Zachary Roth is the national democracy reporter for States Newsroom. Jared Strong is senior reporter for Iowa Capital Dispatch, where this article first appeared.

Iowa’s health department is failing to comply with the federal requirement to make voter registration accessible to people applying for Medicaid, multiple advocates say, likely leading significant numbers of low-income Iowans to be left off the rolls.

“I would regard this as major noncompliance with an agency’s obligations under the NVRA,” said Brenda Wright, special litigation and policy counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. She was referring to the National Voter Registration Act, the 1993 law that requires state agencies to offer their clients the chance to register to vote. 

The concerns come at a time when Iowa already appears to be struggling to get people on public assistance to register, and as the 2024 election approaches.

Photo of happy farmer by Serg Grbanoff, available via Shutterstock.

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.

America Needs Farmers.

This statement has become a cultural touchstone. It became popular during the 1980s farm crisis, as a way to raise awareness of the difficulties suffered in the Midwest agricultural industry.

This phrase and branding has seen a bit of a renaissance in the past decade—featured on bumper stickers, commercials, apparel branding, and even partnerships with major universities like the University of Iowa.

America Needs Farmers, or “ANF,” has become less of a slogan for awareness, and more a brand or identity that Midwesterners tout alongside Carhartt or John Deere. The slogan is now almost synonymous with the Iowa Hawkeyes and rural farming, and is controlled by the Iowa Farm Bureau, a 501(c)5 organization representing farmers across Iowa.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis suspended his presidential campaign in humiliating fashion on January 21, endorsing the man who had taunted and mocked “DeSanctimonious” for months.

Many political reporters have written about what went wrong for DeSantis, who ended up fighting for second place in Iowa after his team and allied super PACs spent at least $150 million and landed coveted endorsements. I wrote my own Iowa obituary for the Florida governor’s campaign shortly before the caucuses.

But make no mistake: despite gaining only 23,420 votes here last week, the DeSantis approach to politics left its mark on Iowa. While Governor Kim Reynolds formally endorsed her friend less than three months ago, she’s been copying his leadership style for years, hurting many vulnerable Iowans in the process.

State Representative Elizabeth Wilson is a Democrat representing Iowa House district 73, covering most of Marion in Linn County.

To move our state forward, Iowa needs a leader in Washington who shares our values.

As a single mom of four boys, Melissa understands the economic struggles many Iowans face. We need a leader who understands personally what it’s like to face and overcome adversity. Take it from me: Melissa does. 

Nancy Dugan lives in Altoona, Iowa and has worked as an online editor for the past 12 years.

North Dakota officials were pulling no punches during an informational session held in Bismarck last month, highlighting the importance of the Summit Carbon pipeline to both the sustainable aviation fuel market and enhanced oil recovery efforts in the Bakken.

During a December 20, 2023, BEK TV special report that broadcast a Friends of Ag and Energy public information session on the Summit Carbon pipeline, held at Bismarck State College’s National Energy Center of Excellence, Governor Doug Burgum said, “Sustainable aviation fuel, if you want to call it the Saudi Arabia of sustainable aviation fuel, it’s going to happen somewhere between North Dakota and Iowa and in between, the corn belt.”

Kathleen Neset, a geologist and owner of Neset Consulting Service Inc. who moderated the panel, spoke after Burgum, stating the following at the outset:

Photo by Julie Gammack of an Iowa Democratic caucus on the south side of Des Moines, January 15, 2024. Published with permission.

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

The Facebook message came in late Monday morning. “Just wondering if you are going to your caucus tonight. I’m worried that there will only be a few people there. Nobody seems interested this year in the Dem caucus.”

My friend, who lives 200 miles distant, began this exchange by noting a recent column I had written. I respond, “Yes, you bet I’m going. Sometimes we send important messages simply by showing up, which is why I named my column such.” 

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

The increasing secrecy by Iowa law enforcement and their lawyers about identifying people by name raises important questions underlying public confidence in the critical work of first-responders.

The question deals with whether police can or should refuse to identify persons involved in incidents and crimes. Despite Iowa’s history of openness about crimes and accidents, with increasing frequency public officials refuse to provide names of people who end up in these events, whether as victims or perpetrators.

A few examples illustrate this trend:

“The First Amendment prohibits government officials from arbitrarily denying reporters access to official information, and from discriminating against reporters based on their viewpoint,” declares a federal lawsuit filed on my behalf on January 19. Yet since 2019, the Iowa House Chief Clerk “has arbitrarily applied an ever-shifting credentialing system” to limit my “ability to gather and report political news” from the Iowa House chamber.

The Institute for Free Speech filed the suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa, making four claims under the U.S. Constitution. First, by denying me access to the Iowa House press bench, where other statehouse reporters can closely observe House debate and attend regular briefings by House Speaker Pat Grassley, Chief Clerk Meghan Nelson is violating my First Amendment rights of free speech and freedom of the press.

Second, the complaint also states that Nelson’s policy, limiting access to reporters who provide “nonpartisan news to a broad segment of the public,” amounts to unconstitutional content-based and viewpoint-based discrimination, on its face and as applied to me.

Third, Nelson’s press credential policy “constitutes a prior restraint in violation of the First Amendment.” Chief Clerk Nelson has “unbridled discretion” to grant reporters access to the House press box, and “relies on the undefined, broad terms of the credential policy to subjectively exclude news media and deprive them of the ability to gather news in a manner equal to that afforded to other media representatives.”

Finally, the suit asserts that the press credential policy is vague in violation of my “First Amendment rights to free speech and press and Fourteenth Amendment right to due process.”

Governor Kim Reynolds delivers the Condition of the State address on January 9, 2024. Photo by Zach Boyden-Holmes/The Des Moines Register (pool).

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 love surprises when we anticipate they’ll be positive. But we dread the surprise of a car not starting on a subzero morning, a call at 2 a.m. from a loved one crying, or a doctor’s hushed prognosis. We laugh when people jump out at a party shouting surprise because we know we’re safe. But we scream if a group jumps out surprising us while we’re on a midnight walk.

Governor Kim Reynolds’ Condition of the State speech last week was a scary surprise party for public educators and parents.

This column by Daniel G. Clark first appeared in the Muscatine Journal on July 19, 2023. Above: Lee Greenway in 1909. (Oscar Grossheim Collection of Musser Public Library, Muscatine)

The Civil War-era “Whiteway” building stands in a prime location we call Carver Corner today.

Muscatine Journal, March 12, 1919: “The White Way hotel will probably be the name of Muscatine’s newest hostelry, which will be opened within the next ten days at the corner of Hershey avenue and Green street.”

“The Appel building, a three-story brick structure, has been remodeled and changed into a modern hotel and rooming house. Fifteen apartments, some only one room, and some of two and three, have been fitted up. The first floor will be the hotel lobby and a spacious dining-room, while the two upper floors will be sleeping rooms.”

Screenshot of President Donald Trump and Governor Kim Reynolds at a rally in Des Moines on January 30, 2020

“I would say with a great deal of confidence that Kim Reynolds is the only person in the state of Iowa that could be a king or a queenmaker,” Republican Party of Iowa state chair Jeff Kaufmann told the Des Moines Register last February. “There’s a lot of people who like to cast themselves as kingmaker because it helps them to push their organizations, but she’s the only one that could be.”

Wrong.

Governor Reynolds spent much of the last two months campaigning for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and starred in a tv ad on his behalf. Yet her backing didn’t move the needle; polls showed support for DeSantis between the mid-teens and low 20s in Iowa for the last six months. As expected, he finished about 30 points behind former President Donald Trump at the January 15 caucuses.

DeSantis did eke out a second-place finish with 21.2 percent of the vote, about 2 points ahead of Nikki Haley. But that more likely stemmed from the Never Back Down super PAC’s extensive field operation, which was superior to what Americans for Prosperity Action delivered for Haley.

Reynolds should have known it was far too late to convince the GOP base to abandon Trump. She’d avoided offending his fans for years.

Continental Resources executive chairman Harold Hamm, center right, is surrounded by Summit representatives during a December 21, 2023 hearing of the North Dakota Public Service Commission. From left to right are Summit Carbon’s general counsel Jess Vilsack; Summit Carbon CEO Lee Blank; Summit Carbon COO James “Jimmy” Powell (seated in the row behind the others); North Dakota Petroleum Council president Ron Ness; Hamm; and Summit Agricultural Group CEO Justin Kirchhoff. (Photo by Kyle Martin, published with permission)

Nancy Dugan lives in Altoona, Iowa and has worked as an online editor for the past 12 years.

While billionaire wildcatter and Summit Carbon Solutions investor Harold Hamm appears to be hedging his bets, Bruce Rastetter, founder of Summit Agricultural Group, which launched the CO2 pipeline project, announced his support for Donald Trump during a Bloomberg News roundtable on January 13 in Des Moines. A Summit Agricultural Group news release also announced the endorsement, which came just two days before Trump’s decisive caucus victory in Iowa.

Meanwhile, Trump lambasted former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, a vocal opponent of using eminent domain to build the Summit Carbon pipeline, in a January 13 post on his Truth Social platform. Trump declared Ramaswamy “not MAGA” and accused him of using “deceitful campaign tricks.” It was the first time the front-runner publicly criticized Ramaswamy, who ended his campaign and endorsed Trump immediately following the Iowa caucuses on January 15.

Donald Trump speaks at a rally in Indianola on January 14; screenshot from C-SPAN video

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

As the Iowa caucuses approached, the state faced another day of subzero weather with wind chills reaching 30 below. The weather seemed fitting, since the Republican front-runner, Donald Trump, is as cold-hearted as ice. He was the clear favorite to win in Iowa, and took 51 percent of the votes to prevail by a record margin.

I’m not sure how long we can excuse Iowans for voting for Trump, after he mocked a disabled reporter, separated children from families at the border, said immigrant blood was poisoning our country, and enabled millions of Americans to die due to his ineffective response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Not to mention his habit of inciting violence and bringing out the racist beliefs in others, masterminding a coup to subvert the peaceful transfer of power, and so on. 

Presidential candidate Nikki Haley speaks at the Des Moines Register Soapbox at the Iowa State Fair on August 12, 2023. Photo by Juli Hansen, available via Shutterstock.

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.

From an article I wrote for Bleeding Heartland four years ago: “Of all the Alice-through-the-looking-glass parts of the American political system, the one I have been completely unable to explain to foreigners are expectations and the Iowa caucuses.”

It usually goes something like this:

Sane person from another country: “Candidate X won”

Pundit: “Well, not really”

Sane person from another country: “But they got more votes”

Pundit: “But they were expected to win by 10 and they only won by 3, so they lost”

Sane person from another country: “That makes no sense. So who won? The person who came in second?”

Pundit person: “No, they got about what they expected. No, the clear winner is the candidate who finished third. There is no doubt they won.”

This Catch-22 aspect of primaries is absurd. But make no mistake: it matters, a lot.

In 2020 I developed a model to predict the effect of the Iowa caucuses on New Hampshire and national polling. A lot of that discussion focused on what happens when front-runners lose. But Trump will not lose tonight.

This chart shows the history.

I want to highlight two numbers:

First: when a Republican front-runner wins the Iowa caucuses, on average they get about a 1.3 percent bounce in New Hampshire in the 48 hours after Iowa.

Oddly, the candidate in second place in Iowa gains 4.3 percent in New Hampshire. Perhaps the best example was in 2000, when George W. Bush won the Iowa caucuses with more than 40 percent of the vote, but saw his New Hampshire polling change not at all.

On the other hand, look at the Democratic race in 1984: Walter Mondale won by one of the largest margins in a multi-candidate race in Iowa caucus history. Yet within 48 hours, Gary Hart (who lost Iowa by more than 20 points) had gained 16 points in New Hampshire!

I have updated the model, and you can find it here.

As a what-if, I made a project based on two assumptions:

1. Haley finishes second tonight with 24 percent of the vote, and
2. Haley goes on to win New Hampshire by 5 points

The model predicts Trump’s national lead would be cut significantly.

Both of the assumptions are well within the realm of possibility—but very much depend on what transpires in the next six hours.

This post will be updated once the Iowa caucus results are known.

Republican voters gather for their precinct caucus in West Des Moines on February 1, 2016. Photo by K. Farabaugh/VOA, available via Wikimedia Commons.

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.

Recently, someone suggested that I attend a Republican caucus on January 15 in order to vote for someone other than Donald Trump. Their suggestion was born out of a sincere fear that should Trump win the Republican nomination and general election, it would mark the end of democracy in the United States as we know it—a fear I wholeheartedly share.

Now you may ask: How can I, a devout and registered Democrat, vote in a Republican caucus? Actually, it is quite easy. All one need do is show up at the caucus site and register that night as a Republican.

In fact, I have done so in the past, but for different reasons.

Michael Giudicessi recently retired from the private practice of law. He now serves in a volunteer capacity as legal counsel for the Iowa Freedom of Information Council.

January 15, 2024

Dear Ernest,

We’ve never met.

But, apparently because our last names are similar—though not the same—email perhaps targeted for you ended up in my junk box.

It’s cold here in Iowa today, and with no U.S. Mail arriving due to the MLK holiday, I have been passing the time by reading a few selections that my computer marked as junk.

That’s how I know you may have missed the news from Ted Cruz.

He wrote today (through the National Republican Senatorial Committee) to say his “new book, Unwoke, is all about how the woke mind virus took over America and what conservatives can do to stop it from spreading further.”

Edmund Muskie, left; Gary Hart, right

Arnold Garson is a semi-retired journalist and executive who worked for 46 years in the newspaper industry, including almost 20 years at The Des Moines Register. He writes the Substack newsletter Second Thoughts, where this article first appeared.

Iowa has been America’s biggest stage for launching presidential campaigns for more than a half-century.

Virtually every presidential election since 1972 has been impacted by what happened in Iowa in January of an election year. During this period, scores of men and women who have wanted to become president of the United States have campaigned extensively in Iowa. They have been on the ground shaking hands in all 99 counties and spent tens of millions of dollars on lodging, transportation, meals, advertising, and more in the state.

It all began in the late 1960s, as America became sharply divided over the rapidly escalating war in Vietnam. As American casualties mounted, the passion among those who favored the war and those who opposed it grew in intensity.

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 released her final pre-caucus Iowa Poll for the Des Moines Register, NBC News, and Mediacom on January 13. Those who closely follow the caucuses know Selzer & Co has been amazingly accurate most of the time. But perhaps the biggest news out of the latest survey is how little news there is in it.

As the table below shows, the last Selzer poll was a little different from other Iowa polls released over the past two months. The stability here is incredible. But given the timidity Trump’s rivals have displayed, maybe that is not surprising.

That said, as I will discuss below, a shocking amount of volatility exists beneath the surface.

For once, I don’t have to write a whole Iowa caucus series explaining the complexities of delegate allocations or the viability threshold. Democratic caucus-goers won’t spend ages counting, realigning, or complaining about how the math worked out.

The 2024 Iowa Democratic caucuses should be drama-free affairs that wrap up in an hour or less.

While the Republican gatherings on January 15 will generate more excitement and suspense as attendees wait to find out who finished a distant second to Donald Trump, Democrats who brave the cold can expect a smaller and friendlier local meeting.

Photo by Lev Radin, taken during the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, available via Shutterstock.

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.

Instead of “beware the Ides of March,” maybe we should beware the Ides of January. For as a soothsayer warned Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar of impending assassination and the end of empire—driven by the supposed effect of the full moon on human affairs in the middle of the month—we should beware the Iowa GOP caucuses, which may herald the onset of a second Donald Trump presidency.

In what would resemble an early Halloween prank upon our nation, Iowa may boost Trump’s candidacy, to the detriment of our democracy.