James Enright is a Sioux City native, avid hiker, fish keeper, and prairie enthusiast.

The 36-mile Glacial Trail Scenic Byway loops through the Little Sioux River valley, covering parts of O’Brien, Buena Vista, Clay, and Cherokee counties. Along the way, it reveals prairie bluffs, oak savanna, timber, deep ravines, and fertile farmland. I first visited with my wife several years ago and was immediately struck by the landscape. I didn’t return until May of 2025, when a new job required travel throughout northwest Iowa. Since then, I’ve driven at least one stretch of the byway more than 50 times this summer.

There is a sense of familiarity in these glacial hills that reminds me of my native Loess Hills. The prairie mostly occupies hillsides too steep to plow, tile, or even graze. Some lower regions also contain mixes of remnant and restored prairie. The ridges are generally dry, open, and exposed to near-constant wind. I encounter many drought-tolerant plants here that I see back home, including rough and dotted blazing stars, spiny golden asters, silky asters, and various drought-tolerant grasses like dropseed and muhly.

If I didn’t know better, I might expect to see yucca, skeletonweed, or prairie bluets on the west- or southwest-facing ridges. This region contains more remnant prairie than anywhere else in Iowa outside of the Loess Hills.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 

Game of Thrones fans remember the ominous warning, “Winter is coming.” It was about White Walkers and the army of the undead invading. Winter is coming in Iowa too. There aren’t White Walkers and the undead lurking behind Iowa snow drifts, but the annual legislative Winter Dance Party under the Golden Dome will begin soon.

It might not provoke White Walker terror, but Iowa educators feel a chill down their spines thinking about the Iowa legislature convening on January 12. What’s the next attack? How will we cope? Will they increase state funding for schools above the inflation rate?

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.

I find myself extremely frustrated with the media coverage and Democratic response to the government shutdown and the attitudes surrounding health care costs. With the ongoing health care crisis—and yes, it’s a crisis—it seems ridiculous to me that Democrats would focus their efforts on bringing down premiums and backing subsidies for health care costs.

Every year around this time, I get angry because our system makes me sign up for health insurance benefits through my employer. That is absolute garbage and one of the primary drivers of unhappiness and economic security for so many Americans.

I will lead with this hot take: Democrats shouldn’t be advocating for lower health care costs through subsidies and making access to the Affordable Care Act marketplace more affordable. That should not be their stated goal, nor their party position when it comes to negotiating on this point.

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. 

Recent events in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and at Sacred Heart Cathedral in Davenport provide stark reminders that our nation’s leaders have seemingly forgotten a biblical command around for the ages.

It is one Robert Ray followed during his tenure as Iowa governor, which ended some 42 years ago.

Ray was front of mind as I digested the news last week. His service contrasted with the haunting picture the three easily missed events presented of who we are as Americans and who we are becoming.

“I heard a physician say one time, you can tell a lot from a person by looking at their skin, and if their skin looks good, generally they’re in pretty good health,” Chris Jones told a capacity crowd at The Harkin Institute at Drake University on November 12. “And the way I see it, I look at Iowa, our lakes and our rivers and our aquifers in that same way.”

Those polluted waters “don’t look good” now, Jones said. “They’re sick,” and they indicate “we have a malignant tumor growing on the inside.”

The malignant tumor, in Jones’ view, is “corporate agriculture.” But consolidation in agriculture and the dominant model for farming have “had effects far beyond our water.” They have also “contributed greatly to the decline of rural Iowa.”

After sounding the alarm for years through his writing and public speaking, Jones is now exploring a Democratic campaign for Iowa secretary of agriculture in 2026. He spoke to Bleeding Heartland after the event in Des Moines about his vision for change and the policies he would champion if he runs for statewide office.

Xavier Carrigan is a Democratic candidate in Iowa’s third Congressional district.

Picture a hostage tied to the tracks. The train is coming. The kidnappers demand a ransom, and the so-called heroes in Washington hand them the keys to the vault.

That’s what happened this fall. After 43 days of a federal government shutdown, Congress reopened the government but left millions of working Americans still bound to the rails. The funding bill keeps programs like SNAP food assistance running, restores federal pay, and prevents layoffs. Those things matter. But what didn’t make it into the deal will hurt far longer than any shutdown: the failure to extend the enhanced premium tax credits under the Affordable Care Act.

State Representative Aime Wichtendahl represents Iowa House district 80.

In the lead up to the 2025 election the consultant class decided to release a 58-page document called deciding ‘Deciding to Win’ a supposed blueprint for how Democrats could win in 2026.

The report was authored by a trio of consultants—David Axelrod, James Carville, and David Plouffe—a group of politicos who haven’t been successful since Avengers was new on DVD.

The document focused on a prescriptive policy agenda for the 2026 elections: emphasize some kitchen table issues, like minimum wage or prescription drugs, and focus less on “some identity and cultural issues.”

Which is consultant-speak for chuck trans people under the bus…just a little bit. After all, they still need the queer community to be uninspired enough to still pull the lever for their “lesser of two evils” candidates ad infinitum.

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

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

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

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 

It’s 9:45 p.m. and we’re on item 3 of the agenda, with 12 more to go. Three board members are in a verbal brawl with two parents that would make the World Wrestling Federation blush. So far, it’s more like a colonoscopy without sedation than a school board meeting.

A person willing to serve in the hardest unpaid job is a hero. He/she stepped up when others stepped back. 

Iowans elected lots of new school board members last week. I’ve worked with many boards over my 38 years in education, so I’ve experienced the good, the bad, and the ugly. Here are a few suggestions for avoiding the ugly.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

With a rare sense of place, a know-it-when-you-see-it Iowa-ness, Art Cullen’s roaring new book is nothing short of an unsparing mirror for 3.3 million of us in the state. With still-night whispers of truth and bar-fight ferocity, this western Iowa newspaperman reveals the masquerade-ball leadership that’s turned so many of Iowa’s once-warm communities into furnaces of justified grievance and misdirected outrage.

Readers will absorb the very landscape of this state with more informed eyes after completing Cullen’s Dear Marty, We Crapped In Our Nest: Notes From The Edge Of The World.

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.

President Donald Trump compares himself—always favorably—to previous U.S. presidents, particularly George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

Trump has faulted Lincoln for not avoiding a Civil War. Our current president is a self-styled peacemaker, claiming to have ended eight wars in eight months—which would be more wars solved than bankruptcies he presided over as a businessman. (That would be four or six bankruptcies, depending on whether you count three of the bankruptcies as one, as Trump does.) The BBC examined the supposed peace agreements—which may or may not have staying power—and how much credit the president deserves for each one.

Some observers of Trump’s governing style see more alarming historical analogies. They may liken the United States in the 2020s to the rise of Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

If you’re not satisfied with these comparisons and contrasts, consider another: Trump and Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (37-68 AD). He’s better known in the Western World as Nero, the Roman emperor (54-68) who supposedly fiddled while Rome burned in the year 64.

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. 

As Iowans headed to the polls this week to elect local school board members, they faced an issue beyond the usual ones of taxes, student achievement, teacher pay, curriculum and enrollment.

This year, school board and administrators’ performance and trustworthiness were front and center in some school districts. And on that, for voters, it is what they do not know that might hurt them.

Katie Byerly of Cerro Gordo County is also known as Iowa Prairie Girl on YouTube.

Have you ever noticed that some flowers have fun nicknames, while others have none? Old farmers know Marsh marigolds as cowslips. Soapwort is also called Bouncing Bet, and then there’s Common mullein . . . also known as cowboy toilet paper, flannel leaf, Quaker’s rouge, and Aaron’s rod, to name a few. 

On the other hand, some wildflowers have few nicknames. Asters and Goldenrod come to mind. Perhaps that is because both these wildflowers come in many varieties, which are hard to differentiate. I imagine our forefathers may have felt the same way I do. . . another #%! aster. Heck, even Sylvan Runkel didn’t take time to recongnize all the asters and goldenrods in either of his Wildflowers of the Tallgrass Prairie or Wildflowers of the Iowa Woodlands books.

Mandi Remington is the founding director of Corridor Community Action Network and a Johnson County supervisor. 

There is a line between hard bargaining and cruelty. When a government begins to weaponize basic means of survival, it crosses into dangerous territory. The decision to withhold Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits—paired with Congressional plans to slash Medicaid and SNAP funding—isn’t just another partisan fight. It’s a turning point.  

For the first time in SNAP’s 60-year history, families aren’t receiving the benefits they depend on. For many, that means empty refrigerators, skipped meals, and trying to explain to their kids why they can’t buy more food. This is a conscious choice by the Trump administration, as Congress has already appropriated billions of dollars in a contingency fund to cover SNAP during government shutdowns. 

My own family has relied on SNAP. When my oldest child was diagnosed with celiac disease at three years old, we stopped going to free meal programs because there was no way for me to know which foods were safe for her to eat. I couldn’t bring myself to ask volunteers to sort through ingredients or make special accommodations when we were there for help that was supposed to be simple. 

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

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

Connie Ryan is Executive Director of the Interfaith Alliance of Iowa and Action Fund.

Halloween is supposed to be light and fun. Whether kids are trick or treating or adults are hanging out together in costume. Ghosts and ghouls; villains and heroes; and everything in-between. Sometimes the costumes—usually worn by adults—are a little questionable. Sometimes there is no question at all.

On this year’s Halloween night in the very pleasant and ordinary suburb of Clive, Iowa, a man walked into a bar dressed as a Nazi.

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

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

Dr. Emily Boevers is a Readlyn farm kid, now an OB-GYN practicing in Iowa and living in Waverly with her family.

On October 1, the federal government “shut down” when the prior funding resolution, which Congress approved in March with bipartisan support in the Senate, expired. This time around, the same Congress was unable to work together for a bipartisan majority to authorize ongoing funding. A central sticking point is what to do about over tax credits for health insurance, which are set to expire at the end of 2025.

A month into the shutdown, a widening chasm exists between our political leaders in Congress, with little to no progress reported. While many Americans have gone about their lives, and the government has diverted funds to cover wages for some federal employees, the stakes are getting higher as we speak.

There is nothing positive about the shutdown, and yet, as a physician, I am glad to see our representatives fighting to maintain health care coverage options for patients through the Affordable Care Act tax credits. It presents an opportunity to share insights from the history of the health care reform law and discuss the challenges of taking care of patients in our current system. Perhaps most urgently, it presents an opportunity to leverage the ongoing chaos of both our political and health care systems into what could be meaningful policy reform.