“We should all be thankful for the careful attention that this jury paid to the evidence and the law, and their time and commitment over these past several weeks,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said during a news conference on Thursday after former president Donald Trump was convicted on “34 counts of falsifying business records […]
Sen. Chuck Grassley
Posted inCommunity/News
‘Baloney,’ ‘a political lynching’ and ‘an egregious act’: Ernst, Grassley and Reynolds join Bird in denouncing Trump’s trial
As Donald Trump sat through his fourth week in a Manhattan courtroom, listening to prosecutors present evidence he committed 34 acts of business fraud to help his 2016 presidential campaign, Iowa’s leading Republicans spoke out, echoing his message that people shouldn’t trust the legal system because all the criminal cases against him are without substance […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Rep. Hinson, Rep. Feenstra and AG Bird push U.S. Supreme Court to restrict medication abortions
The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Tuesday on whether to allow a preliminary injunction suspending the FDA’s 2021 decision easing restrictions on the availability of mifepristone, a prescription medication used in medical abortions. The injunction, issued by a federal judge in Texas in April 2023 and subsequently narrowed by the Fifth Circuit Court of […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Iowa Poll finds 50% believe the state is headed in the wrong direction
A majority of Iowans say the state is headed in the wrong direction, according to the results of a new Iowa Poll published by the Des Moines Register. The poll also found an increase in the number of respondents who disapprove of the work being done by Gov. Kim Reynolds, Sen. Chuck Grassley and Sen. […]
Posted inCommunity/News
‘Student loan socialism scheme’: Iowa’s senators decry SAVE plan as millions enroll
In the two weeks since the launch of the online application portal for the Biden administration’s latest initiative to provide student loan debt relief, almost 40,000 Iowans have been enrolled. According to the U.S. Department of Education, those Iowans are among 4,609,800 Americans who are now covered by the Saving on A Valuable Education (SAVE) […]
Posted inEastern Iowa
Iowa City students, now living in a state where gun reform is virtually impossible, reflect on psychological toll of mass shootings
Despite bitterly cold winds, more than 50 students from Iowa City schools gathered at the Old Capitol on the Pentacrest at noon on Thursday to protest against gun violence and demand new gun safety laws. The protest was organized by students from South East Junior High School and City High School. Both junior high students […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Election 2022: Johnson County remains a Democratic stronghold, as Republicans sweep to victories statewide
Johnson County remained a bright spot for Iowa Democrats on Tuesday, even as Republicans dominated Election Day statewide. Every Democrat in a statewide race carried the county by a large margin, even as they were defeated by Republicans. The only possible exception to that pattern is the Auditor of State race, which was still too […]
Posted inCommunity/News
New Iowa Poll finds Franken almost tied with Grassley, Reynolds still far ahead of DeJear
Over the weekend, the Des Moines Register published the results of a new Iowa Poll on the two big races in the Nov. 8 general election. The reported results show the Republican incumbents still lead their Democratic challengers, but in the case Iowa’s longest-serving senator, that lead continues to get smaller. Mike Franken is now […]
Posted inCommunity/News
This election may be different for Chuck Grassley
Things were different 42 years ago. Chuck Grassley, then a three-term congressman looking to move up to the Senate, declared himself an opponent of negative political ads. Grassley devoted his opening statement in the Iowa Public Television’s Republican primary debate in 1980 to complaining about ads targeting him. Grassley called his primary opponent Tom Stoner […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Have incumbents met their match? An overview of the statewide races on Iowans’ midterm ballots
It’s a truism of American politics that with rare exceptions, incumbents always have a big advantage in an election. And nowhere is that truism truer than Iowa. Chuck Grassley has been in the U.S. Senate longer than all but one of his colleagues — Democratic Patrick Leahy, who is retiring this year — and longer […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Former Rep. Jim Leach breaks with the Republican Party, endorses Bohannan for House and Franken for Senate
Jim Leach, who represented Johnson County and much of southeastern Iowa in Congress for 30 years as a Republican, changed his party registration to Democrat ahead of the June 7 primary, the Quad City Times reported on Wednesday. “Today, the Republican Party that I spent so many years with has really let the country down,” […]
Posted inEastern Iowa Community/News
The U.S. Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, rescinding a right for the first time in its history
“As of today, this Court holds, a State can always force a woman to give birth, prohibiting even the earliest abortions,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote, summing up what the Republican-appointed majority on the U.S. Supreme Court did in its decision Friday that stripped Americans of the federally protected right to abortion. “A State can thus […]
