Nicholas Cocozzelli is an economic analyst and founder of the Inequality Focus Substack newsletter, where this piece originally appeared.

John Deere, a major employer for Iowans, has faced severe criticism for its recent series of layoffs in the Hawkeye State. The agricultural equipment company announced in February it would be laying off 119 workers at its plant in Ankeny, Iowa. The Ankeny plant employs roughly 1,500 workers total. Over the past year, Deere has made roughly 2,000 job cuts at its plants across the state.

Deere has blamed a struggling farm economy for these cuts, but has been criticized as seeking a cheaper labor market in Mexico. Last year, when the company announced layoffs in Dubuque, Deere confirmed that it was “…shifting some production from its Dubuque Works facility in Iowa to a new facility it is building in Ramos, Mexico.”

According to Industrial Equipment News, production of mid-frame skid steer loaders and compact track loaders will be relocated from the Dubuque facility to Ramos. The Des Moines Register also noted that Deere faced scrutiny for outsourcing some lines of production from other plants across Iowa, specifically in Waterloo and Ottumwa, to Mexico.

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!

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

Iowa’s senior U.S. Senator, Republican Chuck Grassley, met with more than 50 of us from the Jefferson area here on April 17. Unlike most Republican members of Congress these days, Grassley has continued to make himself available to his constituents in all 99 Iowa counties.

Some of his meetings are true wide-open town meetings; others are by invitation. The hour-long Jefferson session was billed as a Q and A with local business and development people, but many of those in attendance did not fit that description. Still they asked their questions, and Grassley answered each of them.

Grassley opened the session by noting that he has taken his 99-county tour annually over his 45 years in the Senate. That practice now defies the advice of Republican strategists, who frown on letting people raise their voices face-to-face in disagreement with GOP members of Congress. He is correct in his defiance, and that stance earned him the thanks of some of those at last Thursday’s meeting, even if they strongly disagreed with his positions and his answers to their questions.

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.

As we approach the second anniversary of a tragedy that shocked the people of Davenport and brought national attention to the issue of building safety, government secrecy continues to cloud public understanding of just what happened and who to hold accountable.

The tragedy occurred a few minutes before 5 p.m. on Sunday, May 28, 2023, when the back wall of a Davenport apartment building gave way, bringing down much of the six-story residence that occupied a quarter block across the street from City Hall. 

More than a year before Iowa’s 2026 primary election, Democrats already have one announced candidate for U.S. Senate (Nathan Sage) and two officially running for the U.S. House (Travis Terrell in the first district and Kevin Techau in the second). More Democrats will launch campaigns for Iowa’s statewide and federal offices in the coming months.

So it’s a good time to preview how this website will cover the next round of Iowa Democratic primaries.

GUIDELINES FOR MY OWN REPORTING

First, I don’t plan to endorse a contender in any competitive Democratic primary. My goal is to produce in-depth reporting on the major races, with details about the candidates and the political landscape that readers may not find in other media outlets.

Second, my coverage will focus on candidates with the capacity to run a credible statewide or district-wide campaign. I don’t mean just front-runners; plenty of little-known candidates have built a following and eventually won the nomination for a major office. I mean that when deciding where to spend my time and energy on individual candidate profiles or surveys of the primary field, I will be looking for signs that a candidate is doing the work this kind of campaign requires.

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.

“The working class has been working their ass off every day to survive and make ends meet for their families,” Nathan Sage told me this week. Making working people’s lives better is the driving force of his U.S. Senate campaign.

At least four Democrats are thinking seriously about running against two-term Republican incumbent Joni Ernst. Sage was the first to make it official, on April 16.

Sage discussed his background, beliefs, and reasons for running in an interview with Bleeding Heartland the day before his campaign launch. The full video of our exchange is at the end of this post.

Rob Sand is Iowa’s state auditor.

Recently, an argument has been going around that goes like this: private schools are accredited to teach students, therefore they’re accountable to taxpayers. This claim ignores that being accredited as an academic institution has nothing to do with how an entity spends money. Accredited private schools taking vouchers still have no rules for how they spend tax dollars, and no audits either.

The authors of the governor’s school voucher bill knew accreditation doesn’t impact oversight of spending. In fact, they wanted it that way.

When I noticed that the bill had just one restriction on the use of taxpayer funds once those dollars are turned over to the private schools (rebates to parents aren’t allowed)—I was sure there was some kind of mistake. No, the bill’s advocate told me at the time. That’s the point: “We do not want public oversight of private schools” were his exact words. I would guess most taxpayers agree with me that we want public oversight of public dollars, though.

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.

A constitutional showdown taking shape in southern Iowa’s Decatur County could put taxpayers on the hook financially to defend the county’s efforts to silence a critic of public officials there.

The Institute for Justice, a national nonprofit law firm, wrote to Decatur County Attorney Alan Wilson last week expressing its concerns about Wilson’s recent threat to Rita Audlehelm that she could be sued for defamation for her comments in a letter to the editor published in the Leon Journal-Reporter.

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 

During my 27 years representing teachers, I encountered a variety of teacher assistance plans. The intended purpose was to provide more detail than just having an evaluator sit in a classroom for 30 minutes and then check the “Needs Improvement” box on the evaluation form.

But those plans varied wildly in quality and intent. Some evaluators recognized legitimate teaching deficiencies and tried to provide constructive assistance. The most beneficial plans were drafted with participation from the teacher being evaluated. That provided mutual ownership; the advice was shaped with the teacher instead of imposed on the teacher.

Those were rare.

The field is set for the April 29 special election in Iowa House district 78. Democrats nominated Angel Ramirez at an April 12 nominating convention. Linn County Republicans chair Bernie Hayes won the GOP nomination at an April 14 convention.

Ramirez won on the first ballot in a four-way Democratic field. She is the co-founder and executive director of Our Future, a nonprofit fellowship for young leaders, and a Youth Peace Project Facilitator with the Kids First Law Center.

If elected, she would be the first Latina to serve in the Iowa legislature. She’s also “a proud first-generation college graduate from Coe College,” according to her campaign website. She told Iowa News Now after the convention, “it’s not the time for the status quo” and Democrats need to stand for “a progressive vision,” to help the working class, health care system, public education, LGBTQ neighbors.

Sue Dinsdale is the executive director of the Iowa Citizen Action Network, a grassroots public interest organization committed to creating social change in Iowa and across the nation. She is also the state lead for Health Care for America NOW.

Republicans in Congress have passed a federal budget resolution that instructs Congressional committees to slash trillions in services for everyday people in order to finance the extension of tax breaks that mainly benefit the wealthiest households. Some of the Trump tax cuts enacted in late 2017 expire this year. The top priority for Republicans in Congress is to extend those tax breaks, so the wealthiest 1 percent of households can continue to save on average $60,280 in 2026 alone.

But tax breaks for the wealthy cost the rest of us. When wealthy people and corporations don’t pay their fair share of taxes, revenue is drained out of the budget which means lawmakers will have to cut services.

In this case, Medicaid is on the chopping block. That health insurance program serves more than 80 million people, about one in five Americans. The House-passed proposal includes $880 million in cuts for health care that could very well take coverage from the 678,107 enrolled in Iowa Medicaid.

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.

It will take months to fully assess the fallout from Governor Kim Reynolds’ decision not to seek another term in 2026.

But one thing’s for sure: State Auditor Rob Sand’s chances of winning the next governor’s race are substantially higher now than they were before April 11.

Douglas Burns is a fourth-generation Iowa journalist. He is the co-founder of the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation and a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, where this article first appeared on The Iowa Mercury newsletter. His family operated the Carroll Times Herald for 93 years in Carroll, Iowa where Burns resides.

Many politicians can persuade you to believe in them. That’s a commonly reached feat. But the defining leaders, elected officials like Tom Harkin, Robert Ray, Henry Wallace, and Harold Hughes, are able to summon the inspiration to get Iowans believing in themselves, their own worth and futures.

More than any other contemporary active Democrat, State Representative Josh Turek has the potential to earn the mantle in the ongoing—and now desperately needed—legacy those Iowans with surpassing public-mindedness built.

We are in an era in the United States that can be described as The Great Deconstruction. We are broken. The anger in the streets at “Hands Off!” protests and in other arenas, in real life and online, is fierce and urgent. Soon, and at a more accelerated political pace than is traditional, Democrats will begin vetting candidates for the U.S. Senate race in 2026, a contest with the politically formidable Joni Ernst. The two-term Republican senator has a rare cultural connectivity; her journey as a farm girl and combat veteran carries enormous appeal across the state.

Ann M. Rhodes is a Waterloo native who worked at the University of Iowa for 47 years.

Education at all levels, but particularly higher education, is under assault. As a society, we appear to have abandoned the notion articulated by our Founding Fathers that an educated citizenry is critical to democracy.

As the Chair of the Executive Committee of the University of Iowa chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), I would like to speak to the values of higher education and its critical importance. Here are our core values, upon which our advocacy work is based.

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.

Elon Musk isn’t the problem. Donald Trump isn’t the problem. The problem is Republicanism and our broken political system.

Across the country and here in Iowa there have been protests targeting Elon Musk and the company he owns, Tesla. Protesters point out—rightfully, in my view—that Musk echoes fascist tendencies from the 20^th century with his glorification of Nazi imagery, sympathetic speeches to neo-Nazi groups both domestically and abroad, and his gleeful charge into dismantling the federal government. People have written articles and giving interviews exclaiming how much a problem Musk is for the United States. 

The argument goes something like this: “Elon wasn’t elected, yet he wields tremendous power to dismantle the federal government, and we do not like an unelected billionaire doing all of this damage!”

Yeah, that is true. Americans didn’t elect Musk, and one person shouldn’t have that much power to destroy the state. By all accounts, he seems to be a terrible human being who craves attention and respect while treating others poorly and abusively. Turning away from that type of person is morally good.

Sometimes debate on a low-profile bill reveals a lot about how the Iowa legislature operates.

So it was on April 9, when the Iowa Senate took up House File 363, “an Act relating to the final disposition of remains.”

The bill was one of ten non-controversial measures (often called “non-cons”) that senators approved that day. But don’t be fooled by the 47-0 vote for final passage. The debate on this bill showed the Republican majority’s intensely partisan approach to legislating.

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

Rarely, if ever, have Iowa’s members of Congress found themselves situated to alter the course of America’s economy. But right now they can, and one of the six in the delegation has already taken a first step to do so.

Last week, President Donald Trump imposed harsh tariffs on every nation in the world that trades with us. He did so by fiat, something he claims empowerment to do without so much as even consulting Congress. The Republican majorities of 53-47 in the Senate and 220-213 in the House have remained almost unanimously acquiescent.

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders’ campaign has a staffer on the ground again in Iowa. No, the senator from Vermont isn’t getting a head start on the 2028 caucuses.

In an April 3 telephone interview, Evan Burger described his focus and early work as Iowa organizer for Friends of Bernie Sanders.