The ACLU of Iowa and Planned Parenthood North Central States announced on August 5 that they will not pursue litigation challenging Iowa’s mandatory 24-hour waiting period before all abortions. The Iowa Supreme Court allowed that 2020 law to go into effect in June, when a 5-2 majority reversed the court’s abortion rights precedent and sent Planned Parenthood’s case back to District Court.

In a written statement, ACLU of Iowa legal director Rita Bettis Austen described the decision to dismiss the case as “extremely difficult.”

But the move was wise in light of Iowa’s current legal landscape. Dropping this challenge could push back by years any ruling by the conservative-dominated Iowa Supreme Court to establish a new legal standard for reviewing abortion restrictions. That could strengthen the position of Planned Parenthood and the ACLU as they fight grave threats to Iowans’ bodily autonomy.

Bruce Lear reviews a new worrying line of attack on educators coming out of Republican-controlled states.

As a kid, I loved fishing off the dock because it assured immediate action, since I could catch tiny fish as fast as my worm hit the water.

But my dad practiced real fishing. He’d pack a lunch and fish in a small boat all day, even if nothing but mosquitoes were biting. He was in it for the long term, and it paid off with big catches. If he didn’t catch anything one day, he’d try again the next. He understood big catches took patience.

Like my dad’s long-term fishing, Republicans understand culture wars aren’t about instant gratification. The best example is their 49-year battle against Roe v Wade. They eventually found a right-wing majority on the Supreme Court brazen enough to overturn settled law and rob women of privacy and thus choice.

But the new front in the culture war is clearly public education. The hard right seems determined to chip away through multiple avenues of attack. 

In a huge victory for bodily autonomy, Kansas voters on August 2 overwhelmingly rejected a proposed constitutional amendment that would have cleared a path for Republican lawmakers to ban abortion. With about 95 percent of votes counted, the “no” vote (against removing abortion protections from the Kansas constitution) led the “yes” vote by 58.8 percent to 41.2 percent.

Iowa Democrats and Republicans should pay attention to the results.

Shawna Anderson: Birth control pills may have saved my life and also helped me to conceive.

When the U.S. House approved a bill in July to protect Americans’ access to birth control, 195 Republicans voted no. Those House members, including Iowa’s Representatives Ashley Hinson, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, and Randy Feenstra, opposed codifying not only my right to access family planning, but also my health care.

As a 43-year-old married mother of two and grandmother, I never thought I would see the day that I needed to defend access to any reproductive care, but here we are. After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned what I grew up hearing was the law of the land, Democrats are trying to ensure that people like me will have access to the health care we need.

A friend once told me we should call birth control hormone therapy, because that’s really what it is. Not only does it aid in family planning, but it can treat some medical issues. Let me tell you how birth control/hormone therapy may have saved my life and helped me to conceive.

Randy Evans can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com.

Many of us have trouble mustering empathy for people who have complaints about the way police treated them.

This lack of empathy probably occurs because many ordinary folks do not think they will be in situations like people accused of crimes.

If that description applies to you, allow me to introduce you to Anthony Watson, 43, of Coralville, and Jennifer Pritchard, also 43, of Fort Dodge.

Seventeen academics, farmland owners, and environmental advocates have urged the Iowa Utilities Board to reject permit applications for a carbon dioxide pipeline that would run across Iowa. A July 29 letter to the board laid out four science-based objections to the projects proposed by Summit Carbon Solutions, Navigator CO2 Ventures, and Archer Daniels Midland partnered with Wolf Carbon Solutions.

Matt Liebman, Iowa State University professor emeritus of agronomy, took the lead in writing the document. Citing “relevant scientific and engineering studies,” the letter explained how the pipelines would damage soil and crop yields without significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Allowing the use of eminent domain for this project would be “a betrayal of public trust and a corruption of the ideal of private sacrifice for public good,” the letter argued.

Those who wrote to the Iowa Utilities Board include six retired professors from Iowa colleges or universities and several Iowans with professional conservation experience at the federal or county level. I also signed, having been an environmental advocate for the past 20 years. I did not draft the letter or make editorial changes to it.

This column by Rick Morain first appeared in the Jefferson Herald.

“You’ll never take back our country with weakness, you have to show strength and you have to be strong.”

“If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

—President Donald Trump, in his speech to supporters on the Ellipse on January 6, 2021, before the attack on the Capitol later that day

Let’s talk about “America Strong.”

For Trump, “strong” means supporting his Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Trump-strong means doing whatever it takes, legal or illegal, to help him remain in power after the January 20, 2021 presidential inauguration date.

Sue Dinsdale leads Health Care For America NOW in Iowa.

This month Medicare and Medicaid celebrate their 57th Anniversary. These two biggest government health insurance programs in the nation were created by President Lyndon B. Johnson and the Democratic-controlled Congress in 1965. Together, they provide coverage and services to more than 150 million people in the United States, including 637,388 Medicare enrollees and 812,017 Medicaid enrollees in Iowa.

Medicaid has been a lifeline and resource for workers, families, state budgets and people of all ages. Whether it’s regular preventive care, prenatal or maternity care for new moms, addiction treatment in the swelling opioid epidemic or rapid response to national crisis like hurricanes, terrorist attacks and epidemics, Medicaid is a fundamental pillar of the American health care system that we all depend on.

U.S. Senator Joni Ernst has blocked a Democratic bill that would provide a federal guarantee of contraception rights.

Democrats sought to pass the bill, which cleared the U.S. House mostly along party lines, via unanimous consent during Senate floor debate on July 27.

Ernst rose to object and advocated for a measure that would speed up an over-the-counter designation for oral contraception pills. The bill is a companion to a bill that U.S. Representative Ashley Hinson introduced in the House last week. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Senator Chuck Grassley are co-sponsoring the measure.

Richard Lindgren is Emeritus Professor of Business at Graceland University in Lamoni, Iowa, now retired in Gulf Coast Florida. He blogs at godplaysdice.com.

A Kentucky circuit court recently granted a temporary injunction to halt the implementation of Kentucky’s “trigger law” that would ban abortion in response to the recent Dobbs Supreme Court decision. The judge spelled out perhaps the clearest rationale to date why the most extreme of the anti-abortion laws are blatantly unconstitutional according to the Kentucky state constitution (regardless of what the current Supreme Court says):

Bruce Lear: No political party should gamble our democracy because it wants to face the weakest opponent in a general election. 

I’ve heard from police officers that intervening in domestic disputes is very dangerous. Often those fighting unite and turn on the officer.

Now, some Democratic interest groups are intervening in the Republican party’s family fight, its primary. The goal is to boost Republican candidates that Democrats judge to be too extreme to win a general election.

That boost comes in two ways. One approach is to amplify the “extreme candidate,” and the other is to run negative ads about his/her more “moderate opponents.”

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

In 2019 I wrote a Bleeding Heartland article about the growing disparity between administrative and teacher salaries. At the time I didn’t anticipate that the situation would get much worse. I hoped that Iowa’s ever-increasing rainy day funds might be used when pay became more of a problem. 

Regrettably, here I am again three years later, encouraging Iowans to focus on what has become a major issue.

Herb Strentz discusses the disappointing work of the Iowa Public Information Board, which was created ten years ago to enforce the state’s open meetings and records laws.

Question: Should “We the people” of Iowa pay for our government not telling us what it is doing?

Answer: The question is rhetorical, because we already do so—even though as a matter of principle and given the intent of Iowa’s Sunshine laws, we should not.

The center of this Q&A is the Iowa Public Information Board (IPIB). When created in 2012, after years of work with state lawmakers, the board was heralded. The concept was, challenges to government secrecy would be subject to quick, inexpensive answers. No need to hire a lawyer to represent your concerns.

But two good commentaries illustrate how those dreams were more like delusions.

All three U.S. House Republicans from Iowa voted this week against a bill that would provide a federal guarantee of access to contraception.

But if Iowans encounter any mainstream news coverage of the issue, they may come away with the mistaken impression that GOP Representatives Ashley Hinson and Mariannette Miller-Meeks took a stand for contraception access.

The episode illustrates an ongoing problem in the Iowa media landscape: members of Congress have great influence over how their work is covered.

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.

Most people have memorized their Social Security number, cell phone number, anniversary, birthday and the 911 emergency medical, fire and police protection services number. On July 16, the number “988” became an easy-to-remember crisis hotline number we should log into our memory bank.

Anyone who needs support for a suicidal, mental health, substance use crisis, or other emotional issue can dial or text 988. The nationwide set-up should strengthen and expand the existing Lifeline system, which is a national network of more than 200 local, independent and state-funded crisis centers.

Both the new 988 hotline number and the previous ten-digit number (800-273-8255) will remain in operation, providing 24/7 free and confidential support for people in distress.

Addison Roland is an elementary school teacher in Des Moines.

It was late winter of 2005. I had recently moved back to the Chicago area from Seattle, Washington. I was single and an orphan. My parents had died not long ago, and I was still grieving for them, when I found my 39-year-old self pregnant—for the first time!

I always thought I was sterile. I was dating a man whom I did not want to marry, but we both decided to go ahead with the pregnancy. I thought this was a miracle, and just what I need to get myself back into the game of life. I had a big circle of girlfriends and knew they would help me through the pregnancy and being a first-time mom.

Silvia Secchi is a professor in the Department of Geographical and Sustainability Sciences at the University of Iowa. She has a PhD in economics from Iowa State University.

There is a long tradition of industry proponents overselling the economic benefits of pipelines by paying for economic impact studies.

Two kinds of goals drive this practice. The first is to increase the social acceptability of the pipelines, which often require formal environmental assessments because of their long and short-term environmental effects. Local landowners and environmental groups often oppose the projects, concerned about impacts on existing infrastructure like tile drainage, and on water and land resources. Second, if the pipelines are in line for subsidies, such studies help create the impression that the subsidies are justified.

The inflated economics reports go back to the Trans-Alaskan pipeline in the 1950s and early 1970s, and the more recent infamous examples of the Keystone XL and the Dakota Access pipeline. The tricks in the consultants’ playbook have largely remained the same.

In this post, I will discuss several issues associated with the report that Ernst and Young prepared for Summit Carbon Solutions.

Longtime advocates for access to public records in Iowa expressed concern this week about new administrative rules proposed by the Iowa Public Information Board.

The draft rules would spell out requirements for acknowledging and responding “promptly” to public records requests, but would also create a new excuse for government bodies that fail to provide timely access to records. Nothing in Iowa’s open records statute, known as Chapter 22, authorizes the board’s proposed language on “unforeseen circumstances,” nor is that concept consistent with Iowa Supreme Court precedent.

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.

One of my seminary professors told a story about a time when he was invited to address a group of Jesuit priests. He opened his remarks by saying, “I’m a Jew. I want to let you know that we’re right and you’re wrong!”

As you can imagine, that remark caused quite a stir in the audience. He then went on to say, “That’s OK because you believe that you’re right and I’m wrong! With that understanding, we can begin to dialogue.” At the time, I was quite taken with that story. What a wonderful way to open an interfaith dialogue!

Tom Walton is an Iowa attorney and was a Democratic primary candidate in Iowa House district 28.

In early June, the Des Moines Water Works turned on its nitrate removal facility for the first time in five years. It had to do so because of increasing nitrate levels in in the Raccoon and Des Moines Rivers. Extra treatment is required to meet the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Safe Drinking Water Standards. For nitrate, that level is 10 milligrams of nitrate-nitrogen (NO3-N) per liter of water. Des Moines Water Works provides drinking water to roughly 600,000 central Iowans.

This has been an ongoing battle. In 2013, nitrogen levels at the testing equipment near Van Meter upstream from on the Raccoon River from Des Moines were a record 24 mg/L—more than double the EPA safe level. On June 2 of this year, that station measured a median of 20.4 mg/L.

However, a growing body of scientific research indicates that long-term ingestion of water from public water sources with nitrogen levels below the EPA maximum contaminant level (MCL) have been associated with a higher risk of some forms of cancer and other adverse health effects, although more study is needed to support more conclusive results.

Jeff Shudak is the president of the Western Iowa Labor Federation, AFL-CIO. He is also an active member in his union hall and an Executive Board member of the Iowa Federation of Labor.

Abraham Lincoln famously said, “Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital and deserves much the higher consideration.”

It’s a sentiment that many politicians and policy-makers seem to have forgotten these days, especially those who rig the rules for corporate greed. But Lincoln’s words are no less true. Workers create wealth—period. And Iowa workers deserve more than the small share they’ve been getting.

If you listen to leading national forecasters, U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley and Governor Kim Reynolds are in no danger of losing this November. Inside Elections, the Cook Political Report, and Sabato’s Crystal Ball all put Iowa’s elections for Senate and governor in the “solid” or “safe” Republican category.

But last week, Mike Franken’s Senate campaign released partial results from an internal poll showing the Democrat within striking distance of Grassley. And the only poll of the governor’s race released this year showed Reynolds ahead of Democrat Deidre DeJear by just 8 points.

In past election cycles, media organizations commissioned more frequent political surveys. For instance, Survey USA tracked approval ratings for Iowa’s senators and governor on a monthly basis during the 2000s.

Unfortunately, polling has been another casualty of newsroom budget cuts. While campaign coverage should not focus excessively on the horse race, occasional independent snapshots of public opinion are important. Otherwise conventional wisdom can lead to genuinely competitive races being overlooked.

Herb Strentz scrutinizes U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley’s record on judicial confirmations and gun safety legislation.

The campaign slogan “Grassley Works” is meant to convey Senator Chuck Grassley’s work ethic. But given the news of the day (and likely the news for generations to come), it is more of an indictment of Grassley’s legacy.

William R. Staplin shares another cartoon and explains his artistic choices.

I was inspired to draw this cartoon because of the egregious decision by the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) to overturn a 49 year-old precedent, Roe v. Wade. The majority abandoned pregnant Americans’ right to choose safe health care outcomes, including abortion.

I fashioned this cartoon in the same style as a famous work from the American Regionalist Movement (or American Regionalism Movement). The master artist was John Steuart Curry and he painted the politically controversial mural, “Tragic Prelude, (1940).”

The Iowa Supreme Court has rejected Governor Kim Reynolds’ request that it quickly green-light any and all abortion restrictions the state might enact.

The action means that it could be years before the high court determines whether the state constitution guarantees any level of bodily autonomy for pregnant Iowans.

John and Terri Hale own The Hale Group, an Ankeny-based advocacy firm focused on making Iowa a better place for all. Contact terriandjohnhale@gmail.com.

We’re older Iowans and we’re angry about recent decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court. We’re fearful for the future of our state and nation. And we ponder what we can do about it.

The decisions:

Bruce Lear: The constitutional amendment Iowans will vote on in November goes much further than the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

I love the movie Tombstone, featuring Kurt Russell as Wyatt Earp, Val Kilmer as Doc Holiday, Sam Elliot as Virgil, and Bill Paxton as Morgan. It’s a little shorter than Kevin Costner’s 3 hour plus marathon Earp, released a few months later.      

Tombstone came out in 1993, but it’s still a good watch even for the fifth time. It’s also relevant now, because the U.S. Supreme Court recently expanded gun rights, and this November, Iowans will be asked to enshrine guns into our state’s constitution.

Mary Weaver is a former public health nurse administrator and farm wife who lives near the small town of Rippey, approximately 30 miles west of Ames.

As the newly elected chair of the Women’s Caucus of the Iowa Democratic Party, I am incredibly concerned over recent decisions by the Iowa Supreme Court, which overturned a precedent protecting abortion rights, and the U.S. Supreme Court, which overturned Roe v. Wade.

Those of us who remember life prior to 1973 vowed to never go back to a time when women did not control our own health care choices. The Dobbs decision will cause rights to be lost that women age 60 and older worked to establish. We thought we had guaranteed bodily autonomy for our daughters and granddaughters as well as for ourselves. 

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.

A lot of outlandish, hard-to-believe conspiracy theories are witnessed during one’s lifetime. Most thoughts come and go away with no residual effect. But, in today’s politically divisive times, many conspiracy theories are causing long-term damaging effects.

Many people who watched Oliver Stone’s 1991 movie “JFK” believed there was a government orchestrated conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy. Despite the movie’s many inaccuracies, its plot was confirmation to those believers who had a predisposed anti-government attitude.

University of Miami political science professor Joseph Uscinski—considered the country’s foremost expert on conspiracy theories—contends the disinformation (deliberately deceptive) and misinformation (incorrect or misleading) statements don’t persuade people. Rather, it gives them “exactly what they already believed.”

New restrictions on absentee voting prevented hundreds of Iowans from having their ballots counted in the June 7 primary election, Bleeding Heartland’s review of data from county auditors shows.

About 150 ballots that would have been valid under previous Iowa law were not counted due to a bill Republican legislators and Governor Kim Reynolds enacted in 2021, which required all absentee ballots to arrive at county auditors’ offices by 8:00 pm on election day. The majority of Iowans whose ballots arrived too late (despite being mailed before the election) were trying to vote in the Republican primary.

Hundreds more Iowans would have been able to vote by mail prior to the 2021 changes, but missed the new deadline for submitting an absentee ballot request form. More than half of them did not manage to cast a ballot another way in the June 7 election.

The new deadlines will trip up many more Iowans for the November election, when turnout will likely be about three times the level seen in this year’s primary, and more “snowbirds” attempt to vote by mail in Iowa from other states.

Ken Tilp was a high school teacher of Latin and French for 21 years before becoming president of the Iowa State Education Association for four years. He then worked for the Michigan Education Association for fourteen years, retiring in 2004.

It’s the 50th anniversary of a significant change in the West Des Moines, Iowa, school district personnel policy manual: teachers were no longer required to tell their building principal as soon as they found out they were pregnant.

The school board authorized a committee to review personnel policy, comprised of Bruce Graves, a school board member and young, progressive lawyer; Assistant Superintendent Mel Antrim (known to the elementary teachers as “Apple ass Antrim”); and Ken Tilp, 7th year teacher of Latin and president of the 300-member teachers association.

Catch this: during our discussion about why the requirement should be removed, Antrim said something along the lines of, “Well, I don’t know if I want my child sitting in a classroom with a teacher’s water breaking.”

In the immediate aftermath of the January 6, 2021 coup attempt, Governor Kim Reynolds condemned the attack on the U.S. Capitol and called for prosecuting those who incited violence “to the full extent.”

But as a U.S. House Select Committee uncovers more evidence of former President Donald Trump’s apparent criminal conspiracy to subvert the peaceful transfer of power, Reynolds is “not paying any attention” to the investigation, she told reporters this week.

David Farwell of Spillville, Iowa is a service-connected PTSD disabled veteran and activist for veteran health services as owed to them by law.  

I’ve moved 49 times in 50 years, which is not surprising for a military brat and former global project leader at an international corporation.  

What may be surprising is why my last move was from a Chicago high-rise to Spillville, Iowa, and how an invisible epidemic shattered my life, ended my career and brought me to the tiny town in Iowa where Dvorak completed his New World Symphony.

Andy Johnson is executive director of Clean Energy Districts of Iowa, which was first to publish this commentary.

The June 2 print edition of the Des Moines Register led with the headline, “Iowans warned of rolling blackouts.” Utility sources quoted in the article repeatedly tried to connect the growth of renewable energy with a less reliable grid.

As Mark Twain said: “Few things are more irritating than when someone who is wrong is also very effective in making his point.” Sure, it sounds sensible that closing “baseload” coal plants and replacing them with “variable” renewables is a recipe for disaster. But that logic actually mixes apples and oranges—or corn and beans, or uff-da: 4-H and Future Farmers of America!

Here’s why we can’t blame renewables for the current grid challenges. In fact, the opposite is true: a clean energy future is the best recipe for a healthy, wealthy Iowa and a reliable, affordable grid.

Marty Ryan first published this reflection on the life and legacy of his good friend Carlos Jayne (1935-2022) on his blog.

As he lived, he died—fighting authority!

Legendary NFL Coach Bill Parcells said, “A friend’s someone that knows all about you and likes you anyway.” Carlos and I liked each other, even though he was a big Green Bay Packers fan, and the Pack was my least favorite football team. Therefore, we never talked football. We had coffee and chatted for about two hours monthly. As his health slipped from him, the frequency of our visits diminished.

I first met Carlos when I was a novice lobbyist for the Iowa Civil Liberties Union (now the ACLU of Iowa) and a bill reinstating the death penalty was introduced. A fellow lobbyist pointed at Carlos and told me, “You need to talk to that guy.” I introduced myself to him and he said: “It’s about damned time the ICLU had a lobbyist up here,” and he turned, walked away, and continued to do what he did—talk to anyone who would listen.

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.

Worse things could befall Iowa and the nation than the Iowa caucus losing its “first-in-the-nation” status in presidential election years.

For example, it might be worse if the state kept that status and was viewed as a bellwether in the 2024 election.

Let’s face it. Iowa has little left of the virtues that had the state press routinely boasting about Iowa being “the center of the political universe” when it came to January and February every four years.

For an art-becomes-life perspective, consider a 1947 movie that kind of foretold the story of the Iowa caucuses.

The worst-case scenario for bodily autonomy in Iowa played out over the past ten days. First, the Iowa Supreme Court on June 17 overturned its own 2018 precedent that established a fundamental right to abortion, protected by the state constitution. Then, the U.S. Supreme Court on June 24 overturned the 1973 Roe v Wade decision that established a federal constitutional right to an abortion, and the related Casey decision of 1992.

Top Iowa Republicans immediately promised further action to restrict abortion, which is now legal in Iowa up to 20 weeks of pregnancy. It’s not yet clear when they will try to pass a new law, which exceptions (if any) may be on the table, or whether a ban modeled on other state laws could survive an Iowa court challenge.

Bleeding Heartland user “Bill from White Plains” is an Iowa attorney.

Now that five U.S. Supreme Court justices have overturned the Roe v. Wade precedent when deciding Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, I thought it might be helpful to do a deep dive into the legal bases for that decision. Most folks see this as a “results-oriented” ruling, “judicial activism” done by “unelected judges” superseding “the will of the people.”

As with most Supreme Court cases, the popular press has focused on the result (ending any federal constitutional right to an abortion), rather than the legal framework. More often than not, our discourse parrots what we read and hear from the media. It is important to learn how the Supreme Court majority reached this outcome, because for the rest of our lives, that legal framework may impact civil rights most of us have taken for granted for decades.

C.J. Petersen chairs the Iowa Democratic Party’s Stonewall Caucus.

When my husband and I walk into a restaurant in rural Iowa and sit down, nobody assumes there’s something going on between us. I’m a heavyset, cisgender white guy with a beard. More than once, people have assumed we were brothers or–to my chagrin–that I was his father (only six years separate us, by the way, but at 32, I’m blessed by genetics with salt-and-pepper hair).

Because of this dynamic, I know that I enjoy an immense amount of privilege to be able to live authentically and thrive in rural western Iowa. I know this, too, from listening to the experiences of Black, brown, transgender, and non-binary folks, who tell me how they fear for their safety when they visit my part of Iowa (we’re not yet two years removed from having been represented by Steve King). Their experiences are valid, and none of us is safe while any of our lives are threatened.

As chair of the Iowa Democratic Party’s Stonewall Caucus, a constituency group of LGBTQ+ folks who guide the party’s positions on issues that affect our community, my job is to elect Democrats–specifically, Democrats who support LGBTQ+ people and act as allies in our continued fight for equality and justice.

Senator Chuck Grassley has not been following the work of the House Select Committee investigating the events of January 6, 2021, he told Dr. Bob Leonard of KNIA-KRLS Radio this week.

He should have watched the televised hearings on June 23. The focus was how President Donald Trump tried to use the U.S. Department of Justice to help him subvert the peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election. The key elements of that conspiracy have been known since the Senate Judiciary Committee investigated that angle last year. But witnesses and exhibits provided many new details.

The testimony from former administration officials and Trump attorneys obliterated the alternate reality Grassley promoted last year, in which the president “did not exert improper influence on the Justice Department.”