John Gilbert farms with a brother, a son, and their wives along South Fork, a tributary of the Iowa River. In addition to non-GMO row crops, they raise small grains, forages, cattle, and antibiotic free pigs they sell to Niman Ranch. John is a volunteer with the Southfork Watershed Alliance, and is active in Practical Farmers of Iowa and the Iowa Farmers Union. Their farm has been recognized for its work toward sustainability. 

EDITOR’S NOTE: John Gilbert wrote the following essay, which was first published by the Des Moines Register, before the two-year anniversary of the 2018 Farm Bill’s expiration (September 30). Four members of Iowa’s Congressional delegation (Senators Chuck Grasssley and Joni Ernst, and Representatives Randy Feenstra and Zach Nunn) serve on the Senate or House Agriculture Committees, which are responsible for writing the Farm Bill.

It’s also important to note that this week, the Trump administration is expected to announce bailout payments for soybean farmers—reportedly of about $100 an acre—to offset damages caused by this administration’s erratic tariffs, and trade disruptions. The need for such a payment underscores the weakness of a farm policy based on unrestricted production.

It’s officially time Iowa has one of those warnings, like what you see on cigarette packages: “Caution: Living in Iowa is Hazardous to Your Health!”

The problem isn’t just that Iowa’s water carries way too many farm field pollutants (we’re all tired of hearing about nitrates), although that’s part of it. It’s not just that Iowa has way too many people dealing with cancer; or just that jobs in agriculture, meat packing, construction and manufacturing can be dangerous; or just the dangers of health care deserts in many areas of Iowa. And it’s not just that climate change is making Iowa’s weather more dangerous. The problem is all of those things, and more. 

For years, Governor Kim Reynolds resisted COVID-19 vaccine mandates, saying she believed “in Iowans’ right to make health care decisions based on what’s best for themselves and their families.”

But as this year’s cold and flu season begins, many Iowans who want to protect themselves and their families from COVID-19 are unable to get a booster shot, because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration restricted access to updated vaccines.

Public health authorities in about two dozen states have issued guidance or standing orders designed to help adults choose to vaccinate themselves or their children against COVID-19. The Reynolds administration has not acted.

Staff for the governor’s office and Iowa Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to several requests for comment over the past ten days.

Channing Dutton is a lawyer in Urbandale. His duty is climate action for all children.

Meredith Willson gave us a timeless Iowa tale in “The Music Man”: a fast-talking charmer named Professor Harold Hill sweeps into River City, peddling a dream of shiny instruments, crisp uniforms, and the vision of a boys’ band that will keep young people out of trouble.

Not everyone was swayed by his pitch. Do you remember the bumbling school board members assigned to track down his credentials? Every time they got close, Hill got the barber shop quartet to start singing instead of digging up the truth.  

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. 

I spoke to two groups in recent weeks, and at both gatherings, people wanted to know about the work of the organization I lead, the Iowa Freedom of Information Council.

If I had known then what I know now, I could have been more effective. I could have advised them to wait a week or two and watch the news surrounding the arrest of Ian Roberts, superintendent of the Des Moines Public Schools since 2023, for an illustration of how secrecy breeds distrust.

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 

Americans love a quick fix—an easy answer, immediate satisfaction. We crave comfort. Pharmaceutical ads on TV may not mention what it cures, but if it cures fast, we love it. 

Have you been trapped in an early morning airport coffee line behind “complicated order person?” I have. Their order has more ingredients and steps than Grandma’s top secret chili recipe. Waiting, I sigh as loudly as I can and shrug my shoulders. Then I roll my eyes dramatically like every 13-year-old girl in English class. I’m praying the barista will take pity on my plight. She doesn’t. No quick fix for me.

Right now, we’re faced with politicians calling for a scary quick fix. Charlie Kirk was murdered. No one should celebrate any murder. It’s cruel and ugly. But it seems teachers and late-night comics are held to a higher standard than our political leaders.

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

Occasionally when I go fishing with my husband, the desired fish will be in the “shallows” of the lake. Fishing the shallows often requires casting from the boat towards shore. For any wildflower-loving fisherperson, this opens up the opportunity to observe the aquatic plants growing around the anchored boat.

That is how I first recall noticing Spatterdock—casting for walleyes in Clear Lake.  

Adam Shriver is a concerned resident of Des Moines.

Laura Belin’s been doing an awesome job keeping track of the situation with Dr. Ian Andre Roberts, the former Des Moines Public Schools superintendent who was detained by ICE on September 26 and resigned four days later.

I’ve been seeing a lot of misinformation floating around on right-wing spaces about this, so I thought I’d note a few that need to be corrected.

Former Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf shared multiple false and/or misleading points during a recent Fox News appearance.

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

Des Moines Public Schools superintendent Ian Roberts has resigned from his position effective immediately, lawyers representing him said on September 30.

Jenny Turner is a public school mom and a school speech therapist. She lives in West Des Moines.

It might be prudent to wait for all the facts before writing an opinion piece on ICE detaining Dr. Ian Roberts, the superintendent of Des Moines Public Schools. It is true that there is a lot we don’t know. Which leads me to the central question: why don’t we know?

Dr. Roberts has allegedly had a removal order for nearly a year and a half. Why did the district not know about this? Why was Dr. Roberts arrested suddenly, in the most dramatic fashion, for what amounts to late paperwork (if true)? Why was no thought put into the effect this would have on the community and the kids? Why was it not done mindfully to minimize the impact?

UPDATE: On September 29, the Des Moines School Board learned that the Iowa Board of Education Examiners had revoked Roberts’ administrator license, and received from federal authorities a copy of the final order of removal and other documentation indicating that Roberts was not authorized to work in the U.S. The board held another special meeting at which members voted to put Roberts on unpaid leave. They also gave his attorney until noon on September 30 to provide documents supporting his claim to citizenship. Otherwise the school district will start the process of terminating his contract. Original post follows.

Members of the Des Moines School Board voted unanimously on September 27 to place Superintendent Dr. Ian Roberts on paid administrative leave, one day after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained him. ICE has said Roberts is unlawfully present in the U.S. and lacks work authorization.

In support of the motion she offered at the special meeting, school board member Kim Martorano said, “While there is still much that we don’t know, what we do know is that Dr. Roberts is currently unavailable to perform his duties as superintendent.” She said Iowa Code Chapter 279 and “standard district practice” called for putting Roberts on paid administrative leave “pending further information. The board may revisit this at any time that we have obtained additional concrete information relevant to Dr. Roberts’ status.”

UPDATE: On September 27, the Des Moines School Board put the superintendent on administrative leave and released more details on the hiring and vetting process. Original post follows.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on September 26 detained Dr. Ian Roberts, the superintendent of Iowa’s largest public school district. The Des Moines Public Schools confirmed Roberts’ detention, saying in a statement from school board President Jackie Norris, “We have no confirmed information as to why Dr. Roberts is being detained or the next potential steps.”

Roberts has served as superintendent of Iowa’s largest school district (with more than 30,000 students) since July 2023. He has presided over efforts to improve student performance and attendance, reduce out-of-school suspensions that can lead to higher drop-out rates, and address food insecurity.

Roberts’ official bio states that he “was born to immigrant parents from Guyana, and spent most of his formative years in Brooklyn” (New York City). As a middle distance runner specializing in the 800 meters, he won several titles at the collegiate level in the U.S. and competed in the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, representing Guyana.

Associate Superintendent Matt Smith has stepped in as interim superintendent, according to a statement from the Des Moines Public Schools (enclosed in full below). I will update this post as more details become available.

Voters in Iowa House district 7 will elect a successor to Republican State Representative Mike Sexton on Tuesday, December 9. Governor Kim Reynolds announced the special election on September 24, five days after Sexton resigned to become the next leader of Iowa’s Rural Development office in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That’s the same position former U.S. Senate candidate Theresa Greenfield held during the Biden administration.

Sexton had served in the Iowa House since 2015; he previously served a term in the Iowa Senate, starting in 1999. Most recently he chaired the House Agriculture Committee; House leaders have not yet named his successor in that role. He endorsed Carly Fiorina before the 2016 Iowa caucuses but was an early supporter of Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and attended several Trump rallies in Iowa in 2023.

This race will be the fifth special election for an Iowa legislative district in 2025. But Democrats should not expect another upset win here; House district 7 is among the state’s most solidly Republican districts.

Sue Dinsdale is the Executive Director of Iowa Citizen Action Network and the State Lead for Health Care for America NOW.

Politicians in Washington, D.C. are getting ready to shut down the federal government once again, despite single-party Republican control of the House, Senate, and the presidency. 

This time, disagreements in Congress over health care costs and access are preventing an agreement that would keep critical services going without interruption. 

Earlier this year, Republicans in Congress passed and President Donald Trump signed a massive budget reconciliation bill, the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which extended trillions of dollars in tax breaks that would otherwise have expired this year. The lion’s share of those tax breaks will go to wealthy households making over $400,000 a year and to large corporations through extra loopholes that were reinstated in the law. 

Diane Porter of Fairfield first published this post in July 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.

Winged Loosestrife (Lythrum alatum) is a slender waif. It grows up surrounded by bigger, taller plants. I didn’t discover it until we had been neighbors for almost twenty years.

I found it in a natural opening in the woods at the bottom of a hill. It’s near an intermittent creek, surrounded by trees. I named that spot the Pocket Prairie. To explore it, I mowed a trail through it.

The ground is often wet there. That may be why trees haven’t invaded. It is home to wildflowers that I don’t find up top, where the ground is drier. It’s a magical feeling to enter. This Pocket Prairie is where I discovered a native Iowa wildflower named Winged Loosestrife.

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.

Congress averted an impending federal government shutdown in March by reaching a bipartisan compromise, which kept the government funded through the end of the current fiscal year. Time passes, and we’re approaching the new deadline.

By now a functional Congress would have performed its due diligence and approved the twelve required federal spending bills for the fiscal year. Has that happened? Of course not. So the House, the Senate, and President Donald Trump are dancing through the same old drill. They have until midnight on Tuesday, September 30, to get it done.

Lisa Lima is an organizer, activist, and advocate who chairs the Pottawattamie County Democrats.

In 2019, Iowa was buzzing with presidential hopefuls. Campaigns filled community centers, volunteers hustled to make their voices heard, and voters were at the heart of it all. I was one of those volunteers, working with the ACLU of Iowa to protect civil rights and gather petition signatures. It was exhilarating, but also overwhelming.

That’s when I first met Jill Shudak. I was struggling to collect enough signatures. Jill noticed, stepped in, and without hesitation made sure I had the support I needed. That simple act gave me more than signatures; it gave me the confidence to raise my question, ensure it was answered, and even get it on camera. In that small but powerful way, Jill did what she has always done: she lifted up someone who needed it.

Al Charlson is a North Central Iowa farm kid, lifelong Iowan, and retired bank trust officer. This column was first published in the Waverly Newspapers.

We recently received the 2025-26 real estate tax statement for our farmland in my “home county.” The 11 percent increase must have felt like a punch to a lot of our neighbors back home at this time of corn and soybean prices below the cost of production. It hits particularly hard for younger farmers struggling to provide for their families, make farm payments, and maintain their machinery.

As a note to my non-farm friends and neighbors, the assessment of Iowa farmland for real estate taxes is entirely different than it is for our homes. Home assessments are based on recent sale prices of comparable homes. Since 1977 Iowa farmland has been assessed based on soil productivity (estimated value of crops produced minus production costs).

That makes a big difference. Based on the Bremer County Assessor’s valuation, our Waverly home is worth about 1.4 times the estimated fair market value of our “home county” farmland. The non-city portion of 2025-26 taxes on our Waverly home are about 4.4 times the taxes on our farmland. In my opinion this accommodation for agriculture, the base of Iowa’s economy, is reasonable and justified.

Chuck Isenhart is an investigative reporter, photographer and recovering Iowa state legislator offering research, analysis, education and public affairs advocacy at his Substack newsletter Iowa Public Policy Geek, where this essay first appeared.

In 2014, Raki Giannakouros and Blue Sky Solar put six solar panels on the roof of my house. I have not paid for an electron since. The installation has paid for itself multiple times. Even with Alliant Energy’s recent 19 percent daily “customer charge” increase, my monthly bill is still less than a Thomas Jefferson.

When natural gas prices doubled for everybody in the months after the Texas freeze, I was able to use an electric space heater on many winter nights to avoid the worst of the gas price surge. All made possible by a net-metering policy in Iowa that allows me to generate power the utility can sell to others in the summer (avoiding costs for the utility) that I can reclaim in the winter (when electricity demand is down).

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.

After reading a CNN article about how State Auditor Rob Sand is “leading with faith” as a strategy in his campaign for governor, I am dismayed.

He is wrong, and I think his rhetoric puts the future of our state and the Democratic Party in jeopardy. I like Rob, and I think he would be a better governor than any Republican, but using faith in this way is a dead end for him and the party. He may pick up voters and may even win with this approach in 2026. But it’s not a sustainable long-term strategy, in light of our increasingly secular populace, with older voters having the strongest religious affinity.

Dave Leshtz is the editor of The Prairie Progressive.

“Satanism is as American as apple pie.”

           –Bill Douglas, author of The People are Kind: A Religious History of Iowa

It was hot as hell on Sunday, September 14, in Toledo, Iowa—the scene of a public reading of John Milton’s Paradise Lost.

For the second time, members of the Satanic Temple of Iowa gathered to honor the epic poem they consider the foundational text of what history calls The Enlightenment. My car’s thermometer reached 93 degrees as I parked in front of the Tama County courthouse. Undeterred by the heat, eight Temple members were dressed in their traditional Satanic black finery as they read Milton’s blank verse masterpiece beneath a black pop-up tent.

When I attended the Temple’s first public reading last summer, members were still smarting from the Iowa Department of Administrative Services’ abrupt cancellation of their planned event at the state capitol. Agency director Adam Steen had yanked its approval, forcing the group to look for another government location.