Reporters’ Roundtable

Kay Henderson

There's never really a break from politics, even during the holidays. As you enjoy Thanksgiving leftovers, we will feast on a discussion of political news and happenings with our panel of reporters on this edition of Iowa Press.

 

 

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For decades, Iowa Press has brought you political leaders and newsmakers from across Iowa and beyond. Celebrating more than 50 years on statewide Iowa PBS, this is the Friday, November 29th edition of Iowa Press. Here is Kay Henderson.

 

 

Kay Henderson

At Mar-A-Lago in Florida, president elect Trump is assembling a team for his next administration. At the State House in Des Moines, leaders in the Iowa House and Senate are assembling leaders for committees for the legislative session that will begin on January 13th. We have assembled a group of reporters who cover these issues and more for this edition of Iowa Press. And because of the holiday we are taping on Tuesday to accommodate everyone's schedule so they can be with their family on Thursday. Our guests today are Katarina Sostaric. She is the state government reporter for Iowa Public Radio. Stephen Gruber-Miller is the statehouse and politics reporter for the Des Moines Register. Amanda Rooker is chief political reporter for KCCI TV in Des Moines. And Erin Murphy is the Des Moines bureau chief for The Gazette in Cedar Rapids. Thanks to all of you for being here today. Let's begin with something that happened on Tuesday. Governor Kim Reynolds pardoned a couple of turkeys named Caitlin and Clark. But let's set that aside. She discussed a vacancy in state government. Erin, what was it?

 

 

Erin Murphy

Yeah, we have been without a lieutenant governor for a couple months now here in Iowa. Maybe not the most critical thing in the world. The state seems to be running okay. But it is the next in line if something were to happen to the governor. So it is noteworthy. And she told us again on Tuesday that she is very close to making that announcement. That she's effectively done with the interview process and that she expects an announcement very soon. So we'll find out who that is. And that's interesting, not just because of who will be second in command, but also for the 2026 election and who her lieutenant is at that time.

 

 

Kay Henderson

And, Stephen, if something were to happen, there is a person who is on standby.

 

 

Stephen Gruber-Miller

Yeah, that's right. The Iowa Constitution designates that the president of the Iowa Senate and that Senator, Amy Sinclair, as the the next in line, in the case of there not being a lieutenant governor like there is currently. So.

 

 

Kay Henderson

The other thing she was asked about cell phone usage in schools. Who wants to take a whack at that one? Erin?

 

 

Erin Murphy

Well, I can start. It's been an interesting couple of days since the governor first mentioned this in an interview, that she's going to propose some sort of legislation. We haven't gotten a lot of details yet, but regarding cell phones not being allowed to be on students’ desks, you know, in their possession while they're learning in the classroom. Again, the details remain to be seen, but it's been interesting to hear the reaction to that. And a lot of people of both political stripes supportive, generally speaking, of this idea. There’s some pushback about concerns in an emergency situation. Would a student be able to get to their phone? But, one of the more interesting proposals we’ll be watching for when the governor delivers her Condition of the State address.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Erin, at Radio Iowa, we've done stories from Ottumwa to northwest Iowa of schools that have already made this decision and have done it sort of in degrees. Some of them can't have it in the classroom, but they can have it in their locker. The governor, when she talked about this, is really not giving any good clues about what she wants the legislature to do, specifically. Correct?

 

 

Stephen Gruber-Miller

When she spoke to reporters this morning, what she told us is she wants it to be more of a floor. She said she wants to respect what those different school districts are doing. Knowing that they've been listening to parents and families in their districts and kind of developing policies that go sort of different lengths towards this. So I think that whatever she does, she said she doesn’t, she wants to complement and enhance what they're doing and not sort of usurp it.

 

 

Kay Henderson

And the one thing that occurs to me is they've been debating cell phone use in the legislature for a while, but it's about using it when you're driving, which they have never been able to agree on for over a decade. So that's kind of interesting. Let's move on. Katarina, tell us about sun box versus food boxes.

 

 

Katarina Sostaric

Right. So Iowa has been one of just about a dozen states that has rejected the federal program that's more commonly known as summer EBT. Gives some money on an EBT card, some food assistance for families over the summer who have kids. And, you know, are low income and potentially food insecure. So the governor has rejected this and proposed sending monthly boxes of food during the summer instead. The USDA has rejected her plan, saying it's too far, kind of outside the bounds of what summer EBT is for them to even be able to approve using that money for these food boxes. And the governor is now saying that she is going to reapply for that once the Trump administration is in place. She said that she's very optimistic that the Trump administration would approve it, and that she thinks they'll look at things a lot differently than the Biden administration looked at things. And she even said more broadly she has a list of roadblocks, as she called them, that she feels she has faced with the Biden administration, and she wants to take those to to the new Trump administration and see what can be done about those.

 

 

Kay Henderson

How does this connect to also the discussion about giving block grants to states? And letting states decide how to use federal money?

 

 

Erin Murphy

Yeah. And Governor Reynolds talked about that with us Tuesday morning as well. And it basically boils down to states wanting more flexibility with how federal dollars are spent right now in a lot of these programs. And this is one example, the federal dollars that come to the states to use towards these things have certain requirements that the states have to meet to be able to have and use those dollars. A block grant is much more forgiving. It’s basically a chunk of money to the state that the states can use as they see fit. And so you hear from governors often, especially when their party and the white House party are different, calling for block grants.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Let's move on to stuff that's happening at Mar-A-Lago in Florida. If people are living online, they may have seen a picture of Senator Joni Ernst eating lunch with President-Elect Trump, Elon Musk, who is the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, apparently, And then, the Trump transition team leader. Amanda, what's going on?

 

 

Amanda Rooker

Yeah. So this is part of a new, initiative from the Trump administration to make government more efficient, as you mentioned, the Department of Government Efficiency. Iowa Senator Joni Ernst has been tapped to lead the Senate caucus of Government Efficiency. Part of that meeting was her delivering a letter to Elon Musk, who will co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency with Vivek Ramaswamy. Ernst delivered a letter saying that she has identified about $1 trillion in federal spending that can be cut from the federal government. She points to different things like federal dollars being spent on some infrastructure programs, a California high speed rail program she believes money can be reallocated from that. She also pointed to consolidating some government office space, even changing how we make the US penny. So she has a lot of ideas. You may remember from her ads when she was running back in the day that she was going to make them squeal. She on Fox News on Sunday...

 

 

Erin Murphy

Do you remember that Kay?

 

 

Amanda Rooker

She wants to make, make the…what did she say? She wants to make the federal establishment squeal. Yeah. So she's bringing that back.

 

 

Kay Henderson

How is this connected to her race for reelection? Anybody?

 

 

Stephen Gruber-Miller

I mean, this was one of her signature issues when she first ran for the Senate. And so, and she's been looking at these spending policies by the government for a long time and calling them out. What she calls wasteful spending. So I think she sees an opportunity to basically take that brand to the next level with this new department.

 

 

Amanda Rooker

And I'll just say she's often been, you know, in the hallways or on the Senate floor talking about how federal workers continue to work remotely after the pandemic. And she had said that that was kind of a wasteful use of government spending. So she had been kind of a vocal advocate for this issue. Whether or not that relates to still being in the spotlight.

 

 

Katarina Sostaric

She may also be wanting to get a little closer to president elect Donald Trump ahead of her reelection efforts, since clearly he has a lot of support in Iowa. And I'll just mention, Governor Reynolds touched on this DOGE issue. She said she's pretty excited about this DOGE caucus to cut government waste, as she calls it. And she said, quote, “I did DOGE before DOGE was popular,” referring to her government reorganization efforts over the past couple of years.

 

 

Kay Henderson

The other thing that occurs to me is that, Chuck Grassley made a name for himself when he became a U.S. Senator because he went after Pentagon spending. And it will be sort of fascinating to watch if Joni Ernst, the first elected female combat veteran, goes after the Pentagon, Department of Defense spending as well. Just for the benefit of viewers who don't live in this space like the rest of us at this table do, Matt Whitaker, who was on the Iowa ballot twice. He was the Republican nominee for state treasurer. He was also a candidate for the US Senate. He ran in that primary that Joni Ernst won in 2014. He was the acting attorney general during Trump's first administration for three months. He campaigned all over the country for President Trump, and he has been nominated to be the ambassador to NATO, which is an interesting assignment given what we're seeing unfold right now between Russia and Ukraine. The other thing that's happened is on Tuesday morning, I had an opportunity, as a radio reporter, to speak with Senator Grassley. And I asked him about these tariffs that President-Elect Trump has proposed that would impose a 25% tariff on all goods coming from Canada and Mexico into the US, and adding on to the already existing tariff on Chinese goods that are coming into the country. Senator Grassley said tariffs are tricky. But he said he wasn't going to badmouth them. He said this is perhaps a negotiating tool. Anybody else think that, you know, this may never come to pass?

 

 

Erin Murphy

It was interesting. We also asked Governor Reynolds about this topic on Tuesday morning, and she very much supported the idea, or at least the notion, the use of them, at the very least as a as a threat or a negotiating tactic. She talked when we asked her about the potential impacts of the tariffs. She spoke exclusively about immigration and border crossings and the need for Mexico to help stop those people from coming across the border illegally and said I support, I trust President Donald Trump on this. So she had nary a critical word about that proposal, at least as we sit here. If it actually goes into effect, if he follows through on that threat in January, we'll see then.

 

 

Kay Henderson

At this very table, during a debate between first District Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Democratic challenger Christina Bohannan, they were asked about tariffs and Miller-Meeks expressed some reluctance about tariffs. And of course, this was, you know, a month and a half before what Trump has said this particular week. And who can speak to what happened during the first Trump administration when they paid something like more than $23 billion to farmers? And these, tariff replacement payments or whatever they called them from the USDA. And Trump talked about that a lot during the campaign.

 

 

Stephen Gruber-Miller

Yeah, this was I mean, as far as I can remember, one of the bigger sticking points between Iowa's Republican delegation and the Trump administration during his first term in office. The impact that these tariffs had on farmers. And, like you said, to mitigate that impact, he paid billions of dollars to farmers around the country. A good chunk of that coming to farmers in Iowa. I don't know if that will be part of the plan this time or not. Or if those concerns remain.

 

 

Kay Henderson

How does one do that in an era when you have the Doge, right?

 

 

Stephen Gruber-Miller

That's true. Right. The focus is all on spending cuts at the moment.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Well, speaking of stuff that happens at this particular table last week, if you were watching, the guest was Congresswoman Ashley Hinson, just reelected to a third term. You were sitting in that chair, as I recall.

 

 

Erin Murphy

I believe this very chair.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Oh, there you go. Anyway, there was a discussion about the President-Elect Trump's plan to on day one in the office to declare a national emergency and start deportation proceedings. And she was talking about that during the program.

 

 

Erin Murphy

Yeah. And we asked her we recited the statistics that say there's a little more than 50 to 53,000 undocumented immigrants in Iowa. And should we expect them all to be deported in the next 2 to 4 years. And what Congresswoman Hinson said is it's her hope - and I thought that was an important word to emphasize - that the administration would focus first on and on those people who are here illegally and have had run ins with the law. And we have heard president elect Trump speak in those terms, generically speaking. But, just as the start of his plan, that's not the end of his plan. So Congresswoman Hinson said that is her hope that that's where he that's where the focus is early on. So we'll see if that turns out to be the case starting January 20th.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Folks, we have about ten minutes left for our discussion. Let's focus on the statehouse and Des Moines. Stephen, there have been leadership elections among House Republicans, Senate Republicans, House Democrats and Senate Democrats. Bring us up to speed.

 

 

Stephen Gruber-Miller

Yeah, I'll just run you through them one by one. Right. Mostly, not much has changed. So we'll start with the Republicans, who now have supermajorities in both the House and the Senate. They already had the Senate super majority. The House one is new. Speaker Pat Grassley has been reelected. This will be oh, gosh, he started as speaker maybe in 2019. So he's been in there for several years now. And in the Senate, they've reelected Jack Whitver a senator from Ankeny, as majority leader. So that's the same team that has basically been working with Reynolds as the Republican trifecta has passed really a lot of sweeping policy changes for the past few years.

 

 

Erin Murphy

And if I could jump in really quick. Sorry, Stephen, on that. Speaking of Senator Whitver, we can report that his, folks who have followed this story may know that he was diagnosed with a brain tumor earlier this year. And we can report from Senate Republicans that treatments have been going well. And that's why he was reelected and plans to be back at work at the Capitol.

 

 

Stephen Gruber-Miller

Yeah, that's what I was going to say. His colleagues felt good enough about his health, and he feels good enough about his health fortunately that he's able to continue in that role. With the Democrats. Although they lost some seats in the House, House Democrats have still elected Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst to lead them again in the coming session. She's done that since 2021. And then the Senate is where we have a new face for Democrats. Senator Janice Weiner is the new minority leader in that chamber. She replaces Senator Pam Jochum of Dubuque, who is retired. Senator Weiner's from Iowa City. She's serving her first term in the Senate.

 

 

Kay Henderson

But Katrina, this is not it seems like there's kind of a game of rotating chairs in the Senate Democratic Caucus.

 

 

Katarina Sostaric

Yeah. I mean, this is their third leader in less than two years. Senator Jochum took on the top job there, just last June last year. And before that, Senator Zach Wahls was the leader, and he had been ousted by his colleagues apparently because they didn't agree with some decisions he had been making about staffing in their office. And so Senator Jochum stepped in. She's retiring, and now it's Senator Weiner. And yeah, it's definitely been quite a much more shakeup in that caucus than in the other groups in the Iowa legislature.

 

 

Kay Henderson

And there will be just 15 Senate Democrats when the legislature convenes in January. What does the selection of a Democrat from Iowa City, a stronghold for Democrats, mean, signal, if anything?

 

 

Erin Murphy

Well, for one, I mean, you start with, like you said, there's only 15 of them to start with. So you only have so many choices, the lowest since Stephen, you've done some reporting on this. Is it like the early 70s?

 

 

Stephen Gruber-Miller

Early 1970s.

 

 

Erin Murphy

Yeah. Yeah. So lowest number of Democrats since the early 1970s. And should they be from Iowa City, which is the most liberal spot in the state, should they be from another spot that that's maybe a little more politically mixed? They don't have anybody from those spots in the Senate. They're all from the the state's metro centers.

 

 

Stephen Gruber-Miller

Basically Des Moines, Iowa City or Cedar Rapids.

 

 

Amanda Rooker

It's interesting too when you look at like some of the closest races that were in the state came down to, you know, Senator Sarah Trone Garriott, who, you know, won reelection by just 29 votes in a suburb, you know, Dallas County area. And then you saw Nate Bolton in the Des Moines area. You know, Republican Mike Pike unseated him. And that goes to show, you know, the Republicans are gaining ground in that metro area that may be also contributing to, you know, Democrats shrinking seats.

 

 

Stephen Gruber-Miller

And the Democrats have been in the minority in the Senate since 2016. But with redistricting, especially in 2021, it's really kind of difficult to see a path back to 26 seats for them. Right? They would have to pick up 11 seats that they currently don't hold. And it's really hard to look around the state and see where those are.

 

 

Kay Henderson

And that's because of the way the districts are drawn.

 

 

Stephen Gruber-Miller

Yeah. That's right. So you know, Iowa redistricting law has a system. It's not based on partisan affiliation, but it is based on, you know, you have to keep counties together if you can. You keep cities together. And so sometimes the way that those populations just work out, you have a lot of Democrats perhaps living in just a few districts.

 

 

Erin Murphy

And Nate Bolton's race was an example of that. And that's not to take anything away from Mike Pike, but Nate Bolton had been serving in a district that was a pretty safe Democratic district. It was almost entirely within the city of Des Moines. The redistricting changed the makeup of that. Added a little bit more outside of Des Moines there in Polk County, into Altoona. And so the district changed slightly different electorate. Good year for Republicans, Republicans flipped that seat.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Amanda, at the very beginning of this program, I promised a discussion about assembling leadership teams in the House and Senate. One of the things that happened this past couple of weeks was House speaker Pat Grassley announced the chairs and vice chairs for House committees and this week, Senate Majority Leader Jack Whitver announced the chairs for Senate committees. There's a new committee in the House. Tell us.

 

 

Amanda Rooker

There is the higher Education Committee. So we have seen so much sweeping and, you know, change in education over the past few legislative sessions. This is the first time that the House will have a higher education committee. Speaker Pat Grassley said, you know, that it was long overdue for there to be a comprehensive review of the state's public colleges and universities. Representative Collins will be the chair of that committee. He said, you know, the goal is to really refocus, you know, that there's a workforce shortage in Iowa, that they need to be making sure that taxpayer dollars that go to these institutions are being used to promote education, that there should be less focus on some of the ideological agendas. You may remember this representative, Representative Collins, was one of the leaders of shutting diversity, equity and inclusion offices on Iowa's public colleges. This is higher education has been in his wheelhouse. And refocusing it away from diversity, equity and inclusion has been his passion for a little bit.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Stephen, one of the things Representative Taylor Collins told me was that this review will also include the community colleges, and Iowa’s private colleges and universities. That's pretty broad.

 

 

Stephen Gruber-Miller

It is broad. I think that there's interest in the House Republican caucus to go beyond what they've traditionally done with state universities. Now, what tools they have at their disposal to do that might be a question. But there are funding mechanisms, like the Iowa tuition grant that private colleges can receive that might allow the state to attach certain strings to funding.

 

 

Kay Henderson

There's been a lot of debate in the Iowa House about the carbon pipeline. Do we see anything in the makeup of what's happening in the Iowa Senate in terms of leadership of committees that would look to have a better route to making a bill become law? Regarding the pipelines, anybody?

 

 

Erin Murphy

It didn't.

 

 

Katarina Sostaric

I don't think so.

 

 

Erin Murphy

Yeah. Yeah. It didn't look like it to me. Sorry Katarina, go ahead.

 

 

Katarina Sostaric

No, I didn't see anything that would indicate that that would be the case. Because, you mentioned this. I'm guessing because Senator Whalen Brown was at the head of a committee, and he that would have been in charge of that type of legislation, and he blocked it. And he has resigned from the Senate. So.

 

 

Kay Henderson

And then you have Senator Jason Schultz, who has now been assigned to be the leader of the Senate Judiciary Committee, because a long time of the Judiciary Committee, Brad Zaun a Republican from Johnston lost his reelection.

 

 

Kay Henderson

We have a couple minutes left. Katarina. There have been recounts. We've mentioned a couple in legislative races. The big one that national people are watching is this recount, of Iowa's first congressional district.

 

 

Katarina Sostaric

Right. And speaking again on Tuesday, early afternoon, that recount is still not finished. It’s still ongoing. You know, there's a lot of people saying it's extremely unlikely that it will flip the result in Iowa's first congressional district between, Mariannette Miller-Meeks. The unofficial results showed her winning by 800 votes against Christina Bohannan. So that's ongoing for now. And, it's supposed to be done by next Monday, which is when the state certifies the election results.

 

 

Kay Henderson

And for people who don't know, there's a certification process. Stephen.

 

 

Stephen Gruber-Miller

Yeah. December 2nd. Like Katarina said, the state board of canvassers will meet, to certify Iowa's results. So, it has to be done, like, by then.

 

 

Kay Henderson

So, I'm wondering if anybody at this table will make a prediction about taxes. Governor Reynolds recently received the Tax Foundation's Distinguished Service award. She's the first sitting governor in decades of experience to win that national group's award. What sort of taxes will she decide to cut this year? Anybody?

 

 

Stephen Gruber-Miller

Well, just about every year that the Republicans have had the trifecta over the last five, six, seven years, they've cut some form of taxes. And what I've heard on the campaign trail from a lot of Republican legislators is that next year is a property tax year. So whatever they're able to cobble together a majority coalition, they get, regarding property taxes, that is, I think, where the action will be.

 

 

Kay Henderson

And I think you all agree to that. And you must agree with me because I'm in charge of the time, and I have to tell you that we are out of it for this episode of Iowa Press. Thanks to all of you for being here and sharing your reporting with our viewers. We wish all of you a Happy Thanksgiving holiday, and if you have any want or need to watch an episode of Iowa Press, you may do so at Iowa PBS.org. For everyone here at Iowa PBS, thanks for watching today.

 

 

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