It’s been a while since I attended an Iowa caucus cattle call. After spending most of Saturday at Sen. Joni Ernst’s Roast and Ride event at the Iowa State fairgrounds, featuring eight GOP presidential candidates, I was most surprised by how little things change.
In a lot of ways, it could have been the summer of 2015. Just like this year, the rhetoric from Republican candidates running for the 2016 caucuses was heavy on immigration and government overspending, energy costs, crime at home and dangers abroad.
The national media, this year as in 2015, were obsessed with the wonder of retail politics and wrote very little about what candidates actually said. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis brought his kids and a bouncy house, gave away ice cream and managed to have a few conversations with voters that weren’t painfully awkward. Sen. Chuck Grassley wore socks given to him by Sen. Tim Scott. (Is that some kind of new endorsement by footwear?)
We heard from Republican lawmakers that the recently completed legislative session was “historic.” It sure was — historically small.
With a few exceptions, the major GOP priorities of the legislative session will benefit relatively small numbers of Iowans, in some cases at a gigantic cost to the most vulnerable among us.
The Iowa Supreme Court sent a strong message to the Iowa Legislature. The Statehouse majority party heard it and came up with the most idiotic and harmful response imaginable.
This should surprise no one.
Last Monday, during what turned out to be an all-nighter in the Iowa Senate, Sen. Adrian Dickey, R-Packwood, shocked and angered Senate Democrats by refusing to address a reasonable question about the child labor bill. When Waterloo Democrat Bill Dotzler asked Dickey to “yield” to a question, which is legislative protocol when lawmakers speak to each other on the floor, Dickey simply said, “No.”
Republicans in the Iowa Legislature like to talk about their bedrock principles. This year, those principles seem to be printed on tissue paper and every new bill lights another match.
I wrote a whole column last week about how Statehouse Republicans, despite their repeated declarations of trust for parents, are working to eliminate choices for many. That was just one example, and the pattern has been regularly repeated.
But don’t take my word for it. Listen to Rep. Chad Ingels of Randalia, one of five Republicans who voted against the ban on gender-affirming health care for minors:
“This (bill) seeds division. It also asks the question: When do parents matter? Many people have talked already today that we have had a lot of talk, a lot of discussion, about parents mattering. Parents being the focus. But that’s until those parents think differently than us. You think differently than we do? To hell with them.”
But the abandonment of trust for parents isn’t the only one way the majority of Republicans are shredding previous principles. A central argument for banning drug therapies such as puberty blockers for minors was what Republicans cited as a lack of medical research on the long-term “efficacy” and safety of the medication.
And yet, just last year, House Republicans went to the wall to push through so-called “right to try” legislation to enable unapproved, unproven and potentially unsafe off-label use of drugs for certain patients. They wanted to clear the way for internet-fad remedies like ivermectin, commonly used to deworm horses, to treat COVID-19.
The Republican Party’s obsession with sex and gender identity has reached a fever pitch in the Iowa Statehouse this year. Gov. Kim Reynolds and her gang of helicopter mothers are clutching their pearls so hard they must be cutting off oxygen to their brains. At this rate, they will end up banning rainbows before the next election.
Iowa GOP lawmakers have expanded on the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law from Florida, extending the prohibition in schools on all things LGBTQ all the way to eighth grade. The Florida ban specifies kindergarten through third grade.
Sen. Sandy Salmon’s version of the bill, Senate File 159, would create draconian civil penalties from $10,000 to $50,000 for schools where violations occur and are not immediately corrected. The bill prohibits any instruction on gender identity or sexual orientation in grades K-8, while also requiring instruction on human growth and development to be “age-appropriate” and research-based. That seems like a contradiction, since pretending LGBTQ people don’t exist is neither age-appropriate nor research-based. It’s delusional.
That’s the message, loud and clear, from Gov. Kim Reynolds and her Republican enablers in the Legislature.
I’d suspect that this was another, particularly idiotic manifestation of the trans-phobia that has infected Republican officeholders the past few years. But no, Reynolds and GOP lawmakers are insisting on “transparency” through various priority bills in the Legislature while keeping the public in the dark. Everybody loves transparency – as long as it required of other people.
Reynolds’ recent interview with Amanda Rooker of KCCI-TV made that abundantly clear. Rooker asked Reynolds about the so-called “transparency” measures she is proposing for public schools. These may include ideas proposed in the past, like requiring teachers to post their lesson plans online or school libraries posting every title on their shelves.
Rooker asked if Reynolds would also seek to impose those rules on private schools that receive taxpayer funds from her education savings account proposal.
Reynolds stammered.
“Well, you know they’re held to — you know, most of this would deal with public schools, would public schools right now. So you know, they – it would just be public schools.”
That last phrase is the actual answer. Only public schools would have to post course details and library titles and whatever else the governor and GOP lawmakers can think of to demand from public schools.
When I started my freshman year in college, I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I graduated.
I knew I was a writer, but I had no clear job goal in mind. For the first two years at Iowa State University, I registered for courses that would fit into either an English or a journalism major. But I didn’t make up my mind until faced with a deadline: Either pick a major or take an extra year to graduate.
Performing on deadline is a crucial skill for journalists, so I made the decision. I can’t say I’ve never regretted it over the years, but I’ve also never wished I was teaching English instead.
Sadly, the opportunity for young Iowans to explore, experiment and possibly reconsider a career path while in college may become a luxury reserved only for the wealthy.
Republicans who control the Iowa House are again considering shortchanging state universities. House Speaker Pat Grassley said in an interview last week he anticipates lawmakers telling the Regents universities: “… We will give you the money that you’ve requested, but it’s going to be in forms of scholarships for high-demand fields that are set up by the (Department of) Workforce Development.”
My mom was in the hospital most of the week before Election Day. It wasn’t planned, so she had not voted early or requested an absentee ballot before she was admitted.
I knew she wanted to vote, so last weekend I called her county auditor’s office to ask about voting from the hospital. Iowa’s law allows voters who are hospitalized or in health care centers to request a visit from a bipartisan team from the auditor’s office to bring them an absentee ballot and allow them to vote.
I was told there would be a team from the auditor’s office at the hospital that Monday, the day before Election Day, and they would visit my mom if she let the hospital know she wanted to vote. So Mom told several different nurses, but didn’t hear anything back and nobody showed up to take her vote.
The news that former President Donald Trump will hold a rally in Iowa amid a list of battleground states in the week before the midterm elections inspired puzzled concern from some and glee from others.
The gleeful weren’t all Republicans, and those expressing anxiety weren’t all Democrats.
One of Gov. Kim Reynolds’ biggest applause lines at her Harvest fundraiser over the weekend was her announcement that she’s suing the Biden administration over its decision to forgive student loan debt for more than 408,000 Iowans.
There was a time when it would have been considered political malpractice to gloat about actively working to take thousands of dollars out of the pockets of nearly 20% of all adult Iowans. That’s a significant share of the electorate, not even counting spouses and family members who would benefit from the debt forgiveness.
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