Bird is busy helping Trump, not Iowans

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird has been busy. It’s not because she’s standing up for Iowans. Instead, she’s working overtime to defend the Trump administration.

Bird is leading 19 attorneys general in red states in a lawsuit to defend President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, which has been operating under no statutory authority to fire federal employees, target agencies and withhold federal funding. The authority of DOGE’s leader, billionaire Elon Musk, is also being challenged.

Bird also is leading multiple states in a defense of Trump’s executive order erasing birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants.

By now we’re used to Bird joining politicized lawsuits. But her commitment to serve Iowans also is revealed through the lawsuits Bird won’t join.

Bird has ignored a Trump executive order freezing USDA funding owed to farmers and landowners who instituted water quality improvement measures. So, Iowa farmers waiting for tens of millions of dollars they’re owed by the federal government to be paid.

Going to bat for medical research and farmers seems like a bipartisan no-brainer. Legal action by a Trump backer such as Bird might get the administration’s attention.

Bird also isn’t joining legal efforts to overturn a freeze on research spending by the National Institutes of Health. At the University of Iowa, Trump’s NIH executive order could mean the loss of $30 million for medical research, such as drug trials.

A federal judge has halted enforcement of the funding freeze. But Trump’s action has pushed important medical research into uncertainty.

Four months ago, according to journalist Laura Belin at Bleeding Heartland, Bird did join a multistate lawsuit ostensibly to remove one mention of “gender dysphoria” in the preamble of revised federal disability rights written during the Biden administration.

But the lawsuit’s main objective is declaring section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 unconstitutional. That act prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities for any activity or program funded by the federal government. Striking it down would badly damage critical legal protections.

Bird insists the lawsuit is only about the transgender language. But a read of the petition, filed in a Texas federal court, suggests otherwise. Iowans would be among the many Americans harmed if 504 is overturned.

But our attorney general insists on taking the hyper-partisan route. It may help her ambitions for higher office. In the meantime, Iowans must take what Trump gives them and remain silent.

(319) 398-8262; todd.dorman@thegazette.com