Kurt Meyer writes a weekly column for the Nora Springs – Rockford Register, 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.

“Instructors demonstrated how to stand, move, and approach an attacker, as well as fight or defend themselves with their hands, elbows, palms, knees, feet, and shins. Some techniques are standard, like a punch to the face. Others are new, like raking an attacker’s face with your nails.”

Those sentences are not about a martial arts class or training for bodyguards. This was a newspaper article describing a voluntary, four-hour course available to flight attendants, which noted, may interest those

“looking for more tools to protect themselves from aggressive, out-of-control passengers. Flight attendants wince at the mention of gouging an attacker’s eyes. ‘Remember, this guy is attacking you,’ the air marshal said, encouraging the class to keep their warrior mind-set.”

So, this is what it’s come to? A warrior mind-set among airline employees? What ever happened to “fly the friendly skies”?

John and Terri Hale’s conversation with Iowa snowbirds took an unexpected turn when one volunteered, “I used to be proud to be an Iowan.”

We dipped our toes in snowbird water in January, escaping the cold of Iowa for the warmth and splendor of Arizona. One of the first lessons learned – you can escape Iowa but you can’t escape Iowans.

Iowans are everywhere in Arizona – grocery stores, restaurants, hiking trails, pickle ball courts, golf courses, etc. And here’s no shocker – they are enjoying the heck out of life.

Yet they remain interested in the latest news from their home state.

An example – on a beautiful 71-degree Arizona day, we met a couple from central Iowa and began a conversation.

Like many, I’ve been consumed this week by the horrifying news of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Although Vladimir Putin and his hostility to democracy occupied a lot of my head space in my “past life” covering Russian politics, I never imagined all those years ago that he would go so far as to annex Crimea, let alone launch a full-scale assault on Ukraine.

Foreign policy and military strategy are not my areas of expertise, so I have no insight on how Putin imagines he could benefit from this invasion. Even if he manages to install a puppet government in Kyiv, how will Russian forces maintain control of Ukraine, and how will the Russian economy weather the crushing sanctions? What’s his endgame?

I reported extensively on Putin’s rise to power in late 1999. Russian President Boris Yeltsin had appointed the virtually unknown security official as prime minister that August. But Putin didn’t become popular until a few months later, through a military campaign in the breakaway Republic of Chechnya. The Russian people broadly supported that war, in part due to slanted media coverage, and also because of apartment bombings (that may have been instigated by Russian security forces) and widespread racist attitudes toward Chechens.

Perhaps Putin hopes to replicate that formula for his political benefit. But I find it hard to believe that any significant share of the Russian population support all-out war against Ukraine. Who really believes that a country with a democratically-elected Jewish president needs to be “denazified” by force?

It’s been more than 30 years since I visited Ukraine’s beautiful capital city and the Black Sea resort town of Sochi. For that matter, I haven’t visited Russia in more than two decades. Even so, I’m heartbroken to see the avoidable loss of life on both sides. Please spare a thought for the citizens of Ukraine—whether they are Ukrainian- or Russian-speaking—because I don’t think anyone outside the Kremlin wants this war.

Most of Iowa’s leading politicians reacted to the invasion on February 24. I’ve compiled their comments after the jump.

This column by Daniel G. Clark about Richard Harvey Cain (1825-1887) first appeared in the Muscatine Journal. 

Researchers rely on the archived pages of the Muscatine Journal to reveal much of what can be known about our local history.

Whenever we honor Alexander Clark, we can thank the editor and publisher who led this paper for half a century. Clark starts appearing in John Mahin’s paper in 1857.

February 6: “We are indebted to A. Clark of this city for the proceedings … of a convention of the colored people of Iowa held here…. It was resolved to petition the Constitutional Convention to extend the right of elective franchise to native born negroes and to bestow upon them all the rights and privileges of citizenship.”

But then there’s this, on February 10: “A frame building on Seventh Street, near Iowa Avenue, was destroyed by fire last night. … Excepting the owners of the building, the one who will feel his loss most severely is Richard Cain, the pastor of the African M.E. Church, who occupied one of the apartments. Besides most all his household furniture, he lost a library worth not less than $150.”

Steve Corbin is a freelance writer and emeritus professor of marketing at the University of Northern Iowa.

Jury service is one of the most important civic duties you can perform. Soon you can serve as a juror to determine whether Iowa’s voter suppression law, which Governor Kim Reynolds signed on March 8, 2021, is fair and balanced. The lobbyist declarations show this law was not requested by Iowa citizens but supported only by right-wing think tanks and conservative groups. [Editor’s note: Portions of that law are being challenged in court.]

Let’s start with eleven facts.

Rachel Bruns is a volunteer advocate for quality maternal health care in Iowa.

I recently recounted how it took the Iowa Department of Public Health (IDPH) 170 days to respond to my request for information on the total births, primary cesareans, total cesareans, and vaginal births after cesareans (VBACs) at Iowa hospitals. I eventually received aggregated five-year totals (2016 through 2020) for each birthing hospital in Iowa.

The International Cesarean Awareness Network (ICAN) of Central Iowa, where I serve as a volunteer chapter leader, has made the data available on our website. You can see it in table form below as Appendix 1. 

While I would have preferred for IDPH to provide the figures for a single year, as I requested, the compiled data still tells us a lot about the overuse of cesareans at several Iowa hospitals and the lack of VBAC access across much of the state.

Brian Bruening chairs the Clayton County Democrats.

The Iowa Democratic Party is passing through dire straits right now. We have a lot of energetic folks stepping up to run (Iowa Senate candidates Austin Frerick, Todd Brady, Sarah Trone Garriott, and Deb VanderGaast, to name but a few), but I’m worried that the stampede of Democratic legislators heading for the exit heralds a self-fulfilling prophecy of November defeat. 

Ras Smith dropping out of the governor’s race after being unable to find serious funding this cycle, and then announcing he’s not seeking re-election to his House seat, should’ve been treated as a more ominous a sign than it was. Indeed it was a bellwether in January when former House Democratic leader Todd Prichard announced he was bowing out of the legislature.

Chelsea Sims is a teacher librarian at a public school in Iowa City.

“I loved that book you found for me!” is one of the best phrases a librarian can hear.

As a teacher librarian in one of Iowa’s public schools for more than ten years, I have had the opportunity to recommend countless books from all genres and topics to students. I have watched them find themselves in literature and discover new perspectives. I have seen them develop empathy for all kinds of people in all kinds of situations and grow into more thoughtful young people. I have seen students put down a book they realized wasn’t for them. Literature is powerful.

Now, some legislators in Iowa find that power dangerous. Coordinated political groups around the country have decided that school libraries are a threat to their children, rather than a safe haven filled with wonder and connection.

Glenn Hurst is a family physician in southwest Iowa and a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate.

Several years ago, my wife and I had a friend our family called Grandma Ruth. Ruth was special to us. She was one of the first people we brought my newborn daughter to meet. She had taken a special interest in our kids and was always present for their big events. Often, we would pick her up and bring her to our house for football parties and holidays. She included us in the celebration of her life events as well. She was estranged from her own family and just became part of ours.

I learned a lot from observing how Ruth navigated her world. She had learned how to use senior transportation services to get to doctor appointments as well as to the grocery store or other activities. She knew how to arrange Meals on Wheels and how to keep current with her disability to remain eligible for services she absolutely needed.

Iowa Republicans have sought to undermine LGBTQ equality for more than a decade, but in recent years, their myriad attempts to discriminate didn’t make it past the legislature’s first “funnel” deadline.

However, this year Republicans moved bills out of Iowa House and Senate committees that would prohibit transgender girls and women from participating in school sports. The bills are eligible for debate in both chambers.

The legislation is a priority for Governor Kim Reynolds, who declared during a Fox News town hall last spring that she was committed to acting on the issue. She has repeatedly claimed preventing trans girls from competing is a matter of “fairness,” a talking point echoed by Republican lawmakers who defended the bills last week.

Their stated concerns don’t extend to Iowa’s transgender girls and women, who would find yet another door slammed in their face.

UPDATE: Charlie McConkey became the sixteenth House Democrat to confirm he won’t seek another term. Original post follows.

Nearly 40 percent of the Democrats who now serve in the Iowa House have confirmed they won’t seek re-election this year, and several long-serving incumbents have yet to clarify their plans.

The exodus involves not only lawmakers of retirement age, like State Representatives Marti Anderson and Bruce Hunter, but also some who have decades left in their working lives, like State Representatives Ras Smith, Chris Hall, and Kirsten Running-Marquardt, the latest to announce she won’t continue serving in the legislature.

The unusually high turnover may reflect some pent-up demand; older lawmakers who might have retired a few years ago hung on in light of realistic hope that their party could regain control of the chamber in the 2018 or 2020 elections. That prospect seems remote now, with Republicans enjoying a 60-40 majority and the new political map creating fewer than ten strong pickup opportunities for House Democrats.

Sondra Feldstein is a farmer and business owner in Polk County.

It’s easy to call the Republican Party racist and homophobic when all the books they want to ban happen to deal with people of color, members of a minority religion, or LGBTQ issues; when a predominantly Black demonstration is a “riot” and a predominantly white one “legitimate political protest;” when legislation to curb non-existent voter fraud targets voting methods more often used by people of color. 

But white nationalist ideology in its current iteration in the United States is not simply racist. The definition of racism as “belief that another race is inherently inferior” does not begin to explain 21st century white nationalism. It is much more complicated than that.

Revised Iowa Court Rules of Criminal Procedure face an uncertain future after some state legislators objected to parts of the package, which was three years in the making.

The Iowa Supreme Court withdrew the rules from the Legislative Council on February 17. The order signed by Chief Justice Susan Christensen did not explain why the court took that step.

An email sent to members of the task force that drafted the new rules, which the Judicial Branch provided to Bleeding Heartland, said unnamed state legislators had informed the court “the rules would not be approved as submitted in the current form.” Lawmakers’ concerns centered around changes that would benefit defendants facing criminal charges.

This column by Daniel G. Clark first appeared in the Muscatine Journal.

Muscatine’s first Alexander Clark Day was proclaimed by Mayor Walter Conway in 1958. Sixty years later the city council voted unanimously to honor the famous resident’s birthday in perpetuity.

August 1890: “Alexander Clark, the new minister to Liberia, and who is known throughout the country as the colored orator of the West, was born in Washington county, Penn., February 25, 1826.”

So begins the short biography published nationwide and surely authorized by Clark himself. In 1872 the media-savvy publisher-lawyer-churchman had turned down President Ulysses S. Grant’s offer of appointment to Haiti, reportedly because the job didn’t pay enough.

Iowa House and Senate Republicans have yet again approved school funding at a level that will fail to meet the needs of K-12 school districts.

House File 2316 increases Supplemental State Aid by 2.5 percent (or $181 per pupil) for the coming academic year, the level Governor Kim Reynolds requested. Total state funding for public school districts and Area Education Agencies will increase by $172 million to about $3.58 billion, according to analysis by the nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency.

GOP lawmakers bristle at accusations that they have underfunded K-12 schools, when state aid has increased nearly every year. Republicans “have never once” cut funding to education, Iowa Senate Education Committee chair Amy Sinclair said during the February 14 floor debate.

But a 2.5 percent increase is tantamount to a funding cut in real terms, because it will not keep pace with rising costs for school districts.

Moreover, a review of school funding over nearly 50 years shows that this Republican trifecta has been far less willing to support public schools than past Iowa legislatures.

Jenn Wolff of Waverly is a member of Upgrade Medicaid.

Iowans with all different kinds of disabilities, their families, caregivers, and allies have spoken out about the need for changes to Medicaid since the Branstad-Reynolds administration privatized the program more than five years ago.

The U.S. Department of Justice report on state-run institutions in Glenwood and Woodward, released in December 2021, provides additional evidence of pervasive bias and segregation, caused by Iowa’s failure to invest in Home and Community Based Services.

My question to all Iowa elected officials and legislators is, why does legislation seeking to improve Medicaid die without discussion or opportunity for public comment?

Glenn Hurst is a family physician in southwest Iowa and a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate.

The analysis of election outcomes in Iowa is not a new topic. But applying the lessons that could be learned has eluded some candidates and our dedicated supporters. In at least the last four general elections, Iowa voters have selected the Republican candidates up and down the ballot. As a party, we are poised to repeat the behaviors of the past that have cost Democratic candidates their races.

Democrats have lost state House and Senate seats in most of rural Iowa. We have lost at the top of the ticket in the four key races, for president, governor, U.S. Senate, and several U.S. House districts. Our analysis to date has addressed the following concerns:

Have Iowans rejected Democratic values? The conclusion: not necessarily. Does it mean they reject all Democratic candidates? Again, not necessarily.

What we have not done with those conclusions is determine the correct course of action.

Iowans entering court-controlled spaces are no longer required to wear face coverings, under an Iowa Supreme Court order that took effect on February 14.

The Iowa Supreme Court reintroduced a comprehensive mask mandate last August, after the Delta variant caused a surge in cases and hospitalizations. A December order kept the requirement in place, as the Omicron variant became dominant. The February 11 order signed by Chief Justice Susan Christensen noted, “With both variants now on the wane, we find it appropriate to end this protocol.”

However, the new order gives judges discretion to “require face coverings by participants or take other measures to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 in court proceedings as necessary.”

Iowa Senate President Jake Chapman made it official on January 31: he will seek re-election in the new Senate district 14, rather than moving to safer Republican territory nearby. His decision sets up what should be a competitive race against Democratic State Senator Sarah Trone Garriott this November.

Bleeding Heartland previously reviewed the political landscape and recent voting history of Senate district 14, a swing district mostly populated by suburban voters. As the campaign progresses, I’ll check in regularly on how Chapman and Trone Garriott are making their case.

Iowa’s four U.S. House members all entered the election year with substantially more cash on hand than their opponents, the latest quarterly filings with the Federal Election Commission show.

However, Democratic challengers in the first and second districts are raising enough money to fund strong general election campaigns.