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.

Talk about being a slow learner! It took me 75 to 80 years or more to recognize that our national anthem’s ending was not a proclamation, declaration, or a boast about the United States being “the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

But there it was in the text for the national anthem on our TV screen. The line about being free and brave ended with a question mark, not an exclamation point or even a modest period: “…the land of the free and the home of the brave?”

I even checked the lyrics of the Star-Spangled Banner, to make sure Francis Scott Key penned a question on September 18, 1814, and the ? was not a scurrilous punctuation, stuck in by someone protesting the state of our nation. The accuracy of the question mark was confirmed, of course.

Many readers may wonder — as I do — how could a person have missed the ? for all these decades, through singing the national anthem hundreds of times.

Linda Schreiber writes commentary on selected political or legislative issues.

Big promises, but no appropriations

At the inaugural meeting of the Board of Peace, President Donald Trump announced that nine member countries had pledged $7 billion toward rebuilding Gaza — and that the United States would contribute $10 billion.

There is one glaring problem: Congress has not appropriated a single dollar for this commitment.

Under the U.S. Constitution, the power of the purse belongs to Congress. No matter how boldly announced, a $10 billion commitment does not exist without legislative approval. Yet the president presented the pledge as if the funds were already secured.

That is not diplomacy. That is theater.

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 

We’ve all probably been trapped in a no-win situation. There’s no way out. There’s no good choice.

That’s often called Hobson’s choice. It was supposedly named after a 17^th century stable owner named Hobson who had a corner on the market and forced customers to choose the horse closest to the door or take no horse at all.

Customers had no real choice. They could walk or pay good money for a bad horse which Hobson always located closest to the door.

Hobson’s choice is depicted by the cartoon bully scowling, doubling his first, and shouting, “Do you want to get punched in the stomach or face?”

No choice, just an ultimatum.

The majority party in the Iowa legislature has trapped public schools in a no-win situation. It’s Hobson’s choice at its worst because it isn’t about a broken-down horse, it’s about the futures of public school students.

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. 

We all need reminders now and then.

Some of us believe there is only one correct way to think and speak and act in these United States of America. But that is not true.

Americans are not who we are because we are the same. Americans are who we are, and our nation has long been a shining beacon, because we are all different and were brought together by that freedom to be different.

One occasional reader of my stray thoughts suggested I republish the following column from 2017, which remains relevant today.

House File 2676 may not be the most harmful of the 80-plus bills the Iowa House approved last week. And language allowing pharmacists to dispense ivermectin without a prescription may not be the most harmful provision of that so-called “Make America Healthy Again” bill.

But the brief Iowa House debate about ivermectin on March 3 illustrated how conspiracy theories—once confined to fringe elements of the conservative movement—now drive the mainstream Republican agenda.

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

The Muscatine County Jail was promised a 75 percent increase in potential revenue for holding federal immigration detainees during the first year of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration, newly disclosed records show.

In March 2025, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement amended the federal government’s longstanding contract with Muscatine County for the detention of individuals picked up by the federal government, including those wanted by ICE for potential deportation.

The contract change called for increasing the amount of money the county jail could potentially collect for holding federal detainees by $360,000 — raising the upper limit on federal payouts from $479,045 to $839,045.

The bulk of that increase, $340,000 was allocated to the additional expense of detaining individuals in the jail, while $20,000 of the increase was allocated to transportation services, which typically involves taking inmates to and from federal court.

Wally Taylor is the Legal Chair of the Sierra Club Iowa chapter.

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources recently issued its 2026 draft of impaired waters. This is a requirement of section 303(d) of the Clean Water Act. Every two years states must list the water segments that do not meet water quality standards. This year the DNR evaluated 1,100 water segments and has listed 723 of those segments as impaired. That means that two-thirds of the water segments evaluated do not meet water quality standards.

The impaired waters list containing those 723 water segments are supposed to have total maximum daily loads (TMDLs) prepared. A TMDL calculates how much pollution can be discharged into the water and still meet water quality standards. The TMDL also includes a Water Quality Improvement Plan that proposes the path to bringing the water into compliance with water quality standards.

The problem with the Iowa list is that there are numerous water segments that have been on the list since 2006 and 2008, with no TMDL having been prepared. Some of those waters on the list since 2006 and 2008 are designated as Outstanding Iowa Waters pursuant to Iowa’s antidegradation policy. These waters are entitled to extra protection.

Brooklyn Draisey is a Report for America corps member covering higher education for Iowa Capital Dispatch, where this article first appeared.

Iowa private college officials say a key lawmaker is threatening funding to a state tuition grant program over their opposition to allowing community colleges to offer four-year degrees.

Gary Steinke, president of the Iowa Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, said lobbyists for the association received a call last week from Republican State Representative Taylor Collins, chair of the Iowa House Higher Education Committee. Steinke said Collins told them certain Iowa lawmakers are thinking of withholding their support for funding for the Iowa Tuition Grant program, which provides financial aid to students in need who wish to attend one of the state’s private higher education institutions.

The threat stems from anger over the private institutions’ opposition to House File 2649, Steinke says. The bill would establish a pilot program in which certain community colleges could establish up to three bachelor’s degrees in specific programs.

Jack Hatch is a former state senator and was an author of every health care reform bill in Iowa from 2003 through 2014.

Health care is not a privilege. It is not a reward for good luck, good jobs, or good timing. It is a basic right. And in Iowa, health care, as an issue, has always been understood best when we remember that simple truth. There is another truth: health care is too expensive, in Iowa and across the U.S. 

For decades, our state has shown that when we lead with fairness, openness, and shared responsibility, we can build systems that work. Iowa passed meaningful health care reforms prior to the Affordable Care Act. We created bipartisan commissions to make policy. We listened to consumers, providers and other stakeholders. We debated publicly. And we acted with courage.

That tradition expanded children’s coverage to become the state with the highest percentage per capita for children covered by insurance in the nation as listed by the Kaiser Family Foundation (now known as KFF) in 2013. We led when we modernized health records. We led when we built patient-centered care. We led when we believed that health care reform required public conversation, not private contracts.

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 United States Attorney for the Northern District of Iowa. He is a graduate of Grinnell College and Drake University Law School.

During his interminable State of the Union address, President Donald Trump referred to waste, fraud, and abuse. Of course, such mention was opportunistically political, containing recurrent condemnations of the Somali community, a favorite target of our president’s vile rhetoric. 

While waste, fraud, and abuse is a worthy topic and should be condemned and eliminated, a more introspective approach would have better served our nation.

Governor Kim Reynolds drew criticism in 2018 for accepting free flights on private planes belonging to campaign donors and a longtime state vendor. Her plane travel came under scrutiny again this week.

Des Moines Register reporters Phillip Sitter and Tyler Jett had the scoop on February 24: for the past year, Reynolds has periodically flown on a state-owned plane, purchased with federal pandemic relief funds she allocated to the Iowa Department of Public Safety in 2024.

Reynolds told reporters on February 26 that occasional air travel allows her to use her time more efficiently. To justify spending COVID-19 relief money on the plane, she and her staff have also claimed the 14-seat Cessna 208B Grand Caravan augmented the Iowa State Patrol’s “aging fleet” with “more sophisticated equipment and technology to accommodate a broader span of use for law enforcement.”

But documents I obtained through public records requests show the Iowa State Patrol already had a smaller plane equipped with similar advanced technology, such as thermal imaging and de-icing capability. That Cirrus SR-22 was no obsolete aircraft; the Department of Public Safety used a state appropriation to buy it new in 2021.

Nick Covington is an Iowa parent who taught high school social studies for ten years.

As I round the corner on 40, it’s been humbling and heartbreaking to reflect on how much of my life experience has been defined by global historic change: a child of the 1990s growing up at the peak of American exceptionalism, bookended by the worst attack on the United States since Pearl Harbor, graduating college during the worst recession since the Great Depression, and having my own young children attend school during the worst viral outbreak since the flu epidemic a century ago.

However, regardless of which epochal change I’ve lived through, there has been at least one constant: lectures from the party of “personal responsibility.” 

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

Muscatine County, which has a contract to hold immigration detainees for the federal government, is refusing to publicly disclose its copy of that contract.

In recent months, Muscatine County’s jail administrator has been named in five lawsuits related to the county’s agreement to jail some of the immigrants who are picked up in Iowa by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

Like other Iowa counties, Muscatine County has a contract with ICE to house those individuals in return for payments from the federal government. That contract, and the county’s detention of the immigrants, have been the subject of five civil lawsuits and an alleged ethics complaint concerning former Muscatine County Attorney James Barry, who resigned last year.

Rob Sand is Iowa’s state auditor.

As a father, my top priority is protecting my kids. When a child is placed in foster care, their safety and well-being become the state’s responsibility. Tragically, the state of Iowa failed to protect Sabrina Ray, killed by her adoptive parents in 2017, and her siblings from abuse and torture.

Because of that failure, the state paid $10 million in 2023 to settle lawsuits brought by Sabrina’s two surviving sisters. I voted on those settlements because, as auditor, I am a statutory member of the board that makes these decisions. I supported those settlements not just to help those children and their families, but because I believed it would lead to real, meaningful reform to Iowa’s foster care and adoption system.

A key part of that settlement – and a key reason I supported it – was the creation of a child welfare task force. Its mission: to examine what went wrong, make recommendations on how to improve the system, and most importantly, prevent future tragedies. Its members included professionals directly involved in Sabrina’s case — a police officer, a paramedic, a prosecutor — as well as the families who adopted Sabrina’s sisters.

But that’s not what happened.

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’s funny how a government body can learn and teach an important civics lesson in the time it takes a student to go from kindergarten through 12th grade.

In 2012, the Atlantic Community School District won a lawsuit to keep information secret about disciplinary measures taken against two employees who conducted a strip-search of five girls to try to find $100 another student reported missing.

Iowa Supreme Court Chief Justice Mark Cady wrote a dissent in the case, noting that “transparency in government surely will be thwarted” by those who can “quell public discourse and end controversies over employee misconduct with no public scrutiny by simply announcing discipline has been imposed.”

For the past nine years, Iowa’s Republican-controlled legislature has given Governor Kim Reynolds a free hand. GOP lawmakers allowed Reynolds to spend billions of federal dollars provided through the CARES Act and American Rescue Plan with no legislative input.

They approved most of the governor’s signature proposals, expanded her power to hire and fire officials, and allowed her to set agency directors’ salaries with no constraints.

Neither chamber’s Government Oversight Committee has investigated any alleged malfeasance or mismanagement in the Reynolds administration, such as the governor’s questionable spending of pandemic relief funds on her staff’s salaries, or the tens of millions of dollars wasted on a no-bid contract for Workday.

Now, in the tenth year of Iowa’s GOP trifecta, the ruling party has suddenly decided the legislature should be a check on the executive. Several bills that are eligible for floor debate could prevent Reynolds’ successor from making big changes in state government.

Insulting all of our collective intelligence, Republican lawmakers claim these bills aren’t fueled by concern that State Auditor Rob Sand may win the governor’s race in November.

Here’s a rundown of pending bills that could hamstring the next Democratic governor.

State Representative Josh Turek is a four-time Paralympian and two-time gold medalist for Team USA, a former professional wheelchair basketball player and a candidate for U.S. Senate. 

As the Olympics come to a close and the Paralympics begin in early March, I’m sure a lot of us are thinking about what it means to cheer for Team USA. 

Representing the United States at four Paralympic games was the highlight of my wheelchair basketball career, and one of the greatest honors of my life. Watching them raise the American flag with USA across my chest, a gold medal around my neck, and the stars and stripes over my shoulders, I was proud to be an American. 

This Olympics, I know many Americans are troubled by the direction of our country.

Robin Opsahl, Brooklyn Draisey, and Cami Koons collaborated on this article, which was first published by Iowa Capital Dispatch. Clark Kauffman and Kathie Obradovich also contributed to this story

Iowa lawmakers took on hundreds of bills in the first six weeks of the 2026 legislative session, though several measures named as top priorities heading into the year, like eminent domain and property taxes, have yet to find consensus.

February 19 was the last day lawmakers met to consider legislation before the first “funnel” deadline of the year. While there are many exceptions, most bills that don’t involve spending, taxes or government oversight must pass through a committee in either the House or Senate in order to stay eligible for consideration.

Wally Taylor is the Legal Chair of the Sierra Club Iowa chapter.

A recent study issued by Decision Innovation Solutions, a pro-Big Ag consulting firm in Des Moines, claims that Iowa’s farm economy is in dire straits because Iowa farmers are growing too much corn. Too much corn, according to the report, is creating a “demand gap.” In other words, corn growers are harvesting more corn that can be sold.

The report’s solution to this situation is year-round sale of E-15 (gasoline with 15 percent ethanol content), corn-based marine fuel, and corn-based aviation fuel. It should come as no surprise that the Iowa Corn Growers Association and the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association commissioned this study.

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 

Protecting children is a shared value of most adults. A newborn can’t leave the hospital unless they’re buckled into an approved car seat. We childproof our houses. We gasp the first time they swing too high and move closer to catch them if they fly out. When they’re tweens and teens, we stay up sweating until they’re home. We insist on seat belts, driver’s training, and helmets for bicycle riding.

At school, there are tornado, fire, and lockdown drills. There are lists of people approved to pick up students at the end of the day. Schools warn parents not to send a sick child to school.

We’re protective and cautious.

That’s why a bill now pending in the Iowa House is so troubling.