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.

Robin Opsahl covers the state legislature and politics for Iowa Capital Dispatch, where this article first appeared.

Many of the laws advanced during the 2026 legislative session took effect July 1, including measures restricting access to abortion-inducing medication, increasing the speed limit on two-lane highways and limiting future governors’ powers during public health and disaster emergencies.

July 1, the beginning of the state’s fiscal year, is the default date for new laws to be enacted, unless otherwise specified.

Several measures passed this session went into effect immediately, including laws banning public entities from hosting warrant resolution clinics and shifting some K-12 funding from public to charter schools to follow students. Other new laws have a different start date specified. For example, the 5-cent tax on vapes and alternative nicotine products will go into effect January 1, 2027.

Here’s a look at some of Iowa’s new laws that took effect July 1:

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 

I’m a proud Andy Griffith Show nerd. I know the next line in the dialogue, and even after the twentieth time watching, I cackle like it’s the first. I’ve visited Mount Airy, North Carolina, the real Mayberry for the Andy Griffith Festival, rode in the squad car, played with the siren, and visited the courthouse. 

When I was working after a stressful day, I’d watch a couple episodes, and it calmed me down. It was better than any pill.

One of my top ten favorite episodes is “Aunt Bee’s Medicine Man.” Colonel Harvey, a traveling salesman, arrives in Mayberry and charms the town ladies into buying his tonic he claims, “purges the body and lifts the spirit.” But it’s 85 percent alcohol. Mayberry is a dry county.

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. 

It has been a while since you heard a United States leader say, “The fault is mine alone.”

If you visit Abilene, Kansas, the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Museum offers countless artifacts of leadership — far from the battlefields of Europe and the White House where the five-star general left his mark.

One museum artifact that caught my eye on a visit several years ago stands out because of what it says, and its backstory.

 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. 

During the first seventeen months of President Trump’s second term of office, he is responsible for the U.S. government using taxpayer money to purchase equity stakes in fourteen private and fourteen publicly held companies. Over 250 years of U.S. history, this is—by far— the most significant change in American economic policy.

The Cato Institute, a conservative think tank, characterized Trump’s economic environment as state capitalism and a stepping stone toward what they refer to as “creeping socialism.” In an August 28, 2025 report, Cato argued that “Trump’s state capitalism – a hybrid between socialism and capitalism – won’t make America great again.”

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

I like it when plants are named after the supposed useful functions they provided to our forefathers. After scanning the Iowa wildflower Wednesday index, I found that our writers have covered several of these named plants. We have snakeroot and boneset, fleabane and catchfly, compass and cup plants to list a few. Then there’s bedstraw – Laura Belin covered the “cleavers” bedstraw (Galium aparine) back in 2020. 

Here I will review a different plant in the bedstraw/madder family: Northern Bedstraw (Galium boreale). And yes, just like the name suggests, these plants were used for mattress stuffing. 

Northern bedstraw with Prairie phlox:

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.

More than 40 years ago, in his first term as a U.S. Senator, Chuck Grassley gained a reputation as a government watchdog, thanks to his outrage that the Pentagon would spend $435 for a $15 hammer.

Now it is 2026 and the once thrifty Grassley was willing to shovel billions of taxpayer dollars to President Donald Trump’s pet projects. He approved allocating up to $1 billion for security purposes in construction of Trump’s proposed ballroom of 90,000 square feet. That $1-billion proposal has been shelved, at least temporarily, in response to Senate and public outcry. Republicans dropped it from the budget reconciliation bill to fund immigration and border enforcement, which Trump signed earlier this month.

Governor Kim Reynolds ordered flags flown at half-staff across Iowa on June 20, the day Republican State Senator Julian Garrett was laid to rest. Garrett passed away on June 8 after a long illness, which caused him to miss the entirety of the 2026 legislative session.

In statements released following Garrett’s death, leaders from both parties offered their condolences and honored his work as a legislator, farmer, and attorney.

I want to highlight another important aspect of the senator’s life: he showed unusual persistence in the face of political setbacks.

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.

With the Iowa primary elections behind us and important statewide contests for governor and U.S. Senate coming up in November, I was struck by curiosity.

Does Iowa – 99 counties strong – have a bellwether county?

Over the years, you may have heard about bellwether counties that have correctly selected the U.S. presidential winner many election cycles in a row. (That distinction currently belongs to Blaine County, Montana and Essex County, New York, which have selected every winner since 2000.)

This project is a bit different. It seeks to learn if a single Iowa county’s general election candidate preference percentages closely mirror statewide results over time.

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. 

Here we go again.

If the University of Iowa and Iowa attorney general’s office get their way, a legacy gift from a grateful and accomplished graduate will no longer help students like him.

The graduate, Ezra L. Totton, was an esteemed chemist during the latter half of the 20th century. One chapter in his great American success story was written in the chemistry building at the University of Iowa in the 1940s.

Totton’s story deserves retelling because he was at the center of a recent Iowa Supreme Court decision.

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 

The heavy summer air almost suffocated 10-year-old me as I shuffled into the dark woods clutching an open bag. My older friends coaxed me into a snipe hunt. They barely suppressed giggles as they explained I’d have to be patient, and a flashlight would scare the snipe away. 

I stood shaking with an open bag. My friends evaporated into the night. I hadn’t asked the right questions. I trusted them. Things weren’t the same as they appeared.

I was left holding the bag.

With an election approaching, voters need to ask the hard questions, or we’ll all be left holding the bag and the unfunny joke will be on us. Here are some questions for Zach Lahn, the Republican nominee for governor.