Steve Corbin is emeritus professor of marketing at the University of Northern Iowa and a contributing columnist to 246 newspapers and 48 social media platforms in 45 states, who receives no remuneration, funding, or endorsement from any for-profit business, nonprofit organization, political action committee, or political party. 

Since the 1960s, think tanks and advocacy groups have been key influencers of presidential policymaking. For decades, Democratic and Republican presidents have relied on think tanks for research and policy ideas. Most recently think tank roles have shifted from advisory to actual policy formulation and implementation, whereby the president can be seen as a marionette controlled by the think tank puppeteers.

Research shows that in the first 285 days of Donald Trump’s second presidency, seven conservative organizations have had hundreds of their recommendations implemented. If your mind has been spinning over the drastic changes to the federal government and how Trump has abandoned many norms of domestic policy and international diplomacy, you may wonder who is pulling the president’s strings.

Let’s examine the seven think tank puppeteers that have influenced Trump’s administration since January 20 and will likely continue to play that role until January 2029.

Carl Olsen is the founder of Iowans for Medical Marijuana.

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

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

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

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. 

Not surprisingly these days, free speech on college campuses is back in the headlines.

That makes it worthwhile to highlight the seven-page policy the Iowa Board of Regents wrote to proclaim how it values and protects freedom of expression at the three state universities.

Before getting to that, it is important to note the regents did not start with blank slate when they crafted their policy.

Steve Dunn is a retired journalist who has self-published two books, about former State Senator Pat Deluhery’s political career and the history of professional baseball in Des Moines.

Retired anesthesiologist Dr. Dick Wheeler of Des Moines put people to sleep for a living. Now he wants to wake people up to what he believes is the No. 1 threat to humanity: overpopulation. At 103 years old, Wheeler is more concerned about the future of his four children, eleven grandchildren, and fifteen great-grandchildren than his own.

He has been concerned about overpopulation for a couple of decades. “I read one article about it, which had a bunch of statistics that really alarmed me,” he explained. “Someone had asked a group of experts of various persuasions how many people could Earth support. After due consideration and research, they decided all the way from 11 billion to 17 billion.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Editor’s note from Laura Belin: As Halloween approaches, I am republishing an article by Beth Lynch, professor emerita of biology at Luther College. She wrote this piece for Bleeding Heartland in 2017, adapting an article called “Tiny joys of a botanist,” first published in November 2013. Beth takes great delight in finding rare plants tucked away in the hills and valleys around her and is dedicated to protecting and restoring habitats for native species.

I write to share with you one of my tiny joys of late fall. I took this photograph during the first week of November. What is it? A twig with some leaves, right? Look again. What are those yellow stringy things hanging from the twig? Spiders? Whiskers? Look closely.

These are the bright yellow petals of the witch hazel flowers. Think about it: flowers blooming in November! Every fall when most of the leaves have dropped from the trees and the sun is weak, I look for these cheery little flowers on the witch hazels. They bring a bit of warmth to the cold dark days when I seem to need it most. Tiny joy, indeed.

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 

 “Wait an hour before swimming, or you’ll drown.” “Never shower in a thunderstorm.” “Sitting too close to the TV will ruin your eyes.” “If you get close to a train it will suck you in.”

Those were some of the mom myths I heard growing up. They might not have been true, but even now, I don’t shower in a storm or wander too close to a train.

There are also comfortable myths we remember from elementary school that humanized historical figures. George Washington had wooden teeth, Ben Franklin discovered electricity, and Paul Revere rode through the country shouting, “The British are coming.” We’ve all heard them. We probably all believed them. They were harmless exaggerations.

But some myths aren’t harmless.

It’s time to bust some of those harmful myths surrounding the Iowa DOGE task force recommendation for the Iowa Public Employee Retirement System (IPERS). More than 400,000 Iowans are covered by IPERS. Eliminating or weakening this retirement system would not only hurt those covered but would devastate Iowa’s economy.

Jazlin Coley is a Drake University graduate, educator, and community activator who now serves as Director of the Crew Scholars Program at her alma mater. She is committed to redefining what belonging looks like in higher education and embedding identity, equity, and care into its core. Currently pursuing her PhD in Education, Jazlin’s research and practice focus on harm in belonging practices, institutional accountability, and the cultivation of spaces where students—particularly those from marginalized backgrounds, can lead and thrive.

I met Jennifer Konfrst my first year at Drake University, long before she became House Democratic Leader or a candidate for Congress. Back then, I was a first-generation college student, new to Iowa, unsure of my footing, and truthfully—unsure if I belonged. Jennifer was assigned as my faculty mentor through the Crew Scholars Program, a leadership initiative for students of color. She didn’t have to take on that role; she volunteered for it. And she showed up. Every Thursday.

Some of our meetings ran long because I was navigating personal and academic challenges and needed a space to vent. Jennifer listened without judgment, asked hard questions, and reminded me that my presence on campus mattered. She balanced humor and humility with a kind of grounded honesty that’s rare in higher education, or in politics. She saw me as a person before she saw me as a student.

Gary Berkland is the Belmond-Klemme School Board president.

I’m a lifelong Iowan, a Vietnam veteran, a small-town lawyer, and yes—a registered Republican. I’ve voted for plenty of Republicans over the years, but this election, I’m proud to be supporting Democrat Zach Wahls for the United States Senate.

That might surprise some folks, but it really shouldn’t. Zach represents the kind of leadership both parties used to value: honest, practical, and grounded in Iowa common sense. He’s part of a new generation that’s more interested in solving problems than scoring partisan points, and that’s exactly what our country needs.

Abbey Paxton is the owner of Storyhouse Bookpub in Des Moines.

In 2021, I opened an independent bookstore in downtown Des Moines. My husband, also a small business owner, and I have had two children since moving back to Iowa in 2020, and we work full time running our businesses. 

Like many other small business owners and self-employed Iowans, our family resides in the gap between barely affordable, mediocre, private individual health insurance and Medicaid—a gap that will only widen after the most painful provisions of the Republican budget reconciliation bill (the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”) are fully implemented.

Every Iowa member of Congress voted in favor of the bill, which makes historic cuts to Medicaid while providing big tax breaks for the wealthy and new tax loopholes for big corporations like health insurance and prescription drug companies. 

I can’t remember when I met Claire Celsi. It was years before she decided to run for the state legislature. Our paths crossed often at Democratic events, and we knew many of the same people in progressive circles. I valued her take on the latest news and her thoughts about blogging, since she had kept an online journal during the 2000s.

Claire was generous with her time as a volunteer for many Democratic candidates, starting with Tom Harkin’s first U.S. Senate race in 1984. She was one of the early organizers of the West Des Moines Democrats, back when that suburb leaned strongly to Republicans. She managed Mike Huston’s Congressional campaign in 2000 and worked hard in 2017 to help Renee Hardman defeat an incumbent to win a West Des Moines city council seat. (Hardman is now the Democratic nominee to succeed Claire in Iowa Senate district 16.)

Josh Hughes described how Claire was the first “grown up” to take him seriously as a Democratic activist. She enjoyed spending time with people of all ages. Josh took this picture near the Surf Ballroom in August 2018, when he and Olivia Habinck were leaders of the College and Young Democrats of Iowa, and Claire and I carpooled with them to the Iowa Democratic Wing Ding.

John and Terri Hale own the The Hale Group, an Ankeny-based advocacy firm focused on older Iowans terriandjohnhale@gmail.com. Dean Lerner is an attorney and former Director of the Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals dean@kelinsonlaw.com.

With the passing of State Senator Claire Celsi, Iowa has lost the elected official who cared the most and worked the hardest to improve quality of care for residents of Iowa’s nursing facilities.

We collaborated extensively with Claire on aging and nursing home issues. She was as her friends and colleagues described her: tenacious, passionate, a truth-teller and a fighter.

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.

Lines written by Samuel Coleridge 200 years ago, in 1825:

All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair—
The bees are stirring—birds are on the wing— […]
Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And Hope without an object cannot live.

It’s an early reference to “the birds and the bees,” (although Coleridge inverts the order), a familiar euphemism for a conversation parents should have with their children. But the poet also mentions work and hope, relevant to this ramble since major doses of both are needed for society to address a serious birds’ and bees’ situation—literally the birds and the bees—and their rapidly diminishing populations. 

Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column. This essay first appeared on Substack.

As I write this column, the United States government is still shut down. Federal employees are not getting paid.

No, wait, that’s not quite true. Most federal employees are not getting paid.

Who’s still receiving a paycheck?

That would be President Donald Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, members of Congress, and federal judges. The Constitution requires that they be paid no matter what. Their staffs—and those amount to many thousands of people—are continuing to work, but without receiving their salaries. They’ll be entitled to their back pay once the government reopens.

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

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

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

Some legal background:

Diane Porter of Fairfield first published this post in September on My Gaia, an email newsletter “about getting to know nature” and “giving her a helping hand in our own backyards.” Diane also maintains the Birdwatching Dot Com website and bird blog.

On the first full day of fall, the Blue sage (Salvia azurea) of my garden is in full bloom. Flower spikes are head high. Some are deep blue, others paler. The ones I love best are the color of an Iowa summer sky.

Down in the heart of each flower, the petals narrow and form a well. Inside, a drop of nectar pools. It is ready for a visitor, someone whose flight is powered by sugar, someone who will pollinate the blossom.

Usually it’s a bumblebee who comes. It lands on the ruffled platform of the lower petal and pushes its head into the flower, probing for sweetness with its tongue.

Charles Bruner, Ralph Rosenberg, and David Osterberg jointly wrote this piece. All of the authors served with Paul Johnson in the Iowa legislature and remain active in Iowa politics and policy. They serve on the board of the Johnson Center for Land Stewardship Policy, which worked with Curt Meine in the development of We Can Do Better.

A land comprised of wilderness islands at one extreme and urban islands at the other, with vast food and fiber factories in between, does not constitute a geography of hope. But private land need not be devoted to a single-purpose enterprise. With a broader understanding of land and our place within the landscape, our Nation’s farms, ranches, and private forest land can and do serve the multiple functions that we and all other life do depend upon.

That quote is from Paul Johnson’s introduction to the USDA National Resources Soil Conservation Services’ 1996 America’s Private Land: A Geography of Hope, which is even more relevant today than when he wrote it and shepherded that publication. 

Paul Johnson (1941-2021) was a pivotal figure in American conservation, dedicating his life to bridging the gap between agriculture and environmental stewardship. A new book of Paul’s writings has just been released.

Dan Piller was a business reporter for more than four decades, working for the Des Moines Register and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He covered the oil and gas industry while in Texas and was the Register’s agriculture reporter before his retirement in 2013. He lives in Ankeny.

As my wife and I, both spry seventy-somethings, walked the state capitol complex sidewalks to the No Kings rally on October 18, I couldn’t help but notice the gathering crowd and remarking, “I’d feel better about this if the majority of people here didn’t have grey hair.”

photo by Dan Piller from the No Kings rally outside the Iowa state capitol

I put down the seeming preponderance of the Medicare set at the Des Moines rally to Iowa’s elder-leaning demographics. But the next day, Fox News and the right-wing echo chamber used the apparent senior citizen majority of the No Kings crowds elsewhere as their prime talking point. The rallies were impressive in their numbers, but nonetheless may be remembered as the Last Hurrah of a generation with enough wit to make clever signs.

Bill Bumgarner is a retired former health care executive from northwest Iowa who worked
in hospital management for 41 years, mostly in the state of Iowa.

In my reading over the last couple of weeks, I came upon the following dialogue that someone referenced from Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises.

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.

“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”

That exchange came back to me as I participated in a No Kings gathering in Spirit Lake, Iowa on October 18.

Some 25,000 to 30,000 Iowans were among the millions of Americans who protested President Donald Trump’s abuses of power on October 18. Despite the grave threats that brought people to the rallies, the prevailing mood was upbeat at the two “No Kings” events I attended. That’s consistent with news reports and anecdotal accounts of a “festival atmosphere” in cities and towns across the country.

I took most of the photos enclosed below in Indianola, where more than 300 people lined a busy street in the late morning, or at the early afternoon rally outside the state capitol in Des Moines. Hand-made signs vastly outnumbered professionally printed signs, capturing the protesters’ passion, creativity, and humor.