Pictured (L-R): Moderator Rick Hunsaker, Sen. Schultz, and Rep. Williams during the Feb. 28, 2026 forum in Manning.
It has been just under two weeks since the first funnel of the 2026 Iowa Legislative Session passed, and lawmakers are working through the several hundred bills that are still viable. The Feb. 20 funnel pares down the thousands of bills introduced at the beginning of each session by disqualifying those that had not been approved by committee in either the Iowa House or the Iowa Senate. A question from Rick Hunsaker, who moderated Saturday’s Chamber Legislative Forum in Manning, asked District 6 Sen. Jason Schultz (R-Schleswig) and District 11 Rep. Craig Williams to identify bills that didn’t make it through the funnel but had a chance to return. Schultz says some pro-life groups are upset after a provision concerning chemical abortion pills failed to make it through committee in the Senate.
Schultz adds that the committee did not have enough time to address those complications before the funnel. However, he notes there is a similar piece of legislation in the House that he fully expects the Senate to take up later in the session. Schultz says a separate bill that would have allowed parents and guardians with an Iowa carry permit to remain armed in their vehicles when picking up or dropping off their kids at school was removed. Schultz, a staunch Second Amendment advocate, explains that there are legal considerations many may not be aware of that would need to be met for the “parking lot” bill to stand.
Williams says there are also several bills on the House side that didn’t make it through the funnel that he expects to see again. One example is a bill to standardize DNA collection from suspects arrested for violent crimes.
Williams’s bill to incentivize more rural large-animal veterinarians also did not make it through the funnel, but it could come back through an appropriations bill. Williams says more than 300 bills in just the House survived the funnel, and that figure is simply too large to be feasible.
Fewer bills will give lawmakers more time to devote to individual pieces of legislation and should result in more durable, better-written laws. The session’s second legislative funnel is March 20, when bills must be reported out of the opposite chamber’s respective committees to remain eligible for consideration. These restrictions do not apply to Appropriations, Ways and Means, Government Oversight, and other similar bills.
