The flowers of this prairie inhabitant have eluded me for years. Fortunately, I have friends with better timing.

Leadplant (Amorpha canescens) is indigenous to most of the Midwest and plains states, but it’s not one of those native plants you’ll often see along the roadside, like ironweed.

Although leadplant (sometimes called lead plant) is not rare or threatened, I’ve only found it in good-quality prairies, where it “tends to grow in clumps.” The Illinois Wildflowers website validates my experience: “The presence of Leadplant is a sign of high quality habitat. Because of its deep roots, recovery from fire is very good.”

Speaking of which, the Friends of the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden website notes that “The alternate name ‘Devil’s Shoestrings’ comes from the deep roots which farmers were never able to plough out.” The more common name of leadplant comes from “the whitish or hoary color tinge from the fine leaf and stem hair.”

Herb Strentz was inspired by emails from President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign and recent writing by progressive rural organizer Matthew Hildreth. -promoted by Laura Belin

This post is for PATRIOTS ONLY and is not intended to be shared.

Pardon that opening; please go ahead and read and share, if you want. But the “for PATRIOTS ONLY” line occurs often in the six to ten emails I receive daily from the President Donald Trump, his relatives, and his re-election campaign.

Don’t know how I got on the mailing list — maybe a joke from a friend. But I thought I’d save the notes for a while to see if I could fashion something to share with Bleeding Heartland patriots.

Republican Secretary of State Paul Pate appears to be on a collision course with election administrators in Iowa’s second- and fourth-largest counties, which both lean Democratic.

Linn County Auditor Joel Miller and Johnson County Auditor Travis Weipert have proceeded with mailing absentee ballot request forms to every active registered voter in their jurisdictions, with voters’ information filled in. Miller’s office has nearly completed is mailing, and thousands of Linn County voters have already returned their forms. Weipert’s staff mailed the first batch of pre-filled absentee ballot request forms to Johnson County residents on July 27.

The same day, Pate’s staff attorney wrote to Miller and Weipert, asking dozens of questions about the mailings and demanding a broad array of relevant documents. Those letters sounded like the precursor to legal action.

Also on July 27, the lead attorney for the Republican National Committee asked Pate to take emergency action to block the Linn and Johnson County mailings and declare the forms invalid. His letter indicated that the national party may sue to stop Miller and Weipert from giving voters in their counties a supposedly “unconstitutional advantage in the November election.”

Eric Donat: “It’s important for inclusion to show people with disabilities in all possible roles – not just in disability-specific ones.” -promoted by Laura Belin

I’m excited to be part of the new leadership on The Iowa Democratic Party Disability Caucus as vice chair. I am Eric Donat of Waterloo and Black Hawk County.

I got my start in politics through advocacy training at the Center for Independent Living in Waterloo, Iowans with Disabilities in Action, and the Iowa Developmental Disabilities Council. Consumers at the center were connected to state legislators via our work on systems change advocacy.

Through being an advocate, I supported legislation making it easier for people with disabilities, particularly those using wheelchairs, to travel about in their communities. I also supported reorganizing Iowa’s counties into today’s mental health service regions. In addition, I advocated against privatizing Medicaid in Iowa.

More Iowans than ever participated in the 2020 primary, and the event changed some features of the Iowa electorate. For the first time in at least 20 years, people who choose not to affiliate with any party don’t comprise a plurality of registered voters. Democrats and Republicans both outnumber no-party voters now.

In other ways, the 529,586 Iowans who cast ballots in the June 2 election resembled past primary voters. For instance, nearly three-quarters of them were at least 50 years old, while about 13 percent were under age 35. Those proportions by age group are remarkably close to corresponding figures from the 2018 primary, when only 288,749 Iowans voted.

Follow me after the jump for a closer look at this year’s expanded voter universe by party, gender, and age.

Brian McLain of Ankeny was recently elected chair of the Iowa Democratic Party’s Progressive Caucus. -promoted by Laura Belin

As a leftist, finding a place to have your voice heard within the Democratic establishment has sometimes been challenging. The Iowa Democratic Party’s Progressive Caucus was created out of that need in 2016, and it has become my home in the party.

I have been involved and active in the caucus since its inception, and was recently honored to be elected to chair the group for the 2020-2022 term. I can say with little embellishment that my decision to run for Progressive Caucus chair was not taken lightly.

“We are owning our organization’s history and are committed to addressing the implicit bias and structural racism within our organization and communities,” Planned Parenthood North Central States declared on July 24, near the top of a statement denouncing racist and eugenicist ideas espoused by Margaret Sanger. Formed in 2018 when Planned Parenthood of the Heartland merged with a neighboring organization, the affiliate operates 29 clinics in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota.

Many who believe in Planned Parenthood’s mission–especially the white women who have been the majority of the organization’s volunteers in Iowa–know little about Sanger other than that she established the country’s first birth control clinic. Although I’m a third-generation supporter of Planned Parenthood in Iowa, I was ignorant about Sanger’s eugenicist views for much of my adult life. Those views were repugnant, and it’s important for reproductive rights advocates to be clear about rejecting them.

More than four months into the novel coronavirus pandemic, Governor Kim Reynolds and the Iowa Department of Public Health are finally acknowledging that slowing the spread of COVID-19 will require many more Iowans to routinely cover their faces in public.

Their “#StepUpMaskUpIA” campaign might have been more successful if state officials had pushed the message before reopening businesses and lifting other COVID-19 mitigation strategies in May and June. Instead, top officials waited until new coronavirus cases, hospitalizations, and deaths had been trending upward in Iowa for weeks.

Public health experts at the University of Iowa urged state leaders months ago to call for universal use of face coverings. But at her televised news conferences, Reynolds repeatedly asserted that expanded testing would allow the state to “manage” and “control” the virus. At the same events, the governor regularly portrayed face masks as something vulnerable Iowans might need, or a precaution people could bring with them in case they found themselves in a crowded setting.

As recently as last week, Reynolds was photographed in close proximity to others, with no one’s face covered. Even now, she refuses to delegate authority so local governments can issue enforceable mask orders.

Mary Weaver is an active citizen, rural health advocate, farm wife, mom, grandmother, retired nurse, and former administrator at the Iowa Department of Public Health. -promoted by Laura Belin

“We are living in an age when communication has achieved fabulous importance. There is a new decisive force in the human race, more powerful than all the tyrants. It is the force of massed thought–thought which has been provoked by words, strongly spoken.”

–Robert Sherwood, originator of the Voice of America 1939 

Lost in the ever-evolving news cycle was President Donald Trump’s recent appointment of Michael Pack as the new administrator of the United States Agency for Global Media. This appointment was quickly followed with the dissolution of the advisory boards of Middle East Broadcasting, Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and the Open Technology Fund.

U.S. Senator Joni Ernst told members of the Iowa Farmers Union in June that she’d prefer for fossil fuel companies not to be eligible for COVID-19 relief funds.

However, months earlier she was among only two farm state senators to sign a letter aimed at ensuring that oil, gas, and coal companies would have access to federal funding from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.

Iowa’s seven largest cities are spending more on policing per capita and a greater portion of their municipal budgets on law enforcement compared to the 1990s, according to a new report by the Iowa Policy Project. Over the same time period, spending on social services per capita and as a share of the municipal budget has declined in six of those cities.

Colin Gordon and Peter Fisher authored “Policing, public safety and community priorities,” published on July 22 (also available in pdf format). They examined budgets for the 24 Iowa cities with populations of at least 20,000, because “it is in our larger urban settings in Iowa that the problems with policing — including a well-documented pattern of disproportionate minority contact — are most acute.”

Seven of the cities studied are “metropolitan”: Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Davenport, Sioux City, Waterloo, Council Bluffs, and Dubuque. Seven are suburbs in large metro areas: West Des Moines, Ankeny, Urbandale, Bettendorf, Marion, Coralville, and Johnston. Three are college towns: Iowa City, Ames, and Cedar Falls. Seven are micropolitan cities: Mason City, Marshalltown, Clinton, Muscatine, Burlington, Fort Dodge, and Ottumwa.

Some wildflowers are show-stoppers, while others are easily overlooked. A small colony of Enchanter’s nightshade (Circaea lutetiana) has been growing near my home for many years, but I hardly noticed its blossoms until relatively recently. I learned to identify this plant just last fall, thanks to Leland Searles, a walking encyclopedia of Iowa flora.

Sometimes known as Broadleaf enchanter’s nightshade, this plant is native to most of the U.S. and Canada. If you spend time on wooded trails in the summer, you may have passed it many times without noticing. The plants are only one to two feet tall, and their flowers are tiny, one-eighth to one-fourth inch in diameter.

Enchanter’s nightshade thrives in dappled sunlight or shade. The Illinois Wildflowers website notes, “This is one of the woodland wildflowers that blooms during the summer in shaded areas. The flowers of such species are usually small, white, and not very showy.” The same site speculates, “This plant may be less abundant than in the past because of browsing by deer.”

I took most of the pictures enclosed below in Windsor Heights during the first week of July.

Sarah Zdenek is a Des Moines area educator who works in both virtual and in-person educational contexts. She also has children enrolled in Des Moines Public Schools. -promoted by Laura Belin

Governor Kim Reynolds proclaimed on July 17 that Iowa students must return to schools for in-person learning for at least 50 percent of the time. Her plan fails to address the facts in evidence as to the level of safety and preparedness of our public and accredited private schools. It also fails at basic math.

Some 63,245 absentee ballot request forms are en route to Linn County residents, with voters’ names, birth dates, addresses, and personal identification numbers filled in. Joel Miller, the top elections official in Iowa’s second-largest county, supervised the delivery of envelopes containing the forms to the U.S. Postal Service Bulk Mail Center in Cedar Rapids on the afternoon of July 20, he told Bleeding Heartland.

Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate and Republican lawmakers moved on July 17 to block Democratic county auditors from sending pre-filled absentee ballot request forms. However, Miller said his research indicated neither Pate nor state lawmakers had the legal authority to stop his mailing. The Secretary of State’s office did not file for an injunction or serve notice of any impending lawsuit.

Postage for the first installment of Linn County’s mailing will cost $24,412.57, according to Miller. But pre-filling the forms will save his office a significant amount of staff time, as fewer forms will come back incomplete or with the wrong voter PIN.

This project started with the goal of clearing up some confusion surrounding Iowa’s novel coronavirus (COVID-19) death statistics.

Specifically, I wanted to debunk a conspiracy theory making the rounds on Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit.

I also planned to explain why the number of deaths for a given day on the state’s official website (coronavirus.iowa.gov) didn’t always match the number of new deaths that had been announced on that date. Many readers had asked about the discrepancy.

I was almost ready to publish in early July, but I needed to nail down one detail. Did the total fatalities on the state website (793 at this writing) reflect all of what the U.S. Centers for Disease Control describes as “multiple cause” COVID-19 deaths, or only what the CDC labels “underlying cause” deaths?

After asking that question more than half a dozen times over two and a half weeks, I still haven’t received an answer. So much for the Iowa Department of Public Health’s supposed “transparency” and “constant communication with media” on the pandemic.

Dan Guild continues to explore parallels between this year’s presidential campaign and what unfolded 40 years ago. -promoted by Laura Belin

I wrote in April that President Donald Trump was on the same path that led to the wholesale rejection of Jimmy Carter and the Democratic Party in 1980. With each passing day the similarities become stronger.  

U.S. Senate seats once considered safe for Republicans, like Iowa’s, are now dead heats. States that shifted to the Republicans in 2016 (Pennsylvania, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio) have moved decisively toward the Democrats. Texas is in play, and this week saw a very good pollster find Joe Biden with a 13-point lead in Pennsylvania.

Two enormous events–the Black Lives Matter protests and the COVID-19 crisis–have upended American politics, just as an oil crisis and a hostage crisis upended politics in 1980. Events seem out of control, as they did in 1980, and like then, the president seems completely out of his depth.

Herb Strentz was dean of the Drake School of Journalism from 1975 to 1988 and professor there until retirement in 2004. -promoted by Laura Belin

After almost 60 years of coping with the concept of “objectivity” in journalism, it finally dawned on me that a key problem is a lot of folks are not objective in discussing “objectivity.”

Consider: The New Yorker magazine offered a 2,026-word essay on why the concept of “moral clarity” might replace “objectivity” in assessing press coverage. The Economist magazine followed a week or so afterward with a 1,530 word essay on today’s status of “objectivity.”

But in those 3,500 words — get this — “Fox” or “Fox News” is nowhere to be found.

Dave O’Connor teaches at Merrill Middle School in Des Moines -promoted by Laura Belin

Governor Kim Reynolds’ Return to Learn proclamation, announced on July 17, was disheartening and disingenuous to Iowans, especially local education leaders who had already spent thousands of hours working on their district’s plans. It is causing anxiety among many groups of Iowans.

Many teachers and school administrators were made to feel powerless by the proclamation. I certainly felt that way as I watched the press conference unfold. But we are not powerless. We still have voices, pens, and keyboards that allow us to speak truth to such arbitrary and dangerous use of power. This piece seeks to do just that, by delving into the science and data the governor claims to have based her new policy upon.

Randy Richardson: Governor Kim Reynolds’ latest proclamation appears to override all of the work done by school districts and strikes at the very heart of our long tradition of local control of school districts. -promoted by Laura Belin

Usually when an elected leader holds a press conference to offer additional guidance on a topic, everyone leaves with a deeper understanding of the issue. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case following Governor Kim Reynolds’ July 17 press conference on students returning to school amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Instead, we got a new interpretation of a law that went into effect on July 1, which runs counter to much of the work schools have been doing.

Following the press conference, the governor released a proclamation that limits the ability of both public and private schools to offer remote learning and which loosens the current requirements on the qualifications for substitute teachers.

Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate kept quiet for weeks.

He said nothing in public as Republican lawmakers sought to stop him from taking steps that contributed to record-breaking turnout in Iowa’s primary election.

He said nothing when legislators agreed to allow him to exercise emergency powers over an election only with approval from the GOP-dominated Legislative Council.

He had no public comment when Governor Kim Reynolds signed that bill.

Nor did he react when Republicans on the Legislative Council voted down a Democratic motion to let the secretary of state send absentee ballot request forms to all registered Iowa voters before the November election.

Pate’s staff did not respond to journalists’ inquiries about whether he would attempt to send a universal absentee request mailing this fall.

The secretary of state finally broke his silence on July 16 with a written proposal to mail every active registered Iowa voter an absentee ballot request form. But that’s not all. Pate’s also seeking to stop county auditors from making it easier for their constituents to return complete and accurate requests for absentee ballots.

Republicans on the Legislative Council will surely approve Pate’s request when they meet on July 17. But it’s not clear the secretary of state has the legal authority to limit what county auditors send voters.