# Chuck Grassley



Chuck Grassley rewrites history of his role in smearing Joe Biden

U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley is well known for lamenting the lack of history on the History Channel. This week he has engaged in revisionist history about his role in spreading false allegations against President Joe Biden.

The senator spent months publicizing claims that the president and his son Hunter Biden took bribes from a Ukrainian businessman, even though FBI officials had warned Grassley and other Republican politicians the bribery had not been verified.

Now Grassley is trying to reshape the narrative, casting himself as the hero who helped expose the source of the false claims as a liar. He continues to push back against accusations that he has been a conduit for Russian disinformation.

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Grassley silent after feds link Biden smear to Russian intelligence

U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley has yet to comment publicly on a new document asserting that “officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story” about Hunter Biden.

The revelation came in a detention memo federal prosecutors filed on February 20, hoping to convince a court to keep former FBI informant Alexander Smirnov incarcerated pending trial. Smirnov was arrested last week and charged with lying to FBI agents about an alleged bribery scheme involving Hunter Biden and his father, when Joe Biden was vice president. The FBI memorialized those claims in an FD-1023 document, which Grassley released and hyped last year as evidence of Biden family corruption. Prosecutors now say Smirnov fabricated the allegations.

The detention memo details Smirnov’s “extensive and extremely recent” contacts with “officials affiliated with Russian intelligence,” and asserts he was planning to to meet with Russian operatives during an upcoming trip abroad. The defendant reported some of those contacts to his FBI handler before being arrested and divulged other relevant information in a custodial interview on February 14.

Grassley’s communications staff did not respond to Bleeding Heartland’s inquiries this week about Smirnov’s reported contacts with Russian intelligence. The senator has regularly posted on social media as he tours northern Iowa, but has not acknowledged news related to the false bribery claims. His office has issued ten news releases about various other topics since February 20.

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Grassley unrepentant as DOJ declares explosive claims to be "fabrications"

U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley did his best last year to promote what he called “very significant allegations from a trusted FBI informant implicating then-Vice President Biden in a criminal bribery scheme.”

On February 15, the Justice Department unsealed an indictment charging that informant, Alexander Smirnov, with two felonies: making a false statement to a government agent, and creating a false and fictitious record. Last July, Grassley released that document (an FBI FD-1023 form) to bolster claims President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, had accepted bribes worth $5 million. Federal prosecutors determined the events Smirnov first reported to his handler in June 2020 “were fabrications.”

At this writing, Grassley’s office has not sent out a news release about the criminal charges returned by a federal grand jury in California. But in a statement provided to Bleeding Heartland, staff claimed the indictment “confirms several points Senator Grassley has made repeatedly.”

The spin was not convincing.

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Zach Nunn visits Ukraine on Congressional delegation

U.S. Representative Zach Nunn met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, members of the Ukrainian parliament, and intelligence officials in Kyiv on February 9 as a member of a bipartisan U.S. House delegation.

At this writing, Nunn has not posted about the trip on his social media feeds or announced it in a news release, but he appears in pictures others shared from the visit, and is second from the left in the photo above.

Four of the five members of Congress on this delegation serve on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. A committee news release mentioned that Nunn “sits on the House Financial Services Committee’s Subcommittee on National Security, Illicit Finance, and International Financial Institutions and currently serves as a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserve.”

Representative Mike Turner, who chairs the Intelligence committee, said at a news conference in Kyiv, “We came today so that we could voice to President Zelenskyy and others that we were seeing that the United States stands in full support of Ukraine.”

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Best of Bleeding Heartland's original reporting in 2023

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

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

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

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

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The 23 most-viewed Bleeding Heartland posts of 2023

Iowa’s Republican legislators, Governor Kim Reynolds, and Senator Chuck Grassley inspired the majority of Bleeding Heartland’s most-read posts during the year that just ended. But putting this list together was trickier than my previous efforts to highlight the site’s articles or commentaries that resonated most with readers.

For fifteen years, I primarily used Google Analytics to track site traffic. Google changed some things this year, prompting me to switch to Fathom Analytics (an “alternative that doesn’t compromise visitor privacy for data”) in July. As far as I could tell during the few days when those services overlapped, they reached similar counts for user visits, page views, and other metrics. But the numbers didn’t completely line up, which means the Google Analytics data I have for posts published during the first half of the year may not be the same numbers Fathom would have produced.

Further complicating this enterprise, I cross-post some of my original reporting and commentary on a free email newsletter, launched on Substack in the summer of 2022 as part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. Some of those posts generated thousands of views that would not be tabulated as visits to Bleeding Heartland. I didn’t include Substack statistics while writing this piece; if I had, it would have changed the order of some posts listed below.

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Court blocks Iowa's "staggeringly broad" book bans, teaching restrictions

UPDATE: Attorney General Brenna Bird filed notice of appeal to the Eighth Circuit on January 12. Original post follows.

The state of Iowa cannot enforce key parts of a new law that sought to ban books depicting sex acts from schools and prohibit instruction “relating to gender identity and sexual orientation” from kindergarten through sixth grade.

U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Locher issued a preliminary injunction on December 29, putting what he called “staggeringly broad” provisions on hold while two federal lawsuits challenging Senate File 496 proceed. The judge found the book bans “unlikely to satisfy the First Amendment under any standard of scrutiny,” and the teaching restrictions “void for vagueness under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

However, the state may continue to enforce a provision requiring school administrators to inform parents or guardians if a student seeks an “accommodation that is intended to affirm the student’s gender identity.” Judge Locher found the LGBTQ students who are plaintiffs in one case lack standing to challenge that provision, since “they are all already ‘out’ to their families and therefore not affected in a concrete way” by it.

Governor Kim Reynolds and Attorney General Brenna Bird quickly criticized the court’s decision. But neither engaged with the legal issues at hand.

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What Iowa's House members said about Biden impeachment inquiry

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

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

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

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

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Iowa political reaction to the crisis in Israel and Gaza

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

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

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

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Four takeaways from Iowa Republicans' latest federal budget votes

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

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

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

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

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David Young's narrow win in House district 28 cost everyone too much

Tom Walton chairs the Dallas County Democrats, was a Democratic primary candidate for Iowa House district 28 in 2022, and is an attorney.

In the 2022 election for Iowa House district 28, Republican David Young showed up again in Iowa politics, after losing Congressional races in 2018 and 2020. Young won the Iowa House seat covering parts of Dallas County by only 907 votes, after the Iowa Democratic Party spent only about a quarter as much on supporting its nominee as the Republican Party of Iowa spent on behalf of Young.

Each of those winning votes cost his campaign about $331 based on campaign finance data. All told, Young and the Republican Party spent nearly half a million dollars on his race. As this article demonstrates, his election cost everyone too much—in money spent and loss of freedoms.

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Chuck Grassley's oversight is out of focus

“Strong Island Hawk” is an Iowa Democrat and political researcher based in Des Moines. Prior to moving to Iowa, he lived in Washington, DC where he worked for one of the nation’s top public interest groups. In Iowa, he has worked and volunteered on U.S. Representative Cindy Axne’s 2018 campaign and Senator Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 caucus team. 

During the tenure of arguably the most corrupt president in our nation’s history, U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley, an avowed champion of oversight and “patron saint of whistleblowers” was curiously quiet and not particularly busy. He showed little interest in literally dozens of Trump administration scandals for which there was plenty of evidence.

But in his eighth term, at the age of 89, Senator Grassley has fashioned himself as not just an oversight advocate but an ethics crusader. His target? President Joe Biden. 

It’s somewhat embarrassing that Grassley, an old-school pol from a moderate state, is engaging in this type of raw politics. It’s also embarrassing that the oldest and most experienced Republican in all of Congress is acting as foolishly as hotheaded neophytes Marjorie Taylor Greene or Lauren Boebert.

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Grassley again scores high on HUH?-meter

Herb Strentz was dean of the Drake School of Journalism from 1975 to 1988 and professor there until retirement in 2004. He was executive secretary of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council from its founding in 1976 to 2000.

Iowa’s U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley continues to baffle and befuddle his critics—and others—with his questionable comments on important issues of the day. Most recently, as noted in a Bleeding Heartland commentary by Laura Belin, Grassley declined to even read the historic indictment of former President Donald Trump.

Why?

Grassley told a Congressional reporter he had not (and I guess will not) read the indictment because he is “not a legal analyst.”

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Was it Roast & Ride or Boast & Hide?

Herb Strentz was dean of the Drake School of Journalism from 1975 to 1988 and professor there until retirement in 2004. He was executive secretary of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council from its founding in 1976 to 2000.

A day after Senator Joni Ernst’s annual Roast and Ride fundraiser, which marked the informal start of the Iowa GOP’s 2024 caucus campaign, a friend asked, “Where do we go from here?”

She was mindful of the cluster of Republican candidates challenging former President Donald Trump for the nomination.

Trump, who was absent from Roast and Ride festivities, had offered an answer a few days before at an appearance in Urbandale: “We have a nasty race ahead of us.”

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How Grassley, Ernst approached debt ceiling under different presidents

The United States avoided a doomsday scenario for the economy this week, when both chambers of Congress approved a deal to prevent a default on the country’s debts in exchange for future spending cuts. Iowa’s entire Congressional delegation supported the legislation, marking the first time in decades that every member of the U.S. House and Senate from this state had voted to raise or suspend the debt ceiling.

The vote was also noteworthy for Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, who were part of the 63-36 majority that sent the bill to President Joe Biden. Bleeding Heartland’s review of 45 years of Congressional records showed Grassley had backed a debt ceiling bill under a Democratic president only once, and Ernst had never done so.

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Russia adds Zach Nunn to sanctions list

U.S. Representative Zach Nunn is among 500 Americans the Russian Federation added to its personal sanctions list on May 19. The Foreign Ministry’s latest list of U.S. citizens who would be denied entry to Russia includes former President Barack Obama and various Biden administration officials, dozens of members of Congress and state-level politicians, journalists including MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and CNN’s Erin Burnett, numerous people associated with think tanks, and even comedians Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers.

The Republican who represents the third Congressional district is the only Iowan on the new “stop list.” Nunn posted on Twitter, “After years of fighting against Russian oppression and commanding mission after mission to curb Moscow’s aggression, I’m proud to be banned from Putin’s pathetic regime — the Russian people deserve better.”

Nunn served as an international elections monitor in Ukraine in 2019. After Russia launched its invasion in February 2022, Nunn called for President Vladimir Putin to be charged with war crimes. He has sometimes criticized President Joe Biden for supposedly not having a plan to end the war in Ukraine.

Last year, Russia sanctioned all four of Iowa’s U.S. House members, later adding Senator Joni Ernst and eventually Senator Chuck Grassley to the list of Americans barred from entering the country.

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Grassley highlights inspector general vacancies at federal agencies

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

Federal government whistleblowers have a champion in the U.S. Senate: Republican Chuck Grassley of Iowa.

We can measure a politician’s sincerity about a specific issue or policy by how consistently he or she maintains that position, regardless of which party holds power. Through the years—decades, really—that Grassley has served in the U.S. Senate, he has always insisted that government employees who expose questionable dealings or negligent mismanagement by their superiors must be protected in their jobs, without fear of retaliation.

That’s particularly true when the employee’s specific job is to investigate such dealings. Those crucial public servants are the “inspectors general” of the various federal agencies.

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Ernst seeks to block abortion access for military service members

U.S. Senator Joni Ernst is the lead sponsor of a bill that would block a new Pentagon policy designed to expand service members’ access to abortion care.

The Defense Department has long covered abortions if the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest, or if continuing the pregnancy would endanger the mother’s life. The policy announced last month affects “non-covered” reproductive care, including abortion and various fertility treatments. Haley Britzky and Oren Liebermann reported for CNN on February 16,

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On double standards and State of the Union addresses

Political reactions to a president’s State of the Union address are as ritualized as the speech itself. Elected officials typically have nothing but praise when the president belongs to their own party, while finding much to criticize about a leader from the other party.

If President Joe Biden’s remarks to this year’s joint session of Congress are remembered for anything, it will probably be the segment where he turned Republican heckling to his advantage, promising to defend Medicare and Social Security from cuts.

In their public statements about the speech, Iowa’s all-Republican delegation criticized what Biden didn’t say about some of their priorities. It’s clear those standards apply only to Democratic presidents.

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Ernst moves up in GOP leadership ranks

As the new Congress began its work on January 3, U.S. Senator Joni Ernst moved up a notch on the Senate Republican leadership team.

Ernst had held the fifth-ranking leadership position, Senate Republican Conference vice chair, for the last four years. She now serves as chair of the Senate Republican Policy Committee, the fourth-ranking position for the minority caucus. Her predecessor, Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, opted not to seek re-election in 2022.

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The 22 most-viewed Bleeding Heartland posts of 2022

Governor Kim Reynolds, the state legislature, and Iowa Supreme Court rulings inspired the majority of Bleeding Heartland’s most-read posts from this year.

This list draws from Google Analytics data about total views for 570 posts published from January 1 through December 29. I wrote 212 of those articles and commentaries; other authors wrote 358. I left out the site’s front page and the “about” page, where many people landed following online searches.

In general, Bleeding Heartland’s traffic was higher this year than in 2021, though not quite as high as during the pandemic-fueled surge of 2020. So about three dozen posts that would have ranked among last year’s most-viewed didn’t make the cut for this post. Some honorable mentions from that group:

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Grassley, Ernst oppose big spending bill but back some provisions

The U.S. Senate completed its work for the year on December 22, when senators approved an omnibus bill to fund the federal government through the end of the current fiscal year on September 30, 2023.

The bill allocates $1.7 trillion in federal government spending ($858 billion for the military, and $772 billion in non-defense spending). The Washington Post broke down the funding by appropriations area.

The legislation also provides $44.9 billion more in aid to Ukraine, and $40.6 billion for disaster aid. It changes some Medicaid rules, which will preserve coverage for many new mothers and children. It also includes some policies not related to federal spending, such as reforms to the Electoral Count Act, workplace protections for pregnant or breastfeeding employees, and a ban on installing TikTok on government-owned devices.

Eighteen Republicans joined the whole Democratic caucus to pass the omnibus bill. Iowa’s Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst were among the 29 Republicans who opposed the bill on final passage (roll call). But they supported some amendments added to the bill on December 22, as well as several GOP proposals that failed to pass.

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Iowa Democrats can win again—and soon

Zach Meunier is the previous campaign manager of Rob Sand for Iowa, Rita Hart for Iowa, and Dave Loebsack for Congress.

Enough with the doom-and-gloom.

Campaign managers are not optimists by nature. One of my professional mentors described a campaign manager’s job as “thinking of all the ways you can lose, then working every day to stop that from happening.” So I have found myself in a very strange position in the last month, as the guy arguing that joy cometh in the morning for Iowa Democrats.

Yes, it has been a brutal decade for Iowa Democrats. 2022 was the culmination. Two historical trends that favored the GOP converged in the same year. For the first time since 1986, Republicans had an incumbent governor and U.S. senator running for re-election together, a powerful combination. For the first time since 1962, it was a midterm for a Democratic president who had not won Iowa.

Those factors contributed to a red wave cresting in Iowa when it failed to materialize in most other states. But what lies ahead?

After spending a few weeks looking under the hood of the election data we have available, I have reached one inescapable conclusion. There is a clear path for Democrats to win again in Iowa at all levels: statewide, Congressional, and legislative. In important ways, Iowa still bucks national trends of partisan voting, and the makeup of the Iowa electorate is not locked in stone.

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Don't lose sight of what's important, Iowa Democrats

Randy Evans can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com

Judging from the furrowed brows and dire predictions in Iowa, you might have thought a national Democratic Party committee had voted to eliminate motherhood and apple pie last week.

Actually, what the committee eliminated was Iowa’s first-in-the-nation spot for the Democratic precinct caucuses, a coveted kick-off role for Iowans in the party’s presidential nomination process every four years since 1972.

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Iowans join Congress, Biden in forcing bad contract on rail workers

Every member of Congress from Iowa voted this week to force a five-year contract on the freight rail industry, as President Joe Biden had requested to avert a possible strike on December 9. It was the first time since the 1990s that Congress exercised its power to intervene in national rail disputes.

Four unions representing tens of thousands of rail workers had rejected the tentative agreement, which U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh helped negotiate in September. The main sticking point was the lack of paid sick leave. Instead,

The deal gave workers a 24% raise over five years, an additional personal day and caps on health care costs. It also includes some modifications to the railroads’ strict attendance policies, allowing workers to attend to medical needs without facing penalties for missing work.

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Joni Ernst chooses right side of history

Iowa’s U.S. Senator Joni Ernst was among twelve Republicans who helped Democrats pass the Respect for Marriage Act on November 29. Her vote reflected both a personal evolution and a smart political calculation.

The bill would repeal the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which banned same-sex marriages when it was enacted in 1996. It would also “require the federal government to recognize a marriage between two individuals if the marriage was valid in the state where it was performed.” Finally, although the bill would not require states to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, it would require states to give marriages performed elsewhere “full faith and credit, regardless of the couple’s sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin.”

Senate rules require at least 60 votes to overcome a filibuster by the minority party, and the vote on final passage was 61-36 (roll call). Iowa’s Senator Chuck Grassley was one of the 36 Republicans who opposed the bill.

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Did low turnout sink Iowa Democratic candidates?

Fourth in a series interpreting the results of Iowa’s 2022 state and federal elections.

Many people have asked why Iowa experienced the red wave that didn’t materialize across most of the country. While no one factor can account for the result, early signs point to turnout problems among groups that favor Democratic candidates.

Although this year’s turnout was the second-highest in absolute numbers for an Iowa midterm, participation was down about 8 percent compared to the 2018 general election. The number of Iowans who cast ballots this year (1,230,416) was closer to the 2014 level (1,142,311) than to the high-water mark of 1,334,279, reached four years ago.

My impression is that the decline in turnout was not evenly distributed, but was more pronounced among registered Democrats than among Republicans, who have long been more reliable midterm voters in Iowa.

That alone could account for the narrow defeats of U.S. Representative Cindy Axne (who lost to Zach Nunn in the third Congressional district by 2,145 votes, a margin of 50.3 percent to 49.6 percent), Attorney General Tom Miller (lost to Brenna Bird by 20,542 votes, 50.8 percent to 49.1 percent), and State Treasurer Michael Fitzgerald (lost to Roby Smith by 30,922 votes, or 51.3 percent to 48.7 percent).

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Grassley rewrites history on marriage equality stance

The U.S. Senate is on track to pass legislation protecting same-sex marriage rights, after twelve Republicans (including Senator Joni Ernst) joined all Democrats in voting to proceed with debating the bill on November 16.

Senator Chuck Grassley was among the 37 Republicans who voted to block the bill. In a written statement, he claimed the legislation would “put people with certain sincere religious beliefs at greater legal risk,” even though a bipartisan amendment addressed concerns of religious organizations well enough to satisfy the Mormon Church.

Grassley also portrayed himself as supporting marriage equality: “Of course I believe that all married couples should be able to continue to benefit from the same federal rights and privileges that Barbara and I have enjoyed for 68 years – regardless of their race or sexual orientation.”

That’s not what he said when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down state bans on same-sex marriage, or when the Iowa Supreme Court struck down our state’s Defense of Marriage Act.

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The Register and blue ghosts from 1974

Dan Piller was a business reporter for more than four decades, working for the Des Moines Register and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He covered the oil and gas industry while in Texas and was the Register’s agriculture reporter before his retirement in 2013. He lives in Ankeny.

The windowless Office Lounge bar on Grand Avenue nestled across a narrow alleyway from the Register and Tribune Building in downtown Des Moines was a hopping place in the early morning hours of Wednesday, November 6, 1974.

Longtime Office Lounge owner Dorothy Gabriel continued her election-night tradition of keeping the Register’s semi-official bar open after hours (to the apparent indifference of the Des Moines police) so that the newspaper’s staff could blow off the heat and tension of election night.

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Self-governance: It could be worse. It should be better

Herb Strentz was dean of the Drake School of Journalism from 1975 to 1988 and professor there until retirement in 2004. He was executive secretary of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council from its founding in 1976 to 2000.

“It could be worse.”

At the start of 2022, friends may have uttered those four words to console or comfort us.

As the midterm elections approach, those four words may be prophetic.

Every election in a democracy —from township to presidency — is threatened by voters who are ill-informed, misinformed, and/or uninformed.

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Consulting firm with Grassley ties facing IRS criminal investigation

“Strong Island Hawk” is an Iowa Democrat and political researcher based in Des Moines. Prior to moving to Iowa, he lived in Washington, DC where he worked for one of the nation’s top public interest groups. In Iowa, has worked and volunteered on U.S. Representative Cindy Axne’s 2018 campaign and Senator Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 caucus team. 

Agents from the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation division took the rare step in May of raiding Alliantgroup, a Houston-based firm specializing in energy tax credits Senator Chuck Grassley helped enact. Alliantgroup and its executives are frequent donors to Grassley; its National Managing Director, Dean Zerbe, is a former high-ranking Grassley staffer.

Months later, little is known about the raid, which followed IRS subpoenas and requests for documents. Some have speculated that the investigation is focused on Alliantgroup’s use of tax credits, including one provision Grassley and Zerbe had a big role in adding to the tax code.

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Hey, politicians, are loan bailouts good or bad?

Randy Evans can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com

I try to stay atop the day’s news. But I must have dozed off last week — because I missed the response from Iowa Republican leaders to the Biden administration’s announcement of $1.3 billion in debt relief to 36,000 farmers who have fallen behind on their farm loan payments.

In making the announcement, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said, “Through no fault of their own, our nation’s farmers and ranchers have faced incredibly tough circumstances over the last few years. The funding included in today’s announcement helps keep our farmers farming and provides a fresh start for producers in challenging positions.”

I am not here to question the wisdom of the federal assistance. But the silence from Governor Kim Reynolds and U.S. Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst is markedly different from their criticism after President Joe Biden announced in August that the government would forgive up to $10,000 in federal student loans for most borrowers.

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Does taking a public oath of office mean anything?

John and Terri Hale own The Hale Group, an Ankeny-based advocacy firm focused on making Iowa a better place for all. Contact: terriandjohnhale@gmail.com.

It was October 1973. A recent college graduate took the oath of office as an employee of the federal government in Ottumwa, Iowa. He swore to “…support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic….”

He would spend the next 25 years as a public servant focused on Social Security and Medicare, working with colleagues across the nation to make complex laws understandable and to ensure that people were treated fairly and served well.

That young man was one of this column’s authors.

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What was once "Iowa nice" now "too liberal," through GOP lens

Herb Strentz was dean of the Drake School of Journalism from 1975 to 1988 and professor there until retirement in 2004. He was executive secretary of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council from its founding in 1976 to 2000.

“You can’t handle the truth!”

Many Bleeding Heartland readers will recall those words of contempt that U.S. Marine Colonel Nathan R. Jessup—played by Jack Nicholson— shouted from the witness stand in the 1992 movie, A Few Good Men.

Col. Jessup was alluding to the death of a young Marine, a killing that “saved lives,” he claimed. Those outside the U.S. Marine Corps supposedly couldn’t handle his distorted view of “the truth.”

That contempt called to mind the political commercials that contaminate our television viewing these days. Judging by the smears and deception in so many ads, the phrase “Iowa nice” (like many of the targeted candidates or policies) would now be considered “too liberal for Iowa.”

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New Selzer Iowa Poll points to "winnable" race for Democrats

Dan Guild is a lawyer and project manager who lives in New Hampshire. In addition to writing for Bleeding Heartland, he has written for CNN and Sabato’s Crystal Ball. He also contributed to the Washington Post’s 2020 primary simulations. Follow him on Twitter @dcg1114.

Ann Selzer commented on her latest Iowa Poll of the U.S. Senate race for the Des Moines Register and Mediacom: “It says to me that Franken is running a competent campaign and has a shot to defeat the seemingly invincible Chuck Grassley — previously perceived to be invincible.”

The gold-standard pollster‘s statement will shock many political observers. Forecasters that issue ratings on Senate races have uniformly discounted any chance that Chuck Grassley will lose. This race is simply not on the national radar. Since 2016, Iowa has seemingly marched inexorably toward becoming a red state.

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Where do Iowa's candidates stand on science policy? We asked them

Dan Chibnall, Annabelle Lolinco, and Riley Troyer co-authored this post.

Chuck Grassley, a Republican seeking an eighth term in the U.S. Senate, is concerned that science is becoming politicized, but fears any official responsible for stopping it could become politicized themselves.

Michael Franken, Grassley’s Democratic challenger, says the government should dismantle giant agricultural monopolies and promote regional food hubs to make Iowa farms more sustainable.

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Iowa Republicans call Democrats extreme on abortion. Will voters buy it?

Republicans seeking Iowa’s federal offices take some important advantages into the November election. Most are incumbents with more money to spend than their challengers. Recent history suggests midterms favor the party out of power in Washington, and President Joe Biden has low approval numbers in Iowa.

One wild card complicates the equation for GOP candidates here, as in many other states. Republicans are on record supporting near-total abortion bans, while a majority of voters favor keeping abortion mostly legal.

Republican campaign messaging has emphasized other topics, such as inflation, taxes, or unpopular Washington politicians. When they can’t avoid talking about abortion, Republicans have claimed their Democratic opponents are the real extremists on the issue.

Several races may hinge on whether moderate voters buy into that distortion of the facts.

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Iowa's U.S. Senate race in 3-D

Herb Strentz examines Chuck Grassley’s recent political messaging and low points from his record in the Senate.

The home stretch of this midterm election campaign is unfolding in in 3-D format — Dire, Divisive, and Despairing. That’s particularly true of the U.S. Senate race between Republican incumbent Chuck Grassley, seeking his eighth term at age 89, and Democrat Michael Franken, a retired U.S. Navy admiral, who will be 65 on election day, November 8.

That 3-D nature of our Iowa politics was illustrated well in one of the Grassley campaign’s recent television commercials.

In a backhanded way, Grassley acknowledged why it is time for Iowans to vote him out of office.

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Five things not to do when running for office

U.S. Senate nominee Mike Franken faced every candidate’s nightmare on September 19 when the Republican-funded website Iowa Field Report published allegations that the Democrat kissed his former campaign manager Kimberley Strope-Boggus without consent.

The Des Moines Police Department’s incident report, dated April 12, described the events that led to Strope-Boggus’ complaint of simple assault. After consulting with an assistant Polk County attorney, Officer Abby Giampolo closed the case as “unfounded,” due to “insufficient evidence to pursue a criminal investigation.”

Since Franken and the staffer he fired in February were alone when the disputed events occurred, we will never know exactly what happened between them on the evening of March 18. Franken has denied the allegations, while Strope-Boggus told Bleeding Heartland and other reporters she is unable to comment at this time.

Every candidate can learn some lessons from this episode.

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Iowa media let Grassley, Ernst dodge on nationwide abortion ban

Republican members of the U.S. House and Senate introduced companion bills this week that would ban abortion nationally after 15 weeks, with few exceptions.

The three Republicans representing Iowa in the lower chamber—Ashley Hinson (IA-01), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-02), and Randy Feenstra (IA-04)—all co-sponsored the national abortion ban on the day the bill was introduced.

U.S. Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst dodged questions about whether they would support their colleague’s bill. And leading Iowa news organizations gave them exactly the coverage they wanted.

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Voters, don't let tv ads mislead you

Randy Evans can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com

Televisions are getting larger, but that does not make it easier to decipher the political ads that are as common these days as gnats at a picnic.

There is one thing we should understand about these ads: Their purpose is not to educate voters or inform them about the finer points of a candidate’s views. Instead, their purpose is to scare us, or mislead us, or just confuse us.

One such example tells Iowa viewers that U.S. Representative Cindy Axne, a Democrat from Iowa’s third district, refuses to sign a pledge to support term limits for members of Congress. (Term Limits Action is spending $157,203 to run the ads.)

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Iowa Libertarians opt out of federal, most statewide races: What it means

Iowa’s filing period for the 2022 general election closed on August 27 with no third-party candidate qualified for the ballot in any federal race, or any statewide race other than for governor and lieutenant governor.

The landscape could hardly be more different from four years ago, when the Libertarian Party of Iowa fielded a full slate of federal and statewide candidates, and no-party candidates also competed in three of the four U.S. House districts.

The lack of a third-party presence could be important if any of Iowa’s Congressional or statewide elections are close contests.

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Grassley, Hinson bash student loan relief, but not other government handouts

Like their counterparts across the country, top Iowa Republicans howled on August 24 when President Joe Biden rolled out a three-pronged student loan relief program.

Speaking at a town hall meeting, Senator Chuck Grassley asserted that it’s “unfair” to forgive some student loans but not help other people who struggle to repay their obligations.

U.S. Representative Ashley Hinson denounced the plan as a “handout to the wealthy and a total slap in the face” to working people who didn’t go to college or already paid off their student loans.

The outrage over student debt relief was striking, since Grassley and Hinson have not objected to some other federal government handouts, which benefited their own families.

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Iowa GOP candidates love state fair, shun DM Register Soapbox

Politicians love spending time at the Iowa State Fair, and many candidates for state and federal offices made multiple visits this year. But in a break with a long-running practice, Republicans seeking statewide and federal offices mostly shunned the Des Moines Register’s Political Soapbox.

Just three of the eleven GOP candidates invited to the Soapbox were willing to devote 20 minutes of their state fair visit to a public speech outlining their agenda. Every elected Republican official steered clear.

Avoiding the Register’s platform is another sign of growing Republican hostility toward traditional Iowa media. Other recent examples: some GOP candidates refused to meet with high-profile editorial boards in 2018 and 2020, and Iowa Senate leaders abandoned more than a century of tradition to kick reporters off the chamber’s press bench this year.

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Iowa Republicans go quiet on Trump search

Iowa’s Republican members of Congress were quick to cast doubt on the FBI’s search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida residence. Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, and Representatives Ashley Hinson and Randy Feenstra demanded more information from the Justice Department about the reasons for the “unprecedented” action. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks suggested that investigating Trump was a waste of taxpayer money.

But those GOP officials had nothing to say publicly after an inventory released on August 12 showed the former president had been keeping classified, secret, and top secret documents at the Mar-a-Lago resort.

Multiple news outlets published the search and seizure warrant for Trump’s residence, as well as the receipt listing property FBI agents took on August 8. Four items were described as “Miscellaneous Top Secret Documents,” and one was listed as “Various classified/TS/SCI documents.” Those are high levels of classification, used for material that “could cause ‘exceptionally grave danger’ to national security.”

SCI stands for Sensitive Compartmented Information, which “may be an electronic intercept or information provided by a human informant in a foreign country.” The Washington Post reported on August 11 that “Classified documents relating to nuclear weapons were among the items FBI agents sought” in the search.

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Iowa environmentalists react to Inflation Reduction Act

Meaningful Congressional action on climate change seemed doomed in the 50-50 U.S. Senate after Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia tanked President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better proposal earlier this year. But on August 7, Vice President Kamala Harris cast the tie-breaking 51st vote to approve the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. All Republicans, including Iowa’s Senators Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley, voted against final passage.

Assuming the U.S. House approves the bill (a vote is scheduled for August 12), Biden is poised to sign into law “the single biggest climate investment in U.S. history, by far.” In addition to significant changes to the tax system and health care policy, the massive package includes $369 billion in spending aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and promoting clean energy.

According to summaries of the bill’s energy and climate provisions, enclosed in full below, the bill could help reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 40 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. However, the bill’s incentives for the fossil fuels industry—which were necessary to get Manchin on board—are troubling for many environmental advocates.

Bleeding Heartland sought comment from some Iowans who have been engaged in policy battles related to climate change and the environment.

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Joni Ernst leads Senate opposition to contraception rights bill

U.S. Senator Joni Ernst has blocked a Democratic bill that would provide a federal guarantee of contraception rights.

Democrats sought to pass the bill, which cleared the U.S. House mostly along party lines, via unanimous consent during Senate floor debate on July 27.

Ernst rose to object and advocated for a measure that would speed up an over-the-counter designation for oral contraception pills. The bill is a companion to a bill that U.S. Representative Ashley Hinson introduced in the House last week. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Senator Chuck Grassley are co-sponsoring the measure.

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Three Iowans in Congress support federal guarantee of marriage equality

Three of Iowa’s four U.S. House members were part of the bipartisan majority that voted to guarantee same-sex marriage rights across the country.

Every House Democrat, including Iowa’s Representative Cindy Axne (IA-03), voted for the Respect for Marriage Act, which passed on July 19 by 267 votes to 157 (roll call). So did 47 Republicans, including Representatives Ashley Hinson (IA-01) and Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-02). Representative Randy Feenstra (IA-04) joined the majority of House Republicans in opposing the legislation.

The bill repeals the federal Defense of Marriage Act, enacted in 1996 to protect states from having to recognize same-sex marriages, and to define marriage in federal laws and regulations as between a husband and wife. The Respect for Marriage Act also prohibits states from refusing to recognize any marriage due to the “sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin” of the individuals involved.

House leaders brought the bill to the floor in response to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote in a concurring opinion to the Dobbs case that having overturned Roe v. Wade, the court should reverse other precedents. Among other cases, Thomas mentioned the 1965 Griswold opinion establishing a right to contraception and the 2015 Obergefell ruling on marriage equality. Like the Roe and Griswold decisions, the Obergefell majority relied on a legal analysis that recognizes some liberty interests (like privacy and the right to marry), even though the Constitution does not specifically mention those rights.

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Iowa Democrats face bigger challenges than voter registration numbers

Top Iowa Republicans crowed this month when the state’s official figures showed the GOP had expanded its voter registration lead over Democrats. At this point in the 2018 election cycle, registered Republicans outnumbered Democrats in Iowa by around 24,000. The current disparity is more than three times as large. According to the latest numbers released by the Secretary of State’s office, Iowa has 681,871 active registered Republicans, 597,120 Democrats, and 555,988 no-party voters.

The voter registration totals should concern Democrats, but two other trends facing the party’s candidates in this midterm election should worry them more.

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Can Chuck Grassley really lose?

Dan Guild is a lawyer and project manager who lives in New Hampshire. In addition to writing for Bleeding Heartland, he has written for CNN and Sabato’s Crystal Ball. He also contributed to the Washington Post’s 2020 primary simulations. Follow him on Twitter @dcg1114.

Asking if Senator Chuck Grassley could lose seems absurd. He has received more than 60 percent of the vote every time he has been up for re-election, beginning in 1986. He represents the opposition party at a time when President Joe Biden’s approval rating is below 40 percent.

The Des Moines Register has not released Biden’s approval numbers for their latest Iowa Poll by Selzer & Co, but in March they found Biden’s approval in Iowa was 35 percent, with 59 percent of respondents disapproving. Given the national trends, it is unlikely that the president’s numbers have improved in Iowa since then. Moreover, Republicans have made big gains in Iowa since President Barack Obama carried the state in 2012.

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2022 election merits more concern than Iowa caucuses

Herb Strentz was dean of the Drake School of Journalism from 1975 to 1988 and professor there until retirement in 2004. He was executive secretary of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council from its founding in 1976 to 2000.

Worse things could befall Iowa and the nation than the Iowa caucus losing its “first-in-the-nation” status in presidential election years.

For example, it might be worse if the state kept that status and was viewed as a bellwether in the 2024 election.

Let’s face it. Iowa has little left of the virtues that had the state press routinely boasting about Iowa being “the center of the political universe” when it came to January and February every four years.

For an art-becomes-life perspective, consider a 1947 movie that kind of foretold the story of the Iowa caucuses.

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Hearing obliterates Grassley's excuses for Trump on pressuring DOJ

Senator Chuck Grassley has not been following the work of the House Select Committee investigating the events of January 6, 2021, he told Dr. Bob Leonard of KNIA-KRLS Radio this week.

He should have watched the televised hearings on June 23. The focus was how President Donald Trump tried to use the U.S. Department of Justice to help him subvert the peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election. The key elements of that conspiracy have been known since the Senate Judiciary Committee investigated that angle last year. But witnesses and exhibits provided many new details.

The testimony from former administration officials and Trump attorneys obliterated the alternate reality Grassley promoted last year, in which the president “did not exert improper influence on the Justice Department.”

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Ernst votes for gun violence package

U.S. Senator Joni Ernst was among fifteen Republicans who joined the entire Democratic caucus on June 23 to advance a package designed to reduce gun violence.

Senator Chuck Grassley and 33 other GOP senators opposed the cloture motion to end debate (roll call), which under Senate rules needed 60 votes to pass.

Neither Ernst nor Grassley has released a statement on today’s vote or mentioned it on their social media feeds.

The bill includes:

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Grassley has only himself to blame for skepticism about January 6 denials

Efforts by Donald Trump and his allies to pressure Vice President Mike Pence were the focus of televised hearings the House Select Committee investigating the insurrection held on June 16. Witness after witness testified about the illegal and unconstitutional plot to subvert the electoral college count on January 6, 2021.

Several documents laying out the plan to keep Trump in office foresaw a possible role for U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley, who (as the Senate president pro-tem) would have presided over Senate proceedings that day in Pence’s absence.

In a June 16 news release and social media posts, Democratic Senate nominee Mike Franken called on Grassley to “come clean” and answer four questions related to the January 6 events.

Grassley and his staff have repeatedly said the senator was not recruited to derail the electoral college count and was unaware of memos or PowerPoints mapping out the coup. When Bleeding Heartland asked about Franken’s questions on June 16, the senator’s campaign spokesperson bashed the Democrat for supposedly spreading a “conspiracy theory.”

The reality is that no one has done more than Grassley to make people wonder whether he was recruited to help Trump stay in power.

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Paul Pate hails primary turnout despite huge drop from 2020

Secretary of State Paul Pate often uses the #BeAVoter hashtag and has repeatedly claimed that he works to make it “easy to vote and hard to cheat” in Iowa.

Since the June 7 primary election, Pate has spun the numbers as if they reflected a trend toward greater participation. In reality, this year’s primary turnout was way down compared to 2020, when Pate genuinely tried to make it easier for Iowans to vote during a pandemic.

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The answer: Admiral Mike Franken

Charlie Hodges is a Democratic activist in Polk County.

The first time I met Vice Admiral Michael Franken, we were both set to speak at an Urbandale Area Democrats meeting during the 2020 election cycle. Mike was running in the primary to face Senator Joni Ernst, and I was briefly dipping my toe into state politics (side note: don’t run for office based on an ideological binge).

Mike went first and captured my attention immediately. He exudes a calm and genuine demeanor, and every idea and policy proposal is well thought out. I asked him about gun control, which a lot of Democratic candidates wouldn’t touch publicly when I asked. Mike not only said he was in favor of common-sense gun laws, but also had (as I have now come to expect) a detailed proposal. I was extremely impressed.

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It's different this time

Julie Gammack writes about a campaign event she co-hosted. She published a version of this piece on her Substack, Julie Gammack’s Potluck.

I was in Carey’s Electronics shop in downtown Spencer on Thursday. As we concluded our business, the subject of kids, his kids, their health, and safety came up. I was curious to see where the conversation would go.

“To get a driver’s license, I needed to pass a test,” said the man behind the counter. “To own a car, I must have insurance. If I don’t wear my seatbelt, I can get a $275 ticket.

“But my 18-year-old son can go down the street and buy an assault rifle, no questions asked. This is just insane!”

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Staff say Grassley was "never approached" about January 6 plan

Staff for U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley have again denied the senator was recruited to derail the electoral college count on January 6, 2021.

Politico was first to report on the memo released last week by the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 coup attempt. The December 13, 2020 email from Kenneth Chesebro to Rudy Giuliani shows Republicans plotting to keep Donald Trump in power wanted “Chuck Grassley or another senior Republican” to preside over counting the electoral college votes. The plan envisioned that the presiding official would refuse to count votes from Arizona, citing supposed “irregularities” and two slates of electors.

The vice president typically presides over the electoral college count in the Senate. But as Senate president pro tempore, Grassley would have been the default choice to lead the session if Vice President Mike Pence had been absent or recused himself.

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Franken will advocate for women's rights, human rights in the Senate

Bonnie Campbell is former Chair of the Iowa Democratic Party, former Attorney General of Iowa, and Inaugural Director of the Office on Violence Against Women at the U. S. Department of Justice.

History is calling us to action.

Seventy percent of Americans oppose the overturn of Roe v. Wade –a basic right for women in this country for nearly 50 years. Sadly, Senator Chuck Grassley is not one of them.

If the U. S. Supreme Court makes the dangerous decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, it will be a blow to our democracy so forceful that it will threaten the future of this country and the rights of every citizen.

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Thoughts on what’s happening in Ukraine and political implications

Emily Silliman shares what she’s learned while closely following events in Ukraine following the Russian invasion.

Three months after the Russian Federation invaded a sovereign country with more than 40 million residents, it’s clear Ukrainians are winning this war

This past month was supposed to bring a major push by Russia in the east, after having lost the battle of Kyiv, withdrawn, and re-deployed forces to the eastern theater. Russia appears to want to capture more of the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts (regions), and control as much of the Black Sea coast as possible, as well as maintaining control of Crimea. 

Although that plan made some sense, the Russian armed forces didn’t stick to it. Instead, they wasted effort on multiple lines of attack, including a push toward Kryvyi Ryh, the home town of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Ukraine has very effectively stopped the invaders on all fronts, with a couple of exceptions, with some towns going back and forth between Ukrainian and Russian forces. 

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Chuck Grassley absent from Russia's expanded sanctions list

The Russian Federation’s Foreign Ministry announced on May 21 that it was expanding the list of U.S. citizens who are permanently banned from entering Russia.

In addition to President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and other Biden administration officials, Russia has sanctioned hundreds of members of Congress. All four Iowans who serve in the U.S. House were on the initial sanctions list, which Russia released last month. The expanded “stop list” also includes U.S. Senator Joni Ernst, who welcomed the news.

Iowa’s senior Senator Chuck Grassley is absent from Russia’s updated list. His communications staff did not respond to Bleeding Heartland’s inquiry about the matter.

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Cindy Axne should withdraw her racist police bill

Jaylen Cavil and Alejandro Murguia-Ortiz co-authored this commentary. Cavil is a Democratic candidate in Iowa House district 36. Murguia-Ortiz is an independent candidate in Iowa Senate district 17.

Dog whistles have been a feature of U.S. politics for decades. President Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queens,” President Bill Clinton’s “law and order” campaign, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich calling Barack Obama a “food stamps president” are all examples of racist talking points. Politicians use coded language when trying to garner support by triggering racial anxiety. 

Today’s version of the “war on crime”—a reaction to nationwide calls to defund the police and fund communities instead—is no different from the racist wars on drugs and poverty that have led to the incarceration and deaths of millions.

With the introduction of the Invest to Protect Act, U.S. Representative Cindy Axne (D, IA-03) and U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley have joined forces to re-employ this dog whistle strategy.

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On an Australian travelogue and Iowa travesties

Herb Strentz contrasts charming Australia molehills with troubling American mountains.

While spending a month in Australia, I found some charming molehills. Sadly, though, the “molehills” did not provide needed diversion from the troubling mountains of discord and lies in Iowa public life.

Way back in 1989, in a PBS program, “The Truth About Lies,” Bill Moyers asked, “…can a nation die of too many lies?” A reprise of that program today might straightforwardly declare, “Our nation is dying of too many lies.”

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Mike Franken for Senate

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

American democracy is on the ballot. Electing people who support and will defend our democracy tops my priorities.  

I voted for Senator Chuck Grassley, multiple times. Unfortunately, Grassley no long supports democracy.  He condones Donald Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election, supports voter suppression, opposes the renewal of the Voting Rights Act (which he previously voted for), voted twice to acquit Trump, and opposed a bipartisan January 6 commission. When Grassley chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2016, he refused to give U.S. Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland a hearing.  

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Abby Finkenauer can build a winning coalition

Mary Jo Riesberg chairs the Lee County Democratic Party.

Abby Finkenauer is the Democrat who can defeat U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley. Many factors make her candidacy not only stronger than the other Senate candidates, but one that can offer a boost to those down ballot.

She will represent Iowans as we sit at our kitchen tables discussing the struggles we face in our day-to-day lives. She will be the senator we need to help Iowa and the United States adjust to the “new normal” after the COVID-19 pandemic and to prepare for the many changes needed for the future.

No matter how much people say they are ready to have Grassley out of office, it will still require a coalition of voters to defeat him.

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Choosing the Democrat who can beat Chuck Grassley

Richard Bender served on former Iowa U.S. Senator Tom Harkin’s staff and previously worked for the late former U.S. Sen. John Culver. His long career in public service included devising and implementing the Iowa caucus system used by Democrats since the 1970s.

I have been involved in more than 20 Iowa general elections, working for the Iowa Democratic Party for five years and for U.S. Representative and then Senator Tom Harkin for 37 years. I believe Mike Franken is the most logical choice for Democrats in the June 7 primary because he is best positioned to win and has the experience to be a quality senator.

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Environmental scorecard for the Iowans in Congress

Sheri Albrecht is a member of Indivisible Cedar Rapids Metro and on the executive committees of the Sierra Club’s Iowa Chapter and Cedar-Wapsie Group.

EcoFest 2022 was held on April 23 at the NewBo City Market in Cedar Rapids in celebration of Earth Day.

Our local Indivisible CR Metro group hosted a table. We had three goals: 1) Find out what issues were most important to the people who visited our table; 2) In keeping with the ecological theme of the event, provide data showing attendees how their legislative representatives voted on environmental issues; and 3) Encourage ordinary citizens to engage with their elected representatives.

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Capping costs no substitute for lowering drug prices

Sue Dinsdale is the director of Iowa Citizen Action Network and leads the Health Care For America and Lower Drug Prices NOW campaigns in Iowa.

U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley got it right when speaking about efforts to lower prescription costs. He acknowledged the “difficulty of passing something like this in a Republican Congress,” adding, “If we want to reduce drug prices, then we need to do it now.”

For years we’ve been hearing members of Congress promise to tackle rising drug prices without any action. Prescription drugs and the outrageous price of medicine has made reform a top issue that attracts bipartisan support. A recent national poll indicated that 91 percent of voters consider lowering drug prices a very important issue in the upcoming election, ranking it above COVID-19 worries. 

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Three Iowans among first to have sentences commuted by Biden

President Joe Biden issued three pardons on April 26 and announced commutations for 75 people convicted of nonviolent federal drug offenses.

In a written statement, Biden said he was using his clemency powers during “Second Chance Month” to pardon “three people who have demonstrated their commitment to rehabilitation and are striving every day to give back and contribute to their communities.”

I am also commuting the sentences of 75 people who are serving long sentences for non-violent drug offenses, many of whom have been serving on home confinement during the COVID-pandemic—and many of whom would have received a lower sentence if they were charged with the same offense today, thanks to the bipartisan First Step Act. 

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Iowa women deserve better representation

Doris J. Kelley is a former member of the Iowa House and former Iowa Board of Parole Chair, Vice-Chair and Executive Director.

As a state legislator from 2007 through 2010, I was honored to represent 30,000 Cedar Valley constituents. I represented Iowa’s 3 million citizens while in a leadership position with the Board of Parole from 2011 to 2014. To me, people always came before party.

It perplexed many of my fellow legislators when I supported my constituents’ values and went against the party line. Now, I’m perplexed by the actions of Iowa Republicans who are supposed to represent our wishes in Washington, D.C.

In 1972, then State Representative Chuck Grassley voted for Iowa to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). But as a U.S. senator, he’s not carried that banner forward.

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Why Iowa's senators voted against historic SCOTUS confirmation

The U.S. Senate made history on April 7 by confirming the first Black woman to the U.S. Supreme Court, with the country’s first Black vice president presiding. Three Republicans joined all 50 members of the Senate Democratic caucus to confirm Appeals Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, prompting loud applause in the chamber.

There was never any doubt that Iowa’s two Republicans would vote against this confirmation. However, Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst laid out their reasons for opposing Judge Brown Jackson only this week.

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Believe it or not, Donald Trump told the "truth"

Herb Strentz: Trump’s lies may be troubling, but the failure of our elected GOP leaders to speak up against them should be even more troubling.

The aphorism “If a man bites a dog, that’s news,” has been attributed to a few newspaper characters. One was John Bogart (1848-1921), city editor of the New York Sun, one of that city’s liveliest newspapers in the late 19th century.

That’s why some 100 years later, I named our Sheltie puppy “Bogie.” That was much easier than making something out of Alfred Harmsworth — a British newspaper guy also credited with the line.

“Man bites dog!” defined news as something out of the expected or quite contrary to our daily experiences. You know, like Donald Trump telling the “truth.”

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Violence Against Women Act reauthorized in big spending bill

President Joe Biden has signed into law a $1.5 trillion omnibus spending bill, which funds the federal government through September 30. The president’s action on March 15 ends a cycle of short-term continuing spending resolutions that kept the government operating on spending levels approved during Donald Trump’s administration.

The enormous package combines twelve appropriations bills covering portions of the federal government, as well as an additional $13.6 billion in aid to Ukraine and several unrelated pieces of legislation. One of those reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act through 2027, a task that had remained unfinished for years. Congress last reauthorized the 1994 legislation addressing violence against women in 2013, and that authorization expired in 2019.

Iowa’s Senator Joni Ernst was a key negotiator of the final deal on the Violence Against Women Act and celebrated its passage this week.

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Bob Krause withdraws from U.S. Senate race

And then there were three.

Bob Krause announced on March 13 that he is no longer seeking the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate, having been “blindsided by the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic had on nomination petition signature gathering” at this year’s Iowa caucuses.

Turnout is always low for non-presidential year caucuses, and many county Democratic committees switched to virtual caucuses due to high levels of COVID-19 hospitalizations and community transmission in early February. A statement released by Krause explained,

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Challengers react to Grassley's tweet showing Ukrainian president

U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley posted a screenshot of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy following a virtual meeting with numerous members of Congress on March 5.

Grassley shared the photo with his more than 670,000 Twitter followers at 11:44 am, commenting, “Joined a zoom mtg w President Zelenskyy. we don’t hv a minute to waste in helping Ukraine fight off Putin who is killing innocent ppl to benefit his own ego.”

U.S. Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota blasted Republican Senators Steve Daines and Marco Rubio, who posted similar screenshots of Zelenskyy while the meeting was ongoing. Phillips tweeted, “The Ukrainian Ambassador very intentionally asked each of us on the zoom to NOT share anything on social media during the meeting to protect the security of President Zelenskyy. Appalling and reckless ignorance by two US Senators.”

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Iowa reaction to Russia's invasion of Ukraine

Like many, I’ve been consumed this week by the horrifying news of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Although Vladimir Putin and his hostility to democracy occupied a lot of my head space in my “past life” covering Russian politics, I never imagined all those years ago that he would go so far as to annex Crimea, let alone launch a full-scale assault on Ukraine.

Foreign policy and military strategy are not my areas of expertise, so I have no insight on how Putin imagines he could benefit from this invasion. Even if he manages to install a puppet government in Kyiv, how will Russian forces maintain control of Ukraine, and how will the Russian economy weather the crushing sanctions? What’s his endgame?

I reported extensively on Putin’s rise to power in late 1999. Russian President Boris Yeltsin had appointed the virtually unknown security official as prime minister that August. But Putin didn’t become popular until a few months later, through a military campaign in the breakaway Republic of Chechnya. The Russian people broadly supported that war, in part due to slanted media coverage, and also because of apartment bombings (that may have been instigated by Russian security forces) and widespread racist attitudes toward Chechens.

Perhaps Putin hopes to replicate that formula for his political benefit. But I find it hard to believe that any significant share of the Russian population support all-out war against Ukraine. Who really believes that a country with a democratically-elected Jewish president needs to be “denazified” by force?

It’s been more than 30 years since I visited Ukraine’s beautiful capital city and the Black Sea resort town of Sochi. For that matter, I haven’t visited Russia in more than two decades. Even so, I’m heartbroken to see the avoidable loss of life on both sides. Please spare a thought for the citizens of Ukraine—whether they are Ukrainian- or Russian-speaking—because I don’t think anyone outside the Kremlin wants this war.

Most of Iowa’s leading politicians reacted to the invasion on February 24. I’ve compiled their comments after the jump.

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Iowa must do better than Chuck Grassley

Herb Strentz reviews Senator Chuck Grassley’s record as a leading member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

A one-time Democratic candidate to represent Iowa in the U.S. Senate was only half right when he expressed concern in 2014 that Senator Chuck Grassley might be a threat to our nation’s judiciary.

The comment is relevant today because Grassley still serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee, as the panel’s ranking Republican. He will set the tone for how Republicans respond to President Joe Biden’s nomination of the first Black woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.

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Governor's tax plan would harm rural Iowa, young farmers

Sondra Feldstein is a farmer and business owner in Polk County.

Governor Kim Reynolds wants to exempt all cash rent income for retired farmers from state income tax. This horrible idea would harm rural Iowa and make it even harder for young people to break into the profession of farming.

Iowa already has a problem with an aging population of farm operators. According to the USDA’s 2021 census of agriculture, the average age of farmers in Iowa is 57.1 years. Four times as many farmers are over the age of 65 than under the age of 35. In other words, we don’t have a new generation of farmers to replace the ones already retired.

Why would we want a tax policy that would worsen the problem?

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An open letter to Chuck Grassley about Donald Trump

Herb Strentz follows up on his previous post for Bleeding Heartland in the form of a letter to Senator Chuck Grassley.

Dear Senator Grassley:

Thank you for your reassurance that Iowans and the nation have nothing to worry about regarding former President Donald Trump’s activities and what seems like his death grip on the Republican Party. Some even say the GOP is now a “Trump Cult.”

Your letter/email of January 10 thanked me for writing to express concerns about Trump, but pointed out my concern isn’t too relevant because “President Trump has been out of office for about a year.”

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Voting rights: bipartisan no more

Jim Chrisinger: Today, as in 1965 and in every Voting Rights Act reauthorization vote, Republican senators have to choose.

For more than five decades, voting rights in America enjoyed strong, bipartisan support. Now Republicans have turned their backs.  

The Voting Rights Act originally passed in 1965, led by President Lyndon Johnson, who had built his political career as a get-along go-along ally of Southern segregationists.  

The final vote in the House was 328–74 (Democrats 217–54, Republicans 111–20). The Senate passed it 79–18 (Democrats 49–17, Republicans 30–1). Much of the opposition came from Southern Democrats.  

Bipartisan majorities in Congress reauthorized the act five times, most recently in 2006. The votes were not close. Even Senator Strom Thurmond, famous segregationist and 1948 Dixiecrat presidential candidate, came to support the Voting Rights Act.  

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The 21 most-viewed Bleeding Heartland posts of 2021

It’s time for another review of Bleeding Heartland’s most widely-read posts from the year that just ended. I always struggle a bit with this task, because the work I’m most proud of doesn’t always overlap with what resonated most with readers. Also, I’m wary of watching traffic numbers too closely, because I try not to let potential clicks drive my editorial decisions.

However, I always gain some insight from this review, so here goes.

This list draws from Google Analytics data about total views for 598 posts this website published during 2021: 362 written by me and 236 by other authors. I left out the site’s front page and the “about” page, where many people landed following online searches.

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"Get Big or Get Out": An American horror story

C.J. Petersen is a “dirt road Democrat” and rural organizer.

In the 1987 movie Wall Street, Gordon Gekko quipped that “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.” Since that time, the American family farm—defined by farm economist and researcher Alicia Harvie as a farmer “who makes the management decisions, provides the bulk of the labor on the farm, and looks to make all or most of their living from farming,” has been on the decline.

Corporate agriculture revenues have been on the rise, reaching record profits even amidst a once-in-a-century global pandemic. Lax enforcement of antitrust laws in the agricultural sector of the economy has harmed family farms and led to the corporate consolidation of the industry, resulting in increased costs and the hollowing out of rural communities.

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Grassley misled on state-operated veterans homes

An earlier version of this commentary appeared in The Prairie Progressive‘s fall 2021 issue.

In a media release earlier this year and a commentary published in some Iowa newspapers, Senator Chuck Grassley asserted, “it appears that the standard of care and quality controls at many state veterans homes falls well short of those required by other government supported nursing homes.” He was referencing the number of COVID-19 deaths and infections in veterans homes across the country.

How many is many? The senator’s letter to U.S. Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis R. McDonough cited a handful of media reports in footnotes. Although some of those articles cited statistics provided by the government, the numbers Grassley used are flawed.

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EMILY's List to play in Iowa; won't commit to positive Senate race

One of the leading Democratic-aligned political action committees endorsed three Iowa candidates this week. EMILY’s List, which backs pro-choice Democratic women seeking federal, state, or local offices, endorsed U.S. Senate candidate Abby Finkenauer on December 15 and U.S. House candidates Christina Bohannan and Liz Mathis in the new first and second Congressional districts on December 16.

The PAC endorsed U.S. Representative Cindy Axne for re-election in the third district in March.

This week’s announcements were no surprise, since EMILY’s List supported Axne and Finkenauer in their 2018 and 2020 U.S. House campaigns, and said in April that Senator Chuck Grassley was one of three Republicans the group planned to target in 2022 Senate races.

Backing from EMILY’s List helps candidates raise money through the organization’s large network of donors. Perhaps more important, it indicates the group is prepared to pay for advertising on behalf of endorsed candidates or against their opponents.

The big question is whether EMILY’s List will keep its messages positive before the June 2022 Senate primary, or also target Democratic rivals. I couldn’t get an answer from the group yesterday.

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Staff say Grassley unaware of PowerPoint on coup attempt

U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley was not among the Republican senators who were reportedly shown a PowerPoint presentation on January 4 that laid out options for subverting a peaceful transfer of power to President Joe Biden, the senator’s staff told Bleeding Heartland on December 13.

Mark Meadows, who served as chief of staff to former President Donald Trump, turned over the document to the U.S. House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Hugo Lowell reported for The Guardian on December 10,

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Iowa Republicans say little about voting to shut down government

The federal government will stay open until at least February 18, after the U.S. House and Senate passed a continuing funding resolution on December 2. Only one House Republican crossed party lines to support the resolution, which mostly maintains spending levels agreed during the Trump administration. Iowa’s Representatives Ashley Hinson (IA-01), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-02), and Randy Feenstra (IA-04) opposed the bill.

In the upper chamber, nineteen GOP senators joined Democrats to send the legislation to President Joe Biden. Notably, Iowa Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst voted against the bill, even though they had supported resolutions setting federal spending at these levels while Donald Trump was president.

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Grassley blocks bill on universal background checks

U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley on December 2 blocked Senate debate on a bill that would require background checks on all firearms sales. Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut requested unanimous consent to proceed with debating the bill, known as the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2021, following the latest horrific mass shooting at a school, which ended the lives of four Michigan high school students.

Everytown for Gun Safety explains that current federal law “requires a background check on a prospective gun buyer only when the seller is a licensed gun dealer, leaving all other sales—such as unlicensed gun sales negotiated over the internet—unregulated and with no background check required.” Under this proposal, “unlicensed sellers would meet their buyers at a licensed gun dealer, who would run a background check using exactly the same process already used for sales from their own inventory.”

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Maybe Chuck Grassley should do something stupid

Herb Strentz: Hatred and extremism are more visible in the current political climate. Yet those elements have been active in the U.S. for decades.

A few recent news items and internet links point to the same conclusion: the GOP (Grand Old Party) has become the COT (Cult Of Trump), which appears to be just fine with many Republican leaders.

Concern about Donald Trump as a business and political figure goes back decades. But the catalyst for this collage is twofold and recent.

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What the bipartisan infrastructure bill will spend in Iowa

The state of Iowa will receive approximately $5 billion from the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill headed to President Joe Biden’s desk, according to calculations published by U.S. Representative Cindy Axne (IA-03). Axne, the lone Democrat in Iowa’s Congressional delegation, was among the 215 Democrats and thirteen Republicans who approved the bill late in the evening on November 5. (Procedural matters earlier in the day led to the two longest votes in U.S. House history.)

Iowa’s three Republicans in the chamber—Representatives Ashley Hinson (IA-01), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-02), and Randy Feenstra (IA-04)—opposed the infrastructure legislation.

When the Senate approved the same bill in August, Iowa’s Republicans landed on opposite sides, with Senator Chuck Grassley supporting the infrastructure package and Senator Joni Ernst voting against it.

HOW FUNDS WILL BE SPENT IN IOWA

The bill involves about $550 billion in spending not previously approved by Congress. Axne’s news release estimated Iowa’s share of several large pieces. Our state stands to receive:

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Remembering Neal Smith

I was so sorry to hear that former U.S. Representative Neal Smith passed away on November 2 at the age of 101. Iowa’s longest-serving member of the U.S. House represented Polk County in Congress for 36 years, rising to the third-ranking position on the powerful Appropriations Committee. He had tremendous knowledge and wisdom. Having grown up poor during the Great Depression, he sought to use government to improve people’s lives.

I didn’t know Smith well but I always enjoyed seeing him at Democratic events, most recently at a Polk County or Third District event in 2018. The last time we spoke on the phone was in the summer of 2019, when I was working on a piece about the first passage of the Hyde amendment. At the age of 99, Smith recalled details about that 1976 House floor vote clearly.

Of all the events canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the one I was saddest about was the planned celebration of Smith’s 100th birthday at Drake University in March 2020.

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You cannot make this up

Senator Chuck Grassley struck an indignant tone a few hours after he and all of his fellow Republicans filibustered a bill that would have forced states to meet federal standards for absentee and early voting, and would have required more political groups to disclose their donors.

In his trademark Twitter style (lacking punctuation and some vowels), Grassley told his 660,000 followers that Democrats should drop their “massive partisan election takeover bill based on lies abt widespread voter suppression.” Anyone with proof of illegal discrimination in voting should take it to court, he said. “Don’t talk down our democratic process Best in world.”

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IA-Sen: A big quarter for Abby Finkenauer

The latest Federal Election Commission filings from Iowa’s U.S. Senate candidates included one big surprise. Former U.S. Representative Abby Finkenauer raised more money than seven-term Senator Chuck Grassley during the third quarter of the year.

Follow me after the jump for highlights on fundraising and spending by all the Senate candidates.

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