Pam Mackey Taylor is the Director of the Iowa Chapter of the Sierra Club.

Every three years, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) conducts a Triennial Review of its water quality standards. Part of the review is a determination of what changes need to be made to Iowa’s existing water quality standards.

The agenda for the Triennial Review was simple. The DNR intends to focus on the following topic areas related to water quality standards:

• Tribal reserved rights
• Antidegradation
• Human health criteria
• Chapter 61/Surface Water Classification document cleanup
• Use attainability analysis
• PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, sometimes called “forever chemicals”)
• Lake nutrients

After digging into these topics during the review meeting, what jumped out was the lack of investment the State of Iowa and the DNR have made in water quality and improved water quality standards over the last two decades. 

Robin Opsahl covers the state legislature and politics for Iowa Capital Dispatch, where this article first appeared.

The Iowa Revenue Estimating Conference on October 16 lowered its estimates for the state’s tax revenue in fiscal year 2026 by $375 million compared to predictions from March of this year.

The panel, chaired by Iowa Department of Management Director Kraig Paulsen, approved changes to the revenue estimates in light of recent economic shifts and tax policy changes like the federal “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” the budget reconciliation measure President Donald Trump signed in July. The nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency reported the state’s revenue in fiscal year 2025 was $198 million below the panel’s March forecast because of the impact of federal tax law changes.

Paulsen said the new REC estimates account for both the reduced state revenue due to federal tax policies, the impacts of the state’s 2024 acceleration of previously approved income tax cuts, as well as economic factors like rising unemployment rates and China’s move to import soybeans from South American countries instead of U.S. producers.

“The system is broken,” declared Libertarian Thomas Laehn as he kicked off his U.S. Senate campaign on October 11.

The Greene County attorney, who became the first Libertarian elected to a partisan office in Iowa in 2018, styled his case against two-party governance as a two-count “indictment” of the 535 members of Congress.

One of his central arguments could appeal to many disaffected Republicans.

A text poll in the field this week is probing whether the recent arrest of Superintendent Ian Roberts is a “convincing” argument against a bond issue that is a priority for the Des Moines Public Schools.

Voters in the Des Moines school district will decide on November 4 whether to approve a $265 million, 20-year general obligation bond to finance the Reimagining Education, Reinvigorating Schools initiative. The referendum needs at least a 60 percent “yes” vote to pass; the district hopes to expand or remodel all of the Des Moines high schools and nearly a dozen middle or elementary schools.

The survey tests two messages against the bond referendum and two supporting it, with a ballot test before and after respondents read the arguments. I enclose below the full questionnaire, drawn from screenshots shared by those who took the “Des Moines Schools Survey.”

Representatives of Yes for Des Moines Schools, a political committee formed this summer to support the bond issue, did not respond to Facebook or email messages seeking to confirm whether the group commissioned the poll. But the results could provide valuable information to that organization, which had raised $105,000 by mid-July, according to a campaign finance disclosure.

For years, Governor Kim Reynolds resisted COVID-19 vaccine mandates, saying she believed “in Iowans’ right to make health care decisions based on what’s best for themselves and their families.”

But as this year’s cold and flu season begins, many Iowans who want to protect themselves and their families from COVID-19 are unable to get a booster shot, because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration restricted access to updated vaccines.

Public health authorities in about two dozen states have issued guidance or standing orders designed to help adults choose to vaccinate themselves or their children against COVID-19. The Reynolds administration has not acted.

Staff for the governor’s office and Iowa Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to several requests for comment over the past ten days.

Jenny Turner is a public school mom and a school speech therapist. She lives in West Des Moines.

It might be prudent to wait for all the facts before writing an opinion piece on ICE detaining Dr. Ian Roberts, the superintendent of Des Moines Public Schools. It is true that there is a lot we don’t know. Which leads me to the central question: why don’t we know?

Dr. Roberts has allegedly had a removal order for nearly a year and a half. Why did the district not know about this? Why was Dr. Roberts arrested suddenly, in the most dramatic fashion, for what amounts to late paperwork (if true)? Why was no thought put into the effect this would have on the community and the kids? Why was it not done mindfully to minimize the impact?

Al Charlson is a North Central Iowa farm kid, lifelong Iowan, and retired bank trust officer. This column was first published in the Waverly Newspapers.

We recently received the 2025-26 real estate tax statement for our farmland in my “home county.” The 11 percent increase must have felt like a punch to a lot of our neighbors back home at this time of corn and soybean prices below the cost of production. It hits particularly hard for younger farmers struggling to provide for their families, make farm payments, and maintain their machinery.

As a note to my non-farm friends and neighbors, the assessment of Iowa farmland for real estate taxes is entirely different than it is for our homes. Home assessments are based on recent sale prices of comparable homes. Since 1977 Iowa farmland has been assessed based on soil productivity (estimated value of crops produced minus production costs).

That makes a big difference. Based on the Bremer County Assessor’s valuation, our Waverly home is worth about 1.4 times the estimated fair market value of our “home county” farmland. The non-city portion of 2025-26 taxes on our Waverly home are about 4.4 times the taxes on our farmland. In my opinion this accommodation for agriculture, the base of Iowa’s economy, is reasonable and justified.

Adam Zabner represents Iowa House district 90, covering part of Iowa City.

In April 2024, Bleeding Heartland published an op-ed I wrote detailing my fight with Governor Kim Reynolds’ administration to secure voting rights for Iowans on Medicaid. The fight centered around a federal law, the National Voter Registration Act, which requires states to offer voter registration to people registering for public assistance programs.

As I wrote, at the time, “Iowa’s Medicaid application form is 27 pages long. Many other states include a voter registration form in the packet. In Iowa, at the bottom of page 16, the packet contains one sentence and a link to the voter registration form. The link is printed out. An Iowan would have to type the 46-character link into their browser and access a printer to print it out. This is unlikely to register voters and states with similar policies have been found to be out of compliance with the NVRA.” The result was that far fewer people were registering to vote through Medicaid applications in Iowa, compared to almost any other state.

Jason Benell lives in Des Moines with his wife and two children. He is a combat veteran, former city council candidate, and president of Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers. This essay first appeared in the fall issue of the 2025 American Atheist Magazine

I am often asked, “Why are you an atheist?” or, “How can you be an atheist?” when engaging with members of the public. Here in Iowa, being an atheist, humanist, or secular person is still seen as an anomaly by a lot of folks, especially well-meaning people who are struggling with many of the actions of our state and federal government. They have grown up with the idea that religiosity is synonymous with morality, and while that is so demonstrably not true upon any short reflection, it remains a social burden nonreligious folks must bear. This is deeply unfair as well as untrue: most human beings do not share the faith of the people here.

This is one of the many reasons that I’m motivated to be an atheist activist.

In the end, it wasn’t even close.

Democrat Catelin Drey defeated Republican Christopher Prosch by 4,208 votes to 3,411 (55.2 percent to 44.7 percent) in Iowa Senate district 1, covering much of Sioux City and some rural areas in Woodbury County. Donald Trump carried this district by 11 points in the 2024 presidential election, winning more votes than Kamala Harris in fifteen of the 22 precincts. Yet Drey carried nineteen of the 22 precincts and improved on Harris’ vote share in every precinct.

It was the second Iowa Senate seat Democrats flipped in 2025, and the fourth straight special election in Iowa where the Democratic nominee overperformed by more than 20 points, compared to the November 2024 presidential results. Drey’s win also means Republicans will no longer have a two-thirds supermajority in the Iowa Senate when the legislature convenes in January.

While not every tactic from a special election campaign translates into a higher-turnout midterm environment, Democrats can learn a lot from what Drey and her team did right as they prepare for 2026 races for down-ballot offices. In addition, these lessons could help many progressives running in Iowa’s nonpartisan city and school board elections this November.

Senator-elect Drey and Iowa Senate Minority Leader Janice Weiner joined Iowa Starting Line’s Zachary Oren Smith and me on August 27 to discuss how they overcame the odds. You can watch our whole conversation here.

I also sought insight from Julie Stauch, who has worked on many Democratic campaigns and helped guide a successful 2023 special election campaign for Warren County auditor.

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

I’m okay. I’ve rested long enough. This kerfuffle over diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) has reached a red line with me, and my dander is up. I can’t hold it in. I’d like to skim the top, say there had been a little trouble and now it’s all okay. I can’t, and it’s not.

“I’M APPALLED,” SAID GOVERNOR REYNOLDS

Ed Tibbetts covered this terrain in a Bleeding Heartland post from early August. But the kerfuffle has a new wrinkle almost every day. Tibbetts tells us the details: In a law approved this year, Iowa Code §261J.2, Republican lawmakers made talk or teaching of or about diversity, equity, and inclusion forbidden, effective July 1, 2025. 

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.

Larry McBurney is a Democratic member of the Iowa House representing part of Urbandale.

Governor Kim Reynolds’ “Delivering Opportunities for Greater Efficiency” (DOGE) Task Force plans to recommend moving new public employees away from the Iowa Public Employees’ Retirement System (IPERS) and into a 401(k)-style defined contribution plan. It’s being sold as a modern update, but the truth is this change would devastate Iowa’s public workforce. It’s a solution in search of a problem, and it targets one of the few benefits still keeping people in public service.

Let’s be clear about the reality for public employees in Iowa. Public sector wages are already 17.6 percent lower than in the private sector. Even after factoring in benefits, public employees still earn 14.5 percent less than their private counterparts.

Chris Jones is a fisherman who lives in Iowa City. He writes the Substack newsletter The Swine Republic, where this post first appeared. 

Secretary of Agriculture is one of seven executive offices Iowans see on their off-year voting ballot. The Iowa legislature created both the office and the Department of Agriculture (now IDALS) in 1923.

It may seem curious that we have a statewide election for the administrator of a department that employs less than 2 percent of the state government workforce and represents a private industry that is only Iowa’s third-biggest and one with a declining share of the state’s Gross Domestic Product. All sorts of economic sectors are bigger than agriculture; for example, health care now nearly doubles Ag’s GDP in Iowa.

But we have to remember that in 1923, almost 40 percent of Iowa’s population lived on farms. It’s well below 10 percent in the present day, when only 67,000 people in Iowa list farming as their primary source of income (2 percent of Iowa) and many farmers don’t even live on the farm. GMO has made crop farming so easy that some Iowa farmers also farm in Kansas and the Dakotas and probably other states as well.

A person could wonder why we all don’t vote for a Secretary of Teachers, or a Secretary of Bartenders or Hairdressers or Truck-drivers.

Diane Rosenberg is executive director of Jefferson County Farmers & Neighbors, where this commentary first appeared.

Recently, a friend asked how the Iowa state legislature or governor have impeded the work of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and other agencies in cleaning up air and water borne toxins that may be causing Iowa’s increasing cancer rate.

After eighteen years of working on confined animal feeding operation (CAFO) issues, a whole laundry list of impediments rolled off the tip of my tongue.

Numerous studies link high nitrate levels to a variety of cancers. And this major agricultural state has the second highest rate of cancer in the nation and is one of two states where the number of cases is rising.

Water quality is in the news this summer. High nitrate levels are affecting drinking water in Central Iowa, a new Polk County water quality report links 80 percent of nitrate pollution to agriculture, and too many beaches are unswimmable just when we need to cool off in this blistering heat.

Given all that, I thought this is a good time to spotlight some of the ways I see our state government failing us.

When I saw former State Representative Joe Mitchell’s guest column in the Des Moines Register in late June, my first thought was, “What federal government job is he angling for?” His op-ed was an embarrassing piece of hagiography about Donald Trump—or as Mitchell put it, “the most consequential president ever.”

I got my answer on July 23, when the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced that Mitchell will serve as the agency’s regional administrator for the Great Plains, covering Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska.

Mitchell is a rising star again at the age of 28, when many ambitious politicos haven’t begun climbing the ladder. At every stage, he’s had help from the GOP establishment.

His comeback story shows how over-the-top public praise for Trump has become normal and expected behavior for even the most well-connected Republicans.

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.

Ed Tibbetts, a longtime reporter and editor in the Quad-Cities, is the publisher of the Along the Mississippi newsletter, where this article first appeared. Find more of his work at edtibbetts.substack.com.

Governor Kim Reynolds and Attorney General Brenna Bird have chosen their next target.

Fresh off an embarrassing defeat to Winneshiek County Sheriff Dan Marx, the state’s chief enforcers of Iowa RightThink have decided to take on someone they undoubtedly believe is more vulnerable.

The governor has filed a complaint concerning a University of Iowa employee who had the misfortune of being captured on hidden camera disparaging the anti-Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Gospel of the Republican Party.

In a secretly recorded video that Fox News aired this week, an employee who has been identified in news reports as Andrea Tinoco, assistant director of Leadership and Student Organization Development, said that despite being ordered to remove “DEI” from their websites, “we are essentially finding ways to operate around it. … “We were like, ‘oh, OK, we can’t use that word. OK, ‘civic engagement.’ I think that’s a lot of what we’re doing.”

Julie Stauch is a Democratic candidate for governor. She lives in West Des Moines. This column first appeared in the Cedar Rapids Gazette.

In June, after declaring my campaign for the Democratic nomination for governor, I started traveling the state to hold Interview sessions in fifteen Community College districts. The goal is to understand ground level concerns of Iowans through free-flowing conversations. I want to determine what problems most Iowans are concerned about. Iowa’s next governor will need to address those problems.

While most of the participants have been Democrats, there have also been Republicans and no-party voters in the mix. These have been substantive conversations where individual Iowans share what they see as the biggest challenges facing their area and the state and what a successful Iowa would look like. I also answer their questions about my point of view on a variety of issues.

My core reason for running for governor is to solve problems Iowans need solved.

Ed Tibbetts, a longtime reporter and editor in the Quad-Cities, is the publisher of the Along the Mississippi newsletter, where this article first appeared. Find more of his work at edtibbetts.substack.com.

If there’s one thing politicians know, it’s this: If you want to bury unflattering news, release it on a Friday afternoon.

Which is when Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird broke the news she was dropping her lawsuit against Winneshiek County Sheriff Dan Marx. Her announcement landed in my inbox at 3:24 p.m. on Friday, July 18.

In a brief news release explaining her decision to drop the suit accusing Marx of violating state law by discouraging immigration enforcement, Bird made no mention of the loyalty oath she previously demanded he take in order to avoid court action.

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 

It’s 90 degrees before 9:00 AM. Not a whiff stirs Old Glory. Bicycle tires stick to steaming asphalt, and shirts gain water weight on short walks. But two towns north, thunder begins its base drum rumble. Old men look skyward, rub weather forecasting knees and announce, “storm’s coming.”

It’s a pop-up storm full of sound and a little fury, not lasting long. 

But the political storm now threatening Iowa’s public schools could be long-lasting and destructive. And worse, it’s man-made. Schools may be able to survive by spotting this perfect storm and mitigating the damage. 

Three storm fronts are advancing.

When the Iowa House and Senate approve a bill unanimously, you might assume it was easy to get the measure to the governor’s desk. But appearances can be deceiving. Sometimes, a unanimous vote for final passage obscures years of hard work to pull a bill over the finish line.

So it was with House File 472, which took effect on July 1. The law will make it easier for Iowans to defend themselves when facing meritless lawsuits filed in order to chill speech. Such cases are often called “strategic lawsuits against public participation,” because the plaintiffs have no realistic chance to win in court. Rather, they are suing as a means to silence or retaliate against critics.

Iowa was the 38th state to adopt an “anti-SLAPP” law, according to the Washington, DC-based Institute for Free Speech, which advocates for such legal protections across the country.

If not for one state senator’s determined opposition, Iowa might have joined that club years earlier.

The long-running effort to pass Iowa’s anti-SLAPP bill illustrates how one lawmaker can block a measure that has overwhelming bipartisan support and no meaningful opposition from lobby groups.

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. 

One longtime truism of journalism is “Names make news.” 

That shorthand stems from the fact people better understand the significance and context of news when they learn about events and issues through the eyes and experiences of people they know or with whom they can identify.

The late Iowa Supreme Court Justice Mark McCormick described the importance of this news tenet by noting how disclosing even sensitive private facts and names offers “a personalized frame of reference to which the reader could relate, fostering perception and understanding” and lends “specificity and credibility.”

Here are two heartbreaking examples from recent events: 

Ed Tibbetts, a longtime reporter and editor in the Quad-Cities, is the publisher of the Along the Mississippi newsletter, where this article first appeared. Find more of his work at edtibbetts.substack.com.

In February, House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana justified the looming cuts to Medicaid by complaining the program wasn’t designed to cover a bunch of “29-year-old males sitting on their couches playing video games.”

Give Johnson credit: that is a powerful image.

Nobody wants their tax dollars going to pay for government health insurance for some dude who just hangs around his parents’ basement gaming while the rest of us have to haul ourselves out of bed each morning to go to work. Which is why Republicans have been focusing so much on the Medicaid work requirements in Donald Trump’s big, ugly tax bill.

They won’t admit the money they save by taking health insurance away from millions of poor Americans will go to finance tax cuts for some of the wealthiest families in the country. So, they falsely claim these cuts will protect the most vulnerable, who also are covered by Medicaid.

Wally Taylor is the Legal Chair of the Sierra Club Iowa chapter.

For four years the Sierra Club has been working with impacted landowners to pass legislation that would restrict the use of eminent domain for hazardous liquid pipeline projects. In 2022, 2023 and 2024, we were able to get legislation through the Iowa House with strong bipartisan majorities, but Republican leaders in the Iowa Senate blocked all of those bills.

This year the House approved two bills, again with strong bipartisan majorities. House File 943 was a short bill, which would have banned the use of eminent domain for hazardous liquid pipelines. It was referred to the Iowa Senate Commerce Committee and never got a subcommittee hearing.

The other bill, House File 639, would have changed state law on pipelines and eminent domain in several ways. It likely would have died, but was eventually brought to the Senate floor after twelve Republican senators pledged “to vote against any remaining budget bill until a floor vote occurs on the clean HF639 bill.”

Rekha Basu is a longtime syndicated columnist, editorial writer, reporter, and author of the book, “Finding Your Voice.” She was a staff opinion writer for 30 years at The Des Moines Register, where her work still appears periodically. This post first appeared on her Substack column, Rekha Shouts and Whispers.

As of July 1, a new law signed by Iowa’s first female governor will make it illegal for Des Moines to intentionally recruit, hire, or retain female police officers.

It’s a sad day when Governor Kim Reynolds, a member of an underrepresented group who has benefited from efforts to broaden the mix in power, shuts the door behind her. The very institution of policing will suffer for it and so, besides the women excluded, will those who depend on it to protect us, fairly and equally.

This happens just a year after the Des Moines City Council voted unanimously to pay nearly $2.4 million to four female Des Moines Police Department employees who had suffered discrimination at work. Settled days before it was to go to trial, their lawsuit claimed men in the department were promoted over better qualified women, female employees were subjected to sexual harassment and retaliation for complaining, and harassment was known, tolerated—and in some instances encouraged—by higher ups.

Chuck Isenhart is an investigative reporter, photographer and recovering Iowa state legislator offering research, analysis, education and public affairs advocacy at his Substack newsletter Iowa Public Policy Geek, where a version of this essay first appeared.

Iowa has a new director of the Office for State-Federal Relations. But it’s not clear whether anyone is looking out for Iowa as the federal government slashes programs.

Madeline Willis, a former staffer for U.S. Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst and U.S. Representative Zach Nunn (IA-03), posted on LinkedIn that she accepted “a position with Governor Kim Reynolds as her DC-based Director of State and Federal Relations” in April. Only a few weeks earlier, the Iowa Senate had confirmed Eric Baker as director of that office, an “independent agency” position he had held for the past two years.

I put “independent” in quotes because, although Iowa Code says the Office for State-Federal Relations is a nonpartisan program “accessible to all three branches of state government,” Baker led that office from Des Moines while also serving as Governor Kim Reynolds’ director of strategic operations.

The last time Donald Trump was president, Iowa Democrats had a pretty good midterm election. The party’s candidates defeated two Republican members of Congress, came surprisingly close to beating U.S. Representative Steve King, had a net gain of five Iowa House seats (and almost a sixth), and came within 3 points of winning the governor’s race.

Many Democrats like their chances of improving on that tally in 2026.

But before they get too excited, they need to understand the terrain is now much more favorable to Iowa Republicans than it was during the 2018 election cycle.

A huge GOP voter registration advantage, combined with consistently higher turnout for Republicans in midterm years, make it hard to construct a winning scenario for Democrats in Iowa’s 2026 statewide elections.

To overcome those long odds, Democrats will need not only strong GOTV and good messaging, but also a better voter registration effort over the coming year than the party has seen in decades.

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

Iowa’s DOGE task force, which Governor Kim Reynolds created earlier this year to channel the federal “Department of Government Efficiency,” discussed the possible consolidation of counties at its June 4 meeting.

Various committees, commissions, boards, organizations, individual legislators, and other Iowans take up the idea every so often. Like a steer at the Iowa State Fair, the proposal gets eyeballed, patted down, and evaluated. But unlike a State Fair entry, county consolidation is then written up in a report, and mothballed for a few years until someone else reopens the concept.

Consolidating the 99 counties is the zombie of Iowa think tanks. It doesn’t die, but it never really lives either. And there are good reasons for that.

“People are excited, and I think so far what we’re seeing is hunger for something different,” State Auditor Rob Sand told me on the day he announced he’s running for governor in 2026.

“The real theme across my work is I’m a problem solver,” Julie Stauch told me shortly before her campaign launch.

I interviewed both candidates about their top priorities and the case they will make to Iowa voters over the coming year. Toward the end, I discuss the biggest challenge facing each contender at this early stage.

Sean Flaherty lives in Iowa City.

Election integrity in Iowa would take a major step backward if Governor Kim Reynolds signs House File 928, a bill that would eliminate a hand recount option for statewide and federal elections. 

If Reynolds signs HF 928, recounts in Iowa would almost always use the same computer equipment and program used to tabulate election night results. 

In the event of a miscount due to malware or computer error, using the same equipment and software in a recount would render the recount worse than useless. 

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.

Within a few hours on May 4, the news media offered two provocative perspectives on President Donald Trump, one from The New York Times the other from NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Subscribers to the New York Times could consider the paper’s 24 pages of text and photos containing critiques of Trump and his cabinet. A bit later, they and the rest of us could view the second perspective on TV.

Robin Opsahl covers the state legislature and politics for Iowa Capital Dispatch, where this article first appeared. Brooklyn Draisey, Cami Koons, and Clark Kauffman contributed to this report.

Republicans’ supermajorities in both chambers of the Iowa Legislature allowed them to push several high-profile bills to the governor throughout the legislative session – but many of the thousands of bills discussed this session failed to advance.

Lawmakers adjourned for the 2025 legislative session early on May 15 after a night of debate and closed-door caucus meetings and nearly two weeks after the session was scheduled to end. Republicans were able to reach agreements on May 14 to pass several of the policy bills that had failed to advance earlier in the session, including Governor Kim Reynolds’ bills providing paid parental leave for state employees and reducing the state’s unemployment insurance taxes on employers.

Earlier in the year, the Republican-controlled chambers moved quickly to pass a bill removing gender identity from the Iowa Civil Rights Act. Other measures passed through with less coordination—legislation on eminent domain use in carbon sequestration pipelines only made it to a vote on May 12, following a concerted effort by twelve GOP senators who said they would not support any budget bills until the pipeline bill was brought to the floor.

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.

Give Governor Kim Reynolds credit for consistency. When it comes to wanting to hide details of possible misstatements or misdeeds, she treats Lutherans and atheists alike.

Soon, Iowans may learn important lessons about “executive privilege” claims by the governor and whether they provide her any cover to keep staff documents in her office secret.

These teachable moments arise from two lawsuits filed within hours of each other on April 25.

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 

Many of us have experienced planning committees where loud, “big idea” people dominate. They’re the ones who believe all their ideas are gold and they’re not shy about sharing their genius. They have 50 ideas an hour, and 49 of those should be trashed.

I understand the rules for brainstorming. “There are no bad ideas.” But many of those ideas should die a natural death. They should rest peacefully buried in a closet with other bad ideas written on those big sheets of brainstorming paper.

But sometimes that doesn’t work.

It will take months to fully assess the fallout from Governor Kim Reynolds’ decision not to seek another term in 2026.

But one thing’s for sure: State Auditor Rob Sand’s chances of winning the next governor’s race are substantially higher now than they were before April 11.

Robin Opsahl covers the state legislature and politics for Iowa Capital Dispatch, where this article first appeared. Brooklyn Draisley, Cami Koons, and Kathie Obradovich contributed to this article.

As the Iowa legislature advanced past the second major deadline of the 2025 session, conversations on pipelines, Medicaid work requirements and new higher education requirements are continuing through surviving bills—though agreements have not necessarily been reached between the two Republican-controlled chambers.

The session’s second “funnel” deadline is another checkpoint for lawmakers during the legislative session, culling the bills that remain eligible for consideration as the Legislature nears the end of session. During the first funnel, bills were required to gain approval by a committee in one chamber to survive. In the second funnel, bills must have passed in floor debate in one chamber and gained committee approval in the other chamber to remain eligible.

There are several exceptions to this deadline, such as bills involving taxes, spending and government oversight components, and they include the property tax legislation proposed by Iowa lawmakers. Legislative leaders can also sponsor a bill and bring it forward without abiding by the deadline.

In addition, the language of a bills considered “dead” because of the funnel can still be added, at any point, as an amendment to a surviving bill.

There are also several bills that remain eligible for consideration by being placed on the “unfinished business” calendar, allowing them to remain up for consideration during the remainder of the session.

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.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins’ March 31 visit to Iowa had the appearance and vibe of a high-ranking officer sent to the front line to boost the troops’ morale before the next assault.

Rollins visited all the strategic strongholds of Iowa agriculture: an ethanol plant, a hog farm, a feed processing operation, and a suitably big (Republican-leaning) farm operation just west of Des Moines, handing out plenty of morale-raising attaboys to the soldiers in the trenches.

But even as Rollins addressed the “Ag Leaders Dinner” in Ankeny—assembling some 500 people and Iowa’s agricultural royalty such as Governor Kim Reynolds, U.S. Senator Joni Ernst, and Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig—Iowa’s economic earth was beginning to shake.

Ed Tibbetts, a longtime reporter and editor in the Quad-Cities, is the publisher of the Along the Mississippi newsletter, where this article first appeared. Find more of his work at edtibbetts.substack.com.

The State of Iowa unfairly targeted hundreds of potential voters during last year’s election, and it released more evidence to prove it.

Two weeks before the 2024 election, Secretary of State Paul Pate ordered local election officials to challenge the votes of about 2,200 people who were placed on a secret list. At some point in the past, those people had told the Iowa Department of Transportation they were noncitizens. But they were now registered to vote, and the state was worried they might not be eligible.

At the time, there was clear evidence Pate was using flawed data. The DOT database is a notoriously unreliable tool for finding noncitizen voters, which we already knew was a rare occurrence, anyway. But in the heat of a contentious election and shortly after a conversation with Governor Kim Reynolds, Pate used the power of his office to target hundreds of potential Iowa voters.

On March 20, Pate admitted that only 277 of the 2,176 people on his list were confirmed to be noncitizens.

Steven M. Fink served as rabbi of Temple B’nai Jeshurun in Des Moines from 1983 to 1999. He chose to return to Des Moines after retiring from the pulpit rabbinate. He chose Des Moines because of its rich culture and active civic engagement.  

When Governor Kim Reynolds signed the bill to roll back civil rights protections for transgender people, all Christians, Muslims, and Jews should have been appalled. All three of the Abrahamic religions espouse the belief that a spark of the Divine exists in every human being. 

How then could a majority in the Republican-dominated legislature, many of whom claim to be religious people who base their votes on what God wants, vote to repeal civil rights legislation for a protected group? As the Des Moines Register noted, signing the bill “makes Iowa the first state in the country to take away civil rights from a group it has previously protected in law.” 

How can these representatives of the proud state of Iowa, descendants of those leaders who desegregated schools long before the U.S. Supreme Court required it, admitted women into the legal profession, and acknowledged the right of same-sex couples to marry take a huge backwards step by eliminating civil rights protections for a group of human beings? 

Do they not believe that a spark of God resides in every person? Do they believe that God makes mistakes and they should rectify those wrongs by denying human status to transgender people?