Erin Farquhar is the mother of Abram Miller, who relies on consumable hemp products to control seizures.

This year, the Iowa legislature approved and Governor Kim Reynolds signed House File 2605, placing new regulations on Iowa’s CBD, or consumable hemp, industry. Proponents described the law as an effort to limit the amount of THC in the intoxicating products being sold in our state to protect kids, but that is not what the bill does.  

Unfortunately, HF 2605 was written in a way that has very far-reaching consequences. It does the opposite of what the bill proponents said by banning access to nonintoxicating consumable hemp products used for medical purposes and maintaining access to intoxicating products, like THC infused drinks, used largely recreationally.  

The bill even makes it illegal for me to provide my son the consumable hemp medication he has used for the past nine years to remain seizure-free.   

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

Five months have passed since a 17-year-old Perry High School student walked out of a school bathroom and began shooting toward students who were having breakfast before heading to their classes on the morning of January 4, 2024.

The first details about the tragedy had barely started trickling out when the first questions began. And six months later, most of those questions remain.

Where did Dylan Butler get the guns he used that day?

Who owned the guns?

Did his parents know he had access to the weapons?

Were there any signs before that morning Butler might be thinking about violence? 

Had he been the target of bullying by other students?

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

The facts are as follows:

On May 30, a New York trial jury of five women and seven men unanimously convicted former President Donald Trump of falsifying business records regarding a hush money payment to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels. The payment, in several installments just before the 2016 presidential election, was made in order to prevent her claim about having sex with Trump several years earlier from going public, according to the jury finding. Trump denies a sexual encounter occurred.

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

Former President Donald J. Trump thus reacted in dismay last week after a Manhattan jury convicted the former U.S. president and current GOP candidate to reclaim that office on 34 counts of business impropriety, adding …

Sorry; that wasn’t Trump who said that. Or any Trump supporter. Or last week, or last year, or even last decade. It was what University of Southern California law professor Jody David Armour told the Los Angeles Times after four police officers in that city were acquitted of assault against Rodney King in 1992.

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

Most people go through life never stepping foot inside a courtroom. Most people, that is, except for attorneys, judges, journalists, the few of us chosen to be jurors, and an even more select group, those who are accused of crimes.

If I were talking now with my dear parents, may they rest in peace, I would quickly assure them that my many days spent in courtrooms have been in a professional capacity, not as a defendant trying to avoid the slammer.

As a reporter and later as the boss of reporters, I have had an up-close vantage point to watch our court system as it works. I claim no special expertise. But 50 years in a ringside seat on the judiciary have given me perspective worth sharing.

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.

Attorney General Brenna Bird continues to ignore her critics, doubling down on actions that have drawn criticism. Unfortunately for Iowans, she’s picked a bad model to imitate.

This shoot-yourself-in-the-foot strategy had worked so well for Donald Trump that Bird seems to figure, “Why not give it a try?”

And she’ll likely continue that style, despite the unanimous verdict(s) against Trump in the one trial he has not managed to delay.

“What I saw in that courtroom today is a travesty,” Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird told reporters in New York City on May 13. She was speaking outside the courthouse where former President Donald Trump is being tried for allegedly “falsifying business records to conceal hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election.”

The Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) organized the trip and paid for Bird’s travel to Manhattan, a spokesperson for Bird’s campaign told reporters after the attorney general declined to answer that question directly.

Ed Tibbetts highlighted Bird’s disrespect for the legal system when she declared the case “a scam and a sham.” Dave Busiek ridiculed Bird’s hypocrisy after she denounced the prosecution’s witness Michael Cohen (“a perjurer, disbarred, convicted of lying”) “without any apparent sense of irony that she’s appearing on behalf of Donald Trump, who lies as easily and frequently as the rest of us breathe.”

It’s also worth noting that Trump loyalists like Bird and RAGA have no room to point fingers about political prosecutions or “election interference.”

Robin Opsahl covers the state legislature and politics for Iowa Capital Dispatch, where this article first appeared.

In their final days of the 2024 legislative session, Iowa lawmakers approved $8.9 billion in state spending for the upcoming year, financing the state government and public services. Most of those decisions now await a thumbs up or down from the governor.

Appropriations bills included funding for topics discussed often this session, like increasing pay for Iowa judges, as well as spending cuts to Area Education Agencies (AEAs), the provider of special education and other school support services in Iowa.

Budget bills can also include policy components. This year, language restricting on diversity, equity and inclusion programs at the state’s public universities was passed as part of the education spending bill.

State Auditor Rob Sand speaks at a public town hall in Onawa (Monona County) on May 22, 2023. Photo provided by State Auditor’s office.

Rob Sand is Iowa’s state auditor.

Lots of topics get swept under the rug because they’re not comfortable for us to confront. Sometimes we’d rather pretend the problems don’t exist or couldn’t happen in a place like Iowa. But they do, and it can happen anywhere—even in our great state. It is our obligation to confront them in order to solve them.

I’ve always spoken out on behalf of victims of sexual violence. From my time as a prosecutor putting or keeping rapists and pedophiles behind bars, to voting against taxpayer-funded settlements that bail out perpetrators of egregious sexual harassment in my role as a member of the State Appeal Board now that I’m state auditor.

State Senator Dan Dawson presents Senate File 2349, regarding defense subpoenas, during floor debate on February 27. Screenshot from official video.

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

What were they thinking? That is a question I ask myself a lot lately.

Those were the first words out of my mouth when the Manhattan district attorney had to postpone Donald Trump’s New York criminal trial on the alleged hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels — the delay necessitated because government lawyers had dropped the ball.

I muttered those words during several days of court hearings in Georgia into Atlanta prosecutor Fani Willis’ affair with a subordinate prosecutor — the one she chose to lead the criminal case against Trump and a dozen other defendants for trying to undo that state’s 2020 presidential election results.

And those words come to mind about bills the Iowa legislature is considering that would affect criminal cases like those brought against state university athletes for their online wagers on sporting events.

Gerald Ott of Ankeny was a high school English teacher and for 30 years a school improvement consultant for the Iowa State Education Association.

Mark your calendars for the State of the Union this Thursday, March 7. Get your TVs tuned up. Gather the kids. Sit back. See Marjorie Taylor Greene swallow her tongue. Watch Speaker Mike Johnson break his gavel. See Vice President Kamala Harris spank Jim Jordan’s Freedom Caucus. It’ll be wild.

President Joe Biden will say the state of the union is good. He’ll be right. In fact, on many fronts, the state of the union is great. The trouble is, too few voters believe that, and many are swayed by former President Donald Trump’s preposterous claims or the hypnotic trance he’s placed them in.

U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley is well known for lamenting the lack of history on the History Channel. This week he has engaged in revisionist history about his role in spreading false allegations against President Joe Biden.

The senator spent months publicizing claims that the president and his son Hunter Biden took bribes from a Ukrainian businessman, even though FBI officials had warned Grassley and other Republican politicians the bribery had not been verified.

Now Grassley is trying to reshape the narrative, casting himself as the hero who helped expose the source of the false claims as a liar. He continues to push back against accusations that he has been a conduit for Russian disinformation.

U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley has yet to comment publicly on a new document asserting that “officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story” about Hunter Biden.

The revelation came in a detention memo federal prosecutors filed on February 20, hoping to convince a court to keep former FBI informant Alexander Smirnov incarcerated pending trial. Smirnov was arrested last week and charged with lying to FBI agents about an alleged bribery scheme involving Hunter Biden and his father, when Joe Biden was vice president. The FBI memorialized those claims in an FD-1023 document, which Grassley released and hyped last year as evidence of Biden family corruption. Prosecutors now say Smirnov fabricated the allegations.

The detention memo details Smirnov’s “extensive and extremely recent” contacts with “officials affiliated with Russian intelligence,” and asserts he was planning to to meet with Russian operatives during an upcoming trip abroad. The defendant reported some of those contacts to his FBI handler before being arrested and divulged other relevant information in a custodial interview on February 14.

Grassley’s communications staff did not respond to Bleeding Heartland’s inquiries this week about Smirnov’s reported contacts with Russian intelligence. The senator has regularly posted on social media as he tours northern Iowa, but has not acknowledged news related to the false bribery claims. His office has issued ten news releases about various other topics since February 20.

U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley did his best last year to promote what he called “very significant allegations from a trusted FBI informant implicating then-Vice President Biden in a criminal bribery scheme.”

On February 15, the Justice Department unsealed an indictment charging that informant, Alexander Smirnov, with two felonies: making a false statement to a government agent, and creating a false and fictitious record. Last July, Grassley released that document (an FBI FD-1023 form) to bolster claims President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, had accepted bribes worth $5 million. Federal prosecutors determined the events Smirnov first reported to his handler in June 2020 “were fabrications.”

At this writing, Grassley’s office has not sent out a news release about the criminal charges returned by a federal grand jury in California. But in a statement provided to Bleeding Heartland, staff claimed the indictment “confirms several points Senator Grassley has made repeatedly.”

The spin was not convincing.

Laura Hessburg is Director of Public Policy for the Iowa Coalition Against Domestic Violence. This commentary is slightly adapted from comments she delivered at the public hearing on House File 2389 on February 12.

The Iowa Coalition Against Domestic Violence (ICADV) urges legislators to reject House File 2389, a bill permitting and enabling discrimination against trans individuals. We believe this bill is harmful, unnecessary, and appalling for a variety of reasons. Our remarks address the harmful impact it will have on ensuring crime victims have equal access to support services and emergency shelter.

ICADV supports 22 local victim service provider agencies across Iowa, including eight domestic violence shelters, providing support services to victims of violent crime (domestic violence, sexual assault, child abuse, human trafficking, homicide). The largest source of funding for this work comes from federal grants. As a condition of receiving federal funding, agencies are required to ensure equal access to accommodations and services as per non-discrimination provisions in federal law under the Violence Against Women Act, the Fair Housing Act, and HUD equal access regulations. This bill puts agencies in direct conflict with federal grant obligations and state law—and for many victims, this confusion creates another barrier to accessing support services.

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird receives an award from the Iowa State Sheriffs’ and Deputies’ Association in December 2023. Photo first published on the Attorney General’s official Facebook page.

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

Voters have busy lives—families to care for, jobs demanding their attention, bills to worry about. 

So, they can be forgiven if they do not closely track their government leaders’ statements and actions. Sometimes voters may find discrepancies between what politicians say and what they do.

Here is one example:

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird was in the news last week asking Congress to replenish a federal program, the Victims of Crime Act, which assists crime victims in a variety of ways.

From left: Carolyn Jenison, Angelo Thorne, and Tanya Keith attend a Republican precinct caucus in Des Moines on January 15 after changing their party registrations. Photo by Tanya Keith published with permission.

The Iowa Democratic Party will soon send “presidential preference cards” to registered Democrats who would like to vote by mail for Joe Biden, Dean Phillips, Marianne Williamson, or “uncommitted.” Voters will have until February 19 to request the cards, and will need to return them by March 5 (or with a March 5 postmark).

One group of Iowa Democrats should not attempt to vote by mail, however: those who switched parties in order to attend a Republican precinct caucus on January 15.

Rachel Bruns is a volunteer advocate for quality maternal health care in Iowa. This article originally appeared on the Des Moines Register’s website.

The Des Moines Register article “What Patients Should Know About Hospital Drug Testing” missed some key information that may help families disrupt the illegal maternal and newborn drug screening practices taking place at Iowa hospitals and clinics.

The U.S. Supreme Court made clear in 2001 (Ferguson v. Charleston) that prenatal drug testing without specific informed consent is unlawful. Nevertheless, some Iowa clinics and hospitals continue to conduct such tests, when urine is gathered for testing of urinary tract infections or to check urine glucose or protein levels. Such practices are not only unlawful, but also create mistrust of the medical system—putting the lives of moms and babies at risk. 

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

The increasing secrecy by Iowa law enforcement and their lawyers about identifying people by name raises important questions underlying public confidence in the critical work of first-responders.

The question deals with whether police can or should refuse to identify persons involved in incidents and crimes. Despite Iowa’s history of openness about crimes and accidents, with increasing frequency public officials refuse to provide names of people who end up in these events, whether as victims or perpetrators.

A few examples illustrate this trend:

Screenshot of President Donald Trump and Governor Kim Reynolds at a rally in Des Moines on January 30, 2020

“I would say with a great deal of confidence that Kim Reynolds is the only person in the state of Iowa that could be a king or a queenmaker,” Republican Party of Iowa state chair Jeff Kaufmann told the Des Moines Register last February. “There’s a lot of people who like to cast themselves as kingmaker because it helps them to push their organizations, but she’s the only one that could be.”

Wrong.

Governor Reynolds spent much of the last two months campaigning for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and starred in a tv ad on his behalf. Yet her backing didn’t move the needle; polls showed support for DeSantis between the mid-teens and low 20s in Iowa for the last six months. As expected, he finished about 30 points behind former President Donald Trump at the January 15 caucuses.

DeSantis did eke out a second-place finish with 21.2 percent of the vote, about 2 points ahead of Nikki Haley. But that more likely stemmed from the Never Back Down super PAC’s extensive field operation, which was superior to what Americans for Prosperity Action delivered for Haley.

Reynolds should have known it was far too late to convince the GOP base to abandon Trump. She’d avoided offending his fans for years.

Carl Olsen is the founder of Iowans for Medical Marijuana.

The Iowa Department of Corrections filed two study bills this week, asking Iowa legislators to make an exception to the state’s medical cannabis program, Iowa Code Chapter 124E.

Senate Study Bill 3020 and companion House Study Bill 524 call for amending the statute so the state can

Revoke a medical cannabidiol registration card issued to a person who becomes committed to the custody of the director of the Iowa department of corrections or placed under the supervision of the Iowa department of corrections.

Photo of Perry High School is by Richc80, available via Wikimedia Commons

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

Like many Iowans, my thoughts have been rather chaotic since the horrible news from Perry High School last week.

The events were so sad and senseless. A 17-year-old student was dead, having shot himself. An 11-year-old sixth-grader, known for his big smile and cheerful outlook, was dead from three gunshot wounds. Seven other students and school employees, including the high school principal, were wounded by the teenager.

Americans are numb to the number and frequency of school shootings and other mass killings. Our leaders appear to be paralyzed. Yes, they express their sadness and concern, but thoughts and prayers are not enough.

Gun violence doesn’t originate at the schoolhouse door, and it won’t be solved there. Our policy making and political rhetoric urgently need to reflect this reality.

Nick Covington is an Iowa parent who taught high school social studies for ten years. He is also the co-founder of the Human Restoration Project, an Iowa educational non-profit promoting systems-based thinking and grassroots organizing in education.

Around 7:45 on the morning of January 4, I was headed home after dropping my daughter off at her elementary school when I thought nothing of pulling over for an Iowa Highway Patrol car, lights and sirens blaring, headed west. Hours later, as reports came in, I saw state troopers were among the first on the scene at Perry High School, at the edge of a small Iowa town about 30 minutes due west of my own. A 17-year old student had inaugurated another year of gun violence in American schools, killing a 6th grader and injuring five other students and two staff before taking his own life.

Those dopplered sirens were an unsettling connection between my ordinary morning drop-off routine and the nightmare that had visited families of a nearby community; another sign of the persistent and unique exposure to gun violence that only the United States allows. 

Iowa’s Republican legislators, Governor Kim Reynolds, and Senator Chuck Grassley inspired the majority of Bleeding Heartland’s most-read posts during the year that just ended. But putting this list together was trickier than my previous efforts to highlight the site’s articles or commentaries that resonated most with readers.

For fifteen years, I primarily used Google Analytics to track site traffic. Google changed some things this year, prompting me to switch to Fathom Analytics (an “alternative that doesn’t compromise visitor privacy for data”) in July. As far as I could tell during the few days when those services overlapped, they reached similar counts for user visits, page views, and other metrics. But the numbers didn’t completely line up, which means the Google Analytics data I have for posts published during the first half of the year may not be the same numbers Fathom would have produced.

Further complicating this enterprise, I cross-post some of my original reporting and commentary on a free email newsletter, launched on Substack in the summer of 2022 as part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. Some of those posts generated thousands of views that would not be tabulated as visits to Bleeding Heartland. I didn’t include Substack statistics while writing this piece; if I had, it would have changed the order of some posts listed below.

Donald Trump speaks in Coralville, Iowa on December 13; screenshot from C-SPAN video

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. 

Former President Donald Trump has recently been crying wolf by depicting America’s legal system as a “witch hunt” against him. Trump claims the New York, Georgia, Florida, and District of Columbia criminal cases—with 91 felony charges—are politically motivated to restrict his ability to run for president in 2024.

Anyone would realize the hypocrisy of Trump’s ploy if they knew he never declared “witch hunt” in the 62 lawsuits he filed and lost while contesting the 2020 election. Note: Trump-appointed judges were among the 80-plus magistrates who dismissed his election fraud lawsuits.

Black youth in Iowa continue to be punished more severely than white peers for criminal offenses. According to The Sentencing Project’s latest analysis of disparities in youth incarceration (a category covering detention centers, residential treatment centers, group homes, and youth prisons), Iowa remains among the ten states with the highest overall Black youth incarceration rate, as well as one of the ten states with the greatest Black/white disparity in youth incarceration.

Those statistics reflect only one aspect of a larger problem. Early this year, the final report from a Juvenile Justice Task Force established by the Iowa Supreme Court acknowledged that “Gender and racial disparities are present throughout the system.”

Iowa is in the early stages of implementing the task force’s 55 recommendations, at least seven of which relate to racial disparities. (Many more address out-of-home placements for youth.)

However, advocates say Iowa must do more to address the ongoing disparities. And while an expanded diversion program is keeping many young people out of the juvenile justice system, one Iowa county with a particularly troubled history on youth incarceration is in the process of building a much bigger detention center.

Photo by Bernie Scolaro from the December 5 meeting of the Woodbury County supervisors

Bernie Scolaro is a retired school counselor, a past president of the Sioux City Education Association, and former Sioux City school board member.

One of my first memories of political “participation” was proudly wearing a Nixon button in 4^th grade. My father even took me to see President Richard Nixon pass through Tuckahoe, New York. The motorcade stopped, Nixon waved, and they left. A moment so brief I could have missed it if I blinked too long. 

Nonetheless, I was in awe to see a president in person—a president who would later be the center of the Watergate scandal and would eventually choose to resign. (Years later as the lecture chairperson for my college, I would be introducing Nixon’s former counsel, John Dean, to talk about his role in the Watergate scandal.)  

Quite a few U.S. House Republicans have stirred up trouble for their party’s small majority this year. But the four House members from Iowa—Representatives Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-01), Ashley Hinson (IA-02), Zach Nunn (IA-03), and Randy Feenstra (IA-04)—have generally aligned with the preferences of GOP caucus leaders. It has been rare for to even one of the Iowans to vote differently from top Republicans in the chamber, and they have never done so as a group.

That streak ended on December 1, when Miller-Meeks, Hinson, Nunn, and Feenstra all voted to expel U.S. Representative George Santos.

Santos is only the sixth U.S. House member ever to be expelled, and the 311 to 114 vote (roll call) divided Republicans. While 105 GOP members joined almost all Democrats to remove Santos from their ranks, 112 Republicans opposed the resolution, including the whole leadership team of House Speaker Mike Johnson, Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Majority Whip Tom Emmer, Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, and Republican Policy Chair Gary Palmer.

Kim Taylor could face years in prison after a federal jury convicted her on November 21 of 52 counts of voter fraud, voter registration fraud, or giving false information in registering or voting. Over the course of a six-day trial, prosecutors presented evidence Taylor forged signatures on voter registration forms, absentee ballot request forms, and absentee ballots in order to secure votes for her husband in the 2020 election. Prosecutors identified Jeremy Taylor, a Republican who previously served in the Iowa House and is now a Woodbury County supervisor, as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case.

The jury found Kim Taylor helped cast dozens of fraudulent ballots—a large number, but small in comparison to the 45,700 ballots cast in Woodbury County in 2020, not to mention the 1.7 million ballots cast across Iowa.

Which raises an obvious question for all Republicans who have expressly or tacitly endorsed Donald Trump’s sweeping claims that the 2020 election was “rigged” or stolen from him.

Iowa’s near-total abortion ban remains blocked by court order. But new details emerged last week about how some provisions might be enforced if the Iowa Supreme Court finds the law constitutional (as the state has requested), or lifts the temporary injunction on the ban while litigation proceeds.

One thing is clear: despite repeated references to “standard medical practice” in the document the Iowa Board of Medicine considered on November 17, the proposed abortion rules bear little resemblance to how physicians actually care for patients seeking an abortion.

A Polk County District Court has ruled that the Iowa legislature “overstepped” when it enacted a law allowing police to search garbage outside a home without a warrant.

In a November 13 order granting a defendant’s motion to suppress evidence obtained through trash grabs, Chief Judge Michael Huppert found the 2022 law “void as inconsistent with the language of article I, section 8 of the Iowa Constitution as interpreted by the Iowa Supreme Court.”

Five of the eight Iowa counties with the largest Black populations “had trial juries that were fully representative of their jury-eligible Black population” during 2022 and the first half of 2023, according to data analyzed by the Iowa-Nebraska NAACP. However, trial juries in Polk County and Scott County failed to hit that benchmark, and Dubuque County was “particularly problematic,” with zero Black members of any trial jury during the eighteen-month period reviewed.

The same review indicated that trial juries in Linn and Woodbury counties were close to being representative of the area’s jury-eligible Latino population, while Latinos were underrepresented on juries in Johnson, Marshall, Scott, and Polk counties, and particularly in Muscatine County.

Russell Lovell and David Walker, retired Drake Law School professors who co-chair the Iowa-Nebraska NAACP Legal Redress Committee, examined juror data provided by the Iowa Judicial Branch and presented their findings at the 11th Annual Iowa Summit on Justice and Disparities in Ankeny on November 3.

AJ Jones is a writer. She is a creator of art and expresses herself across different mediums. She embraces her neurodivergence as a unique way to view the world and create a better future.

Domestic Violence Awareness Month is always difficult and one of remembrance. I remember the last conversation I had with Linda, a friend from work. She told me how her husband had tied her up and locked her in the downstairs bathroom of the house for several hours. How he had threatened her with a knife and how he had previously threatened her with a gun. 

You can imagine how that conversation went. I often wonder if my advice was sound.  

Iowa Republicans have seen more advertising against former President Donald Trump this year than GOP voters anywhere else in the country.

The Win It Back PAC, a super-PAC with “close ties” to the conservative advocacy group Club for Growth, spent more than $4 million over the summer to run six different television commercials in the Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, and Sioux City markets. The Republican Accountability PAC kicked in $1.5 million on its own series of tv ads in Iowa. AFP Action, an arm of the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity network, has sent numerous mailings with anti-Trump messages to Iowa households and paid for dozens of Facebook ads seeking to convince Iowans the former president is unelectable. New groups have popped up to fund direct mail in Iowa attacking Trump on issues ranging from LGBTQ rights to COVID-19 policies to crime.

Nevertheless, Trump is as well positioned for the 2024 caucuses as ever, according to the latest Iowa Poll by Selzer & Co for the Des Moines Register, NBC News, and Mediacom. Among those likely to attend the GOP caucuses in January, 43 percent support Trump, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley are tied for second place at 16 percent. No other candidate was in double digits.

Selzer’s findings are consistent with other recent polls of Iowa Republican caucus-goers, showing Trump ahead of DeSantis by at least 20 points and in most cases by more than 30 points.

One could argue the barrage of anti-Trump messages dented the front-runner’s appeal. His numbers in Iowa are lower than his support nationally, where he’s been hovering at or above 55 percent lately in presidential GOP primary polls.

But any early success from the television, direct mail, and digital ad blitz seems to have dissipated. Selzer’s polling suggests Trump’s level of support held steady among likely Iowa GOP caucus-goers: 42 percent in August, 43 percent in October. His lead over the second-place candidate grew from 23 points in August to 27 points this month. Trump’s supporters are also more enthusiastic and “locked in” than those leaning toward other presidential candidates.

The latest Iowa Poll validates the conclusions of research Win It Back PAC conducted this summer: most ads seeking to drive Republicans away from Trump either have no effect or increase his support among the target audience.

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

The rationale behind Iowa’s professional licensing laws is simple: People in certain professions and skilled occupations are required to hold state licenses to work in Iowa. The purpose is to ensure they meet the minimum standard of training and skill necessary to serve consumers safely and effectively.

But a state policy change leads me to wonder whether government officials have lost sight of their obligation to act in the best interests of the public. If officials follow through with the new policy in the coming months, then state legislators should step in next year and correct this ill-conceived decision—and concerned citizens should encourage their lawmakers stick up for the public.

State Senator Adrian Dickey no longer faces a criminal charge stemming from his arrest in Sac County on the second day of RAGBRAI.

Sac County Attorney Ben Smith filed a motion to dismiss the charge of interference with official acts in Sac County Court on October 6. Magistrate Joshua Walsh granted the motion later the same day. Dickey had pleaded not guilty and had requested a jury trial. His attorney had characterized the dispute with a sheriff’s deputy as a “misunderstanding.”

Smith made three points in the motion to dismiss:

Iowa is tied for seventh among states with the highest disparities in Black incarceration rates, according to new analysis from the nonprofit Prison Policy Initiative. Data released on September 27 show Black Iowans are about nine times more likely than whites to be in prison or jail, and Native Americans are about thirteen times more likely than whites to be incarcerated in Iowa.

Betty Andrews, president of the Iowa-Nebraska NAACP, said in a statement that the findings “underscore the need for systemic reform.” She called on Iowa to “take action in every facet of the justice process.”

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

Republican Speaker of the U.S. House Kevin McCarthy announced on September 12 that he had ordered an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.

Democrats should reply, “Bring it on.”

Officials in Sac County, Iowa are refusing to provide footage from law enforcement body cameras and dashboard cameras related to State Senator Adrian Dickey’s arrest last month during RAGBRAI.

Dickey was charged with interference with official acts (a simple misdemeanor) after allegedly refusing to comply with a deputy sheriff’s request to move along a rural road a “big party” of bicyclists were blocking.

The Republican senator has pleaded not guilty and asked for a jury trial. His attorney has characterized the dispute that led to the arrest as a “misunderstanding.”

The day after learning about Dickey’s arrest, I requested relevant records from the Sac County Sheriff’s Office, including copies of body camera and squad car dash camera video from all deputy sheriffs who were present during the incident, as well as audio and video recordings from the jail where the senator was booked. I noted the high public interest in this case, because the defendant is a member of the Iowa legislature.

Responding on behalf of Sheriff Ken McClure, Sac County Attorney Ben Smith said he could not provide the information. He cited Iowa Code Section 22.7(5), a provision in the open records law that declares peace officer’s investigative reports are confidential.

State Senator Adrian Dickey is seeking monetary damages from his daughter and others who filed a civil lawsuit in July accusing him of fraud in connection with a car lien and title.

Korynn Dickey, her mother Shawna Husted, and adoptive father Allen Husted alleged in court filings that after buying Korynn a car in 2020, “no strings attached,” Adrian Dickey signed his daughter’s name to car lien and car title application forms, without her knowledge or consent. The senator asserted in a response filed with the Jefferson County District Court that Korynn “acquiesced or consented/gave her permission” for her father to sign her name.

I wondered whether Dickey might seek to settle this litigation to avoid the expense and publicity of a trial. Instead, he escalated the conflict on August 16, when his attorney Paul Miller submitted an amended answer to the lawsuit. A new section lays out a counterclaim against all plaintiffs, accusing them of making false “written and spoken statements” that “are injurious to the Defendant’s reputation.” Dickey is asking the court to award $120,000 in damages.