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.

With the post-primary pause, it’s time for a candid chat about the state of political fashion, and I don’t mean left-right, progressive-conservative trends. I’m talking about the way our male candidates dress.

(I learned years ago to avoid commentary on women’s clothing except to note they are beautiful. Besides, women politicos today tend to dress very well. More about that later. For now, it’s the men I wonder about).

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. This essay first appeared on his Substack newsletter, Stray Thoughts. 

The offices of the Des Moines Register’s opinion staff were mostly empty when my telephone rang late one afternoon about fifteen years ago.

The guard at the lobby security desk said two men were there and hoped I had time to meet with them. I said sure and invited them up to our office on the fourth floor.

Within minutes, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and his driver emerged from the elevator. They were on their way to Waterloo. But Jackson wanted to detour to the Register, just to talk about some concerns on his mind.

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 contrast between President Harry Truman and our would-be King Donald Trump is relevant and overdue because of the need to hold Trump accountable by the courts and the voters — given the failure of Congress to rein Trump in. For that, thanks go in part to Iowa’s U.S. senators and representatives, who support the reign of Trump whenever push comes to shove and promote his endorsement if seeking election.

So here is a contrast that leads to a look at our situation in the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.

I find a lot of reasons to admire Harry Truman — almost as many as I find to loathe Donald Trump. On the one hand, maybe it’s because of time spent in research at the Truman library in Independence, Missouri. Reading hundreds of letters to and from Truman during his years in office and having access to resources that tell you about the man. Perhaps the key impression for me is how Truman distinguished between the Office of the President, which merited respect, just shy of worship, and the person in the office, who was fair political game.

“He had an amazing ability to stay focused on what was important,” John Norris remembered at a March 7 gathering for Iowans who were involved with Reverend Jesse Jackson’s 1988 presidential campaign.

The group came to the Machinists’ Hall in Des Moines to swap stories before watching a livestream of Jackson’s “Homegoing Celebration of Life” at Rainbow PUSH in Chicago.

I was deeply moved by what I heard during the hour-long event. My full recording is at the end of this post. Here are some highlights.

Dave Leshtz is the editor of The Prairie Progressive.

“Tell them you’re a realist with high ideals.”

That’s what Jesse Jackson said to me in 1987 when I asked him how to respond to my Iowa friends and acquaintances who, somewhat mockingly, called me an idealist for supporting him for president. Only unrealistic, naïve, hopelessly optimistic idealists—so the thinking went—would work for Jackson in an overwhelmingly white state like Iowa.

The sad news of Reverend Jackson’s death brought back memories of his presidential campaign of 1987-88, the most exhilarating, inspiring, and illuminating of all the campaigns I’ve worked on. 

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.

Periodically historians and scholars assess and rank the performance of U.S. presidents. It’s an exercise with no sure answer – a matter of opinion informed by study, observation and perspective, also influenced by a measure of one’s political worldview.  

While interesting on their face, presidential greatness studies can also serve to remind us of the leadership values that brought out the best in America – and warn us that presidential judgement can be terribly misguided, even corrupt. 

Projects evaluating presidential achievement have occurred for decades. The Schlesinger surveys are well known to presidential historians. The first was conducted in 1948 by Arthur Schlesinger Sr., a Harvard University historian, with a follow-up project in 1962. Others came after, to include a survey by his son in 1996. Like his father, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. was a historian at Harvard.

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 new year is a time for making resolutions, starting new, and dreaming big. But quite often the treadmill becomes a clothes rack for things we’ve outgrown, and our resolve to eat healthier evaporates as soon as the drive-up for Raising Cane’s clears up. Keeping resolutions requires willpower and work, and they must be backed by determination and strategies for change. If not, resolutions morph into wishes.

Wishes might be fun when blowing out candles or sitting on Santa’s lap. But wishes are even weaker than resolutions. 

Resolutions are usually individual commitments, but I’m proposing a few collective resolutions around honestly preserving our U.S. and Iowa history.

Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column. This essay first appeared on Substack.

A few days ago a team effort by U.S. military, intelligence, and law enforcement personnel seized Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, and took them into American custody. The move has overwhelmed the news cycle across America, and much of the world as well.

The couple, now arraigned and in federal detention in Brooklyn, New York, will be tried in federal court on charges involving narcoterrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation, high-powered weapons possession, bribery, and fomenting kidnappings and murders.

There’s way too much involved here to unpack fully in a column like this one. The challenge is to drill down to the incident’s essential significance: Why did it happen? What important events led up to it? And what is it likely to mean for the people of Venezuela and their resources?

Jill Norton is a former forest fire fighter, high school teacher, and library director.

My family attends Iowa Irish Fest downtown in Waterloo, Iowa, on Sunday. We arrive early and gain entrance in exchange for cans of food for the Northeast Iowa Food Bank. We listen to mass from the mainstage and scoot off to Jameson’s for what I imagine is the most authentic Full Irish breakfast around. That is, until last year when the establishment changed owners and mass-produced mush was served on Styrofoam plates, and this year when the meal was deemed unprofitable and discontinued altogether.

The Full Irish is an Irish mainstay: soda bread, baked beans, grilled tomato, mushrooms, rashers (linked sausages), thick bacon, eggs, and white and black pudding—which is lard, grain, spices, and blood for the black version, in a sausage-like patty. Inasmuch as food speaks to the heart, this plate of real Ireland will be missed.

No, we’re not Irish, as far as we know. We just enjoy Irish Fest. And we’ve traveled to Ireland. Before and after my travels I endeavored to learn all I could about Ireland and was fascinated, starting with the mythology. Why do we learn about Hercules but not Cúchulainn?

Jon Muller is a semi-retired policy analyst and entrepreneur who previously was a tax analyst and revenue forecaster for Iowa’s Revenue Estimating Conference.

Iowa Republicans appear to be budgeting on pure hope. And that’s probably the only tool they have. That hope appears to be misplaced.

State government is piecing together a budget, but it’s like flying a plane with one engine gone. This piece is an effort to estimate how far they can fly the plane before it crashes.

The three-member Revenue Estimating Conference (REC) left the estimates largely unchanged at its December 11 meeting, with an additional $23 million for the current fiscal year and an extra $105 million for the budget they’ll appropriate next session.

Normally, that would be pretty good news. The state government historically worked on the premise that future expected appropriations could be funded with future expected revenues. Even when the income tax cutting regime got its foothold in the mid-1990s, both the legislative and executive branches used five-year forecasts of revenues and expenditures to make sure the long-term forecast was at least theoretically reasonable. There’s nothing inherently wrong with using reserves to fund tax cuts in the short run, if it’s reasonable to believe future revenue increases are sufficient to fund them.

I sincerely doubt the state government uses this approach anymore. Because they have committed fiscal malpractice the likes of which I have never seen in Iowa.

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

Most of the top leaders of both political parties converged on Washington’s National Cathedral on November 20 to honor the memory of former Vice President Dick Cheney at his funeral service. As former President George W. Bush’s right hand man from 2001 to 2009, Cheney played a key role on foreign and domestic policy initiatives. What he said and did filled international news reports, and he was universally acknowledged as someone who mattered.

Such was certainly not the case for vice presidents throughout most of American history, especially prior to the 20th century. Most Americans today would be hard pressed to name two or three vice presidents before 1900 who (1) did not ascend to the presidency upon the death of the then-sitting president, or who (2) won election to immediately succeed their predecessor.

Who served as vice president under James Buchanan? Franklin Pierce? James K. Polk? Beats me—I had to look up all three.

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.

It only took a few hours after my November 18 column about supporting local journalists to be published for Folience, the “100% employee-owned portfolio of companies with reputations for excellence,” to announce it had sold The Gazette newspaper in Cedar Rapids.

Also going to the buyer, Adams Multimedia of Minneapolis, are eleven community newspapers Folience owned through The Gazette.

“There’s a lot of processing,” Gazette Editor Zack Kucharski said Tuesday evening about his busy day talking through the sale and concerns with staffers, including those at some of the local papers. “It’s been a difficult day.”

I worked at The Gazette for 25 years as a bureau chief, reporter, and editor, so news of the sale stings. Of course, we should be used to the stings now. Another Iowa newspaper owner gone during the changing landscape for newspapers but also any news organization.

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. This essay first appeared on his Substack newsletter, Stray Thoughts. 

Recent events in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and at Sacred Heart Cathedral in Davenport provide stark reminders that our nation’s leaders have seemingly forgotten a biblical command around for the ages.

It is one Robert Ray followed during his tenure as Iowa governor, which ended some 42 years ago.

Ray was front of mind as I digested the news last week. His service contrasted with the haunting picture the three easily missed events presented of who we are as Americans and who we are becoming.

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.

President Donald Trump compares himself—always favorably—to previous U.S. presidents, particularly George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

Trump has faulted Lincoln for not avoiding a Civil War. Our current president is a self-styled peacemaker, claiming to have ended eight wars in eight months—which would be more wars solved than bankruptcies he presided over as a businessman. (That would be four or six bankruptcies, depending on whether you count three of the bankruptcies as one, as Trump does.) The BBC examined the supposed peace agreements—which may or may not have staying power—and how much credit the president deserves for each one.

Some observers of Trump’s governing style see more alarming historical analogies. They may liken the United States in the 2020s to the rise of Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

If you’re not satisfied with these comparisons and contrasts, consider another: Trump and Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (37-68 AD). He’s better known in the Western World as Nero, the Roman emperor (54-68) who supposedly fiddled while Rome burned in the year 64.

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.

As my wife and I, both spry seventy-somethings, walked the state capitol complex sidewalks to the No Kings rally on October 18, I couldn’t help but notice the gathering crowd and remarking, “I’d feel better about this if the majority of people here didn’t have grey hair.”

photo by Dan Piller from the No Kings rally outside the Iowa state capitol

I put down the seeming preponderance of the Medicare set at the Des Moines rally to Iowa’s elder-leaning demographics. But the next day, Fox News and the right-wing echo chamber used the apparent senior citizen majority of the No Kings crowds elsewhere as their prime talking point. The rallies were impressive in their numbers, but nonetheless may be remembered as the Last Hurrah of a generation with enough wit to make clever signs.

Wayne Ford is the executive director of Wayne Ford Equity Impact Institute and co-Director of the Brown and Black Forums of America. He is a former member of the Iowa legislature and the founder and former executive director of Urban Dreams.

The news cycle today is filled with headlines declaring that Elon Musk may become the world’s first trillionaire. His wealth, tied to Tesla, SpaceX, and other ventures, rises and falls daily with the stock market. This possibility captures attention, raises eyebrows, and sparks debate about inequality in the modern age.

But history reminds us to pause. Long before the stock exchange existed, long before Wall Street tracked fortunes, there was a king in West Africa whose wealth was so extraordinary that no number could capture it. His name was Mansa Musa, and his crown jewel was the legendary city of Timbuktu.

Marian Wilson Kimber is Professor of Musicology at the University of Iowa and the editor of the Journal of the Society for American Music.

On October 6, prison laborers began the process of dismantling the 168-year-old State Historical Society of Iowa in Iowa City. State administrators claim it is too expensive to run. You wouldn’t think a music historian like me would have much to look at in the Society’s collection. Spillville was famously visited by Czech composer Antonín Dvořák in 1893. Iowa was the birthplace of Meredith Willson, Bix Beiderbecke, and Simon Estes and the site of the Surf Ballroom, but otherwise, it doesn’t have much of a musical reputation.

I first visited the modest brick building in 2011, searching for the women who posed like the “Grecian urn” ladies satirized in Willson’s The Music Man—yes, they were real. The collection had photographs. But it was something else I encountered there that transformed my research. Archivist Mary Bennett brought me a cardboard box of little program booklets from women’s clubs all over Iowa.

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.

More than 90 years ago, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered a warning that appears prescient in light of today’s woes. Consider these 53 words from FDR’s inaugural address on March 4, 1933:

(T)he only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory.”

Roosevelt’s reference to “dark hours of our national life” calls to mind other rhetoric and survival in dark hours. The reference hints at the lack of frankness and needed vigor in our nation today. And the reference does far more than merely hint about the fear than Trump strikes in the hearts of so many — from the struggling non-profit organizations trying to aid the vulnerable and needy to the well-off members of Congress, apparently confident in their unending terms in office.

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.

Gun violence made headlines again on September 10.

As I write this, two children lay wounded following a school shooting in Colorado. Political commentator Charlie Kirk is dead, the victim of a single shot from a sniper while holding an event at a university in Utah.

Of course, the political class is offering thoughts and prayers. But there will be no meaningful action. Again. We already know that.

Yet, with every act of gun violence, I think back to a speech by Robert F. Kennedy, the former attorney general, U.S. senator and presidential candidate. He delivered these remarks at the Cleveland City Club, in Cleveland, Ohio, on April 5, 1968, the day following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Wayne Ford is the executive director of Wayne Ford Equity Impact Institute and co-Director of the Brown and Black Forums of America. He is a former member of the Iowa legislature and the founder and former executive director of Urban Dreams.

Washington, D.C. has always been more than just another city. It is the nation’s capital, a symbol of democracy, and a unique jurisdiction caught between local self-governance and federal control. Today, it has also become the latest flashpoint in America’s ongoing debate about crime, politics, and presidential power.

Mayor Muriel Bowser recently acknowledged that the federal surge of law enforcement—including the deployment of the National Guard ordered by President Donald Trump—has coincided with a sharp drop in crime. Carjackings fell by 87 percent. Overall violent crime was cut nearly in half. And, in a milestone for the city, Washington went twelve consecutive days without a single homicide.

The numbers are dramatic. Headlines on cable news have trumpeted them as proof that federal power works. Bowser herself admitted that the crackdown “brought results,” even though she expressed concerns about the heavy presence of federal officers in local neighborhoods.

But here is the crucial point: these statistics represent only a few weeks of data. They are not proof of a long-term trend. Just as crime patterns fluctuate with seasons, neighborhoods, and economic cycles, a short-term dip can reflect immediate deterrence without changing the deeper conditions that drive violence. That distinction matters if we are to think seriously about Washington, D.C. and its future.

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

Ninety years ago, in a message to the Boys Scouts of America, President Franklin Roosevelt, honorary president of the Scouts, noted,

The year 1935 marks the 25th birthday celebration of the Boy Scouts of America. During these years the value of our organization in building character and in training for citizenship has made itself a vital factor in the life of America. … There are in each community so many well-organized and efficiently administered agencies… which strengthen the best objectives of the home, the church, and the school.

Several months later, a far less glowing message came from a relative of FDR, Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, President Teddy Roosevelt’s son, chair of the Scout’s personnel division. Speaking extemporaneously at the 25^th anniversary meeting of the Scouts National Council, Colonel Roosevelt referenced a Boy Scout “red flag list,” also known as “ineligible volunteer files” and “perversion files.” 

Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column. This essay first appeared on Substack.

A year ago this month, U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, introduced the No Kings Act with 36 co-sponsors. With the Senate under Republican control, the bill did not receive a vote and therefore died.

It deserves resurrection.

The No Kings Act was inspired by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision on July 1 of last year that the president is immune from prosecution for all official acts he or she commits while in office, even if they break the law. The court handed down that decision in Donald J. Trump v. United States, in which Trump was indicted for attempting to overturn the results of his loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 election four years earlier.

To complicate matters, the court did not define what constitutes an “official act.”

Steve Corbin is emeritus professor of marketing at the University of Northern Iowa and a contributing columnist to 246 newspapers and 48 social media platforms in 45 states, who receives no remuneration, funding, or endorsement from any for-profit business, nonprofit organization, political action committee, or political party. 

I commend columnists who publish research-based and value-added (versus “my opinion”) op-eds on a daily or frequent basis. Submitting an occasional essay gives me time to ponder contemporary issues and research the latest hot topic.

Since August 6, Perplexity and Google have guided me to examine more than 30 documents to determine the best and worst U.S. presidential cabinets. Based upon expert analysis, here are the results.

greg wickenkamp is a lifelong Iowan.

More than 250 people from throughout Iowa gathered in Iowa City on August 23 to help save state history. Attendees demanded the state reverse its decision to close the State Historical Society of Iowa (SHSI) archives in Iowa City.

Rally-goers also called on state officials to reverse their decision discontinuing the only peer-reviewed state history journal, The Annals of Iowa. Without inviting adequate public comment, and after refusing to cover the basic costs of maintaining the historical archives, state officials unilaterally pushed to end these public serving institutions. Since the Iowa City rally, more than 6,000 people have signed a petition to reverse the state’s decision.

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. 

Lyman Dillon resides in the dusty recesses of Iowa history for his role in 1839 in one of Iowa’s earliest infrastructure projects.

Dillon’s work also figures indirectly in a modern-day lesson on how not to run a government.

This how-not-to-do-it tutorial occurred earlier this month during a Jones County Board of Supervisors meeting. A similar lesson is playing out in Storm Lake to a growing audience of discontented residents there.

Randy Richardson is a former educator and retired associate executive director of the Iowa State Education Association. Bruce Lear taught for eleven years and represented educators as an Iowa State Education Association regional director for 27 years until retiring.

Every few years politicians recycle bad ideas that would make teaching even harder. Often, those ideas are long on rhetoric and short on common sense.

Historically, these stale ideas originate from an appointed task force, so politicians don’t have their fingerprints on the ideas if they backfire with the public. 

It’s happening again.

Governor Kim Reynolds’s DOGE Task Force met on August 6 and released a set of 45 recommendations that supposedly would make Iowa’s government more efficient. One of the proposals would establish “merit pay” for teachers.

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.

Sometime back in the 1990s I watched an interview with George Wallace, the four-term former governor of Alabama and a four-time presidential candidate.

He was in his mid-seventies at the time. In physical decline, Wallace was wracked with Parkinsons and the ongoing effects of an assassination attempt in 1972 that forced him to use a wheel chair for the last 26 years of his life.

Yet the pain that was most pronounced in that interview was his sincere regret related to his prominent role as a leading segregationist of the 1960s. Wallace was the man who stood in the “schoolhouse door” in 1963 to unsuccessfully try to prevent the admission of two Black students to the University of Alabama.

Edward A. Wasserman is a 53-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.

Many concerned citizens are asking themselves this pressing question: How have we come to this point in U.S. history where we are reversing prior progress in civil rights, dismantling vital federal agencies, attacking esteemed universities and their faculty, and embracing an imperial presidency? In fact, these events haven’t suddenly and inexplicably arisen. There are many times across several decades—and vivid personal proclamations—that help explain the origin and evolution of these unsettling trends.

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 

There’s power in remembering the past. That’s why families, schools, colleges, and friends hold reunions teeming with more old stories than there are mosquitoes on a hot Iowa evening. Those stories strengthen our connections and spark our memories. 

Winston Churchill once said, “Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.” But before people recognize they’re doomed by repetition, they need to understand the history that’s repeating.

Understanding Iowa’s rich history is now at risk.

William R. Staplin is a former scientist specializing in utilizing molecular biology techniques to investigate RNA plant and animal viruses, research and development of vaccines to protect against infectious viruses; husband to Ruth A. Staplin; father to two independently minded young college students; cancer and spinal cord disability survivor; supporter of girls and women’s equal rights, reproductive rights, bodily autonomy and healthcare; supporter of reclaiming LGTBQIA+ civil rights and liberties; supporter of Black and Brown Lives Matter; full-time greyhound owner and walking companion to Tailgater. 

When you listen to Woody Guthrie’s song “This Land Is Your Land,” what do you think of?  

Does its message advocate for the private ownership of public land, private “walls,” or does it elicit thoughts of the grand picturesque publicly owned landscapes of the American Parks, National Forests and Mountains that make up the United States? 

I would imagine it would be the latter. Woody Guthrie wrote “This Land Is Your Land” in February 1940, reusing the melody roughly carved out from the folk standard “When The World’s on Fire” popularized by the infamous folk family musicians, The Carters, as a rebuke to Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America,” sung by Kate Smith.

Steve Corbin is emeritus professor of marketing at the University of Northern Iowa and a contributing columnist to 246 newspapers and 48 social media platforms in 45 states, who receives no remuneration, funding, or endorsement from any for-profit business, nonprofit organization, political action committee, or political party. 

Peggy Noonan has been a conservative voice for The Wall Street Journal since leaving the Ronald Reagan administration as his primary speechwriter. Five of Noonan’s books have been New York Times bestsellers. Consuming every word of her weekly column keeps me politically balanced.

In Noonan’s June 14-15 column titled “America is losing sight of its political culture,” she characterized our 47^th president as America’s Mr. Tinpot Dictator. This term refers to a leader who acts like a dictator, often with delusions of grandeur and authoritarian tendencies. I decided to investigate how much Trump resembles a dictator.

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.

Given the turmoil of today’s politics and environmental concerns, it’s time to revisit Okefenokee Swamp and attend to the wisdom of Pogo Possum. He sagely advised more than 50 years ago, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Cartoonist Walt Kelly wrote that line for the Pogo comic strip in 1971, as Pogo Possum and one of his cartoon companions, Porky Pine, surveyed the human despoliation of their wetlands home. The swamp covers almost half a million acres straddling the Georgia-Florida border; the cartoon depicted it as awash in discarded furniture, a bath tub, a car half sunk in the swamp and other tons of trash.

Nick Covington is an Iowa parent who taught high school social studies for ten years.

How can John Dewey’s ideal of a thriving democratic education revitalize an American commitment to freedom and democracy?

‍In June 2025, Zinn Education Project hosted their 5th annual Teach Truth Day of Action, which organizers in Iowa City have participated in since 2022. Human Restoration Project has been a co-sponsor of the national Teach Truth Day of Action and the local Iowa City event. These are spoken remarks from the author edited for publication. Photos are also from the author documenting the Iowa City Teach Truth Day of Action event held in Chauncey Swan Park on June 14, 2025.

My name is Nick Covington. I taught social studies for ten years at Ankeny High School before leaving in 2022 after being told “Current Events Do Not Belong in History Class.” I’m a co-founder of Human Restoration Project, an Iowa-based progressive education non-profit and co-sponsor of the national Teach Truth Day of Action.

Sometimes resistance looks like taking care of yourself and those around you. Shout out to every caregiver building a better world one child at a time. Shout out to everyone trying to make ends meet, balancing the needs of their families with the urgency of this moment and couldn’t be here today. In a system intended to grind you down, sometimes resistance looks like survival.

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. 

Several dozen people gathered in Monticello on June 21 for a citizen workshop the Grassroots Iowa Network organized to get more everyday Iowans engaged in the political process.

They spent the day listening to speakers (including me) and exchanging ideas and observations, without fear or reprisal. They lunched and learned.

Former officeholders and current office-seekers were there, too. So were people who have spent countless hours working on issues or on behalf of candidates.

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.

On June 1, 1950, U.S. Senator Margaret Chase Smith (a Republican from Maine) delivered a speech that she called her “Declaration of Conscience.” She targeted fellow Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin and the fear, hate mongering, and divisiveness that was tearing the nation apart in McCarthy’s anti-Communist crusade to make America great again.

Seventy-five years after Smith showed courage and patriotism, Republican Senator Joni Ernst took the opposite path. She mocked an Iowan who cried out against GOP legislation and MAGA efforts that divide the nation today.

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.

World War II is still The Good War.

The celebration last month of the 80^th anniversary of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany in May, 1945 was the latest rush of World War II nostalgia, joining a similar timed anniversary last year of the D-Day landings in Normandy in June, 1944, and the 85^th anniversary of the British evacuation from the disaster at Dunkirk in early June, 1940.

World War II still draws audiences. On American television, “Band of Brothers” remains a streaming sensation with a companion “Masters of the Air” released this year. Subscribers with enough channel power regularly call up Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan” (1998) and Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk” (2017), both of which had enjoyed strong theater runs.

It’s not hard to see why Americans have maintained a nostalgic obsession with the Allied victory in Europe in 1945. The European theater included the ancestral homelands of most Americans. The vanquished Nazis could be loathed without reservation and their end came without an unexpected shock that the atomic bomb provided for the defeat of Japan in the Pacific. Unlike the glorified truce of 1918, the victory over Germany in 1945 was decisive and total, not subjected to the “stab in the back” ruminations that fed later Hitlerian resentment.

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. This essay first appeared on his Substack newsletter, Stray Thoughts.

If an opinionated old guy from southern Iowa delivered the recent commencement address at the United States Military Academy, my message would have contrasted with the one given by another opinionated old guy, one from Queens, New York, by way of the White House.

When I was a newspaper editor, I sometimes told the staff they needed to run a belt sander across an article to remove rough spots before publication. So it was with President Donald Trump’s speech to 1,000 new Army second lieutenants at West Point in May. His staff needed to take the Oval Office belt sander to his message.

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

It usually takes a while for specific changes by the federal government to work their way down to the local level. But after about 100 days of President Donald Trump’s second term, executive orders have begun to directly tighten the screws in Greene County.

Three examples:

Elesha Gayman is a Mom, educator, advocate, Iowan, and American who served in the Iowa House from 2007 through 2010. She has been speaking truth to power since age 14 and writing to change hearts and minds since 2025.

Can you recall a moment in your life when you changed your position on an issue or shifted an opinion you held?

I am not talking about changing your mind on whether to go out to dinner or stay in, but rather a fundamental shift in your beliefs. How did that happen? Was it a massive heart attack or near-death experience that you needed to survive to finally stop smoking or start exercising?

When I challenge myself with these questions, one thing is clear: I am more stubborn than I would like to admit. I don’t make decisions in haste and am very good at sitting on the fence until I get adequate information to formulate a position or opinion. In the Iowa legislature, we often referred to this as “keeping our powder dry.”

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.