Two of Iowa’s four U.S. House districts are among the 31 top targets for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee next cycle.

On April 3, Sahil Kapur of NBC News was first to publish the Democratic target list. It includes Iowa’s first and third districts, now represented by Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Zach Nunn.

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee executive director Julie Merz told NBC that Democrats will present their candidates “as ‘team normal’ against a chaotic band of “MAGA extremists” they say have taken over the House Republican conference.”

“[I]t is time for the House to end the mask mandate for fully vaccinated members and bring an end [to] proxy voting,” U.S. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks tweeted in May 2021.

“Now that we are lifting the requirement for fully vaccinated individuals to wear masks, we should bring an end to proxy voting and return in-person work!” the Republican representing Iowa’s second district tweeted in June 2021.

“It’s time for the House to follow the science, lift the mask mandate in chamber, end proxy voting, and return to normal,” Miller-Meeks tweeted in February 2022.

Yet over the past two years Miller-Meeks signed five letters designating Republican colleagues to cast votes on her behalf. Most recently, she used a proxy for the final House floor votes of the year, recorded late last week.

The omnibus budget bill Congress just approved will fund dozens of infrastructure projects or services in Iowa during the current fiscal year, which ends on September 30, 2023.

But none of those earmarks (totaling tens of millions of dollars) will benefit communities or facilities in the fourth Congressional district. That’s because for the second year in a row, U.S. Representative Randy Feenstra declined to ask for specific projects to be included in the federal budget.

U.S. Representative Ashley Hinson is at it again.

In January 2022, the Republican made news in Iowa and nationally when she took credit for “game-changing” projects in her district, despite having voted against the infrastructure bill that made them possible.

Hinson is closing out the year by bashing the “wasteful spending” in an omnibus budget bill, while boasting about her success in “securing investments for Iowa” through the same legislation.

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.

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).