The fast-paced week in the Iowa legislature known as “Funnel Week” officially concluded on March 7. During this period, all bills introduced in the session faced a baseline review process to determine which have the necessary support among representatives to realistically become law.
It is at this point in the session that legislative priorities are revealed. Coming off the heels of a tense election year, proposals were expected to be provocative, but after Iowa’s first round of eliminations, the remaining bills are largely political fodder.
Serving little purpose beyond fueling agendas, these bills do not address citizens’ needs — something desperately needed as Iowa’s population falters. As a state that consistently fails to address elementary infrastructural concerns, Iowa’s focus on politicizing issues in the legislature is offensive to the public.
Public education has taken a major blow post-Funnel Week. Senate File 138 aims to promote high schools offering classes on the New and Old Testament of the Bible. House File 884 allows the hiring of religious chaplains at schools. Other progressed bills include requiring a humanized version of abortion education, providing protections for instructors who choose to misgender students, and facilitating investigations of grooming and child abuse in public schools.
This patchwork of legislation reinforces the idea that public schools are somehow working against the best interests of children. It suggests ordinary community members should be viewed with suspicion, secularism threatens religious values, and schools have been promoting a distorted view of abortion. It also implies immoral school faculty are being shielded by “a liberal agenda.”
Three additional bills were also advanced, aiming to ban Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, or DEI, practices at both public and private universities. DEI has already been banned at the state level, and new federal policies reinforce this stance.
The only bill to actually be passed and signed into law thus far has been Senate File 418, which removes “gender identity” from the Iowa Civil Rights Act, stripping transgender individuals of civil rights protections in the state, while the House of Representatives has simultaneously chosen to stall a public school funding bill that would allocate $22.6 million directly to student resources.
It seems the Iowa legislature would rather spend its time and resources on instilling doubt in its citizenry about public infrastructure than to simply invest in the public infrastructure. So, where does that leave its citizens?
“I don’t think those are the values of specifically Iowans. Politics has gotten more extreme than the people that they’re representing, and that’s kind of crazy,” lifelong Iowa resident and student at Kirkwood Community College Bella Zamudio — a transgender woman concerned about the recent legislation — said.
Iowa has been losing its domestic population for decades now. Growth rates have remained measly but positive, largely due to the intake of international migrants, but Iowa has consistently been losing its native population. This has been attributed to many different factors such as natural fluctuations, the aging boomer generation, and work opportunities elsewhere. However, it’s no exaggeration to conclude the state is simply not providing much of a reason to stay.
The state government consistently targets minority groups, such as immigrants and transgender individuals, while suggesting those who form the backbone of the state are morally misguided — whether deemed too “ungodly” or too diverse. It spends more energy blaming supposed “agendas” than addressing the actual issues these agendas are said to create.
Among the proposals that failed to make it past Funnel Week were bills aimed at increasing the minimum wage for disabled workers, strengthening water quality and treatment protections, and allocating an additional $600,000 to improve nursing home inspection standards.
While former President Joe Biden’s many proposals were put forward, those cut include measures that could have been invaluable to constituents on a personal level. These proposals are being cut by the party that campaigned on criticizing President Biden’s economy and claimed “liberals” focus too much on DEI. Given this platform, one would expect a focus on addressing these very issues. Instead, there has been no mention of meaningful statewide economic reforms, and DEI has received more attention than ever before.
Iowa may be naturally losing its population, but it’s also making no moves to retain it. Agenda-based politics are a fad that works for now, but what will the priorities be when foundational infrastructure crumbles beyond repair?
“I can’t be somewhere where I don’t feel protected, I don’t feel safe,” Zamudio said. “The law is not in my favor.”