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.

A sign of our times: a satirical T-shirt from the RAYGUN store in Des Moines offers better perspective on a political controversy than you’ll get from a Congressional hearing or the vigilante operation of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Using humor—an alternative to despair—the T-shirt highlights one small aspect of Trump’s reckless, damaging first few weeks in office.

With so many issues, lies, and likely unconstitutional actions in play, where does one begin? 

Let’s start with the Lutheran Crime Syndicate.

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

President Donald Trump and DOGE top gun Elon Musk have been in power for a month. How have they changed life in Greene County?

Probably not much—yet.

Musk has ordered the firing of hundreds of thousands of federal employees, particularly those on “probationary” status who were hired in recent months. Greene County has precious few federal workers. Probably most of them here are concentrated in the USDA and related agencies. I’m not aware that anyone here in that category has been let go, but I may be wrong.

Anne Kinzel is a former attorney and Californian now living in central Iowa. Anne speaks three languages: English, French, and Policy, which allows her to take arcane policy concepts and translate them into language that consumers, voters, and policy makers can appreciate and use.

How many consultants has the Democratic establishment hired over the years to help them understand why they aren’t connecting with voters and non-voters? It’s likely more than the $250 million Elon Musk spent to buy the election.

Why don’t the Democrats connect well enough with Americans? It’s all about who has your back and who your true friends are—those who stand by you in a crisis.

I am certain that we are in a serious crisis. Every day, my Washington Democratic acquaintances bombard me with messages and spammy emails declaring that our country, our democracy, all of us are facing an existential crisis brought on by the authoritarian criminal Donald Trump and his twisted accomplice, Elon Musk. The essence of my Dem friends’ messages is this: send money to help us get re-elected, and everything will be fine.

Governor Kim Reynolds struck a confident tone when asked this week about a possible 2026 primary against former State Representative Brad Sherman.

In a February 17 news release announcing his campaign for governor, Sherman said, “I look forward to working with President Trump – who I endorsed early and supported in rallies, caucuses, conventions, and elections – in his agenda to restore the America we love.”

It was a not-subtle swipe at Reynolds, who endorsed and campaigned for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis before the 2024 Iowa caucuses.

Although the governor has not confirmed she will seek a third term, she was ready with talking points that would cater to Republican audiences.

“I’LL STAND ON MY BOLD CONSERVATIVE RECORD”

Gray TV Iowa political director Dave Price asked Reynolds on February 18 if she felt confident the president would endorse her in a Republican primary. Here’s my recording of that exchange from the governor’s press conference.

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 

Imagine being appointed to be the president of a huge tech company. You have no experience or knowledge of tech. Your 11-year-old grandson taught you once how to turn on a computer, but that’s the limit of your tech knowledge. You’re a modern-day Luddite.

Most of your experience is in showbiz. The chairman of the board loved your show and even made guest appearances. The other board members are afraid of the chairman, so when he shouts, “jump!” They whimper, “How high?”

You’ve received your orders from the chairman. His goal is to dismantle the company regardless of harm. You’re hired to destroy, not reform.

Brian Bruening lives in Clayton County and has been involved in Democratic Party leadership since 2017. He is on Bluesky at @iowarural.bsky.social.

When I wrote just under two years ago about my unsuccessful bid for the Iowa House, I affirmed the importance of running as a Democratic candidate in a very red district and said I would do so again. Last fall, I made good on that commitment, and ran for Iowa Senate district 32, with similar results. We ran a lean campaign, raising and spending a little more than $21,000 in a three month span starting from my nomination via special convention in late July through Election Day.

Having long ago given up on expecting much help from the state party beyond a phone call or two and some technical assistance, I relied on local volunteers and county party infrastructure to spread my message. I created and sent out targeted online and streaming ads, sent text messages, direct-to-door mailers, distributed hundreds of signs and banners, filled local airwaves with radio ads, participated anyway I could in local newspapers and TV, and spoke and debated throughout the district.

I focused on issues that directly affected voters in local communities: public education and defunding of the Area Education Agencies, health care, and rural economics, all the most potent issues the Iowa Democratic Party told us to run on. I added water quality issues to my platform, something our Big Ag-beholden state Democratic Party seemingly doesn’t have the stomach to discuss. The end results were as expected: the Republican incumbent held his seat with 64.6 percent of the vote.

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.

I wouldn’t have guessed President Donald Trump’s lawsuit over the pre-election Iowa Poll could assert claims any more outlandish than the original court filing in December.

Enter U.S. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks and former State Senator Brad Zaun.

The Des Moines Register’s William Morris was first to report on February 4 that Miller-Meeks and Zaun signed on as plaintiffs in Trump’s case against J. Ann Selzer, her polling company, the Des Moines Register, and its parent company Gannett. The suit alleges that the inaccurate poll (which suggested Democratic nominee Kamala Harris was leading Trump in Iowa) was an “unfair act or practice” under Iowa’s consumer fraud statute. It further claims defendants “engaged in this misconduct to improperly influence the outcome of the 2024 Presidential Election.”

Adding plaintiffs who are Iowa residents will help Trump get the case moved back to state court, where he originally filed. Attorneys for Gannett used a legal maneuver in December to remove the case to federal court.

For Miller-Meeks, there’s political upside as well: demonstrating her allegiance to Trump may help her fend off a second primary challenge from MAGA Republican David Pautsch.

But let’s be clear: Miller-Meeks and Zaun have even less basis to claim the Iowa Poll harmed them than Trump does.

“The grassroots of America love making America great again,” David Pautsch told me during a February 5 telephone interview. “It’s the political establishment people, including and especially the Republican establishment, that is the biggest albatross around our neck.”

Pautsch is counting on the MAGA grassroots as he prepares for a rematch against U.S. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks in the 2026 GOP primary for Iowa’s first Congressional district.

A minister and founder of the Quad Cities Prayer Breakfast, Pautsch received just under 44 percent of the vote in the 2024 primary after running against the incumbent from the right.

I reached out to Pautsch after seeing he had booked the state capitol rotunda on February 27 for a “Congressional candidacy announcement.” Although he hasn’t officially launched his campaign, he agreed to speak on the record about his plans and prospects.

Dan Piller was a business reporter for more than four decades, working for the Des Moines Register and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He covered the oil and gas industry while in Texas and was the Register’s agriculture reporter before his retirement in 2013. He lives in Ankeny.

President Donald Trump renewed his eight-year tariff war last weekend by declaring tariffs of 25 percent on most goods from Mexico and Canada (10 percent on Canadian oil) and 10 percent on China. No sooner had the war been declared than we had a 30-day truce as Mexico and Canada promised various reinforcements of their border that supposedly will stanch the flow of fentanyl into the U.S.—policies both countries had announced weeks earlier.

Trump famously told us eight years ago that trade wars are “easy to win.” But if they’re so easy, why are we still fighting them eight years later? U.S. armed forces needed just half that time to subdue Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in World War II.

Trump and his MAGAtoids can claim short-term victories with the Mexican and Canadian truces. But bigger hills remain to be seized. China might not be so easy to bully. Neither will be the European Union. To those of us of advanced ages, the 30-day truce was reminiscent of the occasional truces during the Vietnam War, when hopes were raised around the world only to be shattered by the resumption of bombings and guerilla ambushes.

John Kearney is a retired philosophy professor who taught at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He has lived in Waterloo, Iowa for the past six years.

You are a juror in a murder trial, and you are tasked with deciding the innocence or guilt of defendant Robinson. To be convinced of Robinson’s guilt you want “sufficient evidence,” a reason or set of reasons for confidently believing that he is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. If ten witnesses saw Robinson shoot Johnson and there are no witnesses who saw anything to the contrary, then there are strong reasons (“sufficient evidence”) for believing that Robinson shot Johnson.

But evidence can be “insufficient.” If five witnesses believe it was Robinson who shot Johnson, but five other witnesses believe it was someone who simply looks like Robinson, then the situation becomes problematic. If your verdict hinged solely on eyewitness testimony, you would have grounds for “reasonable doubt.” You would have “insufficient evidence” for finding Robinson guilty.

It is clearly better to have sufficient evidence for your beliefs than to be saddled with insufficient evidence or no evidence at all.

In his recent press conference following the tragic accident near Reagan National airport President Trump claimed “we do not know what led to this crash, but we have some very strong opinions and ideas, and I think we’ll probably state these opinions now.”

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.

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird again tried to put herself in the national spotlight last week as leader of a group of Republican attorneys general who fixed their sights on Costco over the warehouse retailer’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies.

The state attorneys sent a stern warning letter telling the company, “We … urge Costco to end all unlawful discrimination imposed by the company through diversity, equity and inclusion (“DEI”) policies. … Costco should treat every person equally and based on their merit, rather than based on divisive and discriminatory DEI practices.”

Mary Weaver writes a regular column for the Jefferson Herald and Greene County News online. She is a former registered nurse and former public health nurse administrator, who currently chairs the Iowa Democratic Party’s Women’s Caucus. Mary resides on a farm near Rippey.

To the editor:

As a former Public Health Nurse, I am very anxious and concerned that Robert Kennedy Jr. may be confirmed to the cabinet position of Health and Human Services secretary.

I will share a couple of stories to emphasize my concerns, particularly in the arena of vaccinations.

I have a good friend who loves to explore cemeteries. I cannot say it is my favorite diversion, but one very weather pleasant day she talked me into going with her. She likes to look at the headstones and I dutifully followed along. There were numerous markers with lambs. This was usually the grave of an infant who had died of diphtheria or whooping cough. It is painful to believe this type of marker may indeed be seen in future cemeteries.

Sean Flaherty lives in Iowa City.

Many Bleeding Heartland readers know this already, but we’re going to have to repeat a certain fact quite a lot in the next four years: Foreign aid makes up less than 1 percent of the U.S. federal budget. Cuts to this lifesaving aid could not be worse for America’s credibility and standing in the world.

ProPublica published a story on January 31 about the chaos that is choking non-governmental organizations that depend on funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). These NGOs deliver critical services to millions of people around the world. The article by Anna Maria Barry-Jester and Brett Murphy describes a tragedy unfolding.

They say anything can happen in a low-turnout special election. And on January 28, voters in Iowa Senate district 35 elected Democrat Mike Zimmer to represent them through the end of 2026. Zimmer defeated Republican nominee Katie Whittington by 4,812 votes to 4,473 (51.7 percent to 48.1 percent), according to unofficial results.

Most Iowa political observers expected Republicans to hold the seat easily. Former State Senator Chris Cournoyer was re-elected in this district with about 61 percent of the vote in 2022. (She resigned from the legislature to become Iowa’s lieutenant governor last month.) In the most recent general election, voters living in Senate district 35 preferred Donald Trump to Kamala Harris by a 21-point margin, and preferred GOP incumbent Mariannette Miller-Meeks over Democratic challenger Christina Bohannan by a 9-point margin. The GOP has a voter registration advantage too.

Yet Zimmer performed well in every part of Senate district 35. He carried Clinton County, where most of his constituents live, by 3,411 votes to 3,169 (51.7 percent to 48.0 percent). Trump won that formerly blue county in November with 58.5 percent of the vote to 39.7 percent for Harris.

The Democrat carried the Jackson County precincts by 555 votes to 446 for Whittington (55.4 percent to 44.6 percent). Voters in the same area favored Trump by 60.3 percent to 38.2 percent in November, according to Bleeding Heartland’s analysis of the precinct-level results.

Also impressive: Zimmer nearly matched his opponent in the Scott County portion of the district, gaining 846 votes to 858 for Whittington (49.6 percent to 50.3 percent). Trump’s advantage over Harris in the same precincts: 64.2 percent to 34.1 percent.

How did the Democrat pull it off?

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 was in Eagle Grove last week. Like many travelers in Iowa, I stopped at Casey’s before leaving town.

Eagle Grove is a meatpacking community, and many jobs are held by Hispanic men and women. As I waited with my coffee in the check-out line, I was behind a Hispanic man whose hands showed his labors had taken a rougher toll than my life’s work at a computer has taken on mine.

A convenience store in the middle of America is not a place where one typically pauses to reflect on a church sermon given three days earlier at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.

Governor Kim Reynolds hasn’t faced an opponent in a Republican primary since 2008, when she ran for state Senate. But if she seeks a third term in 2026, she will likely compete against a challenger from the right: former State Representative Brad Sherman.

The Iowa Standard reported last month that Sherman intends to run for governor. Speaking to Bleeding Heartland at the state capitol on January 23, Sherman declined to discuss specifics but indicated he has a campaign kickoff planned for February.

His campaign Facebook page was recently updated after a stretch of 21 months with no new posts. His refreshed campaign website is recruiting volunteers to “spread the word about the upcoming primary.” His latest campaign financial disclosure shows no fundraising for the first eleven months of 2024—when Sherman wasn’t seeking re-election to the state House—followed by ten donations totaling $4,030 in December. That month, the campaign committee paid $6,000 to a Republican consulting firm.

To put it mildly, Sherman would face long odds against Reynolds. The governor’s campaign raised $1.8 million last year and started 2025 with more than $3 million cash on hand. Reynolds would have massive establishment support—not only in state, but from the Republican Governors Association, where her former chief of staff serves as executive director. In addition, Iowans are famous for re-electing incumbents.

On the other hand, a sizeable number of Iowa Republicans are open to anti-establishment candidates. Then State Senator Jim Carlin ran for U.S. Senate on a shoestring budget but received 26.5 percent of the 2022 primary vote against Senator Chuck Grassley. Last year, Kevin Virgil received nearly 40 percent of the vote against U.S. Representative Randy Feenstra, and David Pautsch managed just under 44 percent against U.S. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks, even though both members of Congress massively outspent their GOP challengers.

Four groups would be particularly important for Sherman if he seeks the nomination for governor next year.

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.

The Iowa Department of Education may be first in the nation in commemorating a centennial to be ashamed of.

I’m talking about the 100^th anniversary of the Scopes trial in Dayton, Tennessee, which took place from July 10 to July 21, 1925. John Scopes, a high school biology teacher, was convicted of violating a state law, the Butler Act, which made it illegal to teach human evolution in public schools. He was fined $100 (about $1,800 in today’s dollars), but never had to serve jail time.

Bernie Scolaro is a retired school counselor, a past president of the Sioux City Education Association, and former Sioux City school board member.

Jackson Katz created a peer leadership program called Mentors in Violence Prevention in 1993. The concept was to empower bystanders to help prevent bullying, sexual harassment and gender-related violence. Some schools implemented Mentors in Violence Prevention strategies in 1997. Sioux City West High School implemented the training program while I was a school counselor there. Assistant Principal Al Heisterkamp took the lead. Philanthropist Cindy Waitt and the Waitt Institute for Violence Prevention provided support and funding, which contributed to this program’s success nationwide. 

This program deserves its own recognition and deep dive, but here’s one key fact: its success was based on training peers to educate their peers in standing up for each other. Why did this model work? Because we tend to listen to people who are more like us; in this instance, those similar in age.

At least ten Iowans are among some 1,500 people President Donald Trump pardoned on his first day back in the White House. The sweeping proclamation affects everyone convicted of offenses related to the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Most of them will receive a “full, complete and unconditional pardon.” Fourteen named individuals, who were leaders of the extremist groups Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, will have their sentences commuted to time served.

Speaking from the Oval Office, Trump characterized those charged with January 6 offenses as “hostages,” a term he periodically used on the campaign trail last year.

Ten Iowans have been charged in connection with the January 6 events, William Morris and Brian Smith reported for the Des Moines Register earlier this month. Two have been serving years-long prison terms but will soon be released, in accordance with Trump’s pardons:

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.

Here’s a look at perspectives on Donald Trump’s return to the White House and some thoughts about how to deal with that.

For example, despite the political polarization in Iowa and across the nation, one might argue there can be some contrived agreement with this wording: “Donald Trump’s return to the White House will not be as bad as millions of citizens fear.”

MAGA WELCOMES TRUMP’S RETURN

On the one side we have some two thirds of Republican voters who cheer the return because they believe the lie that the 2020 election was stolen by the Democrats.

Many Republicans reject criticism of Trump’s first term in office, from 2017 through 2020, because they were said to be based on fake news or disproved by “alternative facts.”

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.

One of the biggest spenders on behalf of U.S. House Democrats launched digital advertising this week targeting U.S. Representatives Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Zach Nunn in Iowa’s first and third Congressional districts. The ads, enclosed in full below, claim the GOP incumbents “could cost you more,” because they support President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for health and human services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

The House Majority PAC’s 501(c)4 affiliate, House Majority Forward, is funding the 30-second spots, part of a $10 million campaign targeting nine potentially vulnerable House Republicans.

The nonprofit Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) announced on January 7 that it will defend longtime Iowa Poll director J. Ann Selzer at no charge in the lawsuit Donald Trump filed last month. Trump sued Selzer, her polling company, the Des Moines Register, and its parent company Gannett over the final pre-election Iowa Poll, which showed Vice President Kamala Harris leading Trump by 3 points. The Republican later carried Iowa by a 13-point margin.

FIRE’s chief counsel Bob Corn-Revere said in a news release, “Punishing someone for their political prediction is about as unconstitutional as it gets,” adding, “This is America. No one should be afraid to predict the outcome of an election. Whether it’s from a pollster, or you, or me, such political expression is fully and unequivocally protected by the First Amendment.”

One of President-elect Donald Trump’s top advisers on judicial and legal matters stepped away from a University of Iowa alumni advisory board late last year. Mike Davis has long been an aggressive Trump ally, known for his “combative presence on right-wing media.” Some of his posts on the X/Twitter platform prompted calls in November for the university to remove him from the political science department’s alumni advisory board. But in a statement provided last month, Davis said, “With President Trump’s victory on November 5th, I will not have the necessary bandwidth to serve on this important volunteer board, so I decided on my own to step down.”

The Article III Project, which Davis leads as founding president, told Bleeding Heartland that no one from the university asked Davis to resign from the advisory board or take down any of his social media posts.

Communications staff for the University of Iowa declined to comment on the situation. Professor Brian Lai, the interim department chair listed as the point of contact for the alumni advisory board, did not respond to inquiries.

“You suck, Joni! That’s just the nicest way I can summarize how we’re all feeling about your reign so far,” says Joshua Smith in the first digital ad promoting his Republican campaign for Iowa’s U.S. Senate seat.

The video previews what will be an aggressive campaign by Senator Joni Ernst’s 2026 primary challenger from the right.

Bleeding Heartland set yet another record for guest contributions in 2024, with 416 posts involving 146 authors. (The previous record was 358 posts that more than 125 people wrote for this site in 2023.) I don’t know of any state-based political website that provides more quality coverage and commentary by guest contributors.

This year’s guest authors covered a wide range of topics, from public schools to local government, major employers, CO2 pipelines, notable events in Iowa history, and of course wildflowers.

They wrote about President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, Governor Kim Reynolds and her administration, Attorney General Brenna Bird, and of course former and future President Donald Trump.

During the legislative session, guest authors highlighted flaws in the governor’s plan to overhaul Area Education Agencies and the report that sought to justify it. They shared their own personal or professional experiences with AEAs. They covered other education proposals and explained why the state’s official school voucher numbers were misleading. They also covered bills that received less attention but could change many Iowans’ lives for better or worse.

During the 2024 campaign and its aftermath, guest authors wrote about presidential polling in Iowa and nationally, profiled candidates, and analyzed the election results from several angles.

Guest authors sounded the alarm about Iowa’s near-total abortion ban, unlawful drug testing at hospitals, and climate change impacts. They suggested ways to protect water and air quality, and flagged transparency problems in state and local government. They reviewed books that would interest many Bleeding Heartland readers.

They reflected on the lives of those who passed away this year, including Iowans Marcia Nichols, Bobby Washington, and Jim Leach, as well as Tim Kraft, who played an important role on some Iowa campaigns.

While many guest authors criticized Republican policies and politicians, some offered advice or constructive criticism to Democrats following the Iowa caucuses and another disappointing general election.

As noted below, some contributions by guest authors were among the most-viewed Bleeding Heartland posts of the year.

Henry Jay Karp is the Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Emanuel in Davenport, Iowa, which he served from 1985 to 2017. He is the co-founder and co-convener of One Human Family QCA, a social justice organization. This essay first appeared on his Substack column.

When folks like me call out what we see as a profound danger to our society, as it appears that our government is turning against entire segments of our community, stripping or reducing the rights of select groups of people who are our neighbors, there are those who claim we are alarmists sowing discontent; that we are modern day “Chicken Littles,” going around declaring that the sky is falling.

On December 27, the Quad City Times published its list of “top 10 Iowa stories of 2024.” One look at the list offers more than ample justification for the warnings I and so many others have offered about the current state of our state and the troubling prospects of what lies ahead for Iowa and the nation over the next four years. A whopping seven out of these ten top stories are matters of serious concern for Iowa’s social justice advocates.

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.

Gerald Ott of Ankeny was a high school English teacher and for 30 years a school improvement consultant for the Iowa State Education Association.

“We recognize as a board and as a district that the lives of many of our students and their families will be impacted because of immigration policy,” said Des Moines Public Schools board member Maria Alonzo. “We felt making this statement was important.”

That quote comes from Samantha Hernandez’s story for the Des Moines Register on the Des Moines Public Schools’ new policy statement about the immigration concerns of students and their families. It appears to be an effort to resist President-elect Donald Trump’s plan (endorsed by Governor Kim Reynolds) to conduct mass deportations of undocumented migrant children and their families.

I commend the school district for releasing this statement, which recognizes the precariousness of students whose parents (or themselves) are here from another country and possibly lack documentation.

Henry Jay Karp is the Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Emanuel in Davenport, Iowa, which he served from 1985 to 2017. He is the co-founder and co-convener of One Human Family QCA, a social justice organization. This essay first appeared on his Substack column.

Shortly after the recent election, Democratic State Representative Ken Croken, one of the members of the Quad Cities delegation to the Iowa legislature, hosted a meeting at a local library. The theme was, “Where Do We Go From Here?”

The room was packed. It was booked for an hour, but for the first half hour those in attendance were obsessed with the question of “Where did the Democrats go so wrong?” Every speaker had his or her view on why Democratic candidates failed so miserably, both nationally and in Iowa.

It was interesting, to a point. It allowed people to grieve and vent their anger, but it wasn’t very useful and it definitely was off topic. Finally, I raised my hand in frustration and said, “We’re talking about the wrong thing! It will be two years before we can effect change through the voting booth! But it will only be two months before January 20 and day one of the Trump presidency! Right now we have bigger fish to fry and not a lot of time to get cooking!”

Steve Corbin is emeritus professor of marketing at the University of Northern Iowa and a freelance writer who receives no remuneration, funding, or endorsement from any for-profit business, nonprofit organization, political action committee, or political party. 

Roughly 1,200 positions in the federal government require U.S. Senate confirmation. The first cabinet official was confirmed in 1789 when the Senate unanimously approved President George Washington’s nomination of Alexander Hamilton to be treasury secretary.

The confirmation process involves judgment calls by 100 senators, who decide whether a nominee is professionally qualified, exhibits leadership skills, is ethically fit, morally just, doesn’t carry “baggage” and has the temperament for the job.

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.

Lyle Muller is a board member of the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting and Iowa High School Press Association, a trustee of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, former executive director/editor of the Iowa Center for Public Journalism that became part of the Midwest Center, former editor of The Cedar Rapids Gazette, and a recipient of the Iowa Newspaper Association’s Distinguished Service Award. In retirement, he is the professional adviser for Grinnell College’s Scarlet & Black newspaper. This article first appeared on his Substack newsletter.

So, Donald Trump is suing The Des Moines Register and pollster J. Ann Selzer for consumer fraud, which he claims was willful election interference. Bring it on, I would like to say—but I don’t run The Register and my subscription does not entitle me to make such a challenge. I would be doing Selzer no favors, either. 

It would be like pushing the weakest sucker in your group of eighth-grade buddies to the front of the group after mouthing off to a bully. And, make no mistake, a bully is involved in this lawsuit. The kind you thought you left behind in eighth grade.

President-elect Donald Trump followed through this week with his threat to sue pollster Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register over the final pre-election Iowa Poll, which showed Vice President Kamala Harris leading Trump by 47 percent to 44 percent.

Many others have pointed out that Trump’s lawsuit is part of his broader “revenge tour” and “war on journalism.” In Greg Sargent’s words, the case is “putting people in the media and polling on notice that they will face real legal harassment if they anger or criticize Trump.” The president-elect admitted during a December 16 press conference that he will use lawsuits to influence news coverage: “I think you have to do it, because they’re very dishonest. We need a great media, we need a fair media.”

This post will focus on the legal, factual, and logical problems with the court filing.

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

A share of Iowa’s Republican electorate appears ready to abandon Senator Joni Ernst in favor of a more Trumpian replacement in the 2026 Iowa Republican primary election. It’s yet another sign of what today’s Republican Party has become: Donald Trump’s captive. Independent judgment within the GOP is now almost extinct.

Ernst’s current situation arose because she didn’t promptly announce her support for Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense. Hegseth’s past provides plenty of reasons why Republican Senators should take a hard look at his nomination. For starters, he’s accused of sexual abuse (he paid a financial settlement to an accuser), a strong penchant for alcohol, and poor leadership of veterans’ advocacy organizations.

Dan Piller was a business reporter for more than four decades, working for the Des Moines Register and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He covered the oil and gas industry while in Texas and was the Register’s agriculture reporter before his retirement in 2013. He lives in Ankeny.

In an era when sex and religion are politicized, it was inevitable that food would follow.

Two bookend events in 2025 may catapult our eating habits off the Food Network and onto mainstream cable and broadcast news. First will be the confirmation hearing for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for Secretary of Health and Human Services. Then an ad hoc committee of experts must release the legally-required rewriting of the federal government’s food and nutrition dietary guidelines, which are due by the end of 2025.

Gerald Ott of Ankeny was a high school English teacher and for 30 years a school improvement consultant for the Iowa State Education Association.

The autopsy

Belatedly, I listened to the Iowa Down Ballot podcast released on November 28. I say “belatedly” because, since the election, a new “breaking news” story surfaces every day, usually one more shocking than the day before. It has been doubly true in the week since Thanksgiving. 

News not available to the Down Ballot panelists at the time of their forum is the full lineup of nominees President-elect Donald Trump has chosen for his cabinet. It is each day’s big news story. Matt Gaetz (“a” before “e” except after “c”) is already old news, and Fox News host Pete Hegseth (I hope I never have to learn to spell or pronounce that name) seems to be the worst of the bad boys.

Bernie Scolaro is a retired school counselor, a past president of the Sioux City Education Association, and former Sioux City school board member.

I applauded TIME magazine’s 2024 Athlete of the Year, Caitlin Clark. She has brought so much positive attention to women’s basketball. She is undeniably also a great role model for younger, aspiring athletes.

Shortly after, TIME named President-elect Donald Trump as Person of the Year. Honestly, I initially wasn’t even sure if this was just another AI photo or if it was real. I read disparaging comments on social media about the magazine’s choice.

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird will again ask the Iowa legislature to increase state penalties for assaulting law enforcement officers, she told reporters on December 12. But she did not condemn the idea of pardoning those who assaulted police during the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Bleeding Heartland asked Bird whether people who assaulted law enforcement or damaged federal government property on January 6 should be pardoned. She replied, “Well, that’s up to President Trump to decide once he’s in office.”

Would she support Trump if he issues those pardons? “As someone who has worked on pardons at the state level” with former Governor Terry Branstad, Bird said, “I think those decisions are best made on an individualized basis.”

Bird served as Branstad’s legal counsel from his return to the governor’s office in 2011 until early 2015. Elected attorney general in 2022, she was the highest-ranking state official to endorse Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign before the Iowa caucuses.