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’m old enough to remember when Fonzie jumped the shark on the show “Happy Days.” That episode spawned a new idiom, referring to when something “has reached its peak and starts to decline in quality.”

But the 1977 “shark jumping” didn’t just happen. It occurred as the sitcom writers neglected script quality and instead relied on outrageous, attention-grabbing gimmicks.

That’s what’s happening in Iowa. But it’s not a sitcom that’s past its prime—it’s Iowa’s beloved public education system. Public schools have suffered from long-term neglect and three attention-grabbing attacks, which remind me of how Fonzie jumped the shark.

Kenny Slocum is the naturalist and natural resource manager for the Clayton County Conservation Board.

The first time I had an opportunity to write for Bleeding Heartland, I wrote about one of my favorite places. Bloody Run County Park, outside of Marquette, sparked my interest in plants years ago when I began to find a litany of unique native plants, stuff that I’d mostly consider “meat-and-potatoes” kind of species now.

Yet every year, it seems, I get the pleasure of adding a new species to my digital herbarium. Some of them, the butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa) and round-headed bush clover (Lespedeza capitata) and rough blazing star (Liatris aspera), in and of themselves, might not make the typical prairie-stomper excited, but it’s a thrill for me to see them in context.

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. 

Thirty-three years ago on a snowy Friday in November, the nightmare of mass school shootings shocked Iowa like it has never been shocked before.

It was 3:40 p.m. A former University of Iowa graduate student with a brilliant scientific mind, and a .38-caliber revolver, walked into a conference room in Van Allen Hall, the home of the university’s renowned Department of Physics and Astronomy.

Brooklyn Draisey is a Report for America corps member covering higher education for Iowa Capital Dispatch, where this article first appeared.

The Iowa Board of Regents is working with board staff and state universities to analyze diversity, equity and inclusion programs and positions and ensure their compliance under a state law set to take effect next summer.

President Sherry Bates said during the September 19 board meeting that she, along with Regents Greta Rouse, David Barker, and JC Risewick started this summer ensuring compliance with both DEI directives put in place by the board and Senate File 2435 at the University of Iowa, Iowa State University, and University of Northern Iowa.

While running for state treasurer, Republican State Senator Roby Smith touted his attendance record, noting in digital and television advertising that he “never missed a vote” during his twelve years in the legislature.

But since being sworn in as state treasurer in January 2023, it’s not clear whether Smith has regularly worked at the state capitol.

Staff in the State Treasurer’s office and the Iowa Department of Administrative Services refused Bleeding Heartland’s requests for records that would show how often Smith comes to work in Des Moines. After months of delay, both entities declined to provide keycard data that would indicate when the treasurer entered his capitol office. Smith’s chief of staff, Molly Widen, also said there are no calendar entries showing which days her boss has worked in the main office.

Iowa’s open records law stipulates that “free and open examination of public records is generally in the public interest even though such examination may cause inconvenience or embarrassment to public officials.”

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. He and Laura Belin are also among the contributors to the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative podcast, Iowa Down Ballot. On the latest episode, they discussed the first and third Congressional district campaigns, a state audit on nursing home inspections, and more.

For much of this week, I’ve been waiting for U.S. Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa to complain about former President Donald Trump’s latest campaign promise, which would pile hundreds of billions of dollars onto the already bulging national debt.

I searched news reports and her X/Twitter account. But so far: Zip.

You’d think she’d say something, right? I mean, Ernst is famous for caring about budget discipline. Isn’t she?

While hundreds of prominent Republicans around the country have endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president, no well-known GOP activists in Iowa had joined their ranks—until today.

Dawn Roberts, who was one of three co-chairs for Nikki Haley’s Iowa caucus campaign, announced her support for Harris in a letter first published September 20 in Julie Gammack’s Iowa Potluck column on Substack, and a few hours later by the Des Moines Register.

A lifelong Republican, Roberts was Polk County co-chair for then Governor Robert Ray’s campaigns and served as state co-chair for Gerald Ford’s 1976 presidential campaign. She became the first woman to lead the Polk County Republicans and was the GOP nominee for Iowa secretary of state in 1986.

Roberts wrote in her endorsement letter that she was impressed by how Harris “showed a willingness to listen to a wider range of views to solve problems.” The vice president allowed people with different political perspectives, including some Republicans, to speak at the Democratic National Convention.

Dave Leshtz is the editor of The Prairie Progressive.

The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.

–John Milton, Paradise Lost

It was a beautiful day for a drive, with big clouds billowing in a vast Iowa sky.  My destination was the town of Toledo, where an “Iowa 99 County Bible Reading Marathon” was taking place on September 16.

Iowa’s past two governors have signed annual proclamations encouraging Iowans to read the entire Bible at the state capitol building and at all of Iowa’s county courthouses.

When I arrived at the Tama County Courthouse, a balding man in overalls and a white t-shirt stood at a podium in the center of a large concrete platform about five feet off the ground. He was reading from a bible: “God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world but that the world through him might be saved.”

But the man in overalls was not the only one reading.

Stephen G. Bloom is a professor of journalism at the University of Iowa. He is the author of seven nonfiction books, the latest of which is The Brazil Chronicles, due out in November.

For anyone who grew up in Iowa during the 1940s or ’50s, or was a student at the University of Iowa in the 1960s, the name Bobby Washington will ring a bell. While nowhere near as agile and skilled an athlete as Caitlin Clark, Washington was a talented and wildly popular basketball player. Just like Caitlin, if you mentioned just the name Bobby, everyone knew who you were talking about.

Bobby was a starter on the Iowa basketball team that three years earlier had lost in the NCAA Final Four to University of San Francisco and Bill Russell, who scored 26 points and grabbed 27 rebounds in a single game, a record that stands today.

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.

The anguish and angst visited upon us this election year is faithful to the old saying “Politics makes strange bedfellows.’” That take is adapted from a line in Shakespeare’s The Tempest—”Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.”

Inspired by this season of anguish and angst, this post offers dots connecting George Orwell, Bob Feller, Donald Trump, U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley, and Joseph Welch. You’re familiar with most of our cast. And you may recall that Welch is the attorney who grew up in Primghar, Iowa and attended Grinnell College. He gained national fame as the U.S. Army’s attorney 70 years ago, when he got fed up and asked Senator Joseph McCarthy on live television, “Have you left no sense of decency?”

Lora Conrad lives on a small farm in Van Buren County.

The American Hog Peanut is also called American Wild Peanut. Amphicarpaea bracteata is a vining annual plant in the Pea family (Fabaceae). It can also be a short lived perennial. It is somewhat unusual for a legume in that it thrives in shady areas.

Amphicarpaea is reported to mean either “two kinds of flowers” or “two kinds of fruit,” both of which it has. Bracteata means “with bracts” at the base of the flower, which show clearly in the flower photos. It is the only Amphicarpaea sp. native to eastern North America and to the west, throughout Iowa. This BONAP map shows its Iowa and nearby distribution.

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

I’ve been muddling through some thoughts about national politics after the November 5 election. I will no doubt have more, but this week I have one for each party.

Nick Covington is an Iowa parent who taught high school social studies for ten years. He is also the co-founder of the Human Restoration Project, an Iowa educational non-profit promoting systems-based thinking and grassroots organizing in education.

In 2022, following a long culture war fight in my own suburban Iowa school district, I resigned from a job I had held for a decade as a high school social studies teacher. When I eventually wrote about these experiences publicly, the feedback I got from students and parents was overwhelmingly positive and supportive, but the most frequent response I got was, “I had no idea all of this was happening.”

Two years ago, we were just beginning to understand what was unfolding in Iowa schools and repeated across the country. It was happening quietly and in isolated pockets, which gave plausible deniability to the idea that this wasn’t an organized, systematic effort to dismantle public education and punish those who refused to go along with it. 

Every Iowa Democratic candidate had reason to celebrate the latest Iowa Poll by Selzer & Co for the Des Moines Register and Mediacom, showing former President Donald Trump leading Vice President Kamala Harris by just 4 points (47 percent to 43 percent). But arguably none had more grounds for optimism than Lanon Baccam, the Democratic nominee in Iowa’s third Congressional district.

According to calculations by the Daily Kos Elections team (now publishing as The Downballot), Trump outpolled Joe Biden across the IA-03 counties by 49.3 percent to 48.9 percent in 2020, while winning the state by an 8-point margin. So if Harris trails by only 4 points statewide now, she likely leads Trump in the third district.

Assuming the Selzer poll is off by the margin of error (plus or minus 3.8 percentage points), and Trump has an 8-point lead statewide, the major-party presidential nominees may be roughly tied in the IA-03 counties.

In other words, Baccam won’t have to overcome strong headwinds at the top of the ticket in order to beat first-term Republican Representative Zach Nunn, who carried this district by 50.3 percent to 49.7 percent in 2022.

I’ve been thinking about what else needs to happen for the challenger to win in November.

Dan Guild is a lawyer and project manager who lives in New Hampshire. In addition to writing for Bleeding Heartland, he has written for CNN and Sabato’s Crystal Ball, most recently here. He also contributed to the Washington Post’s 2020 primary simulations. Follow him on Twitter @dcg1114.

Ann Selzer’s gold standard poll is out, and suggests a remade presidential race in Iowa.

The top line numbers from Selzer & Co’s latest poll for the Des Moines Register and Mediacom indicate former President Donald Trump has 47 percent support and Vice President Kamala Harris 43 percent among likely Iowa voters. This poll started contacting respondents on September 8 (before the debate) and concluded on September 11, the day after the debate. At the end of this piece is a summary of post-debate national polling, which has found a gain for Harris of about 1 percent.

When you compare the new survey to Selzer’s numbers from June (Trump 50 percent, President Joe Biden 32 percent in Iowa), you will find a 14 point shift in margin. But purely focusing on the margin may be a mistake.

Henry Jay Karp is the Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Emanuel in Davenport, Iowa, which he served from 1985 to 2017. He is the co-founder and co-convener of One Human Family QCA, a social justice organization.

The night after Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump duked it out in Philadelphia, unsurprisingly, Chris Hayes dedicated his MSNBC show, “All In With Chris Hayes,” to conversations about the debate.

Rebecca Traister was among the guests who appeared on that show. While my wife Gail and I do not remember ever having heard her before (she writes for the New Yorker), after that night, we look forward to hearing more from her in the future.

William R. Staplin is a former scientist specializing in utilizing molecular biology techniques to investigate RNA plant and animal viruses, research and development of vaccines to protect against infectious viruses; husband to Ruth A. Staplin, a longtime SPPG employee and political wonk; father to two independently minded young adults; cancer and spinal cord disability survivor; and a supporter of women’s reproductive rights, LGTBQ+, and Black and Brown Lives Matter. He is also a full-time greyhound owner and greyhound cafeteria worker.

The U.S. Supreme Court dealt a devastating blow to women’s health care rights in 2022, when the conservative majority ruled in favor of Dobbs in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women Health Organization. The 5-4 decision overturned the Roe vs. Wade precedent, which since 1973 had guaranteed a woman or girl the constitutional right to an abortion. The conservative majority’s decision to allow the 50 states to regulate abortion led to a massive upheaval in women’s and girls’ basic access to health care, and in turn maternal and infant care.

Many Republican-controlled states quickly enacted abortion bans, or allowed laws from before Roe to take effect. Fourteen states (mostly in the southeastern U.S.) have total abortion bans.

Anna Ryon is a Des Moines attorney who practices in the field of utility consumer advocacy. Her experience includes nearly nine years of service at the Iowa Office of Consumer Advocate.

When Brenna Bird was elected attorney general, she took an oath to faithfully and impartially discharge the duties of her office, as state law requires. The official website of the Iowa Department of Justice describes the attorney general as “the state’s chief legal officer.” In that capacity, it is reasonable for Bird to know what duties she is required by law to discharge.

However, Bird’s record suggests she either does not understand all the duties the law requires her to discharge or has simply chosen not to fulfill some of those duties. Her failure to discharge the duties required by law has left Iowa landowners subject to unconstitutional eminent domain and their neighbors subject to the dangers of hazardous carbon dioxide pipelines without the legal representation they deserve.

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 don’t want to be scared. I avoid roller coasters. I don’t like horror movies. I’m not a fan of people jumping out even if they’re yelling “surprise,” and I don’t pay to be scared in Halloween haunted houses.

But when I was 15, the church youth group went to a haunted house sponsored by another church. Even then, I tried to find an excuse to skip out, but it was a church event. How scary could it be?

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

I have fielded a bunch of emails, text messages and phone calls in the days since the school shooting in Winder, Georgia.

Each one is from Perry, Iowa. Each one had the same question for me and the Iowa Freedom of Information Council. Each one came from a parent, teacher or other concerned person asking, why isn’t the public allowed to read the official findings by state agents about the shooting at Perry High School and Middle School last January 4?