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.

Try as one might, I defy you to find a better concise description of what’s at stake in the upcoming election than Trump v. United States—the U.S. Supreme Court ruling decided by a 6-3 majority on July 1, 2024. Think about it: The President vs. the United States of America.

Our short-term future might be in 3-D: Daily Doses of Disaster, or Democracy’s Doses of Despair.

So what’s wrong with Trump v. United States? In a word, everything. However, my focus today is on the hypocrisy inherent in claiming to be both bipartisan and pro-Trump.

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority — shaped by Iowa’s U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley — has given President Donald Trump the equivalent of a Monopoly get-out-of-jail-free card. We are saddled with “a landmark decision…holding that presidential immunity from criminal prosecution presumptively extends to all of a president’s “official acts” – with absolute immunity for official acts within an exclusive presidential authority that Congress cannot regulate.”

Trump has the Monopoly card, and we get a wannabe king not being held accountable by Congress or the courts.

Maybe on November 3, voters will finally hold Trump accountable for his continuous disasters, aided by Iowa’s four U.S. Representatives — the honorable Zach Nunn, the honorable Ashley Hinson, the honorable Mariannette Miller-Meeks, and the honorable Randy Feenstra — and our two U.S. senators — the honorable Grassley and the honorable Joni Ernst.

Mocking the six as “honorable” ties in well with the hypocrisy of so much campaign rhetoric these days, as the Iowa delegation abandons the constitutional balance of power our founding fathers envisioned.

And it ties in well with the despair many feel about the coming election. Whatever its outcome, we face two more years of Trump, and the lingering fears about what threats lie ahead after his reign ends. (One is that the vulgar plans for a money-making Trump presidential library will also bring rot to the presidential library system — as though today’s decay of democracy is not enough to fret about.)

A harvest of hypocrisy

Forget about corn and soybeans. Iowa’s Congressional delegation is more than knee deep in a harvest of hypocrisy.

When announcing her candidacy for Ernst’s Senate seat in September 2025, Hinson pledged to be Trump’s “strongest ally” in the chamber, vowing “Mr. President…I will not let you down.”

That vow — conspicuous by its absence in the Hinson campaign today — likely will be the order of the day if Iowans elect Hinson to the Senate.

That is what an analysis by the international news agency Reuters suggests:

Two-thirds of Republican candidates running for the House and Senate have broken with President Donald Trump on key policy matters or sought to minimize their associations with him.

An analysis by Reuters, which examined voting records, campaign materials, and public statements across 62 high-stakes races ahead of the November 3 midterm elections, identified 41 candidates attempting to create space between themselves and the administration as the president’s low popularity threatens the party’s congressional majorities. […]

The strategy appears designed to appeal to independent voters while avoiding a complete break with the leader of their party.

For her part, Hinson still plays some Trump cards, like the fomenting fear of immigrants.

A Hinson campaign ad attacks her Democratic opponent, State Senator Josh Turek, for pointing out that immigrants do have legal rights, even though they are not citizens. Reports from KCRG-TV of Cedar Rapids and the national fact-checker Politifact have faulted Hinson’s attacks.

Meanwhile, another Trump supporter seeking re-election, the “honorable” Nunn, has resorted to playground taunts in his campaign against State Senator Sarah Trone Garriott.

Despite Trone Garriott’s lengthy and impressive record of public service, Nunn ridicules her as “kooky”— a taunt masquerading as a guide to reasoned decision making.

Nunn’s use of the “kooky” label is contemptible. When fresh out of college, Trone Garriott was a VISTA (Voluteers in Service to America) worker in New Mexico as an advocate for victims of domestic abuse. She then worked in similar capacity while attending Harvard Divinity School and comforting families and children as a hospital chaplain. She served as a Lutheran minister and worked for the Des Moines Area Religious Council in serving the needy and building bridges among the different faiths in Central Iowa.

“Kooky,” “kooky,” “kooky” is how Nunn characterizes that background, throwing in some misleading statements about her legislative work. (Disclosure: I became a friend of Sarah’s when she was an associate pastor at Faith Lutheran Church in Clive.)

Nunn and Hinson both ignore the fact that Trone Garriott and Turek crossed party lines in the legislature to vote with Republicans on some issues.

Can’t say we weren’t warned

More than ten years ago, Iowans heard a warning about the woes in store for us if Grassley became chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. But the warning was botched and — as it has turned out — the woes were greatly underestimated.

The context: in 2014, Democrat Bruce Braley and Republican Joni Ernst vied to see who would succeed Democratic Senator Tom Harkin.

At a fundraiser in Texas, Braley warned trial lawyers of what would happen if Republicans gained control of the Senate and Grassley —”a farmer from Iowa who never went to law school, never practiced law” — were in charge of the Judiciary Committee.

Concern about Grassley’s lack of a legal background was merited. But Republicans turned Braley’s perceived slur against farmers into a major campaign issue, putting “a farmer from Iowa” in countless ads that boosted Ernst’s campaign.

Republicans did flip the Senate in 2014, and Grassley became committee chairman. Bleeding Heartland contributor Rick Morain provided one of the most glaring examples of Grassley’s partisanship in a post on April 23, 2025. It’s well worth reading. 

The adjective “glaring” is warranted, given how often Grassley claims to be “bipartisan.” But his role in shaping the judiciary for Trump belies that assessment.

Nine years later, Grassley acknowledged that in 2016 he either misled or lied about reasons for blocking President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nomination of the well-qualified Merrick Garland. That paved the way for Trump’s controversial appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the court, and was an early sign of the demise of our “checks and balances” system of government.

It will be far from a satisfactory answer. But at least on November 3, it would be a start.

Voters can support the United States in a retake on Trump v. United States.

---

Top photo of Donald Trump is cropped from an official White House photo by Daniel Torok of the president in North Dakota on July 1, 2026. Close-up of the Statue of Liberty in 2014 is by Acediscovery, available via Wikimedia Commons.