetime Democratic strongholds that turned red during the Trump era. They share a commitment “to combat Republican extremism” in the legislature. Attention from a national group should help them raise money and recruit volunteers looking to make a difference in a competitive election.

Key facts about the featured candidates and their districts are enclosed below. Bleeding Heartland will profile these races in more depth as the campaigns develop. All voter registration totals come from the Iowa Secretary of State’s website. Voting history for 2020 comes from the maps Josh Hughes created in Dave’s Redistricting App for Iowa’s current state House and Senate districts.

Erin Farquhar is the mother of Abram Miller, who relies on consumable hemp products to control seizures.

This year, the Iowa legislature approved and Governor Kim Reynolds signed House File 2605, placing new regulations on Iowa’s CBD, or consumable hemp, industry. Proponents described the law as an effort to limit the amount of THC in the intoxicating products being sold in our state to protect kids, but that is not what the bill does.  

Unfortunately, HF 2605 was written in a way that has very far-reaching consequences. It does the opposite of what the bill proponents said by banning access to nonintoxicating consumable hemp products used for medical purposes and maintaining access to intoxicating products, like THC infused drinks, used largely recreationally.  

The bill even makes it illegal for me to provide my son the consumable hemp medication he has used for the past nine years to remain seizure-free.   

Bruce Lear lives in Sioux City and has been connected to Iowa’s public schools for 38 years. He taught for eleven years and represented educators as an Iowa State Education Association regional director for 27 years until retiring. He can be reached at BruceLear2419@gmail.com 

It has happened to many of us. While cruising down the highway, a dashboard light flashes on. You may not recognize what the light is telling you. You can ignore it and pray to the car gods your engine doesn’t die, or you can pull over, look for the car manual, and find out what it means.

My dad called these dashboard warnings “idiot lights.” I can still hear him say, “You’re an idiot if don’t stop and check what’s wrong.”

Once that light flashes you’ll feel your wallet thinning as you curse the car, forgetting you’re responsible for preventive maintenance.

Idiot lights are flashing across Iowa, trying to warn us our state’s public schools are beginning to crumble from neglect. It’s time to pull over to discover the problems.

Iowa Restaurant Association President Jessica Dunker is not happy that the U.S. Department of Labor is fining Iowa restaurants for youth employment violations.

The association has warned its members that federal officials “are taking massive punitive action” against restaurants that follow Iowa’s child labor law. Dunker told the Des Moines Register’s Kevin Baskins that the enforcement actions “are literally going to put people out of business” and accused the federal agency of targeting her association’s board members and award winners. Baskins profiled one Subway franchise owner who is “a nervous wreck” potentially facing “huge fines.”

Iowa Restaurant Association leaders should have expected this scenario when they successfully lobbied the legislature to relax youth employment rules in 2023. U.S. labor officials made clear last year that Iowa’s new law (known as Senate File 542) was “inconsistent with federal child labor law in several respects.” They promised the federal agency would “vigorously enforce child labor protections across the nation,” and said employers violating federal law could face “various penalties, including civil money penalties.”

Dunker’s group and the Iowa Department of Inspections, Appeals, and Licensing downplayed such risks when educating restaurant owners about the new state rules.

Governor Kim Reynolds signed an economic development bill twice last month after the legislature initially forwarded an incomplete version of the bill to her office.

Secretary of the Senate Charlie Smithson wrote to the governor on May 10 that “due to a clerical error,” part of a late amendment was omitted from the enrolled text of Senate File 574, which the governor had signed on May 1. Smithson enclosed “an accurate version of the bill,” which Reynolds signed the same day.

Former legislative staff who worked in the chambers for decades told Bleeding Heartland they could not recall any similar mix-up happening.

Al Charlson is a North Central Iowa farm kid, lifelong Iowan, and retired bank trust officer. The Bremer County Independent previously published a version of this commentary.

From the time our forefathers broke the prairie sod and began building communities Iowans have been known as hard workers who took pride in a job well done. Stories of my Norwegian immigrant great-grandfather highlight his ability to stack grain bundles perfectly to protect the shock from rain, and to plant corn in rows straight as an arrow.

We recently had windows replaced and our house re-sided by a north central Iowa contractor whose reputation was endorsed by a family member. The contractor has a branch in central Iowa, and a Des Moines area siding team was assigned to our house. The entire team was Hispanic; the only one I could communicate with was the team leader, José. 

UPDATE: Wichtendal won the November 5 election by about 800 votes (52.3 percent to 47.6 percent). Original post follows.

After inching toward greater diversity following each of the last two general elections, the Iowa legislature could take another step forward this year if Hiawatha City Council member Aime Wichtendahl becomes the first transgender person elected as a state lawmaker.

While other trans candidates have run for the legislature—Democrat Elle Wyant and Libertarian Jeni Kadel competed for Iowa House seats in 2022—Wichtendahl is the first trans major-party nominee in a district that leans to her party. She was unopposed in the June 4 Democratic primary for House district 80, covering part of the Cedar Rapids metro. It’s an open seat because longtime Democratic State Representative Art Staed opted to run for the Iowa Senate.

Wichtendahl discussed her campaign and her priorities in a June 6 telephone interview.

All seven Iowa legislators who faced competition for their party’s nominations prevailed in the June 4 elections. The outcome was a reversion to normal following a tumultuous 2022 cycle, in which six Iowa House Republicans lost their primaries. Two years ago, Iowa’s new political map forced three pairs of House members to face off against each other, and Governor Kim Reynolds endorsed challengers against several more GOP lawmakers who had opposed her “school choice” plan.

Crucially, Reynolds did not endorse any 2024 candidates running against incumbents. On the contrary, she backed one of the incumbents in a tough primary.

In addition, property rights proved to be a less potent issue here than in South Dakota, where fourteen Republican lawmakers lost to primary challengers on June 4.

Although Iowa saw no upsets, several of this year’s legislative races revealed that Republicans could be vulnerable to candidates from the right. The two challengers who came closest to knocking off incumbents were both vocal opponents of using eminent domain to build CO2 pipelines.

This post covers the primaries from the narrowest winning margin for the incumbent to the most comfortable victory.

UPDATE: Unofficial results show Bloomingdale won the nomination by 1,729 votes to 1,112 (60.8 percent to 39.1 percent). Original post follows.

Four of the 64 Iowa House Republicans have competition in the June 4 primary, and the most closely-watched of those elections will happen in House district 60. State Representative Jane Bloomingdale held off a primary challenger in 2022, even as several of her GOP colleagues failed to secure their nominations. She now faces John Rosenfeld, who is running to her right on several issues.

In a late twist, Governor Kim Reynolds endorsed Bloomingdale, even though the incumbent voted against one of the governor’s top legislative priorities last year and has consistently opposed GOP efforts to ban abortion in Iowa.

Diane Rosenberg is executive director of Jefferson County Farmers & Neighbors, where this commentary first appeared.

With the passage of Senate File 2370 (a version of legislation introduced by the governor’s office), Governor Kim Reynolds’ Executive Order No. 10, issued in January 2023, is now Iowa law. It will have a substantial impact on the state’s ability to protect waterways and communities from factory farms.

State agencies across Iowa will be prevented from strengthening rules and regulations, but will have the ability to weaken them. It’s now a race to the bottom that will adversely affect factory farming’s impact on water quality and public health.

The Iowa Senate approved SF 2370 by 32 votes to 14, with all Democrats present opposing the bill.

In the House it passed by 91 votes to 3. It was expected that the GOP caucus would fully support this bill, as they have with most of the Reynolds administration’s priorities.

But nearly all House Democrats voted for SF 2370, too.

UPDATE: Unofficial results show Brown won this primary by 2,546 votes to 2,273 (52.8 percent to 47.1 percent). Original post follows.

Two Iowa state senators and six state representatives face competition for their party’s nomination in the June 4 primary. The most intriguing match-up is unfolding in Senate district 30.

Two-term Republican State Senator Waylon Brown has a huge financial advantage and the backing of powerful interest groups. His opponent Doug Campbell, a retired pharmacist and former Mason City school board member, is running a low-budget campaign powered by grassroots outrage over a proposed CO2 pipeline.

The outcome should signal whether the controversy over property rights in rural Iowa is salient enough in GOP circles to overcome the advantages of incumbency. If Campbell prevails, Senate Republicans may feel pressure to consider eminent domain legislation in 2025, after blocking all such bills in the Commerce Committee for the last several years.

Kali White VanBaale is an Iowa-based novelist, creative writing professor, and mental health care advocate. Find more of her work at kwhitevanbaale.substack.com (where this essay first appeared) and www.kaliwhite.com.     

This month, Governor Kim Reynolds signed several critical pieces of mental health care legislation, including House File 626, “an Act relating to continuity of care and non-medical prescription switching by health carriers, health benefit plans, and utilization review organizations.” This legislation has a long, contentious history at the Iowa capitol.

Why was this bill important enough to lobby for it year after year with no success? What exactly is non-medical switching?

Transparency advocates found something to celebrate in Governor Kim Reynolds’ final bill signings on May 17. The governor rejected House File 2539—her only veto of the Iowa legislature’s 2024 session—due to language that would have created an “enormous loophole” in the open meetings law, experts inside and outside state government warned.

Drafting a better bill to strengthen penalties for open meetings violations should be easy, if Iowa lawmakers return to the topic in 2025.

But fixing the process that allowed such a poorly-worded bill to reach the governor’s desk would be a tall order. Because while House File 2539 suffered a unique fate, its journey through the legislature illustrated broader problems with how the GOP-controlled House and Senate do business.

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

Where does your primary loyalty lie: as a citizen of America, or as a citizen of Iowa?

Probably seems like a meaningless question. But around the nation, more and more states these days are enacting laws in opposition to those of the federal government, placing the loyalty question front and center. And a growing number of U.S. residents are declaring a preference to honor their state laws above those of the United States.

ORIGINS OF THE SUPREMACY CLAUSE

In terms of settled law, there’s no real dispute: federal law outranks state law. The U.S. Constitution leaves no doubt. Article VI, Clause 2 (the “Supremacy Clause”), reads as follows:

Randy Evans is executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council and can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com. 

You don’t often hear anyone extol the benefits of the COVID-19 pandemic. But I did a few weeks ago—when I stood before the Storm Lake Kiwanis club and talked about government transparency in Iowa.

I did not wade into the debate over masks, social distancing or vaccinations. It was a polite audience, but I was not silly enough to needlessly venture onto that thin ice.

What I said about the pandemic was this: State and local governments embraced, even if grudgingly, the benefits of live-streaming their board meetings during the pandemic so the public could watch from wherever they were.

Iowa Senate Majority Leader Jack Whitver is undergoing radiation therapy for a brain tumor, he announced in a May 17 news release. He said his condition was diagnosed after the Iowa legislature adjourned for the year in April, adding that he is “responding well to the initial treatments.”

Whitver said he will continue to serve in the legislature and as majority leader. Senate GOP staff did not respond to Bleeding Heartland’s questions about where Whitver is receiving medical care, or the expected time frame of the treatment plan.

Many elected officials from both parties—including Governor Kim Reynolds, Attorney General Brenna Bird, State Auditor Rob Sand, U.S. Senator Joni Ernst, Iowa House Speaker Pat Grassley, Iowa Senate Minority Leader Pam Jochum, and House Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst—expressed prayers and well wishes for Whitver’s health in statements sent to news organizations or posted on social media.

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.

Governor Kim Reynolds came to Beit Shalom, the home of the Quad Cities Jewish community, on May 15 to sign House File 2545, a bill containing controversial new social studies curriculum requirements.

Why Beit Shalom? Because the bill requires Iowa schools to teach Holocaust education, following the model of Illinois, which has required it for several years.

Though members of the Quad Cities Jewish community are divided about the policies of the governor and the Republican-controlled legislature, we do stand united on the issue of Holocaust education in our schools. According to FBI statistics for the past several years, more than 50 percent of religion-based acts of hate in the U.S. targeted the Jewish community, more than all the other faith groups put together. Since the atrocities of the Hamas attack on Israeli communities on October 7, 2023, the number of antisemitic attacks in the U.S. has more than tripled.

A comprehensive academic study found “causal evidence” that Governor Kim Reynolds’ Education Savings Accounts policy (commonly known as school vouchers) “led Iowa private schools to increase tuition” during its first year.

Princeton University doctoral student Jason Fontana and Princeton sociology Professor Jennifer L. Jennings published their working paper, “The Effect of Taxpayer-Funded Education Savings Accounts on Private School Tuition: Evidence from Iowa,” at Brown University’s Annenberg Institute in April.

Fontana and Jennings collected tuition data from 70 percent of Iowa’s private schools, focusing their analysis on 51 percent of schools (educating 62 percent of Iowa students attending private schools) for which they had multiple years of tuition data as well as grade-level enrollment numbers.

The researchers compared private school tuition in Iowa and Nebraska. Both states enacted taxpayer-funded “school choice” policies in 2023, but Iowa implemented Education Savings Accounts for the 2023/2024 school year, while Nebraska delayed its start date until 2024/2025.

Two bills Governor Kim Reynolds signed on May 1 will make advanced testing for breast cancer and other diseases more accessible to Iowans with health insurance coverage.

House File 2489 requires certain types of private health insurance policies to cover supplemental or diagnostic breast examinations such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), ultrasound, or contrast-enhanced mammography. House File 2668 requires public and private health insurance to cover biomarker testing for some cancers and other diseases or conditions. Both bills take effect on January 1, 2025.

Gerald Ott of Ankeny was a high school English teacher and for 30 years a school improvement consultant for the Iowa State Education Association.

Twenty-three years ago, in the months just before 9/11, the National Issues Forums asked me to work on a “discussion guide” on the topic of immigration. The assignment required me to ask people in Iowa how they felt about immigration and what, if anything, should be done.

My small team and I found the issue was “hot” among Iowans, especially among working-class people—particularly former packing house workers who had lost their jobs and saw their wages cut by a sleight-of-hand when plants changed ownership and de-unionized the workforce. The void, some said, was filled by migrants.

We found some business people welcomed new arrivals as needed for jobs that were unfilled by the local, native population. Descendants of Iowans who originally came to the U.S. to receive a homestead were open to immigration, especially from European countries—much less so of peoples from Latin American or Asian countries. The guide was meant to offer a policy alternative for ordinary Americans to consider in weighing the costs and consequences of the nation’s immigration policies.

Bill Bumgarner is a retired former health care executive from northwest Iowa who worked in hospital management for 41 years, predominantly in the state of Iowa.

The recently concluded legislative session has shown again that the state of Iowa is firmly entrenched in red state antipathy. 

Republican elected officials continued to casually pursue and advance legislation that strips away at Iowa’s once proud history of engagement, moderation, and inclusion.

The last few legislative sessions have produced attacks on public education, threatened a women’s right to make her own health care decisions, eroded the civil rights of certain citizens, advanced book bans and now—recklessly—introduced guns into Iowa schools.

Bruce Lear lives in Sioux City and has been connected to Iowa’s public schools for 38 years. He taught for eleven years and represented educators as an Iowa State Education Association regional director for 27 years until retiring. He can be reached at BruceLear2419@gmail.com  

Dear Administrators and School Boards,

It’s been a tough winter. Public schools endured repeated assaults from a governor focused on consolidating power and a legislature refusing to provide a hint of check and balance on her power grab.

The public-school family is hurting.

The Iowa legislature adjourned on April 20, having approved no bills this year that specifically targeted LGBTQ Iowans. It was a marked contrast from the 2023 session, when Republican lawmakers and Governor Kim Reynolds enacted a ban on gender-affirming care for minors, a school “bathroom bill,” and an education law with several provisions adversely affecting LGBTQ students.

However, the LGBTQ community had to mobilize repeatedly against harmful bills moving through the legislative process this year. For that reason, One Iowa’s director of policy and advocacy Keenan Crow called the 2024 session “an extremely difficult one for LGBTQ Iowans.”

In addition, one GOP bill that has already become law and another awaiting the governor’s signature will make Iowa a less welcoming place for marginalized groups, including LGBTQ people. Expected changes to the Iowa Civil Rights Commission will hamper enforcement of the Iowa Civil Rights Act, which has prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity since 2007.

Robin Opsahl covers the state legislature and politics for Iowa Capital Dispatch, where this article first appeared.

In their final days of the 2024 legislative session, Iowa lawmakers approved $8.9 billion in state spending for the upcoming year, financing the state government and public services. Most of those decisions now await a thumbs up or down from the governor.

Appropriations bills included funding for topics discussed often this session, like increasing pay for Iowa judges, as well as spending cuts to Area Education Agencies (AEAs), the provider of special education and other school support services in Iowa.

Budget bills can also include policy components. This year, language restricting on diversity, equity and inclusion programs at the state’s public universities was passed as part of the education spending bill.

Ralph Rosenberg served in the Iowa legislature from 1981 through 1994 and was director of the Iowa Civil Rights Commission from 2003 through 2010.

The Iowa legislature turned its back on our state’s proud civil rights legacy with last week’s passage of Senate File 2385, which neuters the effectiveness of the civil and human rights agencies and eliminates specific commissions dedicated to marginalized populations.

This combination undercuts Iowa values of respect and protecting the dignity of all Iowans. The bill compounds the removal of legal authority to proactively act on civil and human rights violations, by broadcasting a national message about how the Iowa government devalues diversity in religion, race, ethnic background, gender, or national identity. (Other pending Republican legislation reinforces this message, by calling for K-12 schools to teach history from a Western Civilization perspective, or limiting diversity, equity, and inclusion programming on college campuses.)

State Senator Dan Dawson floor manages a proposed constitutional amendment on April 10.

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

Tax bills in the Iowa legislature have always been approved or disapproved by simple majorities. If most legislators want to raise taxes, or lower them, they do it the usual way: take a vote, up or down, and whichever side gets the most votes wins. That’s how democracy works.

But this year, Republican legislators voted to change that.

First the Iowa House in late March, and then the Iowa Senate earlier this month, approved House Joint Resolution 2006, a proposed amendment to the Iowa Constitution that would require a two-thirds majority in each house of the legislature to raise state income taxes.

Des Moines City Hall, photographed by James Steakley in 2009. Photo licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Randy Evans is executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council and can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com. 

The Iowa legislature took an important step last week in voting to toughen penalties for state and local officials who violate a key government transparency tool, Iowa’s open meetings law.

Unfortunately, lawmakers’ actions may not be enough to reverse the love for secrecy that too many government boards and councils demonstrate. The latest example comes from Des Moines. 

State Representative Joel Fry floor manages a bill on raising elected officials’ salaries on April 18

Before adjourning for the year on April 20, the Iowa Senate did not take up a last-minute bill from the House that would have given state legislators and statewide elected officials a $10,000 raise, effective 2025.

Lawmakers should not wait until the closing days of the next session to address this issue. Stagnant, relatively low salaries are a real barrier to bringing more diverse perspectives and life experiences to the statehouse.

From left: Iowa House Majority Leader Matt Windschitl, Florida Governor RonDeSantis, Iowa Senate President Amy Sinclair, Governor Kim Reynolds. Photo first published on Reynolds’ political Facebook page on December 18, 2023.

Bruce Lear lives in Sioux City and has been connected to Iowa’s public schools for 38 years. He taught for eleven years and represented educators as an Iowa State Education Association regional director for 27 years until retiring. He can be reached at BruceLear2419@gmail.com  

My grandson and I go to a lot of Marvel movies. We sit in the front, bathed in superhero heroism. But before the feature, there’s always coming attractions. The first three or four trailers are loud and enticing. Usually we whisper, “That looks great. We should try to go.” By the eighth, we’ve found the bottom of our popcorn, our drinks are gurgling empty, and the coming attractions seem to look alike.

During what should have been the three coldest, snowiest months in Iowa, my wife and I escaped to Florida, the land of Iowa legislative “coming attractions.”