Ed Tibbetts, a longtime reporter and editor in the Quad-Cities, is the publisher of the Along the Mississippi newsletter, where this article first appeared. Find more of his work at edtibbetts.substack.com.
Governor Kim Reynolds and Attorney General Brenna Bird have chosen their next target.
Fresh off an embarrassing defeat to Winneshiek County Sheriff Dan Marx, the state’s chief enforcers of Iowa RightThink have decided to take on someone they undoubtedly believe is more vulnerable.
The governor has filed a complaint concerning a University of Iowa employee who had the misfortune of being captured on hidden camera disparaging the anti-Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Gospel of the Republican Party.
In a secretly recorded video that Fox News aired this week, an employee who has been identified in news reports as Andrea Tinoco, assistant director of Leadership and Student Organization Development, said that despite being ordered to remove “DEI” from their websites, “we are essentially finding ways to operate around it. … “We were like, ‘oh, OK, we can’t use that word. OK, ‘civic engagement.’ I think that’s a lot of what we’re doing.”
Civic engagement? The horrors!
In another part of the heavily edited video, Tinoco says: “We are still doing DEI work. We’re still working with our students. I have yet to be told, like, ‘Drea, you can’t say DEI,’ and I’m still gonna say it.”
Reynolds—who once said a that jury’s verdict convicting Donald Trump of 34 felonies didn’t matter—was instantly triggered by the video. She’s already pronounced Tinoco guilty of defying the state law banning Diversity, Equity and Inclusion offices and activities. This, before the investigation was completed; perhaps even before it had even begun.
But it’s not at all clear that Tinoco has violated anything. The vaguely written law, which Republicans enacted in 2024, prohibits establishing offices or engaging in activities that give “special benefits” or encourage “preferential treatment” based on characteristics like race, religion, ethnicity, gender identity or sexual orientation.
Just because the adherents of Iowa RightThink get wiggy at the mere mention of “DEI,” and some university employees continue to believe in the idea behind it—equal opportunity—this doesn’t mean they are breaking the law.
Disparaging a concept, or attempts to banish it, are not illegal, either.
Nor are attempts to maneuver within the law’s meaning. Politicians do this all the time.
We’ve seen this movie before.
In February, Sheriff Marx violated Iowa RightThink by having the nerve to say he would uphold the Constitution, even if it meant refusing to pledge unquestioning loyalty to the federal government’s immigration practices.
These words also triggered the governor, who complained to Bird. The attorney general then tried to bring Marx to heel for what he wrote, going to court claiming he had broken state law. But Marx, a popular Republican sheriff in a Republican leaning county, chose to fight. He won.
This no doubt embarrassed Reynolds and Bird. So now they’ve chosen someone who might not have the resources or the level of public support of the elected sheriff who humiliated them. A person who they now seek to intimidate, either themselves or by leveraging the Board of Regents or the university to do it for them.
I don’t know Andrea Tinoco, but I hope she’s got access to good legal help. Because the weight of Iowa’s government is being brought to bear against her.
If she doesn’t, I hope Iowans who believe in free speech will step up.
I also hope the University of Iowa doesn’t knuckle under. We’ve already seen larger universities, with hefty financial resources, cave under the pressure of Trumpian intimidation, surrendering their free-speech values in the process. It would be a shame to see the University of Iowa join this crowd.
Here’s the bottom line: Iowans, including public employees, ought to be able to express an opinion, even if it runs against the prevailing winds of Iowa’s ruling party; even if it is expressing how you have tried to find ways, in the face of a pernicious law, to do “what we know we have to do for students.”
If this breaks the law, then Bird should have to prove it. If not, then she and the governor ought to leave people alone to say what they want in our free society.
Iowa Republicans have been on a jihad for years to try to establish RightThink in this state—by muzzling public school teachers, banning library books, seeking to impose loyalty oaths on law enforcement, and so on.
If they can’t do it by law, then they’ll try to do it by intimidation. They failed with Dan Marx, so now they’ve chosen a new target. But the truth is they’re not just trying to persecute a state employee. We are all the targets of Iowa RightThink.
Top photo is cropped from an image first published on Bird’s political Facebook page on January 5, 2023.