Former Des Moines Register assistant sports editor Ira Lacher writes about the games and business of sports for various newspapers and magazines.

“Are you not entertained? Are you not entertained? Is this not why you are here?” 

The quote is from the 2000 film Gladiator, which followed a deposed Roman nobleman’s quest to avenge the executions of his wife and children. But it could easily be applied to the modern gladiator sport: American football, which brought in about $14.5 billion in revenue in 2025.

According to recent polling, Americans consider football our most popular sport by almost a 2-to-1 margin over baseball. Regular-season NFL games averaged 18.7 million viewers in 2025. By contrast, the top non-NFL telecast last year, a typical episode of the CBS series Tracker, averaged a mere 11 million.

Those who have examined the sport academically understand that unlike gladiator contests, football is hardly a death dealer: Only one NFL player, Chuck Hughes, of the Detroit Lions, died during a game, in 1971.

But players get hurt. Seriously hurt. 

Katie Byerly of Cerro Gordo County is also known as Iowa Prairie Girl on YouTube. Her video about wild parsnip is at the end of this post.

I don’t use the word hate often. If you asked me if I liked black licorice, I would say “I don’t like black licorice.” I know I wouldn’t say “I hate black licorice.” Hate is a strong word, and I avoid using it. But I’m going to use it here: I hate wild parsnip!

Charles Bruner is a former Democratic Iowa legislator (1978-1990), was the founding director of Iowa Child and Family Policy Center (1990-2015, now Common Good Iowa), and is national director of the InCK Marks Initiative’s Child Health Equity Leadership Group.

I am pretty certain all of this year’s Iowa Democratic candidates for the U.S. House and Senate would have voted for the Affordable Care Act in 2010, the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, and the Build Back Better Infrastructure Act of 2021. I am pretty certain they all would have voted against the Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017 and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025.

I am also sure all Republicans running for Congress in Iowa this year would have done the exact opposite. (Representatives Ashley Hinson, Marianette Miller-Meeks, and Zach Nunn did vote that way on the bills that coincided with their tenure in Congress.)

I am sure of it because all of those votes were on strict party lines. The Tax Cut and Jobs Act and One Big Beautiful Bill Act did not even seek any bipartisan support, as Republicans approved them through the budget reconciliation process.

“Not enough people know the story about how this court got captured by a bunch of creepy right-wing billionaires,” U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse told hundreds of Iowa Democrats on August 29.

The senator from Rhode Island used much of his speech at the Polk County Steak Fry to describe what he and U.S. Representative Jamie Raskin—another featured speaker at the event in Des Moines—would be able to accomplish as leaders of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, if Democrats gain control of Congress after the November elections.

Rachel Bruns is a maternal health advocate in Iowa.

Earlier this year, I wrote a three-part series for the Des Moines Business Record’s Fearless publication titled “From Personal Experience to Policy Change: Fighting for Improvements in Maternal Health Care in Iowa.” 

With that series, I was excited to highlight, in part 1, promising practices at hospitals across the country that were making positive improvements in maternal health care – improving both patient satisfaction and outcomes. In part 2, I highlighted ongoing policy issues impacting maternal health, and in part 3, I examined the consequences of mistrust in medicine.

While I have had to step back from my engagement on maternal health advocacy, I am still paying attention, and there is a lot to pay attention to.

David Elbert is a former business editor and columnist for the Des Moines Register. He now writes about local history for DSM Magazine. 

The national debt recently passed the $40 trillion mark, which means your share is about $117,000, or roughly half the cost of a typical Iowa home.

The national debt nearly doubled in the past decade, which is more than twice the rate of inflation during those ten years.

The New York Times published an interesting chart recently that tracked the national debt as a percentage of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is a calculation of all goods and services produced annually.

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. 

Novelist Charles Dickens poked his quill pen at government bureaucracy 175 years ago with his accounts about a fictionalized department he called the “Circumlocution Office.” 

“Circumlocution” often is used with disdain to describe writing or speaking that is intentionally vague, evasive, or overly wordy.

Sadly, the personnel departments in state and local governments in Iowa these days have become Circumlocution Offices of their own when officials describe why a highly paid public employee was fired.

The recent termination of a Polk County administrator illustrates the problem.

Kenny Slocum, the owner/operator of Light Touch Ecological LLC, features another good wildflower find in northeast Iowa.

I left my job with the Clayton County Conservation Board in March of this year to pursue private land restoration full-time.

It was a leap of faith. I had done some forestry work on the side for several years, and finally felt like I had gotten enough to interest, and enough spousal support, to justify leaving behind the relative comforts of government work and benefits.

Financial concerns aside, I also worried I would come to miss the places I had spent the last decade restoring. I reminded myself often in that work, when I would find a primitive shelter left by behind by boy scouts who haven’t learned leave-no-trace or a bunch of morel stumps indicating someone had found my honey hole, that these lands belonged to everyone and I must abandon feelings of ownership.

I wanted to work more with private lands, in part because my area of northeast Iowa appears to have both the need on the landscape, and the appetite among the landowners for more of the kind of healing work I find valuable.

But on the other side of that coin lies, often, much more degraded landscapes. None but the most dedicated landowners have the practical capacity to engage with the land as often as I could in my prior role, to say nothing of the hands tied by various cost-share programs, for better or worse.

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.

To help get a grip on the turmoil of the day, please repeat after me:

“At long last, sir,” [At long last, sir]
“Have you left no sense of decency?” [Have you left no sense of decency?]

As many readers know, that was the question Joseph Welch asked of Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin at a Senate hearing on June 9, 1954.

His pointed question was overdue. It was Welch—an Iowan born in Primghar, and a graduate of Grinnell College—who finally held a U.S. senator accountable for fomenting fear of Communism into a time of national divisiveness and hatred. McCarthyism fed on the lies and innuendo heaped upon those McCarthy and his supporters deemed un-American.

Jennifer Breon is a Senior Iowa Organizer with Food & Water Action, the political and lobbying sibling organization of the national environmental group Food & Water Watch. She is based in Iowa City.

Matt Hildreth is the Executive Director of Rural Organizing, a national organization working to rebuild a rural America that’s empowered, thriving, and equitable. Originally from eastern South Dakota, Matt is based in rural Washington State.

Industrial agriculture’s public health crisis is on full display in Iowa. 

As residents of the state with the nation’s fastest-rising cancer rates, the most factory farms and highest waterway toxic nitrate concentrations, Iowans are desperate for change. If Iowa Democrats want to regain power this fall, they need to prove to voters that they are serious about solutions.

If they can get it right, new polling from Rural Organizing outlines the opportunity this issue offers Democratic candidates: Iowans are so fed up with high and rising cancer rates that fully 11 percent of Trump’s rural Iowa voters would consider voting for a different party over this issue. Indeed, recent Food & Water Action polling found that few issues are as concerning to Iowa voters as cancer rates and clean water.

Politics is so often a game played in the margins, with opportunities for flipping voters between parties few and far between. Democrats would be wise to seize this rare opening.

When U.S. Representative Ashley Hinson was gearing up to run for Senate last year, her primary objectives appeared to be pleasing the “audience of one” in the White House and clearing the Republican field. Within days of her campaign launch, she had locked down support from President Donald Trump and most of the GOP establishment.

That should have been enough in a state where Democrats haven’t won a U.S. Senate race since 2008, and Republicans enjoy a large voter registration advantage.

Things haven’t gone according to plan.

Whether you consider Iowa’s U.S. Senate race a toss-up (like the Cook Political Report, the Silver Bulletin, and Fox News), tilting Republican (Inside Elections) or still leaning in Hinson’s direction (Sabato’s Crystal Ball), one fact is undeniable: Hinson and her allies are trying to change the dynamic of the campaign.

Their twofold strategy is to tear down the Democratic nominee, State Representative Josh Turek, while shoring up Hinson’s support with conservatives. And they have good reasons to worry.

Deborah Thompson is the Owner of DHT Consulting & Training, LLC and a long-time public health advocate. She is president-elect of the Iowa Public Health Association but is offering her personal opinions here, not speaking on behalf of the association.

Every political season brings a new health priority, slogan, or bill promising to improve the well-being of Iowans. This year, Iowa joined the national “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) movement with the passage of House File 2676. 

U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. joined Governor Kim Reynolds at the May 20 bill signing. The law reflects growing public concern about nutrition, food ingredients, physical activity, and chronic disease. Our candidates for governor and Congress are talking about health, too. Enough to bring RFK back to our humble state this past week to campaign for MAHA candidate Zach Lahn, the GOP nominee for governor.

The attention is welcome, but if Iowa is truly committed to becoming healthier, a more important question remains: What happens after the headlines fade?

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

Three weeks ago, I wrote that Iowa’s future might look like Missouri’s.

Let’s hope this is the case. At least in one respect: this month, Missouri voters overwhelmingly rejected a plan to eliminate state income taxes and authorize higher sales taxes to replace the lost revenues.

Voters in Missouri clearly disliked the idea. Roughly 83 percent (yes, 83 percent!) rejected the plan, which had been supported by the state’s Republican leadership and well-heeled donors, who spent millions of dollars to try to pass the scheme. The opposition was so broad, the measure lost in every county.

As I noted last month, the Missouri plan, called Amendment 5, has many similarities to the effort now being supported by Republicans and the special interests in Iowa to pass a new constitutional amendment that would eventually lead to a higher sales tax here.

Diane Porter of Fairfield first published this post on My Gaia, an email newsletter “about getting to know nature” and “giving her a helping hand in our own backyards.” Diane also maintains the Birdwatching Dot Com website and bird blog.

I reached down to touch the yellowing fruit. I only noticed it because the leaves it was hiding under were withering away.

At my touch, the fruit dropped into my hand. It was soft.

So the Mayapples were ripe.

A month or two ago I had seen quite a few fruits hidden beneath the Mayapple leaves.

Now they were gone.

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 Iowa Supreme Court typically opens its rulings on the state’s public-records and open-meetings laws by reciting that the cases start with a “presumption of openness.” 

But a new study of the court’s open-government decisions finds the presumption now wins only about half the time. That is a marked change from a decade ago, when the court’s decisions leaned decidedly toward public access and disclosure.

The Iowa Freedom of Information Council study examined 21 decisions involving Iowa Code chapters 21, 22, and 23 — the open-meetings, public-records and Iowa Public Information Board laws — that were decided between February 2011 and June 2026. The study examined how each of the twelve justices who sat on those cases voted.

The study was based on a review and analysis made with the assistance of generative artificial intelligence. Michael Giudicessi, legal counsel for the group, and I completed the review and editing that produced the new report.

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 Dude, where this essay first appeared.

The century started out with such promise. On July 1, 1999 (technically fiscal year 2000), Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack inaugurated the College of Public Health. The first new academic unit at the University of Iowa in 50 year recognized the growing impact of research being conducted there.

In years that followed Iowa passed the Smokefree Air Act and the Public Health Modernization Act. Major steps forward in infectious disease testing and surveillance were enabled when the State Hygienic Laboratory opened a state-of-the-art facility at the University of Iowa. Stakeholders were engaged to create the Healthy Iowans 2010 plan, setting state benchmarks to increase life expectancy, combat obesity and reduce deaths from chronic conditions like heart disease and cancer.

Today, public health in Iowa is frayed. Tattered threads are held together by a dedicated corps of health professionals who refuse to let the public down.

On her way out the door, Governor Kim Reynolds has put in motion a process that will sideline local public health agencies and eventually privatize public health in Iowa.

Bruce Lear lives in Sioux City and has been connected to Iowa’s public schools for 38 years. He taught for eleven years and represented educators as an Iowa State Education Association regional director for 27 years until retiring. He can be reached at BruceLear2419@gmail.com 

I was a few weeks from college graduation, on my way to my first teaching job interview. I was driving a jacked-up, dented 1967 Ford. As I reached town, I started to coast feathering the gas pedal only when necessary. I didn’t want a bad muffler announcing my arrival. 

I was wearing a borrowed tie and a too tight sport coat courtesy of the dreaded freshman 15, still lingering after three years. Sweat trickled down my back as I stepped out.

The principal asked questions about classroom management, curriculum and where I saw myself in five years. The questions were challenging, but I thought I handled most of them.

Then came the hardest question.

James Enright is a Sioux City native, avid hiker, fish keeper, and prairie enthusiast.

In the spring of 2025, I began a job on the road that would eventually allow me to visit over 50 different prairies and preserves all over northwest Iowa over the summer and fall. I’ve been hiking the Loess Hills most of my adult life, but I typically cut back on my hikes and prairie visits during the long, cold Iowa winters. Working on the road, however, allowed me to continue to seek out new prairies and hiking spots that I could enjoy once the weather warms up and the prairies become lively again.

Last summer, I visited as many different prairies as possible, mainly because they were all new to me, and I had no expectations. This continued through early winter when I decided to take a different approach. I began visiting prairies with the hope of learning how to ID seed heads, so I could spend the rest of the winter determining which prairies were the most diverse and interesting to visit in 2026. I love all of our public lands, but some prairies are just more diverse and undisturbed than others.

After visiting dozens of prairies—remnant, restored, and completely reconstructed—I decided to narrow my focus to remnant prairies, at least through spring until the reconstructions, which tend to be summer-heavy in terms of seeding, can catch up.

A new poll conducted for Chris Jones’ campaign shows the Democratic challenger is “within striking distance” of Republican Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig and leads the incumbent after respondents read information about both candidates.

Change Research conducted the poll on behalf of Jones’ campaign from July 28 to August 1 and published key findings in a memo provided to Bleeding Heartland.

Naig led Jones by 42 percent to 40 percent in the first ballot test, before respondents heard biographies of either candidate. That’s within the margin of error (+/- 3.1 percentage points) for the survey of 1,071 likely general election voters. Some 16 percent said they were unsure.

After respondents read background information about both contenders, Jones led Naig by 46 percent to 40 percent, with 13 percent unsure.

Jones told me the poll backs up what he’s seen on the campaign trail: “Iowans are fed up with the status quo and ready for change.”

Naig’s campaign has not released any internal polling. But several signs point to Republican anxiety about the secretary of agriculture race.

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.

One fist of iron, the other of steel
If the right one don’t get you then the left one will
—from “Sixteen Tons” as sung by Tennessee Ernie Ford

——————————

That’s the challenge the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness faces today along the Minnesota-Ontario border. The pristine area, the largest U.S. designated wilderness region east of the Rocky Mountains and north of the Everglades, with two million acres of forest and lakes, is threatened on two fronts, one of them unavoidable and the other entirely manmade.

The unavoidable danger is the forest fires that are currently ravaging western Ontario and northern Minnesota, including wilderness within the Boundary Waters. More than 73,000 acres in the area have burned so far, and as of this past weekend, some of the blazes are still uncontrolled. Other fires continue to devastate many more forest acres in Ontario to the north and west of the Boundary Waters.

Lightning has sparked most of the fires, as hot, dry weather continues across the area. It’s nobody’s fault. We can’t yet control lightning.

But President Donald Trump doesn’t see it that way. He blames the nation of Canada for the thick, choking smoke that blanketed much of America’s Midwest and East.