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. 

Whether you work for the federal, state or local government, you best just accept that blame and criticism go with the job and move ahead.

Decatur County Attorney Alan Wilson learned that lesson a few years ago. 

So, too, did Michael Hansen, the Newton mayor at the time.

It is a lesson top officials at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will have to learn for themselves.

Brooklyn Draisey is a Report for America corps member working for Iowa Capital Dispatch, where this story first appeared. To read the full report, scroll to the end of this article.

Iowa’s community colleges told lawmakers this year that portions of Iowa are lacking access to a higher education and one solution to eliminate “education deserts” is to offer bachelor’s degrees at their institutions. Private colleges pushed back against this premise, disagreeing about the perceived need.

A state-commissioned study received by the Iowa Department of Education last month, but not released until now, says the vast majority of the state is in reach of higher education resources, and that Iowa’s colleges and universities are rising to meet student and workforce needs. The study attributes workforce shortages to the business climate, not the higher education system. But community colleges argue the study misidentifies higher education deserts and says the state could still benefit from four-year degree programs at their schools.

Parties on opposite sides of the debate on whether Iowa’s higher education institutions are adequately meeting student and workforce demand had different takeaways from the report that maps out degree demand and access, though both agree the public and state officials would benefit from seeing it and adapting its recommendations.

“Higher Education and Workforce Alignment in Iowa: Final Report” was prepared for the department of education by the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS) after the department contracted the nonprofit consulting organization in December, according to the report. It is dated March 6. The Iowa Capital Dispatch obtained the report on July 23 through a public records request.

Dean Lerner served Iowa as an Assistant Attorney General for sixteen years, Chief Deputy Secretary of State for four years, and about ten years as Deputy Director, then Director of the Department of Inspections & Appeals. He then worked for the CMS Director of the Division of Nursing Homes, and the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Iowa. He is a graduate of Grinnell College and Drake University Law School.

Reflecting upon the extraordinary 250th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence, it seems important to again contemplate and admire the bravery and devotion of our founding fathers to the cause of liberty. The incomparable creation of this everlasting document and its corollary Constitution are nothing short of a miracle penned by extraordinarily gifted men.

Their genius provided us with living parchments establishing lofty ideals and aspirations for a new nation and the construct to preserve it. One principal, unmistakable safeguard to its preservation was the formation of three co-equal branches of government, each responsible for providing checks and balances to excesses of the other.

Today, regrettably, one could reasonably conclude that our executive branch has methodically co-opted these essential safeguards—with assistance from weak and/or cowardly sycophants. How, one should ask, could this happen?

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

In spite of its tall, straight stature (between 2-5 feet tall), Prairie dogbane (Apocynum cannabinum), also known as Indian hemp, is often overlooked.

I really like Prairie dogbane. I often say out loud, “Oh, look, Prairie dogbane!” Sometimes I’m pointing it out to others. But more likely I’m just saying it to myself—and probably to the plant itself. I feel the plant needs to know it’s appreciated. 

State Representative Derek Wulf has experienced a remarkable reversal of fortune since becoming the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor in June. A month ago, he was facing possible foreclosure and default judgments for multiple creditors seeking repayment of six-figure debts.

Iowa court filings indicate that since GOP gubernatorial nominee Zach Lahn chose his running mate, Wulf received a bridge loan, which allowed him to repay at least one major debt, and possibly more. In addition, an unnamed lender may be willing to refinance the obligations that prompted Wulf’s bank to file a foreclosure petition in May.

Neither Wulf’s attorney nor a spokesperson for Lahn’s campaign has responded to detailed questions about who has provided bridge financing, offered collateral to secure a new loan, or agreed to guarantee new loans. At this writing, it’s unclear whether those offering Wulf a financial lifeline include Lahn, any member of Lahn’s family, any donor to Lahn’s campaign, or anyone Iowa law would prohibit from making a gift to state legislators and candidates.

Noah Gratias is a seventh generation Iowan from Waukee. 

In April 1903, on the steps of Iowa’s state capitol building, President Teddy Roosevelt said, “I am glad to say that Iowa can teach rather than learn the lesson of good citizenship.” More than a century later, Iowans are still known for their decency and civic virtue.

Yet many would agree that “Iowa Nice” has been strained by the toxicity of national politics. As the 2026 elections draw closer, Iowans have an opportunity to radiate some of the healing our country desperately needs. 

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. 

Buried words, like buried treasures, sometimes surprise and enrich. But buried landmines only create problems now, and later.

Such is the case with a passage buried in a 71-page Iowa Supreme Court decision last month.

In a unanimous ruling, the court decided that a law authorizing Iowa prisons to block inmates from receiving printed materials containing nudity was constitutional.

The justices laid out a cogent rationale for their conclusion: Some inmate free-speech rights must give way inside prisons to protect safety and security. One such permissible restriction, the court said, allows government in Iowa to ban inmate access to commercially printed materials depicting nudity.

But the discussion did not stop with that.

Bruce Morrison is a working artist and photographer living with his wife Georgeann in rural southeast O’Brien County, Iowa. Bruce works from his studio/gallery–a renovated late 1920s brooding house/sheep barn. You can follow Morrison on his artist blog, Prairie Hill Farm Studio, or visit his website at Morrison’s studio.

Iowa’s Western Echinacea

For many years I have become familiar with the Narrow-leaved Purple Coneflower (Echinacea angustifolia), sometimes just referred to as Narrow-leaved Echinacea. In our northwest corner and the entire western edge of Iowa, this is the most common native Echinacea species.

The BONAP’s North American Plant Atlas (NAPA) shows it as stretching as far as from western Iowa and Minnesota, all the way to Montana, Wyoming, the Dakotas, down through Nebraska, Oklahoma, Colorado, Texas, and into New Mexico.

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.

If the Confederate States of America had succeeded in winning, or negotiating, its independence from the United States of America in the Civil War, this year it would be celebrating its 165th birthday. The Confederacy declared itself a new nation on February 4, 1861.

As a young kid I unconsciously confused the words “confederate” and “counterfeit.” To me at that time, the two were interchangeable. The South was a fake nation, in my mind, so either word worked.

In the final analysis I was sort of right. But for four years after its birth in 1861, the Confederacy fought valiantly on land and sea against the USA. The Confederacy’s ultimate defeat, from the North’s greater strength in armed men, industrial and economic superiority, and international approval, does not invalidate Southern determination to defend its society and culture, which of course included slavery.

Al Charlson is a North Central Iowa farm kid, lifelong Iowan, and retired bank trust officer.

We have heard for years that the Social Security and Medicare trust funds are running out of assets. The projected dates when both will be depleted are now clearly visible.

The trustees of the Social Security Trust Fund now project that it will be depleted by late 2032. Republican Senator Bernie Moreno of Ohio and Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts warned in a recent New York Times guest column that if nothing is done, Social Security benefits could then be cut by more than 20 percent. That would be a jolt and a real hardship for many of our older neighbors.

Moreno and Warren are working together on legislation to remove the current $184,500 payroll tax cap, which they estimate would increase revenue by $3 trillion over the next 10 years and extend Social Security solvency for another generation.

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 Americans celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday with parades, speeches, fireworks and other patriotic traditions, much attention will focus on familiar symbols of our history — monuments, battlefields, historic landmarks.

Yet Independence Day also lets us reflect on lesser-known stories of people and places that illuminate the ideals on which our nation was founded.

One such place is Hero Street, a stone’s throw from the Mississippi River and Interstate Highway 80 in Silvis, Illinois, part of the Quad Cities.

One of my best scoops wasn’t related to Iowa politics or state government. It came out of the 1996 Russian presidential election, and it happened 30 years ago today.

Covering a presidential election in Moscow

During the 1990s, I would not have guessed that I would ever devote my professional life to covering Iowa politics. I landed my first writing job in 1995, working at the Prague-based Open Media Research Institute. Robert Orttung and I were hired to cover Russian domestic politics, including campaigns and elections and parliamentary happenings.

Clark Kauffman is deputy editor at Iowa Capital Dispatch, where this article first appeared on June 30.

Two federal judges in Iowa have sharply criticized government officials for repeatedly violating the law in immigration cases, with one Iowa ICE enforcement officer held in contempt for “astonishing conduct” and willfully violating a court order.

The two cases, each handled by a different federal judge, involve Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials who have moved detainees out of Iowa jails and the court’s jurisdiction while the individuals have pending immigration cases before the court.

The judge in one of the two cases took aim at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa, saying “the court expects better” of assistant U.S. attorneys who, she said, should be working in the interests of justice. The judge also criticized ICE and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for what she called their “unprecedented disregard for court orders and continued failure to follow the law.”

Kristie Brown is a homeschooling mom who has dedicated her life to creating a better world for her children and future generations. Self‑taught in languages, cooking, sewing, gardening, and more, she has spent countless hours in independent study. She believes children are the foundation of tomorrow, and it is her calling to give them opportunities and a life richer than those who came before us.

In the summer of 1995, we were having a family get-together at my grandparents’ house on Walker Street in Des Moines, Iowa. I was five years old, playing outside, but I could still hear all the adults talking about my grandparents’ neighbor to the right of their home. It was a woman who was unusual and kept to herself. She had a beautiful Victorian home, but what captivated me was hiding behind it. I could see all the wildflowers peeking through her backyard fence.

The adults debated calling the city on her for having such a wild yard and said she must have bugs and rodents in her home. I did not agree with them, but being five, I knew to keep my mouth shut when the adults were talking. I remember seeing all the life in the yard. The purple cone flowers and the dozens of butterflies sparked my imagination. I was the only one in the neighborhood who admired the yard.

Until recently, I didn’t realize how much this particular moment in my life would affect me as an adult. I was consumed with envy, and I wanted to live there with her.

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

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

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

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

AJ Jones is a writer and creator of art, expressing herself across different mediums. She embraces her neurodivergence as a unique way to view the world in hopes of creating a better future. She first published this essay on her Substack newsletter, Blue Dot Thoughts.

As I consider my plans for this year’s special Semiquincentennial, I find myself wistfully remembering the Bicentennial 50 (wow) years ago.

We were all patriots

In 1976, there was no argument; we were all patriots. Nestled between the end of the Vietnam War and Nixon’s downfall, and Reagan’s promise of trickle-down economics there was a time when our country felt whole, if only for the year leading up to the celebration.

It was different then. Someone with no work experience could find a job in local manufacturing. There were so many factories about.

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.

Greene County Attorney Thomas Laehn, the only Libertarian Party candidate ever elected in a partisan contest in Iowa, intends to use the Constitution to break the Democrat-Republican stranglehold on the nation’s government in his race for the U.S. Senate, he said in a wide-ranging, hour-long interview last week in Jefferson.

Laehn, who says the American Republic is now an elective monarchy with oligarchic influences, is a fierce critic of the government use of eminent domain for private-interest carbon-capture pipelines. He thinks abortion should be decided fully at the state level, although Laehn describes himself as “radically” anti-abortion, who if elected at the state level, would support a total abortion ban.

He supports decriminalization of marijuana possession and use, which he says is the first bill he’d introduce in the Senate.

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

Few, if any, July Fourths have been anticipated with the trepidation of this year’s. We will mark the 250^th anniversary of our nation’s founding but also will stoke anxiety about damage President Donald Trump is doing to our democracy.

Instead of, or as a salve to, the 250^th observance, we also have a bicentennial on hand — a somber yet inspiring commemoration of the lives and deaths of two presidents, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

They strove to create a nation where all “are created equal …endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

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.

Donald Trump is the most consequential president of the United States in more than 75 years. He now controls, partially controls, or heavily influences most of the major sectors of American life. He continually seeks to grow that power.

The country is now celebrating 250 years of existence, which began with its Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. But the first attempt of the new nation to form a lasting government—the Articles of Confederation—failed to launch.

Diane Porter of Fairfield first published this post 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.

Down the grassy slope from my house, in June a great tangle of wild roses suddenly blooms with hundreds of flowers. They billow in every tint from deep raspberry through pale pink to nearly white.

It is the Climbing Rose (Rosa setigera), one of Iowa’s several wild roses. According to botanists, it is considered uncommon in Iowa. I’m rather pleased to find that it grows on my land.