Bruce Lear lives in Sioux City and has been connected to Iowa’s public schools for 38 years. He taught for eleven years and represented educators as an Iowa State Education Association regional director for 27 years until retiring. He can be reached at BruceLear2419@gmail.com 

School lunches were a minefield for a picky eater like me. Our rural school was blessed with dedicated elementary teachers who ranked proper nutrition equal to reading, writing, and arithmetic.   

Thanks to those teachers, long before I negotiated wages, benefits and language for educators, I bargained literally under the table trades for peanut butter sandwiches and extra homemade cookies.

Trading food was forbidden by the lunch wardens, and a few times I was caught, tried, convicted, and forced to eat my attempted trade. One memorable time was when I was caught trying to palm-off stewed tomatoes.

Nick Covington is an Iowa parent who taught high school social studies for ten years.

Iowans today find their rights limited by private, partisan, and parochial interests, where the in-group gets the freedom to flourish and the out-group is free to leave.

State logo and slogan adopted by the Reynolds administration in 2023

Iowa Republican candidates and elected officials have been quick to claim the mantle of “culture” and “heritage” in our state. Back in February, then Iowa Republican gubernatorial candidate, Zach Lahn told Tucker Carlson, “the primary catalyst for me doing this was I believe we are losing our culture and our heritage as a people. That’s my honest belief…Are the traditions and the heritage and the value[s] of our ancestors important to us?”

Gerald Ott of Ankeny was a high school English teacher and for 30 years a school improvement consultant for the Iowa State Education Association.

Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds has won the culture war.

In so-doing, Reynolds has dug the state into a deep, deep hole largely by rallying voters to reject allegedly naughty books and keeping them (us) embroiled in one-after-another pieces of nonsense legislation.

And by gifting a minority of parents, her allies, with the unquestioned right to enroll their kids, at taxpayer’s expense, in any church-affiliated school, academy, or charter of their choice. And, in the face of all these new budget-busting costs, cutting taxes and swaying otherwise public minded voters to doubt the effectiveness of their kids’ local schools. It’s plain sinful.

Dave Leshtz is the editor of The Prairie Progressive.

I’ve written about and gotten to know several members of Iowa’s Satanic Temple. 

They are young and intelligent. They come mostly from small towns in Iowa, where their families still live. They have a sense of humor and like to dress in black. They consider the poet John Milton’s Paradise Lost their foundational text – their Bible, so to speak.

Most of all, they are sincere in their belief that government shouldn’t favor one religion over another, that public services or benefits to religious groups should not be denied because officials disagree with their beliefs.

I don’t personally know any members of the Assemblies of God, a Pentecostal denomination for which Iowa gubernatorial candidate Adam Steen is a credentialed minister. It is an Evangelical church which reported in 2022 a worldwide membership of 69 million. The Satanic Temple claims approximately 700,000 members, according to Wikipedia. Its numbers in the state of Iowa are, well, considerably less.

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. 

We all need reminders now and then.

Some of us believe there is only one correct way to think and speak and act in these United States of America. But that is not true.

Americans are not who we are because we are the same. Americans are who we are, and our nation has long been a shining beacon, because we are all different and were brought together by that freedom to be different.

One occasional reader of my stray thoughts suggested I republish the following column from 2017, which remains relevant today.

Rodney Drenkow is an attorney, a local business owner, and a former member of the Waverly City Council. This column first appeared in the Waverly Democrat.

This is the most difficult piece that I have ever written. Emotions are inflamed. Positions have been set in concrete. There does not seem to be room for any middle ground. The last thing that I want to do is add to the chaos. But I am also very concerned.

It seems that we have fallen far from what makes America great. There are many, many examples: from treating our allies with disdain, the insane way that trade partnerships for our corn and soybeans that have been built up over decades are so cavalierly discarded, the use of federal agencies as vehicles to control, intimidate, and exact retribution against American citizens, the disturbing treatment of those who exercise their Constitutional right to protest. 

Being a bully does not make us respected. Think Biff Tannen in the “Back to the Future” movies. Rather than “Make America Great Again” we are witnessing the tearing down of the very things that make us great. 

I truthfully don’t understand why some people are so afraid of immigrants. Immigrants are, by and large, hard working people, doing the jobs that Americans often don’t want. 

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. 

What makes freedom of speech so difficult to understand and accept?

That question came up during a recent discussion at the Des Moines Valley Friends Meeting. The Friends invited me to speak at the gathering that coincided with the 50th anniversary of the December 15, 1975 bombing of the Friends meeting house and the adjacent American Friends Service Committee building at 42nd Street and Grand Avenue in Des Moines.

Police never located the bomber, so no criminal charges were filed. Consensus remains that someone planted the explosives who disliked the Quakers’ and AFSC’s opposition to the Vietnam war, their support of non-violence, and their humanitarian relief efforts in Vietnam after the war.

I reminded the audience of what Mary Autenrieth of Paullina, the chair of the AFSC’s regional policy board 50 years ago, told The Des Moines Register then: “I expect in a nation where open disagreement is encouraged, there are some who disagree with us. But I would expect that they would not use violence in answer.”

Editor’s note from Laura Belin: The story Trone Garriott told, which the Des Moines Register published here, indicates that she was an intern pastor when these events occurred. She did a reading at the wedding described, but the pastor who was training her officiated at the wedding.

Francis Boggus is an experienced community development professional in rural Iowa communities and former Democratic State Central Committee member from Council Bluffs, now living in Des Moines. He has endorsed Jennifer Konfrst for Congress. 

Recently, a friend who’s deciding whom to support in Iowa’s Democratic primaries sent me this video from the Des Moines Register’s “Storytellers Project” series in 2023. In the video, State Senator Sarah Trone Garriot (who is now running for Congress in Iowa’s third district) describes the first wedding she performed to marry a pair of Satanists.

I’ll be clear: I have no personal issue with Satanists. Like many other Iowans, I believe their First Amendment rights should be protected just like anyone else’s. I am no stranger to marriages that might be looked down upon—I was in an interracial marriage in the 1980s, and one of my daughters is married to a woman. Marriage equality across race, religion, and sexuality must be protected.

What bothers me is the tone Trone Garriott used when talking about working class people, whether they be in West Virginia or Iowa.

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.

Dave Leshtz is the editor of The Prairie Progressive.

“Satanism is as American as apple pie.”

           –Bill Douglas, author of The People are Kind: A Religious History of Iowa

It was hot as hell on Sunday, September 14, in Toledo, Iowa—the scene of a public reading of John Milton’s Paradise Lost.

For the second time, members of the Satanic Temple of Iowa gathered to honor the epic poem they consider the foundational text of what history calls The Enlightenment. My car’s thermometer reached 93 degrees as I parked in front of the Tama County courthouse. Undeterred by the heat, eight Temple members were dressed in their traditional Satanic black finery as they read Milton’s blank verse masterpiece beneath a black pop-up tent.

When I attended the Temple’s first public reading last summer, members were still smarting from the Iowa Department of Administrative Services’ abrupt cancellation of their planned event at the state capitol. Agency director Adam Steen had yanked its approval, forcing the group to look for another government location.

Jason Benell lives in Des Moines with his wife and two children. He is a combat veteran, former city council candidate, and president of Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers. This essay first appeared in the fall issue of the 2025 American Atheist Magazine

I am often asked, “Why are you an atheist?” or, “How can you be an atheist?” when engaging with members of the public. Here in Iowa, being an atheist, humanist, or secular person is still seen as an anomaly by a lot of folks, especially well-meaning people who are struggling with many of the actions of our state and federal government. They have grown up with the idea that religiosity is synonymous with morality, and while that is so demonstrably not true upon any short reflection, it remains a social burden nonreligious folks must bear. This is deeply unfair as well as untrue: most human beings do not share the faith of the people here.

This is one of the many reasons that I’m motivated to be an atheist activist.

Bruce Lear lives in Sioux City and has been connected to Iowa’s public schools for 38 years. He taught for eleven years and represented educators as an Iowa State Education Association regional director for 27 years until retiring. He can be reached at BruceLear2419@gmail.com 

There’s nothing wrong with politicians discussing their religious faith and beliefs. Religion is often a huge part of what makes a person who they are. There is, however, something terribly wrong when a candidate or office holder condemns all other religious beliefs by implying everyone in the United States should believe the way they do, and the country should make policy based on his beliefs. That’s religious nationalism. 

Religious nationalism is the belief that “a country’s historically predominant religion should be a central part of its national identity and drive policymaking.” It is linked to policies that promote one religion over others. It’s really just old-fashioned religious bigotry. 

Chris Prosch, the Republican candidate in the upcoming August 26 special election for Iowa Senate district 1, embraces religious nationalism. In 2022, Prosch’s firm “helped produce and distribute” a video called “Enemies Within the Church.” That video claimed mainline Christian denominations were corrupting Christianity because some leaders have become “woke.”

Jason Benell lives in Des Moines with his wife and two children. He is a combat veteran, former city council candidate, and president of Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers. This essay first appeared on his Substack newsletter, The Odd Man Out.

Imagine you’re caught breaking out a window with a baseball bat at the local grocery store.  You’ve done this before, both by accident and on purpose, depending on the day and your mood, and yet again, you’ve been caught. Bat in hand, you look up sheepishly as, rounding the corner you catch the gaze of your neighbor and their kids, the local grocer and proprietor, and worst of all, the local magistrate.

You’ve been busted. Again.

The group demands you explain yourself, astonished that you’d take a bat to a store window for as far as they can tell, no good reason. The property damage, the disturbance of the peace, and the threatening behavior have the now gathering townsfolk on edge and looking at you with suspicious. Now, you’ve been in this jam before, and you have an idea. It’s bold, but it is crazy enough that it just might work.

The Interfaith Alliance of Iowa has honored Bleeding Heartland with its 2025 Partner Organization award, “in recognition of your significant commitment to keep Iowans informed with a vital free press, an essential part of a strong democracy.”

Only one other media outlet has received this award from the Interfaith Alliance of Iowa: The Storm Lake Times and its Pulitzer Prize-winning editor Art Cullen in 2019.

The Interfaith Alliance of Iowa is a 501(c) 3 organization that describes itself as “the only statewide, non-partisan, progressive voice for people of faith and no faith protecting religious freedom, safeguarding the line between religion and government, ensuring religion is not misused to discriminate, championing individual rights, and uniting diverse voices to challenge extremism.”

Jason Benell lives in Des Moines with his wife and two children. He is a combat veteran, former city council candidate, and president of Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers. A version of this essay first appeared on his Substack newsletter, The Odd Man Out.

As an atheist and critic of religion, I didn’t expect to be writing about the goings on in the Catholic Church regarding the new pope. The media is abuzz with coverage of the man the cardinals elected, Robert Prevost of Chicago. Since he has been critical of notable right-wing politicians and policy on social media, and is the first Pope from North America, some have argued his selection signifies a continuation of the “progressive” legacy of the late Pope Francis.

However, the evidence is simply not stacking up behind this claim.

The Rev. Lizzie Gillman is an Episcopal priest in Des Moines serving St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church and the Beloved Community Initiative of the Episcopal Diocese of Iowa. She recently sent versions of this message to Republican members of the Iowa House, after the chamber approved House File 856, banning public entities and institutions from diversity, equity, and inclusion activities.

Dear Iowa House Republicans,

Your brilliant and faithful colleague, Representative Rob Johnson, shared a photo of today’s vote on HF856, and I see that you once again voted against Iowa being a diverse, equitable, and inclusive state. With your “green” vote, you joined those who continue to deny the truth that every Iowan, no matter their race, gender, or background, belongs and deserves dignity.

I am a woman who is able to serve as an ordained Episcopal priest because the Black Church – rooted in resilience, liberation, and justice—affirmed the gifts and calls of women long before many white institutions did. A few faithful white men stood in solidarity, helping to open the doors of pulpits and altars that had long been closed to women. The progress that allowed me to stand at the altar and proclaim God’s Word was born not from exclusion, but from courageous inclusion.

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.

Give Governor Kim Reynolds credit for consistency. When it comes to wanting to hide details of possible misstatements or misdeeds, she treats Lutherans and atheists alike.

Soon, Iowans may learn important lessons about “executive privilege” claims by the governor and whether they provide her any cover to keep staff documents in her office secret.

These teachable moments arise from two lawsuits filed within hours of each other on April 25.

Henry Jay Karp is the Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Emanuel in Davenport, Iowa, which he served from 1985 to 2017. He is the co-founder and co-convener of One Human Family QCA, a social justice organization.

As an Iowan, a Jew, and a rabbi who has served the Quad Cities Jewish community for nearly 40 years, I was beside myself when I read Dr. Thomas Lecaque’s guest column in Iowa Starting Line about the school chaplain bill moving through the Iowa legislature. Having made its way through the House and the Senate Education Committee, it is now eligible for floor debate in the Senate.

House File 884 is an offense of the highest degree to every non-Christian faith community in our state. It empowers school districts to hire chaplains “to provide support, services, and programs as assigned by the board of directors of the school district.”

If that sounds innocuous, think again, for the Senate Education Committee has already rejected an amendment that would restrict school chaplains from proselytizing students. So much for religious neutrality in our schools!

Dr. Thomas Lecaque is an Associate Professor of History at the Grand View University.

I teach at a Lutheran school in Iowa. We have a chapel on campus. Every faculty meeting and event, every major school event, starts with our campus pastor offering a prayer. There are boats hanging in the church and also in the room in the administrative building that was the first chapel on campus, because we’re a Danish Lutheran school, and both of those traditions run deep.

I say this not because you need to know about me, or about my university, but because chaplains on campus, chaplains in schools, religion and the university, is not a thing I have a problem with. We’re a private Lutheran school, and people who come here know that when they apply and enroll, and they’ve made a choice to be here, in this environment, with everything that entails.

The key word there, of course, is private. If your kids go to a Catholic school, for example, you cannot pretend to be surprised and alarmed when Catholicism is in the classroom too. But if you send your kids to public school, like most Iowans, you have a reasonable expectation that the establishment clause, the separation of church and state, will keep specific religious ideas and doctrine out of the school. In this context, Iowa House File 884, the school chaplains bill, immediately rings alarm bells.

Herb Strentz was dean of the Drake School of Journalism from 1975 to 1988 and professor there until retirement in 2004. He was executive secretary of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council from its founding in 1976 to 2000.

Three faiths have major religious observances around this time of year.

The oldest one is the Jewish Passover (Pesach) which began on April 12 and ends at nightfall Sunday, April 20.

That Sunday is of course Easter Sunday, marking the end of the Christians’ Holy Week in celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

The Islamic Ramadan, the ninth month in the Islamic calendar, began at sundown on February 28 and ended at sundown March 29. For practicing Muslims, Ramadan is a month for fasting, prayer, giving, and self-evaluation.

Although President Donald Trump and his supporters have proclaimed that God saved him from assassination to “Make America Great Again,” Trump has little in common with the core principles of those three faiths. On the contrary: we find unending contradictions between his behavior and religious values.

Bruce Lear lives in Sioux City and has been connected to Iowa’s public schools for 38 years. He taught for eleven years and represented educators as an Iowa State Education Association regional director for 27 years until retiring. He can be reached at BruceLear2419@gmail.com 

If you ask an Iowa educator what they need to be successful, you’ll get a list of things like, time to prepare, no legislative attacks, parental support, adequate supplies, administrative backing, and adequate school funding. 

What’s in House File 884 won’t be on the list. That bill allows public school districts and charter schools to hire or allow volunteer or paid chaplains, with no qualification requirements except to pass a background check. Iowa House Republicans approved the legislation on March 26, and Republicans on the Senate Education Committee advanced it on April 3, making the bill eligible for debate in the full Senate. 

Herb Strentz was dean of the Drake School of Journalism from 1975 to 1988 and professor there until retirement in 2004. He was executive secretary of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council from its founding in 1976 to 2000.

We’re in the Christian season of Lent—the 40 days from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday—a time for self-reflection and repentance. This year, however, Lent is also marked by enough ironies to fuel endless debates about the separation of religion and politics.

Consider:

President Donald Trump has said of the attempt to assassinate him last July, “I was saved by God to make America great again.”

Further, Trump has likened his May 2024 felony conviction to the persecution suffered by Jesus Christ. He also likened those he pardoned for their roles in the January 6, 2021 insurrection to Christian martyrs—“persecuted Christians” was Trump’s phrase.

On the other hand, a recent survey by the well-respected Pew Research Center suggests a marked decline in Iowans identifying themselves as Christian. Pew’s Landscape Study also indicates that Iowa is no longer more Christian than the rest of the nation.

Steven M. Fink served as rabbi of Temple B’nai Jeshurun in Des Moines from 1983 to 1999. He chose to return to Des Moines after retiring from the pulpit rabbinate. He chose Des Moines because of its rich culture and active civic engagement.  

When Governor Kim Reynolds signed the bill to roll back civil rights protections for transgender people, all Christians, Muslims, and Jews should have been appalled. All three of the Abrahamic religions espouse the belief that a spark of the Divine exists in every human being. 

How then could a majority in the Republican-dominated legislature, many of whom claim to be religious people who base their votes on what God wants, vote to repeal civil rights legislation for a protected group? As the Des Moines Register noted, signing the bill “makes Iowa the first state in the country to take away civil rights from a group it has previously protected in law.” 

How can these representatives of the proud state of Iowa, descendants of those leaders who desegregated schools long before the U.S. Supreme Court required it, admitted women into the legal profession, and acknowledged the right of same-sex couples to marry take a huge backwards step by eliminating civil rights protections for a group of human beings? 

Do they not believe that a spark of God resides in every person? Do they believe that God makes mistakes and they should rectify those wrongs by denying human status to transgender people?

First-term State Representative Brett Barker has acknowledged he made a “rookie mistake” when he authorized the distribution of a right-wing Christian pamphlet to all of his Iowa House colleagues. Barker told Bleeding Heartland he didn’t read the publication by Capitol Ministries before it was circulated in the chamber on March 19.

But Barker has not publicly disavowed the contents of the weekly “Bible Study,” which portrays political adversaries as tools of Satan, calls on believers to “evangelize their colleagues,” depicts same-sex marriage and LGBTQ existence as “satanic perversions,” and condemns “women’s liberation” as a “scheme of the devil.”

Staff for Governor Kim Reynolds and U.S. Senator Joni Ernst did not respond to Bleeding Heartland’s inquiries about their association with Capitol Ministries or the views expressed in its latest publication. Both Reynolds and Ernst are among the “Bible Study Sponsors” listed on the front page of the document distributed in the Iowa House.

Bruce Lear lives in Sioux City and has been connected to Iowa’s public schools for 38 years. He taught for eleven years and represented educators as an Iowa State Education Association regional director for 27 years until retiring. He can be reached at BruceLear2419@gmail.com 

We’ve all attended parties living two hours beyond when it should die. The conversation ends, the chip dip separates, there’s more empty beer cans than full. But there’s always someone trying to keep it alive. 

We all know that guy.  He tells another loud, obnoxious joke.  As yawns drown out the music, he shouts, “Let’s play a drinking game.” 

There’s a mad dash for the door. It’s time to go home.

Herb Strentz was dean of the Drake School of Journalism from 1975 to 1988 and professor there until retirement in 2004. He was executive secretary of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council from its founding in 1976 to 2000.

A sign of our times: a satirical T-shirt from the RAYGUN store in Des Moines offers better perspective on a political controversy than you’ll get from a Congressional hearing or the vigilante operation of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Using humor—an alternative to despair—the T-shirt highlights one small aspect of Trump’s reckless, damaging first few weeks in office.

With so many issues, lies, and likely unconstitutional actions in play, where does one begin? 

Let’s start with the Lutheran Crime Syndicate.

Jason Benell lives in Des Moines with his wife and two children. He is a combat veteran, former city council candidate, and president of Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers and the author of the Substack newsletter The Odd Man Out.

Iowa used to be a state of Firsts. It was introduced as a free state to counter Texas as a slave state into the United States. Iowa was famous for its participation in the Civil War on the side of the Union. Iowa has such a steeped and storied history in education that leaders chose a schoolhouse for the state’s commemorative quarter, to demonstrate how much Iowans value education. The Iowa Supreme Court ruled that school segregation was unconstitutional 86 years before the U.S. Supreme Court mandated desegregation nationally. 

The rights of women via the suffragists were a massive force in Iowa. The University of Iowa was a destination for many award-winning writers like Kurt Vonnegut, and Iowa State University broke racial barriers with Jack Trice and George Washington Carver. Iowa was among the first states to legalize same sex marriage in 2009 before it was done nationally. Governor Robert Ray, a Republican, became famous for welcoming immigrants, setting up a refugee center for thousands of Tai Dam refugees during the 1970s.

That positive impact is still felt today.

Herb Strentz was dean of the Drake School of Journalism from 1975 to 1988 and professor there until retirement in 2004. He was executive secretary of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council from its founding in 1976 to 2000.

Current controversy over the Iowa Department of Education’s proposals for new school standards on science education goes back only a couple of months. But on Sunday, January 26, a Des Moines pastor went back some 3,000 years in scripture to discuss how the agency’s proposals reflect the threats that Christian Nationalism poses to our democracy and the nation’s religious life.

At the end of his sermon, the congregation applauded him for doing so.

The pastor is the Rev. Dr. Scott Paczkowski.

The congregation is Westminster Presbyterian in the Beaverdale neighborhood of Des Moines.

Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column.

This year marks the centennial of the notorious Scopes trial, held in 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee, over the question of whether a state could ban the teaching of e – – – – – – – – (rhymes with “revolution”) in its public schools.

This month the people of Iowa caught a whiff of that episode as a result of a proposed revision to state standards on science education in Iowa schools.

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.

I was in Eagle Grove last week. Like many travelers in Iowa, I stopped at Casey’s before leaving town.

Eagle Grove is a meatpacking community, and many jobs are held by Hispanic men and women. As I waited with my coffee in the check-out line, I was behind a Hispanic man whose hands showed his labors had taken a rougher toll than my life’s work at a computer has taken on mine.

A convenience store in the middle of America is not a place where one typically pauses to reflect on a church sermon given three days earlier at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.

John Kearney is a retired philosophy professor who taught at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He has lived in Waterloo, Iowa for the past six years.

On January 9, 2025, Robert Barron, Roman Catholic Bishop and prelate of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester in Minnesota, posted on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter):

I was watching highlights from President Carter’s funeral service at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC. I found some of the speeches very moving. But I was appalled when two country singers launched into a rendition of John Lennon’s “Imagine.”  Under the soaring vault of what I think is still a Christian church, they reverently intoned, “Imagine there’s no heaven; it’s easy if you try” and “imagine there’s no country; it isn’t hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too.” Vested ministers sat patiently while a hymn to atheistic humanism was sung. This was not only an insult to the memory of a devoutly believing Christian but also an indicator of the spinelessness of too much of established religion in our country.

I respectfully disagree with Bishop Barron’s criticism, especially his claim that “Imagine” is a “hymn to atheistic humanism.”

Kurt Meyer writes a weekly column for the Nora Springs – Rockford Register and the Substack newsletter Showing Up, where this essay first appeared. He served as chair of the executive committee (the equivalent of board chair) of Americans for Democratic Action, America’s most experienced liberal organization.

There once was a time, now no longer true for Democrats, when if Iowans wanted to see, meet, probably visit with a candidate seeking to become president of the United States, you could. It wasn’t especially difficult. They came around, perhaps to your county, certainly to your region… and spoke, took questions, engaged with potential voters. For maybe a four-month period every four or eight years, presidential aspirants were about as accessible as U.S. Senate or U.S. House candidates.

As many have noted, this is largely because of a certain presidential campaign in 1976.

This is my way of introducing that, over the years, I had numerous small encounters with the late President Jimmy Carter. I chuckle at the thought, in part because in his presidential campaigns, I was never a staunch Carter supporter.

For many Iowans, myself included, Jimmy Carter’s recent death brings forth a fresh wave of memories.

As each new year begins, I enjoy looking back at the posts that resonated most strongly with readers in the year that ended. Some things never change: actions by the Republican-controlled state legislature and Governor Kim Reynolds—especially attacks on public education—inspired many of Bleeding Heartland’s most-viewed posts from 2024. That’s been true every year since the GOP trifecta began in 2017. U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley, who featured prominently in two of last year’s most popular posts, makes another appearance below.

I’ve learned there is no way to predict which pieces will take off. Some of the posts linked below required intensive research and days of writing, while others took only a few hours from start to finish. One was among the longest I wrote last year (more than 5,000 words), while another was among the shortest (fewer than 300 words).

Some authors whose work gained a large following in past years made the list again. But three authors featured below were contributing to Bleeding Heartland for the first time.

This list draws from Fathom Analytics data about total views for 561 posts published from January 1 through December 31, 2024. I wrote 145 of those articles and commentaries; other authors wrote 416. I left out the site’s front page and the “about” page, where many people landed following online searches.

A half-dozen posts barely missed the top 24, by a few hundred views or less:

Bleeding Heartland set yet another record for guest contributions in 2024, with 416 posts involving 146 authors. (The previous record was 358 posts that more than 125 people wrote for this site in 2023.) I don’t know of any state-based political website that provides more quality coverage and commentary by guest contributors.

This year’s guest authors covered a wide range of topics, from public schools to local government, major employers, CO2 pipelines, notable events in Iowa history, and of course wildflowers.

They wrote about President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, Governor Kim Reynolds and her administration, Attorney General Brenna Bird, and of course former and future President Donald Trump.

During the legislative session, guest authors highlighted flaws in the governor’s plan to overhaul Area Education Agencies and the report that sought to justify it. They shared their own personal or professional experiences with AEAs. They covered other education proposals and explained why the state’s official school voucher numbers were misleading. They also covered bills that received less attention but could change many Iowans’ lives for better or worse.

During the 2024 campaign and its aftermath, guest authors wrote about presidential polling in Iowa and nationally, profiled candidates, and analyzed the election results from several angles.

Guest authors sounded the alarm about Iowa’s near-total abortion ban, unlawful drug testing at hospitals, and climate change impacts. They suggested ways to protect water and air quality, and flagged transparency problems in state and local government. They reviewed books that would interest many Bleeding Heartland readers.

They reflected on the lives of those who passed away this year, including Iowans Marcia Nichols, Bobby Washington, and Jim Leach, as well as Tim Kraft, who played an important role on some Iowa campaigns.

While many guest authors criticized Republican policies and politicians, some offered advice or constructive criticism to Democrats following the Iowa caucuses and another disappointing general election.

As noted below, some contributions by guest authors were among the most-viewed Bleeding Heartland posts of the year.

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. 

When it comes to freedom of religion and the rights enshrined in the 45 words of the First Amendment, the devil is in the details in Iowa.

Governor Kim Reynolds’ administration recently revoked permission for the Satanic Temple of Iowa to place a display in the state capitol and host a holiday celebration around it. The Department of Administrative Services and governor’s office claimed the event would harm minors.

A year ago, the governor took the opposite stance on the Satanic Temple’s holiday display. Although she said it was “absolutely objectionable,” she explained in 2023 why the display was allowed: “In a free society, the best response to objectionable speech is more speech, and I encourage all those of faith to join me in praying over the Capitol and recognizing the nativity scene that will be on display.”

Jason Benell lives in Des Moines with his wife and two children. He is a combat veteran, former city council candidate, and president of Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers. A version of this essay first appeared on his Substack newsletter, The Odd Man Out.

Here we are again.

We saw this last year with them calling for the Satanic Temple of Iowa’s holiday display “objectionable.” We saw this in the last few years with Governor Kim Reynolds signing the “religious freedom restoration act,” which critics correctly claimed would privilege Christianity and religion over other faiths and irreligion.

We saw this with the Republican administration taking public dollars from public schools and sending them to unscrupulous and unaccountable religious institutions. We saw this with the state legislature mandating an oath to a deity in classrooms statewide with the pledge of allegiance in public schools.  We saw this in the last ten years with the Muslim ban from President Donald Trump. We saw this in the last decades when the atheists wanted to run some bus ads or put up billboards.

Time and again we see the Republican Party, particularly the Republican Party of Iowa, finding new and ever more egregious ways to privilege their favored flavor of religion—Christianity—at the public’s expense.

Al Charlson is a North Central Iowa farm kid, lifelong Iowan, and retired bank trust officer. The Bremer County Independent previously published a version of this commentary.

This is not the column I planned to write. Economics and government tax and spending policy are my primary opinion writing focus, and there’s plenty to talk about. But I’ll get back to that another time. 

I am compelled to write now about immigration and the incoming administration’s plans for mass deportation.

Bruce Lear lives in Sioux City and has been connected to Iowa’s public schools for 38 years. He taught for eleven years and represented educators as an Iowa State Education Association regional director for 27 years until retiring. He can be reached at BruceLear2419@gmail.com   

Some things are hard to predict. Why is my cell phone obsolete after a month? Which Hawkeye quarterback will play Saturday? Will the Stranger Things cast be on Medicare before it returns to Netflix, and which cabinet position will Donald Trump give to Dr. Phil?

Other things are easy to predict. A match between a 58-year-old biting-boxer and a 27-year-old YouTuber will always feature dancing and a few scripted punches. If you’re a male over age 60 on Facebook, and a 20-something woman with a revealing neckline says your posts are fascinating, she’s scamming you. 

The most predictable thing: Iowa’s ruling trifecta, led by a governor desperate to get her MAGA creds back, will ram extreme public education bills through the legislature next year.

State Senator Janice Weiner will be the new leader of Iowa Senate Democrats, replacing State Senator Pam Jochum, who did not seek re-election this year.

Weiner “grew up in a politically aware family in Coralville” and was a career Foreign Services officer with the U.S. State Department before moving back to Iowa in 2015. She represents Iowa Senate district 45, the chamber’s bluest district, covering Iowa City and University Heights in Johnson County. She first ran for the legislature in 2018, finishing second to Zach Wahls in the Democratic primary for a Senate district covering Coralville. She won a seat on the Iowa City council in 2019 and ran for the legislature again in 2022, when long-serving State Senator Joe Bolkcom retired.

Weiner is known for the well-researched comments she has often delivered during Iowa Senate committee meetings or floor debate.

Gerald Ott of Ankeny was a high school English teacher and for 30 years a school improvement consultant for the Iowa State Education Association.

I read the op-ed Bob Vander Plaats wrote for the Des Moines Register last week. It’s glowingly referenced on the Facebook page of his organization, The FAMiLY Leader.

I remember Vander Plaats when he got his knickers in a twist because the Iowa Supreme Court decided the Iowa Constitution’s equal protection clause applied to gay and lesbian people. The court unanimously held in the Varnum v. Brien decision from 2009 that Iowa’s “Defense of Marriage Act” was unconstitutional. The ruling paved the way for same-sex couples to solemnize their relationships under Iowa’s marriage laws.