What’s on your mind, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

Only one week into Donald Trump’s presidency, the outrages are piling up. Philip Rucker and David Filipov report today for the Washington Post that Trump has restructured the National Security Council to give his political strategist Steve Bannon a permanent spot on the “principals committee” of senior officials. Meanwhile, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of national intelligence will no longer be regular members of that committee. President George W. Bush never allowed his hatchet man Karl Rove to attend National Security Council meetings.

Trump issued several executive orders this week related to immigration. The most controversial (and probably unconstitutional) one restricts entry from seven countries–but maybe not for Christians from those areas. Despite the trending hashtag #MuslimBan, the order is technically not a ban on Muslims entering the U.S.–though Rudy Giuliani says Trump asked advisers to help him accomplish that goal through legal means. The White House is portraying the order as an anti-terrorism measure, but knowledgeable people know otherwise.

The series continues; previous installments are here. -promoted by desmoinesdem

This week I will review our sixth-smallest county in terms of population, Osceola County. The 2010 census found 6,462 people living in the entire 399 square miles, the 3rd smallest in Iowa. To put this in perspective, Osceola County is roughly equal in population to the city of Oelwein (Fayette County).

Osceola County is north and just a bit west of Des Moines, bordering Minnesota on its north border. The highest point in Iowa, Hawkeye Point is located within the county. According to Google Maps, the county seat of Osceola County, Sibley, is 236.1 road miles from the Iowa State Capitol building in Des Moines. Osceola County was founded in 1871 when it was separated from Woodbury County, and was the last county established in Iowa. The county was named after the Seminole chief Osceola.

Turnout for the Women’s March in Washington and companion events around the world shattered expectations on Saturday, far exceeding the number of people who showed up to watch Donald Trump be sworn in as president the previous day. Trump and White House press secretary Sean Spicer had a right royal meltdown over media coverage of attendance at the inauguration. The president must have been seething to see yesterday’s news about more than 2.5 million people marching, including at least half a million in Washington and massive numbers in city after city: 750,000 in Los Angeles, 250,000 in Chicago, 100,000 in Denver, and so on.

Before the weekend, I heard predictions that 10,000 people might come to the Iowa Women’s March outside the Capitol in Des Moines. Instead, an estimated 26,000 people were there–impressive turnout for a state with about 3 million residents.

I spent most of Saturday at the Iowa Democratic Party State Central Committee meeting, so I’m grateful to Bleeding Heartland readers who gave me permission to share their Iowa Women’s March photos below (click on any image to enlarge). The only problem was choosing what to post among scores of inspiring images from the rally.

This is an open thread: all topics welcome. The Iowa City Press-Citizen published a photo gallery from the women’s march in the “people’s republic.”

Two weeks late and humbled by the results from previous efforts to foretell the future, I offer seventeen Iowa politics predictions for the new year.

I struggled to compile this list, in part because it’s harder to come up with things to predict during a non-election year. I didn’t want to stack the deck with obvious statements, such as “the GOP-controlled Iowa House and Senate will shred collective bargaining rights.” The most consequential new laws coming down the pike under unified Republican control of state government are utterly predictable. I needed time to look up some cases pending before the Iowa Supreme Court. Also, I kept changing my mind about whether to go for number 17. (No guts, no glory.)

I want to mention one prediction that isn’t on this list, because I don’t expect it to happen this year or next. I am convinced that if the GOP holds the governor’s office and both chambers of the Iowa legislature in 2018, they will do away with non-partisan redistricting before the 2020 census. I don’t care what anyone says about our system being a model for the country or too well-established for politicians to discard. Everywhere Republicans have had a trifecta during the last decade, they have gerrymandered. Iowa will be no exception. So if Democrats don’t want to be stuck with permanent minority status in the state legislature, we must win the governor’s race next year. You heard it here first.

For a self-style “constitutional conservative,” Representative Steve King has a lot of trouble with the separation of powers concept. In the past, King has tried to block federal courts from hearing cases related to marriage rights and encouraged state governments to disregard the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 marriage equality ruling.

King went one step further this week by introducing a bill to prohibit the Supreme Court from citing its previous cases involving the 2010 Affordable Care Act.

Legal experts agree King’s proposal is itself unconstitutional.

The main order of business in the U.S. House on January 3 was electing the speaker on the first day of the new session. House members returned Paul Ryan to that position with only one dissenting vote from the GOP caucus, in contrast to January 2015, when Representatives Rod Blum (IA-01) and Steve King (IA-04) were among 25 Republicans not supporting Speaker John Boehner’s re-election.

The big news on Tuesday, however, was House Republicans backpedaling on their vote the previous night to gut the powers of the Office of Congressional Ethics.

While staff for dozens of House members hid behind “we don’t know” or “we’ll get back to you” in response to constituent calls, King became one of the few “loud and proud” supporters of the amendment. In fact, he will seek to abolish the office rather than merely neutering it.

Continuing a 99-part series. You can find previous entries here. -promoted by desmoinesdem

This week I will review our third-smallest county in terms of population, Audubon County.

The 2010 census found 6,119 people living in the entire 443 square miles (22nd smallest) that are within Audubon County. Audubon County is directly west of Des Moines. According to Google Maps, the county seat of Audubon County, Audubon, is 84.8 road miles from the Iowa State Capitol building in Des Moines.

Audubon County was founded in 1851 when it was split from Pottawattamie County. And yes, it was named after John James Audubon. The highest population in the county was 13,626 in the 1900 census. Audubon County has lost population in every census since that time. The racial makeup of the county was 99.17 percent white, 0.15 percent Black or African-American, 0.09 percent Native American, 0.19 percent Asian, 0.03 percent from other races, and 0.38 percent from two or more races. 0.48 percent of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.

Former Republican State Senator David Johnson will remain an independent during the Iowa legislature’s 2017 session, but he will not be entirely shut out of committee work. William Petroski reported for the Des Moines Register this weekend that Democrats offered Johnson one of their positions on the Natural Resources Committee, recognizing his work on issues in that committee’s jurisdiction. In recent years, Johnson has been the leading Republican advocate for increasing conservation spending in the state budget as well as for raising the sales tax to fill the Natural Resources and Outdoor Recreation Trust Fund.

Johnson quit the Republican Party in June to protest the nomination of Donald Trump for president. He had occasionally found himself at odds with this GOP colleagues before then. For instance, he supported the unsuccessful Democratic effort to stop Medicaid privatization and later voted for a Democratic bill on stronger Medicaid oversight.

First elected to the Iowa House in 1998 and to the Senate in 2002, Johnson told Petroski he hasn’t decided whether to run for re-election in Senate district 1 next year. Zach Whiting, a staffer for U.S. Representative Steve King, announced in August that he will run in Johnson’s district, which is the GOP’s second-safest seat in the state. The latest figures from the Secretary of State’s office show Senate district 1 contains just 7,900 active registered Democrats, 21,374 Republicans, and 13,574 no-party voters. The five counties in the district voted for Trump by wide margins in November. The GOP nominee received 81.4 percent in Lyon, 78.8 percent in Osceola, 68.2 percent in Clay, 65.5 percent in Palo Alto, and 65.2 percent in Dickinson.

Despite having only one committee assignment for the coming legislative session, Johnson sounds content with his new independent status:

“I have made some votes in the past that I wasn’t comfortable with, and I don’t believe really represented the district that I am honored to represent,” Johnson told The Des Moines Register. “I am free now to really follow my conscience and my constituents. We always talk about how you should put your district first. Well, I can now because I represent everybody. I don’t represent Republicans here. That has created quite a furor among some Republican leaders, and that’s fine.”

According to legislative records cited by Petroski, an independent hasn’t served in the Iowa Senate since 1925 or in the Iowa House since 1972.

Jennifer Jacobs reported for Bloomberg last night that Governor Terry Branstad has accepted President-elect Donald Trump’s offer to become the next U.S. ambassador to China. Jacobs cited three unnamed sources, and an unnamed member of Trump’s transition team confirmed the news to the Washington Post this morning. I expect Trump to make the official announcement during his Thursday “thank you” rally in downtown Des Moines. (By the way, many central Iowa Democrats as well as Republicans received a robocall invitation to that rally, featuring Donald Trump, Jr.)

I wish Branstad well in his new adventure. He’ll have a lot to contend with: the president-elect’s recent overture to Taiwan was destabilizing; Trump’s threats to punish China for supposedly unfair trade and currency practices could spark a trade war; and horrific air pollution has made Beijing “almost uninhabitable.”

Kim Reynolds is the fifth woman to hold the office of Iowa lieutenant governor and will soon become the first woman governor in our state’s history. Branstad has been saying for years he wanted her to succeed him, and many Democrats expected him to step down before the end of his sixth term, to give her the advantages of incumbency going into the 2018 campaign. The domain KimReynoldsforgovernor.com has been registered since 2012, Mark Langgin pointed out today.

Reynolds will select the next lieutenant governor, and she may use that power to neutralize a potential rival, such as Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey. (Why Northey would agree to that arrangement is a mystery to me.) I don’t expect Reynolds to clear the field for the 2018 Republican primary, but as governor, she will be able to raise more money and possibly deter some ambitious people. Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett has been laying the groundwork for a gubernatorial campaign for years. I don’t know how many major donors would back him now that Reynolds will be the incumbent, though. Running a credible campaign against her would require millions of dollars.

Many Democrats were delighted to read this morning that Representative Steve King told The Hill’s Scott Wong he is thinking about running for governor himself. I suspect this will play out like the early months of 2013, when King attracted a lot of attention by saying he might run for U.S. Senate. I never believed then and don’t believe now that King will run for higher office. However, two recent developments may have changed the equation for him.

First, Iowa’s sharp turn to the right this November may have convinced King he has a chance to win a statewide election, which didn’t appear to be the case a few years ago. Second, he and Branstad are not on good terms. King was a leading surrogate for presidential candidate Ted Cruz, whom Branstad attacked shortly before the Iowa caucuses. Reynolds and many other prominent Iowa Republicans endorsed King before this year’s GOP primary in the fourth Congressional district, but Branstad didn’t join them. Adding to the insult, soon after King defeated State Senator Rick Bertrand in that primary, the governor’s son Eric Branstad hired some of Bertrand’s former staffer to work on Trump’s campaign.

Any thoughts about Branstad’s prospects in China or the 2018 campaign are welcome in this thread.

UPDATE: The Des Moines rumor mill sees State Representative Peter Cownie as a likely lieutenant governor choice for Reynolds. Further updates are after the jump.

The Daily Kos Elections team has been filling in a spreadsheet showing “presidential election results for both the 2016 and 2012 elections according to the congressional district lines used in the 2016 elections.” A few points jumped out as I looked at the Iowa numbers, just added this week.

Let’s start with the bad news.

Nearly every day brings news of another Donald Trump cabinet appointee whose agenda would hurt millions of Americans. Yesterday, we learned that the next secretary of Health and Human Services will be U.S. House Budget Committee Chair Tom Price, who favors rapid privatization of Medicare, less protection for people with pre-existing health conditions, and total repeal of the Medicaid expansion that has saved lives.

But I want to set government policy aside for now and focus on an equally urgent matter. The president-elect is not mentally fit for the world’s most important job. Unfortunately, all signs point to Republicans in Congress enabling and normalizing his erratic and dangerous behavior.

Representative Steve King said last week he might leave Congress if offered the right position in Donald Trump’s administration. I’m for that, because King stepping down is the only realistic path to electing someone less hateful and embarrassing to represent Iowa’s fourth Congressional district.

King has worked with Kellyanne Conway, a key figure in Trump’s campaign. He’s on good terms with Trump’s chief White House strategist, the racist demagogue Steve Bannon.

But by all accounts, loyalty is very important to Trump. Would the president-elect give an important Homeland Security post to Ted Cruz’s leading Iowa surrogate before the caucuses?

How about this to sweeten the deal: King was a fan of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s leadership style way before Trump was running for president.

In fact, King was being briefed by Russian security officials while Trump’s national security adviser-to-be, the Putin-friendly retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, was still working for President Barack Obama as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Representative Steve King would consider leaving Congress if offered the right job in Donald Trump’s administration, O.Kay Henderson reported yesterday for Radio Iowa.

Continuing a Bleeding Heartland tradition, I encourage readers to post their general election predictions as comments in this thread before 7 am on November 8. Predictions submitted by e-mail or posted on social media will not be considered. It only takes a minute to register for an account here, log in, and write a comment.

Anyone can enter, whether you now live or have ever lived in Iowa. You can change your mind, as long as you post your revised predictions as an additional comment in this thread before the Tuesday morning deadline.

No money’s at stake, just bragging rights like those most recently claimed by Bleeding Heartland user zbert for Iowa caucus predictions and JoshHughesIA for having the best guesses about this year’s primary elections. This isn’t “The Price is Right”; the winning answers will be closest to the final results, whether they were a little high or low. Even if you have no idea, please try to take a guess on every question.

Minor-party or independent candidates are on the ballot for some races, so the percentages of the vote for Democratic and Republican nominees need not add up to 100. You can view the complete list of candidates for federal and state offices in Iowa here (pdf).

Good luck, and remember: you can’t win if you don’t play.

A long and growing list of U.S. newspapers that normally support Republican candidates have refused to endorse Donald Trump for president.

Editorial boards at several large Iowa publications joined the crowd.

Not only that, some went so far as to endorse Hillary Clinton, including one newspaper that had not supported a Democrat for president in my lifetime.

I enclose below highlights from thirteen lead editorials endorsing either Clinton or neither major-party candidate. Earlier this year, I thought some conservative editorial boards might choose Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson as an alternative to Trump, but I am not aware of any Iowa newspapers to do so.

Speaking of endorsements, film-maker Michael Moore spoke to Rolling Stone magazine recently about his “forbidden love” for Clinton and his fear that Trump, whom he considers a “sociopath,” could win the election. Some of Moore’s comments surprised me, since he campaigned for Ralph Nader in 2000 and was a big Bernie Sanders backer in the primaries. His reasoning tracked closely to that of Iowa’s best-known Nader endorser, Ed Fallon. Speaking to Bleeding Heartland in August, Fallon discussed that choice and why he’s discouraging activists on the left from voting for third-party candidates this year.

Representative Joaquin Castro of Texas will be the “special guest speaker” at the Iowa Democratic Party’s 2016 Gala, formerly known as the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner, according to invitations that arrived in many Democrats’ mailboxes today. Tickets for the October 14 event at the Community Choice Credit Union Convention Center in Des Moines (formerly Veterans Auditorium) are available online as well.

Castro represented a San Antonio district for five terms in the Texas legislature before being elected to the U.S. House for the first time in 2012. The Progressive Punch database rates his voting record as the 112th most progressive among current House members. The same database ranks Iowa’s Representative Dave Loebsack 152nd.

Castro spoke about his family’s immigration story and Donald Trump’s hateful rhetoric on the final night of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. I enclose below parts of that speech, background on Castro’s career, and excerpts from his entertaining essay for the Texas Monthly about his first year in Congress. That piece went viral mainly because the author recounted that in 2013, he heard then-House Speaker John Boehner refer to Iowa’s own Representative Steve King as an “asshole.”

This summer, Castro confirmed he will consider running against U.S. Senator Ted Cruz in 2018.

His identical twin brother, U.S. Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro, is a former mayor of San Antonio and delivered the keynote speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte (transcript here). He was on Hillary Clinton’s short list for vice president.

P.S.-I’m still not happy Iowa Democratic Party leaders turned the Jefferson-Jackson dinner into a generic “gala,” which could refer to any fancy fundraiser. They could have honored any number of inspiring Democratic figures with a name more appropriate for what should be a celebration of shared political values.

When it comes to racially divisive public statements, few members of Congress are in Representative Steve King’s league, and Donald Trump surpasses every presidential candidate of the last half-century aside from George Wallace. Yet King strongly objects to critics who would portray him or Trump as racist. Buzzfeed’s Andrew Kaczynski reported yesterday on King’s interview with a Fort Dodge-based radio station:

“And now we’ve got the Congressional Black Caucus here in Washington, DC, today will be leading a protest and they have declared Donald Trump to be a racist. Now, why are they the authority on that?” the Iowa congressman said on KVFD AM1400 radio in Iowa. “I call them the self-segregating caucus, and so, they long ago moved away from the integration that we really need in this country.”

Click through to hear the audio clip and read more comments from King. He’s still bent out of shape over African-American journalist April Ryan confronting him in July about his assertion that white people had contributed “more to civilization” than had “other categories of people.”

King is uncomfortable with black people calling attention to systemic racism, whether they be farmers who sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture over decades-long discrimination policies or a football player declining to stand during the national anthem. In a classic example of what psychologists call projection or scapegoating, King labels African Americans “divisive” if they want an important historical figure to be represented on currency, and considers public discussion of police misconduct grounded in racism to be “anti-white.” Yet he considers it appropriate to display a Confederate flag on his desk in the halls of Congress.

Some Congressional Black Caucus members literally put their lives on the line to integrate public spaces in this country. Yet King would have us believe the caucus is a force of racial divisions because its members object to Trump’s manifold racist comments. King’s remarks to KVFD reminded me of a Gallup poll from the summer of 1963. During that critically important time for the civil rights movement, some 60 percent of respondents nationwide said “mass demonstrations by Negroes” are “more likely to hurt the Negro’s cause for racial equality.” Talk about projecting blame and responsibility “towards a target person or group.”

Final thought: King posturing as a supporter of “the integration that we really need” will be news to many of his constituents. Iowa’s fourth Congressional district includes many counties with large Latino populations. Those families are keeping schools and local businesses viable in numerous cities and towns. But that hasn’t stopped King from disparaging Spanish-speaking immigrants and their children as drug mules, or from trying to restrict birthright citizenship to exclude children of people who came to this country illegally.

UPDATE: Added below an image King tweeted on September 23, in which references to NFL player Colin Kaepernick and police officers were replaced with “King” and “Muslim” to highlight what King called “the contradictions of political Correctness.”

Blogger’s dilemma: which of Representative Steve King’s latest embarrassing, bigoted comments on national television should I focus on today?

Arguing that the government should guarantee parental leave only for the so-called “natural family” (which in King’s mind does not include gay or lesbian parents) was reprehensible. Why does he keep looking so hard for ways the state can treat LGBT people like second-class citizens? A parent’s sexual orientation should have no bearing on whether a baby deserves more time to bond with the primary caregiver. CNN’s Chris Cuomo already did a good job challenging King, pointing out research shows babies in LGBT households “are doing just as well if not better” than children being raised by a man and a woman.

I’ll take door number 2: King telling a friendly interviewer that professional football player Colin Kaepernick engaged in “activism that’s sympathetic to ISIS” and should be forced to “take a knee and beg forgiveness from the American people.”

Donald Trump’s potential to be unduly influenced by Russian President Vladimir Putin has been worrying me for some time, so my head nearly exploded when I watched NBC’s Matt Lauer question Trump about Putin during last night’s “Commander-in-Chief forum.”

Other commentators have already noted how Lauer interrupted Hillary Clinton repeatedly but let Trump get away with long-winded non-responses, didn’t follow up when Trump lied (again) about supposedly having opposed the war in Iraq and military intervention in Libya, and didn’t mention controversial Trump statements of obvious relevance to an audience of veterans.

Lauer also flubbed a perfect chance to scrutinize Trump’s Russia connections.

U.S. House and Senate members returned to work Tuesday, no better equipped to handle basic tasks of governance than they were before their unusually long summer recess.

You might think funding to combat a public health emergency would be easy to pass even in a hyper-partisan, election-year atmosphere. But you would be wrong, because legislation to pay for a Zika virus response remains tied up over “poison pills.”

Three of the seven Iowa Supreme Court justices who concurred in the historic Varnum v Brien ruling on marriage equality lost their jobs in the 2010 judicial retention elections. A fourth survived a similar campaign against retaining him in 2012.

The last three Varnum justices, including the author of the unanimous opinion striking down our state’s Defense of Marriage Act, will appear on Iowa ballots this November. At this writing, no one seems to be organizing any effort to vote them off the bench. Iowa’s anti-retention campaigns in 2010 and 2012 were well under way by the end of August, but the social conservatives who spearheaded those efforts have shown no interest in repeating the experience.

Zach Whiting, a staffer for U.S. Representative Steve King, will run for the Iowa Senate in 2018 against Republican State Senator David Johnson, Tom Lawrence reported today for nwestiowa.com. Whiting told Lawrence, “David Johnson’s decision to leave the Republican Party has left his constituents without a representative, without an effective representative.” Johnson announced on June 7 that he was changing his registration to no-party because of Donald Trump’s “racist remarks and judicial jihad.” I assume he will rejoin the GOP soon after the November election, though he has not promised to do so.

Lawrence’s article did not mention another likely motivation for Whiting’s bid: Johnson supported and donated to Iowa Senate colleague Rick Bertrand’s challenge to King in the fourth Congressional district this year. King won just under 65 percent of the Republican primary vote. Johnson later told the Sioux City Journal he would support Bertrand for Congress again, adding, “There is too much blind loyalty to Steve King.”

Follow me after the jump for more about the political make-up of Iowa Senate district 1, background on both candidates, and first thoughts on Whiting’s chances.

The filing deadline to run in Iowa’s general election ended at 5 pm today, and the Secretary of State’s Office has updated the list of candidates who submitted nominating papers and petitions with enough signatures. The following ten presidential tickets will appear on Iowa ballots:

The last three public polls in Iowa put Johnson at 12 percent, 6 percent, and 12 percent in a four-way race against Clinton, Trump, and Stein. Although those surveys probably overstate Johnson’s support, the unusual unpopularity of this year’s major-party nominees gives the Libertarian a good chance to improve on all of his party’s previous showings in Iowa. Click here to view results for Libertarian presidential candidates going back to 1976. At a Polk County Democratic event last night, a number of activists were concerned that Johnson’s name was not yet on the Secretary of State’s candidate list, because Johnson is presumed to draw more support from traditionally Republican-leaning voters. Libertarian activists cut it close by submitting nominating papers today, but all’s well that ends well.

Others who filed on the last possible day included Evan McMullin, a former CIA officer who launched his presidential campaign only last week, and the candidates for the New Independent Party and Legal Marijuana Now, which seem like decent names for picking up protest votes.

Five candidates qualified to run for Iowa’s U.S. Senate seat: Republican Charles E. Grassley, Democrat Patty Judge, Libertarian Charles Aldrich, Jim Hennager of the New Independent Party, and Michael Luick-Thrams, “Nominated By Petition.”

Only major-party candidates will appear on the ballot in three of Iowa’s four Congressional districts: Republican Rod Blum and Democrat Monica Vernon in IA-01, Republican Christopher Peters and Democrat Dave Loebsack in IA-02, Republican Steve King and Democrat Kim Weaver in IA-04.

The field will be more crowded in IA-03, with Republican David Young, Democrat Jim Mowrer, Libertarian Bryan Jack Holder, and two candidates to be listed as “Nominated By Petition”: Claudia Addy and Joe Grandanette.

GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump continued to disgrace himself over the past five days, feuding with the parents of fallen Captain Humayun Khan and revealing shocking ignorance about a foreign policy challenge the next president will face.

The response from prominent Iowa Republicans has been inadequate (in the case of Trump’s insulting comments about Khizr and Ghazala Khan) or nonexistent (in the case of his latest statements about Russia and Ukraine).

Every Republican candidate or office-holder in this state, aside from #NeverTrump State Senator David Johnson, should answer the following questions.

Three 40-something politicians who had hoped to be this year’s GOP presidential nominee addressed the Republican National Convention last night. Only one of them upstaged what was supposed to be the evening’s highlight: a speech by vice presidential nominee and Indiana Governor Mike Pence.

Although Senator Ted Cruz drew boos from many in the crowd and was panned by some journalists, he ended the night better-positioned for a possible 2020 race than either Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker or Senator Marco Rubio.

Representative Steve King’s concerns about people of non-European origin damaging American civilization are not news to anyone who has followed the Iowa Republican’s career. In the last month alone, King has asserted that it is “racist” to add the image of Harriet Tubman to the $20 bill and that the United Kingdom vote to leave the European Union may help save western civilization. At the same time, King has no problem displaying a Confederate flag, under which people fought and died to preserve slavery and divide this country, on his office desk.

King takes the alleged superiority of white culture for granted, which might not raise eyebrows on the conservative radio and television programs where he is a frequent guest. But when King floated those views to MSNBC’s national viewing audience this afternoon, the reaction was as explosive as the wave of outrage and mockery regarding House Speaker Paul Ryan’s “so white” selfie with interns.

Anyone even vaguely familiar with Representative Steve King has probably heard some of his statements about immigrants who are not authorized to be in this country.

But although I’ve followed King’s career closely for more than a decade, I didn’t know until I saw this news segment yesterday that he displays a Confederate flag on his desk.

We may never comprehend the underlying cause of Micah Johnson’s murderous spree during Thursday night’s Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas. The 25-year-old Army Reserve Veteran had served a tour in Afghanistan and had no criminal record or ties to terrorist groups, law enforcement officers believe. He apparently used an AR-15 assault weapon to kill four police officers and a Dallas Area Rapid Transit officer, wounding seven other officers and two civilians. During a standoff before he was killed by a bomb police detonated, Johnson reportedly said “he was upset about the recent police shootings” and “wanted to kill white people, especially white officers,” Dallas Police Chief David Brown told the media on July 8.

The fatal shootings of Alton Sterling by a police officer in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Philando Castile by an officer in Falcon Heights, Minnesota provoked national outrage and many Black Lives Matter protests, including the one in Dallas. Despite what the alleged gunman reportedly told officers shortly before his death, those shootings may not be the only reason Johnson took it upon himself to end innocent lives. Maybe he had post-traumatic stress disorder related to his service in a war zone (in a non-combat role). Maybe he had unresolved mental health issues not related to his military service. Maybe he had visions of glory similar to those that have inspired other perpetrators of mass shootings. We just don’t know.

Yet Representative Steve King (R, IA-04) confidently traced the Dallas police shootings to a different national phenomenon, which he described as “anti-white/cop events.”

Craig Robinson has stopped publishing regularly at The Iowa Republican and plans to transform the site into a personal blog, he told Bleeding Heartland yesterday. Robinson has been the publisher and primary author at Iowa’s most widely-read conservative political website since its launch in 2009. Other writers have been regular contributors over the years, but since early 2015, The Iowa Republican has published press releases or pieces by Robinson himself. Updates became noticeably less frequent over the past year, compared to the blog’s output during the 2011-2012 Iowa caucus campaign and GOP primary season.

The last new post at the site was a May 9 commentary by Robinson, who took shots at Republicans unhappy about Donald Trump becoming the likely presidential nominee. In keeping with past practice, the author did not mention that the Trump campaign did more than $116,000 in business with the Global Intermediate direct mail firm, for which Robinson serves as president.

Via e-mail, Robinson explained that he will likely continue to publish occasional opinion pieces at The Iowa Republican but has “no time table” for when that may begin. He may also use the site “to promote Global Intermediate’s capabilities to readers and potential clients.” As for disclosing his side work for political campaigns to the many national reporters who quote him about Republican happenings (most recently Matt Viser in the Boston Globe), Robinson sees connecting those dots as the journalist’s responsibility: “I don’t think its necessary for me to provide a list of current and former clients, anytime I have been asked I have been forthcoming. I have hosted CNN, FOX News, NBC, ABC and a handful of local news outlets at my Global office for the past couple of years, I’m not exactly hiding from anyone.”

I enclose below more excerpts from our e-mail correspondence, some passages from the May 9 post at The Iowa Republican, and details on Global Intermediate’s work for the Trump campaign to date.

Iowa is universally acknowledged to be in play this fall. All signs point to Trump investing significant resources here; he needs the six electoral votes and has hired our governor’s son as his state director. Whether or not Global Intermediate produces any more direct mail for the GOP nominee, national journalists seeking local Republican commentary should identify Robinson as someone who has done work for the Trump campaign–not only as a former Iowa GOP political director and publisher of The Iowa Republican blog, as has been standard media practice up to now.

Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Jim Comey made an “unusual statement” today explaining why the FBI is recommending “no charges” in connection with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server.

In looking back at our investigations into mishandling or removal of classified information, we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts. All the cases prosecuted involved some combination of: clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice. We do not see those things here.

Legal experts have been saying for a long time that criminal charges were unlikely, in the absence of intent to break the law, especially since former CIA Director David Petraeus was allowed to plead down to a misdemeanor for deliberately leaking classified information.

However, Clinton’s ill-advised e-mail practices will remain a political problem for the presumptive Democratic nominee. Comey underscored the “extremely careless” handling of classified information by the secretary and some of her colleagues. U.S. House Republicans plan to hold hearings on why the FBI didn’t recommend criminal charges. Today U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley called on the FBI to release more evidence from its investigation “so the public can make an educated decision on its own about the judgment and decision-making of all the senior officials involved.”

Meanwhile, Stephen Braun and Jack Gillum of the Associated Press examined six public statements by Clinton about her e-mails that were either questionable or untrue, based on the FBI’s findings. Republican Party of Iowa Chair Jeff Kaufmann repeatedly alleged today that the investigation had been “rigged,” saying Clinton had “lied” on many occasions and that “anyone else in the country” would be indicted for similar conduct.

I enclose below the full statements from Grassley and Kaufmann, along with some expert opinions on the case and some of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s comments about the FBI recommendation. Any relevant comments are welcome in this thread. Former Justice Department spokesperson Matthew Miller called Comey’s press conference “absolutely outrageous” and a violation of standard department practice not to comment on ongoing investigations.

UPDATE: Grassley told reporters on July 6 that he has written to Comey asking for answers to many questions about the e-mail investigation. He also said some senators are drafting a bill to revoke Clinton’s security clearance, adding that such a bill might be “an unconstitutional bill of attainder.”

SECOND UPDATE: Representative Steve King posted on Twitter on July 6, “FBI Dir. Comey/DOJ gave us truth but not justice. Confirmed, the Rule of Law took a heavy blow again from the Clintons. Obama is culpable.”

I wish I could say the above tweet was satire, but that is a genuine post by Representative Steve King a day after the “Brexit” referendum, in which roughly 52 percent of United Kingdom voters marked their ballots to Leave the European Union.

In some ways, King and Nigel Farage of the U.K. Independence Party are birds of a feather. King has claimed immigration threatens to drag the U.S. down to “Third World status,” and like Farage has implied that immigrants commit violent crimes at higher rates than native-born citizens, though research doesn’t bear out the scare-mongering. Farage employs race-baiting to stir up opposition to his country’s immigration policy. Others including UKIP founder Alan Sked have claimed Farage’s racism is deep-seated.

King may not be aware that Farage has long called for spending more of the UK’s budget on the National Health Service–that is, socialized medicine. In fact, before the Brexit vote one of the biggest talking points for the Leave campaign was reallocating an exaggerated total of money allegedly “spent” on the EU to the NHS–a promise Farage now admits cannot be kept.

Iowa’s most persistent warrior against “Obamacare” has inaccurately characterized the 2010 Affordable Care Act as the “nationalization” of health care. He also has falsely described the State Children’s Health Insurance Program as “socialized” medicine. He could hang out with Farage at some NHS hospitals and clinics to learn what government-run health care really looks like.

At least King didn’t reveal Donald Trump’s level of ignorance yesterday. While visiting Scotland to open a golf course owned by one of his companies, Trump claimed the “Place is going wild over the vote. They took their country back, just like we will take America back.” Remarking on what he called a brave & brilliant choice, Trump seemed unaware that every county in Scotland voted to Remain in the EU. Many Scots took to Twitter to correct the record, often using colorful language in reference to the billionaire.

P.S.- Like Trump, UKIP leader Farage is said to be an admirer of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s leadership style.

Dozens of U.S. House Democrats staged a protest in the House chamber yesterday, demanding a vote on gun control legislation. Shouting ensued when Speaker Paul Ryan gaveled the House back in for late-night votes after a recess that had lasted most of the day. The “#NoBillNoBreak” sit-in kept going overnight and continues this morning, even though House Republicans voted to adjourn until July 5 shortly after a 3 am vote on a Zika virus funding bill. UPDATE: Democrats ended the protest early Thursday afternoon.

Iowa’s Representative Dave Loebsack joined the sit-in late yesterday morning and stayed for much of the day. He returned to the House floor Wednesday evening, giving a short speech around 10 pm central time. O.Kay Henderson posted the full audio clip at Radio Iowa. My partial transcript is below.

I would prefer for the sit-in to be about legislation such as stronger background checks or an assault weapons ban, rather than the “no fly, no buy” bill that has grabbed the most attention since the Orlando massacre. But it is symbolically important for Democrats to stand up to the National Rifle Association and expose Republican cowardice on this issue. Eric Boehlert observed last night that in 1999, “31 Senate Republicans voted in favor of mandating background checks at gun shows,” and in 1994, “42 House Republicans voted for President Bill Clinton’s crime bill, which included a ban on assault weapons.” Now hardly any Congressional Republicans will back even the most popular gun control measures. Large majorities of Republicans and many gun owners support universal background checks, including for private gun sales.

Representative Steve King showed up in the House chamber Wednesday evening, around the time Loebsack spoke. Unlike his GOP colleague Louis Gohmert, King didn’t mix it up with Democrats. But a little before 2 am, he vented on Twitter, “I’ve had it with the gun grabbing Democrats and their sit in anti 2nd amendment jihad. I’m going to go home and buy a new gun.”

Apparently he is under the impression that Democrats get upset when someone buys a gun. As long as the purchase happens with an appropriate background check, I couldn’t care less if King prefers to spend money on additional firearms. I trust the congressman will store his new weapon appropriately, so his young grandchildren can’t get hold of it and hurt someone.

The U.S. House Rules Committee decided tonight against allowing a vote on Representative Steve King’s proposal to block the U.S. Treasury Department from using federal funds to redesign any currency. In April, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew announced plans to redesign the $20 bill, with a picture of Harriet Tubman on the front and an image of President Andrew Jackson on the back.

The innovation didn’t sit well with King. As Zach Carter first reported for the Huffington Post, King offered his amendment to the appropriations bill covering the Treasury Department. Matthew Nussbaum reported this evening for Politico,

“It’s not about Harriet Tubman, it’s about keeping the picture on the $20,” King said Tuesday evening, pulling a $20 bill from his pocket and pointing at President Andrew Jackson. “Y’know? Why would you want to change that? I am a conservative, I like to keep what we have.”

The conservative gadfly said it is “racist” and “sexist” to say a woman or person of color should be added to currency. “Here’s what’s really happening, this is liberal activism on the part of the president, that’s trying to identify people by categories and he’s divided us on the lines of groups. … This is a divisive proposal on the part of the president and mine’s unifying. It says just don’t change anything.”

Has anyone seen a better example of white male privilege lately? U.S. paper currency has featured white men on all denominations for generations. Yet it’s “racist” and “sexist” to put an African-American woman on one bill and several white women on another–even though both redesigned bills would retain images of white men on one side.

Sensitivity to racial injustice has never been King’s strong suit, so of course he would call it “unifying” to keep the seventh president’s place on the $20. Never mind Jackson’s legacy of brutal Indian removal policies, not to mention direct involvement in the slave trade and attempts to limit postal delivery of abolitionist materials. In case King forgot, the Republican Party grew out of the anti-slavery movement.

With Donald Trump damaging the GOP brand among non-white Americans, House leaders needed unflattering national news coverage and an eventual floor vote on King’s amendment like a hole in the head. So the Rules Committee determined the proposal to be out of order. King can go back to fighting “bloodthirsty vegan brigades” and other imagined threats to American civilization.

UPDATE: Added below fantastic comments by King’s Democratic challenger, Kim Weaver.

If the Iowa politics rumor mill can be believed, State Senator Rick Bertrand has been telling constituents for some time that he will not seek a third term in the legislature. Less than two weeks after losing the fourth Congressional district primary to Representative Steve King by a two to one margin, Bertrand told the Sioux City Journal’s Bret Hayworth that he is more likely to run for Congress or some other office in 2018 than for re-election.

I am skeptical.

In contrast to 2012 and 2014, no recounts or special nominating conventions delayed the tabulation of results from Bleeding Heartland’s latest election contest.

Follow me after the jump to see which predictions in this comment thread most closely corresponded to unofficial results from the Iowa Secretary of State’s website.

Spoiler alert: yet again, I failed to win. One of these years…

At the Smart Politics website, Eric Ostermeier noted yesterday that U.S. representatives from Iowa “have won 191 consecutive renomination bids from 1950 through the 2016 cycle […] The last Iowan to lose a primary for a U.S. House seat was seven-term Republican John Gwynne in 1948. […] The last Democrat to lose a renomination bid was freshman Sanford Kirkpatrick in 1914.”

This year, Representative David Young won nearly 85 percent of the vote in Iowa’s third Congressional district against Joe Grandanette, who didn’t run an extensive campaign.

Representative Steve King beat back a more significant challenge State Senator Rick Bertrand, which wasn’t surprising, given King’s popularity among conservatives and support from the Iowa Republican establishment. However, the scale of King’s victory (64.7 percent to 35.2 percent) was smaller than I expected. Would anyone have predicted Monica Vernon winning the first Congressional district race by a larger margin than King’s over Bertand?

The U.S. Senate primary outcome was frustrating for supporters of Rob Hogg. Despite outperforming his numbers in the Selzer poll for the Des Moines Register, Hogg finished about 8.5 percent behind front-runner Patty Judge. Tom Fiegen and Bob Krause each took about 6.7 percent of the primary votes, which arguably kept Hogg from overcoming Judge’s higher name recognition and better-funded campaign. Many activists are upset that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee encouraged Judge to bigfoot Hogg in the first place.

Let’s set aside the blame game for now.

The low turnout in yesterday’s primary should alarm all Iowa Democrats, regardless of preference in the Senate race.

Polls closed at 9 pm across Iowa. Any comments about today’s primary elections are welcome in this thread. Anecdotally, I heard reports of low turnout from various parts of the state all day long. I will be updating this post throughout the evening. For statewide results, check the Iowa Secretary of State’s results page. The Polk County Elections Office is posting results here.

Follow me after the jump for updates. The Des Moines Register posted the video of Patty Judge’s victory speech, because our local CBS affiliate cut away from it, and the NBC and ABC affiliates had ended their election coverage before then.

“Mark me down as Never Trump,” State Senator David Johnson said today, becoming the most prominent Iowa Republican elected official to renounce the presumptive presidential nominee. The longtime Senate incumbent told the Des Moines Register’s William Petroski he became a no-party voter because of Donald Trump’s “racist remarks and judicial jihad.”

“I will not stand silent if the party of Lincoln and the end of slavery buckles under the racial bias of a bigot,” Johnson said, referring to Trump. His criticism was prompted by Trump’s comments that a judge presiding over a lawsuit involving his business was biased because of his Mexican heritage. […]

“If Mr. Trump is the nominee, he becomes the standard bearer for a party that’s on the verge of breaking apart. He simply cannot unify the GOP. If there is a profound split, I’ll gladly re-join Republicans who are dedicated to equality and justice for all, and let Mr. Trump lead his supporters over the cliff,” Johnson said. […]

“There are consequences to the decision to suspend, for now, my Republican registration. I am fully aware of that,” Johnson said. “As I have for the past 18 years, I will put a high priority on constituent service. Many of the voters who elected me are supporting Mr. Trump. I respect that, but disagree that he is qualified to lead the nation and the free world.”

Johnson represents one of the most heavily Republican state Senate districts, covering five counties in northwest Iowa. Ted Cruz carried two of those counties (Lyon and Osceola) by a relatively wide margin, while Trump carried the other three (Dickinson, Clay, and Palo Alto) by slim margins. Johnson endorsed former Texas Governor Rick Perry for president in early 2015, eventually backing Carly Fiorina last October.

Conservation funding aside, I rarely find myself in agreement with Johnson. But kudos to him for speaking out while Senator Chuck Grassley, Governor Terry Branstad, and others tried to sidestep Trump’s steadfast assertion that a federal judge is biased because “he’s Mexican.”

UPDATE: A reader asked whether Johnson had endorsed Representative Steve King’s re-election, given King’s long history of offensive statements regarding Latinos. Johnson was not on the list of state legislative supporters the King campaign released on May 24.

King himself has not yet endorsed Trump, for reasons unrelated to the presidential candidate’s comments about immigrants.

SECOND UPDATE: Added below excerpts from Johnson’s interview with Ben Jacobs of The Guardian.

It’s that time of year. For your chance at bragging rights in the Bleeding Heartland community, post a comment in this thread with your answers to the following fifteen questions sometime before 7 am central time on Tuesday, June 7.

Anyone can enter, whether you now live or have ever lived in Iowa. It’s fine to change your mind about some or all of your answers, as long as you post a comment with your new predictions before the deadline.

Only comments posted in this thread will be valid contest entries. Predictions submitted by e-mail or posted on Facebook or Twitter will not be considered. Please try to answer every question, even if it’s just a wild guess. We’re all guessing anyway, since no public polls have been published for most of these races.

Bleeding Heartland user ModerateIADem won this blog’s primary election prediction contests in 2010 and 2012. There was no clear winner two years ago.