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.

On Memorial Day I set out to visit Iowa’s largest “lake.” A staple in the memories of my youth. I was curious to see if people still relaxed and recreated as they once did during the warm weather holidays. So much has changed, environmentally, since I was a kid and not for the better.

It seems I was born in the “sweet spot.” A time before an outrageous number of CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) and manure run-off…a time before Roundup and glyphosate. A time of innocence when family and friends could meet at Iowa lakes to fish, to swim, to enjoy the warmer seasons outdoors.

Looking back we had no idea just how lucky we were.

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. A version of this essay first appeared on his Substack newsletter, The Odd Man Out.

Kitchen table.

This word has come to be a kind of Rorschach test for political commentary—simultaneously drained of all meaning while growing to encompass every hot take of the moment. Kitchen tables are no longer just a place to sit, set down the day’s mail, or eat. No, no, no, this is a semi-holy location, a hallowed ground that ought be spoken of with the weightiest concern and utmost care.

Forget the Room Where It Happens, it’s all about this kind of table. That is where “it” happens, but for some reason, only for certain types of people and for certain types of issues. They are the “kitchen table issues” Americans supposedly care about, separate from and above other “complicated” issues.

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.

My first look at Wild geraniums (Geranium maculatum) was on a vertical cliff, which forms the far bank of Crow Creek, near my home.

Pink-purple flowers leaned out over the stream, lavish among mosses, ferns, and other wildflowers.

I didn’t know what they were.

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.

If an opinionated old guy from southern Iowa delivered the recent commencement address at the United States Military Academy, my message would have contrasted with the one given by another opinionated old guy, one from Queens, New York, by way of the White House.

When I was a newspaper editor, I sometimes told the staff they needed to run a belt sander across an article to remove rough spots before publication. So it was with President Donald Trump’s speech to 1,000 new Army second lieutenants at West Point in May. His staff needed to take the Oval Office belt sander to his message.

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 

Over time, essential items seem to vanish and are quickly replaced by new technology. Home phones gave way to cell phones now found in most 5^th grader pockets.

Video tapes and CDs died and were resurrected as movie streaming and digital music. Once a badly folded map gave directions. Now, we talk to GPS, and it orders us, “Make a U-turn as soon as possible.”

Politics isn’t immune either. Principled conservatives disappeared and have been replaced by enablers.

Iowa’s 2026 U.S. Senate race had its first viral moment on May 30, when an unscripted comment from Senator Joni Ernst generated massive coverage across Iowa and national news outlets.

The words Ernst blurted out in frustration at that town hall meeting may or may not have staying power in the next Senate campaign.

But we’ll definitely keep hearing what the senator said before and after making that gaffe. Republicans around the country, including Iowa’s U.S. House members, have used the same false claims in defense of the budget reconciliation bill now pending in the Senate.

Those statements were among more than a dozen messages about Medicaid and the federal food assistance program known as SNAP that Republicans tested this spring in telephone polls. I was a respondent for one of the surveys in early May and have transcribed the questionnaire at the end of this post.

I don’t know which GOP-aligned entity paid for the robo-poll I received, but it’s clear the memo on how to spin deep Medicaid and SNAP cuts has gone out to all Republicans in Congress.

Two Iowa jurists have signed on to an amicus brief calling for a federal court to dismiss the indictment against Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan. Federal prosecutors charged the judge with concealing a person from arrest and obstructing an official proceeding after she allegedly helped a defendant in her courtroom avoid immigration law enforcement. She has pleaded not guilty and moved to dismiss the charges.

Former U.S. District Court Judge Mark W. Bennett and former Iowa Supreme Court Chief Justice Marsha Ternus were among the 138 retired judges who signed the brief, filed on May 30 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. The signatories served on courts in 24 different states or were appointed to the federal bench by Presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George H.W. Bush. Their brief argued, “The government’s indictment of Judge Dugan represents an extraordinary and direct assault on the independence of the entire judicial system.”

In early May, Judge Bennett and Justice Ternus signed an open letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, which condemned the Trump administration’s various attempts to “intimidate and threaten the judiciary.”

The Interfaith Alliance of Iowa has honored Bleeding Heartland with its 2025 Partner Organization award, “in recognition of your significant commitment to keep Iowans informed with a vital free press, an essential part of a strong democracy.”

Only one other media outlet has received this award from the Interfaith Alliance of Iowa: The Storm Lake Times and its Pulitzer Prize-winning editor Art Cullen in 2019.

The Interfaith Alliance of Iowa is a 501(c) 3 organization that describes itself as “the only statewide, non-partisan, progressive voice for people of faith and no faith protecting religious freedom, safeguarding the line between religion and government, ensuring religion is not misused to discriminate, championing individual rights, and uniting diverse voices to challenge extremism.”

John and Terri Hale own The Hale Group, an Ankeny-based advocacy firm focused on older Iowans, Iowans with disabilities and the caregivers who support them. Contact them at terriandjohnhale@gmail.com

Our admiration goes to the Davids of the world: those who stand up, speak out and fight back, refusing to let the Goliaths intimidate or silence them.

A recent example is a story by Clark Kauffman, reporter at the Iowa Capital Dispatch. He detailed the allegations in a lawsuit filed by a former certified nurse aide at a nursing home in Fonda, Iowa. The suit was filed against the Fonda Specialty Care nursing home, its parent company, Care Initiatives, and a licensed practical nurse working at the facility. You can read the April 30 story here.

Geoff Horsfield is policy director and Anne Schechinger is Midwest director at the Environmental Working Group. This post first appeared on the EWG’s website.

Farm subsidies already favor the largest farms. But the budget reconciliation bill the U.S. House approved on May 22 is packed with farm subsidy loopholes that would make the problem worse. 

These provisions could add tens of billions to the federal deficit and further tilt the playing field against small family farmers. 

Here are some of the worst farm subsidy loopholes and giveaways in the bill: 

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 

They’re finally gone. It’s over. Mom always said, “Nothing good comes after midnight.” I didn’t get it as a teen. I do now. At 6:31 am on May 15 the legislative party under the Golden Dome died, after lingering on life support for nearly two weeks beyond the scheduled adjournment date.

But it’s not majority party legislators suffering from hangover headaches. The real head throbbing belongs to Iowa public schools.

It can’t be cured with sleep or a home remedy. It impacts 480,665 students in 325 school districts. Here are some of those headaches.

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.

Last week, the Pentagon accepted the emir of Qatar’s gift of a Boeing 747, a $400 million bauble donated for our president to enjoy by a monarch whose family has ruled the tiny Mideast nation for more than a century.

Our commander in chief said the United States would be stupid to reject the donation—a present he hopes to use as a temporary replacement for Air Force One. The key word there: a temporary replacement.

Controversy clouds this gift for a couple of reasons. And Iowa’s public gift law—which deals with freebies much less ostentatious than the Qatari jet—provides important context on the controversy.

Taylor Kohn is an Iowan advocate and publicist currently residing in Minnesota.

State Auditor Rob Sand, the top elected Democrat in Iowa, announced his run for governor on May 12. With Governor Kim Reynolds not seeking re-election, some see Sand’s candidacy as a chance to win the office away from the GOP. I’m among those who would like to see that happen.

Unfortunately, Rob Sand is not offering a real alternative to the party in power.

Sean Flaherty lives in Iowa City.

Election integrity in Iowa would take a major step backward if Governor Kim Reynolds signs House File 928, a bill that would eliminate a hand recount option for statewide and federal elections. 

If Reynolds signs HF 928, recounts in Iowa would almost always use the same computer equipment and program used to tabulate election night results. 

In the event of a miscount due to malware or computer error, using the same equipment and software in a recount would render the recount worse than useless. 

President Donald Trump marked Memorial Day on May 26 with an all-caps rant about “scum” who allegedly “spent the last four years trying to destroy our country,” and “USA hating judges” he characterized as “monsters who want our country to go to hell.” It’s becoming a regular thing for Trump to use this day as another excuse to settle scores with political opponents.

Most people in public life understand that the holiday originally known as Decoration Day is intended to honor Americans who died during military service.

The Iowa National Guard posted a video on May 26 to illustrate the training that goes into offering military funeral honors at approximately 1,400 services in Iowa each year. Sgt. Lorenzo Lopez of the Iowa Army National Guard’s Military Funeral Honors team explained the various roles and steps, and how team members focus on being “precise” with their movements.

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. A version of this essay first appeared on his Substack newsletter, The Odd Man Out.

As an atheist and critic of religion, I didn’t expect to be writing about the goings on in the Catholic Church regarding the new pope. The media is abuzz with coverage of the man the cardinals elected, Robert Prevost of Chicago. Since he has been critical of notable right-wing politicians and policy on social media, and is the first Pope from North America, some have argued his selection signifies a continuation of the “progressive” legacy of the late Pope Francis.

However, the evidence is simply not stacking up behind this claim.

“President Trump was right about everything—build the wall, end catch-and-release, and stand with law enforcement,” wrote Attorney General Brenna Bird in a May 21 post on her campaign Facebook page. She was near the U.S. border with Mexico, at a press conference organized by the Republican Attorneys General Association.

The Iowa Attorney General’s office didn’t release a statement about the trip before or afterwards, and didn’t post about it on Bird’s official Facebook or X/Twitter feeds.

That makes sense, because Bird didn’t go to Arizona to perform any official duties. The trip was the latest sign that she is desperate to secure President Donald Trump’s endorsement as she considers whether to run for governor in 2026.

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.

Prior to retiring at the end of 2023, I worked in hospital leadership for 41 years. For the last 24 years of that time, I served as president at two hospitals in rural Iowa.

I’ll be quick to my point and blunt. When President Donald Trump or any Republican member of the U.S. House or Senate tells you that their Medicaid budget plans are strictly focused on cutting waste, fraud and abuse, they’re lying.

All four Iowans in the U.S. House voted on May 22 to pass a federal budget reconciliation package combining massive tax cuts with deep spending cuts on health care and food assistance.

The early morning vote on the “One Big Beautiful Act” (adopting President Donald Trump’s preferred phrase) followed an all-night debate. House leaders rushed the vote before the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) could analyze a manager’s amendment released on the evening of May 21, which made many substantive changes to tax provisions and deepened the planned Medicaid cuts.

House members approved the measure by 215 votes to 214, with two Republicans joining all Democrats to vote no, and one Republican voting “present.” The one-vote margin means U.S. Representatives Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-01), Ashley Hinson (IA-02), Zach Nunn (IA-03), and Randy Feenstra (IA-04) each can claim to have cast the deciding vote to cut taxes. They did it without waiting for a nonpartisan analysis of the costs and impacts for their constituents.

This vote will likely become a central theme for Democratic candidates in Iowa’s 2026 Congressional campaigns—and the governor’s race, if Feenstra becomes the GOP nominee. Within hours, Congressional challengers Travis Terrell (IA-01), Sarah Trone Garriott (IA-03), and Jennifer Konfrst (IA-03) blasted the vote in social media posts and fundraising emails. A video of Miller-Meeks running away from Social Security Works executive director Alex Lawson as he presses her about Medicaid cuts has gone viral on several social media platforms and will surely be seen in television commercials.

Tens of thousands of Iowans will lose their health insurance, food assistance, or both if the “big, beautiful bill” becomes law. Meanwhile, the package would raise the debt ceiling by $4 trillion and add at least $2.3 trillion to the deficit (or perhaps $3.2 trillion) over the next ten years.

Patrick Swanson has been restoring a Harrison County prairie.

About six months have passed since I wrote about my experience on a fall LoHi Trek through the southern Loess Hills. This spring, LoHi Trek number 5 was held April 23-28 in the middle reaches of the Loess Hills, centered in and around Hitchcock Nature Center (HNC) in Pottawattamie County. This was my fourth LoHi Trek, and was distinctive from my previous journeys for its inclusion of an urban hike through the neighborhoods and urban core of Council Bluffs. 

Like earlier LoHi adventures, Golden Hills Resource Conservation and Development spearheaded the planning and logistics of the trip, and posted an excellent summary of each day’s activities, highlighting the many partners and volunteers that made this event possible. 

Crescent Hill at Hitchcock served as our home base, where we set up camp near the Crescent Ridge Cabin. This area was formerly operated as Mt. Crescent Ski Area; Pottawattamie County acquired it in 2021 to expand Hitchcock Nature Center to the south and develop additional recreational opportunities beyond the snow-based activities for which Mt. Crescent was well-known.