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

For the past three and a half years, Donald Trump has falsely claimed the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. Many polls have indicated that roughly 70 percent of Republicans across the country believe the same thing.

Why do so many Republicans accept the Big Lie? The only reason I can see is that Donald Trump says it. If Trump suddenly announced he was wrong, that Joe Biden indeed won the election fair and square, how many Republicans would immediately change their tune as well? My guess: nearly all of them.

That’s because they have no facts to trot out in support of Trump’s claim that 2020 was “rigged,” “stolen,” or “fraudulent.”

U.S. Senator Joni Ernst asserted on June 14 that former President Donald Trump privately supports continuing U.S. military assistance to Ukraine. Ernst spoke to Bleeding Heartland following a town hall meeting in Winterset.

Asked about the many Republicans who do not support further military aid to Ukraine, a group that appears to include Trump, Ernst said, “Actually, no, he’s been pretty silent on that issue, and just in private conversations, he understands it’s the right thing to do.”

It’s not clear when such conversations might have occurred. Iowa’s junior senator last saw Trump on June 13, when he had lunch with Senate Republicans at the U.S. Capitol. News accounts of that meeting suggest the focus was on presenting a unified GOP front in the upcoming election campaigns, though Trump and the senators also discussed a range of policies.

U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida posted on June 13 that during a closed-door meeting with House Republicans, Trump said of Ukraine, “They’re never going to be there for us.” Gaetz also wrote that Trump “says we should pay OUR TROOPS more instead of sending $60b to Ukraine.”

The latest foreign aid package approved by Congress included $61 billion for Ukraine. Observers widely perceived Trump to be using his influence with House Republicans to keep that aid stalled for months, before Speaker Mike Johnson put it to a floor vote in April. While Iowa’s Congressional delegation all supported the proposal, more House Republicans voted against the latest Ukraine funding than for it. Members most committed to cutting off aid to Ukraine include many Trump loyalists, like Gaetz.

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

The facts are as follows:

On May 30, a New York trial jury of five women and seven men unanimously convicted former President Donald Trump of falsifying business records regarding a hush money payment to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels. The payment, in several installments just before the 2016 presidential election, was made in order to prevent her claim about having sex with Trump several years earlier from going public, according to the jury finding. Trump denies a sexual encounter occurred.

Jim Chrisinger is a retired public servant living in Ankeny. He served in both Republican and Democratic administrations, in Iowa and elsewhere. He also holds a law degree from the University of California, Berkeley.

Donald Trump and MAGA are tearing down the rule of law, and most Americans don’t understand this threat or its gravity. The Declaration of Independence grounds our entire system of government:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

This system, which America pioneered for the world, depends on everyone being treated equally. No royal, aristocrat, wealthy person, property owner, white person, male, straight person, Christian, or anyone is more equal. We each carry the same weight, and responsibility, in our democracy.

But how does that work? What makes it real? The rule of law.

The president of the Congressional Leadership Fund (the main super-PAC aligned with U.S. House Republicans) congratulated U.S. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks on her “resounding victory” in the June 4 primary to represent Iowa’s first district.

U.S. Representative Randy Feenstra hailed the “clear message” from fourth district voters, saying he was “humbled by the strong support for our campaign.”

They can spin, but they can’t hide.

Pulling 55 to 60 percent of the vote against an underfunded, first-time candidate is anything but a “resounding” or “strong” performance for a member of Congress.

Writing under the handle “Bronxiniowa,” Ira Lacher, who actually hails from the Bronx, New York, is a longtime journalism, marketing, and public relations professional.

Former President Donald J. Trump thus reacted in dismay last week after a Manhattan jury convicted the former U.S. president and current GOP candidate to reclaim that office on 34 counts of business impropriety, adding …

Sorry; that wasn’t Trump who said that. Or any Trump supporter. Or last week, or last year, or even last decade. It was what University of Southern California law professor Jody David Armour told the Los Angeles Times after four police officers in that city were acquitted of assault against Rodney King in 1992.

Randy Evans is executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council and can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com. 

Most people go through life never stepping foot inside a courtroom. Most people, that is, except for attorneys, judges, journalists, the few of us chosen to be jurors, and an even more select group, those who are accused of crimes.

If I were talking now with my dear parents, may they rest in peace, I would quickly assure them that my many days spent in courtrooms have been in a professional capacity, not as a defendant trying to avoid the slammer.

As a reporter and later as the boss of reporters, I have had an up-close vantage point to watch our court system as it works. I claim no special expertise. But 50 years in a ringside seat on the judiciary have given me perspective worth sharing.

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. 

NBC News recently compared where President Joe Biden and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump stand on a multitude of issues of importance, ranging from abortion to health care reform, housing, climate change, education, crime, trade, immigration, taxes, foreign policy, student loan debt, and much more.

One issue missing from the NBC News report has become a focal point for the Biden camp: democracy vs. authoritarianism. Will the duly elected president inaugurated on January 20, 2025 keep the U.S. as a democracy, in line with centuries of tradition? Or will that day be the start of a shift toward authoritarian governance or fascism?

Douglas Burns is a fourth-generation Iowa journalist. He is the co-founder of the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation and a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, where this article first appeared on The Iowa Mercury newsletter. His family operated the Carroll Times Herald for 93 years in Carroll, Iowa where Burns resides.

Two-term U.S. Senator Joni Ernst, a Red Oak Republican and the first female combat veteran to serve in the Senate, said on May 29 that she will seek a third term in 2026.

In an interview in Carroll with Iowa Mercury and the Carroll Times Herald following an economic-development event, Ernst, 53, left the door open to a possible cabinet position in a second Trump administration if the former president prevails in November. Trump vetted Ernst in the 2016 cycle as a possible vice presidential running mate.

Asked directly if she planned to seek re-election to the U.S. Senate in 2026, and to rate her likelihood on a scale of 1 to 10 for a third-term bid (with 10 being most likely) Ernst said, “That is my intent. So I would say, yes, 10 very likely. I love representing the people of Iowa, and it really has been a very fulfilling position for me to be able to fight for rural America. Of course, important to me as well are our veterans and Armed Services.”

Ernst said she would wait until after the 2024 election cycle to get a “little closer” to 2026 before announcing.

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 

I always considered knot tying and auditioning as two separate skills with nothing in common. I learned knot tying from an overly-patient Scoutmaster who scowled but never criticized when knots like the sheepshank, square, clover hitch, and bowline were too loose or completely flubbed. 

I also had auditions. I went for a music scholarship in college. I didn’t get it. I tried out for a few plays and scored parts.

Both skills require practice, discipline, and willingness to fail. I never tried both skills at once. After all, that would have left me tied in knots and looking bad during an audition.

But it’s happening now on the political stage.

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.

Attorney General Brenna Bird continues to ignore her critics, doubling down on actions that have drawn criticism. Unfortunately for Iowans, she’s picked a bad model to imitate.

This shoot-yourself-in-the-foot strategy had worked so well for Donald Trump that Bird seems to figure, “Why not give it a try?”

And she’ll likely continue that style, despite the unanimous verdict(s) against Trump in the one trial he has not managed to delay.

Former President Donald Trump marked Memorial Day on May 27 by ranting on his social media platform about “the Human Scum that is working so hard to destroy our Once Great County,” the “Radical Left, Trump Hating Federal Judge in New York,” and “the N.Y. State Wacko Judge,” among others.

In contrast, Iowa politicians from both parties embraced the spirit of the holiday originally known as Decoration Day by honoring Americans who died during military service. Governor Kim Reynolds attended Memorial Day events at the Iowa Gold Star Museum in Johnston and Iowa Veterans Cemetery in Adel.

In that spirit, Bleeding Heartland remembers the Iowans killed in military conflicts, from before statehood to the current decade.

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

It’s a cloudy day as I sit outside. I am intently reading To Kill a Mockingbird, which I quickly put down as our new neighbor walks by and waves to me. He’s wearing a red MAGA hat with a red, white and blue t-shirt. I would say it is for Memorial Day, but the attire is a common theme in the neighborhood. American and Trump flags both align the houses up and down the street like it’s getting ready for a parade or a Trump rally. But the election is over, and the news reports said it was the widest margin of victory for a presidential candidate in U.S. history.

The year is 2029.

Randy Evans is executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council and can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com. 

Here is a tidbit from my years as a newspaper reporter and editor:

I never voted in a primary election, never attended the Iowa caucuses, never stuck a candidate’s sign in my yard, never had a bumper sticker on my car, never signed a petition, never donated to a campaign.

When Sue and I married, she got something more in the deal than my sparkling personality. She knew she could not have any yard signs, because people driving past our home would not know which part of the yard was for her opinions and which was for mine. To eliminate any confusion, there were no yard signs. Period.

Jim Chrisinger is a retired public servant living in Ankeny. He served in both Republican and Democratic administrations, in Iowa and elsewhere. 

Character once counted in Iowa Republican politics. We could take pride in Governor Bob Ray, U.S. Representative Jim Leach, and the early U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley. They led with integrity. They willingly crossed the aisle to achieve bipartisan goals. They served as role models for our children, standing up for democracy, truth, and accountability. Our state enjoyed a reputation in public administration circles as a “good government” jurisdiction.

Donald Trump has upended all this. He is the antithesis of character. He’s the skunk at the church picnic. He lies incessantly, bullies, commits fraud and adultery, sexually assaults women, mocks wounded veterans, and cheats contractors. He’s a racist. He puts his attempt to overthrow a free and fair election at the center of his campaign. Donald Trump is everything we don’t want our children to be.

In this historic moment, Iowa’s representatives in Washington—Chuck Grassley, Joni Ernst, Ashley Hinson, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Zach Nunn, and Randy Feenstra—are failing the character test.

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  

Starting in 2016, Netflix streamed Stranger Things, a horror, science fiction series set in a small Indiana town with tweens and teens as main characters. In its four seasons, the audience travels to the “Upside Down,” an alternate universe where bizarre replaces normal.

It’s fun fiction.

But in real life, we have veered into the “Political Upside Down.”

“What I saw in that courtroom today is a travesty,” Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird told reporters in New York City on May 13. She was speaking outside the courthouse where former President Donald Trump is being tried for allegedly “falsifying business records to conceal hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election.”

The Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) organized the trip and paid for Bird’s travel to Manhattan, a spokesperson for Bird’s campaign told reporters after the attorney general declined to answer that question directly.

Ed Tibbetts highlighted Bird’s disrespect for the legal system when she declared the case “a scam and a sham.” Dave Busiek ridiculed Bird’s hypocrisy after she denounced the prosecution’s witness Michael Cohen (“a perjurer, disbarred, convicted of lying”) “without any apparent sense of irony that she’s appearing on behalf of Donald Trump, who lies as easily and frequently as the rest of us breathe.”

It’s also worth noting that Trump loyalists like Bird and RAGA have no room to point fingers about political prosecutions or “election interference.”

Ed Wasserman is a 52-year resident of Iowa and a professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at The University of Iowa. The views expressed in his piece are his own and do not in any way reflect those of his employer.

Observers often puzzle over the chummy connection between former President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. What links these two leaders to one another? Largely ignored among several possibilities is their common political philosophy.

In a column for the New York Times in February, Carlos Lozada sharply criticized Donald Trump’s ostensible lack of political philosophy: “The difficulty with Trumpism is Trump himself, who renders any coherent ism impossible.” His assessment echoes the widespread belief that Trump is utterly unschooled in geopolitical history or philosophy. Although few would disagree with Trump’s scholarly naïveté, I fear his political acumen may have been seriously underestimated.

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  

A segment of America has always been intrigued by anti-hero characters, fictional and real. Think Tony Soprano, Dirty Harry, Jesse James, Bonnie and Clyde, Billy the Kid. We might not want them as neighbors, but there’s a secret fascination with their antics. They give a wink, a smirk, and a middle finger to society while being outrageous and often breaking the law.

Enter Donald J. Trump.

Jim Chrisinger is a retired public servant living in Ankeny. He served in both Republican and Democratic administrations, in Iowa and elsewhere. 

Some of my social media friends wonder why I’m so focused and adamant in my advocacy for democracy and the rule of law. Why can’t you just post cute memes, memories, and family events like we do? I come by it honestly.

For three years my wife, Liz, and I lived in communist Czechoslovakia where I served as a U.S. diplomat. We experienced a country with no democracy and no rule of law. We saw the impact of communism on lives, society, and government. Then we witnessed the country’s liberation in the (thankfully bloodless) Velvet Revolution in the fall of 1989.

Liz likes to quote Václav Havel, the dissident playwright turned president of newly-democratic Czechoslovakia. He called communism the slow and insidious murder of the human spirit. He was right.

Republicans yell “communism” anytime a government does something they don’t like. Do they even know what communism is? FYI, “communism” is the Leninist political system overlaying the Marxist economic system of socialism during the Soviet era.

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. 

This voter guide compares the major-party presumptive presidential nominees, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, on seventeen topics.

A nationwide poll by Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research in early April focused on adults’ perspective as to how Biden and Trump’s respective presidencies have hurt America. The two issues of greatest concern for Biden’s presidency were the cost of living and immigration. Nearly half of respondents said Trump’s presidency did harm on five fronts: voting rights, election security, relations with foreign countries, abortion laws, and climate change.

The choice facing voters in 2024—and issues of concern—could hardly be more different.

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

Twenty-three years ago, in the months just before 9/11, the National Issues Forums asked me to work on a “discussion guide” on the topic of immigration. The assignment required me to ask people in Iowa how they felt about immigration and what, if anything, should be done.

My small team and I found the issue was “hot” among Iowans, especially among working-class people—particularly former packing house workers who had lost their jobs and saw their wages cut by a sleight-of-hand when plants changed ownership and de-unionized the workforce. The void, some said, was filled by migrants.

We found some business people welcomed new arrivals as needed for jobs that were unfilled by the local, native population. Descendants of Iowans who originally came to the U.S. to receive a homestead were open to immigration, especially from European countries—much less so of peoples from Latin American or Asian countries. The guide was meant to offer a policy alternative for ordinary Americans to consider in weighing the costs and consequences of the nation’s immigration policies.

Republican Party of Iowa state chair Jeff Kaufmann is tired of talking to party activists who aren’t ready to commit to supporting Donald Trump in November.

In an animated speech to the Jones County Republicans on April 25, Kaufmann repeatedly reminded his audience that they “picked a team” and now need to get on board with the party’s presumptive presidential nominee. He didn’t acknowledge concerns about the former president’s abuses of power, attempts to overturn the last election, or possible felony offenses. Instead, Kaufmann depicted Republican hesitancy as rooted in Trump’s personality or mean tweets.

The state party chair also disparaged Democrats as endangering the country and operating in a “top-down” way—even as he lectured his audience to fall in line: “If you don’t like Donald Trump, you’re gonna fake it!”

Jon Stewart discusses Donald Trump’s Gettysburg remarks on The Daily Show

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.

Seldom do late-night TV hosts scoop the giants of the mainstream news media. But that seems to be the case regarding news coverage of Donald Trump’s campaign rally on Saturday, April 13, in Schnecksville, Pennsylvania, near Gettysburg.

Here’s how Mark Sumner of the Daily Kos website put it: “The only thing more amazing than Trump’s Gettysburg address may be how PBS, The Associated Press, The New York Times, CNN, and The Washington Post all managed to cover Trump’s rally without mentioning one word of this historic statement…Had President Joe Biden said anything half so irrational, every one of those same outlets would have dedicated their full front pages to a discussion of Biden’s mental fitness.”

Photo of Caitlin Clark first published on the University of Iowa’s Hawkeye Sports website in 2023.

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

I am one of those snowbirds from Iowa residing in South Carolina. I happily cheered on Caitlin Clark and the Iowa women’s basketball team throughout the NCAA Final Four tournament. While my Carolinian friends cheered for their Gamecocks, they nonetheless enjoyed and admired the ride the Hawkeyes provided for myself, the state of Iowa, and actually, most of the nation. 

Traveling to a strategically important foreign country as part of a Congressional delegation is an honor—but you wouldn’t guess that from how Iowa’s current representatives in Washington avoid talking about the experience.

U.S. Senator Joni Ernst and U.S. Representative Ashley Hinson met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on April 5 in Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv Oblast. Zelenskyy posted that he briefed the bipartisan delegation “on the situation on the battlefield, our army’s urgent needs, and the scale of the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia.” He also “emphasized the vital need” for Congress to approve another military aid package to Ukraine.

Neither Ernst nor Hinson announced the visit in a news release or mentioned the trip on their social media. Since April 5, Hinson’s official Facebook page and X/Twitter feed have highlighted topics ranging from Hamas to Iowa women’s basketball, biofuels, a fallen World War II soldier, border security, “Bidenomics,” drought conditions, and solar eclipse safety. During the same period, Ernst used her social media to praise Iowa women’s basketball while bashing Hamas and President Joe Biden’s so-called electric vehicle “mandates,” “border crisis,” “socialist student loan schemes,” and federal policies on remote work.

Communications staff for Ernst and Hinson did not respond to Bleeding Heartland’s emails seeking comment on the trip and their views on further military aid to Ukraine. Both have voted for previous aid packages.

President Donald Trump listens to a prayer offered by the Rev. Franklin Graham on September 20, 2019. Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead, available via Wikimedia Commons.

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.

“Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name and will deceive many.” Jesus Christ, Matthew 24. 

“Evangelical Christianity has been hijacked by people who, if Jesus appeared at their door, would give him the boot.” – Former President and former Baptist Jimmy Carter

Devout Christians who hoped they could get through the Holy Week between Palm Sunday and Easter free from politics were sorely disappointed.

From left: Margaret Chase Smith, Lowell Weicker, Liz Cheney

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.

In an odd—even terrifying—way to respond to threats to our democracy, The Republican/MAGA Party will offer Donald Trump as its presidential nominee in 2024, the golden anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s resignation.

Nixon left office in disgrace on August 9, 1974, in the wake of Watergate disclosures that would likely have led to his impeachment and removal.

The Republican Party will formally endorse Trump as its presidential candidate at its national convention in Milwaukee in July—despite Trump’s disgraceful behavior before, during, and after his one term as president. He won the electoral college in 2016 while trailing Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by more than 2.8 million popular votes. Trump lost both the electoral college and the popular vote to Joe Biden in 2020—by more than 7 million votes this time—yet he continues to spread his Big Lie about the supposedly rigged election.

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. 

Clowns to the left of me

Jokers to the right

Here I am

Stuck in the middle with you.

These are lyrics from the song “Stuck in the Middle With You,” co-written by Garry Rafferty and Joe Eagan and performed by their band in 1972. The 43 percent of voters who now identify as politically independent, according to Gallup, might agree that the lyrics “stuck in the middle” speak to them and our 2024 presidential election.

On March 12, Joe Biden and Donald Trump locked up their respective political party nomination, starting a 244-day campaign to November 5.

Research reveals the vast majority of registered Democrats are committed to vote for Biden despite his octogenarian age (though former Special Counsel Robert Hur told the president during one interview, “You appear to have a photographic understanding and recall”).

Donald Trump speaks at an Ohio rally on March 16. Screenshot from C-SPAN video

Kurt Meyer writes a weekly column for the Nora Springs – Rockford Register and the Substack newsletter Showing Up, where this essay first appeared. He serves as chair of the executive committee (the equivalent of board chair) of Americans for Democratic Action, America’s most experienced liberal organization.

“Words matter.” It’s a simple message, one I’ve cited before, short enough to be printed on a lapel button. I know this, thinking back a dozen years, to when I worked for the National Council of Churches (NCC), a national Christian organization. There were indeed buttons circulating around NCC offices with these two words on display. 

The “words matter” message was in support of more inclusive, less male dominant language… in church documents, in congregations, in outreach conversations, and most certainly, in our thinking. Memories of this button surfaced after reading reports and seeing video clips of the former president speaking at an Ohio rally prior to that state’s primary. One word he used that day was “bloodbath” (the New York Times spells it as two words). It’s an unusually powerful term—like massacre, genocide, holocaust—meaning usage requires considerable care and caution.

State Senator Dan Dawson presents Senate File 2349, regarding defense subpoenas, during floor debate on February 27. Screenshot from official video.

Randy Evans is executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council and can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com. 

What were they thinking? That is a question I ask myself a lot lately.

Those were the first words out of my mouth when the Manhattan district attorney had to postpone Donald Trump’s New York criminal trial on the alleged hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels — the delay necessitated because government lawyers had dropped the ball.

I muttered those words during several days of court hearings in Georgia into Atlanta prosecutor Fani Willis’ affair with a subordinate prosecutor — the one she chose to lead the criminal case against Trump and a dozen other defendants for trying to undo that state’s 2020 presidential election results.

And those words come to mind about bills the Iowa legislature is considering that would affect criminal cases like those brought against state university athletes for their online wagers on sporting events.

Randy Evans is executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council and can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com. 

Like many people who call this state home, I have long taken an interest in the careers and achievements of people who got their start in Iowa. 

As a kid, I was fascinated to walk through that two-room cottage in West Branch, knowing a president of the United States, Herbert Hoover, was born there.

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

Mark your calendars for the State of the Union this Thursday, March 7. Get your TVs tuned up. Gather the kids. Sit back. See Marjorie Taylor Greene swallow her tongue. Watch Speaker Mike Johnson break his gavel. See Vice President Kamala Harris spank Jim Jordan’s Freedom Caucus. It’ll be wild.

President Joe Biden will say the state of the union is good. He’ll be right. In fact, on many fronts, the state of the union is great. The trouble is, too few voters believe that, and many are swayed by former President Donald Trump’s preposterous claims or the hypnotic trance he’s placed them in.

Jack Posobiec speaks at the Turning Point Action Conference in West Palm Beach, Florida on July 16, 2023. Photo by Gage Skidmore, available via Wikimedia Commons.

Jim Nelson is a retired Montana Supreme Court justice.

It has been said that: “When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag and waving the cross.”

Early signs are visible in the U.S. right now. For example, at the Conservative Political Action Convention’s recent annual meeting, right-wing conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec proclaimed during a panel discussion, “I just wanted to say, welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely. We didn’t get all the way there on January 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it and replace it with this right here.”

Posobiec then held up a Christian cross on his necklace, adding, “That’s right, because all glory, all glory is not to government, all glory is to God.”

Photo of Donald Trump campaigning at West High in Sioux City is by Bernie Scolaro and published with permission.

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

Former President Donald Trump has won all the GOP nominating contests so far. On March 5 (Super Tuesday), the MAGA base in fifteen states and American Samoa will vote for a shallow man who somehow fills an emptiness inside them. It’s a sort of “Fat Tuesday” for Trump zealots. 

What insatiable need is missing from the common, everyday person that so many want to re-elect a person like Trump? What void lets us elect someone regardless of his cruel bullying? 

U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley has yet to comment publicly on a new document asserting that “officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story” about Hunter Biden.

The revelation came in a detention memo federal prosecutors filed on February 20, hoping to convince a court to keep former FBI informant Alexander Smirnov incarcerated pending trial. Smirnov was arrested last week and charged with lying to FBI agents about an alleged bribery scheme involving Hunter Biden and his father, when Joe Biden was vice president. The FBI memorialized those claims in an FD-1023 document, which Grassley released and hyped last year as evidence of Biden family corruption. Prosecutors now say Smirnov fabricated the allegations.

The detention memo details Smirnov’s “extensive and extremely recent” contacts with “officials affiliated with Russian intelligence,” and asserts he was planning to to meet with Russian operatives during an upcoming trip abroad. The defendant reported some of those contacts to his FBI handler before being arrested and divulged other relevant information in a custodial interview on February 14.

Grassley’s communications staff did not respond to Bleeding Heartland’s inquiries this week about Smirnov’s reported contacts with Russian intelligence. The senator has regularly posted on social media as he tours northern Iowa, but has not acknowledged news related to the false bribery claims. His office has issued ten news releases about various other topics since February 20.

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. 

Martin Niemöller (1892-1984), a German Lutheran pastor, composed a 1946 post-World War II confessional titled “First they came for the Socialists . . ..” The four-line composition explains, in straight-forward language, how the Nazis rose to power by methodically silencing German intellectuals and clergy.

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum features the prose on one of its walls:

Gerhild Krapf is a longtime resident of Iowa City. She worked as attorney for University hospitals and served in a variety of University of Iowa administrative positions for many years, prior to retiring early. She is now real estate broker of her firm, Homes & Hearth,LLC.

I write as the daughter of German immigrants who survived Nazi Germany and came to America in the early 1950s. My father was conscripted in Germany at age 17, and fought in the German army on the Russian front. At war’s end, he was illegally captured by the Soviets and transported to a Siberian prison camp, where he almost died.

After four years of forced labor, he was sent home to Germany, now weighing only 85 pounds and too weak to labor in coal mines, build bridges and roads, and so on. His return home was a miracle to his family, who believed he was dead.

President Donald Trump poses with a Bible outside St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington on June 1, 2020. Official White House photo by Shealah Craighead.

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.

For openers, please consider two quotes from centuries ago. They are relevant to today’s politics, and in particular to former President Donald Trump and his supporters among those the news media call “the evangelical right.”

The first quote is from 1792, when then Secretary of the Treasury and founding father Alexander Hamilton warned of the risks inherent in a democracy:

U.S. Representative Zach Nunn met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, members of the Ukrainian parliament, and intelligence officials in Kyiv on February 9 as a member of a bipartisan U.S. House delegation.

At this writing, Nunn has not posted about the trip on his social media feeds or announced it in a news release, but he appears in pictures others shared from the visit, and is second from the left in the photo above.

Four of the five members of Congress on this delegation serve on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. A committee news release mentioned that Nunn “sits on the House Financial Services Committee’s Subcommittee on National Security, Illicit Finance, and International Financial Institutions and currently serves as a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserve.”

Representative Mike Turner, who chairs the Intelligence committee, said at a news conference in Kyiv, “We came today so that we could voice to President Zelenskyy and others that we were seeing that the United States stands in full support of Ukraine.”