Lyle Muller is a board member of the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting and Iowa High School Press Association, a trustee of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, former executive director/editor of the Iowa Center for Public Journalism that became part of the Midwest Center, former editor of The Cedar Rapids Gazette, and a recipient of the Iowa Newspaper Association’s Distinguished Service Award. In retirement, he is the professional adviser for Grinnell College’s Scarlet & Black newspaper. This article first appeared on his Substack newsletter.

So, Donald Trump is suing The Des Moines Register and pollster J. Ann Selzer for consumer fraud, which he claims was willful election interference. Bring it on, I would like to say—but I don’t run The Register and my subscription does not entitle me to make such a challenge. I would be doing Selzer no favors, either. 

It would be like pushing the weakest sucker in your group of eighth-grade buddies to the front of the group after mouthing off to a bully. And, make no mistake, a bully is involved in this lawsuit. The kind you thought you left behind in eighth grade.

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   

Storm clouds thicken as flashes brighten a distant sky. It’s coming. The snare drum cadence of thunder morphs into booming bass drums accompanied by a slashing light show. The wind howls. You check the batteries in the flashlights. You close the windows and secure the garbage cans.

It’s time to gather family, grab flashlights, and head for lower ground.

There are different kinds of storms. On January 13, a legislative storm will begin brewing in Des Moines. It’s time to gather the education family to prepare.

Clark Kauffman is deputy editor at Iowa Capital Dispatch, where this article first appeared. He worked for the Iowa Office of Ombudsman from October 2018 through November 2019. 

The Iowa Department of Corrections has refused to change its administrative rules to help ensure the state’s county jails aren’t illegally seizing inmates’ money, according to the state ombudsman’s office.

In its newly issued annual report, the Iowa Office of Ombudsman says that for several years, it has tracked procedures in Iowa jails that run contrary to Iowa law. Some of the practices are attributed to contradictions between Iowa law and state agencies’ administrative rules.

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. A version of this essay first appeared on his Substack newsletter, The Odd Man Out.

Here we are again.

We saw this last year with them calling for the Satanic Temple of Iowa’s holiday display “objectionable.” We saw this in the last few years with Governor Kim Reynolds signing the “religious freedom restoration act,” which critics correctly claimed would privilege Christianity and religion over other faiths and irreligion.

We saw this with the Republican administration taking public dollars from public schools and sending them to unscrupulous and unaccountable religious institutions. We saw this with the state legislature mandating an oath to a deity in classrooms statewide with the pledge of allegiance in public schools.  We saw this in the last ten years with the Muslim ban from President Donald Trump. We saw this in the last decades when the atheists wanted to run some bus ads or put up billboards.

Time and again we see the Republican Party, particularly the Republican Party of Iowa, finding new and ever more egregious ways to privilege their favored flavor of religion—Christianity—at the public’s expense.

President-elect Donald Trump followed through this week with his threat to sue pollster Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register over the final pre-election Iowa Poll, which showed Vice President Kamala Harris leading Trump by 47 percent to 44 percent.

Many others have pointed out that Trump’s lawsuit is part of his broader “revenge tour” and “war on journalism.” In Greg Sargent’s words, the case is “putting people in the media and polling on notice that they will face real legal harassment if they anger or criticize Trump.” The president-elect admitted during a December 16 press conference that he will use lawsuits to influence news coverage: “I think you have to do it, because they’re very dishonest. We need a great media, we need a fair media.”

This post will focus on the legal, factual, and logical problems with the court filing.

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

A share of Iowa’s Republican electorate appears ready to abandon Senator Joni Ernst in favor of a more Trumpian replacement in the 2026 Iowa Republican primary election. It’s yet another sign of what today’s Republican Party has become: Donald Trump’s captive. Independent judgment within the GOP is now almost extinct.

Ernst’s current situation arose because she didn’t promptly announce her support for Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense. Hegseth’s past provides plenty of reasons why Republican Senators should take a hard look at his nomination. For starters, he’s accused of sexual abuse (he paid a financial settlement to an accuser), a strong penchant for alcohol, and poor leadership of veterans’ advocacy organizations.

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. 

A public policy dispute over plans for about 1,000 miles of carbon dioxide pipeline across Iowa took a concerning turn last week. The pipeline company’s latest tactic demonstrates why Iowa should finally enact an anti-SLAPP statute that has been floating around the legislature for a few years.

Cami Koons reported for Iowa Capital Dispatch that Summit Carbon Solutions, an Ames company co-founded by businessman Bruce Rastetter, sent letters to six opponents of its plans to use eminent domain authority to build the pipeline. With eminent domain, Summit could force landowners along the route to sell easements to the company so it could bury the proposed 2-foot-diameter pipe across their land.

The letters demand the recipients retract what Summit claims are false and defamatory statements the six critics have made and cease making similar comments in the future. The letters warn recipients their statements have “exposed you to significant legal liability.”

Voters in Iowa Senate district 35 will soon elect a new senator, now that Chris Cournoyer has resigned from that role to become Iowa’s lieutenant governor.

Under state law, when a vacancy in the Iowa House or Senate arises within 45 days of the next legislative session convening, “the governor shall order such special election at the earliest practical time, giving at least eighteen days’ notice.” Governor Kim Reynolds’ spokesperson Mason Mauro said on December 16 he could not answer questions about the timing of the special election. But it’s likely to happen sometime in January. The winner will serve out the remainder of Cournoyer’s term, which runs through 2026.

Republicans will be heavily favored to hold the seat, which would give them a 35-15 majority in the chamber.

Tom Cope worked on two of Congressman Jim Leach’s re-election campaigns and on his district office staff, from 1991-1995. He is a principal in the Iowa lobbying firm of Cope Murphy + Co. and serves on the Johnston City Council. 

I consider myself to have been very blessed in my life. One of those blessings was the opportunity to work for Congressman Jim Leach from 1991 to 1995. I managed his re-election campaigns in both 1992 and 1994, and worked in his district offices in Cedar Rapids and Davenport in between those times. 

As I think about Jim and all that I learned, there are three things that are important to remember about him.

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.

In an era when sex and religion are politicized, it was inevitable that food would follow.

Two bookend events in 2025 may catapult our eating habits off the Food Network and onto mainstream cable and broadcast news. First will be the confirmation hearing for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for Secretary of Health and Human Services. Then an ad hoc committee of experts must release the legally-required rewriting of the federal government’s food and nutrition dietary guidelines, which are due by the end of 2025.

“They don’t make them like Jim Leach anymore,” posted the elections analysts at The Downballot after learning Leach had passed away on December 11. They were commenting on his extraordinary warning to the Republican National Committee chairman that he would not caucus with Republicans in the next Congress if the Iowa GOP continued to fund direct mail attacking his 2006 Democratic challenger.

Among Iowans who have served in Congress, Leach was unique in many ways.

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

The autopsy

Belatedly, I listened to the Iowa Down Ballot podcast released on November 28. I say “belatedly” because, since the election, a new “breaking news” story surfaces every day, usually one more shocking than the day before. It has been doubly true in the week since Thanksgiving. 

News not available to the Down Ballot panelists at the time of their forum is the full lineup of nominees President-elect Donald Trump has chosen for his cabinet. It is each day’s big news story. Matt Gaetz (“a” before “e” except after “c”) is already old news, and Fox News host Pete Hegseth (I hope I never have to learn to spell or pronounce that name) seems to be the worst of the bad boys.

Bernie Scolaro is a retired school counselor, a past president of the Sioux City Education Association, and former Sioux City school board member.

I applauded TIME magazine’s 2024 Athlete of the Year, Caitlin Clark. She has brought so much positive attention to women’s basketball. She is undeniably also a great role model for younger, aspiring athletes.

Shortly after, TIME named President-elect Donald Trump as Person of the Year. Honestly, I initially wasn’t even sure if this was just another AI photo or if it was real. I read disparaging comments on social media about the magazine’s choice.

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird will again ask the Iowa legislature to increase state penalties for assaulting law enforcement officers, she told reporters on December 12. But she did not condemn the idea of pardoning those who assaulted police during the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Bleeding Heartland asked Bird whether people who assaulted law enforcement or damaged federal government property on January 6 should be pardoned. She replied, “Well, that’s up to President Trump to decide once he’s in office.”

Would she support Trump if he issues those pardons? “As someone who has worked on pardons at the state level” with former Governor Terry Branstad, Bird said, “I think those decisions are best made on an individualized basis.”

Bird served as Branstad’s legal counsel from his return to the governor’s office in 2011 until early 2015. Elected attorney general in 2022, she was the highest-ranking state official to endorse Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign before the Iowa caucuses.

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.

It’s a startling statistic, but it’s not true.

Joni Ernst has gotten a lot of attention recently for her claim that only 6 percent of federal employees work in person on a full-time basis.

The New York Post ran with it. So did Elon Musk. The Des Moines Register quoted it, too.

It’s not true.

Before I dig into the details, a little background:

The House Majority PAC, one of the biggest spenders supporting Democrats in U.S. House races, has confirmed Iowa’s first and third Congressional districts are among its “top targets” for the 2026 election cycle.

The PAC also put IA-02 on a list of sixteen House districts that “could become competitive” in 2026.

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

President Joe Biden’s recent pardon of his son Hunter Biden has reignited the debate over the presidential pardoning power. And argument over this constitutionally protected prerogative of the president will not go away with Donald Trump’s return to power next month. Trump already has used the pardoning power for the benefit of his political cronies during his first term (2017-2021).

Biden is reportedly mulling whether he should go further in light of Trump’s threats to bring charges against some of his political enemies after he returns to office in 2025. In light of those threats, Biden is reportedly considering preemptive pardons for former U.S. Representative Liz Cheney, former Representative and now Senator Adam Schiff, former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci, and General Mark Milley, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Channing Dutton is a lawyer in Urbandale. His duty is climate action for all children.

When it comes to the biggest political blunder of the 21st century, no mistake by the Republicans compares to the colossal fumble the Democrats have made on climate change. We saw it on Black Friday during the Hawks football game with my beloved Huskers: a tied score, the clock ticking down, and the ball bouncing on the turf. Do you remember? That was a fumble of opportunity. 

The same has been true during the past several election cycles where the Democrats seem unable to make the play that wins the game. I think of it as the Climate Change fumble.

Senator Joni Ernst has her first declared 2026 primary challenger. Joshua Smith announced on X/Twitter on December 5 that he plans to run against Ernst as a Republican in 2026. The “blue-collar, working-class veteran” and father of seven promised he would be “the most pro-life, pro-family, small government candidate running for a federal office” next cycle.

So far, Smith’s campaign looks more like a bid for online engagement than a serious threat to Ernst’s career. But in a December 9 telephone interview, he explained why he’s confident he can build a strong GOP primary campaign.

MAGA activists are increasingly unhappy with U.S. Senator Joni Ernst and looking for someone to run against her in Iowa’s 2026 Senate primary.

If conservatives aren’t able to stop Ernst from winning the nomination, they may have a place to park their protest votes in the general election. Libertarian Thomas Laehn again confirmed to Bleeding Heartland he’s seriously considering a Senate bid.