Isabella Murray

A bill that would stop five Iowa school districts from pointing to voluntary diversity plans as a reason to deny student transfers advanced Thursday through another legislative subcommittee. Under current law, Des Moines, Davenport, Postville, Waterloo and West Liberty superintendents can deny requests for open enrollment of a student from one district to another if…

A top Democratic elections lawyer filed a lawsuit Tuesday morning against Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate and Attorney General Tom Miller, challenging the voter suppression bill signed into law Monday afternoon. The rapid response case, filed by voting rights attorney Marc Elias and the League of United Latin American Citizens of Iowa, comes after…

It’s been about six weeks since state Rep. Amy Nielsen tested positive for COVID-19, which she thinks she contracted at the Capitol, and she is still experiencing lingering symptoms. The North Liberty Democrat on January 30 became the first lawmaker to contract the virus this year (or at least the first to publicly report it),…

An Iowa Republican likened an abortion “pandemic” to COVID-19 as a bill that would create an abortion state information dashboard passed on Thursday through a legislative subcommittee. “COVID-19 has had a huge impact on a lot of Iowans, and unfortunately we’ve lost a lot of Iowans due to COVID-19. If you go to the state’s…

“If you decide you want to censor Iowans, then you forgo your special tax breaks. And they are rich tax breaks in this state,” warned Iowa Republican Sen. Jake Chapman during debate on a bill which would halt financial incentives for big tech companies that “censor” speech. The bill, which was met with significant opposition…

Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds received a newly-released, one-dose, Johnson and Johnson COVID-19 vaccine on Wednesday during a live press conference—a bittersweet action to some Iowans who appreciate her attempt to dispel vaccine misinformation amid the state’s continuation of lax pandemic mitigation efforts. Reynolds, who has been widely criticized for her attempts to undermine the pandemic…

After a summer filled with public activism on racial justice issues following George Floyd’s murder, an Iowa Senate subcommittee on Tuesday advanced a wide-ranging law enforcement protections bill meant to clamp down on future protests. “I think we all know that over the past several months, law enforcement here in Iowa and around the country…

A “small step” on marijuana reform advanced on Tuesday in the Iowa legislature. A GOP-sponsored Senate bill that would lower legal penalties for first-offense Iowans who possess less than five grams of marijuana passed through a Senate Judiciary subcommittee with unanimous support. Democrats say the legislation, which has before passed through the Senate, is a…

In one of the first floor speeches as an Iowa state senator, Sarah Trone Garriott breathlessly described the realities of COVID-19 she had seen in her own community. “Over the course of the past year I spoke with thousands of constituents of every political affiliation,” she began. “Educators told me of their exhaustion of trying…