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 […]
Gov. Kim Reynolds
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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 […]
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Along with banning books and targeting LGBTQ students, SF 496 also cut requirement for schools to provide information on HIV/AIDS and HPV
It’s World AIDS Day. Since 1988, the first day of December has been recognized as a day on which to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS and remember those who died because of the disease. Around the same time World AIDS Day was first commemorated, Iowa began requiring public schools to provide age-appropriate information about HIV/AIDS to […]
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‘I am not shameful’: Iowa Safe Schools, seven students sue the state over anti-LGBTQ law SF 496
On Tuesday, the ACLU of Iowa and Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, a nationwide civil rights organization dedicated to defending and advocating for LGBTQ people, filed a lawsuit in federal court in Des Moines challenging SF 496, the education bill signed into law by Gov. Kim Reynolds in May. “This is a federal civil […]
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Marginalization and book bans protect abusers, warns Iowa writer Lyz Lenz: ‘Silence always benefits power’
Growing up in a conservative evangelical family, Lyz Lenz internalized Old Testament proverbs, like, “It is better to live in a corner of the housetop than in a house shared with a quarrelsome wife.” She was conditioned to believe that anger was a bad emotion, especially if you were a girl or a woman. As […]
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Iowa Board of Medicine will consider rules for six-week abortion ban, even as injunction remains in effect
Last week, Attorney General Brenna Bird finally filed the Reynolds administration’s appeal to the Iowa Supreme Court, seeking to have the temporary injunction stopping enforcement of a new law banning almost all abortion after six weeks lifted. The Nov. 8 court filing comes four months after Gov. Kim Reynolds issued a statement saying she would […]
