Sam Stockard and Anita Wadhwani report for the Tennessee Lookout, which is is part of the States Newsroom network. This article first appeared at Iowa Capital Dispatch.

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird is among a coalition warning the nation’s largest companies—many of which have diversity and equity programs—they could face legal action for using race-based policies.

A July 13 letter from Bird and twelve other attorneys general put Fortune 100 companies on notice they could be hit with legal action for violating the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. President & Fellows of Harvard College, which put an end to using race as a basis for admitting students to college. The attorneys general are targeting hiring and contracting too.

Iowans face more threats to their reproductive freedom now than at any time in the past 50 years.

After Governor Kim Reynolds signs House File 732 on July 14, restrictions that would prohibit an estimated 98 percent of abortions will go into effect immediately. Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, the Emma Goldman Clinic, and the ACLU of Iowa have already filed a lawsuit, but there is no guarantee courts will block the law temporarily or permanently, once the case reaches the Iowa Supreme Court.

During a large rally at the capitol on July 11, many pro-choice advocates chanted “Vote them out!” State Senator Sarah Trone Garriott recalled that being present when Iowa Republicans approved a near-total abortion ban in 2018 inspired her to run for office. Organizing and volunteering for candidates who will defend reproductive rights will clearly be an essential task. And if Iowa Republican lawmakers put a constitutional amendment about abortion on the ballot next year, we’ll need all hands on deck to defeat it.

That said, you don’t need to wait until 2024 to help others avoid being forced to continue a pregnancy. So I’m updating this post with some concrete steps people can take today—or any day—to preserve abortion access in Iowa.

Janice Weiner is a Democratic state senator representing Iowa City and a member of the Iowa Senate State Government Committee, where Republicans ran the bill that received final approval as House File 732.

During the time-limited debate on Iowa’s six-week abortion ban on July 11, the Iowa Senate—predictably—ran out of time. You can’t say everything that truly needs to be said, argue all the inaccuracies and vague language and failures and exceptions that sound good on paper but have shown themselves, across this country, to be paper tigers, in a matter of hours.

One important argument that fell on the “time certain” cutting room floor: freedom of religion. I’ve reorganized the freedom of religion portion of my constitutional arguments speech into this article.

Tracy Jones is a progressive political activist in Davenport. These comments are a longer version of testimony she delivered at an Iowa House public hearing on July 11 (see video below). She is pictured here on the left, speaking to State Representative Luana Stoltenberg.

In the spring of 1972, my mom was a pregnant 32-year-old with three young children. My sister was eleven years old, my brother was eight, and I was fifteen months old. Our mom had just experienced the collapse of her second marriage, and her pregnancy was not my dad’s.

I can only imagine the shame, fear and guilt that must have clung to her. Our mom was raised in a conservative and religious household. I’m certain an abortion wasn’t the first thing on her mind, but she knew her medical history. She had difficult pregnancies and suffered from severe preeclampsia with each.

As the pregnancy progressed, it became clear that this would be the pregnancy that would kill her. She needed an abortion but was living in a state where it wasn’t legal.

Bruce Morrison is a working artist and photographer living with his wife Georgeann in rural southeast O’Brien County, Iowa. Bruce works from his studio/gallery–a renovated late 1920s brooding house/sheep barn. You can follow Morrison on his artist blog, Prairie Hill Farm Studio, or visit his website at Morrison’s studio.

Wild Four-O’Clocks (Mirabilis nyctaginea) are from the Four-O’Clock family (Nyctaginaceae). This perennial native plant is common throughout Iowa, and sources describe it as preferring drier conditions and soil, particularly disturbed sites. All of our pasture populations in southeast O’Brien County are along the fence line next to the gravel road that borders our pastures and acreage.

Writing under the handle “Bronxiniowa,” Ira Lacher, who actually hails from the Bronx, New York, is a longtime journalism, marketing, and public relations professional.

If you’re reading this on Wednesday, July 12, you will likely find that Iowa has a new law prohibiting abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the nation. Legislators met in special session on July 11 so that Republicans could send this bill to Governor Kim Reynolds by cover of night for her to sign. Which made Tuesday’s protest at the Iowa capitol pretty much confined to letting off steam.

And steam they did. The steam was so thick, you couldn’t cut it with a chainsaw.

But what did it prove? Informal talks with folks on both sides—those carrying signs reading “No Bans,” as well as those carrying signs reading “No Murder”—only illustrated that the special session accomplished exactly what Reynolds and the Republicans wanted: to elevate the rhetoric on both sides to show the state and national media that only those in power can accomplish their aims, and rational discussion is impossible.

Walking amid the roaring crowds on the first floor, it was quite clear that strategy was working.

Julie Russell-Steuart is a printmaker and activist who chairs the Iowa Democratic Party’s Disability Caucus. The Iowa legislature convenes on July 11 for a special session to pass a near-total abortion ban.

The disability community is one of the most impacted by the harmful and egregious proposed abortion ban. People with disabilities are more likely to have medical reasons to have an abortion that do not fit into any of the exemptions. Our medications can interfere with a successful pregnancy. We may not be physically able to carry a fetus to term, and the bill unfairly assigns that determination to medical provider, which will no doubt lead to inconsistent and life-threatening results for people with disabilities.

Like the 2018 law, the new bill contains no exception for emotional or psychological conditions or disabilities that can affect someone’s readiness to have a child—often a painful, careful personal decision. Its definition of “medical emergency” specifically excludes “the woman’s age” and “familial conditions” like access to a supportive environment in which to raise a child, or size of family.

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.    

More than a year has passed since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Roe v Wade and Casey precedents, stripping women of a right they’d had for nearly 50 years to make their own reproductive health-care decisions. The Dobbs v. Jackson decision has affected American lives in many ways, and had some surprising consequences.

For the first time ever, a majority of Americans say abortion is morally acceptable and recent abortion laws are too strict.

For the first time in two decades, more people identify as “pro-choice” versus “pro-life.”

Bernard L. Spaeth, Jr. is chair of the Iowa State Committee of the American College of Trial Lawyers.

The Iowa State Committee of the American College of Trial Lawyers condemns impeachment threats made against Iowa Supreme Court Chief Justice Susan Christensen and Justices Thomas Waterman and Edward Mansfield arising from their decision in Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, et al, v. Reynolds, No. 22-2036 (Iowa Supreme Court, June 16, 2023).

The justices voted to uphold a lower court decision that refused to vacate a four-year old injunction against the 2018 fetal heartbeat bill without new abortion legislation. The Sunday Des Moines Register on July 2 included a guest column from Bob Vander Plaats who argued their judicial act constitutes a “misdemeanor or malfeasance in office” under the Iowa constitution allowing the legislature to impeach and remove them. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Patrick Muller is a visual artist living in Hills (Johnson County).

Multiple times a year, teenage athletes from all corners of the state roll into a dedicated tournament venue to showcase their talents and compete for trophies. While forming a sports conclave, these individuals and teams also represent schools and towns. These competitions, then, have the additional potential to be meetings of minds and substrates for community building. When, for instance, Audobon, Bloomfield, Cascade, and Milford contestants meet, why not use that occasion for a pop-up chautauqua, learning commons, or consideration cafe?

While students are heaving a discus or passing the baton, individuals from their schools and towns could get together to share, on a variety of topics, best practices and approaches to opportunities and challenges; learn; network; and even sketch out some multi-community collaborations.

Truly, after nearly a century of championships in some sports, one has to wonder why these affairs are still merely ephemeral, insular, ostensibly single-purposed. 

July seems early for Iowa caucus dirty tricks, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

As most polls show former President Donald Trump with a comfortable lead among Republicans in Iowa and nationwide, a mailing sent to some Iowa households this weekend purports to thank Trump “for standing up for LGBTQ+ rights!”

An Iowa reader provided the following images.

Randy Richardson is a former educator and retired associate executive director of the Iowa State Education Association.

Governor Kim Reynolds and the Republican-controlled legislature agreed to a budget that allocated $107 million in fiscal year 2024 to pay for private school vouchers for an estimated 14,068 students. But the number of Iowans who applied for “education savings accounts” vastly exceeded that number: 29,025 applications by the June 30 deadline.

The good folks at the nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency, who usually do an excellent job of forecasting costs, calculated the original estimate. However, when the actual number is more than double your forecast, something is off somewhere.

In a textbook case of “too little, too late,” the Iowa Board of Medicine appeared to move on July 3 to stop a physician who was recently charged with sexual abuse of a child.

The board did not disclose the name of the physician at the center of “an agreement not to practice,” approved by unanimous vote after an hour-long, closed-session discussion. But the meeting was widely believed to pertain to Dr. Lynn Lindaman.

The Department of Public Safety announced Lindaman’s arrest on June 28. Charging documents accuse him of touching the “privates” of a child born in 2015, first over the child’s clothing and the next day through “skin to skin contact.”

Late last week, the Board of Medicine revealed plans to discuss an agreement with an unnamed physician at a virtual meeting set for 5:30 pm on July 3. The pre-holiday dump is a well-known government tactic for keeping bad or embarrassing news from reaching a wide audience.

It’s not the first time Lindaman has been charged with this kind of crime. A jury determined in 1976 that he had committed “lascivious acts” with a 13-year-old child. Sherri Moler, the victim in that case, had “pleaded and begged” many times for the Iowa Board of Medicine to stop Lindaman and other abusers from practicing. Board members didn’t listen. Neither Governor Kim Reynolds nor the Republican-controlled legislature demanded action.

Governor Kim Reynolds has appointed Emily Wharton to remain in charge at the Iowa Department for the Blind, effective July 1. Wharton has worked for the agency since 2013 and has served as its director since 2016.

NEW POWER FOR THE GOVERNOR

For generations, the Iowa Commission for the Blind (a three-member body appointed by the governor) had the authority to hire and fire the agency director. But Reynolds’ plan to restructure state government, which Republican lawmakers approved in March, gave that power to the governor.

The change was consistent with language giving Reynolds direct control over several other agency leaders not already serving “at the pleasure of the governor.” But that idea didn’t come from the outside consultant’s report on realigning Iowa government, commissioned by the Reynolds administration at a cost of $994,000. Blind Iowans turned out in large numbeers for state House and Senate subcommittee hearings on the bill and uniformly spoke against the proposal.

UPDATE: The bill text was published on the legislature’s website on July 7. It closely matches the 2018 law, which would ban most abortions after fetal cardiac activity can be detected. Original post follows.

Governor Kim Reynolds has called a special session of the Iowa legislature for July 11, “with the sole purpose of enacting” new abortion restrictions. The move suggests Republicans will approve something comparable to the 2018 law that would ban almost all abortions after about six weeks, with very limited exceptions, rather than a total ban preferred by some GOP lawmakers.

The Iowa Senate approved the 2018 abortion ban along party lines. Of the six Iowa House Republicans who voted against that legislation, only one (State Representative Jane Bloomingdale) still serves in the legislature. Most of the 64 current House Republicans had not yet been elected to the body during the 2018 session. However, I expect nearly all of them will support a six-week ban, as will their Senate GOP colleagues.

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

The many soft blue flowers shining through the green on the forest floor in early spring just might be a lovely native spring blooming perennial you don’t want to miss: Spreading Jacob’s Ladder (Polemonium reptans).

In Iowa, its common name is just Jacob’s Ladder, as it is the only species of the Polemonium genus native to this state. It also has common names of Greek Valerian and Creeping Polemonium. The Polemonium genus is a member of the Phlox family. The Greek Valerian name is a transfer of a name used for a similar plant in the Polemonium genus in England by Europeans in the Americas.

The name Jacob’s Ladder refers to the leaves. Early Europeans believed they resembled Jacob’s Ladder in the biblical story of Jacob’s dream about a ladder leading to heaven. Though that may be a bit over the top, the little plant is “heavenly,” and the common name has stuck for this species and another two members of the Polemonium genus.

Janice Weiner is a Democratic state senator representing Iowa City and a member of the Iowa Senate Judiciary Committee.

With the ink barely dry on the Iowa Supreme Court’s split decision on the 6-week abortion ban, the Iowa legislature already seems headed for a special session.

For perspective, the ban that has been permanently enjoined passed in 2018, in a very different legal environment. All Republicans who voted for it knew it was unconstitutional and would never go into effect. It was a political nod to the extremists in their base.

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

My late friend Paul was a fine Des Moines teacher. I wish the Evans girls had him for history and government. 

Judging from his ability to entertain me with descriptions of his interactions with students, parents and administrators, I am confident he could make the Peloponnesian War come alive for his history students and hold their attention.

If I live to be 100, I will never forget him relating anecdotes from parent-teacher conferences. He described one student sitting next to Mom, listening as Paul expressed concern about the kid’s sluggishness many mornings.

Then came the money quote: “You know the rules!” Mom exclaimed, looking her son in the eyes. “There’s no marijuana use on school nights!”

Writing under the handle “Bronxiniowa,” Ira Lacher, who actually hails from the Bronx, New York, is a longtime journalism, marketing, and public relations professional.

Bringing in my 7-year-old Windows laptop to the repair shop—I confess I hold on to my computers as long as I hold on to my cars—made me think about how America is like a PC.

PCs, based on the Microsoft Windows operating system, are greater than the sum of their parts: a box made by manufacturer A, a motherboard from manufacturer B, a hard drive from manufacturer C, a power source from manufacturer D, and so on.

Similarly, America was pieced together as a conglomeration: 13 semi-autonomous colonies, now 50 semi-autonomous states, which differ in ethnicity, topography, religion, and economy, among others.

The Constitution was designed not as a unifying operating system but as a series of giant compromises to keep states from warring with each other. So states can mandate what is considered criminal conduct, mandate their own penalties for such conduct, ascribe and proscribe rights, and more. In fact, it took the Supreme Court to rule, in 1819, that yes, federal law had primacy over state law.

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.

Iowa’s U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley continues to baffle and befuddle his critics—and others—with his questionable comments on important issues of the day. Most recently, as noted in a Bleeding Heartland commentary by Laura Belin, Grassley declined to even read the historic indictment of former President Donald Trump.

Why?

Grassley told a Congressional reporter he had not (and I guess will not) read the indictment because he is “not a legal analyst.”