Jon Muller is a semi-retired policy analyst and entrepreneur.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which Democrats in Congress approved and President Joe Biden signed in 2022, eliminated the subsidy cliff for health insurance purchased through the Affordable Care Act exchanges through 2025. It used to be the case that your ACA health insurance subsidy disappeared with the first dollar earned over 400 percent of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL).

Unless Congress acts to continue this provision of the IRA, the subsidy cliff will return in January. Thus far, Republicans in Congress show no interest in extending the enhanced subsidies for ACA health insurance plans.

The FPL in 2025 is $15,650 for a single person and $21,150 for a married couple. Thus, 400 percent of FPL is $62,600 and $84,600, respectively. A single person earning $62,600 currently pays $434/month on the Exchange for a Silver Plan. The married couple at 400 percent of FPL pays $599. The FPL increases with each dependent.

Under current law, a 60-year-old single person making just one extra dollar, or $62,601, experiences a rate increase of less than 1 penny/month. When the subsidy cliff returns in January, those premiums will go to $870/month, or an additional $5,119/year. For a 60-year-old married couple earning $1 more, the monthly premium will increase to $1,512, an annual hit of $10,953. These estimates are based on average rates for non-smoker 60-year-olds in Iowa. The increases could be more or less depending on other factors, including geography, age, and smoking status.

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 Principled conservatives disappeared and have been replaced by enablers.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.

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: 

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.

Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column.

Have you ever heard someone refer to an “emolument” in a context other than the U.S. Constitution? Probably not. The word is somewhat archaic, and rarely appears other than as a reference to a gift provided to a public official, especially the president. It came into its own during President Donald Trump’s first term, when Democrats accused him of violating the Constitution by accepting gifts from foreign powers, particularly in the form of paying high prices to stay in a Trump hotel.

Now the same president is once again front and center in an emolument discussion. In this case it’s a luxury plane worth hundreds of millions of dollars, which the U.S. Air Force accepted on May 21 as a gift from the Emirate of Qatar.

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 

In grade school, there’s always one kid who needs to be first. He cuts the line for lunch, with a hard shove. In class, even if he doesn’t have a clue about the answer, his hand shoots up first. At recess, if he’s not picked first, the only game played is All Star wrestling.

He owns the big box of crayons, the one with the sharpener, and he guards it. He doesn’t share. If your green crayon is a nub, and you ask to borrow one of his four, his answer is always, “They’re mine.” His sharpener isn’t communal.

The grown-up version cuts you off with a high-speed veer into another lane avoiding a construction zone. He steals the last parking spot while you’re inches from pulling in. He flashes a smirk.

What happens when the adult version isn’t cutting you off in a construction zone, or stealing a parking place, but elected to lead the most powerful country in the world?

Two Democrats launched campaigns this past week in Iowa’s third Congressional district, one of the party’s top 2026 pickup opportunities in the U.S. House. Republican Representative Zach Nunn held off challenger Lanon Baccam in 2024, winning by roughly the same four-point margin by which Donald Trump carried the district. But in the last midterm election while Trump was president, Democratic challenger Cindy Axne defeated another two-term GOP incumbent in the Congressional district anchored by the Des Moines metro area.

The Cook Political Report and Inside Elections with Nathan Gonzales see IA-03 as a “lean Republican” district for 2026, while Sabato’s Crystal Ball views this race as a toss-up.

I interviewed State Senator Sarah Trone Garriott and State Representative Jennifer Konfrst about their priorities and the case they will make to Democrats as they compete for the chance to face Nunn in November.

I’m not aware of any other Democrats seriously considering this race. State Representative Austin Baeth, who said earlier this year he might run for Congress, confirmed to me on May 8 that he will seek a third term in Iowa House district 36. Though there is plenty of time for others to join the field, they would struggle to compete against Trone Garriott and Konfrst, who are experienced candidates and fundraisers with the capacity to run strong district-wide campaigns.

President Donald Trump’s first 100 days back in the White House have brought the U.S. an economy weakened by tariffs, a depreciating dollar, and the worst stock market performance during a new presidency since 1974. Trump now has historically low approval ratings, even on his handling of the economy—which had long been his strongest public opinion metric. Economists and market analysts increasingly see a recession likely to come this year, and consumer confidence just dropped to its lowest level since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

But to hear U.S. Representative Ashley Hinson tell the story, the country has experienced “100 days of WINNING under President Trump!” The Republican from Iowa’s second Congressional district told reporters on May 2 that the president is “ushering in the new era, the golden age for our economy.”

Whether she’s speaking to a national television audience, her social media followers, the press, or a hostile town hall crowd, Hinson is working hard to demonstrate her loyalty to Trump.

Her tight embrace of a polarizing president could hurt her with swing voters in 2026 but may be essential for her 2028 ambitions.

“It’s not about left/right, Democrat/Republicans, it’s about doing the right thing,” Kevin Techau told me on April 17, the day he launched his campaign for Congress in Iowa’s second district. “I think my record supports that that’s been the direction of my career.”

IA-02 wasn’t on either party’s target list in 2024. But Techau has potential to mount a serious challenge to three-term U.S. Representative Ashley Hinson.

This analysis assumes Hinson will run for re-election to the U.S. House. Although she has been mentioned as a possible candidate for governor, I doubt she would roll the dice on a statewide primary, where she would probably compete against a Republican with closer ties to President Donald Trump.

That said, if Hinson did seek another office in 2026, Techau’s prospects would improve dramatically. With rare exceptions, it’s easier for the party out of power to win an open seat than to defeat an incumbent. Hinson outperformed the top of the Republican ticket in 2024 and goes into this cycle with high name ID and more than $2.2 million in the bank, whereas a new GOP candidate would be starting from scratch.

U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley has avoided public criticism of President Donald Trump’s cabinet members. But in an unscripted moment this week, he questioned why Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had texted family members about a planned military operation.

The New York Times reported on April 20 that Hegseth “shared detailed information about forthcoming strikes in Yemen on March 15 in a private Signal group chat that included his wife, brother and personal lawyer.” Among other things, the defense secretary texted “the flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets targeting the Houthis.”

Grassley’s office didn’t release any statement about the new controversy, nor did the senator mention it on his social media feeds. But Raccoon Valley Radio news director Coltrane Carlson raised the topic during a Q&A session published on April 25 and shared in the senator’s weekly newsletter. You can listen to the relevant segment here, which begins at the 4:23 mark of the full recording.

Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column.

Iowa’s senior U.S. Senator, Republican Chuck Grassley, met with more than 50 of us from the Jefferson area here on April 17. Unlike most Republican members of Congress these days, Grassley has continued to make himself available to his constituents in all 99 Iowa counties.

Some of his meetings are true wide-open town meetings; others are by invitation. The hour-long Jefferson session was billed as a Q and A with local business and development people, but many of those in attendance did not fit that description. Still they asked their questions, and Grassley answered each of them.

Grassley opened the session by noting that he has taken his 99-county tour annually over his 45 years in the Senate. That practice now defies the advice of Republican strategists, who frown on letting people raise their voices face-to-face in disagreement with GOP members of Congress. He is correct in his defiance, and that stance earned him the thanks of some of those at last Thursday’s meeting, even if they strongly disagreed with his positions and his answers to their questions.

“The working class has been working their ass off every day to survive and make ends meet for their families,” Nathan Sage told me this week. Making working people’s lives better is the driving force of his U.S. Senate campaign.

At least four Democrats are thinking seriously about running against two-term Republican incumbent Joni Ernst. Sage was the first to make it official, on April 16.

Sage discussed his background, beliefs, and reasons for running in an interview with Bleeding Heartland the day before his campaign launch. The full video of our exchange is at the end of this post.

Sue Dinsdale is the executive director of the Iowa Citizen Action Network, a grassroots public interest organization committed to creating social change in Iowa and across the nation. She is also the state lead for Health Care for America NOW.

Republicans in Congress have passed a federal budget resolution that instructs Congressional committees to slash trillions in services for everyday people in order to finance the extension of tax breaks that mainly benefit the wealthiest households. Some of the Trump tax cuts enacted in late 2017 expire this year. The top priority for Republicans in Congress is to extend those tax breaks, so the wealthiest 1 percent of households can continue to save on average $60,280 in 2026 alone.

But tax breaks for the wealthy cost the rest of us. When wealthy people and corporations don’t pay their fair share of taxes, revenue is drained out of the budget which means lawmakers will have to cut services.

In this case, Medicaid is on the chopping block. That health insurance program serves more than 80 million people, about one in five Americans. The House-passed proposal includes $880 million in cuts for health care that could very well take coverage from the 678,107 enrolled in Iowa Medicaid.

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.

Elon Musk isn’t the problem. Donald Trump isn’t the problem. The problem is Republicanism and our broken political system.

Across the country and here in Iowa there have been protests targeting Elon Musk and the company he owns, Tesla. Protesters point out—rightfully, in my view—that Musk echoes fascist tendencies from the 20^th century with his glorification of Nazi imagery, sympathetic speeches to neo-Nazi groups both domestically and abroad, and his gleeful charge into dismantling the federal government. People have written articles and giving interviews exclaiming how much a problem Musk is for the United States. 

The argument goes something like this: “Elon wasn’t elected, yet he wields tremendous power to dismantle the federal government, and we do not like an unelected billionaire doing all of this damage!”

Yeah, that is true. Americans didn’t elect Musk, and one person shouldn’t have that much power to destroy the state. By all accounts, he seems to be a terrible human being who craves attention and respect while treating others poorly and abusively. Turning away from that type of person is morally good.

Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column.

Rarely, if ever, have Iowa’s members of Congress found themselves situated to alter the course of America’s economy. But right now they can, and one of the six in the delegation has already taken a first step to do so.

Last week, President Donald Trump imposed harsh tariffs on every nation in the world that trades with us. He did so by fiat, something he claims empowerment to do without so much as even consulting Congress. The Republican majorities of 53-47 in the Senate and 220-213 in the House have remained almost unanimously acquiescent.

Dave Price had the scoop for Gray Media on March 28: State Senator Zach Wahls is “certainly listening” to those who have encouraged him to run for U.S. Senate in 2026.

Wahls is the first Democrat to publicly express interest in this race. Two-term Senator Joni Ernst has not formally launched her re-election campaign but is widely expected to seek a third term.

Wahls told Price he will decide whether to run for higher office after the Iowa legislative session. But he’s already criticizing Ernst, most recently in a March 26 news release that tied the senator to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s “reckless mishandling of military plans” in a Signal group chat.

Rod Sullivan is a Johnson County supervisor. 

I searched the word “Medicaid” in my archive. I was shocked to find how much I have written on the topic—tens of thousands of words over the years. 

Why have I written so much about Medicaid? For one, you write what you know. I used to work in the Iowa Medicaid program. Even though that was several years ago, I know Medicaid quite well. That is why the Republican scheme to cut the program upsets me so much.

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 

Dear members of Congress:

I know your job is difficult. I’d hate coming to work where I’m expected, at least in public, to despise almost half of my co-workers just because we disagree.

One side knows the republic hangs in the balance, but can’t decide how to cut it down to keep it from choking. The other side twists itself into knots defending a mercurial president who rides one whim after another, depending on the day. Both sides hurl insults via cable news noise.

It’s a dysfunctional work environment.

The American people are caught in the middle.

Here are some suggestions for improving your workplace and getting back to doing the people’s business. 

Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column.

It takes courage to stand for the right course of action. It takes more courage to do something about it.

John F. Kennedy’s 1956 book Profiles in Courage details the actions of eight U.S. Senators throughout history who did the right thing in specific instances, knowing nevertheless the bitter criticism and retaliation they would undergo. Among the eight was U.S. Senator James W. Grimes of Iowa, who was among seven Republican senators who voted against convicting President Andrew Johnson in 1868 on his questionable impeachment charge approved by the Republican-controlled U.S. House.

Johnson avoided ejection from the presidency by just one vote. Had any one of the seven brave senators voted the other way, he would have been gone.

Sometimes such courage takes place hidden from the public. Other times, as in the episodes Kennedy describes, it’s very public, even sensational.

If ever a time cried out for such courage, it’s now.

John Hale and Terri Hale own The Hale Group, advocating for older Iowans and people with disabilities. John worked for the Social Security Administration for 25 years in its Baltimore headquarters, Kansas City regional office, and in multiple Iowa field offices. Contact: terriandjohnhale@gmail.com

The Social Security program is 89 years old. Seventy-two million Americans currently receive a monthly benefit. Some 185 million Americans pay into the system and plan to receive benefits someday.

According to the Social Security Administration, some 687,630 Iowans receive monthly Social Security benefits, which total more than $1.2 billion ($1,235,464,000 to be precise) every month—in Iowa alone.

Americans depend on Social Security to be there for them. Recent events raise serious questions about whether it will be.

Charles Gaba is a health care policy wonk, advocate, and blogger who mixes data analysis with snark at ACASignups.net, where this article first appeared. You can follow him on Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, Spoutible, or X/Twitter.

Over the past couple of months I’ve compiled a master spreadsheet breaking out enrollment in Affordable Care Act plans (Qualified Health Plans and Basic Health Plans), Medicaid/Children’s Health Insurance Program coverage (both traditional and via ACA expansion) and Medicare (both Fee-for-Services and Advantage) at the Congressional district levels.

With the pending dire threat to several of these programs (primarily Medicaid and the ACA) from the federal budget proposal House Republicans approved in late February, I’m going a step further and am generating pie charts which visualize just how much of every Congressional district’s total population is at risk of losing health care coverage.

All four Republicans who represent Iowa in the U.S. House voted for the budget blueprint.

The only Iowa Republican in Congress who did not receive Donald Trump’s “Complete and Total Endorsement!” in 2022 has been working hard to demonstrate her loyalty to him.

U.S. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks has stuck close to Trump—literally and figuratively—as she prepares for what could be a tough 2026 primary campaign in Iowa’s first Congressional district.

Sue Dinsdale is the executive director of the Iowa Citizen Action Network, a grassroots public interest organization committed to creating social change in Iowa and across the nation. She is also the state lead for Health Care for America NOW. Brian Keyser is a health policy research associate at Center for American Progress, an independent, nonpartisan policy institute that is dedicated to improving the lives of all Americans through bold, progressive ideas, strong leadership, and concerted action.

Last year, 60-year-old Iowan Susan McKinney started a new job working from home for a travel agency. Susan suffers from diabetes, arthritis, and atrial fibrillation (AFib), and her insurance coverage hadn’t kicked in before her health deteriorated to the point where she couldn’t walk up or down her apartment steps. She couldn’t get to a doctor—which she had no way to pay for anyway—so her conditions went untreated. In November, her concerned siblings moved her back to her hometown of Cedar Rapids, where the local free clinic told her that she qualified for Medicaid. Susan’s sister says, “Medicaid saved her life.”

Medicaid provides comprehensive medical coverage and long-term care for approximately 21 percent of Iowans like Susan. In 2023, the federal government covered around 72 percent of Iowa’s $7 billion in Medicaid spending.

But on February 25, all four members of Iowa’s House delegation voted in lock step with the Republican majority to advance a budget that would necessitate slashing federal contributions to state Medicaid programs to fund tax cuts for the wealthy. If implemented, this legislation could mean a loss of more than $8 billion for Iowa’s economy over the next decade.

The Center for American Progress estimated how the $880 billion in proposed Medicaid cuts nationwide would cost each Congressional district in federal funding. Here are the Iowa numbers:

The only Iowa Republican legislator to lose his 2024 re-election bid has landed a job in the Trump administration—and he won’t need to move to Washington, DC.

Former State Senator Brad Zaun will be the administrator of the Small Business Administration’s Region 7, he announced to LinkedIn followers on March 6. In a statement published by the Des Moines Register, Zaun said he was “dedicated to boosting small businesses in Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska by cutting red tape, expanding our reach, and providing essential resources.” He added, “My goal is a streamlined, ‘America First’ SBA that fuels free enterprise and regional prosperity.”

Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” continues to slash the federal workforce, but there will always be room for political appointees—especially those on good terms with President Donald Trump.

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.

Recently we have seen an onslaught of awful behavior and policy from the Republican majority, not only at the Iowa statehouse but nationally. In each case the Republicans have acted deplorably, while Democrats seem to think that the proper way to respond to deplorable behavior is to adjust their monocle, straighten their suit jackets, and have a respectable and demure silent protest before tut tutting on the drive home. 

Now, I am not one for immediately going from zero to pissed in a counterproductive way, but I am also not one to say, “When they go low, we tuck our tails and do nothing.” The way you deal with bullies isn’t to immediately cave and cede the entire ground to them, but to stand up and make them do the bad things they threaten to do. You don’t comply in advance. If you stand up, you have a chance to stop them.

State Senator Liz Bennett and State Representative Aime Wichtendahl co-authored this commentary, which first appeared in the Cedar Rapids Gazette. Bennett represents Senate district 39 and is District 39 and is the ranking member of the Senate Technology Committee. Wichtendahl represents House district 80 and serves on the House Economic Growth and Technology Committee.

On January 31, 2025, the largest data breach in U.S. history occurred when Elon Musk accessed the United States Treasury systems. The data accessed is, in effect, the nation’s checkbook. Financial transactions detailing the who, what, where, and when of every payment the United States makes, as well as the Social Security numbers of millions of Americans were compromised.

According to reports, then-unnamed affiliates of Musk were also granted access and external hard drives were brought in to capture the data for offsite storage. While these affiliates are now being called employees of the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), none of them have gone through the rigorous background checks used to vet other federal employees at this level.

What had been obvious for weeks became official on January 14. Hours after Pete Hegseth’s confirmation hearing in the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Joni Ernst announced in an interview with WHO Radio’s Simon Conway and later in a news release that she would vote to confirm President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of defense.

It never seemed likely Ernst would stand in Hegseth’s way. However, she had suggested in early December that he needed a “thorough vetting,” and she wasn’t ready to commit. Facing a barrage of attacks from conservative influencers and threats of a 2026 GOP primary challenge, the senator quickly changed her tune, saying in a statement, “As I support Pete through this process, I look forward to a fair hearing based on truth, not anonymous sources.”

In the end, Ernst conducted a selective search for the truth about Hegseth. She discounted facts that raised doubts about his fitness while playing up a testimonial from someone with a stake in the outcome.

Her approach was quite different in 2019, when she considered a controversial Trump nominee for another military role—in the absence of any coordinated effort to influence her decision.

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson caused some angst in the House Republican caucus this week when he removed Representative Mike Turner as chair of the Intelligence Committee, supposedly due to “concerns from Mar-a-Lago,” among other considerations. But there were no unpleasant surprises for Iowa’s delegation as committee assignments were finalized for the 119th Congress.

The Iowans rank low in seniority among House Republicans, with Representative Zach Nunn (IA-03) beginning his second term, and Representatives Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-01), Ashley Hinson (IA-02), and Randy Feenstra (IA-04) each starting their third terms. Nevertheless, all will continue to serve on influential panels.

Senator Chuck Grassley is the longest-serving U.S. senator in Iowa history and among the ten longest-serving members of Congress from any state. He returned this month to two prominent roles as chair of the Judiciary Committee and Senate President pro tempore—the third in line for the presidency after the vice president and U.S. House speaker. Meanwhile, Senator Joni Ernst now chairs a committee for the first time.

A year-end review from U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley’s office boasted that the senator’s oversight “touched on 97% of all taxpayer-funded agencies” during 2024. “Nearly every corner of government received Grassley’s thorough inspection – it’s all part of Grassley’s constant efforts to ensure the government is a service to the American people,” the report added.

One area that escaped Grassley’s “thorough inspection” was the collapse of bribery allegations against President Joe Biden and Hunter Biden. For months in 2023, Grassley publicized an FBI informant’s explosive claims about the Bidens.

But he’s had nothing to say since Alexander Smirnov, the original source of those allegations, pleaded guilty in December to making up the whole story.

Rachel Bruns is a volunteer advocate for quality maternal health care in Iowa.

With the Iowa legislative session beginning January 13, it is time for a rundown of important maternal health policies that should become priorities for state lawmakers in 2025.

Since I am focusing on access to midwifery care, it is worth noting that in October 2024 the World Health Organization issued a new position paper on “Transitioning to Midwifery Models of Care.” That paper offers an international definition by describing the guiding principles of midwifery models of care and reviewing the advantages of adopting them. 

According to the World Health Organization’s position paper, 

As each new year begins, I enjoy looking back at the posts that resonated most strongly with readers in the year that ended. Some things never change: actions by the Republican-controlled state legislature and Governor Kim Reynolds—especially attacks on public education—inspired many of Bleeding Heartland’s most-viewed posts from 2024. That’s been true every year since the GOP trifecta began in 2017. U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley, who featured prominently in two of last year’s most popular posts, makes another appearance below.

I’ve learned there is no way to predict which pieces will take off. Some of the posts linked below required intensive research and days of writing, while others took only a few hours from start to finish. One was among the longest I wrote last year (more than 5,000 words), while another was among the shortest (fewer than 300 words).

Some authors whose work gained a large following in past years made the list again. But three authors featured below were contributing to Bleeding Heartland for the first time.

This list draws from Fathom Analytics data about total views for 561 posts published from January 1 through December 31, 2024. I wrote 145 of those articles and commentaries; other authors wrote 416. I left out the site’s front page and the “about” page, where many people landed following online searches.

A half-dozen posts barely missed the top 24, by a few hundred views or less:

A years-long effort to expand the federal judiciary faltered this week when President Joe Biden vetoed the Judicial Understaffing Delays Getting Emergencies Solved Act of 2024. The JUDGES Act would have increased the federal district court bench by about 10 percent over the next twelve years, adding 63 new permanent federal judgeships in thirteen states, along with three temporary judgeships in Oklahoma. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa was slated to receive one of the first eleven positions to be created in 2025.

The veto leaves Iowa’s Northern District with two District Court judges (Chief Judge C.J. Williams and Judge Leonard T. Strand), along with Senior Judge Linda R. Reade and two magistrate judges. That number hasn’t changed since 1990, when the last major expansion of the federal bench allocated a third judgeship to Iowa’s Southern District. The 1990 law also assigned a judge who had previously divided his time between the state’s two districts to the Northern District on a permanent basis.

Biden may not have the last word on this subject, given the Republican Party’s commitment to putting more conservatives on the bench.

Charles Gaba is a health care policy wonk, advocate, and blogger who mixes data analysis with snark at ACASignups.net, where this article first appeared. You can follow him on Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, Spoutible, or X/Twitter.

In early 2021, Democrats in Congress passed and President Joe Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), which among other things dramatically expanded and enhanced the original premium subsidy formula of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The changes brought the financial aid sliding income scale up to the level it should have been in the first place more than a decade earlier.

In addition to beefing up the subsidies along the entire 100 percent to 400 percent of Federal Poverty Level income scale, the ARPA also eliminated the much-maligned “Subsidy Cliff” at 400 percent of the Federal Poverty Level. Before 2021, a household earning even $1 more than that amount had all premium subsidies cut off immediately, requiring middle-class families to pay full price for individual market health insurance policies.

COMPARING THE ORIGINAL ACA SUBSIDIES WITH ENHANCED SUBSIDIES

Here’s what the original ACA premium subsidy formula looked like compared to the current, enhanced subsidy formula:

They were so close.

After weeks of negotiations, U.S. House and Senate leaders had agreed on a year-end spending bill that would fund the federal government through March 14, extend the 2018 Farm Bill through next September, and provide more than $100 billion in disaster aid. The legislation included numerous other policies, including at least two that had been priorities for Iowa’s members of Congress. The bill would have legalized year-round sales of higher ethanol blends known as E-15 in all states. It also contained new regulations for pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), which could have saved consumers billions while helping small pharmacies.

All of the Iowans in Congress have talked up E-15 as a path to U.S. energy independence. (In reality, only about 3,400 of some 198,000 gas stations across the country dispense higher ethanol blends.) Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-01) and Senator Chuck Grassley have been among the most vocal proponents of PBM reform, calling for action on prescription drug middlemen in draft bills, press releases, news conferences, House and Senate hearings, floor speeches, and taxpayer-funded radio ads.

Little did they know that President-elect Donald Trump and his billionaire buddy Elon Musk were about to blow up the deal.

Iowa’s all-Republican delegation voted the same way on almost every bill that came before both chambers during the 118th Congress, which wrapped up its work in the early hours of December 21. But one of the last bills sent to President Joe Biden, the Social Security Fairness Act, revealed an unusual disagreement among the Iowans serving in the U.S. House and Senate.

When the House approved the bill by 327 votes to 75 in November, U.S. Representatives Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-01), Ashley Hinson (IA-02), Zach Nunn (IA-03), and Randy Feenstra (IA-04) were part of the bipartisan majority.

When the Senate passed the bill by 76 votes to 20 shortly after midnight on December 21, Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst were among the 20 Republicans who voted no.

The Iowans’ comments on the Social Security Fairness Act illustrate how differently politicians with similar ideologies can view a complex public policy fix.

Iowa is projected to maintain four U.S. House districts after 2030, according to population estimates the U.S. Census Bureau released on December 19. If that pans out, it would be our state’s longest stretch without losing a Congressional district in 100 years.

Michael Li, senior counsel for the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program, posted a map on social media on December 19, showing how reapportionment would affect each state. Iowa is among 36 states that would neither gain nor lose any U.S. House districts after the 2030 census, if population trends from the past two years hold. Three neighboring states—Illinois, Minnesota, and Wisconsin—are each expected to lose one seat, in line with a decades-long trend of relatively slower population growth in the Midwest and Northeast, compared to the South and West.

Tom Cope worked on two of Congressman Jim Leach’s re-election campaigns and on his district office staff, from 1991-1995. He is a principal in the Iowa lobbying firm of Cope Murphy + Co. and serves on the Johnston City Council. 

I consider myself to have been very blessed in my life. One of those blessings was the opportunity to work for Congressman Jim Leach from 1991 to 1995. I managed his re-election campaigns in both 1992 and 1994, and worked in his district offices in Cedar Rapids and Davenport in between those times. 

As I think about Jim and all that I learned, there are three things that are important to remember about him.

“They don’t make them like Jim Leach anymore,” posted the elections analysts at The Downballot after learning Leach had passed away on December 11. They were commenting on his extraordinary warning to the Republican National Committee chairman that he would not caucus with Republicans in the next Congress if the Iowa GOP continued to fund direct mail attacking his 2006 Democratic challenger.

Among Iowans who have served in Congress, Leach was unique in many ways.