Democrat congressional candidate Christina Bohannan pushed for legislation in the Iowa state house requiring implicit bias training for healthcare workers during a time of national crisis.
Bohannan, a former Iowa state representative and pro-DEI University of Iowa law professor, is vying to take Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks’ (IA) seat in the Hawkeye State’s 1st Congressional District for the third time. It is widely considered a battleground district now, particularly given the Democrats’ razor-thin loss in the 2024 election.
She served in the Iowa state house from January 2021 to January 2023, and during that time, she pushed legislation requiring implicit bias training for healthcare workers — at a time when the nation faced a healthcare worker shortage.
The legislation specifically stated that an applicant for a license to practice a profession under the subtitle would not be eligible to receive their license until they completed “a course of implicit bias training approved by the appropriate licensing board or is able to satisfy the appropriate licensing board that the applicant received implicit bias training substantially similar to a course of implicit bias training approved by the appropriate licensing board.”
Meanwhile, her state saw headlines such as: “‘Staffing crisis’ grips Iowa hospitals as COVID cases climb,” as reported in the Iowa Capital Dispatch in December 2021.
“The demand for so-called ‘traveling nurses’ from other states has risen as longstanding nursing shortages have been exacerbated by a surge of COVID-19 hospitalizations,” the outlet reported at the time.
“Queen of DEI’ Christina Bohannan would rather lecture Iowans than actually solve problems for them,” National Republican Congressional Committee Spokeswoman Emily Tuttle said in a statement. “Her political agenda is completely out of touch with the needs of Iowa families.”
That is not the only thing from Bohannan’s past resurfacing, stating on the Under the Dome podcast in 2021 that her state would be viewed as “backwards” if it did not zone in on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) practices in schools, deeming implicit bias “very real.” Speaking about a bill to ban such practices, she said, “I think that it is going to be very divisive if passed.”
“I think that it’s going to send a very bad message about Iowa and that it is going to seem like are kind of this backwards state that doesn’t understand there are things like systemic racism,” she remarked.
Bohannan’s commitment to pushing far-left narratives was also on full display after refusing to support Iowa’s “Back the Blue Act” during a time of civil unrest and violence. During the Black Lives Matter protests, she served on the University of Iowa Law School’s DEI Committee and defended the protesters despite injuries to officers.
The race is significant, as she nearly unseated Miller-Meeks in the 2024 election, with 49.8 percent of the votes compared to Meeks’s 50 percent — a difference of 799 votes.
