The most closely watched Iowa Supreme Court case of 2023 ended in a stalemate on June 16. Nearly a year to the day after the court’s majority severely undermined reproductive rights by reversing a 2018 precedent, the justices split 3-3 on Governor Kim Reynolds’ effort to lift an injunction on a 2018 law that would ban an estimated 98 percent of abortions.

The split decision in what will be known as Planned Parenthood of the Heartland v Reynolds V affirmed last year’s Polk County District Court ruling “by operation of law.” In other words, the 2018 abortion ban will be permanently enjoined. For the foreseeable future, abortion will remain legal up to 20 weeks in Iowa—in contrast to many other Republican-controlled states.

But top Iowa Republicans have vowed to enact new abortion restrictions, which will prompt new litigation. Although the opinions published on June 16 have no force of law, they provide many clues about how the Iowa Supreme Court may approach its next major abortion case.

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

Forty-four years ago, the Iowa Supreme Court made an important change in the way the state courts operate, by allowing journalists to bring their cameras and audio recorders inside courtrooms during hearings and trials to better inform the public about noteworthy cases.

Iowa was a pioneer in making its court proceedings more accessible and transparent to those who could not be there in person.

It is long overdue for the federal courts to follow Iowa’s lead and swing open the doors of federal courtrooms across the country to provide similar access. The coming proceedings in Florida in the case of United States of America vs. Donald J. Trump cry out for making this change.

Top Iowa Republicans reacted quickly on June 16 after the Iowa Supreme Court’s split decision kept abortion legal in Iowa up to 20 weeks.

In a joint news release, Governor Kim Reynolds, Senate Majority Leader Jack Whitver, and House Speaker Pat Grassley promised to work together on what they called “pro-life policies to protect the unborn.” But they did not indicate whether a new law might differ from the near-total abortion ban passed in 2018, which remains permanently enjoined after the Supreme Court deadlock.

The statements also did not clarify whether Republicans plan to convene a special legislative session before lawmakers are scheduled to return to Des Moines next January. Communications staff working for the governor and House and Senate leaders did not respond to Bleeding Heartland’s questions.

Any new abortion ban would be challenged immediately, and two years might pass before the Iowa Supreme Court rules on whether that law violates the state constitution. So anti-abortion advocates will want the legislature and governor to start the process sooner rather than later.

But even with the large House and Senate majorities Iowa Republicans now enjoy, it may not be easy to draft a bill that can get through both chambers.

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

Last week Special Counsel Jack Smith, representing the U.S. Department of Justice, indicted former President Donald Trump in federal district court in Florida.

Let’s be clear:

UPDATE: In late November 2024, the governor appointed Dustin Hite to fill a different District Court vacancy in the same region. Original post follows.

Governor Kim Reynolds got just about everything she wanted from the Iowa legislature during the 2023 session. But she signaled this week that she isn’t ready to let bygones be bygones when it comes to Republicans who have stood in her way.

The governor’s office announced three District Court judicial appointments on June 16, including Michael Carpenter for District 8A, covering ten counties in southeast Iowa. The other person nominated for that judgeship was former State Representative Dustin Hite.

Pat O’Donnell is a resident of Sioux Center and spent 37 years serving in Iowa public schools as a teacher, principal and superintendent. He may be reached at patnancy@zoho.com. A version of this commentary first appeared in the N’west Iowa Review.

“Foundation in Education” was the motto on the Iowa quarter issued in 2004. In my thirty-seven years serving in Iowa public schools as a teacher, principal, and superintendent, I was so proud to be an educator in a state that valued education as much as this one. 

Yet, despite what the Iowa quarter says, our state’s “Foundation in Education” is under assault.

What happened to Chuck Grassley?

I’ve heard versions of that question from many people who are old enough to remember when Iowa’s senior senator crafted a reputation for independence by tangling with Reagan administration officials.

But I’d never heard anyone who had worked closely with Grassley raise similar concerns—until this week.

Democrats in and near Warren County are collecting signatures to demand a special election after the county board of supervisors named David Whipple, a 2020 election denier, to serve as county auditor.

All three Warren County supervisors—board chair Darren Heater, Crystal McIntyre, and Mark Snell—are Republicans, and all voted on June 6 to appoint Whipple through the end of 2024. He fills a vacancy left by the county’s longtime Democratic Auditor Traci VanderLinden, who retired in May. (Snell ran unsuccessfully against VanderLinden in 2020.)

Whereas Whipple has no background in election administration, the other applicant for the position was the county’s current deputy auditor Kim Sheets.

Amy Duncan covered the supervisors’ meeting for the Indianola Independent Advocate. Whipple emphasized his background in construction and his experience hiring, training, and managing staff. Sheets said she knows the strengths and weaknesses of the auditor’s office employees and would be able to mentor them to improve operations.

McIntyre acknowledged it “looks weird” for the board to be considering Whipple, a personal friend, for the vacancy. “It came down for me is the detail-oriented person especially in elections,” she added. “The public, you’re only going to see voting, but there is real estate, there is claims. I want the detail person.”

It appears that no one at the meeting discussed one important detail: Whipple helped spread baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election.

Kara Grady is an amatuer botanist and wildflower enthusiast based in eastern Iowa. Her work has been published in the Erythronium newsletter of the Iowa Native Plant Society. When she’s not going on rare flower adventures, she can be found reading the latest botanical books or attending prairie seminars.

“I think I’ll put a cage around it.”

It was a beautiful blue day in the middle of May, and Chris Edwards and I were both staring at the one lesser yellow lady slipper blooming in his family’s woodland plot. While I stared in utter rapture, Chris looked slightly grim, and perhaps for good reason. This is the last clump of the slipper that still exists since his grandparents bought the woodland in 1963. He blames ravenous deer for their disappearance.

Hungry deer are just one of the many challenges Iowa’s orchids face in their struggle for survival.

Dana James, the founder of the Black Iowa News website and email newsletter, has launched a print version of the publication in time for Juneteenth celebrations around the state. James told Bleeding Heartland she plans to publish the Black Iowa Newspaper quarterly this year, with the goal of monthly printing during 2024.

Although Iowa has a long tradition of Black journalism—the Iowa Bystander newspaper was founded in Des Moines in 1894—the state has been without a print newspaper produced by and for Black Iowans for some time. Jonathan Narcisse, the last publisher of the Bystander, moved the paper to a digital-only format several years before his death in 2018.

Alexandra Dermody is a Davenport based Gen Z activist, nonprofit director, and small business owner.

A promising figure has emerged in Davenport’s political tapestry: Jasmine Schneider. A stalwart community organizer and advocate for change, Schneider has thrown her hat into the ring for this year’s mayoral election. With a comprehensive, ambitious agenda, she brings a breath of fresh air and dedication to her vision of a more inclusive, thriving Davenport.

Schneider’s steadfast resolve is woven throughout her political platform, from her commitment to restorative justice to her focus on Davenport’s economic development. Her key priorities, distilled from her understanding of the city’s most pressing challenges, are both inclusive and innovative.

Governor Kim Reynolds was quick to respond after federal prosecutors charged former President Donald Trump with 37 counts related to concealing and mishandling classified documents, making false statements, and obstructing justice.

Although the governor misrepresented the facts of the criminal case, her statement conveyed plenty about Reynolds and the dominant mindset among Iowa Republicans.

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

Three federal judges have made the national news recently.

One of them is not like the others.

A British prime minister once said that a week is a long time in politics. Iowa Senate Democrats proved the adage true on June 7, when they elected State Senator Pam Jochum as minority leader, replacing State Senator Zach Wahls.

Wahls was first elected to the legislature in 2018 and had led the caucus since November 2020. Jochum was first elected to the Iowa House in 1992 and to the Senate in 2008 from districts covering Dubuque. When Democrats last controlled the chamber, she held the second-ranking position of Senate president from 2013 through 2016. More recently, she has served as one of four assistant minority leaders.

A week ago, a Senate Democratic leadership election was not on anyone’s radar. Wahls was the guest on the latest edition of the Iowa PBS program “Iowa Press.”

The June 7 caucus meeting was scheduled to address an uproar that unfolded over the weekend.

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.

A day after Senator Joni Ernst’s annual Roast and Ride fundraiser, which marked the informal start of the Iowa GOP’s 2024 caucus campaign, a friend asked, “Where do we go from here?”

She was mindful of the cluster of Republican candidates challenging former President Donald Trump for the nomination.

Trump, who was absent from Roast and Ride festivities, had offered an answer a few days before at an appearance in Urbandale: “We have a nasty race ahead of us.”

Former Iowa House Republican Garrett Gobble recently filed paperwork to run for the legislature in 2024—but not in the Ankeny-based district he represented for two years.

Gobble lost his 2022 re-election bid in House district 42 by 23 votes to Democrat Heather Matson, whom he had narrowly defeated in 2020.

A statement of organization filed with the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board last month indicates Gobble will be a 2024 Republican candidate in Iowa House district 22, which covers Norwalk, Cumming, Carlisle, and other areas of Warren County outside Indianola.

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.

False Gromwell (Onosmodium molle occidentale), sometimes known as Western Marbleseed, is often overlooked, yet common in Iowa. The range map in An Illustrated Guide to Prairie Plants, by Paul Christiansen and Mark Muller, shows it in at least half of our counties. It’s likely much more common than that.

I find it mostly in dry to gravelly hillsides or upland prairie and even roadsides. I suspect Iowa’s western counties are the most reliable hosts for the native forb.

I remember the first time I saw false gromwell. it was here in southeast O’Brien County along side a dirt road abutting a small natural area donated to the county by a local landowner. I noticed the plant, not the flowers (it was well past their latest blooming time of mid-July). This plant’s leaf structure is really quite attractive—or at least the form and stature are attention getting.

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

To paraphrase George Carlin: I used to be a cynic; now, I’m a skeptic. You know; you grow.

“A skeptic is a doubter. A cynic is a disbeliever.” Thus saith the Associated Press Stylebook. The difference? In today’s polarized America, a skeptic may acknowledge that even though Supreme Court justices, as do all of us, have biases, their rulings we dislike are probably based on their knowledge of the Constitution, the intent of the statute’s creators, and what the statute actually says. A cynic believes the justices mine all that simply to impose their biases on what they want to become the law of the land.

Joseph Howe is a political strategist and former Libertarian Party of Iowa state chair with experience working on campaigns as a state director such as Gary Johnson 2016 as well as campaign director for Rick Stewart 2022 and Jake Porter 2018. He also served as the Polk County co-chair for Rand Paul’s campaign in 2016. In addition to his political work, Joseph is a financial services operations manager and resides in Beaverdale with his wife Amanda and son John.

Last week, Governor Kim Reynolds signed legislation that will not only impact the Iowa Democratic Party’s caucus plans but also have ramifications for the Libertarian Party of Iowa (LPIA). Although House File 716 primarily targets Iowa Democrats due to the loss of first in the nation status, it raises concerns for Iowa Libertarians as well, as I discussed in a previous Bleeding Heartland post. 

While the final version of the bill did not include the initial requirement to register with your political party of choice 70 days before the caucus date, it did mandate in-person caucusing for major party presidential processes. The LPIA was the first major party to give options other than in-person caucusing via a hybrid online/county megasite strategy in 2018, a tradition that carried into 2020 and 2022.

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.

Part 1 of this series tried to ascertain the percentage of Iowa’s 2022 general electorate who could be classified as swing voters by the rate of ticket-splitting. It found evidence that ticket-splitting is comparatively high in Iowa and has not declined over the past few decades, with at least 12.4 percent of 2022 voters splitting their ticket.

So where are these voters located? And what can that tell us about why they are willing to vote for candidates from either major party in the same election?

The ticket-splitting score presented in Part 1 can also be calculated for smaller areas of Iowa.