What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

The Des Moines Register’s Kyle Munson published an excellent profile of Iowa Republican operative David Kochel and his battle with leukemia. I enclose excerpts below, but do click through to read the whole piece. Kochel has worked for numerous Republican candidates, most recently Jeb Bush. He was a senior strategist for Joni Ernst’s Senate campaign in 2013 and 2014 and for Mitt Romney during the last presidential election cycle.

Kochel has been on the #NeverTrump train for months–an anomaly in Iowa circles, where most well-known Republicans have fallen in line behind the nominee. Yet around the country, a stunning number of GOP elected officials, commentators, or former staffers have said they will not vote for Trump under any circumstances.

Last month, Tara Golshan and Sarah Frostenson compiled a list of more than 100 #NeverTrump Republicans, and 50 former national security officials from GOP administrations signed a letter warning that Trump “lacks the character, values and experience” to be president and “would put at risk our country’s national security and well-being.”

Several newspapers that had endorsed GOP presidential nominees for decades have rejected Trump, most recently the New Hampshire Union Leader, which called Trump “a liar, a bully, a buffoon.”

All those traits were on display this past week, when Trump tried to blame Hillary Clinton for starting the “birther” movement, called for Secret Service agents protecting Clinton to disarm and “see what happens to her,” and went off script during a rally to complain about a mosquito.

On the plus side for Trump, the media’s renewed focus on the Republican candidate’s contributions to birtherism kept devastating scoops by Kurt Eichenwald and David Fahrenthold from getting much traction this week. Excerpts from Eichenwald’s cover story for Newsweek are after the jump.

Meanwhile, pathetic lackey and convicted felon Dinesh D’Souza took to Twitter to defend Trump’s admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who “unlike someone else we know–LOVES his country & FIGHTS for its interests.” When a commenter pointed out that D’Souza “would be dead” if he were in Russia and criticized the president, D’Souza countered that opposition figure Garry Kasparov “is a public critic of Putin & very much alive.” The former world chess champion posted a priceless response: “Have you noticed I live in New York now? Stop spitting on the graves of Putin’s victims with your dictator worship.” Kasparov added a few minutes later, “If you can’t articulate criticism of Hillary Clinton or Obama without praising a brutal dictator, you’re incompetent & should just shut up.”

It wasn’t for nothing some called D’Souza “Distort D’Newsa” when he became a nationally-known flame-thrower during the 1980s.

Big news broke in Waterloo on Friday: Police Chief and Director of Public Safety Dan Trelka will apparently be out of a job soon, after more than six years as the top law enforcement officer in Iowa’s sixth-largest city. KWWL was first to report that Trelka “informed some officers and staff members this morning [September 16] that he’s been asked to step down.”

Democratic State Senator Joe Seng has died after a two-year battle with brain cancer, Iowa Senate leaders confirmed today. I enclose below comments released by Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal and Senate President Pam Jochum.

With the upper chamber split 26-24 and many important votes falling along party lines, Democratic leaders needed Seng’s presence often during the last two legislative sessions. He had phenomenal dedication and kept showing up for work while fighting a monstrous disease and undergoing regular chemotherapy. The Des Moines Register’s William Petroski posted a video of Seng singing and playing the accordion for his colleagues in April 2015.

Seng served as Davenport’s alderman-at-large and mayor pro-tem before representing parts of Iowa’s third-largest city for two years in the state House and fourteen in the Senate. A veterinarian by training, he chaired the Senate Agriculture Committee in recent years and served on the Commerce, Ethics, Labor and Business Relations, Natural Resources and Environment, and Ways & Means committees.

After Iowa’s new map of political boundaries put Scott County in the second Congressional district, Seng challenged U.S. Representative Dave Loebsack and won about 18 percent of the vote in the 2012 Democratic primary. In his final re-election campaign two years ago, Seng easily defeated a primary challenger and did not face a general election opponent.

Seng’s passing will force a special election later this year in Senate district 45 (map enclosed below). Because the district contains more than twice as many registered Democrats as Republicans, the only real competition to replace Seng will be for the Democratic nomination, to be decided at a district convention. Democrats Jim Lykam and Cindy Winckler have represented the two halves of Seng’s Senate district in the Iowa House since 2003.

Blogger’s dilemma: which of Representative Steve King’s latest embarrassing, bigoted comments on national television should I focus on today?

Arguing that the government should guarantee parental leave only for the so-called “natural family” (which in King’s mind does not include gay or lesbian parents) was reprehensible. Why does he keep looking so hard for ways the state can treat LGBT people like second-class citizens? A parent’s sexual orientation should have no bearing on whether a baby deserves more time to bond with the primary caregiver. CNN’s Chris Cuomo already did a good job challenging King, pointing out research shows babies in LGBT households “are doing just as well if not better” than children being raised by a man and a woman.

I’ll take door number 2: King telling a friendly interviewer that professional football player Colin Kaepernick engaged in “activism that’s sympathetic to ISIS” and should be forced to “take a knee and beg forgiveness from the American people.”

Leaders of a campaign to provide a “permanent and constitutionally protected funding source dedicated to clean water, productive agricultural soils and thriving wildlife habitats” in Iowa touted support in the business and agriculture communities this week. You can watch Iowa’s Water and Land Legacy‘s September 12 press conference here or listen to the audio at Radio Iowa. Under a state constitutional amendment Iowa voters adopted in 2010, revenues generated by the next 3/8th of a cent sales tax increase (estimated at more than $180 million per year) would flow into a Natural Resources and Outdoor Recreation Trust Fund. Scroll to the end of this post for a current list of IWLL coalition members and details on the formula for allocating trust fund money.

Without knowing which parties will control the Iowa House and Senate next year, it’s hard to gauge prospects for passing a sales tax increase. Democratic State Senator Matt McCoy commented on Monday, “The best time to move on a piece of legislation is just following an election. That’s when you get your best bipartisan compromises, and I think ultimately, this is something we can find a bipartisan compromise on.”

Who might lead statehouse Republicans toward such a compromise is unclear. The GOP lawmaker most supportive of IWLL has been State Senator David Johnson. But he left the party this summer to protest presidential nominee Donald Trump and told Bleeding Heartland in a recent interview that he plans to remain an independent during the 2017 legislative session.

At least one Republican running for governor in 2018 will support the sales tax increase: Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett. That stance will put him in conflict with either Governor Terry Branstad or his chosen successor, Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds. In addition, support for funding IWLL among major farm lobby groups could create problems for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey, also a likely gubernatorial candidate in 2018.

Most thistles growing along Iowa roads or fields are invasive plants. Bull thistle and Canada thistle are on Iowa’s noxious weeds list.

But if you’re lucky, you may see a thistle that belongs in our state’s wooded or prairie habitats.

Tall thistle (Cirsium altissimum) is native to most of the U.S. east of the Rocky Mountains. Its seeds are a “staple” food for the eastern or American goldfinch, Iowa’s state bird.

I took the pictures enclosed below in late August and early September on a restored prairie in Dallas County.

Both major investor-owned utility companies in Iowa now accept a policy that will make solar installations more affordable. Alliant Energy made the shift last summer. MidAmerican Energy finally came around two weeks ago.

Much has been made about the number of elected supervisors on Linn County’s Board, with some arguing for a reduction from five members to three. While the current board has wisely put this question on November’s ballot, there are still some who are undecided about the best way forward. While I have taken a position on this issue, it is my ultimate hope that voters will take from my explanation a clearer picture of the consequences of reducing elected representation on the board.

If we reduce the Board from five members to three, rural communities will lose elected representation, good governance will be compromised, and cost-savings will be minimal. In fact, costs could rise over time if the pared-down Board hires staff to make up for the shortage.

A series of disturbing incidents involving Waterloo police officers came to light this summer through legal settlements, a pending lawsuit, and a criminal trial. The common thread was white police officers using excessive force or offensive language toward African-Americans in Waterloo, the Iowa city with the largest proportion of black residents.

Waterloo Police Chief Dan Trelka announced an investigation into one officer, who laughed at the scene of an 18-year-old’s fatal shooting, called the victim a “dead mother f—-er” and said “we just need a semi-apocalyptic event to get rid of 90 percent of them.”

But Trelka has also accused the media of making too much of the scandals, telling local radio host Bob Bruce last month that negative news coverage obscures great progress being made in the department. Trelka acknowledged “we needed to adjust,” adding that “we have adjusted with changes in policy and training.”

Last year, external reviewers suggested at least ten reforms for the Waterloo Police Department. I have been unable to find evidence that Trelka and his staff acted on any of those recommendations.

Donald Trump is too ignorant to be president, according to former Lieutenant Governor Joy Corning, the most prominent Iowa Republican to disavow the GOP nominee.

Corning served six years in the Iowa Senate, then eight years as lieutenant governor during Terry Branstad’s third and fourth terms. Since unsuccessfully seeking the GOP nomination for governor in 1998, she has held leadership roles in numerous non-profit organizations. As a pro-choice moderate, she has been increasingly outnumbered within Iowa GOP ranks. Nevertheless, she supported every Republican presidential nominee from Dwight D. Eisenhower through John McCain, Corning told Bleeding Heartland yesterday in a telephone interview. Despite voting for President Barack Obama in 2012, she never left the Republican Party and endorsed Jeb Bush before this year’s Iowa caucuses.

Corning said she realized while watching the Republican debates that Trump was not a candidate she could ever support. As for why, she cited his “know-it-all demeanor when he really doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” Had she ruled out voting for him by the time he locked up the GOP nomination? “Oh, yes. Yes.”

Like State Senator David Johnson, who came out against Trump this summer, Corning declined to state publicly for whom she will vote in November.

After Jeb Bush announced in May that he would not support Trump, I sought comment from State Senator Charles Schneider and the six Iowa House Republicans who had endorsed the former Florida governor before the caucuses. Schneider said, “I intend to vote for Trump assuming he is the nominee,” while State Representative Greg Forristall likewise confirmed he “will vote for the Republican nominee.” State Representative Dave Heaton commented at that time, “It’s pretty hard for us to turn our back on the party’s selection, so I probably would support [Trump].” State Representatives Zach Nunn, Linda Miller, and Ron Jorgensen did not respond to my inquiries.

The new RABA Research poll for Simpson College found U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley leading Democratic challenger Patty Judge by 50 percent to 37 percent. Full results are here, and I’ve enclosed the cross-tabs on the Senate results after the jump. Bleeding Heartland covered key findings from Simpson/RABA on the presidential race here.

Adding to the consensus that Iowa’s six electoral votes could go either way, a new poll by RABA Research for Simpson College shows Donald Trump leading Hillary Clinton by 43 percent to 42 percent in a two-way race or by 40 percent to 39 percent in a field including Libertarian Gary Johnson (10 percent) and Green Party candidate Jill Stein (3 percent). The remaining 8 percent of respondents were undecided.

Full poll results are here; I enclose below the page containing the cross-tabs.

Clinton is winning women by 43 percent to 37 percent in a four-way race and by 46-38 against Trump alone. Trump is winning men by 44-34 when Johnson and Stein are included and by 48-38 against Clinton alone. Among the 40 percent of respondents who identified as evangelicals, just 56 percent back Trump in a four-way race and 57 percent in a two-way race.

Clinton leads among respondents who have a college degree, but she is not winning that group by enough to compensate for Trump’s advantage among non-college-educated voters. The latest census data indicate that about 26 percent of Iowans at least 25 years old have a bachelor’s degree or post-graduate education.

Like other recent polls, RABA’s survey suggests that third-party candidates are drawing roughly equally from voters who would otherwise lean toward the Democratic or Republican nominees. Johnson remains on track to far exceed any previous Libertarian candidate’s showing in Iowa. This morning FiveThirtyEight.com’s Harry Enten examined Clinton’s underperformance with young millennials (18-25), who are more likely than older voters to support third-party candidates.

Any comments about the presidential race are welcome in this thread. Trump’s campaign just started running television commercials in Iowa this month. Scroll down to see the video and transcript of the latest spot, a rapid response to the weekend’s news that Clinton had referred to the GOP nominee’s supporters as “a basket of deplorables.” Charles Blow wrote the best take I’ve seen on that gaffe.

Leaders of the campaigns to oust Iowa Supreme Court justices in 2010 and 2012 have chosen not to engage in this year’s retention elections, which will decide whether the last three justices who participated in Iowa’s marriage equality ruling will stay on the bench.

However, the coalition formed to stop “extremists from hijacking Iowa’s courts” is taking no chances. Justice Not Politics commissioned a statewide poll last week to gauge voters’ attitudes toward Chief Justice Mark Cady and Justices Brent Appel and Daryl Hecht, as well as some issues related to controversial Iowa Supreme Court rulings.

Fifteen years later, images of the burning and collapsing World Trade Center towers are fresh in the minds of just about everyone old enough to remember 9/11. All topics are welcome in this thread, including any reflections on that horrific day.

Many people casually refer to “3,000 Americans” killed on 9/11, but hundreds of the victims were from other countries. Last year, the Brilliant Maps website posted a map created by reddit user thepenaltytick, showing all countries that lost at least one citizen. Most of the globe is covered.

The United Kingdom lost 67 citizens (some tourists, others working in the U.S.), making 9/11 the deadliest terror attack in that country’s history.

I was living in London fifteen years ago. Having watched the BBC’s uneventful news over lunch, I turned off the tv to get back to work on my dissertation. Around 2:00 pm, which would have been 9:00 am in New York, someone called and told me to turn the tv back on. I was glued to the BBC for the rest of the day and night. Watching the people trapped on the roof of the World Trade Center, I couldn’t understand why none of the helicopters could get close enough to rescue them before the towers collapsed. I could not believe a plane was able to crash into the Pentagon.

In Britain, as in the U.S., there was a tremendous public outpouring of grief after the attacks. British people are normally reserved with strangers, but many approached me after hearing my American accent in a shop or a train station, just to say how very sorry they were about what had happened in my country. UPDATE: Added below photos a reader sent, showing piles of flowers and gifts and notes left outside the U.S. embassy in London in September 2001.

I didn’t lose any friends on 9/11, and only one of my acquaintances lost a loved one that day; his father was on one of the planes that hit the towers. Even without experiencing a personal bereavement, I felt enraged, especially when reading newspaper profiles of the victims. During the Jewish high holidays in late September 2001, the last thing I felt like doing was reflecting on the past and forgiving wrongs from the past year. At that time, I heard a BBC radio segment featuring the UK’s Chief Rabbi, David Sacks. He reminded listeners that the Bible (he meant the Hebrew Scriptures or “Old Testament”) tells us once to love our neighbors, but tells us approximately 30 times to love the stranger. That’s because it is easier to love our neighbor, who is probably a lot like ourselves, than it is to love a stranger. It’s the only quote I remember from what must have been dozens of radio commentaries by Sacks I heard during my years abroad.

This week, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein called for a new investigation of the 9/11 events. Stein is headlining a rally at the state capitol in Des Moines today from 3 pm to 5:30. To any readers who attend: feel free to write about the speakers or crowd atmosphere in a comment or a guest post for Bleeding Heartland later. MSNBC’s Alex Seitz-Wald analyzed Stein’s campaign strategy a few weeks ago, arguing she “seems unsure how to speak to anyone this side of Noam Chomsky” and has “misread” the Bernie Sanders playbook while attempting to appeal to Sanders supporters.

Big news on Friday: in a move without precedent, the Obama administration ordered that construction of the Dakota Access (Bakken) pipeline “will not go forward at this time” on Army Corps land bordering or under a North Dakota lake on Standing Rock Sioux tribal land. Gavin Aronsen wrote up the story for Iowa Informer. The federal action will not affect Bakken pipeline construction in Iowa. Though the project will probably be completed in all four states eventually, James MacPherson reported for the Associated Press that the government’s intervention “may forever change the way all energy infrastructure projects [affecting tribal land] are reviewed in the future.”

To win control of the Iowa Senate, where Democrats have held a 26 to 24 majority for the last six years, Republicans will need to beat at least two Democratic incumbents. One of their top targets is Senator Brian Schoenjahn, who is seeking a fourth term in Senate district 32.

Follow me after the jump for a map and details on the political makeup of this northeast Iowa district, along with background on Schoenjahn and his challenger Craig Johnson, the key issues for each candidate, and a look at Johnson’s first television commercial.

One year ago today, the University of Iowa’s Faculty Senate voted no confidence in the Iowa Board of Regents, saying the board “has failed in its duty to take care of the University of Iowa and citizens of Iowa and shown blatant disregard for the shared nature of the university governance.” Five days earlier, the regents had offered the university presidency to Bruce Harreld, passing over three other finalists with substantial support among campus stakeholders and far more experience in higher education.

Harreld’s first year on the job did little to reassure his critics, in part because he’s never acknowledged any flaws in the process that brought him to Iowa City. The American Association of University Professors issued a detailed report last December on the presidential search. Cliffs Notes version: key members of the Board of Regents decided early on to pick a “non-traditional” candidate from the business world, who would preside over “transformative” change at the university; diminished faculty power on the search committee; made Harreld a finalist without a committee vote and despite substantial opposition from faculty; and discounted input from staff, students, and faculty in choosing Harreld over finalists with strong backgrounds in academic administration.

In June, delegates to the AAUP’s national meeting voted unanimously to sanction the University of Iowa for “substantial non‐compliance with standards of academic government” in connection with Harreld’s hiring. Soon after, Harreld commented on the sanctions, “It’s bizarre to me. […] It doesn’t make any sense.” As Mark Barrett noticed, Harreld had the same reaction last fall when asked about controversy surrounding his secret meetings with decision-makers before he formally applied for the presidency: “I find the criticism bizarre, to be really honest about it. […] There is an assumption that I somehow was given preferential treatment. I didn’t see that at all.”

Speaking of bizarre, the University of Iowa will hold a celebration next week to “officially welcome” Harreld to campus, more than ten months after he started work.

I decided to mark this anniversary by cataloguing my coverage of events that inspired the hashtag #prezfiasco. Before Harreld arrived on the scene, University of Iowa politics had inspired only a handful among more than 5,000 posts I’d written over eight and a half years. Some pieces about the Harreld hire turned out to be among the most-viewed Bleeding Heartland posts of 2015.

Readers with a strong interest in this subject should check out Barrett’s more extensive archive of “Ongoing Harreld Hire Updates” at the Ditchwalk blog.

Donald Trump’s potential to be unduly influenced by Russian President Vladimir Putin has been worrying me for some time, so my head nearly exploded when I watched NBC’s Matt Lauer question Trump about Putin during last night’s “Commander-in-Chief forum.”

Other commentators have already noted how Lauer interrupted Hillary Clinton repeatedly but let Trump get away with long-winded non-responses, didn’t follow up when Trump lied (again) about supposedly having opposed the war in Iraq and military intervention in Libya, and didn’t mention controversial Trump statements of obvious relevance to an audience of veterans.

Lauer also flubbed a perfect chance to scrutinize Trump’s Russia connections.

Today’s featured plant was a new discovery for me a few weeks ago. Its tall, branching stems with many delicate flowers compelled me to pull over my bicycle, despite being hungry for breakfast at the downtown farmers market.

Biennial gaura (Oenothera gaura) is native to much of North America east of the plains states. As its name suggests, the plant has a two-year cycle, developing a “a rosette of basal leaves” during the first year and flowering the next year. You are most likely to find it in “tall grass prairie, woodland openings and river banks.” Biennial gaura thrives in full sun but “tolerates many kinds of soil.” Its alternate name biennial beeblossom testifies to the plant’s appeal to various insect pollinators.

I took the enclosed photos along the Meredith bike trail in Des Moines, close to the southeast end of Gray’s Lake.

Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton leads Republican Donald Trump by 45 percent to 43 percent in a two-way race, and U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley leads Democratic challenger Patty Judge by 49 percent to 43 percent, according to a Public Policy Polling survey of 827 “likely voters” in Iowa on August 30 and 31. PPP conducted the poll on behalf of We Need Nine, which advocates for filling the U.S. Supreme Court vacancy as a project of the Constitutional Responsibility Project. (That advocacy group has spent $31,273 so far against Grassley.)

PPP did not include minor-party presidential candidates in its ballot test, and at this writing no cross-tabs are available to shed light on Clinton’s narrow lead over Trump. The main purpose of the survey was to gauge support for Grassley and Iowa voters’ opinions on the Supreme Court vacancy.

For those wondering about priming effects–that is, whether the pollster “primed” respondents to evaluate Grassley on this issue in order to reduce his lead over Judge–PPP asked respondents about the Senate race before the series of questions about judicial confirmations. It’s worth noting that PPP did some internal polling for Judge’s campaign before the Democratic primary in June.

Buzzfeed’s Chris Geidner was first to report on this survey. I enclose below excerpts from PPP’s polling memo and other findings from the survey.

U.S. House and Senate members returned to work Tuesday, no better equipped to handle basic tasks of governance than they were before their unusually long summer recess.

You might think funding to combat a public health emergency would be easy to pass even in a hyper-partisan, election-year atmosphere. But you would be wrong, because legislation to pay for a Zika virus response remains tied up over “poison pills.”