Linda Schreiber writes commentary on selected legislative issues.

While Iowa’s public universities support one in every ten jobs and generate billions of dollars in economic impact statewide, Republicans are pushing for yet another layer of oversight on the Regent institutions.

House File 2243, introduced by Iowa House Higher Education Committee chair Taylor Collins and eligible for floor debate, would require the Iowa Board of Regents to report to the state legislature and governor on how the board “could establish a performance-based funding model” for the three state universities. That funding model “must include” the following factors: graduation rates, degrees awarded in high-demand fields, postgraduate employment and income, and the number of graduates who stay in Iowa after graduation.

Those metrics already tell a compelling story: the state’s public universities are essential to meeting Iowa’s workforce needs, retaining talent, and strengthening communities across the state.

According to the Iowa Board of Regents, Graduates of the University of Iowa (UI), Iowa State University (ISU), and the University of Northern Iowa (UNI) fuel Iowa’s economy, filling high-demand roles in health care, education, and STEM fields.

Yet legislators frequently criticize the Regent universities while placing increasing constraints on their operations. What Iowans need are clear, accessible facts about the value and success of their public universities—and what those institutions need in return is stable, realistic financial support, not micromanagement, to continue delivering results for Iowa.

Al Charlson is a North Central Iowa farm kid, lifelong Iowan, and retired bank trust officer. This commentary was first published in the Waverly Democrat.

Soybeans and I go back a long way. In the late 1950s, my dad began experimenting with soybeans as an alternative cash crop. He planted a small field in the corner of the farm, as far from the road as possible. That was a good idea—weed control in soybeans involved a learning curve. From the beginning it involved “walking beans” (hand weeding), so I literally got to know soybeans “from the ground up.”

At that time the landscape of North Central Iowa was very different from the dominant corn-soybean rotation we see today. Our 160 acres grew a rotation of corn, oats, and an alfalfa-grass mix. The mix was used for both hay and pasture for the dairy herd which was Dad’s primary livestock enterprise. He also raised hogs and maintained a flock of laying hens.

“Coordination between Grassley and the F.B.I.’s office of congressional affairs was unusually close throughout the year,” Emily Bazelon and Rachel Poser reported for the New York Times Magazine on January 22.

U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley was not the main focus of “A Year Inside Kash Patel’s F.B.I.,” a must-read investigation of changes that are “undermining the agency and making America less safe,” according to knowledgeable insiders. But as Bazelon and Poser interviewed dozens of current and former FBI employees, Iowa’s senior senator came up repeatedly.

Grassley’s oversight work as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee led to career agents or supervisors being forced out, in some cases with no investigation supporting their alleged wrongdoing.

The New York Times Magazine article has so far received little attention from the Iowa media. Local journalists with access to Grassley’s weekly conference calls and recorded interviews with hand-picked reporters should ask the senator about some of the troubling details Bazelon and Poser uncovered. (His staff rarely reply to my emails and do not allow me to participate in any of his media availabilities.)

Linda Schreiber writes commentary on selected legislative issues.

Bob Dylan’s 1964 lyric, “The times they are a-changin’,” captured a moment of upheaval. The same could be said today—especially when it comes to how Iowa funds its communities.

A decade ago, when lawmakers reduced state funding for schools and local governments, cities and counties could adjust their budgets and, if needed, raise property taxes to maintain services residents wanted. Today, that flexibility is disappearing. And therein lies the paradox.

Throughout the first year of the 91st Iowa General Assembly, lawmakers debated cutting property taxes. With Republicans holding a trifecta, this is the year those cuts may pass. Two GOP proposals emphasize a strict 2 percent cap on local property tax revenue growth, promoted as relief for taxpayers. If state-level cuts reduce local revenue, will the result be fewer services Iowans rely on?

A poll in the field this week is testing dozens of messages about the two Democrats running for governor, State Auditor Rob Sand and Julie Stauch, who has worked for many Democratic campaigns and nonprofit organizations.

The survey appears designed to identify Sand’s weaknesses and the strongest arguments a competitor could make before the June 2 Democratic primary. Several questions highlight how Sand has distanced himself from his party or failed to take a stand on issues that matter to many Democratic voters.

A spokesperson for Sand’s campaign confirmed they did not commission the poll but declined further comment. Stauch declined to comment for the record.

Some other entity may have paid for the survey—perhaps a Democratic-aligned group or large donor considering spending to support Sand or Stauch for governor. It’s also possible a Republican-aligned group is thinking about meddling in the Democratic primary to weaken the likely nominee. (The Downballot reported on January 29 that “a prominent GOP consulting firm is financing an obscure group that’s run digital ads and sent out mailers” in support of a Democratic candidate for an upcoming special election in Michigan.)

Sand is the overwhelming favorite to win the nomination, with higher name ID, statewide election victories in 2018 and 2022, and more than $13.2 million cash on hand as of December 31, compared to around $12,000 in Stauch’s campaign account. Even so, a strong primary challenge could weaken the front-runner, by forcing his campaign to spend more before the general election period, or by exposing how he has alienated part of the base he would need to win in November.

A poll in the field this week previews attack lines Republicans may use against State Senator Sarah Trone Garriott, if she becomes the Democratic nominee in Iowa’s third Congressional district. The same poll tests positive messages about the incumbent, U.S. Representative Zach Nunn.

It’s not clear who commissioned the survey, but the question wording points to either Nunn’s campaign or some GOP-aligned group that plans to support Nunn’s re-election through independent expenditures.

The questions enclosed below are taken verbatim from a text version of the poll. I don’t know whether some voters in the third district are being surveyed by phone; some political polls are conducted entirely by text, while others use multiple methods to reach respondents. UPDATE: A source confirms there is a telephone version of this poll.

I fact-checked the claims about each candidate. According to the respondent who provided copies of the questions to me, this poll did not test any messages about two other Democrats seeking the nomination in IA-03: State Representative Jennifer Konfrst and Xavier Carrigan. That suggests whoever commissioned the poll expects Trone Garriott, who has led the Democratic field in fundraising, to win the June primary. UPDATE: Konfrst ended her campaign and endorsed Trone Garriott on January 26.

A quick reminder: although you may feel angry when you see or hear inaccurate or biased claims about Democratic candidates, it’s better not to click away or hang up. Take screenshots or detailed notes, or record the phone call, and share the questionnaire with me. (I won’t publish your name.)

Adam Shriver is Director of Wellness and Nutrition at the Harkin Institute for Public Policy and Citizen Engagement. This essay was first published on his Substack newsletter, Canary in a Cornfield.

Republican State Senator Ken Rozenboom spoke at the Iowa Senate Agriculture Committee’s first meeting of the year on January 13. I appreciate that he raised the topic of nitrates in drinking water. He also made some comments that deserve a response.

I clipped a video from Rozenboom’s opening remarks, which I’ll focus on here:

Noah Gratias is a Navy Intelligence Officer and Iowa State University alum. The views expressed are his own and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Navy or the U.S. Government. He can be reached at noahgratias@gmail.com.

The past few months have demonstrated once again that many soybean producers cannot survive without access to firms owned and operated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). U.S. leaders should treat this vulnerability as a national security challenge, not a minor trade war glitch. There is danger in treating every economic dispute as a security issue, but this situation demands urgent attention. In practical terms, Beijing can bludgeon the Midwest any time Washington crosses the CCP.

Beijing understands this leverage and has built policy around it. “Grain security” is a CCP priority, and Chinese leaders have made it clear they are working to slash U.S. food imports. Investments in South America, combined with state-managed soybean reserves, have further enhanced Beijing’s advantage.

Al Charlson is a North Central Iowa farm kid, lifelong Iowan, and retired bank trust officer. This commentary was first published in the Waverly Democrat.

With reluctance and apprehension I am beginning 2026 by venturing back into the property tax jungle. In my September column, which focused on farmland taxes, I indicated I would return to address the property tax concerns of my in-town friends and neighbors.

In-town residential property taxes are more complicated for a couple of reasons. Of course, city residents pay city taxes—city finances could easily be the topic for an entire column. I had the opportunity to be a guest Waverly City Council member in January 2025, which included attending annual budget hearings. My overall impression was that our city operating departments are seriously committed to providing the services they deliver as efficiently as possible.

The other complicating factor is that houses are taxed on their estimated market value. That gets interesting. In 2024 the assessed value of our home was increased 15.3 percent. The Assessor only bumped up the value of the house by 6 percent, but increased the value of our lot by 56 percent.

For most of the time Kim Reynolds has served as governor, her staff have tried to limit my access to information and news conferences available to other statehouse reporters. This week, the governor’s press secretary blocked me from attending a briefing a few hours before Reynolds delivered her Condition of the State address.

The video of my encounter with Mason Mauro on January 13 was shared widely and generated hundreds of comments across my social media feeds. Many readers, followers, and well-wishers (plus a few trolls) have asked about the incident—far too many for me to answer individually.

I’m addressing the most frequently asked questions below.

I’ve been writing about the Iowa legislature, campaigns, and elections at Bleeding Heartland since 2007, and I’ve rarely looked forward to a new year in politics as much as this one.

With open-seat races for governor, U.S. Senate, and two U.S. House seats in Iowa, plus many incumbents facing challengers from within their own party, this year’s primaries will be the most fascinating I’ve covered—especially on the Republican side. The general election will feature competitive races for many state and federal offices.

The dynamics of the tenth legislative session under a GOP trifecta could be quite different, now that Governor Kim Reynolds is a lame duck, and senior roles in both the Iowa House and Senate have changed since last spring.

I will continue to publish deep dives and exclusive reporting about state government, legislative, Congressional, and campaign happenings at Bleeding Heartland, sharing links to all of those posts on Facebook, Bluesky, X (formerly Twitter), Mastodon, and the free Evening Heartland email newsletter.

But over the past five years, my political reporting has expanded far beyond this website. If you’re only following my work here, you’re not getting the whole picture.

The Iowa Senate reconvened on January 12 with a different look: a new majority leader (Mike Klimesh) and a changed balance of power: 33 Republicans and seventeen Democrats, down from a 34-16 GOP majority for most of the 2025 session.

Seven senators (four Republicans, three Democrats) were elected to the chamber for the first time in 2024, and three more won their seats in special elections during 2025.

Fourteen senators are women (eight Democrats and six Republicans)—that’s one more woman than last year, since Democrat Catelin Drey won the race to succeed the late Rocky De Witt in Senate district 1, and Renee Hardman won the race to succeed the late Claire Celsi in Senate district 16. The high point for women’s representation in the Iowa Senate was in 2023 and 2024, when the chamber had 35 men and fifteen women.

Hardman is the first Black woman to serve in the Iowa Senate and only the third African American ever elected to the chamber. Democrat Izaah Knox is also Black. The other 48 senators are white. No Latino has ever served in the chamber, and Iowa’s only Asian-American senator was Swati Dandekar, who resigned in 2011.

In 2023, Democrat Janice Weiner became the first Jewish person to serve in the Iowa Senate since Ralph Rosenberg left the legislature after 1994. She became the first Jewish person to lead an Iowa legislative caucus when her peers elected her minority leader in November 2024.

Democrat Liz Bennett is the only out LGBTQ member of the Iowa Senate.

I enclose below details on the majority and minority leadership teams, along with all chairs, vice chairs, and members of Iowa Senate committees. Where relevant, I’ve mentioned changes since last year’s legislative session. Although there hasn’t been as much turnover as the Iowa House saw during the interim, Klimesh did make quite a few changes in the committees compared to last year. He took all committee assignments away from one Republican (Doug Campbell) and took certain positions away from Kevin Alons, Mark Lofgren, Sandy Salmon, and Dave Sires.

Some non-political trivia: the 50 Iowa senators include four men named Mike (three Republicans and a Democrat), two Toms (a Democrat and a Republican), a Dave and a David (both Republicans), and two men each named Jeff, Mark, and Dan (all Republicans).

Normally, big changes in the Iowa legislature happen the year after a general election. But there has been much more turnover than usual in the Iowa House since last spring. With two Republicans running for Congress and another resigning from the legislature to take a Trump administration job, a chain reaction leaves ten House committees with a different leader for the 2026 session.

The overall balance of power remains the same: 67 Republicans and 33 Democrats in the chamber. Each party has some new faces in the leadership team, however. All of those details are listed below, along with committee assignments and background on all committee chairs and ranking members. As needed, I’ve noted changes since last year’s session.

Nineteen House members (fourteen Republicans and five Democrats) are serving their first term in the legislature—three more than in 2025, due to special elections that happened last March, April, and December.

The number of women serving in the chamber crept up from 27 at the beginning of 2025 to 29 as of January 2026, since Democrat Angel Ramirez succeeded Sami Scheetz in House district 78 and Republican Wendy Larson was elected to replace Mike Sexton in House district 7. The ratio of 71 men and 29 women is the same as during the 2024 session.

Six African Americans (Democrats Jerome Amos, Jr., Ruth Ann Gaines, Rob Johnson, Mary Madison, and Ross Wilburn, and Republican Eddie Andrews) serve in the legislature’s lower chamber. Gaines chairs the Iowa Legislative Black Caucus.

Republican Mark Cisneros became the first Latino elected to the Iowa legislature in 2020, and Democrat Adam Zabner became the second Latino to serve in the chamber in 2023, and Ramirez the chamber’s first Latina member in 2025.

Republican Henry Stone became the second Asian American ever to serve in the House after the 2020 election. Democrat Megan Srinivas was first elected in 2022. The other representatives are white.

Three House members identify as part of the LGBTQ community: Democrats Elinor Levin and Aime Wichtendahl, and Republican Austin Harris. As for religious diversity, Levin and Zabner are Jewish. Srinivas is Hindu. The chamber has had no Muslim members since Ako Abdul-Samad retired in 2024.

Some non-political trivia: the 100 Iowa House members include two with the surname Meyer (a Democrat and a Republican), two Johnsons (a Democrat and a Republican), and a Thompson and a Thomson (both Republicans).

As for popular first names, there are four men named David (one goes by Dave), three named Thomas or Tom, three Roberts (two Bobs and a Bobby), a Jon and a John, a Josh and a Joshua, a Mike and a Michael, and two men each named Jeff, Dan, Brian, Steven, Chad, Austin, and Mark. There is also an Elizabeth and a Beth, and two women each named Jennifer, Heather, Megan, and Shannon. As recently as 2020, four women named Mary served in the Iowa House, but now there is only one.

Iowa’s all-Republican Congressional delegation votes in unison on almost every resolution or bill. But last week, U.S. Representatives Zach Nunn (IA-03) and Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-01) each parted ways with most of their GOP colleagues on high-profile measures.

Nunn and Miller-Meeks are among the country’s most vulnerable U.S. House incumbents. They have largely supported President Donald Trump’s agenda and remained loyal to House GOP leaders. But in recent weeks, they have taken different paths on an issue likely to be at the center of their 2026 re-election campaigns.

And while Nunn publicly explained why he supported a Democratic bill on health insurance subsidies, Miller-Meeks drew no attention to her votes to override Trump’s vetoes of two uncontroversial bills.

Nunn’s political strategy is easier to understand than Miller-Meeks’. But it may be just as risky.

Editor’s note from Laura Belin: This post has been updated with additional information and clarifications.

Linda Schreiber writes commentary on selected legislative issues.

For more than four decades, Iowa’s Bottle Bill stood as a national model: simple, effective, and popular. It reduced litter, boosted recycling, and put responsibility where it belonged—on producers and consumers. The 2022 update weakened those goals while reducing public accountability.

In 2019, Iowa State University professor Dr. Dermot Hayes recommended adjusting the five-cent deposit enacted in 1979 for inflation, roughly 17 cents at the time. A survey showed 88 percent of Iowans supported the Bottle Bill. Advocates, including the League of Women Voters and the Sierra Club, urged lawmakers to strengthen the program, improve redemption access, and preserve public benefits.

Iowa lawmakers chose a different path.

West Des Moines City Council member Renee Hardman won big in the December 30 special election to represent Iowa Senate district 16. Unofficial results show the Democrat defeated Republican Lucas Loftin by 7,341 votes to 2,930 (71.4 percent to 28.5 percent), a margin of about 43 points in a district Kamala Harris carried by about 17 points in 2024.

Hardman will make history as the first Black woman to serve in the Iowa Senate. Her win also means Democrats will hold seventeen of the 50 Iowa Senate seats during the 2026 legislative session, depriving Republicans of the two-thirds supermajority needed to confirm Governor Kim Reynolds’ nominees without any Democratic support.

In an emotional speech to supporters after results were in, Hardman acknowledged the late State Senator Claire Celsi, a personal friend who had managed her first city council race in 2017. “Claire led with courage, she loved this community fiercely. […] We will continue the work she cared about so deeply. We will honor her legacy, and we won’t give up the fight for a better Iowa.” The victory party was at Tavern II, a West Des Moines restaurant where Celsi regularly held her own campaign events.

The outcome was not a surprise, given the partisan lean of Senate district 16 and a massive ground game that gave Democrats a substantial lead in early votes banked.

Still, we can learn a few lessons from the lopsided special election result.

Voters in Iowa Senate district 16 will elect a successor to State Senator Claire Celsi on December 30. The stakes are high: this election will determine whether Republicans regain their 34-16 supermajority in the chamber for the 2026 legislative session. With a two-thirds majority, Republicans could confirm Governor Kim Reynolds’ nominees with no Democratic support.

If West Des Moines City Council member Renee Hardman keeps this seat in the blue column, the Republican majority in the chamber will return to 33-17, meaning Democrats could block some of the governor’s worst appointees. Either way, the winner will serve out the remainder of Celsi’s term.

Hardman is favored over Republican Lucas Loftin in this suburban area. But as we’ve seen this year in Iowa, anything can happen in a low-turnout special election. And it’s hard to think of a date primed for lower turnout than the Tuesday between Christmas and New Year’s Day.

Since Donald Trump returned to the White House, I’ve sometimes wondered: is there anything this president could do that Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird would find objectionable?

We got the answer this week, when Bird and counterparts from seven other Republican-controlled states quietly expressed “concerns” about one of Trump’s actions.

You’ll never guess why.

Jon Muller is a semi-retired policy analyst and entrepreneur who previously was a tax analyst and revenue forecaster for Iowa’s Revenue Estimating Conference.

Iowa Republicans appear to be budgeting on pure hope. And that’s probably the only tool they have. That hope appears to be misplaced.

State government is piecing together a budget, but it’s like flying a plane with one engine gone. This piece is an effort to estimate how far they can fly the plane before it crashes.

The three-member Revenue Estimating Conference (REC) left the estimates largely unchanged at its December 11 meeting, with an additional $23 million for the current fiscal year and an extra $105 million for the budget they’ll appropriate next session.

Normally, that would be pretty good news. The state government historically worked on the premise that future expected appropriations could be funded with future expected revenues. Even when the income tax cutting regime got its foothold in the mid-1990s, both the legislative and executive branches used five-year forecasts of revenues and expenditures to make sure the long-term forecast was at least theoretically reasonable. There’s nothing inherently wrong with using reserves to fund tax cuts in the short run, if it’s reasonable to believe future revenue increases are sufficient to fund them.

I sincerely doubt the state government uses this approach anymore. Because they have committed fiscal malpractice the likes of which I have never seen in Iowa.

Wendy Larson will be the newest Republican in the Iowa House, after winning the December 9 special election in House district 7 by a margin of 2,817 votes to 1,201 for Democratic candidate Rachel Burns (70.0 percent to 29.9 percent). Larson’s victory brings the GOP majority in the chamber back to 67-33. Her predecessor, State Representative Mike Sexton, stepped down in September to take a senior position with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The special election outcome was almost a foregone conclusion in one of the state’s reddest legislative districts. House district 7, covering Sac, Pocahontas, and Calhoun counties, plus some rural areas of Webster County, contains more registered Republicans than Democrats and no-party voters combined. Donald Trump received nearly 75 percent of the vote here in 2024, well above the 55.7 percent he received statewide in Iowa.

Still, I was closely watching the race to see what the results might tell us about voter enthusiasm and changing preferences going into the 2026 midterms.

It’s hard to draw any broad conclusions from this election, but I have a few takeaways.

Sarah Watson had the scoop for the Quad-City Times: U.S. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks no longer officially lives in Scott County, or anywhere in Iowa’s first Congressional district. In July 2025, she changed her voter registration back to the Ottumwa home she shares with her husband.

Aspiring candidates and campaign strategists could learn a lot from how Miller-Meeks has handled questions surrounding her residency over the past four years. It’s hard to believe an experienced politician could botch this issue so badly.

Wayne Ford is the executive director of Wayne Ford Equity Impact Institute and co-Director of the Brown and Black Forums of America. He is a former member of the Iowa legislature and the founder and former executive director of Urban Dreams.

INTRODUCTION: A STATE IN TRANSITION

For nearly half a century, Iowans have approached our future with optimism, hard work, and a deep commitment to community. But as we enter the next 25 years—from 2026 through 2050—the forces shaping Iowa are fundamentally different from anything in our past. These forces are structural, interconnected, and accelerating. They affect every sector of our society: our schools, our health care systems, our farmland, our water, our workforce, our economy, and the very makeup of our communities.

For decades, states like Iowa have relied on annual budgeting to shape priorities. But a one-year budget cannot capture pressures that unfold over decades. Nor can it measure the true economic cost of challenges such as rural hospital closures, workforce shortages, mental health crises, water contamination, demographic decline, artificial intelligence, or the shifting global market for agriculture.

To prepare for the next generation, Iowa must adopt a broader lens—one that helps leaders understand where the state is headed, not only where the budget is today.

Matt Russell is a farmer, political writer, and progressive ag and rural leader. He has published work in the New York Times, TIME, AgInsider, Civil Eats, and many state and local publications. He co-owns Coyote Run Farm with his husband Patrick Standley in rural Lacona, Iowa. A version of this essay first appeared on his Substack newsletter, Growing New Leaders: Perspectives from Coyote Run Farm.

Iowans will have some outstanding Democratic candidates to vote for in 2026. A Democratic candidate for secretary of agriculture is not yet among them, but could be soon.

Chris Jones has announced an exploratory committee and plans to decide whether to run in January. You can read Laura Belin’s interview with him here. Jones, who has a PhD in analytical chemistry, is a longtime advocate for cleaner water. He’s a sharp critic of how the agriculture industry has contributed to the pollution but avoided taking enough (if any) responsibility for dirty water.

Until election day 2024, I had planned to run for Iowa secretary of agriculture in 2026. My plan was to stay in my appointment at USDA with the Biden-Harris Administration until this fall. I’d hoped Christina Bohannan would win in Iowa’s first Congressional district, and as only one or two Democratic members of the Iowa delegation, I’d work with her to identify a great candidate to offer to the Harris-Walz Administration to be the next State Executive Director of the Iowa Farm Service Agency.

“Good job you did! Great job,” President Donald Trump says to U.S. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks in a 30-second commercial that has reached thousands of Iowans on the radio or social media platforms over the past month.

The three-term Republican did not place the ads through her campaign committee, which had accumulated more than $2.6 million cash on hand as of September 30.

Instead, Miller-Meeks—considered one of the country’s most vulnerable House Republicans—has used taxpayer funds to share Trump’s praise with Iowans.

Bleeding Heartland’s review of data from Facebook’s ad library and Federal Communications Commission files suggest that Miller-Meeks’ Congressional office has spent at least $10,000 to run this spot. (Several other taxpayer-funded radio ads have also been in rotation this fall.)

If the 2024 campaign is any indication, Miller-Meeks may spend much more from her Congressional office budget in the coming months, as she seeks to shore up her appeal with conservatives before another competitive primary election in Iowa’s first district.

Carl Olsen is the founder of Iowans for Medical Marijuana.

The Iowaska Church of Healing is seeking a federal exemption for the religious use of ayahuasca, a hallucinogen in Schedule 1 of the Controlled Substances Act. Several other churches have received exemptions for ayahuasca, so it seems like the process should be straightforward, and that’s what the church argued in the U.S. Court of Appeals on November 14, 2025, after a six-year delay in processing their application.

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) created a Guidance Document for the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) in 2009 which is at the heart of this case argued before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on November 14, 2025. In re: Iowaska Church of Healing, No. 25-1140. The Guidance Document explains how to apply for a religious exception to the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) of 1970 using the regulatory authority in the CSA.

Prior to the decision in Gonzales v. O Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal, 546 U.S. 418 (2006), the DEA had claimed it lacked the regulatory authority in the CSA to make religious exceptions. The Guidance Document does not include an apology for that error, but it does finally settle the issue of whether the DEA has the authority to make religious exceptions. It does, and it always did.

Chuck Isenhart is an investigative reporter, photographer, and recovering Iowa state legislator offering research, analysis, education, and public affairs advocacy at his Substack newsletter Iowa Public Policy Dude, where this essay first appeared.

Thanksgiving is one day in the year that no one in the United States should go hungry. Ya think? If you don’t agree with that, you probably are not reading this post.

While Iowa’s Governor Kim Reynolds pardoned Tailfeathers and Wing-ding the turkeys this week, it’s worth noting that she and others in the majority party who consent to her schemes don’t mind depriving people of food access other times of year.

No, I am not related to Debbie Downer, who spoiled Thanksgiving dinner. However, now that I have gathered some evidence, this holiday seems an appropriate time to point out that the governor’s Healthy Kids Iowa summer food “pilot” program for school children did exactly that—deprived kids of food.

A little-known conservative group based in Virginia spent heavily in October to run a 30-second positive ad about Attorney General Brenna Bird on television and streaming services across Iowa.

The Fund for Economic Independence later claimed their commercial “sharply” improved Bird’s image with “targeted persuadable voters,” moving her from a 7-point deficit to a tie in a ballot test against Democratic challenger Nate Willems.

While it’s impossible to confirm whether that commercial measurably helped Bird with swing voters, one thing is clear: more than a year before the 2026 midterm election, the attorney general’s polling numbers were bad enough to inspire a well-funded outside rescue mission.

The bill President Donald Trump signed on November 12 to end the longest federal government shutdown includes $16 million for designated projects in Iowa, according to Bleeding Heartland’s analysis of a Senate Appropriations Committee report. U.S. Senators Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley were among 60 senators who approved the funding bill on November 10. All four U.S. House Republicans from Iowa—Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-01), Ashley Hinson (IA-02), Zach Nunn (IA-03), and Randy Feenstra (IA-04)—were among the 22 representatives who voted for the bill two days later.

The bill funds most federal government operations through January 30, 2026. A few agencies and programs, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture, are funded through the end of the federal fiscal year on September 30, 2026.

Miller-Meeks, Hinson, and Nunn had all requested “community project funding” through various USDA programs. The final bill included eleven of those earmarked projects: five in Hinson’s district, and three each sought by Miller-Meeks and Nunn.

The 36 counties in IA-04 will receive none of the earmarked funding, because for the fifth straight year, Feenstra declined to submit any requests for community projects. Ernst and Grassley have not participated in the earmarks process in recent years either. Abstaining from the process does not save any taxpayer dollars; it only ensures that the federal funds allocated for Congressionally-directed spending flow to other members’ districts.

These are the first earmarks Iowa will receive from a government funding bill since 2024. Miller-Meeks, Hinson, and Nunn submitted a combined $115 million in community project requests for fiscal year 2025, but the appropriations bill Congress approved in March of this year—with Iowa’s whole delegation voting in favor—included no money for any earmarked projects.

Miller-Meeks, Hinson, and Nunn each submitted fifteen community project funding requests (the maximum allowed for each U.S. House member) for the current fiscal year. Most of them were repeated from last year. The fate of the other projects—which include improvements to roads, flood mitigation, higher education, and airports—won’t be known until Congress approves and Trump signs final appropriations bills for fiscal year 2026.

Jeff Morrison is a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative and the publisher of the Between Two Rivers newsletter, where this article first appeared. Find more of his work at betweentworivers.substack.com and iowahighwayends.net.

Forty-three Iowa school districts held bond referendums on November 4. According to unofficial results from the Iowa Secretary of State’s Office, eighteen passed, fifteen had a majority in favor but not the required 60 percent supermajority, and ten failed to reach 50 percent. The middle category has five districts of all sizes—Cedar Rapids, Easton Valley, Hinton, Independence, and Sergeant Bluff-Luton—receiving more than 58 percent but less than 60 percent support.

The 43 districts voted on a combined $1,435,950,000 in general obligation bonds. (That includes Atlantic’s $22.5 million bond for school construction, which passed, but not its $18.5 million sales tax revenue bond for a multipurpose facility, which failed.)

“I think it really speaks to the changing of the times,” Jill Shudak told me on November 6, two days after she became the first woman elected mayor of southwest Iowa’s largest city. Council Bluffs is “moving forward, and they’re ready for a forward thinker.”

Amid many Democratic victories from coast to coast in the November 2025 election, Shudak’s accomplishment stayed mostly below the radar. But she beat the odds in two ways. As a first-term city council member, she defeated a well-known, long-serving incumbent. Council Bluffs voters had elected Matt Walsh mayor three times; he had previously served on the city council since 1996.

It’s also notable that a Democrat won a mayoral race in a city that has trended red. (While local elections are nonpartisan in Iowa, area Democrats and labor activists were supporting Shudak, and Walsh is a Republican.) Bleeding Heartland’s analysis of results from the 2024 general election show voters across the 22 Council Bluffs precincts preferred Donald Trump for president by a margin of 53.6 percent to 44.7 percent for Kamala Harris, and preferred Republican Randy Feenstra to Democratic challenger Ryan Melton in the Congressional race by 55.3 percent to 44.1 percent.

Unofficial results from the 2025 election show Shudak received 3,641 votes (43.9 percent) to 3,524 votes (42.5 percent) for Walsh. City council member Chris Peterson likely received most of the 1,130 write-in votes (13.6 percent) in the mayoral race.

Shudak made time to talk about her campaign despite a “whirlwind” of activity since the election, including conversations with the city’s department heads and a round table discussion about property taxes with Governor Kim Reynolds. Here’s the full video from our interview.

Dan Guild is a lawyer and project manager who lives in New Hampshire. In addition to writing for Bleeding Heartland, he has written for CNN and Sabato’s Crystal Ball, most recently here. He also contributed to the Washington Post’s 2020 primary simulations. Follow him on Twitter @dcg1114.

This is a quick post about two things to watch for in today’s elections for governor in New Jersey and Virginia.

At long last, U.S. Representative Randy Feenstra confirmed on October 28 that he’s running for governor.

For all of his talk about “taking Iowa to new heights”—and boy, was there a lot of it—the Republican front-runner’s rollout won’t get high marks.

Carl Olsen is the founder of Iowans for Medical Marijuana.

“The medicinal properties of the cannabis plant have been known for millennia.” Lambert Initiative for Cannabinoid Therapeutics, History of cannabis, The University of Sydney.

Iowa classified cannabis as a habit-forming drug with accepted medical use in 1921. 1921 Acts ch. 282.

In 1967, the United States entered into an international agreement classifying cannabis as having no medical use. Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, May 25, 1967, 18 U.S.T. 1407, 520 U.N.T.S. 151.  The Single Convention allows exceptions. From Article 36(2): “Subject to the constitutional limitations of a Party, its legal system and domestic law, …”

Ed Tibbetts, a longtime reporter and editor in the Quad-Cities, is the publisher of the Along the Mississippi newsletter, where this article first appeared. Find more of his work at edtibbetts.substack.com.

If I were in charge of the state budget and had just watched $825 million unexpectedly disappear, I suppose I’d try to bluff my way out of this mess, too.

Which is what the Reynolds administration looked like it was doing earlier this month, when the state’s Revenue Estimating Conference (REC) said the 2025 fiscal year ended with $300 million less than they’d expected a year ago.

For the current fiscal year, 2026, they’re now anticipating a whopping $525 million less than predicted last October.

I touched on this trend in my last post about Iowa’s long-suffering economy, but after I published, the news from the REC got so much worse.

No wonder the ruling party was putting on a brave face and trying to convince Iowans this was all part of the plan. But they’re not very good poker players. Their tells were all over the place.

Randy Evans is executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that promotes openness and transparency in Iowa’s state and local governments. He can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com. This essay first appeared on his Substack newsletter, Stray Thoughts. 

The nation’s founders got right to the point when they laid out how to treat the First Amendment freedoms of religion, speech, the press and the rights of people to assemble and to petition the government. They used only 45 words, without asterisks.

Their simple words should lead to simple conclusions. Yet, recent Iowa cases illustrate why people in general, and educators specifically, are perplexed about what is protected and what is not.

Some legal background:

Pam Mackey Taylor is the Director of the Iowa Chapter of the Sierra Club.

Every three years, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) conducts a Triennial Review of its water quality standards. Part of the review is a determination of what changes need to be made to Iowa’s existing water quality standards.

The agenda for the Triennial Review was simple. The DNR intends to focus on the following topic areas related to water quality standards:

• Tribal reserved rights
• Antidegradation
• Human health criteria
• Chapter 61/Surface Water Classification document cleanup
• Use attainability analysis
• PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, sometimes called “forever chemicals”)
• Lake nutrients

After digging into these topics during the review meeting, what jumped out was the lack of investment the State of Iowa and the DNR have made in water quality and improved water quality standards over the last two decades. 

A new Iowa poll is testing messages about a $4,000 tax credit to help families cover “approved education expenses,” and suggests that approach may save taxpayer money currently spent on children enrolled in public schools.

It’s not clear who commissioned the text survey, which has been in the field in recent days. The questionnaire points to Randy Feenstra’s campaign for governor, which is technically still in the “exploratory” phase, or some entity planning to support Feenstra for governor. Many of the questions use preferred Republican frames (“education freedom,” parental choice, “limiting government overreach”). The poll asks how important it is for Iowa’s next governor to “work to improve K-12 education,” and tests only one potential match-up: Randy Feenstra vs. Rob Sand. (Last month, Bleeding Heartland covered a different poll testing messages about Feenstra and Sand.)

Homeschoolers are an important Republican constituency, especially among social conservatives. Families who send their kids to private schools—almost all of which are Christian or Catholic—would also welcome an education tax credit, in addition to the taxpayer assistance they already receive through Iowa’s school voucher program (“education savings accounts”).

Feenstra has good reason to search for ways to shore up his support with the “education freedom” crowd. His underwhelming victory over a little-known 2024 primary challenger highlighted troubles on his right flank. He is unpopular among property rights activists who oppose the use of eminent domain to build Summit Carbon Solutions’ proposed CO2 pipeline. He has skipped forums involving other Republican candidates for governor, including an Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition event in July. Feenstra’s exploratory committee has the resources to pay for opinion research.

A recent poll of “likely Republican voters,” conducted by American Viewpoint, found Feenstra “in a commanding position,” with 41 percent support in the governor’s race and no other GOP candidate above 5 percent. A cautionary note: American Viewpoint’s polls for Feenstra’s U.S. House campaign found the incumbent with a roughly 50-point lead over challenger Kevin Virgil before the 2024 GOP primary. Feenstra ended up winning the nomination in Iowa’s fourth Congressional district by a margin of 60.1 percent to 39.4 percent.

A pair of recent polls have tried to gauge how the arrest of then Des Moines Superintendent Ian Roberts could affect Iowa’s U.S. Senate race.

One text survey, which was in the field this past week, seeks to determine how much respondents have heard about the incident, who “bears the most responsibility” for the situation, and whether the Roberts controversy gives respondents concerns about Des Moines School Board President Jackie Norris, who is one of the Democrats running for Senate. A different version of the survey tests another negative message about Norris’ past political work and support for “radical DEI policies” on the school board.

Staff for Norris did not respond to inquiries about the survey, but the question wording (enclosed in full below) strongly suggests the Norris campaign commissioned it. Notably, the poll tests U.S. Representative Ashley Hinson (the Republican front-runner) against Norris twice, and Hinson against State Representative Josh Turek once, but does not ask respondents about their preference between Hinson and either State Senator Zach Wahls or Iraq War veteran Nathan Sage. It also tests messages about Norris, but not about any other Democratic candidate.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee, the main campaign arm of U.S. Senate Republicans, commissioned a separate poll of 579 “Democratic primary voters via text-to-web surveys” on September 29 and 30, a few days after Roberts’ arrest. The NRSC has not released full results from that poll, the questionnaire, or the screen used to identify “Democratic primary voters.” Jennie Taer published a few findings in an article on the conservative website The Daily Wire.

“The system is broken,” declared Libertarian Thomas Laehn as he kicked off his U.S. Senate campaign on October 11.

The Greene County attorney, who became the first Libertarian elected to a partisan office in Iowa in 2018, styled his case against two-party governance as a two-count “indictment” of the 535 members of Congress.

One of his central arguments could appeal to many disaffected Republicans.

John Gilbert farms with a brother, a son, and their wives along South Fork, a tributary of the Iowa River. In addition to non-GMO row crops, they raise small grains, forages, cattle, and antibiotic free pigs they sell to Niman Ranch. John is a volunteer with the Southfork Watershed Alliance, and is active in Practical Farmers of Iowa and the Iowa Farmers Union. Their farm has been recognized for its work toward sustainability. 

EDITOR’S NOTE: John Gilbert wrote the following essay, which was first published by the Des Moines Register, before the two-year anniversary of the 2018 Farm Bill’s expiration (September 30). Four members of Iowa’s Congressional delegation (Senators Chuck Grasssley and Joni Ernst, and Representatives Randy Feenstra and Zach Nunn) serve on the Senate or House Agriculture Committees, which are responsible for writing the Farm Bill.

It’s also important to note that this week, the Trump administration is expected to announce bailout payments for soybean farmers—reportedly of about $100 an acre—to offset damages caused by this administration’s erratic tariffs, and trade disruptions. The need for such a payment underscores the weakness of a farm policy based on unrestricted production.

It’s officially time Iowa has one of those warnings, like what you see on cigarette packages: “Caution: Living in Iowa is Hazardous to Your Health!”

The problem isn’t just that Iowa’s water carries way too many farm field pollutants (we’re all tired of hearing about nitrates), although that’s part of it. It’s not just that Iowa has way too many people dealing with cancer; or just that jobs in agriculture, meat packing, construction and manufacturing can be dangerous; or just the dangers of health care deserts in many areas of Iowa. And it’s not just that climate change is making Iowa’s weather more dangerous. The problem is all of those things, and more.