WASHINGTON — In a sit-down interview with The Daily Iowan, U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R- Iowa, spoke on his new bill to reform the powers of district court judges to grant national injunctions, his opposition to the Department of Education, and his support for the Department of Government Efficiency.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The Daily Iowan: The Trump administration paused funding on refugee resettlement services, and Iowa has a long-standing tradition of supporting refugees and opening up our state to them. Do you believe this pause aligns with the state’s values?

U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley: Remember that presidents, when they first come to office, often hold up regulations and money for a 90-day period of time.

Your question to us was about grants for that program. And I just, I haven’t finished reading this letter yet, but this is from a constituent that wrote to us about certain grant programs in the agriculture department, and some of them were released on Feb. 25 and some on March 25, and so I think you have to wait until this process is done to decide exactly what’s going to happen.

But I would assume that the refugee program, which is a program for people legally in the country, would be continued.

The Department of Government Efficiency has worked to slash billions in spending that it finds wasteful. Tell me a little bit about your review of their performance so far. What are the highlights of what you’ve seen?

I’m a member of the caucus that she started and very glad to have the Senate studying the same things. I just simply tell you, from a standpoint of some specifics that you saw roll down the TV screen when they exposed some of this money that’s been [used in ways] that would be questionable.

Congress tends to not be very specific on the money that we appropriate. It’s not totally lump sum, but it’s in big baskets, and if we would ever have a chance to say yes to a couple of these things or no to a couple of these things that I’ve seen on television, it would have never got through the Congress in the United States, like $10 million to Guatemala for sex changes, $20 million to Iraq for something to promote Sesame Street. What’s that got to do with our foreign aid?

And yet, there’s a bureaucracy that was set up that’s been basically abolished now or put under the Secretary of State to make [sure] things like that wasteful expenditure money won’t happen again.

But every member of Congress ought to be embarrassed by the way we appropriate and give out of consideration to where this money’s going to go, and particularly now in the last few years, where we have just one gigantic appropriation bill, grouping 12 together and having an omnibus appropriation bill. Basically, you just vote yes or no. You don’t get a chance to offer amendments. It usually comes up at a midnight hour before the government’s going to shut down.

So, we’ve got to have some reform to the appropriation process. So, this stuff that ought to be embarrassing to every member of Congress.

Opponents to what DOGE is doing say that cuts, specifically layoffs of federal workers, have or could impact services that Iowans rely on. What do you say to those criticisms?

Reverse of what we’re talking about now is we’re raising questions about people being laid off. I just met at one o’clock with one of the administrators of a subdivision of Health and Human Services to learn that in the last four years, the employment of HHS has gone up 17 percent.

Nobody tends to pay attention when you have that massive growth of bureaucracy. But when you’re trying to see if every job is necessary or not, then it gets attention. We ought to give equal attention to both.

President Trump has started the process of closing the Department of Education, but a full closure would require congressional action. Would you sign off on that? Why?

There’s 535 members of Congress now. I’m the only member of Congress that on Sept. 27, 1979, voted against setting up the Department of Education.

Obviously, I think the Department of Education ought to go away for the same reason I voted not to set it up in the first place, and that is because I think that under the Constitution, education is not a primary responsibility of the federal government.

We don’t want anything but state and local government setting that policy. So, it comes back to us this way. Well, what about this special education program? What about Pell Grants? What about guaranteed student home programs? What about the need for Title One for low-income families?

All of those programs were set up before the Department of Education was set up, so they were administered properly before the Department of Education was set up, and they’re going to be administered the same way — properly — without the Department of Education.

Trump has enacted reciprocal tariffs just this last week. Can you tell me your thoughts on the tariffs and how they’re currently impacting the economy, specifically for farmers?

First of all, one of the 18 powers of Congress is to regulate interstate and foreign commerce. The 1963 Congress, the 1974 Congress, both delegated away all of our constitutional authority.

Now, there’s nothing in our bill that’s retroactive, so you can’t say it’s against what the president did, but when tariffs come up, just like they did in 2018, I tried to get something done to recoup this power to the Congress of the United States. I failed.

Obviously, I didn’t do anything on it between then and now because who cares about tariffs, but the President has elevated this. [It] gives me a chance to bring to the country’s attention the fact that Congress has delegated too much authority.

Now, he put out a statement this morning. He’s going to veto the bill. I think any president would say the same thing. They selfishly protect this power, whether they get it from the Constitution or whether they get it handed to them from the Congress [of] the United States. We got to recoup some of this power to Congress and overcome the mistakes that were made in ‘63 and ‘74.

You’ve led a bill that would reduce the amount of power that district court judges have to place nationwide injunctions. Please tell me a little bit more about why you decided to bring that bill forward.

I don’t think I’m reducing the power that they have because there’s nothing in the laws or nothing in the Constitution that says one judge in one of our 93 district court systems, and one judge out of more than 600 district judges, can make a decision that applies nationwide.

But for the first 175 years of our country, we never had such a thing, and it’s only gotten to be a big thing in the last 15 years.

The words “cases” or “controversies” are the two words in the Constitution. They limit themselves to the parties in the court and to that district, and then, if there’s abuse of it, have a quicker appeal process.

Can you think how ridiculous it is that a district court judge said Trump, on foreign aid, had to spend $2 billion within 36 hours? And then, let’s say that stood, and then an appeal court would say you didn’t have the authority to do that, and the money is already spent. So, we’ve got to get these appeals moving faster, and we have to limit a judge to cases or controversy and to that district and to the parties in the courtroom.