It was always obvious Gov. Kim Reynolds would endorse Donald Trump for president once Ron DeSantis’s floundering 2024 campaign collapsed. DeSantis gave up his bid for the Republican presidential nomination and endorsed Trump six days after his distant second-place finish in the Iowa Republican Caucus on Jan. 15. On Wednesday, Gov. Reynolds did the obvious, […]
Gov. Kim Reynolds
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Poll shows opposition to Gov. Reynolds’ proposal to change transgender Iowans’ birth certificates
A plurality of Iowans oppose Gov. Kim Reynolds’ effort to change how the state issues birth certificates in order to identify transgender people, according to a new Iowa Poll. In the survey of 804 adults conducted by Selzer & Co. for the Des Moines Register and Mediacom, 49 percent opposed the proposed change, while 44 […]
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House Republicans pass bill to eliminate regular health and safety inspections of hotels and motels in Iowa
A decade ago, the Iowa Department of Inspections, Appeals and Licensing (DIAL) stopped following the requirement in state law that it inspect all hotels and motels in the state at least once every two years. The department didn’t inform the public or lawmakers that it stopped routine inspections in 2014. That fact didn’t come to […]
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‘Suspicious fire’ damages Iowa’s largest sycamore; Gov. Reynolds’ opposition to CAFO rules threatens waterways
Iowa’s largest sycamore tree, which is located in a state park near Burlington, was severely damaged by a “suspicious fire,” the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) said in a news release on Thursday. It’s not known if the tree, estimated to be about 350 years old, will survive. According to the DNR, a visitor […]
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Iowa House approves bill to prevent tracking of suspicious gun purchases on party-line vote
A bill to stop credit card companies from taking steps to help law enforcement agencies identify suspicious purchases of firearms and ammunition was passed by the Iowa House of Representatives on Tuesday. HF 2464 was approved on a party-line vote with House Democrats voting against it. The bill prohibits credit card companies from using transaction […]
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Hundreds declare ‘we will not go silently’ as supporters of Gov. Reynolds’ HF 2389 complain trans people ‘need to go’; bill advances
It’s funnel week at the Iowa Capitol, so by Friday a bill needs to be approved by a committee in either the House or Senate to be considered for passage this legislative session. It’s supposedly a fixed deadline, but it’s really just an observed custom, because there are existing exceptions for certain bills — such […]
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‘Shouldn’t we be working on something more important in education?’: Republicans in House ed committee fast-track Gov. Reynolds’ bill targeting trans Iowans’ ID
Just a few days after Gov. Kim Reynolds introduced a sweeping bill targeting transgender and nonbinary Iowans, that bill is now eligible for a floor vote in the Iowa House. HSB 649, which the governor filed last Thursday, was approved by the House Education Committee on Tuesday on a party-line vote. All of the committee’s […]
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One day after bill undermining transgender rights is defeated, Gov. Reynolds introduces new bill targeting IDs for trans and nonbinary Iowans
One day after a bill that would have stripped legal protections for transgender people out of the Iowa Civil Rights Act was rejected in the Iowa House, Gov. Kim Reynolds introduced a new bill targeting transgender Iowans. Reynolds’ submitted HSB 649 to lawmakers a few hours after Iowa Capitol Dispatch reported on the existence of […]
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Bill to remove protection against gender identity discrimination from Iowa Civil Rights Act gets a scheduled hearing
Since taking control of both chambers of the Iowa Legislature in 2017, Republicans have repeatedly passed discriminatory legislation targeting transgender Iowans with the full support of Gov. Kim Reynolds, who has signed those bills and other anti-LGBTQ legislation into law. But even when pushing through those bills almost exclusively on party-line votes, Republicans still understood […]
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Iowa House Republicans advance a bill to cut qualifications for running a program giving anti-abortion centers millions in funds
In 2022, Republicans in the Iowa Legislature pushed through a bill creating the More Options for Maternal Support (MOMS) program, which would use tax dollars to fund privately run anti-abortion centers — which call themselves “pregnancy resource centers” — across the state. Gov. Kim Reynolds touted the program as an important part of her anti-abortion […]
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Report: Gov. Reynolds has been tweeting about Trump and DeSantis on a semi-secret social media account
There’s no shortage of tweets from semi-anonymous accounts about the Iowa Caucus on the platform Elon Musk has renamed X, and until this week, none of them seemed significant. But on Thursday, the New York Times reported that one of those accounts belongs to Gov. Kim Reynolds. For the past year, Reynolds has tweeted about […]
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Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds proposes special education changes, income tax cuts in Condition of the State speech
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said Tuesday she plans to continue work this year on cutting taxes and consolidating and reorganizing Iowa’s state government systems with a focus on special education, boards and commissions and mental health care providers. The governor gave her Condition of the State address in the Iowa House Tuesday evening as winter […]
