Posted December 18th, 2020 at 5:22am by Pat Rynard
As a very, very long 2020 winds down to a close, I thought it would be good to take a look back at what Iowa Starting Line accomplished in our most successful year yet.
One thing I don’t always do a good job of is publicly touting our successes I’m always cautious about sounding self-serving or boasting. I think when your journalism work is out in public, it can speak for itself.
However, the impact of Starting Line’s work is often far greater than what you simply see online. There are many times every month where there will be a story that ends up on CNN or in the New York Times or on KCCI that I know was a direct result from our reporting. I know that a producer or an editor who follows us noticed something we tweeted, looked into it more and wrote something about it themselves. But if you don’t follow all these social media connections, you might not know how so many storylines about Iowa politics are directly in
How Goes Texas, So Goes the House of Representatives
Breakdown of Vote in the Senate Race
The Supreme Court of the United States threw out the Texas redistricting map which could determine the ruling party of the House of Representatives for decades to come. The first map drawn up by Republicans favored their side. A federal judicial panel redrew the map after Democrats and minority groups in Texas complained.
Texas gains four new congressional seats this year because of the census and this ruling could give the Democrats control of the House. Texas is one of nine mostly Southern states covered by a provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that requires places with a history of discrimination to show in advance that election-law changes would not hurt minorities.
Vengeful Trump Takes Down Sessions In Senate Runoff Photo by Federal Bureau of Investigation
Reprinted with permission from Alternet
Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions lost his primary race to be the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Alabama on Tuesday night in a landslide, according to Decision Desk HQ. Early returns showed him losing the shot to win back his old seat by more than 20 points to opponent Tommy Tuberville, who will face off against Democratic Sen. Doug Jones in November.
It wasn t a surprising loss for Sessions, though it is a brutal one. He gave up his seat in the Senate to become President Donald Trump s attorney general, and he lost his big chance to return because his one-time benefactor turned against him. Trump enthusiastically endorsed Tuberville while viciously and repeatedly denouncing Sessions.