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

As I round the corner on 40, it’s been humbling and heartbreaking to reflect on how much of my life experience has been defined by global historic change: a child of the 1990s growing up at the peak of American exceptionalism, bookended by the worst attack on the United States since Pearl Harbor, graduating college during the worst recession since the Great Depression, and having my own young children attend school during the worst viral outbreak since the flu epidemic a century ago.

However, regardless of which epochal change I’ve lived through, there has been at least one constant: lectures from the party of “personal responsibility.” 

Rob Sand is Iowa’s state auditor.

As a father, my top priority is protecting my kids. When a child is placed in foster care, their safety and well-being become the state’s responsibility. Tragically, the state of Iowa failed to protect Sabrina Ray, killed by her adoptive parents in 2017, and her siblings from abuse and torture.

Because of that failure, the state paid $10 million in 2023 to settle lawsuits brought by Sabrina’s two surviving sisters. I voted on those settlements because, as auditor, I am a statutory member of the board that makes these decisions. I supported those settlements not just to help those children and their families, but because I believed it would lead to real, meaningful reform to Iowa’s foster care and adoption system.

A key part of that settlement – and a key reason I supported it – was the creation of a child welfare task force. Its mission: to examine what went wrong, make recommendations on how to improve the system, and most importantly, prevent future tragedies. Its members included professionals directly involved in Sabrina’s case — a police officer, a paramedic, a prosecutor — as well as the families who adopted Sabrina’s sisters.

But that’s not what happened.

For the past nine years, Iowa’s Republican-controlled legislature has given Governor Kim Reynolds a free hand. GOP lawmakers allowed Reynolds to spend billions of federal dollars provided through the CARES Act and American Rescue Plan with no legislative input.

They approved most of the governor’s signature proposals, expanded her power to hire and fire officials, and allowed her to set agency directors’ salaries with no constraints.

Neither chamber’s Government Oversight Committee has investigated any alleged malfeasance or mismanagement in the Reynolds administration, such as the governor’s questionable spending of pandemic relief funds on her staff’s salaries, or the tens of millions of dollars wasted on a no-bid contract for Workday.

Now, in the tenth year of Iowa’s GOP trifecta, the ruling party has suddenly decided the legislature should be a check on the executive. Several bills that are eligible for floor debate could prevent Reynolds’ successor from making big changes in state government.

Insulting all of our collective intelligence, Republican lawmakers claim these bills aren’t fueled by concern that State Auditor Rob Sand may win the governor’s race in November.

Here’s a rundown of pending bills that could hamstring the next Democratic governor.

Robin Opsahl, Brooklyn Draisey, and Cami Koons collaborated on this article, which was first published by Iowa Capital Dispatch. Clark Kauffman and Kathie Obradovich also contributed to this story

Iowa lawmakers took on hundreds of bills in the first six weeks of the 2026 legislative session, though several measures named as top priorities heading into the year, like eminent domain and property taxes, have yet to find consensus.

February 19 was the last day lawmakers met to consider legislation before the first “funnel” deadline of the year. While there are many exceptions, most bills that don’t involve spending, taxes or government oversight must pass through a committee in either the House or Senate in order to stay eligible for consideration.

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 

Protecting children is a shared value of most adults. A newborn can’t leave the hospital unless they’re buckled into an approved car seat. We childproof our houses. We gasp the first time they swing too high and move closer to catch them if they fly out. When they’re tweens and teens, we stay up sweating until they’re home. We insist on seat belts, driver’s training, and helmets for bicycle riding.

At school, there are tornado, fire, and lockdown drills. There are lists of people approved to pick up students at the end of the day. Schools warn parents not to send a sick child to school.

We’re protective and cautious.

That’s why a bill now pending in the Iowa House is so troubling.

John and Terri Hale own The Hale Group, an Ankeny-based firm advocating for older Iowans and Iowans with disabilities.

It was disturbing, frustrating and sickening. But it was not surprising. And it’s happened six years in a row. 

Behind closed doors, secretively and quietly, Iowa Senate Republicans once again killed a bill that would improve, and possibly save, the lives of nursing home residents.  

The bill would protect the right of loved ones of nursing home residents to install video cameras in their rooms. The camera would allow families near and far to check in on their moms, dads, grandparents or others to make sure they are well, safe, and receiving good care. 

Linda Schreiber writes commentary on selected legislative issues.

While Iowa’s public universities support one in every ten jobs and generate billions of dollars in economic impact statewide, Republicans are pushing for yet another layer of oversight on the Regent institutions.

House File 2243, introduced by Iowa House Higher Education Committee chair Taylor Collins and eligible for floor debate, would require the Iowa Board of Regents to report to the state legislature and governor on how the board “could establish a performance-based funding model” for the three state universities. That funding model “must include” the following factors: graduation rates, degrees awarded in high-demand fields, postgraduate employment and income, and the number of graduates who stay in Iowa after graduation.

Those metrics already tell a compelling story: the state’s public universities are essential to meeting Iowa’s workforce needs, retaining talent, and strengthening communities across the state.

According to the Iowa Board of Regents, Graduates of the University of Iowa (UI), Iowa State University (ISU), and the University of Northern Iowa (UNI) fuel Iowa’s economy, filling high-demand roles in health care, education, and STEM fields.

Yet legislators frequently criticize the Regent universities while placing increasing constraints on their operations. What Iowans need are clear, accessible facts about the value and success of their public universities—and what those institutions need in return is stable, realistic financial support, not micromanagement, to continue delivering results for Iowa.

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.

Politicians who seek to ban diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices at public institutions, and even try to extend the ban to the private sector, argue that DEI potentially discriminates against individuals who are not of a race, religion, ethnicity, gender orientation, or other group that DEI seeks to protect.

Individuals from the dominant groups in the nation or a state, they reason, deserve to be treated fairly, as individuals, in competition for college admission, employment, housing, and other sectors. No one should be favored because he or she belongs to a group that is supposedly discriminated against in our society and culture.

Cami Koons covers agriculture and the environment for Iowa Capital Dispatch, where this article first appeared.

A bill that advanced in an Iowa House subcommittee and committee on February 10 would prohibit a water segment from being designated as impaired unless the Iowa Department of Natural Resources identified the percentage of fecal bacteria coming from each animal species that contributed to its impairment.

Every two years, the DNR must submit a list to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency of water segments in the state that are “impaired” or don’t meet water quality standards. 

Once listed, DNR and the EPA work to develop an improvement plan that puts limitations on the amount of pollutants that identified polluters can discharge into the surface water segments. 

Kali White VanBaale is an Iowa-based novelist, creative writing professor, and mental health care advocate. Find more of her work at kwhitevanbaale.substack.com (where this essay first appeared) and www.kaliwhite.com.

It’s legislative season again, and last month I was back at the state capitol in Des Moines to offer testimony at a House subcommittee meeting on proposed mental health care legislation advocates have been requesting for over a decade: increasing the number of inpatient psychiatric beds at each state mental health institute.

The Iowa House approved similar legislation a few years ago before the bill stalled in the Senate. Advocates are hopeful about the renewed interest in and support for it in the 2026 session.

State Representatives Heather Matson, Tracy Ehlert, Eric Gjerde, Monica Kurth, Elinor A. Levin, and Mary Madison co-authored this column.

Two months. Twelve stops. All four corners of Iowa on a statewide education listening tour. 

That’s how we, as members of the House Education Committee, spent the fall as we focused our attention on how to make Iowa number 1 in education again. 

We set out to Mason City, Waterloo, Ankeny, Ottumwa, Indianola, Creston, Council Bluffs, Storm Lake, Emmetsburg, Bettendorf, Mount Vernon, and Dubuque. At each stop we heard from current and retired teachers, paraeducators, principals, superintendents, school board members, community college and higher education professors and leaders, AEA educators, school librarians, nurses, counselors, and mental health professionals, parents, and community advocates. 

We flipped the script of traditional town halls—this wasn’t about us talking—it was about listening before legislating. What did we hear? A lot! Here are some of the highlights. 

Linda Schreiber writes commentary on selected legislative issues.

Bob Dylan’s 1964 lyric, “The times they are a-changin’,” captured a moment of upheaval. The same could be said today—especially when it comes to how Iowa funds its communities.

A decade ago, when lawmakers reduced state funding for schools and local governments, cities and counties could adjust their budgets and, if needed, raise property taxes to maintain services residents wanted. Today, that flexibility is disappearing. And therein lies the paradox.

Throughout the first year of the 91st Iowa General Assembly, lawmakers debated cutting property taxes. With Republicans holding a trifecta, this is the year those cuts may pass. Two GOP proposals emphasize a strict 2 percent cap on local property tax revenue growth, promoted as relief for taxpayers. If state-level cuts reduce local revenue, will the result be fewer services Iowans rely on?

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 recent email from the Iowa Attorney General’s (AG’s) office to Greene County Assistant Attorney Laura Snider is of great concern to Greene County Attorney Thomas Laehn. That’s because it displays a quandary created by the state’s 2023 government reorganization act.

Much of Snider’s work in the county attorney’s office deals with Child in Need of Assistance (CINA) cases. Iowa law puts county attorneys in charge of such cases, particularly when it comes to deciding whether to recommend that a court remove a child from a parent’s custody.

The Iowa Department of Health and Human Services also plays a role in those decisions. The email from the attorney general’s office included a proposed agreement for Snider to sign, which would establish new procedures for how a CINA case would be handled if the Greene County attorney’s office and HHS disagree in a particular case.

“I am not interested in pretending this is just a private medical matter. It is a public policy failure playing out in my body,” State Senator Catelin Drey said in an extraordinary Senate floor speech on January 26.

The Democrat from Sioux City revealed that she has been diagnosed with stage 1 uterine cancer, and explained why she plans to be transparent about her cancer journey.

The Iowa Senate Democrats made their recording of Drey’s remarks available to Bleeding Heartland.

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

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources has drafted the 2025 update of Iowa’s Wildlife Action Plan. The plan shapes how we protect wildlife, restore habitat, and ensure healthy ecosystems for the next decade in Iowa. This post explains why that’s important, and how to encourage the state to follow its plan.

What’s a Wildlife Action Plan?

In order to receive federal funding for wildlife programs, each state is required to prepare a wildlife action plan, outlining the steps needed to conserve wildlife and habitat before they become too rare and costly to restore.

Adam Shriver is Director of Wellness and Nutrition at the Harkin Institute for Public Policy and Citizen Engagement. This essay was first published on his Substack newsletter, Canary in a Cornfield.

Republican State Senator Ken Rozenboom spoke at the Iowa Senate Agriculture Committee’s first meeting of the year on January 13. I appreciate that he raised the topic of nitrates in drinking water. He also made some comments that deserve a response.

I clipped a video from Rozenboom’s opening remarks, which I’ll focus on here:

Steve Dunn is a retired journalist who has self-published two books, about former State Senator Pat Deluhery’s political career and the history of professional baseball in Des Moines. This essay first appeared on his Substack newsletter, Blasts and Bunts.

To say we’re living in troubled times is an understatement. Since 2026 began, the U.S. has captured the leader of Venezuela and his wife, bombed Syria and threatened to take over Greenland by force if necessary. Not only that, but we’ve also witnessed the shooting of a Minnesota woman by an ICE agent.

After a church service on January 11, I told the associate pastor the toxic climate in the U.S. today is ten times worse than mood of the country in the 1960s, when I came of age. Oh sure, the 1960s included the highly unpopular Vietnam War, race riots, civil rights protests, and assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy.

But today an “us versus them” mentality has a stranglehold on America. It’s almost as if we’re two different countries with two different mindsets. We haven’t had this much division since the Civil War and the fight over preserving the union and abolishing slavery. Unfortunately, the divide is fueled by many talking heads on talk radio, social media, and television.

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

With reluctance and apprehension I am beginning 2026 by venturing back into the property tax jungle. In my September column, which focused on farmland taxes, I indicated I would return to address the property tax concerns of my in-town friends and neighbors.

In-town residential property taxes are more complicated for a couple of reasons. Of course, city residents pay city taxes—city finances could easily be the topic for an entire column. I had the opportunity to be a guest Waverly City Council member in January 2025, which included attending annual budget hearings. My overall impression was that our city operating departments are seriously committed to providing the services they deliver as efficiently as possible.

The other complicating factor is that houses are taxed on their estimated market value. That gets interesting. In 2024 the assessed value of our home was increased 15.3 percent. The Assessor only bumped up the value of the house by 6 percent, but increased the value of our lot by 56 percent.

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.

I’ve been writing about the Iowa legislature, campaigns, and elections at Bleeding Heartland since 2007, and I’ve rarely looked forward to a new year in politics as much as this one.

With open-seat races for governor, U.S. Senate, and two U.S. House seats in Iowa, plus many incumbents facing challengers from within their own party, this year’s primaries will be the most fascinating I’ve covered—especially on the Republican side. The general election will feature competitive races for many state and federal offices.

The dynamics of the tenth legislative session under a GOP trifecta could be quite different, now that Governor Kim Reynolds is a lame duck, and senior roles in both the Iowa House and Senate have changed since last spring.

I will continue to publish deep dives and exclusive reporting about state government, legislative, Congressional, and campaign happenings at Bleeding Heartland, sharing links to all of those posts on Facebook, Bluesky, X (formerly Twitter), Mastodon, and the free Evening Heartland email newsletter.

But over the past five years, my political reporting has expanded far beyond this website. If you’re only following my work here, you’re not getting the whole picture.

The Iowa Senate reconvened on January 12 with a different look: a new majority leader (Mike Klimesh) and a changed balance of power: 33 Republicans and seventeen Democrats, down from a 34-16 GOP majority for most of the 2025 session.

Seven senators (four Republicans, three Democrats) were elected to the chamber for the first time in 2024, and three more won their seats in special elections during 2025.

Fourteen senators are women (eight Democrats and six Republicans)—that’s one more woman than last year, since Democrat Catelin Drey won the race to succeed the late Rocky De Witt in Senate district 1, and Renee Hardman won the race to succeed the late Claire Celsi in Senate district 16. The high point for women’s representation in the Iowa Senate was in 2023 and 2024, when the chamber had 35 men and fifteen women.

Hardman is the first Black woman to serve in the Iowa Senate and only the third African American ever elected to the chamber. Democrat Izaah Knox is also Black. The other 48 senators are white. No Latino has ever served in the chamber, and Iowa’s only Asian-American senator was Swati Dandekar, who resigned in 2011.

In 2023, Democrat Janice Weiner became the first Jewish person to serve in the Iowa Senate since Ralph Rosenberg left the legislature after 1994. She became the first Jewish person to lead an Iowa legislative caucus when her peers elected her minority leader in November 2024.

Democrat Liz Bennett is the only out LGBTQ member of the Iowa Senate.

I enclose below details on the majority and minority leadership teams, along with all chairs, vice chairs, and members of Iowa Senate committees. Where relevant, I’ve mentioned changes since last year’s legislative session. Although there hasn’t been as much turnover as the Iowa House saw during the interim, Klimesh did make quite a few changes in the committees compared to last year. He took all committee assignments away from one Republican (Doug Campbell) and took certain positions away from Kevin Alons, Mark Lofgren, Sandy Salmon, and Dave Sires.

Some non-political trivia: the 50 Iowa senators include four men named Mike (three Republicans and a Democrat), two Toms (a Democrat and a Republican), a Dave and a David (both Republicans), and two men each named Jeff, Mark, and Dan (all Republicans).

Normally, big changes in the Iowa legislature happen the year after a general election. But there has been much more turnover than usual in the Iowa House since last spring. With two Republicans running for Congress and another resigning from the legislature to take a Trump administration job, a chain reaction leaves ten House committees with a different leader for the 2026 session.

The overall balance of power remains the same: 67 Republicans and 33 Democrats in the chamber. Each party has some new faces in the leadership team, however. All of those details are listed below, along with committee assignments and background on all committee chairs and ranking members. As needed, I’ve noted changes since last year’s session.

Nineteen House members (fourteen Republicans and five Democrats) are serving their first term in the legislature—three more than in 2025, due to special elections that happened last March, April, and December.

The number of women serving in the chamber crept up from 27 at the beginning of 2025 to 29 as of January 2026, since Democrat Angel Ramirez succeeded Sami Scheetz in House district 78 and Republican Wendy Larson was elected to replace Mike Sexton in House district 7. The ratio of 71 men and 29 women is the same as during the 2024 session.

Six African Americans (Democrats Jerome Amos, Jr., Ruth Ann Gaines, Rob Johnson, Mary Madison, and Ross Wilburn, and Republican Eddie Andrews) serve in the legislature’s lower chamber. Gaines chairs the Iowa Legislative Black Caucus.

Republican Mark Cisneros became the first Latino elected to the Iowa legislature in 2020, and Democrat Adam Zabner became the second Latino to serve in the chamber in 2023, and Ramirez the chamber’s first Latina member in 2025.

Republican Henry Stone became the second Asian American ever to serve in the House after the 2020 election. Democrat Megan Srinivas was first elected in 2022. The other representatives are white.

Three House members identify as part of the LGBTQ community: Democrats Elinor Levin and Aime Wichtendahl, and Republican Austin Harris. As for religious diversity, Levin and Zabner are Jewish. Srinivas is Hindu. The chamber has had no Muslim members since Ako Abdul-Samad retired in 2024.

Some non-political trivia: the 100 Iowa House members include two with the surname Meyer (a Democrat and a Republican), two Johnsons (a Democrat and a Republican), and a Thompson and a Thomson (both Republicans).

As for popular first names, there are four men named David (one goes by Dave), three named Thomas or Tom, three Roberts (two Bobs and a Bobby), a Jon and a John, a Josh and a Joshua, a Mike and a Michael, and two men each named Jeff, Dan, Brian, Steven, Chad, Austin, and Mark. There is also an Elizabeth and a Beth, and two women each named Jennifer, Heather, Megan, and Shannon. As recently as 2020, four women named Mary served in the Iowa House, but now there is only one.

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 

The digital clock silently clicks 3:01 a.m. Her eyes flash open. She’s a teacher and she knows 3:01 isn’t awake time especially when 27 pairs of third grade eyes will be staring at her in a few hours. Her mind reviews every lesson rewriting in her mind. Then she begins to worry about her career choice. Will it get easier? How do I balance family with school?

She hopes her school can hire more teachers, reduce paperwork, meetings, and maybe agree to a raise above insurance increase. But money is tight. She needs more time to prepare so her teaching bag isn’t filled to the brim at home. She prays she’ll be allowed to be creative because that’s the joy of teaching. She’s exhausted by interference. 

Her last thought before drifting off to a dreamy sun-soaked beach is a hope Iowa legislators will stop punching down on her profession.

Editor’s note from Laura Belin: This post has been updated with additional information and clarifications.

Linda Schreiber writes commentary on selected legislative issues.

For more than four decades, Iowa’s Bottle Bill stood as a national model: simple, effective, and popular. It reduced litter, boosted recycling, and put responsibility where it belonged—on producers and consumers. The 2022 update weakened those goals while reducing public accountability.

In 2019, Iowa State University professor Dr. Dermot Hayes recommended adjusting the five-cent deposit enacted in 1979 for inflation, roughly 17 cents at the time. A survey showed 88 percent of Iowans supported the Bottle Bill. Advocates, including the League of Women Voters and the Sierra Club, urged lawmakers to strengthen the program, improve redemption access, and preserve public benefits.

Iowa lawmakers chose a different path.

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. 

Days removed from the winter solstice, when Iowa’s nights are the longest, we have another example of the absence of sunshine in Iowa government. And this example shows why the state legislature has much to do about openness and accountability when it convenes on January 12.

A recent court decision with ties to the collapse in May 2023 of an apartment building in Davenport highlights the urgent need for legislative action. The case involves more than the public’s right to know, considering that three people died in the collapse and rescue workers needed to amputate a survivor’s leg to free her from the rubble.

Dr. Emily Boevers is a Readlyn farm kid, mother of three, and physician practicing in Iowa. This essay first appeared in the Waverly Democrat.

Property “ownership” is surprisingly complicated. Since feudal times when all land belonged to kings, to global wars that claimed land by force and displaced native populations, to modern concepts about private deeds, covenants and easements—property rights are nuanced. The law bundles the privileges of land ownership as a right to exclude others from a space, to protect or to exploit property for one’s own benefit, to pass it on to heirs and to not have it unlawfully taken or damaged. Enforcement of the rights that come with land title are an honored, but dynamic, legal tradition.

Today, limited options exist to legally seize, use or redistribute property owned by another. Zoning laws are one example of limitations on property use. Voluntary easements grant another the opportunity to use one’s property for limited purposes. Eminent domain allows the non-consensual taking of private land so long as landowners are justly compensated and public good is served.

It is likely through enforcement of eminent domain that the carbon-capture pipeline will ultimately wind its way through Iowa. In June 2024 the Iowa Utilities Board (since renamed the Iowa Utilities Commission) determined that the project qualified as “public use.” The board members concluded that the pipeline’s potential public benefits outweighed private and public costs. Therefore, landowners who do not sign voluntary easements for Summit Carbon Solutions’ pipeline could still be subject to non-consensual use.

West Des Moines City Council member Renee Hardman won big in the December 30 special election to represent Iowa Senate district 16. Unofficial results show the Democrat defeated Republican Lucas Loftin by 7,341 votes to 2,930 (71.4 percent to 28.5 percent), a margin of about 43 points in a district Kamala Harris carried by about 17 points in 2024.

Hardman will make history as the first Black woman to serve in the Iowa Senate. Her win also means Democrats will hold seventeen of the 50 Iowa Senate seats during the 2026 legislative session, depriving Republicans of the two-thirds supermajority needed to confirm Governor Kim Reynolds’ nominees without any Democratic support.

In an emotional speech to supporters after results were in, Hardman acknowledged the late State Senator Claire Celsi, a personal friend who had managed her first city council race in 2017. “Claire led with courage, she loved this community fiercely. […] We will continue the work she cared about so deeply. We will honor her legacy, and we won’t give up the fight for a better Iowa.” The victory party was at Tavern II, a West Des Moines restaurant where Celsi regularly held her own campaign events.

The outcome was not a surprise, given the partisan lean of Senate district 16 and a massive ground game that gave Democrats a substantial lead in early votes banked.

Still, we can learn a few lessons from the lopsided special election result.

Voters in Iowa Senate district 16 will elect a successor to State Senator Claire Celsi on December 30. The stakes are high: this election will determine whether Republicans regain their 34-16 supermajority in the chamber for the 2026 legislative session. With a two-thirds majority, Republicans could confirm Governor Kim Reynolds’ nominees with no Democratic support.

If West Des Moines City Council member Renee Hardman keeps this seat in the blue column, the Republican majority in the chamber will return to 33-17, meaning Democrats could block some of the governor’s worst appointees. Either way, the winner will serve out the remainder of Celsi’s term.

Hardman is favored over Republican Lucas Loftin in this suburban area. But as we’ve seen this year in Iowa, anything can happen in a low-turnout special election. And it’s hard to think of a date primed for lower turnout than the Tuesday between Christmas and New Year’s Day.

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.

Fox News host Greg Gutfeld and his orbiting panelists relentlessly mocked the weight of a rural middle- and high school band teacher and Democratic candidate for the Iowa legislature in a viral three-minute national broadcast last week.

The barbs aimed at Dunlap City Council member Benjamin Schauer were incessant and cruel, and the piece has generated comments in a range of online forums, including The Daily Caller.

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 on his Substack newsletter, The Odd Man Out.

A little over a year ago I wrote a piece called “America Needs Farmers, Just Not Their Politics.” It is probably one of my most read pieces, which somewhat broke containment before I even had a space of my own on Substack. I felt like it was a worthwhile endeavor to check back in, since I wrote that piece before the 2024 election.

We’ve had a year to see how the active rural voting parts of our state, alongside the big agricultural entities like the Iowa Farm Bureau and Iowa Soybean Association, would handle the increased turmoil in a Trump administration.

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 a scene in the 1974 movie Longest Yard, which I’ve always remembered. The prison warden forces Burt Reynolds, an incarcerated former professional football player, to organize a football team to play the guards.

In the huddle, Reynolds tells the offensive line to let a hated guard through. As the guard blitzes, the line parts and Reynolds hurls a pass into the guard’s groin.

The prisoners huddle, and Reynolds calls the same play: “Let’s do it again.” They do. The guard leaves the game in agony clutching his groin. 

Republican State Representative Skyler Wheeler, who chairs the House Education Committee, is signaling he may call the same play during the next Iowa legislative session that was called this year.

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 

Game of Thrones fans remember the ominous warning, “Winter is coming.” It was about White Walkers and the army of the undead invading. Winter is coming in Iowa too. There aren’t White Walkers and the undead lurking behind Iowa snow drifts, but the annual legislative Winter Dance Party under the Golden Dome will begin soon.

It might not provoke White Walker terror, but Iowa educators feel a chill down their spines thinking about the Iowa legislature convening on January 12. What’s the next attack? How will we cope? Will they increase state funding for schools above the inflation rate?

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 I were in charge of the state budget and had just watched $825 million unexpectedly disappear, I suppose I’d try to bluff my way out of this mess, too.

Which is what the Reynolds administration looked like it was doing earlier this month, when the state’s Revenue Estimating Conference (REC) said the 2025 fiscal year ended with $300 million less than they’d expected a year ago.

For the current fiscal year, 2026, they’re now anticipating a whopping $525 million less than predicted last October.

I touched on this trend in my last post about Iowa’s long-suffering economy, but after I published, the news from the REC got so much worse.

No wonder the ruling party was putting on a brave face and trying to convince Iowans this was all part of the plan. But they’re not very good poker players. Their tells were all over the place.

I can’t remember when I met Claire Celsi. It was years before she decided to run for the state legislature. Our paths crossed often at Democratic events, and we knew many of the same people in progressive circles. I valued her take on the latest news and her thoughts about blogging, since she had kept an online journal during the 2000s.

Claire was generous with her time as a volunteer for many Democratic candidates, starting with Tom Harkin’s first U.S. Senate race in 1984. She was one of the early organizers of the West Des Moines Democrats, back when that suburb leaned strongly to Republicans. She managed Mike Huston’s Congressional campaign in 2000 and worked hard in 2017 to help Renee Hardman defeat an incumbent to win a West Des Moines city council seat. (Hardman is now the Democratic nominee to succeed Claire in Iowa Senate district 16.)

Josh Hughes described how Claire was the first “grown up” to take him seriously as a Democratic activist. She enjoyed spending time with people of all ages. Josh took this picture near the Surf Ballroom in August 2018, when he and Olivia Habinck were leaders of the College and Young Democrats of Iowa, and Claire and I carpooled with them to the Iowa Democratic Wing Ding.

John and Terri Hale own the The Hale Group, an Ankeny-based advocacy firm focused on older Iowans terriandjohnhale@gmail.com. Dean Lerner is an attorney and former Director of the Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals dean@kelinsonlaw.com.

With the passing of State Senator Claire Celsi, Iowa has lost the elected official who cared the most and worked the hardest to improve quality of care for residents of Iowa’s nursing facilities.

We collaborated extensively with Claire on aging and nursing home issues. She was as her friends and colleagues described her: tenacious, passionate, a truth-teller and a fighter.

This is an image of a reimagined Iowa state flag with rainbow Pride stripes.

Voters in Iowa House district 7 will elect a successor to Republican State Representative Mike Sexton on Tuesday, December 9. Governor Kim Reynolds announced the special election on September 24, five days after Sexton resigned to become the next leader of Iowa’s Rural Development office in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That’s the same position former U.S. Senate candidate Theresa Greenfield held during the Biden administration.

Sexton had served in the Iowa House since 2015; he previously served a term in the Iowa Senate, starting in 1999. Most recently he chaired the House Agriculture Committee; House leaders have not yet named his successor in that role. He endorsed Carly Fiorina before the 2016 Iowa caucuses but was an early supporter of Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and attended several Trump rallies in Iowa in 2023.

This race will be the fifth special election for an Iowa legislative district in 2025. But Democrats should not expect another upset win here; House district 7 is among the state’s most solidly Republican districts.

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.

The Republican supermajority in the Iowa Senate is no more. Catelin Drey became the seventeenth Democrat in the 50-member chamber on September 15.

About half of her Democratic colleagues came to watch Drey take the oath of office, including State Senator Mike Zimmer, who flipped another Republican-held district in January.

Alongside her husband and daughter, Catelin Drey repeats the oath after Iowa Supreme Court Justice Matthew McDermott (photo courtesy of Iowa Senate Democrats)

Kira Barker is a Democratic organizer in Polk County. She posted this reflection on Facebook on September 12, two days after Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

It was my first year clerking in the Iowa House (January 2023). I was so naive, I remember working on those House races in Ankeny, thinking if we flipped those seats, we would be able to stop private school vouchers. LOL. I had no idea what the legislature was really like or what I was getting into.

During clerk orientation, staff told us we’d have several weeks to settle in before any bills would be up for a vote. In the second week the Iowa Rs passed the voucher bill. I described it as Dems getting our teeth kicked in; after enough kicks your gums get callused. The team in charge really knew how to set the tone.

Throughout the session there are “Day on the Hill” events where organizations bring members to the capitol to meet legislators, lobby, and set up tables in the first-floor rotunda to highlight priorities. This particular day was “Second Amendment Day on the Hill.”

If you didn’t know, guns are allowed in the capitol. I didn’t know that at the time. I learned it that day.