Rep Steve King Removed From Committee Assignments

Andrew Donaldson

Born and raised in West Virginia, Andrew has since lived and traveled around the world several times over. Though frequently writing about politics out of a sense of duty and love of country, most of the time he would prefer discussions on history, culture, occasionally nerding on aviation, and his amateur foodie tendencies. He can usually be found misspelling/misusing words on Twitter @four4thefire and his food writing website Yonder and Home. Andrew is the host of Heard Tell podcast. Subscribe to Andrew's Heard Tell SubStack for free here:

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9 Responses

  1. Oscar Gordon says:

    Awww, that’s terrible. My heart pumps purple piss for the man.

    Now the people of Iowa who keep voting for him… WTF?Report

    • Not condoning Steve King in any way, shape, or form, but it turns out he was born in Storm Lake, IA where I went to grade school and junior high. When I lived there, the population was white, period. A large majority of the people there were descended from Northern Europeans recruited by the Great Northern Railway to be grain farmers in the 1880s. I am a standard Anglo-Saxon brown-haired light-brown-eyed guy; the Danish grandmother of one of my classmates described me as “dark”, and wasn’t talking about my personality. The largest private sector employer, the meat packing plant, paid a living wage. The canning factory, where work was seasonal, also paid pretty well.

      Today the city population is >40% Hispanic, and another 10% from SE Asia. Much of that population is transient — there for a couple of years and then move. The public school system has more students fluent in Spanish than fluent in English. (The only private school in town is the small Roman Catholic school that was there when I lived there; I assume the sisters have had to tone down the physical discipline.) The leading employers are all ag-related and have Spanish-language requirements for hiring. I can sort of understand if any of my classmates who still live there feel like there’s been a slow-motion invasion.

      Storm Lake is where King is pointing when he talks about what’s gone wrong in America.Report

      • Road Scholar in reply to Michael Cain says:

        Yeah, I’m familiar with his district. I had two uncles that settled in NW Iowa. Haven’t been out there in quite awhile but I remember it being about as white as skim milk.Report

      • Doctor Jay in reply to Michael Cain says:

        As I understand your reporting, there are two trends here. Perhaps there are more, but the two I see are an influx of Spanish-speaking immigrants, and an erosion of living standards and infrastructure which is couple to the loss of manufacturing industry and jobs.

        And in Steve King’s world, one implies the other. That’s the problem.

        By contrast, I live in a state, (CA) not just a county, that has more Hispanics than white people. That state has the sixth largest economy in the world. My county, Santa Clara County, is not majority white either. And it’s the home of Silicon Valley. The workforce is somewhat transient, but it isn’t minimum wage, and there are plenty of people here for the long haul. Mostly they are people who like the cosmopolitan nature of the place. Not everything is rosy, but most think things are going well.

        I do not want to gloss over the struggles of people in places like Storm Lake. I know it’s real. I have family in places like Storm Lake. It’s not until we get over this “blame the invasion” thing that we’re going to be able to tackle these problems, which are hard, and will take perhaps a generation or more to fully address.Report

    • Fish in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

      I said the same thing on the Facebooks and my friends from Iowa were quick to point out that the blame belongs not with all Iowans but just with those living in the 4th.Report

  2. Saul Degraw says:

    The problem is that this is probably only happening because the GOP doesn’t have a majority anymore. It feels like too little, too late. Though someone on LGM speculated that the GOP asked him to resign and King’s response was “make me.”Report

  3. CJColucci says:

    I’m shocked, SHOCKED, to learn that ….. Oh, the hell with it. The cynicism is just too obvious.Report

  4. Road Scholar says:

    I’m so terribly impressed that Republican leadership is finally acknowledging what has been glaringly obvious to the rest of us for just about forever. Real profiles in courage there.Report