Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds Delivers Republican Response to Biden's State of the Union

Reynolds contrasts president’s hopeful speech by describing a country mired in crises as Republicans look ahead to midterm elections.

Iowa Governor Swipes at Biden Leadership in Republican Rebuttal

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, delivering the Republican rebuttal to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, painted the picture of a country hardly emerging from a crisis and instead in the grips of several as she hammered the president’s leadership notably on the world stage.

Reynolds depicted Biden’s year in office as having “sent us back” to fraught times more than 40 years ago as she made the case for the “alternative” approach of Republicans hoping to capture control of Congress in this year’s midterm elections.

“Instead of moving America forward, it feels like President Biden and his party have sent us back in time to the late ’70s and early ’80s, when runaway inflation was hammering families, a violent crime wave was crashing on our cities, and the Soviet army was trying to redraw the world map,” Reynolds said.

Republicans have hinted for months at two prongs of the three-sided broadside. But Reynolds’ critique of Biden for the Russian invasion of Ukraine signaled the party’s commitment to casting Biden and Democrats as weak world leaders, compounding their withering criticism of the administration’s handling of the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan last fall.

“Even before taking the oath of office, the President told us that he wanted to ‘make America respected around the world again and to unite us here at home.’ He’s failed on both fronts,” Reynolds said, speaking from the rooftop terrace of Iowa Historical Building with the gold-domed Capitol in Des Moines in the background.

Reynolds, whose foreign affairs experience is limited to overseas economic development missions, said “weakness on the world stage has a cost. And the President’s approach to foreign policy has consistently been too little, too late.”

“And now Russia has launched an unprovoked full-scale military invasion of Ukraine, an attack on democracy, freedom, and the rule of law,” she said.

The swipe goes right at what had been a perceived strength of Biden, who brought to the White House eight years as vice president and decades of service on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Reynolds’ defense of democracy, however, also comes as a select congressional committee has spent more than a year investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by activists loyal to former President Donald Trump who believed the Republicans falsehoods — roundly rejected by state officials and the courts — that the 2020 election was stolen.

While Democrats have portrayed the deadly Capitol siege as an attack on democracy, the Republican National Committee last month labeled the event “legitimate political discourse.”

Reynolds used her 14-minute address to portray the United States as on the “wrong track” — mired in inflation, crime and moral decay, not emerging from the two years of the global coronavirus pandemic.

Instead, she blamed inflation and rising energy prices on spending by Biden and Democrats, who control Congress. “They plowed ahead anyway, raising the price at the pump by 50% and pushing inflation to a 40-year high,” she said.

She also took her moment to introduce herself as a Midwestern mother and grandmother — once a small-town grocery clerk — more in touch with everyday Americans than leaders in Washington, whom she painted as out of touch with heartland cultural concerns.

It’s those leaders in Washington, she argued, who are part of “a political class trying to remake this country into a place where an elite few tell everyone else what they can and cannot say, what they can and cannot believe.”

Last year, Reynolds signed legislation banning from schools controversial books and teachings, including lessons about systemic racism and white privilege.

Parents are “tired of politicians who tell parents they should sit down, be silent, and let government control their kids’ education and future,” she said.

“It seems like everything is backwards,” she said, describing Americans as “waiting for the insanity to stop.”

Reynolds, a former lieutenant governor, has been governor since 2017, when then-Gov. Terry Branstad was confirmed as the Trump administration’s ambassador to China. She was elected to her own term in 2018 and is expected to seek a second this year.

Reynolds, 62, has been a devout Trump advocate in Iowa, campaigning with him before the 2020 election, when he carried Iowa for a second time. She also stood with Trump during a Des Moines rally in October, after he had left office, when he repeated the falsehoods that rampant voter fraud cost him a second term.

Though Reynolds has not echoed the falsehoods, she has stood by Trump.

“This is not the same country it was a year ago,” said Tuesday. “The president tried to paint a different picture tonight, but his actions over the last twelve months don’t match the rhetoric. It’s not what he promised when he took office.”

Reynolds had endeared herself to Iowa’s increasingly GOP-leaning electorate in no small part by opposing much of the Biden administration’s pandemic policy.

She resisted mask requirements and joined other states in lawsuits to fight the Biden administration’s vaccine mandates. She also was the first governor to require schools to resume in-person classes and fought with some districts that tried to continue online learning recommended by public health officials to slow virus spread.

“I was attacked by the left. I was attacked by the media. But it wasn’t a hard choice. It was the right choice,” she said.

US Supreme Court Mulls Republican Bid to Defend Trump Immigration Rule

washington — 

U.S. Supreme Court justices on Wednesday struggled over whether to let Republican state officials defend an immigration rule crafted by former President Donald Trump’s administration to bar permanent residency for immigrants deemed likely to need government benefits.

The justices heard oral arguments in an appeal by 13 Republican state attorneys general led by Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich of a lower court’s ruling that rejected their bid to defend Trump’s rule, which expanded the scope of those considered likely to become a “public charge.”

President Joe Biden’s administration dropped the government’s defense of the policy, prompting the action by the states. The rule took effect in February 2020.

Liberal and conservative justices questioned why the administration rescinded the policy in March 2021 based on a November 2020 decision by U.S. District Judge Gary Feinerman in Illinois ordering it vacated nationwide in another case, rather than undertaking a formal rulemaking process to replace it while it remained in effect.

Justice Elena Kagan suggested that the administration evaded requirements under a U.S. law called the Administrative Procedure Act and expressed doubt that the court should be “green-lighting” such behavior. Chief Justice John Roberts said circumventing that statute “is a pretty big deal.”

‘Not unprecedented’

Some justices noted that presidential administrations often stop defending in court certain policies they oppose.

“It’s very much not unprecedented,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh said.

Biden administration lawyer Brian Fletcher raised some eyebrows when he told the justices that the government does not believe that federal administrative law gives judges the power to set aside policies on a nationwide basis, as Feinerman did in this case — a position aligning with that of the Trump administration.

Justice Neil Gorsuch wondered how that admission should affect the case, given that the Biden administration’s decision to rescind Trump’s rule “is premised on what it admits to be an unlawful order” by Feinerman.

The Supreme Court in a separate dispute is weighing whether to let Kentucky’s Republican attorney general defend a restrictive abortion law in his state that was struck down by lower courts, after its Democratic governor dropped the case.

Biden’s administration six days ago announced a new “fair and humane” public charge rule that it said would avoid penalizing people for seeking medical attention and other services. The fact that a new federal rule already has been devised raises questions about what type of remedy would be available to the state officials even if they win and get to defend Trump’s policy.

Brnovich was joined by officials from Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas and West Virginia.

Past guidelines

U.S. guidelines in place for the past two decades had said immigrants likely to become primarily dependent on direct cash assistance or long-term institutionalization — in a nursing home, for example — at public expense would be barred from legal permanent residency, known as a “green card.”

Trump’s policy expanded this to anyone deemed likely to receive a wider range of even non-cash federal benefits such as the Medicaid health care program, housing and food assistance for more than an aggregate of 12 months over any 36-month period.

The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided in 2020 that Trump’s policy impermissibly expanded the definition of who counts as a “public charge.” Other courts made similar rulings.

During the time the policy was enforced, the government issued only three denials of admission under it, according to court filings, all of which have since been reversed.

The Supreme Court’s ruling is expected by the end of June.

Republican Lawmakers in Several US States Bar Journalists From House Floors

Salt Lake City, Utah — 

Republican lawmakers in several states are scaling back access to government business, extending pandemic-era rules that restrict when journalists can report from the floors of state legislative chambers and, in effect, making it easier to dodge the press.

As the public returns to the corridors of state capitols, new rules approved in Iowa last month and in Utah this week critically limit reporters’ access to lawmakers, sparking an outcry from media organizations and press advocates.

“It is critical that there is some accountability with respect to those who have tremendous power, such as you,” Lauren Gustus, the executive editor of The Salt Lake Tribune, told Utah lawmakers in a committee hearing last week, where she testified against such rules.

These rule changes limit when journalists can work on the floor of the legislature where lawmakers sit, making it easier for elected officials to avoid interacting with the press, even when they take up high-profile topics like election laws, taxes and abortion.

Rules governing where journalists can work vary across the nation’s 50 statehouses. Most allow credentialed reporters to observe from the chamber floors; some allow reporters to ask questions before or after proceedings; others require they remain in press boxes or alcoves separated from lawmakers, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

In states that are now moving to change their procedures, lawmakers argue that creating formal rules allays security concerns and prevents bad actors from disrupting governance. Press advocates say the proposed rules make it more difficult for journalists to ask questions and impede the reporters’ ability to keep tabs on fast-paced statehouse action.

In Iowa, Republican leaders this year did not issue credentials to journalists to work at press benches on the state Senate floor as they had previously. They said the policy change addressed “confusion” because of changing media that now includes blogs and newsletters that identify themselves as the press.

In Utah, reporters are now being required to ask for permission each time they’d like to interview a lawmaker on the Senate floor or in certain adjacent hallways. There and in the Iowa Senate, reporters now must work from a gallery high above the chambers though they can still work from the floor in the House of Representatives.

Under new rules passed through Utah’s Senate and advancing through the House, camera crews will be required to ask for permission to film in certain parts of committee rooms.

In a hearing on the rule last week, Utah lawmakers said daily press conferences and efforts to stream all proceedings online demonstrated their commitment to transparency. They said putting a clear rule on the books would help both lawmakers and the press know what’s allowed.

“The barriers of civility and discourse that have been respected in this state and this country for years and for decades are changing and they’re changing rapidly,” said Utah GOP Sen. Todd Weiler, who supported the rule change, adding that “if they are pushing the barriers, it is nice to have a rule in place.”

In Kansas, new rules from leaders in the state Senate relegate newspaper reporters to the chamber’s gallery, which has made it easier for senators to avoid reporters after sessions. In exceptional circumstances, like when the gallery is filled with other members of the public, journalists are allowed to report from the floor like the rules allowed before.

“Placing restrictions on journalists in the Senate chamber suggests there is something to hide, or that leadership is taking unwarranted and unnecessary retaliation against reporters,” former Kansas lawmaker Steve Morris wrote in an editorial in the Kansas Reflector.

Morris, who led Republicans in the Kansas Senate from 2005 to 2013, said that as a politician and a news consumer he saw the benefits of having journalists able to observe and report from a statehouse floor. When discussions draw considerable public interest, he said, people want to know how their lawmakers are reacting, which at times can mean body language like eye rolls or enthusiastic gestures.

“Reporters are our avenue to see what’s going on,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press.

“Especially when there’s something controversial,” he added. “The session adjourns and members skedaddle out of there rapidly so it’s hard for journalists to get to them, unlike when they’re on the floor they can immediately get to them.”

The new limits come in an environment of increasing attacks on the media and parallel new restrictions placed on journalists covering protests and courtroom proceedings. They also come as states and cities loosen coronavirus restrictions that have returned restaurants, sporting events and offices to pre-pandemic capacity.

Parker Higgins, the advocacy director at the Freedom of The Press Foundation, said the ways transparency and access increased during the pandemic — for example, when courtrooms allowed members of the public to hear and watch trials remotely — were being reversed.

After speaking with reporters in Kansas and Iowa, he said “most say it’s not impossible to do their jobs without floor access. But, in terms of doing your job quickly and effectively, you can’t get that from the public gallery.