Michaelyn Mankel is an Iowa Organizer with Food & Water Action, the political and lobbying arm of the national environmental group Food & Water Watch. She is based in Des Moines.

Last month, the Iowa Utilities Board (renamed the Iowa Utilities Commission as of July 1) approved Summit Carbon Solutions’ permit application for a carbon pipeline. If built, their project would be the largest carbon pipeline in the world, crossing more than 2,000 miles across five states, including nearly 700 miles in Iowa.

The board issued its order as much of the pipeline’s Iowa route was underwater. Extreme flooding displaced hundreds of people, many of whom are under threat of eminent domain land-takings for the project. As Iowans return to their homes and the pipeline approval sinks in, one thing is clear: the fight to keep carbon pipelines out of this state is far from over.

Editor’s note from Laura Belin: This week Iowa wildflower Wednesday highlights the regal fritillary, an insect species that depends on plants native to the tallgrass prairie.

Kara Grady is a writer and plant enthusiast from eastern Iowa. Her work has been published by the Iowa Native Plant Society, Lyrical Iowa, Bleeding Heartland, and most recently by the Women, Food, & Agriculture Network. She currently lives and writes in northeast Ohio. 

With the 2024 presidential election looming large, I wanted to shift our focus to perhaps an even more serious candidacy. This candidate has lived in Iowa their whole life and is admired throughout the state. Its platform focuses on ecosystem restoration and insect education. It is one of the largest, most beautiful butterflies, whose host plant is an equally beautiful and common wildflower.

With all these credentials to its name, it may shock some people that to this day, the regal fritillary still hasn’t been named Iowa’s State Insect. There are many good reasons to do so.

Jared Strong is senior reporter for Iowa Capital Dispatch, where this article first appeared. Under a state law that took effect July 1, the Iowa Utilities Board was renamed the Iowa Utilities Commission.

Legislators, counties, conservation groups, and landowners have asked state regulators to reconsider their permit approval for an expansive carbon dioxide pipeline system in Iowa.

A total of eight motions were filed with the Iowa Utilities Commission in the past week before a procedural deadline on July 15, and they are likely precursors to lawsuits in state court.

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

In late June, six conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices overruled the Chevron doctrine in a case called Loper Bright v. Raimondo. The 40-year-old Chevron precedent had required courts to give deference to an administrative agency’s interpretation of the laws it administers and enforces.

This may sound like an issue only a lawyer would care about. But it has major implications for how government functions.

Kurt Meyer writes a weekly column for the Nora Springs – Rockford Register and the Substack newsletter Showing Up, where this essay first appeared. He served as chair of the executive committee (the equivalent of board chair) of Americans for Democratic Action, America’s most experienced liberal organization.

By the time you read this, I will have been in Washington D.C. to participate in the annual awards gathering of Americans for Democratic Action (ADA). I’ve attended these events for the last dozen years although, as for most organizations, the ADA get-together went “virtual” during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, it’s a hybrid, virtual/in-person event.

Americans for Democratic Action was founded in the aftermath of World War II by a distinguished group of progressives, led by Eleanor Roosevelt, Reinhold Niebuhr, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Walter Reuther, and Hubert Humphrey, then Minneapolis mayor. This gathering is special for me, for although I’ve introduced numerous honorees before, this year I received ADA’s “Timeless Liberal” award. 

Iowans Tamara Scott and Brad Sherman are among some 20 Republicans who signed an unofficial “minority report” on the abortion plank of the Republican National Committee’s platform.

Scott has represented Iowa as RNC committeewoman since 2012 and is the Iowa state director of Concerned Women for America. Sherman is a pastor and first-term member of the Iowa House. He voted for the near-total abortion ban Republican lawmakers approved in July 2023 (which will soon be enforced) and has co-sponsored even more extreme bills to prohibit abortion.

Loyalists to former President Donald Trump wrote the RNC’s new platform and rammed the draft through the National Republican Platform Committee using a closed process, with no subcommittee meetings, little time to review or debate the document, and no votes on proposed amendments. The abortion plank now reads:

What should have been an ordinary presidential campaign rally in Butler County, Pennsylvania turned into a horrifying scene on July 13. A man shot at Donald Trump from a nearby rooftop, killing one person and wounding several others, including the former president.

Iowa political leaders reacted quickly to the assassination attempt, and their comments reflected several distinct themes.

Steve Corbin is emeritus professor of marketing at the University of Northern Iowa and a freelance writer who receives no remuneration, funding, or endorsement from any for-profit business, nonprofit organization, political action committee, or political party. 

Psychological scientists who study human behavior concur that past actions are the best predictor of future behavior. If past actions caused no problem, then all is well. If, however, a person demonstrated poor behavior in the past, well, buckle up. The odds are very great the person will continue to perform poorly if given the chance.

Donald Trump’s past behavior on national defense indicates that if the 45th president becomes the 47th president, we’re in a heap of trouble. Americans must seriously examine Trump’s past national security endeavors before voting on November 5.

Declaring that “This election is bigger than any one person” and “the stakes are just too high,” first Congressional district nominee Christina Bohannan on July 11 called for President Joe Biden “to withdraw from this campaign and pass the torch to a new generation of leadership.”

The same day, the Democratic nominee in Iowa’s second Congressional district, Sarah Corkery, said the president should “pass the baton” to Vice President Kamala Harris.

Bohannan and Corkery were the first Iowa Democratic candidates to publicly endorse replacing the party’s presumptive presidential nominee. It’s a risky move that could appeal to independents who overwhelmingly disapprove of Biden’s job performance, but could also alienate the party faithful the challengers need to volunteer for and donate to their campaigns.

Readers often tell me they appreciate Bleeding Heartland’s wildflower series as a break from the stress of following political news and the negative energy of social media. I feel the same way when I browse the hundreds of lovely photographs in the Iowa wildflower Wednesday archive.

But for a truly peaceful experience, nothing beats spending time with wildflowers in the real world. When you are stuck indoors, spending a few minutes with Iowa wildflower videos can a pretty good substitute for wandering around natural habitat.

This post features some of my favorite Iowa wildflower videos by two of Bleeding Heartland’s occasional guest authors: Bruce Morrison and Katie Byerly. Their YouTube channels (Bruce Morrison and Iowa Prairie Girl) are delightful in their own ways.

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  

We’ve all heard these old adages. “You can’t force a round peg into a square hole.” “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.”

There are a lot of other things we shouldn’t try to force. We can’t force someone to think we’re handsome, beautiful, witty, or charming. We can’t force our kids to date or marry the one we choose, and we can’t force a sushi hater to love eating sushi.

In the U.S., we can’t force someone to believe in one brand of religion or any religion at all just because that’s what the majority believes or that’s what politicians think would make them more popular.

But It’s happening.

Clark Kauffman is deputy editor at Iowa Capital Dispatch, where this article first appeared.

The state of Iowa says it will not necessarily disclose to the public the rationale for disciplinary charges against licensed professionals such as physicians, nurses, therapists, and nursing home administrators.

The determining factor appears to be whether the state’s licensing boards choose to include the allegations within the text of a final order in a disciplinary case. If a board opts to omit those allegations from the final order, the public may never know what gave rise to the charges.

The result is that Iowa’s licensing boards are now, in some cases, keeping secret the alleged misconduct that is tied to charges of professional incompetence, ethical violations, patient abuse and even criminal convictions.

Nancy Dugan lives in Altoona, Iowa. Disclosure: Dugan has filed several objections into the Summit Carbon Iowa Utilities Board (since renamed Iowa Utilities Commission) dockets in opposition to the CO2 pipeline. She has neither sought nor received funding for her work. This is an opinion piece.

During a February 7 interview, North Dakota radio host Scott Hennen asked Bruce Rastetter to answer the following question posed by a listener: Can the carbon in CO2 be separated and just store the carbon?

A portion of Rastetter’s answer is transcribed below (emphasis added):

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

Do you remember that phrase our nation’s founders wrote in the preamble to the Constitution 237 years ago? The one about forming a more perfect union?

We have hit some speed bumps in that quest, a couple that would rattle your teeth. I wonder when, and how, or if, we are going to get back on the road.

Consider these potholes our nation has banged into recently:

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

My father is 95 years old, but you would never guess his age by watching him or talking to him. Unlike President Joe Biden. He shows his age, and like all presidents, has been aged by the job.

In the president’s recent CNN debate against Donald Trump, Biden shuffled to the stage like the elderly man he is. He often stumbled for a loss of words as he tried to recall accurate, real facts and statistics. 

I could relate; in school, having to memorize dates in history or speeches for English class, it wasn’t easy. Words did not always flow—and I wasn’t on national TV at the time. I wasn’t 81 years old. I didn’t have a lifelong stutter. I wasn’t debating for the soul of democracy. And I wasn’t debating against someone who doesn’t know how to engage in civil discourse.

UPDATE: A special district nominating convention selected Doug Campbell as the GOP candidate on August 19. Original post follows.

State Senator Waylon Brown announced on July 8 that he is resigning his Iowa Senate seat, effective July 10. Brown chairs the Iowa Senate Commerce Committee and has served as majority whip (the fourth-ranking position for Senate Republicans) since the 2023 legislative session. He was first elected to the legislature in 2016.

In a written statement, Brown touted various policy accomplishments but did not explain why he is stepping down. He said, “I look forward to my next chapter,” without indicating whether he has a new job lined up that would be incompatible with serving in the legislature. Bleeding Heartland’s efforts to reach Brown by phone and email were not successful. His campaign Facebook page was taken down the afternoon of July 8; no new content had been posted there since an appeal to voters on the day of the June 4 primary.

Although Iowa legislators occasionally resign during an election year—sometimes to accept a new job—it’s unusual for an incumbent to spend heavily on a tough primary campaign, then step down weeks after winning.

This column by Daniel G. Clark first appeared in the Muscatine Journal on January 10, 2024.

I braved slick roads to attend a Martin Luther King Day celebration in Iowa City at the historic Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Instead of the announced speaker, Professor Venise Berry who got stranded by weather, I got to hear a preacher whose name I didn’t know but whose face I thought I recognized.

Soon enough, I placed Orlando Ray Dial the instant he mentioned a recent communication with an unnamed (smile) Pulitzer Prize-winner former student. Of course! I had seen him on stage in Waterloo with journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, the Iowa native now famous for creating The 1619 Project, the controversial New York Times series turned anthology, curriculum, and TV documentary.

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.

For many, the current political climate seems to have taken a distinct turn. The media has been ablaze with U.S. Supreme Court decisions concerning the rights of kings—I mean presidents—in regard to the rule of law, as well as sweeping changes to how policy can be interpreted by different branches. The high court has also determined that prosecuting people for being homeless is not “cruel and unusual.”

Closer to home, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that people with uteruses are not full citizens, and after six weeks of pregnancy no longer have the same rights that non-uterus-having folks still maintain to control their own bodies.

This may seem like an onslaught of bad news, or at least noteworthy and worth paying some attention to. For the first time, many are becoming a bit more carefully tuned-in to the goings on and the headlines now that democracy and basic human rights are at a serious risk of being eroded away. Yes, democracy is under threat and yes we should all be paying attention.

However, for those of us who are tuned in to what the political Right has wanted since its existence as a pro-monarchist political realm, it is so clearly not new, it was a long time coming, and it is genuinely and utterly at the feet of the Republican Party and those who support them.  

Neal Schuster is the rabbi of Temple B’nai Jeshurun in Des Moines. This essay is the prepared version of remarks he delivered at a Shabbat service on June 28.

Well, let’s see – what’s in the news? What’s in the news?

Hmm, let’s see. Oh, there was an anti-Jewish pogrom outside of a synagogue in LA, with police in riot gear standing idly by for an hour while Jews were being blocked from shul, pepper-sprayed, and attacked in various ways.

Al Charlson is a North Central Iowa farm kid, lifelong Iowan, and retired bank trust officer. The Waverly newspaper group previously published a version of this commentary.

Based on the standard measures I learned to watch over 30 years as a trust officer, the U.S. economy is in good condition. We have completed seven straight quarters of real GDP growth. Corporate profits after taxes in the first quarter or 2024 were 6.4 percent higher than a year earlier. Monthly job growth remains strong, and unemployment has been 4 percent or lower every month since January 2022. 

In this economic environment, investment markets are favorable. Stock market indices are at or near record levels. Long-term bond yields have returned to rational levels, and certificate of deposit interest rates are the highest in years. My wife’s and my personal finances are also in good condition.