Iowa’s Republican legislators, Governor Kim Reynolds, and Senator Chuck Grassley inspired the majority of Bleeding Heartland’s most-read posts during the year that just ended. But putting this list together was trickier than my previous efforts to highlight the site’s articles or commentaries that resonated most with readers.

For fifteen years, I primarily used Google Analytics to track site traffic. Google changed some things this year, prompting me to switch to Fathom Analytics (an “alternative that doesn’t compromise visitor privacy for data”) in July. As far as I could tell during the few days when those services overlapped, they reached similar counts for user visits, page views, and other metrics. But the numbers didn’t completely line up, which means the Google Analytics data I have for posts published during the first half of the year may not be the same numbers Fathom would have produced.

Further complicating this enterprise, I cross-post some of my original reporting and commentary on a free email newsletter, launched on Substack in the summer of 2022 as part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. Some of those posts generated thousands of views that would not be tabulated as visits to Bleeding Heartland. I didn’t include Substack statistics while writing this piece; if I had, it would have changed the order of some posts listed below.

This list draws from Google Analytics and Fathom Analytics data about total views for 497 posts published from January 1 through December 31. I wrote 139 of those articles and commentaries; other authors wrote 358. I left out the site’s front page and the “about” page, where many people landed following online searches.

There’s no huge gap in page views between the 23rd most-viewed and the next ten or fifteen posts on the list. So here are a few notable pieces that just missed the cut:

• Zach Nunn has a lot to learn about federal food programs (this post from January would have been number 23 until a few days ago, when Scott Syroka’s latest essay took off)
• Iowa Supreme Court rejects governor’s attempt to dismiss open records claims (my write-up from April of the unanimous decision known as Belin v Reynolds would be in the top 20 if I had counted Substack views)
• For first time, whole Iowa delegation parts ways with House leaders (on the Iowans’ votes in November to expel their GOP colleague George Santos)
• Exclusive: Iowa governor’s office hides the ball on its own spending (another post from April, one of my deep dives on the governor’s office budget)
• Iowa Senate Republicans hit new low for transparency (written in April after the Senate Appropriations Committee advanced seven spending bills with blank spaces where dollar amounts and staffing numbers would normally be listed)

On to the countdown:

23. Court finds Iowa’s garbage search law unconstitutional

I was working on something else one Monday evening in November when an attorney I follow on X/Twitter posted about an interesting Polk County District Court decision.

I decided to write this up quickly because I had covered the legislative debate over a 2022 bill authorizing law enforcement to search garbage left outside homes without a warrant. Democratic State Representative Mary Wolfe, a criminal defense attorney, had warned colleagues the law (designed to overturn a 2021 Iowa Supreme Court ruling) was not constitutional. Republicans didn’t listen.

In an order granting a defendant’s motion to suppress evidence obtained through trash grabs, Chief Judge Michael Huppert determined the legislature “overstepped” when passing the 2022 law, which he deemed “void as inconsistent with the language of article I, section 8 of the Iowa Constitution as interpreted by the Iowa Supreme Court.”

I don’t know why this piece generated so much interest, but I do think it’s an important topic the Iowa Supreme Court will revisit at some point.

22. Republicans shatter another Iowa Senate norm

I was at home watching the livestream from the Iowa Senate chamber, planning to cover the child labor bill Republicans were about to pass that evening. But a different story unfolded over the course of the debate, which didn’t end until around 5:00 am.

State Senator Adrian Dickey (the bill’s floor manager) and Majority Leader Jack Whitver refused to answer a Democratic senator’s questions about an amendment.

Republicans were reluctant to engage because the Iowa Supreme Court had recently quoted at length from Senate floor debate in its LS Power decision. In that case, the court found a provision added to a 2020 budget bill in the middle of the night likely violated the Iowa Constitution’s single-subject rule.

The child labor bill was big news, but if Republicans were going to stop answering substantive questions during floor debate, that was a bigger story. All of this happened less than two weeks after Iowa Senate Republicans moved blank budget bills through the Appropriations Committee, which is why the headline referred to “another Iowa Senate norm.”

This post included video clips of Democratic State Senators Bill Dotzler and Zach Wahls denouncing the breach of Senate protocol. I also included video from the June 2020 debate (which the Iowa Supreme Court had cited), and a clip of State Representative Steven Holt refusing to “answer hypotheticals” about a firearms bill in early April of this year, while House Republicans weighed how to respond to the LS Power decision.

21. Chuck Grassley’s oversight is out of focus

Huge shout out to Bleeding Heartland user “Strong Island Hawk.” Both posts he contributed to the site this year resonated strongly enough to make it onto the most-viewed list.

I had been following the news about the senator’s irresponsible decision to publish an FBI document containing unverified allegations about Biden family corruption. But I didn’t have time to write about it.

Strong Island Hawk dug into the topic in July with a look at some of the “extraordinary claims” Grassley and key House Republicans have been making about Hunter Biden and his father. He broke them into several categories: Hunter’s work on the Burisma board in Ukraine, business deals with a Chinese energy firm, the FBI’s FD-1023 form, and IRS whistleblowers who claim Hunter Biden got a sweetheart deal from federal prosecutors.

Having worked for a public interest group that investigated government corruption, Strong Island Hawk concluded: “Simply put: I could never publish a report with as many unfounded allegations and suspiciously sourced material as Grassley has used to promote these conspiracy theories. […] It’s discouraging to see Grassley go on a wild goose chase with some of the most extreme Republicans in the House.”

20. Crisis in Iowa nursing homes demands our attention

I haven’t written enough about the state’s totally inadequate oversight of nursing homes, mostly because Clark Kauffman is on that beat and breaking stories for Iowa Capital Dispatch on almost a weekly basis. But I do recognize it’s an important ongoing scandal, so was happy to publish this piece by Mary Weaver.

Mary originally wrote this column in early December for the Jefferson Herald and Greene County News online. She wanted to highlight “the horror stories erupting statewide about the deplorable, life-threatening situations occurring in Iowa nursing homes.”

Earlier in her career, Mary was a surveyor for the Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals. So she understands how nursing home inspections should work. She also keeps up with news reports on the problems affecting Iowa care facilities. And unfortunately, she has a personal friend who has suffered due to inadequate staffing in the facility where she lives (at a cost of $10,000 per month).

A few days after this post appeared, Mary spoke at a news conference organized by Iowa Senate Democrats, who called for legislators to investigate neglect and abuse in nursing homes. Within hours, Republicans ruled out convening any oversight hearings on the matter.

19. We can stop this storm

Bruce Lear has been a frequent contributor to this site and wrote the most-viewed post of 2022. A former teacher and regional director for the Iowa State Education Association, he most often writes about public schools, always a hot topic for the Bleeding Heartland community.

In this essay from June, Bruce explained why the “perfect political storm” was brewing for the upcoming school board races. He suggested a dozen questions Iowans could ask school board candidates to help them avoid those “who would create chaos instead of consensus.”

18. Seven bad policies Iowa Republicans slipped into budget bills

The Iowa legislature adjourned for the year on May 4. I tested positive for COVID-19 (for the first time) on May 5. That limited my ability to cover the end-of-session rush.

Once I was feeling better, I started to think about the best way to circle back to legislative coverage. I wanted to focus on bills that had received little or no attention.

Republicans didn’t use this year’s appropriations bills as vehicles for any high-profile policies unrelated to spending, such as the judicial selection changes approved in 2019 or absentee ballot restrictions from 2020. (In part that was a reaction to the Iowa Supreme Court’s LS Power decision, mentioned above.) Nevertheless, the majority party did tuck plenty of policy surprises into bills covering parts of next year’s budget.

This post highlighted seven provisions that appeared in budget bill amendments published shortly before Iowa House or Senate floor debate. Most of this policy language never appeared in a stand-alone bill, allowing Republicans to avoid the scrutiny that comes with subcommittee and committee discussions. Democratic legislators had little time to review the proposed budgets before votes on final passage, which mostly fell along party lines.

I was on the fence: should I combine all of these items into one piece, or explore the concept through a bunch of short posts? Several of these policies hadn’t been previously reported, and could easily warrant a separate article.

On the other hand, I wanted to illustrate a pattern of behavior. And the reality is, most readers don’t check my website every day to see what’s new. They click through when they happen to see a link on their social media feeds or in an email. So if I published a multi-part series, it’s likely few people would read the whole thing.

Even on my last proofread, I was questioning the decision to combine the news into a single post. But I’m so glad I did, because this piece likely reached more people than if I had written separately about the policies.

17. Using Republican logic on their school voucher plan

Strong Island Hawk wrote this piece in early February, soon after Republicans fast-tracked Governor Kim Reynolds’ plan to divert hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars every year to pay for tuition at K-12 private schools. His thought process:

I couldn’t help but notice how the debate over private school funding oddly resembled the debate on another education topic: the Biden administration’s student loan debt forgiveness policy. I’m against the Reynolds plan for a number of reasons. But I was struck by the notion that we could make the same bad faith arguments that conservatives made about student loans.

So, in the interest of playing devil’s advocate, I would like to apply that same logic to the private school debate.

To be fair: I don’t think these were good or worthwhile arguments. Nor do I think they were they made in good faith. So this is simply a rhetorical exercise.

It was a great device, and I enjoyed his take on talking points such as “It favors the wealthy,” “It’s unfair to those who have already paid,” and “Why should I have to pay for someone else’s education?”

16. Grassley again scores high on HUH?-meter

Like Strong Island Hawk, Herb Strentz has two posts this year on Bleeding Heartland’s most-viewed list. (He also wrote the seventh most-viewed post from 2022.) His proposed headline for this piece was inspired, making many people curious to click through.

What made Herb say “HUH?” this time was Senator Chuck Grassley’s comment to Congressional reporter Joe Perticone in early June. The former chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee said he hadn’t read former President Donald Trump’s latest criminal indictment (related to allegedly mishandling classified documents) because he’s “not a legal analyst.”

Herb reviewed some of Grassley’s work on the Judiciary Committee and reflected on the senator’s evolution over the course of his career.

You can see why a former longtime Grassley staffer Kris Kolesnik wrote last month that “fellow travelers in oversight circles have asked me: What has happened to Grassley?”

Kolesnik sees his former boss, who once tried to keep partisan politics out of oversight work, now “waging political battles” and “wading in the bogs with provocateurs and witnesses who so far seem to be credibility-challenged.”

You also can consider Grassley’s emergence at the state and federal levels. Back in the 1970s, bipartisanship was the order of the day under Iowa Governor Bob Ray. During the 1980s, Grassley forged a good reputation and gained widespread support for being willing to take on the Reagan administration as a first-term senator.

Today, he uses his clout to promote right-wing policies in state government and divisiveness across the nation.

15. Exclusive: After budget boost, Iowa governor gave senior staff big raises

My late father, David Belin, liked the saying that sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good. I thought of those words when I went through the salary records that prompted this investigative reporting.

For several years in a row, I’ve requested the governor’s office salary records from the Iowa Department of Administrative Services, which handles payroll for state government. It’s a good way to nail down not only how much Governor Reynolds’ employees are being paid, but also exactly when certain staffers began working or stopped working in her office.

I usually file that request in August, so I can capture all the pay periods from the previous fiscal year and the first two or three pay periods from the current fiscal year, which begins on July 1.

I realized shortly after Labor Day that I had forgotten to file the request. So I asked for the governor’s office salary records from the last two pay periods of FY22, all pay periods of FY23, and all pay periods so far in FY24.

The Department of Administrative Services slow-walked my request for two and a half months, then sent the records shortly before Thanksgiving in a difficult-to-use pdf format.

But my tardiness paid off. I learned Reynolds had given some people on her staff big raises, effective the first pay period of September. If I had filed the request in August, I would have seen only the 3 percent raise everyone on the governor’s staff received in early July.

In my reviews of salary records, I’ve rarely seen state employees get a 15 percent or 17 percent raise, and I’ve never seen it happen in the middle of a fiscal year, when the person hadn’t gotten a promotion or a significant change in their job duties.

This piece (published in mid-December) made an impression on many readers, beyond clicks that can be measured. When the Reynolds administration announced the Friday before Christmas that Iowa won’t participate in a federal food assistance program for children next summer, I saw lots of social media posts and comments along the lines of: she gave her staff huge raises, but turns down money for hungry kids.

14. Hog confinements and human health

Larry Stone was the Des Moines Register’s outdoor writer/photographer for 25 years and has continued writing about and speaking on environmental issues in retirement. He also writes a column for the Iowa Writers Collaborative.

Larry didn’t write this piece specially for Bleeding Heartland. Rather, it is the introductory section of a free online publication, co-authored with Bob Watson and Richard “Dick” Janson: Hog Confinements and Human Health: the intersection of science, morals, and law. The publication is “a request, and a how to, for help in a grassroots campaign to regulate hog confinements in Iowa.”

Although many Bleeding Heartland readers are interested in environmental issues or active in the environmental community, articles or commentaries about pollution are rarely among the most popular material published here. So I was very happy to see Larry’s post reach a large audience.

13. Error prompts governor’s “extraordinary” intervention on appointing judge

It never fails: my list of most-viewed posts always contains at least one big surprise. It was number 13 in 2021, number 18 in 2022, and number 13 again this year.

Longtime readers know I love a good story about something unusual happening with judicial selection. So I was intrigued to see that the District 2B Judicial Nominating Commission sent the governor two different sets of nominees for a District Court vacancy. When the governor’s office announced that appointment in a classic late Friday news dump in November, I wanted to learn more.

It turned out that for the second time in three years, the governor refused to act on a slate of nominees approved by this commission. After learning more of the context, I could understand where she was coming from. But I was troubled by the commission’s ongoing failure to have a judge preside over the selection process (as the Iowa Constitution and state law require).

This piece included the letter from the governor’s senior legal counsel to 2B commission members, explaining why the governor’s “extraordinary step” was “important to protect the integrity of the nomination process.” I also discussed the relevant constitutional and statutory provisions, and why it’s important for a judge to be involved with these commissions. 

Finally, I considered the prospects for more legislation to alter judicial selection in Iowa. Many readers probably remember when Reynolds and top GOP lawmakers tried to give political appointees total control over the nominating commissions in 2019. What’s lesser known: the governor signed a 2022 bill with the apparent goal of making it easier for her former senior legal counsel Sam Langholz to get on a short list for an appellate court.

In addition, Iowa Senate Republicans have repeatedly voted to remove judges from district nominating commissions. House Judiciary Committee Chair Steven Holt told me there is still a lot of resistance to that idea in his caucus.

I thought this story was fascinating but never expected it would do much better than average.

12. Iowa Republicans take a wrecking ball to education

Dan Henderson’s debut post for Bleeding Heartland took off like a rocket. He had published an earlier version on his Substack newsletter, Things We Don’t Talk About Like Politics & Religion.

This piece appeared in early February, soon after Reynolds signed the school voucher plan into law. But Dan wasn’t mainly writing about that bill. Iowa House Republicans had recently listed their top thirteen priorities for the 2023 session. Eight of them were related to K-12 schools or the three state universities.

Dan walked through what each of those bills would do to public education in Iowa. Several of the proposals (watering down teacher licensing requirements, “don’t say gay or trans,” forced outing of transgender students) ended up in broader legislation the House and Senate approved in April.

11. Federal court rulings suggest new Iowa law is unconstitutional

In 2023, Iowa joined the wave of GOP trifecta states that banned gender-affirming care for minors. Soon after Republicans fast-tracked the bill to Reynolds’ desk, I explained why I believed the law would face an uphill battle in court.

I planned to return to the topic after a U.S. District Court ruled on a 2021 Arkansas law, the first of its kind. In June, Judge James Moody published an epic takedown. Most of his findings of fact and conclusions of law were directly on point with the law Iowa Republicans enacted in March.

When I wrote this post, I assumed some transgender children and their parents would soon challenge our state’s new ban on gender-affirming care, and their lawsuit would extensively cite Judge Moody’s opinion. (Iowa and Arkansas are both part of the Eighth Circuit.)

I was also optimistic because other federal judges (including two Donald Trump appointees) had issued preliminary injunctions blocking Alabama, Indiana, and Florida from enforcing similar laws. Since then, some federal judges have followed that trend, most recently in Idaho. But a panel of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals allowed Tennessee and Kentucky to enforce their bans on gender-affirming care for minors.

For reasons I don’t understand, no one has filed suit yet against Iowa’s law. I believe that will happen in 2024.

For those who want to keep track of lawsuits related to anti-LGBTQ discrimination around the country, I recommend subscribing to Chris Geidner’s Law Dork newsletter (it’s free).

10. The twelve Iowa Republicans who voted against school vouchers

On any given day I look for some Iowa political story no one else is covering, or a different angle on the story everyone is covering.

I knew every news organization would put up a story quickly about the Iowa House and Senate approving the governor’s “school choice” plan less than three weeks into the legislative session.

Thinking about how I could add value, I decided to profile the Republicans who joined Democrats to defy the governor and their party leaders. I figured that while some other articles would list their names, few would provide much context.

How long have these nine state representatives and three state senators served? Which counties do they represent? Are there any private schools in their districts? Did they face a GOP primary challenger in 2022? What do they stand to lose in terms of committee assignments by voting against a leadership priority?

One of my 2023 New Year’s resolutions was to prioritize sleep more, and I did generally go to bed earlier. But I stayed up late and published this piece around 3:00 am, because I knew there would be so much demand for an original take on the voucher bill.

9. Progressives win, book banners lose many Iowa school board races

This one was the product of another all-nighter, but you almost have to do that after an election.

Iowa’s school board races in 2021 had been a mixed bag; it was hard to identify any statewide trends. But on November 7, 2023, Iowa voters overwhelmingly rejected conservative-backed school board candidates, electing those supported by local Democrats and the Iowa State Education Association.

Since most Iowa media don’t report on school board races outside their coverage area, I wanted to take a broader look at what happened in the largest school districts around the state. I knew what my frame would be by 11:00 pm, but I wasn’t ready to hit publish until after 4:00 am.

I often find with a high-traffic post that one platform generated most of the hits. But this piece did well across the board, getting more traction on Facebook and Twitter than most of what I publish, but also doing well in terms of direct traffic, Google News, and the NewsBreak app. It was also the most-viewed post I shared on Substack during 2023 (as mentioned near the top, I didn’t count the Substack views for this compilation).

8. Iowa schools may never recover from 2023 legislative session

On the Friday before Memorial Day weekend, Governor Reynolds signed seven education-related bills, including two that would impose many new restrictions while lowering standards for educators and curriculum. I had a few weeks to consider how to cover this story, because it was a foregone conclusion that she would sign the bills. I’d reported on many of the substantive provisions (“don’t say gay/trans,” book bans, forced outing, etc.) in April. I didn’t want to write the standard “Kim Reynolds says this/other groups say that” story.

I had been thinking about how the Republican trifecta of the early 1970s transformed Iowa’s K-12 education system in a positive way, adopting a new school funding formula and creating Area Education Agencies to serve kids with disabilities. In contrast, the legislature’s work in 2023 will be incredibly destructive to public schools.

So I decided to write about not only the bills Reynolds had just signed, but the totality of the year’s legislative actions on education. I also wanted to highlight the false or misleading spin coming out of the governor’s office about these laws.

In the age of social media and smartphones, slow news days aren’t what they used to be. This piece is a case in point. I published late Saturday night on Memorial Day weekend, yet it became one of my most-viewed posts of the year.

Side note: on December 29, a federal judge blocked Iowa from enforcing school book bans and teaching restrictions that were part of Senate File 496, one of the most important education laws enacted in 2023.

7. Is this heaven? No, Iowa’s becoming hell for lots of us

Herb Strentz cut to the chase in the lede of this commentary from late March:

Given the travesties and tragedies Governor Kim Reynolds has already visited upon Iowans, with the help of a GOP-controlled legislature that rubber-stamps her agenda, it is long past time to retire the phrase “Iowa nice.”

Let’s also give a rest to the most famous line from the movie “Field of Dreams”: “Is this Heaven? No, it’s Iowa!”

Herb touched on lots of ways the GOP trifecta had harmed Iowa kids and families during the 2023 legislative session, and the piece wasn’t even close to an exhaustive list. (For instance, he wrote it before Republicans passed the final versions of bills cutting eligibility for food assistance and relaxing child labor regulations.)

I think this post resonated with readers because Herb tapped into feelings many longtime Iowans share.

6. What Kim Reynolds was really saying about latest Trump indictment

On a Friday afternoon in June, minutes before the Iowa Writers Collaborative was about to start a group meeting in Amana, I checked my email and saw Governor Reynolds’ official comment on the criminal charges against Trump related to classified documents.

I knew immediately I would need to give her statement some attention. But I had events scheduled all day and evening, and throughout the following day.

While driving home from Amana on Saturday evening, I considered how to approach this topic. Other news outlets had already reported Reynolds’ remarks as part of a “Republican reaction to Trump indictment” story. I wanted to explore the governor’s framing in a different way—not only her word choices, but also her implicit messages.

I kept circling back to a concept from a famous essay by Václav Havel. It felt important to work that in somehow. But I had trouble organizing my thoughts.

Lucky for me: my husband Kieran Williams wrote a book about Havel. He helped me talk this through when I got home.

5. Iowa mailer “thanks” Donald Trump for pro-LGBTQ stances

Compared to past presidential election cycles, I wrote very little Iowa caucus coverage in 2023. There was no action on the Democratic side, and with so many other reporters following Republican candidates around the state, I didn’t see many opportunities to add value. But one Saturday in July, I got a tip about a new arrival in Iowa mailboxes.

It was stylized as a positive piece, thanking Donald Trump “for standing up for LGBTQ+ rights!” But it was obviously phony praise, designed to create negative views of Trump among potential GOP caucus-goers. And it didn’t come from a genuine LGBTQ advocacy organization—the sender was an unknown group called Advancing Our Values, registered with the Iowa Secretary of State’s office just a few days earlier.

I hadn’t seen anyone else cover this yet, so it seemed like a good scoop. I got the story (with pictures of both sides of the mailing) online around dinnertime. Quite a few national political reporters shared it or linked to it.

“Advancing Our Values” sent a second mailer to Iowans roughly a week later, describing Trump inaccurately as a “Trailblazer for Trans Rights!” Again, the mailing appeared to praise the former president, urging the reader to “thank him for fighting for LGBTQ+ rights!” But the clear purpose was to diminish support for Trump among voters who fear and loathe transgender people. Needless to say, the gambit didn’t work.

I haven’t seen any sign of this group since July and never found out who funded the mailings. A spokesperson for Koch Industries denied that Koch (which spent a lot of money trying to drive Republicans away from Trump) paid for or supported the effort.

Speaking of which…

4. A bad deal gets worse: Koch trying to buy Iowa fertilizer plant

The week between Christmas and New Year’s tends to be a quiet time in politics. Some years, I have published original reporting during this window that did reasonably well, probably because there wasn’t much competing political news online. Even so, I didn’t expect huge numbers for anything published last week.

Enter Scott Syroka. He sent me a well-researched post on why antitrust regulators should block the proposed sale of a Lee County fertilizer plant to Koch Industries. It related to a story I covered extensively in 2012 and 2013: the massive tax incentives the state offered Orascom to build a fertilizer plant in southeast Iowa. Critics including Democratic State Senator Joe Bolkcom argued persuasively the company would have built the plant in Iowa anyway.

Scott explained that “Proponents of the Orascom project claimed building the plant would help increase competition in the fertilizer market and drive down costs.” Then Governor Terry Branstad even made a case for the deal by accusing the Koch brothers of wanting “to keep out competition.”

Fast forward to today. While Koch failed to stop a competitor plant from being built then, they’re attempting to get the last laugh on Branstad and Reynolds now.

If regulators approve the proposed Koch acquisition, then our tax dollars will have gone toward building a fertilizer plant owned by Koch—even though advocates argued a decade ago the deal was needed because there weren’t enough fertilizer plants not owned by Koch.

Scott’s piece generated quite a bit of interest soon after I published on December 28 and exploded on NewsBreak the next day. Within 24 hours of publication, it was already among the five most-viewed posts of the year. Extraordinary.

3. Iowa Republicans couldn’t have been more wrong about defunding Planned Parenthood

I was working on many other projects in October, but I couldn’t stop thinking about a story Michaela Ramm wrote for the Des Moines Register. A little-noticed state presentation on Iowa family planning programs showed a collapse in services provided under the program Iowa Republicans created to cut off government funding to Planned Parenthood.

I reported extensively on GOP efforts to defund Planned Parenthood while Iowa had divided government and during the first year of the GOP trifecta (2017). But it had been years since I dug into that topic. I set aside what I’d been planning one weekend to write this piece.

In addition to covering the new statistics—which are shocking—I wanted to highlight the big promises Republicans made while they were fast-tracking their plan to sideline Iowa’s top provider of reproductive health care. I was able to watch the Senate debate again on the legislature’s website. I included some video clips and quotes from senators on both sides of the issue.

I got pushback from some readers who objected to my framing. Why did I say Republicans were wrong, instead of saying they lied when they promised excluding Planned Parenthood from the new state program would “expand the services provided” to women, especially in rural Iowa?

It was obvious to anyone who knew anything about reproductive health care that replacing Iowa’s Medicaid family planning waiver would be a disaster for health care services. Experts warned GOP lawmakers in 2017 that other providers would not be able to meet the need.

It’s possible some Republicans understood this and lied in during legislative debate or in their communication with constituents. It’s also possible they were ignorant and engaged in wishful thinking. We’ve seen in subsequent legislative debates that basic knowledge about reproductive health care is lacking among Iowa GOP lawmakers. Before accusing anyone of lying, I would need to be able to demonstrate they knowingly made false statements. (Please reach out confidentially if you have evidence that happened.)

This post did well enough initially to be among Bleeding Heartland’s ten most-viewed posts of the year. Unexpectedly, it picked up thousands more views in December after someone shared it on the popular “Leopards At My Face” subreddit. Someone took it from there to a site I’d never heard of (Fark.com), noting with an “obvious” tag, “Turns out Iowa defunding Planned Parenthood was a terrible idea.”

2. Get ready to march–it’s that bad, folks

Of the 20 posts Gerald Ott has contributed to Bleeding Heartland (fourteen of them in 2023), this was by far the most popular. He wrote it in late February, when the Iowa legislature had already approved parts of the governor’s agenda and was moving fast on other fronts.

I think the title helped pull people in, and many readers could relate to Gerry’s anger and contempt for what was happening, right from the opening paragraphs:

Yes, brace yourself. Governor Kim Reynolds has given every indication she wants on the national stage. Anything to get out of Iowa before public schools are shuttered, hog sh*t clogs the Raccoon, drinking water costs more than gas, and the last of the state’s topsoil flows into the sea.

Give Reynolds credit. She’s ridden unbridled ambition, a particle of intellect, a nod from her predecessor Terry Branstad, MAGA hysteria, the Iowa State Fair, and Herculean bullheadedness into Terrace Hill. And she’s stayed there by pushing the red-state agenda that plagues all of America, and has seemingly put ordinary people into a deep stupor. 

1. Iowa Senator Adrian Dickey arrested during RAGBRAI

My plan for that Wednesday afternoon was to publish an essay by Diane Rosenberg about state rules on large livestock confinements and start copy editing Katie Byerly’s wildflowers post before heading out for a very early dinner with friends who were passing through Des Moines for RAGBRAI.

I had almost finished formatting Diane’s piece when I got a tip a little after 1:30 pm: Republican State Senator Adrian Dickey had been arrested in Sac County on Monday and charged with interfering with official acts.

I rarely chase breaking news, but it’s not every day (or every year) that a sitting member of the Iowa legislature gets arrested. Even more intriguing, Dickey had introduced a bill in 2022 that would have limited some law enforcement activities during RAGBRAI.

I figured other reporters were working on the story, so I moved as quickly as I could to pull together details from Sac County Court records and other relevant information. Fortunately, I was able to reach former State Senator Bolkcom. He had served on the subcommittee that considered (but did not advance) Dickey’s bill about law enforcement and RAGBRAI.

I texted my friends to let them know I was running a little late and managed to get this story online a few minutes before 3:00 pm—before any other media, to my knowledge. Within 24 hours, it became my most-viewed post of the year, and within a week, it was the most-viewed post in Bleeding Heartland’s sixteen-year history.

Dickey didn’t respond to my phone or email messages, but I updated the piece later with comments he and his attorney Matt Schultz provided to other reporters, and a statement from the Sac County Sheriff’s Office.

I filed a public records request for material related to this incident, including body cam and dashboard cam footage from the sheriff’s deputies who were on the scene. But even though I renewed the request after the state dropped the criminal charge against Dickey in October, I haven’t received any records. The GOP senator is still a defendant in an unrelated civil lawsuit his daughter filed in July.

Thank you so much to all who read or shared Bleeding Heartland’s work this year. Your support helped the site reach hundreds of thousands of readers and at least 1.2 million page views without a marketing budget or staff dedicated to promotions.

And special thanks to the guest authors and tipsters, without whom some of these posts could never have been published.