Iowa Politics with Jeff Stein -- Tue. Sep. 22, 2026

AM radio in every vehicle gets closer.

I'm Jeff Stein with today's Iowa Politics Report.

You have heard me talk here about the AM radio for every vehicle act pending in Congress.

Most recently I took Congress to task for failing to act on a heavily bipartisan piece of legislation.

This one.

and noted that the House was instead tucking it inside a broader transportation funding bill, as opposed to it standing on its own merits.

Well, lo and behold, despite cutting days and even weeks off of the session schedule where votes could be taken, the U.S.

House has actually passed the bill, HR 979, by a voice vote.

The legislation now awaits consideration by the U.S.

Senate, which for decades has been where good ideas and good legislation go to die.

The Senate version of the bill, S315, apparently has strong bipartisan backing, but again, don't hold your breath.

Now this whole thing came up because proponents of electric vehicles complained that the electrical impulses of the car created static on the radio, much the same way you hear static on AM when there's a thunderstorm with lightning.

Carmakers said they needed to take out AM radio as a result.

However, the manufacturers had to concede that a filter costing a few dollars would take care of the static issue.

That exposed their real reason for getting rid of the AM car radio?

Money.

Not from paying for a filter and the cost of that, but the money they would receive from subscription services.

We've told you here before that if they could get rid of AM radio for that flimsy electrical static reason, they'd soon try to get rid of FM as well, saying it's no longer cost effective to have just FM in your car.

And some manufacturers did actually try that.

But again, it exposed all of this as a cash grab.

Because if you did not have free radio in your car, you would have to pay for their streaming services in order to find something to listen to while driving.

And the automakers would share in dividing up that money with the streamers.

Some have claimed that getting rid of AM radio was to silence conservative voices, and I don't doubt that would be the motivation for some.

But again, it's really all about more dollars for the automakers.

So now it's past the House.

The Senate is scheduled to be in session through next week.

Perhaps with all the things they can't agree on,

They can find time to move this bill so emergency broadcasts and free over-the-air radio can remain safe, as citizens say they want.

And that's the Iowa Politics Report for Tuesday, September 22 on Twitter, Instagram, Gitter, Threads and Truth Social at Iowa Politics.

I'm Jeff Stein on News Talk 1540, KXEL.