Steve Dunn is a retired journalist who has self-published two books, about former State Senator Pat Deluhery’s political career and the history of professional baseball in Des Moines. This essay first appeared on his Substack newsletter, Blasts and Bunts.

To say we’re living in troubled times is an understatement. Since 2026 began, the U.S. has captured the leader of Venezuela and his wife, bombed Syria and threatened to take over Greenland by force if necessary. Not only that, but we’ve also witnessed the shooting of a Minnesota woman by an ICE agent.

After a church service on January 11, I told the associate pastor the toxic climate in the U.S. today is ten times worse than mood of the country in the 1960s, when I came of age. Oh sure, the 1960s included the highly unpopular Vietnam War, race riots, civil rights protests, and assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy.

But today an “us versus them” mentality has a stranglehold on America. It’s almost as if we’re two different countries with two different mindsets. We haven’t had this much division since the Civil War and the fight over preserving the union and abolishing slavery. Unfortunately, the divide is fueled by many talking heads on talk radio, social media, and television.

Deaconess Irene DeMaris grew up in rural Washington state, where she often got in trouble for driving too fast down gravel roads in the family pickup. She moved to Iowa in 2018 after meeting her now husband. Irene lives in Des Moines, where she is active in her faith community, enjoys riding her bike, and is converting her lawn into a pollinator paradise.

I don’t always get excited about candidates running for office. But when I heard Wade Dooley was running for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture as a Democrat, I was so genuinely thrilled that I startled my two Corgis.

Since moving to Iowa in late 2018, I’ve traveled across the state, listening to rural communities and learning how farming deeply shapes both our economy, and even more so, our identity. One thing has become abundantly clear: when farmers are empowered to lead, big things happen. Farmers are natural problem-solvers, called to work the land, adapt to challenges, and innovate. They already are, and must continue to be, leaders in climate solutions.

Wade Dooley is exactly that kind of leader.

Editor’s note from Laura Belin: This post has been updated with additional information and clarifications.

Linda Schreiber writes commentary on selected legislative issues.

For more than four decades, Iowa’s Bottle Bill stood as a national model: simple, effective, and popular. It reduced litter, boosted recycling, and put responsibility where it belonged—on producers and consumers. The 2022 update weakened those goals while reducing public accountability.

In 2019, Iowa State University professor Dr. Dermot Hayes recommended adjusting the five-cent deposit enacted in 1979 for inflation, roughly 17 cents at the time. A survey showed 88 percent of Iowans supported the Bottle Bill. Advocates, including the League of Women Voters and the Sierra Club, urged lawmakers to strengthen the program, improve redemption access, and preserve public benefits.

Iowa lawmakers chose a different path.

David Elbert is a former business editor and columnist for the Des Moines Register. He now writes about local history for DSM Magzine. A version of the following column appeared first in the Des Moines Register.

Wendy Wintersteen is retiring after eight years as the first female president of Iowa State University.

As a native of Ames and a graduate of Iowa State, I should be proud. But I’m not. In retrospect, I probably I expected too much from her.

Before Wintersteen took over the top job at ISU, she was dean of ISU’s highly regarded College of Agriculture. She was, I might add, the first Iowa State president with an agricultural background since 1926 when Raymond Pearson left to become president of the University of Maryland. 

Matt Russell is a farmer, political writer, and progressive ag and rural leader. He has published work in the New York Times, TIME, AgInsider, Civil Eats, and many state and local publications. He co-owns Coyote Run Farm with his husband Patrick Standley in rural Lacona, Iowa. A version of this essay first appeared on his Substack newsletter, Growing New Leaders: Perspectives from Coyote Run Farm.

Iowans will have some outstanding Democratic candidates to vote for in 2026. A Democratic candidate for secretary of agriculture is not yet among them, but could be soon.

Chris Jones has announced an exploratory committee and plans to decide whether to run in January. You can read Laura Belin’s interview with him here. Jones, who has a PhD in analytical chemistry, is a longtime advocate for cleaner water. He’s a sharp critic of how the agriculture industry has contributed to the pollution but avoided taking enough (if any) responsibility for dirty water.

Until election day 2024, I had planned to run for Iowa secretary of agriculture in 2026. My plan was to stay in my appointment at USDA with the Biden-Harris Administration until this fall. I’d hoped Christina Bohannan would win in Iowa’s first Congressional district, and as only one or two Democratic members of the Iowa delegation, I’d work with her to identify a great candidate to offer to the Harris-Walz Administration to be the next State Executive Director of the Iowa Farm Service Agency.

“I heard a physician say one time, you can tell a lot from a person by looking at their skin, and if their skin looks good, generally they’re in pretty good health,” Chris Jones told a capacity crowd at The Harkin Institute at Drake University on November 12. “And the way I see it, I look at Iowa, our lakes and our rivers and our aquifers in that same way.”

Those polluted waters “don’t look good” now, Jones said. “They’re sick,” and they indicate “we have a malignant tumor growing on the inside.”

The malignant tumor, in Jones’ view, is “corporate agriculture.” But consolidation in agriculture and the dominant model for farming have “had effects far beyond our water.” They have also “contributed greatly to the decline of rural Iowa.”

After sounding the alarm for years through his writing and public speaking, Jones is now exploring a Democratic campaign for Iowa secretary of agriculture in 2026. He spoke to Bleeding Heartland after the event in Des Moines about his vision for change and the policies he would champion if he runs for statewide office.

Steve Dunn is a retired journalist who has self-published two books, about former State Senator Pat Deluhery’s political career and the history of professional baseball in Des Moines.

Retired anesthesiologist Dr. Dick Wheeler of Des Moines put people to sleep for a living. Now he wants to wake people up to what he believes is the No. 1 threat to humanity: overpopulation. At 103 years old, Wheeler is more concerned about the future of his four children, eleven grandchildren, and fifteen great-grandchildren than his own.

He has been concerned about overpopulation for a couple of decades. “I read one article about it, which had a bunch of statistics that really alarmed me,” he explained. “Someone had asked a group of experts of various persuasions how many people could Earth support. After due consideration and research, they decided all the way from 11 billion to 17 billion.”

Kurt Meyer writes a weekly column for the Nora Springs – Rockford Register and the Substack newsletter Showing Up, where this essay first appeared. He served as chair of the executive committee (the equivalent of board chair) of Americans for Democratic Action, America’s most experienced liberal organization.

Lines written by Samuel Coleridge 200 years ago, in 1825:

All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair—
The bees are stirring—birds are on the wing— […]
Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And Hope without an object cannot live.

It’s an early reference to “the birds and the bees,” (although Coleridge inverts the order), a familiar euphemism for a conversation parents should have with their children. But the poet also mentions work and hope, relevant to this ramble since major doses of both are needed for society to address a serious birds’ and bees’ situation—literally the birds and the bees—and their rapidly diminishing populations. 

Charles Bruner, Ralph Rosenberg, and David Osterberg jointly wrote this piece. All of the authors served with Paul Johnson in the Iowa legislature and remain active in Iowa politics and policy. They serve on the board of the Johnson Center for Land Stewardship Policy, which worked with Curt Meine in the development of We Can Do Better.

A land comprised of wilderness islands at one extreme and urban islands at the other, with vast food and fiber factories in between, does not constitute a geography of hope. But private land need not be devoted to a single-purpose enterprise. With a broader understanding of land and our place within the landscape, our Nation’s farms, ranches, and private forest land can and do serve the multiple functions that we and all other life do depend upon.

That quote is from Paul Johnson’s introduction to the USDA National Resources Soil Conservation Services’ 1996 America’s Private Land: A Geography of Hope, which is even more relevant today than when he wrote it and shepherded that publication. 

Paul Johnson (1941-2021) was a pivotal figure in American conservation, dedicating his life to bridging the gap between agriculture and environmental stewardship. A new book of Paul’s writings has just been released.

Pam Mackey Taylor is the Director of the Iowa Chapter of the Sierra Club.

Every three years, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) conducts a Triennial Review of its water quality standards. Part of the review is a determination of what changes need to be made to Iowa’s existing water quality standards.

The agenda for the Triennial Review was simple. The DNR intends to focus on the following topic areas related to water quality standards:

• Tribal reserved rights
• Antidegradation
• Human health criteria
• Chapter 61/Surface Water Classification document cleanup
• Use attainability analysis
• PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, sometimes called “forever chemicals”)
• Lake nutrients

After digging into these topics during the review meeting, what jumped out was the lack of investment the State of Iowa and the DNR have made in water quality and improved water quality standards over the last two decades. 

John Gilbert farms with a brother, a son, and their wives along South Fork, a tributary of the Iowa River. In addition to non-GMO row crops, they raise small grains, forages, cattle, and antibiotic free pigs they sell to Niman Ranch. John is a volunteer with the Southfork Watershed Alliance, and is active in Practical Farmers of Iowa and the Iowa Farmers Union. Their farm has been recognized for its work toward sustainability. 

EDITOR’S NOTE: John Gilbert wrote the following essay, which was first published by the Des Moines Register, before the two-year anniversary of the 2018 Farm Bill’s expiration (September 30). Four members of Iowa’s Congressional delegation (Senators Chuck Grasssley and Joni Ernst, and Representatives Randy Feenstra and Zach Nunn) serve on the Senate or House Agriculture Committees, which are responsible for writing the Farm Bill.

It’s also important to note that this week, the Trump administration is expected to announce bailout payments for soybean farmers—reportedly of about $100 an acre—to offset damages caused by this administration’s erratic tariffs, and trade disruptions. The need for such a payment underscores the weakness of a farm policy based on unrestricted production.

It’s officially time Iowa has one of those warnings, like what you see on cigarette packages: “Caution: Living in Iowa is Hazardous to Your Health!”

The problem isn’t just that Iowa’s water carries way too many farm field pollutants (we’re all tired of hearing about nitrates), although that’s part of it. It’s not just that Iowa has way too many people dealing with cancer; or just that jobs in agriculture, meat packing, construction and manufacturing can be dangerous; or just the dangers of health care deserts in many areas of Iowa. And it’s not just that climate change is making Iowa’s weather more dangerous. The problem is all of those things, and more. 

Julie Stauch is a Democratic candidate for governor.

My team and I hit the ground running in June, and visited all fifteen Community College districts of Iowa. From the start, I made it clear: this campaign would be different. The old way of running campaigns isn’t working anymore, and I believe Iowans deserve a new approach. 

Over the last three months, I’ve spent my time understanding what people across this state most want from their next governor. The core message I heard was that Iowans want leaders who will focus on the real problems they face. The people of Iowa are fed up with candidates not deeply engaging in conversation with them. 

That’s why I’ve held 27 in-depth interview sessions across these districts, ensuring that every voice is heard and every concern is taken seriously. In fact, during the very first interview session, a woman wrote on her worksheet, “I feel like I’ve been heard for the first time.”

Chris Jones is a fisherman who lives in Iowa City. He writes the Substack newsletter The Swine Republic, where this post first appeared. 

Secretary of Agriculture is one of seven executive offices Iowans see on their off-year voting ballot. The Iowa legislature created both the office and the Department of Agriculture (now IDALS) in 1923.

It may seem curious that we have a statewide election for the administrator of a department that employs less than 2 percent of the state government workforce and represents a private industry that is only Iowa’s third-biggest and one with a declining share of the state’s Gross Domestic Product. All sorts of economic sectors are bigger than agriculture; for example, health care now nearly doubles Ag’s GDP in Iowa.

But we have to remember that in 1923, almost 40 percent of Iowa’s population lived on farms. It’s well below 10 percent in the present day, when only 67,000 people in Iowa list farming as their primary source of income (2 percent of Iowa) and many farmers don’t even live on the farm. GMO has made crop farming so easy that some Iowa farmers also farm in Kansas and the Dakotas and probably other states as well.

A person could wonder why we all don’t vote for a Secretary of Teachers, or a Secretary of Bartenders or Hairdressers or Truck-drivers.

Diane Rosenberg is executive director of Jefferson County Farmers & Neighbors, where this commentary first appeared.

Recently, a friend asked how the Iowa state legislature or governor have impeded the work of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and other agencies in cleaning up air and water borne toxins that may be causing Iowa’s increasing cancer rate.

After eighteen years of working on confined animal feeding operation (CAFO) issues, a whole laundry list of impediments rolled off the tip of my tongue.

Numerous studies link high nitrate levels to a variety of cancers. And this major agricultural state has the second highest rate of cancer in the nation and is one of two states where the number of cases is rising.

Water quality is in the news this summer. High nitrate levels are affecting drinking water in Central Iowa, a new Polk County water quality report links 80 percent of nitrate pollution to agriculture, and too many beaches are unswimmable just when we need to cool off in this blistering heat.

Given all that, I thought this is a good time to spotlight some of the ways I see our state government failing us.

Cami Koons covers agriculture and the environment for Iowa Capital Dispatch, where this article first appeared.

More than 500 individuals gathered in Des Moines on August 4 to hear what comes next following the release of an in-depth water quality report commissioned by Polk County. 

Another 500 watched online, to hear years worth of research on water pollutants and key steps forward at the individual, watershed and state levels. 

One speaker said it was the first step in an effort to keep the report from just “sitting on a shelf.”

“They spent over 4,000 hours on research and compiling data,” former Polk County administrator John Norris said. “Their work now empowers us as citizens and voters to demand action be taken to make our waters safe.” 

Julie Stauch is a Democratic candidate for governor. She lives in West Des Moines. This column first appeared in the Cedar Rapids Gazette.

In June, after declaring my campaign for the Democratic nomination for governor, I started traveling the state to hold Interview sessions in fifteen Community College districts. The goal is to understand ground level concerns of Iowans through free-flowing conversations. I want to determine what problems most Iowans are concerned about. Iowa’s next governor will need to address those problems.

While most of the participants have been Democrats, there have also been Republicans and no-party voters in the mix. These have been substantive conversations where individual Iowans share what they see as the biggest challenges facing their area and the state and what a successful Iowa would look like. I also answer their questions about my point of view on a variety of issues.

My core reason for running for governor is to solve problems Iowans need solved.

Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column. This essay first appeared on Substack.

The state of Iowa in 2013 approved its “Nutrient Reduction Strategy” for reducing nitrogen and phosphorus runoff into the state’s streams and rivers, and eventually downstream into the Gulf of Mexico. The voluntary strategy was officially adopted in 2018, with a goal of reducing the pollutants’ runoff by 45 percent.

While some farmers have been diligent in their efforts to comply with the strategy, and they deserve Iowans’ gratitude, too few of them do enough to adequately reduce nitrogen and phosphorus runoff. There are several reasons for the lag, including cost, inertia, failure to learn and/or appreciate the best practices proposed by the strategy, and individual resistance to change.

Tom Walton is an attorney in Dallas County.

In March 2024, Dr. Peter S. Thorne, Department of Occupational and Environmental Health at the University of Iowa, with his colleague Dr. Angelico Mendy, an epidemiologist at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, published an important scientific paper on the association between drinking water nitrate levels with the risk of death from cancer. Thorne is the former Chairman of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Scientific Advisory Board.

The report has received little, if any, coverage by others, including in Iowa. It deserves more.

James Larew is an attorney in Iowa City who served as general counsel and chief of staff for former Governor Chet Culver. This post is a revised version of a letter he sent to Polk County supervisors as a public comment before their July 1 meeting.

We are on the cusp of a civil rights movement—a movement to protect citizens’ fundamental right to access clean water.

In the mid-1840s, our ancestors marveled at the “well-watered” rivers and creeks and the readily-available water supply.

But for the confluence of the abundant and clean waters of the Raccoon and Des Moines Rivers, the City of Des Moines and the nearby communities would likely never have amounted to anything. Instead, that resource allowed for the founding of a capital city and a robust economy.

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

For four years the Sierra Club has been working with impacted landowners to pass legislation that would restrict the use of eminent domain for hazardous liquid pipeline projects. In 2022, 2023 and 2024, we were able to get legislation through the Iowa House with strong bipartisan majorities, but Republican leaders in the Iowa Senate blocked all of those bills.

This year the House approved two bills, again with strong bipartisan majorities. House File 943 was a short bill, which would have banned the use of eminent domain for hazardous liquid pipelines. It was referred to the Iowa Senate Commerce Committee and never got a subcommittee hearing.

The other bill, House File 639, would have changed state law on pipelines and eminent domain in several ways. It likely would have died, but was eventually brought to the Senate floor after twelve Republican senators pledged “to vote against any remaining budget bill until a floor vote occurs on the clean HF639 bill.”

Chuck Isenhart is an investigative reporter, photographer and recovering Iowa state legislator offering research, analysis, education and public affairs advocacy at his Substack newsletter Iowa Public Policy Geek, where this essay first appeared.

Never have I ever had the nightmare, much less a daytime phantasm, that a friend of mine could be the victim of a political assassination in the United States of America.

Never have I ever looked to the sky, as I did on Saturday afternoon, admiring three great blue herons over the Mississippi River, which flows from Minnesota to Iowa, then starkly recognize that the majestic birds are flying in “missing man formation.”

Never have I ever met a public servant quite like Melissa Hortman.

“People are excited, and I think so far what we’re seeing is hunger for something different,” State Auditor Rob Sand told me on the day he announced he’s running for governor in 2026.

“The real theme across my work is I’m a problem solver,” Julie Stauch told me shortly before her campaign launch.

I interviewed both candidates about their top priorities and the case they will make to Iowa voters over the coming year. Toward the end, I discuss the biggest challenge facing each contender at this early stage.

AJ Jones is a writer and creator of art, expressing herself across different mediums. She embraces her neurodivergence as a unique way to view the world in hopes of creating a better future. She first published this essay on her Substack newsletter, Blue Dot Thoughts.

On Memorial Day I set out to visit Iowa’s largest “lake.” A staple in the memories of my youth. I was curious to see if people still relaxed and recreated as they once did during the warm weather holidays. So much has changed, environmentally, since I was a kid and not for the better.

It seems I was born in the “sweet spot.” A time before an outrageous number of CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) and manure run-off…a time before Roundup and glyphosate. A time of innocence when family and friends could meet at Iowa lakes to fish, to swim, to enjoy the warmer seasons outdoors.

Looking back we had no idea just how lucky we were.

Robin Opsahl covers the state legislature and politics for Iowa Capital Dispatch, where this article first appeared. Brooklyn Draisey, Cami Koons, and Clark Kauffman contributed to this report.

Republicans’ supermajorities in both chambers of the Iowa Legislature allowed them to push several high-profile bills to the governor throughout the legislative session – but many of the thousands of bills discussed this session failed to advance.

Lawmakers adjourned for the 2025 legislative session early on May 15 after a night of debate and closed-door caucus meetings and nearly two weeks after the session was scheduled to end. Republicans were able to reach agreements on May 14 to pass several of the policy bills that had failed to advance earlier in the session, including Governor Kim Reynolds’ bills providing paid parental leave for state employees and reducing the state’s unemployment insurance taxes on employers.

Earlier in the year, the Republican-controlled chambers moved quickly to pass a bill removing gender identity from the Iowa Civil Rights Act. Other measures passed through with less coordination—legislation on eminent domain use in carbon sequestration pipelines only made it to a vote on May 12, following a concerted effort by twelve GOP senators who said they would not support any budget bills until the pipeline bill was brought to the floor.

Cami Koons covers agriculture and the environment for Iowa Capital Dispatch, where this article first appeared.

A federal judge heard oral arguments on March 31 in a case that could overturn a decades-old statute tying wetland conservation to federal farm benefit eligibility. 

The plaintiff CTM Holdings, which owns and rents land to Iowa farmers, sued over the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s “swampbuster” law, alleging its implementation is unconstitutional, and that it takes land without any compensation to landowners.

The government defendants and intervening environmental groups argued against CTM and alleged the company had no standing as it had not suffered any injury from the statute.

Chief Judge C.J. Williams, for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa, questioned whether the whole issue was a “failure to communicate” between the landowner and Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), which carries out the swampbuster rule. 

Dani Replogle is a staff attorney with the national advocacy group Food & Water Watch.

For nearly a century, the U.S. government has encouraged farmers to adopt practices that conserve wetlands, protect clean water, and keep farms sustainable. But this common-sense federal commitment to farmers and wetland conservation is now under threat.

Swampbuster, a federal program that rewards farmers who conserve wetlands with eligibility for millions of dollars in U.S. Department of Agriculture benefits, is a policy that embodies the longstanding governmental commitment to supporting good farmland stewardship practices. Thanks to the Trump administration and a suite of lawsuits that have cropped up in federal courts, Swampbuster and similar incentive programs now face an uncertain future.

For years, family farm groups have been advocating for this long-term farm sustainability program. This month, attorneys representing sustainable agriculture groups will defend the critical Swampbuster program in federal court in Cedar Rapids.

Jason Benell lives in Des Moines with his wife and two children. He is a combat veteran, former city council candidate, and president of Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers. A version of this essay first appeared on his Substack newsletter, The Odd Man Out.

Republicans, particularly Iowa Republicans, seem to have a serious problem with science and the scientific method. Their actions and rhetoric treat science as if it is some monolithic thing to appeal to or a lever you can pull to look good and reasonable in the face of scrutiny. However, like so many concepts and principles that require thought and consideration, they seem to really struggle with science and the scientific method. 

So often, Republicans substitute a tradition or a belief or cultural icon for science, in order to justify some action or some policy proposal. It is a common refrain, with scientific and secular organizations lining up with data, expertise, and testable hypotheses on one side of an issue. On the other side—the Republican side—there are faith-based organizations and Very Concerned Citizens who have little to no scientific data to back them up. These folks tend to view science the same way they view their favored religious text: as an authoritative source of knowledge that must be appealed to, rather than a process that should be applied and worked through.

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

I watched Governor Kim Reynolds’ Condition of the State message on YouTube on January 15, the day after she spoke to state legislators. I followed along with the text from her official webpage. If she left out a word, I missed the omission.

Every citizen should scrutinize the governor’s remarks to see if or how she speaks to you. If I seem cynical, I feel justified.

I didn’t put a timer on it, but minutes devoted to hand clapping seemed to outnumber the actual minutes of speaking. Those packed in the “People’s House” no doubt came away with hands reddened and raw from clapping.

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

For the first time, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has overruled the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) on the state’s impaired waters list.

Pam Mackey Taylor, director of the Iowa Chapter of Sierra Club, explained in a Bleeding Heartland post from November that last year, the EPA objected to the impaired waters list the DNR submitted. The EPA added seven segments in the Cedar, Des Moines, Iowa, Raccoon, and South Skunk Rivers to the list, because DNR staff had not used all existing and readily available water quality data. The DNR had refused to add these seven segments during the preparation of the list, even after the EPA told them the omission of those segments would not be approved.

Before Sierra Club and two other ad hoc groups filed a lawsuit in 2000, Iowa had never prepared an impaired waters list, even though the federal Clean Water Act required the state to do so. As a result of that lawsuit, EPA created Iowa’s first impaired waters list. But the federal agency had not overruled the DNR’s submission of the state’s impaired waters list until last year.

Cami Koons covers agriculture and the environment for Iowa Capital Dispatch, where this article first appeared.

Iowa counties can have their own review on proposed animal feeding operation permits if they adopt a construction evaluation resolution and submit it to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources by the end of January each year. 

But not all counties are taking this step, giving up the ability to have a say in the permitting process.

The resolutions allow counties to submit formal recommendations to DNR, send county officials to the DNR inspections of a site, appeal a DNR decision on a construction permit, and implement more stringent construction requirements through the state master matrix.

As each new year begins, I enjoy looking back at the posts that resonated most strongly with readers in the year that ended. Some things never change: actions by the Republican-controlled state legislature and Governor Kim Reynolds—especially attacks on public education—inspired many of Bleeding Heartland’s most-viewed posts from 2024. That’s been true every year since the GOP trifecta began in 2017. U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley, who featured prominently in two of last year’s most popular posts, makes another appearance below.

I’ve learned there is no way to predict which pieces will take off. Some of the posts linked below required intensive research and days of writing, while others took only a few hours from start to finish. One was among the longest I wrote last year (more than 5,000 words), while another was among the shortest (fewer than 300 words).

Some authors whose work gained a large following in past years made the list again. But three authors featured below were contributing to Bleeding Heartland for the first time.

This list draws from Fathom Analytics data about total views for 561 posts published from January 1 through December 31, 2024. I wrote 145 of those articles and commentaries; other authors wrote 416. I left out the site’s front page and the “about” page, where many people landed following online searches.

A half-dozen posts barely missed the top 24, by a few hundred views or less:

Bleeding Heartland set yet another record for guest contributions in 2024, with 416 posts involving 146 authors. (The previous record was 358 posts that more than 125 people wrote for this site in 2023.) I don’t know of any state-based political website that provides more quality coverage and commentary by guest contributors.

This year’s guest authors covered a wide range of topics, from public schools to local government, major employers, CO2 pipelines, notable events in Iowa history, and of course wildflowers.

They wrote about President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, Governor Kim Reynolds and her administration, Attorney General Brenna Bird, and of course former and future President Donald Trump.

During the legislative session, guest authors highlighted flaws in the governor’s plan to overhaul Area Education Agencies and the report that sought to justify it. They shared their own personal or professional experiences with AEAs. They covered other education proposals and explained why the state’s official school voucher numbers were misleading. They also covered bills that received less attention but could change many Iowans’ lives for better or worse.

During the 2024 campaign and its aftermath, guest authors wrote about presidential polling in Iowa and nationally, profiled candidates, and analyzed the election results from several angles.

Guest authors sounded the alarm about Iowa’s near-total abortion ban, unlawful drug testing at hospitals, and climate change impacts. They suggested ways to protect water and air quality, and flagged transparency problems in state and local government. They reviewed books that would interest many Bleeding Heartland readers.

They reflected on the lives of those who passed away this year, including Iowans Marcia Nichols, Bobby Washington, and Jim Leach, as well as Tim Kraft, who played an important role on some Iowa campaigns.

While many guest authors criticized Republican policies and politicians, some offered advice or constructive criticism to Democrats following the Iowa caucuses and another disappointing general election.

As noted below, some contributions by guest authors were among the most-viewed Bleeding Heartland posts of the year.

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. This essay first appeared on his Substack column.

When folks like me call out what we see as a profound danger to our society, as it appears that our government is turning against entire segments of our community, stripping or reducing the rights of select groups of people who are our neighbors, there are those who claim we are alarmists sowing discontent; that we are modern day “Chicken Littles,” going around declaring that the sky is falling.

On December 27, the Quad City Times published its list of “top 10 Iowa stories of 2024.” One look at the list offers more than ample justification for the warnings I and so many others have offered about the current state of our state and the troubling prospects of what lies ahead for Iowa and the nation over the next four years. A whopping seven out of these ten top stories are matters of serious concern for Iowa’s social justice advocates.

UPDATE: In early January, Dexter Merschbrock withdrew as a contender for Iowa Democratic Party state chair and endorsed Alexandra Nickolas-Dermody for the position. Original post follows.

Dexter Merschbrock is a member of National Association of Letter Carriers Branch 373 from Cedar Rapids, spouse to a public school teacher, and father of three. He is originally from Fort Madison. 

The Iowa Democratic Party’s current state chair Rita Hart often talked in the last two years about the 90,000 Democrats in the state who turned out to vote in 2020, but didn’t turn out in the 2022 midterm elections. The theory seemed to be that if those Democrats voted in 2024, the party would see improved results. Either this theory was wrong or, even worse, Democrats failed to turn out 2020 voters at the same time Republicans were increasing their turnout percentage.

Either way, the result is the same: Iowa Democrats, led by chair Rita Hart, failed to convince enough Iowans to vote for them.

Pam Mackey Taylor is the Director of the Iowa Chapter of the Sierra Club.

The U.S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently notified the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) that several Iowa rivers which are used for drinking water need to be put on the impaired waters list—also called the 303(d) list—because they are polluted with nitrate and nitrite. Nitrate and nitrite are toxic to humans. 

The affected rivers are the Cedar River, Des Moines River, Iowa River, Raccoon River, and South Skunk River. There were numerous water samples exceeding the federal water quality standard for surface waters used for drinking water. 

This development is significant, because it means DNR will have to take actions to reduce the nitrates and nitrates in these rivers in order to protect drinking water. With these rivers on the impaired waters list, the DNR can no longer ignore the continuing pollution of these waterways with nitrate and nitrite. 

Dani Replogle is a staff attorney with the national advocacy group Food & Water Watch.

The Midwest’s iconic prairie potholes and other wetlands across the nation are under attack. A politically motivated lawsuit targeting the popular “Swampbuster” provision of the 1985 Farm Bill aims to erode a policy that has protected wetlands and supported farmers for nearly four decades. The case–CTM Holdings, LLC v. U.S. Department of Agriculture–is now pending before the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa.

From cleaning water and providing wildlife habitat to mitigating droughts and flooding, wetlands perform a panoply of ecosystem services that benefit human health and safety. As the impacts of climate change intensify over the coming years, farmers and rural communities stand to benefit immensely from wetlands protected by Swampbuster. That’s why a group of sustainable agriculture groups including Food & Water Watch, Iowa Farmers Union, Iowa Environmental Council, and Dakota Rural Action have moved to intervene in the lawsuit that will decide the program’s fate. 

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

Recent news articles have reported on NexEra’s interest in restarting the Duane Arnold nuclear plant. We need to consider the consequences of such an action.

Restarting a closed reactor in decommissioning status has never been attempted. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) admits there are no regulations authorizing the restart of a closed reactor. In order to restart Duane Arnold, NextEra will have to cobble together a daisy chain of existing regulations that is of doubtful legality, as is being attempted at the Palisades Nuclear Plant in Michigan. Nor is there any assurance that the operation could be done safely.

James Larew is an attorney in Iowa City who served as general counsel and chief of staff for former Governor Chet Culver. Chris Jones is retired from the University of Iowa where he worked as a Research Engineer at IIHR-Hydroscience & Engineering. Prior to that he worked at the Des Moines Water Works and the Iowa Soybean Association. He is author of the book The Swine Republic, Struggles with the Truth about Agriculture and Water Quality. He lives in Iowa City. 

Iowa law should recognize access to clean water and clean air as a fundamental right.

The Iowa Constitution should be amended to assure that right is protected, and to guarantee that governmental actions conflicting with this right are subjected to strict judicial scrutiny.

A further constitutionally-imposed duty should be placed on state government: to affirmatively protect our precious natural resources for us, and for all future generations.

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

During the 40 years I was a newspaper editor/manager, I strived to ensure the staff incorporated context into their articles. Sometimes, in a journalistic shorthand, that was described “the Iowa angle.”

If there was a mass murder in Iowa, I would dip into my stash of clippings and find the list of the worst mass killings in Iowa history. That allowed us to give context to the magnitude of the tragedy.

The same with tornadoes and floods. How does the number of deaths compare with the worst of these nightmares we have experienced in the past?

During the Vietnam war, and later during the Gulf wars, we turned to bound desk calendars where we pasted clippings to track the running tally of deaths of Iowa soldiers. 

So, over this past weekend a friend and I pawed through statistics to provide important Iowa context when Belgium’s mixed relay triathlon team pulled out of the Olympic competition in Paris.

Libertarian candidates have qualified for the general election ballot in three of Iowa’s four U.S. House districts.

A state party convention in early June nominated Nicholas Gluba in the first Congressional district, Marco Battaglia in the third, and Charles Aldrich in the fourth.

All three candidates spoke to Bleeding Heartland about their goals and priorities at the state capitol on July 29. That was the first day federal candidates who did not compete in a major-party primary could submit nominating papers to the Iowa Secretary of State’s office for the November 5 election.