Gov kimberly reynolds
Kimberly Kay Reynolds is an American politician serving as the 43rd Governor of Iowa since 2017. A member of the Republican Party, she is the first female Governor of Iowa. Reynolds previously served as the 46th Lieutenant Governor of Iowa from 2011 to 2017. Wikipedia
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11 23
After Florida governor and 2024 GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis visibly received less support than ex-President Donald Trump from Republican voters during the state's Saturday Freedom Summit, the Sunshine State leader is expected to be endorsed by Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds Monday, NBC exclusively reports.
NBC notes, "Prior to Reynolds, two Iowa Republican statewide officeholders endorsed other presidential candidates. State Attorney General Brenna Bird gave her support to Trump, while state Treasurer Roby Smith backed businessman Vivek Ramaswamy."
Reynolds' decision comes after she said she planned to "remain neutral" on a candidate earlier this year, later adding during the August Iowa State Fair that she might change her mind "down the road."
Reynolds criticized Trump for failing to participate in the event's "Fair-Side Chats," saying that if he wants to win, voters "expect him to be here."
NBC reports:
*The endorsement is a major departure from tradition: Iowa governors have typically stayed on the sidelines ahead of the caucuses. An endorsement last happened in 1996, when then-Gov. Terry Branstad threw his support behind Bob Dole — though Branstad did also step out in 2016 to say he hoped Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas would be defeated ahead of that year's caucuses.
READ MORE:'It’s going to be Trump': Here’s what proved DeSantis’ 'diminishing stature in his home state'
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n o lnx
Des Moines Register
Iowa among GOP states suing Biden administration to halt student loan forgiveness plan
By Seung Min Kim - Sep 29
WASHINGTON (AP) — Iowa is among six Republican-led states suing the Biden administration to try to halt its plan to forgive student loan debt for tens of millions of Americans, accusing it of overstepping its executive powers.
President Joe Biden forgives $10,000 in student loan debt for millions of Americans
It’s at least the second legal challenge this week to the sweeping proposal laid out by President Joe Biden in late August, when he said his administration would cancel up to $20,000 in education debt for huge numbers of borrowers. The announcement, after months of internal deliberations and pressure from liberal activists, became immediate political fodder ahead of the November midterms while fueling arguments from conservatives about legality.
In the lawsuit, being filed Thursday in a federal court in Missouri, the Republican states argue that Biden's cancellation plan is “not remotely tailored to address the effects of the pandemic on federal student loan borrowers,” as required by the 2003 federal law that the administration is using as legal justification. They point out that Biden, in an interview with CBS' "60 Minutes” this month, declared the COVID-19 pandemic over, yet is still using the ongoing health emergency to justify the wide-scale debt relief.
“It’s patently unfair to saddle hard-working Americans with the loan debt of those who chose to go to college,” Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, who is leading the group, said in an interview.
She added: “The Department of Education is required, under the law, to collect the balance due on loans. And President Biden does not have the authority to override that.”
Gov. Kim Reynolds calls Biden plan 'an insult to working people'
The states of Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and South Carolina joined Arkansas in filing the lawsuit.
Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller is a Democrat, but Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed on Iowa's behalf.
Reynolds had also signed onto a joint letter with 21 other Republican governors earlier this month voicing concerns about Biden's loan forgiveness plan, including that he lacked the power to do it.
“A significant majority of Americans have already paid off their student loans or chose not to pursue a higher education degree at all,” Reynolds said in a statement Thursday. “By forcing them to pay for other people’s loans ― regardless of income — President Biden’s mass debt cancellation punishes these Americans and belittles the path they chose. This expensive, unlawful plan is an insult to working people and must be stopped.”
The states argue that Missouri's loan servicer is facing a “number of ongoing financial harms” because of Biden's decision to cancel loans. Other states that joined the lawsuit argue that Biden's forgiveness plan will ultimately disrupt revenue to state coffers.
More:How student loan forgiveness will affect Iowans, who owe an average of $31,000
Biden’s forgiveness program will cancel $10,000 in student loan debt for those making less than $125,000 or households with less than $250,000 in income. Pell Grant recipients, who typically demonstrate more financial need, will get an additional $10,000 in debt forgiven.
The administration also said it would extend the current pause on federal student loan repayments — put on hold near the start of the pandemic more than two years ago — once more through the end of the year.
The administration faced threats of legal challenges to its plans almost immediately, with conservative attorneys, Republican lawmakers and business-oriented groups asserting that Biden was overstepping his authority in taking such sweeping action without the assent of Congress.
Democratic lawmakers battling in tough reelection contests also distanced themselves from the student loan plan. Republican officials have called it an unfair government giveaway for relatively affluent people at the expense of those who didn’t pursue higher education.
Republican attorneys say plan violates lawful procedures
In their lawsuit, the Republican attorneys general also contend that the forgiveness program violates the Administrative Procedures Act, which lays out how federal agencies should make regulations in order to ensure executive branch policies are well-reasoned and explained.
“The president does not have the authority to put himself in the place of Congress,” Rutledge said in the interview. “These actions must be taken by Congress and he can’t override that.”
To justify the plan’s legality, the Biden administration is relying on a post-Sept. 11, 2001, law meant to help members of the military. The Justice Department says the law allows Biden to reduce or erase student loan debt during a national emergency. But Republicans argue the administration is misinterpreting the law because, in part, the pandemic no longer qualifies as a national emergency.
Another lawsuit against Biden’s student loan program was filed this week in an Indiana federal court by the Pacific Legal Foundation, a libertarian legal advocacy group that employs a lawyer who says he would be harmed by the forgiveness plan. The lawyer, Frank Garrison, says erasing his current debt load will trigger a tax liability from the state of Indiana, which is among at least a half dozen states where the forgiven loan amounts will be subject to state taxes.
The White House dismissed the lawsuit as baseless because any borrower who does not want the debt relief can opt out. The Education Department is still on track to unveil the application for the forgiveness plan in early October.
Republicans have also seized on the Biden plan’s price tag and its impact on the nation’s budget deficit. The Congressional Budget Office said this week that the program will cost about $400 billion over the next three decades. The White House countered that the CBO’s estimate of how much the plan will cost just in its first year, $21 billion, is lower than what the administration initially believed.
Register staff writer Ian Richardson and Associated Press writer Collin Binkley contributed to this report.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Iowa among GOP states suing Biden administration to halt student loan forgiveness plan
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~ sotu
https://www.bleedingheartland.com/2022/03/12/governor-gop-legislature-sound-death-knell-for-iowa-nice/
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https://www.americanoversight.org/investigation/state-proposals-to-restrict-protests
eg
https://www.americanoversight.org/document/records-request-to-florida-governoros-office-regarding-bill-to-shield-drivers-from-liability-if-they-hit-protesters
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On Tuesday night, March 1, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds gave the Republican Party rebuttal to President Joe Biden’s first State of the Union address. Reynolds’ prominence in the GOP has grown, but in her state, she is facing a controversy over COVID-19 relief funds.
According to Associated Press reporter David Pitt, “Iowa's state auditor has again called for Gov. Kim Reynolds to return nearly $450,000 in federal coronavirus relief funds that were used to pay for 21 governor's office staff members for three months in 2020. Auditor Rob Sand, a Democrat, released a report Tuesday that repeated his recommendation from October 2020 and last year that the funds were improperly used and should be returned.”
Sand, according to Pitt, alleged that Reynolds misspent COVID-19 relief funds and tried to cover that up by passing the money through the Iowa Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.
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note grumpy get off my lawn generalizations; chris h etc say this is stock stump for 2022 election
https://mtstandard.com/lifestyles/health-med-fit/iowa-governor-swipes-at-biden-leadership-in-gop-rebuttal/article_9feecd0d-91cb-5012-a33f-754b6bdc78e6.html
AP
Iowa governor swipes at Biden leadership in GOP rebuttal
By THOMAS BEAUMONT - Associated Press Mar 2, 2022
By THOMAS BEAUMONT - Associated Press
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, delivering the Republican rebuttal to President Joe Biden's State of the Union address Tuesday, painted the picture of a country in the grip of several crises 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.
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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.
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“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.
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alt facts?
Iowa's COVID-19 death rate among highest in US, report says https://apnews.com › article › virus-outbreak-public-he...
Oct 23, 2020— IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — Iowa has among the nation's highest coronavirus death and infection rates and residents should avoid gatherings in ...
New COVID-19 cases skyrocket in Iowa - The Gazette https://www.thegazette.com › health-care-medicine › iowa...
Jan 6, 2022 — Deaths. The statewide COVID-19 death toll is now 8,019, with 161 deaths confirmed in the past week, compared to the 59 deaths reported last week ...
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npr
Since taking office in 2017 as Iowa's first female governor, Kim Reynolds has pushed for conservative policies, like limiting teaching about systemic racism in schools and seeking to ban transgender girls from girls' sports teams.
But it's Reynolds' response to the pandemic that has gotten her national attention.
Businesses and large gatherings in Iowahave had few or no restrictions for much of the past two years, often against the advice of public health experts.
Reynolds is likely to tout her approach to the pandemic as she delivers the official Republican response after President Biden's State of the Union address Tuesday night.
In a recent Iowa PBS interview, she contrasted her policies with those from Democrats.
"People are so frustrated. They've just had it, and they feel their freedoms and liberties are being infringed upon," Reynolds said. "And we're seeing that here in the United States. And you're seeing it honestly in the president's poll numbers. They are tanking, and you're seeing, I think, Democratic governors in other states realize what's happening and where Americans are today."
Reynoldsrequired Iowa schools to offer in-person learningfor most of the pandemic and rejected $95 million in federal funding for COVID testing in schools. Last spring, she banned schools from requiring masks, leading the Biden administration tolaunch a civil rights investigation.
Reynolds says federal pandemic relief has contributed to inflation andworkforce issues. But the billions of dollars coming into the state helped make a big legislative win possible for her: On Thursday Reynolds signed legislation to cut income taxes.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, told Fox News he's proud of Reynolds and gave a preview of what he thinks she will say.
"I expect her to say that Iowa has led the way," Grassley said. "And it's about time that the federal government do the same thing and the president show leadership that is something other than shutting down the economy to fight the virus."
Deidre DeJear, a Democrat running for governor in Iowa, said Reynolds being chosen for the GOP response shows she's following national Republican talking points instead of addressing challenges specific to the state.
Reynolds still hasn't announced if she's running for reelection this year, but she's expected to run. She has never said publicly if she wants to run for higher office in the future. Reynolds has been mentioned as a potential vice presidentfor Donald Trump if he runs again.
Copyright 2022 Iowa Public Radio
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https://sports.yahoo.com/iowas-anti-vaccine-mandate-bill-180010203.html2 11 22
...the hearing — which extended significantly longer than most legislative subcommittee meetings — was the first test for a far-reaching bill that would specify that businesses, governments and schools couldn't fire workers based on their medical treatment status, including vaccinations.
House Study Bill 647 would also ban mask requirements and would make businesses, schools or governmental entities that violate the law liable for any adverse reactions that stem from receiving “forced medical treatment.”
In the opening hours of the subcommittee meeting, a number of speakers provided testimony taking aim at the federal government's handling of the coronavirus pandemic and the medical guidance on COVID-19 treatment.
"The medical freedom and privacy bill must pass," said Dr. Mollie James, who has claimed to "jailbreak" COVID-19 positive patients from hospitals. "Doctors need to be able to take care of our patients with all evidence available."
More: Iowa doctor goes national and stages hospital 'jailbreaks' for COVID-19 patients
Hunter questioned whether some of the testimony from doctors was germane to the bill.
"It really doesn't have anything to do with whether people are being discriminated against," Hunter said.
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/this-is-a-big-deal-iowa-governor-ends-voting-ban-for-people-with-felony-convictions/
no lnx twt
in a development heralded as “a historic sea change,” Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed an executive order on Wednesday overturning the state’s policy of permanently banning those with felony convictions from voting.
“Today we take a significant step forward in acknowledging the importance of redemption, second chances, and the need to address inequalities in our justice system,” said Reynolds, a Republican, whose order (pdf) is expected to restore voting rights to roughly 40,000 people.
Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, welcomed the order.
“This is a big deal,” Gupta tweeted. “Iowa was the last remaining state that permanently and categorically banned people with former convictions from voting.”
Previously, those who’d completed felony sentences had to individually appeal to the governor for possible re-enfranchisement.
Eliza Sweren-Becke, voting rights and elections counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, responded similarly to the order, tweeting, “This is a HUGE—now NO state in the country has a policy of permanently and categorically banning people from voting because of past convictions—a historic sea change.”
The change is also good news for racial justice.
“This action will benefit people regardless of race or ethnicity, but with the grave racial disparities in our criminal justice system, it will very significantly benefit African Americans and other people of color,” Betty C. Andrews, president of the Iowa-Nebraska NAACP, said in a statement.
As KPBS reported:
Reynolds’ order restores voting rights to felons who have completed their sentence, including probation, parole, and special sentences that are associated with sex offenses. Reynolds’ order does not require payment of victim restitution or any other fines or fees as a condition of being able to vote, a point of contention in Florida that has been caught up in court.
The order doesn’t cover those convicted of felony homicide offenses—an exclusion lamented by ACLU of Iowa executive director Mark Stringer, who said his group would “continue to work to ensure that all Iowans who have completed their sentences can once again participate in the democracy that so profoundly affects them.”
Voting rights advocates also recognized that Wednesday’s win could be easily yanked away—they saw that happen in 2011 when then-Gov. Terry Branstad rescinded a 2005 executive order that had restored voting rights to Iowans who had completed sentences for felony convictions.
As such, said Stringer, “it’s important that we continue to pursue a more permanent fix to the problem of felony disenfranchisement in our state. Another governor could issue a different executive order to reverse this current executive order.”
“That’s why we’ll continue to advocate for an amendment to the Iowa Constitution,”he said.
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see trms: really successful mail in primary ballot, so gop legis eliminates?!
an 620
des Moines newspaper slams Iowa GOP’s ‘egregious’ voter suppression campaign in a scathing editorial
Iowa is among the swing states that could help determine whether President Donald Trump spends another four years in the White House or is voted out of office. It’s also…
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AG miller goes after ACE cpp dem
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Reynolds
Kimberly Kay Reynolds (née Strawn, born August 4, 1959) is an American politician serving as the 43rd Governor of Iowa since 2017. A member of the Republican Party, she is the first female Governor of Iowa. Reynolds previously served as the 46th Lieutenant Governor of Iowa from 2011 to 2017. Before she was elected Lieutenant Governor, Reynolds served as Clarke County Treasurer for four terms and then served in the Iowa Senate from 2009 to 2011.
Reynolds became Governor of Iowa in May 2017 when her predecessor, Terry Branstad, stepped down to become United States Ambassador to China. In May 2018, Reynolds signed a bill that scaled back energy efficiency programs and a bill that the Des Moines Register referred to as "the most restrictive abortion ban in the nation."
Reynolds won a full term as governor in the 2018 gubernatorial election.
- 1Early life, education and family
- 2Iowa State Senate
- 3Lieutenant Governor of Iowa
- 4Governor of Iowa
- 5Electoral history
- 6See also
- 7References
- 8External links
Early life, education and family
Strawn attended Northwest Missouri State University, where she took classes in business, consumer sciences and clothing sales and design between 1977 and 1980. She later took classes at Southeastern Community College in the late 1980s, and then took accounting classes at Southwestern Community College between 1992 and 1995. She did not earn a degree from any of these institutions.[2] In 2016, Reynolds received a Bachelor of Liberal Studies degree from Iowa State University.[3]Reynolds was born Kimberly Kay Strawn in St. Charles, Iowa. She attended high school at the Interstate 35 Community School District and graduated in 1977.[1]
Reynolds was twice charged with driving under the influence of alcohol, first in 1999 and again in 2000.[4] The 2000 case was originally charged as a Second Offense OWI, but eventually reduced to First Offense OWI. Reynolds was sentenced to pay a $1,500 fine and serve 12 months of informal probation. A related open container charge was dropped entirely.[5] In 2017, Reynolds stated that she sought inpatient treatment for alcoholism following her second arrest, and that she had been sober for nearly 17 years.[6]
Reynolds married Kevin Reynolds in 1982. As of 2018, the Reynoldses have three daughters--Jennifer, Nicole and Jessica[7]--and nine grandchildren.[8]
Iowa State Senate
Lieutenant Governor of Iowa
Reynolds served four terms as the Clarke County Treasurer before being elected on November 4, 2008 to represent the 48th district in the Iowa Senate, defeating Ruth Smith (D) and Rodney Schmidt (I).[9] In the Senate, she was a member of five committees: Economic Growth, Environment & Energy Independence, Local Government (Ranking Member), Rebuild Iowa, Transportation, and Appropriations Subcommittee (Economic Development Appropriations Subcommittee). In 2010, Reynolds endorsed a ban on same-sex marriage in Iowa.[10]
On June 25, 2010, Republican gubernatorial nominee Terry Branstad publicly proposed Reynolds for Lieutenant Governor. The next day, she received the Republican nomination from the 2010 Republican State Convention. On November 2, 2010, the Branstad/Reynolds ticket won the general election.[11][12] Reynolds resigned from her Senate seat on November 12, 2010 to "focus solely on assisting Gov. (Terry) Branstad’s transition team."[13]
Reynolds was the Lieutenant Governor of Iowa from 2011 until 2017.[14] Unlike Lieutenant Governors in many other states, Reynolds had specific roles, including co-chairing the Governor's Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) Advisory Council, co-chairing the Iowa Partnership for Economic Progress board, co-chairing the Military Children Education Coalition and serving as Gov. Branstad's representative on the board of the Iowa State Fair.[15]
Reynolds was elected Chair of the National Lieutenant Governors Association (NLGA) in July 2015.[16]
TenureGovernor of Iowa
On May 24, 2017, Reynolds became governor of Iowa upon the resignation of Governor Terry Branstad, who stepped down to become the new United States Ambassador to China. Reynolds is the first female governor of Iowa.[17]
Reynolds's elevation to the governorship created a vacancy in the office of the lieutenant governor, and reports indicated that her selection of a lieutenant governor could be challenged in the Supreme Court of Iowa.[18] An opinion from the Iowa attorney general indicated that "an individual promoted from lieutenant governor to governor, as was Reynolds, [did] not have the authority to appoint a new lieutenant governor.[19] On May 25, 2017, Reynolds announced that Iowa Public Defender Adam Gregg would serve as acting lieutenant governor; to avoid litigation, the Reynolds administration stated that Gregg "[would] not hold the official position of lieutenant governor" and would not succeed Reynolds in the event of her inability to serve as governor.[20]
In 2018, following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), Reynolds described same-sex marriage as a "settled" issue and said that she did not consider herself obligated to follow the Iowa Republican Party platform provision against same-sex marriage.[21][22]
Reynolds acknowledged that Trump's trade and tariff policies were hurting farmers, but said she believed that farmers would benefit on them in the end.[23][24][25]
In May 2018, Reynolds signed a bill to revamp Iowa's energy efficiency policies.[26] Also in May 2018, Reynolds signed a fetal heartbeat bill that the Des Moines Register referred to as "the most restrictive abortion ban in the nation."[27] In January 2019, the law was struck down by an Iowa state judge, who said it was unconstitutional.[28]
Reynolds began her first full term on January 18, 2019.
On March 27, 2019, Reynolds signed a bill into law requiring public universities to protect the "fullest degree of intellectual freedom and free expression."[29][30]
Electoral history
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