Dr. Greg Cohen has practiced medicine in Chariton since 1994 and is vice president of the American College of Osteopathic Family Physicians. He was named the Rural Health Champion by the Iowa Rural Health Association in 2014 and was awarded the Living Doc Hollywood Award for National Rural Health day in 2015. He was named a Distinguished Fellow by the American College of Osteopathic Family Physicians as well as Physician of the Year by the Iowa Osteopathic Medical Association in 2019.

Dr. Cohen’s first commentary about the COVID-19 pandemic is one of the most-viewed Bleeding Heartland posts in the sixteen-year history of this website.

Three years ago, I wrote a letter to the editor about my experiences as a rural physician six months into the COVID-19 Pandemic. There was no vaccine, no Paxlovid, and only experimental treatments for patients sick enough to be hospitalized. About 180,000 Americans had died. I had not hugged my children or grandson in nearly six months, and in my recurring dreams, I was suffocating in an ICU bed. (I finally hugged my children seven months later, after we had all been vaccinated.)

Governor Kim Reynolds announced on August 2 that 109 Iowa National Guard soldiers were en route to Texas, where they will be deployed through September 1 “in support of Operation Lone Star to help secure the U.S. Southern Border following the end of Title 42.” In addition, the Department of Public Safety will send Iowa State Patrol officers to Texas from August 31 through October 2, to assist Texas state troopers with various law enforcement activities.

The governor’s news release confirmed that “federal funding allocated to Iowa from the American Rescue Plan” will cover “all costs” associated with these deployments. The statement went on to assert, “States are given flexibility in how this funding can be used provided it supports the provision of government services.”

Not so fast.

While the American Rescue Plan did give states more leeway than previous federal COVID-19 relief packages, ARP funds are still subject to detailed federal rules. A plain reading of those regulations suggests deploying Iowa National Guard and law enforcement to the U.S. border with Mexico does not fall under any eligible category.

Reynolds’ public statements about Operation Lone Star also confirm the mission is not related to the pandemic.

The state of Iowa’s chronic lateness in producing financial reports threatened to disrupt the flow of federal funds to Iowa’s universities this year, documents obtained by Bleeding Heartland show.

For the third year in a row, the state will be more than six months late to publish its Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (ACFR), which the Iowa Department of Administrative Services compiles. As of June 26, only six states had not published their comprehensive financial reports for fiscal year 2022 (see appendix 2 below).

The delay has pushed back the publication of Iowa’s statewide Single Audit, a mandatory annual report for non-federal entities that spend a certain amount of federal dollars.

To address concerns raised by the U.S. Department of Education, state auditors worked out an arrangement to produce individual FY2022 Single Audit reports for Iowa’s three state universities by the end of June. The State Auditor’s office released the first of those reports, covering the University of Iowa, on June 27.

Going forward, state auditors will prepare separate Single Audit reports for each Iowa university by March 31, the federal deadline for providing such documentation.

A notice posted in January on the EMMA website, the leading source for data and documents related to municipal bonds, did not clarify why Iowa’s ACFR would be late again. Tami Wiencek, public information officer for the Department of Administrative Services, has not replied to inquiries about the reason for the extended delay. Records indicate that staff turnover at the agency has derailed what was for many years a smooth process.

Alexandra Dermody is a Davenport based Gen Z activist, nonprofit director, and small business owner who lives in Iowa House district 81.

Republican State Representative Luana Stoltenberg of Davenport has completed her first legislative session as the member from House District 81, covering part of Davenport. As a staunch social conservative with a troubling track record—including traveling to Washington, DC for Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally on January 6, 2021—Stoltenberg’s bid for office warrants a strong opposition.

Here are the reasons voters should replace her next year:

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

A potential class-action lawsuit claims Governor Kim Reynolds’ refusal to pay pandemic-related jobless assistance to 30,000 Iowans was unlawful and deprived those individuals of “life-sustaining benefits.”

Lawyers for Karla Smith of Pleasantville and Holly Bladel of Clinton have filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa claiming the two women and thousands of other Iowans were illegally denied unemployment benefits in 2021 due to the actions of Reynolds and Iowa Workforce Development Director Beth Townsend.

The lawsuit alleges Reynolds and Townsend violated Iowa’s Employment Security law, which requires the state to “cooperate with the United States Department of Labor to the fullest extent” and make available to Iowans “all advantages available under the provisions of the Social Security Act that relate to unemployment compensation.”

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.

There’s an old story about how to boil a frog. If you put a frog in boiling water, it will quickly jump out. But supposedly, if you put a frog in tepid water and gradually heat it, the frog stays until it boils to death. 

Like the frog, Iowans failed to recognize the danger of political climate change. And Iowa is now boiling.