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 headline of the May 27 Bleeding Heartland post was jarring and depressing. 

When Laura Belin wrote, “Iowa schools may never recover from the 2023 legislative session,” she predicted a bleak future for Iowa and its youngsters. Devastatingly so, because these same youngsters, mostly public school students, will soon sit on school boards and in the Capitol chambers or governor’s office being charged with carrying forward the state’s business into the second half of the 21st century.

Initially, Laura takes her readers back to the glory days of Governor Robert Ray (in office 1969-1983) when refugees were welcomed and progressive legislation for public schools, students, and their teachers not only seemed possible, but actually passed. 

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

In a May 25 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court greatly restricted the jurisdiction of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers to protect wetlands under the Clean Water Act.

The Clean Water Act gives the agencies authority to protect “waters of the United States,” known as WOTUS. Constitutionally, the EPA and the Corps have jurisdiction over waters that affect interstate commerce. Certainly, interstate rivers like the Mississippi and the Missouri affect interstate commerce. And no one seriously argues that rivers and streams that flow into interstate rivers are not within the EPA’s and the Corps’ jurisdiction. But what about wetlands?

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.    

The prefix “pro-“ means to support a cause. The noun “life” is defined as an organism composed of cells that can grow, learn and respond to stimuli preceding death. It stands to reason that a pro-lifer would be a radical proponent that from cell development until death—everyone—is supported. Everyone!

Many right-wing evangelicals and conservative Catholics boast of being pro-life. MAGA Republican die-hards fondly recall a January 2020 March for Life rally, where then President Donald Trump thanked participants for “making America the pro-family, pro-life nation.”

Simply stated, you cannot be pro-life unless you also support the 7.2 percent of babies who grow up to be LGBTQIA and—by the way—are living under the same canopy of heaven and with God’s divine grace.

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.

While running for the U.S. Senate in 1858, Abraham Lincoln quoted a portion of Mathew 12:25, which has been translated as, “A House divided against itself cannot stand.” 

He was talking about slavery, but 165 years later, our country and some of our cherished institutions still haven’t grasped that united is better than divided.

There’s an adage that the two subjects you don’t discuss in polite company are religion and politics.  But those two topics are now hard not to mention together because both are immersed in culture wars.

Two Republican trifectas, 50 years apart, reshaped Iowa’s K-12 schools. But whereas the legislature and Governor Robert Ray put public education on a more equitable, better funded path during the early 1970s, this year’s legislative session left public schools underfunded and unable to meet the needs of many marginalized students.

Governor Kim Reynolds capped a devastating year for Iowa’s schools on May 26, when she signed seven education-related bills, including two that will impose many new restrictions while lowering standards for educators and curriculum.

In a written statement, Reynolds boasted, “This legislative session, we secured transformational education reform that puts parents in the driver’s seat, eliminates burdensome regulations on public schools, provides flexibility to raise teacher salaries, and empowers teachers to prepare our kids for their future. Education is the great equalizer and everyone involved—parents, educators, our children—deserves an environment where they can thrive.” 

Almost every part of the first sentence is false or misleading.

As for the second sentence, this year’s policies make it less likely that any of the named groups will thrive, aside from a small subset of parents who share the governor’s political and religious outlook.

Alexandra Dermody is a Davenport based Gen Z activist, nonprofit director, and small business owner who lives in Iowa House district 81.

Luana Stoltenberg, a Republican who traveled to Washington, DC for Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally on January 6, 2021, has completed her first legislative session as the representative for House District 81.

While she presents herself as a pro-life activist and author, it is essential to examine her legislative record and consider the implications of her key votes and sponsored bills.

Let’s take a closer look at Stoltenberg’s voting history:

John and Terri Hale own The Hale Group, an Ankeny-based advocacy firm working for better lives for all Iowans. Contact them at terriandjohnhale@gmail.com.

A crisis ignored eventually leads to catastrophe. That’s what we’re witnessing in long-term care services. 

As far back as 1990, the U.S. Bipartisan Commission on Comprehensive Health Care described as a “crisis” the challenges the nation faced in providing long-term care services to people with disabilities and older citizens.

That commission also used phrases like an “urgent need for action” and “current conditions that are unconscionable” when urging Congress to act on recommendations that would ensure all Americans have access to high-quality, affordable long-term care services in the setting they prefer.

Macklin Scheldrup was the Iowa Democratic Party’s Data Director in 2022. A native of Cedar Rapids, he had previously worked on the monitoring and evaluation of foreign aid projects in conflict zones including Afghanistan, Pakistan, and South Sudan.

Swing voters can seem like a mythic, unknowable creature. Depending on who you ask, they either single-handedly determine government control or don’t exist at all. But what do the 2022 election results indicate about their importance in Iowa politics? How many are there? What do they look like? And where do they live? 

Ticket-splitting is the most obvious expression of a swing voter within a single election. Nationally, ticket-splitting has been on the decline throughout the 21st century. In the 2004 election, seven states split their vote for president and the U.S. Senate, meaning seven senators were elected while their state voted for the other party’s presidential nominee. When those same Class 3 Senate seats were up in the 2016 election, not a single state elected a U.S. Senator of the opposite party of their electoral votes. 

But the reports of the death of ticket-splitting may be greatly exaggerated, especially in the Hawkeye State.

Ian Miller is the author of The Scything Handbook (New Society Publishers, 2016). His writing has appeared in Mother Earth News, the apparently-now-defunct Permaculture Magazine and Seed Savers Exchange publications. He is a former semi-professional musician, having recorded and toured with numerous bands. Originally from Dubuque, he has lived in San Francisco and Austria and now resides in Decorah with his wife and two children.

On Thursday, May 18, I received an email from the Decorah Community School District’s superintendent. He wrote:

He included what appeared to be copy from a press release provided by Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird’s office:

Katie Byerly features yet another native plant I’ve never seen. She has a knack for finding the rare ones! Katie is also known as Iowa Prairie Girl on YouTube.

Is Edible Valerian (Valeriana edulis) edible or not? Valerian is also called Tobacco Root. According to the Montana Plant Life website, some Native Americans cooked the root for two days before eating it. The same site notes, “It has a very strong and peculiar taste that is offensive to some people but agreeable to others.”

Minnesota Wildflowers compares early European accounts of the carrot-like taproot to the usual discussion on lutefisk—meaning you either like it or hate it. I doubt anyone is currently baking valerian root in the ground for days to avoid hunger, but do note that it is poisonous raw.

The only location I have found edible Valerian is in the native prairie in Wilkinson Pioneer Park in Rock Falls (Cerro Gordo County). In north Iowa and at Wilkinson Park, this plant is one of the first taller fluorescence to appear in the spring. While short and almost hidden yellow star and blue-eyed grasses are blooming close to the ground, edible Valerian pop up to one to four feet above early spring prairie flowers.

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

My wife is an environmentalist. Big time. She cuts up plastic soda can rings, so they won’t trap defenseless birds. She insisted on us purchasing electric outdoor power tools, so we won’t exude noxious fumes into the air. She knows exactly what stuff you can recycle and what you can’t — regulations so arcane, they make the NFL rule book simpler than Fun with Dick and Jane.

So, when she blanched at “No Mow May,” I experienced a Walter Cronkite moment, when “the most trusted man in America” urged the U.S. to get out of Vietnam.

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

When FBI agents led a Dixon, Illinois, official out of city hall in handcuffs and the charges against her became public, the most often asked question was “How?”

How did City Comptroller Rita Crundwell manage to embezzle an astounding $54 million from the northwest Illinois community of 15,700 people before she was finally detected? 

How did city officials and an outside CPA auditing firm fail to get even a whiff of her brazen scheme for the 22 years she robbed the city treasury?

Crundwell was arrested in 2012. Her case is old news now. But Iowans should have more than idle curiosity in her crime.

Hers is a textbook case of why it is important to have independent outside auditors and investigators with the legal tools and the expertise to dig into potential “paper” crimes or misconduct involving government employees. 

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 suffers from a self-inflicted double whammy: (1) the 2023 legislative session and (2) the delusion that the rest of the nation would take the 2024 Iowa caucuses seriously.

With regard to (1), Governor Kim Reynolds and her GOP puppets in the legislature did more damage to the public schools and public education than had been done—collectively—in the last 50 years of state governance.

The signature piece of the destruction is a likely $1 billion commitment (over the next four years alone) to subsidizing private schools at the expense of better funding for public schools and a range of special needs.

Second in a series on under-covered stories from the Iowa legislature’s 2023 session.

During the seven years of the Iowa GOP trifecta, the majority party has often enacted significant public policy through eleventh-hour appropriations bills. Just before adjourning in 2019, Republicans amended spending bills to change the judicial selection process, restrict medical care for transgender Iowans on Medicaid, and block Planned Parenthood from receiving sex education grants.

A lengthy amendment to a budget bill approved in the closing hours of the 2020 session made it harder for Iowans to vote by mail and sought to restrict some companies from bidding on electric transmission lines projects.

The Iowa Supreme Court sent the legislature a message in March, blocking the 2020 provision on transmission lines, on the grounds that it was likely passed through unconstitutional “logrolling.”

Republican legislators weren’t pleased with the ruling known as LS Power, but seem to have adapted to it. This year’s “standings” appropriations bill was relatively short and focused on spending and code corrections—a far cry from the usual “Christmas tree” featuring unrelated policy items from lawmakers’ wish lists.

Nevertheless, many surprises lurked in other bills that allocated spending for fiscal year 2024, which begins on July 1.

This post focuses on seven provisions that appeared in budget bill amendments published shortly before Iowa House or Senate debate. Most of this policy language never appeared in a stand-alone bill, allowing Republicans to avoid the scrutiny that comes with subcommittee and committee discussions. Democratic legislators had little time to review the proposed budgets before votes on final passage, which mostly fell along party lines.

Four Iowa newspapers owned by Lee Enterprises announced on May 21 that beginning next month, they will produce print editions only three days a week.

The Sioux City Journal, Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier, Mason City Globe-Gazette, and Council Bluffs Daily Nonpareil previewed the changes in Sunday editorials. Journal editor Bruce Miller’s column was headlined, “Changes ahead in Journal content, distribution.” Doug Hines, who serves as editor for both the Courier and Globe-Gazette, and Rachel George of the Daily Nonpareil announced the move with none-too-convincing optimism about an “expanded” newspaper “coming soon.”

Starting on June 20, each paper will produce a print edition on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Subscribers to the Courier, Globe-Gazette, and Journal will receive the papers through the U.S. Postal Service, rather than delivered to their doorstep. Miller advised, “If you routinely read the print product early in the morning (and your mail doesn’t arrive until the afternoon), you may want to get in the habit of looking at the paper on your cellphone, your tablet or your computer. It’s news when you want it.”

The editorial in the Nonpareil didn’t mention a shift away from traditional delivery.

U.S. Representative Zach Nunn is among 500 Americans the Russian Federation added to its personal sanctions list on May 19. The Foreign Ministry’s latest list of U.S. citizens who would be denied entry to Russia includes former President Barack Obama and various Biden administration officials, dozens of members of Congress and state-level politicians, journalists including MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and CNN’s Erin Burnett, numerous people associated with think tanks, and even comedians Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers.

The Republican who represents the third Congressional district is the only Iowan on the new “stop list.” Nunn posted on Twitter, “After years of fighting against Russian oppression and commanding mission after mission to curb Moscow’s aggression, I’m proud to be banned from Putin’s pathetic regime — the Russian people deserve better.”

Nunn served as an international elections monitor in Ukraine in 2019. After Russia launched its invasion in February 2022, Nunn called for President Vladimir Putin to be charged with war crimes. He has sometimes criticized President Joe Biden for supposedly not having a plan to end the war in Ukraine.

Last year, Russia sanctioned all four of Iowa’s U.S. House members, later adding Senator Joni Ernst and eventually Senator Chuck Grassley to the list of Americans barred from entering the country.

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.

Where I grew up there were multiple sources of news. To hear the news, men gathered at the post office and Standard station, while women preferred the Clover Farm Store or Rebekah Lodge. 

It wasn’t broadcast news. It was secret, local news that an impolite observer might call gossip.

There was typical gossip including who bought a new combine, whose car was parked too long at the lower tavern, and who had the worst dye job in town. 

But there were special categories delivered only in whispers. Things like a cancer diagnosis, a church lady with a fresh shiner, or a recent bankruptcy. These whispers were met with silence, and the few Catholics crossing themselves.

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

Federal government whistleblowers have a champion in the U.S. Senate: Republican Chuck Grassley of Iowa.

We can measure a politician’s sincerity about a specific issue or policy by how consistently he or she maintains that position, regardless of which party holds power. Through the years—decades, really—that Grassley has served in the U.S. Senate, he has always insisted that government employees who expose questionable dealings or negligent mismanagement by their superiors must be protected in their jobs, without fear of retaliation.

That’s particularly true when the employee’s specific job is to investigate such dealings. Those crucial public servants are the “inspectors general” of the various federal agencies.

The combination of a late spring and a busy legislative session delayed the return of Bleeding Heartland’s wildflowers series, but I’m excited to kick off the twelfth year with a lovely collection of photographs.

Johnson County Supervisor Lisa Green-Douglass supplied all of the images featured below. She took the pictures in April and May on various Johnson County conservation properties, including the Phebe Timber and Kent Park, as well as in other parts of the county, such as the Clear Creek Trail in Coralville.

I’m presenting the photos in roughly the order one would see these flowers, from the earliest to appear along trails or in wooded areas to those that bloom once spring is well underway.

If you have images to share or would like to write a guest post for the wildflowers series, please reach out to me. I welcome commentaries showcasing one species, especially a plant that hasn’t yet been featured here. But it’s also fun to see pictures of many wildflowers found in one location. Essays about transformations, whether in your back yard or some larger area, are always popular with readers.

Three of Iowa’s four U.S. House Republicans submitted the maximum number of fifteen earmark requests for federal funding in fiscal year 2024, which begins on October 1.

U.S. Representatives Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-01), Ashley Hinson (IA-02), and Zach Nunn (IA-03) were among the numerous House Republicans who asked for “Community Project Funding,” which Congress directs in several dozen areas of the federal budget. Iowa Capital Dispatch reported on May 14, “The sum of Nunn’s requests is the highest, at $41.25 million. Miller-Meeks is second with $40.15 million, while Hinson requested $37.06 million.”

For the third straight year, Representative Randy Feenstra (IA-04) declined to submit any earmark requests. As Bleeding Heartland previously discussed, Feenstra’s staff has said the Republicans “believes it is time for Congress to restore fiscal stability and balance our budget.” But earmarked projects come out of funds the federal government will spend regardless. So when a member makes no requests, that person’s district loses its chance to receive a share of money that has already been allocated for earmarks.

Thanks to transparency rules established in 2021, the funding requests submitted by Miller-Meeks, Hinson, and Nunn are available online. Once the 2024 budget has been finalized, Bleeding Heartland will report on which projects received funding for the coming fiscal year.

The Iowa Capital Dispatch article by Ashley Murray and Ariana Figueroa highlighted an apparent contradiction: many House Republicans who have demanded steep cuts across the federal budget have asked for millions of dollars to support projects in their own districts. That has long been the case with earmarks: one person’s valuable community investment can be portrayed as wasteful pork in someone else’s district.