From left: Democratic State Representatives Austin Baeth, Molly Buck, Josh Turek, Elinor Levin, Sharon Steckman, and Adam Zabner. Screenshot from video posted to Facebook on February 8.

“When I joined Environmental Protection, I never envisioned that I would be talking about a raccoon bounty, but here we are,” Democratic State Representative Josh Turek said on February 7, while the House Environmental Protection Committee considered the only bill on the agenda that day.

As they weighed in on the bill, Democrats voiced broader frustrations about the committee’s failure to engage with any of Iowa’s serious environmental challenges.

U.S. Representative Zach Nunn met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, members of the Ukrainian parliament, and intelligence officials in Kyiv on February 9 as a member of a bipartisan U.S. House delegation.

At this writing, Nunn has not posted about the trip on his social media feeds or announced it in a news release, but he appears in pictures others shared from the visit, and is second from the left in the photo above.

Four of the five members of Congress on this delegation serve on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. A committee news release mentioned that Nunn “sits on the House Financial Services Committee’s Subcommittee on National Security, Illicit Finance, and International Financial Institutions and currently serves as a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserve.”

Representative Mike Turner, who chairs the Intelligence committee, said at a news conference in Kyiv, “We came today so that we could voice to President Zelenskyy and others that we were seeing that the United States stands in full support of Ukraine.”

Iowa State University recently acquired a Cessna 560XL airplane for $5.06 million, university staff confirmed to Bleeding Heartland on February 7. The 2004 model Cessna arrived in Ames last month and is intended to replace the university’s King Air 350.

ISU communications staffer Angie Hunt said via email, “the Cessna plane was purchased for the athletic department’s primary use,” with the ISU Foundation using the athletic’s department’s “cash reserves” for the transaction. She added, “No general funds or tuition dollars were used.”

Staff in the Athletics Department have already used the Cessna for several trips.

Nancy Dugan lives in Altoona, Iowa and has worked as an online editor for the past 12 years.

A Gevo official confirmed on February 2 that the company expects to use 300 million gallons of water per year, or 700 gallons per minute, at its planned Lake Preston, South Dakota Net-Zero 1 (NZ1) plant and an adjacent green hydrogen facility known as the Dakota Renewable Hydrogen (DRH) Project.

When asked if the water use estimate provided was for the NZ1 plant, the DRH plant, or both, Heather Manuel, vice president of corporate communications for Gevo, replied, “Both – we have an agreement with Kingbrook Rural Water for our water supply and do not require a permit.”

On February 6, 2023, Summit Carbon Solutions announced its partnership with Colorado-based Gevo, although that arrangement is not yet reflected on the South Dakota pipeline route. Sabrina Zenor, director of stakeholder engagement and corporate communications for Summit, stated on January 25 that Gevo would be added to the proposed CO2 pipeline route when the company resubmits its application to the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission. The commission denied Summit’s initial application last September.

Tom Walton chairs the Dallas County Democrats.

In 2018, Governor Kim Reynolds made “Future Ready Iowa” her trademark program designed to improve Iowa’s workforce, setting a goal to increase the number of Iowans who had attained a post-secondary education to 70 percent of the workforce by 2025.

Reynolds announced in last month’s Condition of the State address, “I’m happy to say that we’ve reached our ambitious goal, and we did it ahead of schedule.” Future Ready Iowa’s website likewise asserts, “we are now proud to report that we have met that goal as a state.”

Two years ahead of schedule sounds like a huge public policy accomplishment, right? Not so fast. On closer examination, Reynolds and her team fudged the numbers.

“If you wish to enjoy civil rights, being able to act and behave civilly is a prerequisite,” State Representative Jeff Shipley tweeted on January 31, shortly after his latest effort to take civil rights protections away from transgender Iowans went down in flames.

Even for a practiced troll like Shipley, it was a remarkably ignorant and obnoxious statement.

UPDATE: On February 6, Republicans advanced this bill from an Iowa House subcommittee. A few hours later, the full House Education Committee amended the bill to remove the driver’s license section, then approved it along party lines. Democrats requested a public hearing, which took place on February 12 (video). Following committee passage, the bill was renumbered as House File 2389. Original post follows.

Governor Kim Reynolds didn’t give LGBTQ Iowans even one full day to celebrate the downfall of a bill to remove gender identity protections from Iowa’s civil rights law.

The latest legislative proposal from the governor’s office would lay the foundation for “separate but equal” treatment of transgender Iowans and what one advocate called an “astonishing government violation of privacy rights.”

Although House Study Bill 649 contains some language designed to bolster the state’s potential defense in court, there’s no way the governor’s newest effort to codify discrimination against LGBTQ people could be constitutional.

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

On January 26, a month later than planned, the Iowa Department of Education released a summary of the annual certified enrollment numbers for Iowa’s public and private K-12 schools. The agency’s news release also provided our first look at the impact “education savings accounts” (also known as school vouchers) have had on public school enrollment across Iowa.

Public school enrollment for the current academic year was 483,699, a decrease of 2,776.8 students (0.57 percent) from the previous year. Conversely, private schools had a total enrollment of 36,195 students, an increase of 2,503 students (7.4 percent) over the previous year.

When you dig into the voucher numbers, however, things begin to get interesting. According to the Department of Education, 16,757 students used vouchers this year to attend a private school.

State Auditor Rob Sand has asked federal regulators to block Koch Industries’ planned acquisition of OCI Global’s Nitrogen Iowa fertilizer plant in Lee County.

In a January 30 letter to Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan and Assistant U.S. Attorney General Jonathan Kanter, who leads the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, Sand noted tax incentives totaling some $550 million had supported building the plant, which “was pitched to taxpayers as a project that would encourage future competition and growth for the region.”

Scott Syroka highlighted the problematic sale in a Bleeding Heartland post last month. That article detailed how then Governor Terry Branstad’s administration orchestrated a package including $300 million in federal tax giveaways related to a flood relief program, $133 million in local tax abatements from Lee County over twenty years, and $112 million in state tax credits or forgivable loans.

The auditor’s letter argued that a sale to Koch Industries would likely increase fertilizer costs for farmers. It would also negate the original intent of the deal; the idea that Koch wouldn’t own the new plant justified “the massive commitment of tax dollars in the first place.” Sand said he agreed with comments Branstad made to reporters in 2013, asserting that the Koch brothers “don’t want the competition,” whereas Iowans “want competition.”

Sand is the first Iowa statewide official to contact federal officials about the sale, which OCI Global announced in December.

UPDATE: After this post was published, the Iowa Business Council, Technology Association of Iowa, and Greater Des Moines Partnership registered against the bill.

SECOND UPDATE: Subcommittee members voted 3-0 on January 31 not to advance this bill. Original post follows.

An Iowa House Judiciary subcommittee will soon consider the broadest threat to trans rights since lawmakers added gender identity protections to the Iowa Civil Rights Act in 2007, the first year of a Democratic trifecta. House File 2082 would remove gender identity as a protected class, while redefining “a diagnosis for gender dysphoria or any condition related to a gender identity disorder” as a disability under the civil rights act.

Eighteen organizations are already registered against the bill, which is scheduled for a subcommittee hearing on January 31.

But as the Republican-controlled legislature’s attacks on transgender Iowans continue to escalate, some groups that helped hold the line against past efforts to rewrite the civil rights code are on the sidelines, for now.

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.

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

The Iowa Utilities Board has proposed companion bills on energy production in the Iowa legislature this year. The Sierra Club is focused on two provisions in House Study Bill 555 and Senate Study Bill 3075: including battery storage as part of an energy production facility, and designating nuclear power as an alternate energy production facility.

One of the primary criticisms of renewable energy, specifically wind and solar, is that they provide power intermittently. In other words, wind turbines don’t provide power when the wind isn’t blowing, and solar panels don’t provide power when the sun isn’t shining.

My five-year effort to gain a seat on the Iowa House press bench ended less than five days after the Institute for Free Speech filed a federal lawsuit on my behalf.

House Chief Clerk Meghan Nelson informed me shortly after 5:00 pm on January 23 that the Iowa House approved my application for work space, and a spot has been reserved for me in the press box on the floor of the House chamber.

Catching up on some legislative campaign news: Iowa Senate Minority Leader Pam Jochum announced on January 12 that she won’t seek re-election this November. Jochum is the longest-serving current Iowa Democratic legislator, with sixteen years of experience in the state House followed by sixteen in Senate. Her colleagues chose her to lead the sixteen-member caucus last June. The last four years Democrats held a majority in the chamber, Jochum served as Senate president (the second-ranking position).

While the open seat in Iowa Senate district 36 leans Democratic, the Dubuque area is no longer as blue as it has been for much of the last century. Depending on who wins each party’s nomination, this could be a race to watch in November.

Nancy Dugan lives in Altoona, Iowa and has worked as an online editor for the past 12 years.

North Dakota officials were pulling no punches during an informational session held in Bismarck last month, highlighting the importance of the Summit Carbon pipeline to both the sustainable aviation fuel market and enhanced oil recovery efforts in the Bakken.

During a December 20, 2023, BEK TV special report that broadcast a Friends of Ag and Energy public information session on the Summit Carbon pipeline, held at Bismarck State College’s National Energy Center of Excellence, Governor Doug Burgum said, “Sustainable aviation fuel, if you want to call it the Saudi Arabia of sustainable aviation fuel, it’s going to happen somewhere between North Dakota and Iowa and in between, the corn belt.”

Kathleen Neset, a geologist and owner of Neset Consulting Service Inc. who moderated the panel, spoke after Burgum, stating the following at the outset:

UPDATE: Days after this lawsuit was filed, the chief clerk granted me press credentials for the remainder of the 2024 legislative session. In January 2025, I received credentials to report from the Iowa House press bench for the 2025 session. Original post follows.

“The First Amendment prohibits government officials from arbitrarily denying reporters access to official information, and from discriminating against reporters based on their viewpoint,” declares a federal lawsuit filed on my behalf on January 19. Yet since 2019, the Iowa House Chief Clerk “has arbitrarily applied an ever-shifting credentialing system” to limit my “ability to gather and report political news” from the Iowa House chamber.

The Institute for Free Speech filed the suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa, making four claims under the U.S. Constitution. First, by denying me access to the Iowa House press bench, where other statehouse reporters can closely observe House debate and attend regular briefings by House Speaker Pat Grassley, Chief Clerk Meghan Nelson is violating my First Amendment rights of free speech and freedom of the press.

Second, the complaint also states that Nelson’s policy, limiting access to reporters who provide “nonpartisan news to a broad segment of the public,” amounts to unconstitutional content-based and viewpoint-based discrimination, on its face and as applied to me.

Third, Nelson’s press credential policy “constitutes a prior restraint in violation of the First Amendment.” Chief Clerk Nelson has “unbridled discretion” to grant reporters access to the House press box, and “relies on the undefined, broad terms of the credential policy to subjectively exclude news media and deprive them of the ability to gather news in a manner equal to that afforded to other media representatives.”

Finally, the suit asserts that the press credential policy is vague in violation of my “First Amendment rights to free speech and press and Fourteenth Amendment right to due process.”

Continental Resources executive chairman Harold Hamm, center right, is surrounded by Summit representatives during a December 21, 2023 hearing of the North Dakota Public Service Commission. From left to right are Summit Carbon’s general counsel Jess Vilsack; Summit Carbon CEO Lee Blank; Summit Carbon COO James “Jimmy” Powell (seated in the row behind the others); North Dakota Petroleum Council president Ron Ness; Hamm; and Summit Agricultural Group CEO Justin Kirchhoff. (Photo by Kyle Martin, published with permission)

Nancy Dugan lives in Altoona, Iowa and has worked as an online editor for the past 12 years.

While billionaire wildcatter and Summit Carbon Solutions investor Harold Hamm appears to be hedging his bets, Bruce Rastetter, founder of Summit Agricultural Group, which launched the CO2 pipeline project, announced his support for Donald Trump during a Bloomberg News roundtable on January 13 in Des Moines. A Summit Agricultural Group news release also announced the endorsement, which came just two days before Trump’s decisive caucus victory in Iowa.

Meanwhile, Trump lambasted former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, a vocal opponent of using eminent domain to build the Summit Carbon pipeline, in a January 13 post on his Truth Social platform. Trump declared Ramaswamy “not MAGA” and accused him of using “deceitful campaign tricks.” It was the first time the front-runner publicly criticized Ramaswamy, who ended his campaign and endorsed Trump immediately following the Iowa caucuses on January 15.

Presidential candidate Nikki Haley speaks at the Des Moines Register Soapbox at the Iowa State Fair on August 12, 2023. Photo by Juli Hansen, available via Shutterstock.

Dan Guild is a lawyer and project manager who lives in New Hampshire. In addition to writing for Bleeding Heartland, he has written for CNN and Sabato’s Crystal Ball, most recently here. He also contributed to the Washington Post’s 2020 primary simulations. Follow him on Twitter @dcg1114.

From an article I wrote for Bleeding Heartland four years ago: “Of all the Alice-through-the-looking-glass parts of the American political system, the one I have been completely unable to explain to foreigners are expectations and the Iowa caucuses.”

It usually goes something like this:

Sane person from another country: “Candidate X won”

Pundit: “Well, not really”

Sane person from another country: “But they got more votes”

Pundit: “But they were expected to win by 10 and they only won by 3, so they lost”

Sane person from another country: “That makes no sense. So who won? The person who came in second?”

Pundit person: “No, they got about what they expected. No, the clear winner is the candidate who finished third. There is no doubt they won.”

This Catch-22 aspect of primaries is absurd. But make no mistake: it matters, a lot.

In 2020 I developed a model to predict the effect of the Iowa caucuses on New Hampshire and national polling. A lot of that discussion focused on what happens when front-runners lose. But Trump will not lose tonight.

This chart shows the history.

I want to highlight two numbers:

First: when a Republican front-runner wins the Iowa caucuses, on average they get about a 1.3 percent bounce in New Hampshire in the 48 hours after Iowa.

Oddly, the candidate in second place in Iowa gains 4.3 percent in New Hampshire. Perhaps the best example was in 2000, when George W. Bush won the Iowa caucuses with more than 40 percent of the vote, but saw his New Hampshire polling change not at all.

On the other hand, look at the Democratic race in 1984: Walter Mondale won by one of the largest margins in a multi-candidate race in Iowa caucus history. Yet within 48 hours, Gary Hart (who lost Iowa by more than 20 points) had gained 16 points in New Hampshire!

I have updated the model, and you can find it here.

As a what-if, I made a project based on two assumptions:

1. Haley finishes second tonight with 24 percent of the vote, and
2. Haley goes on to win New Hampshire by 5 points

The model predicts Trump’s national lead would be cut significantly.

Both of the assumptions are well within the realm of possibility—but very much depend on what transpires in the next six hours.

This post will be updated once the Iowa caucus results are known.

Dan Guild is a lawyer and project manager who lives in New Hampshire. In addition to writing for Bleeding Heartland, he has written for CNN and Sabato’s Crystal Ball, most recently here. He also contributed to the Washington Post’s 2020 primary simulations. Follow him on Twitter @dcg1114.

Ann Selzer released her final pre-caucus Iowa Poll for the Des Moines Register, NBC News, and Mediacom on January 13. Those who closely follow the caucuses know Selzer & Co has been amazingly accurate most of the time. But perhaps the biggest news out of the latest survey is how little news there is in it.

As the table below shows, the last Selzer poll was a little different from other Iowa polls released over the past two months. The stability here is incredible. But given the timidity Trump’s rivals have displayed, maybe that is not surprising.

That said, as I will discuss below, a shocking amount of volatility exists beneath the surface.

For once, I don’t have to write a whole Iowa caucus series explaining the complexities of delegate allocations or the viability threshold. Democratic caucus-goers won’t spend ages counting, realigning, or complaining about how the math worked out.

The 2024 Iowa Democratic caucuses should be drama-free affairs that wrap up in an hour or less.

While the Republican gatherings on January 15 will generate more excitement and suspense as attendees wait to find out who finished a distant second to Donald Trump, Democrats who brave the cold can expect a smaller and friendlier local meeting.

Screenshot of Donald Trump speaking at a rally in Newton, Iowa on January 12

Dan Guild is a lawyer and project manager who lives in New Hampshire. In addition to writing for Bleeding Heartland, he has written for CNN and Sabato’s Crystal Ball, most recently here. He also contributed to the Washington Post’s 2020 primary simulations. Follow him on Twitter @dcg1114.

I have written before about the incredible shifts that have happened late in Iowa caucus campaigns. Front runners beware, I wrote in 2016 (and that piece was prescient).

In 2020 I suggested Iowa would surprise, and predicted Pete Buttigieg would be the candidate most likely to do it.

This time it feels different, for good reasons.

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.

Republican lawmakers may take additional steps to remove “sexually explicit material” from schools, Iowa House Speaker Pat Grassley indicated on January 8. Speaking to fellow legislators, Grassley also blamed schools for politicizing what he called “a simple solution to protect Iowa’s students from inappropriate material.”

Grassley was the only House or Senate leader to address the school book bans in opening remarks on the first day of the legislature’s 2024 session. His comments came ten days after a federal court blocked the state of Iowa from enforcing a ban on library books and classroom materials that describe or depict sex acts.

Iowa Senate chamber, as photographed by Nagel Photography, available via Shutterstock

The Iowa Senate convened in Des Moines on January 8 for the first day of the 2024 legislative session. Although the balance of power remains the same (34 Republicans, sixteen Democrats), I’m publishing a new version of this post to note changes in leadership or among the chairs, vice chairs, and members of standing Senate committees.

Fourteen senators (nine Republicans, five Democrats) were elected to the chamber for the first time in 2022. Seven of them (four Republicans and three Democrats) previously served in the Iowa House.

Fifteen senators are women (eight Democrats and seven Republicans), up from twelve women in the chamber prior to the 2022 election and more than double the six women senators who served prior to the 2018 election.

Democrat Izaah Knox is the second Black state senator in Iowa history. The first was Tom Mann, a Democrat elected to two terms during the 1980s. The other 49 senators are white. No Latino has ever served in the chamber, and Iowa’s only Asian-American senator was Swati Dandekar, who resigned in 2011.

Democrat Janice Weiner became the first Jewish person to serve in the Iowa Senate since Ralph Rosenberg left the legislature after 1994. Democrat Liz Bennett became the first out LGBTQ state senator since Matt McCoy retired in 2018.

Iowa House members return to Des Moines on January 8 for the opening day of the 2024 legislative session. Although the balance of power remains the same (64 Republicans, 36 Democrats), I’m publishing a new version of this post to note small changes in leadership or among the chairs, vice chairs, and members of standing House committees. Where relevant, I’ve noted changes since last year’s session.

Thirty-eight House members (24 Republicans and fourteen Democrats) are serving their first term in the legislature. Two Republicans previously held other legislative offices: Craig Johnson served one and a half terms in the Iowa Senate, and David Young served two terms in Congress.

The House members include 71 men and 29 women (sixteen Democrats and thirteen Republicans), down from 31 women who served in 2021 and 2022. The record for women’s representation in the Iowa House was 34 female lawmakers in 2019.

UPDATE: Attorney General Brenna Bird filed notice of appeal to the Eighth Circuit on January 12. Original post follows.

The state of Iowa cannot enforce key parts of a new law that sought to ban books depicting sex acts from schools and prohibit instruction “relating to gender identity and sexual orientation” from kindergarten through sixth grade.

U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Locher issued a preliminary injunction on December 29, putting what he called “staggeringly broad” provisions on hold while two federal lawsuits challenging Senate File 496 proceed. The judge found the book bans “unlikely to satisfy the First Amendment under any standard of scrutiny,” and the teaching restrictions “void for vagueness under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

However, the state may continue to enforce a provision requiring school administrators to inform parents or guardians if a student seeks an “accommodation that is intended to affirm the student’s gender identity.” Judge Locher found the LGBTQ students who are plaintiffs in one case lack standing to challenge that provision, since “they are all already ‘out’ to their families and therefore not affected in a concrete way” by it.

Governor Kim Reynolds and Attorney General Brenna Bird quickly criticized the court’s decision. But neither engaged with the legal issues at hand.

Governor Kim Reynolds with her predecessor Terry Branstad in photo originally published on Reynolds’ official Facebook page in September 2020

Scott Syroka is a former Johnston city council member.

Antitrust regulators should block the proposed sale of OCI Global’s Iowa Fertilizer Co. plant in Wever (Lee County) to Koch Industries. The deal would be outrageous, but we must look back to fully understand why.

HOW IOWA TAXPAYERS HELPED FUND OCI’S FERTILIZER PLANT IN WEVER

Then-governor Terry Branstad and Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds offered nearly $550 million in tax giveaways to OCI’s predecessor, Orascom, to build the plant prior to its 2017 ribbon cutting.

That included $133 million in local giveaways such as Lee County property tax abatement over twenty years. Another $112 million in state giveaways like corporate tax credits and forgivable loans. And an estimated $300 million in federal tax giveaways from the get-go thanks to the Iowa Finance Authority approving Orascom for $1.2 billion in Midwestern Disaster Area bonds created by Congress after the 2008 floods.

Gail Wortmann works with a student as she works on a Rube Goldberg machine (a complicated gadget that performs a simple task) in physical science class. Photo published with permission from the Bloomfield Democrat.

Karen Spurgeon is publisher of the Bloomfield Democrat, a Davis County newspaper where this article first appeared.

Gail Wortmann has had an exceptional career as a science teacher, but when she agreed to finish out the semester for a Davis County science teacher who left the school system on short notice, she found herself spending more time on disciplining and less on teaching than ever before in her career.

Image of frequently banned books by On The Run Photo is available via Shutterstock. All books shown here have been removed from multiple Iowa school districts, according to the Des Moines Register’s database.

A federal judge will soon decide whether to block enforcement of all or part of an Iowa law that imposed many new regulations on public school libraries and educators.

Two groups of plaintiffs filed suit last month challenging Senate File 496 as unconstitutional under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Among other things, the law prohibits school libraries and classrooms from offering “any material with descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act.” It also forbids schools from providing “any program, curriculum, test, survey, questionnaire, promotion, or instruction relating to gender identity or sexual orientation to students in kindergarten through grade six.”

U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Locher of the Southern District of Iowa did not consolidate the cases, which contain some overlapping arguments. But he did consolidate the hearings on the plaintiffs’ requests for a temporary injunction, which would prevent the state from enforcing certain provisions of SF 496 while litigation proceeds.

Near the end of that December 22 hearing in Des Moines, the judge said he will rule on whether to issue an injunction by January 1, when provisions allowing the state to investigate or discipline educators or school districts for certain violations will take effect.

Attorneys for the state advanced several misleading or contradictory legal arguments at the hearing and in briefs filed last week.

Nancy Dugan lives in Altoona, Iowa and has worked as an online editor for the past 12 years.

A labyrinth of limited liability companies own numerous animal feeding operations in Clarke County that continue to rely on the city of Osceola’s depleted water supply, even as city residents face restrictions since the Osceola Water Works Board of Trustees declared a water emergency on October 5.

A search of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources’ (DNR) animal feeding operation website identifies 27 animal feeding operations in Clarke County. The chart below identifies these facilities, the majority of which appear to house hogs in enclosed structures commonly known as confined animal feeding operations, or CAFOs.

UPDATE: The Iowa State Board of Education approved all of the applications described below on January 11. Original post follows.

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

The Iowa Department of Education recently announced that five groups have applied to open eight new charter schools in Des Moines and Cedar Rapids for the 2024/2025 school year. Only one of those five groups is based in Iowa.

The full applications for each proposed charter school are available on this page of the Department of Education’s website. Be aware that some of these applications stretch to nearly 400 pages, so if you want to review them, plan to spend some time on the task.

Governor Kim Reynolds gave four of her top staffers raises ranging from 13 percent to 17 percent several months after Republican lawmakers approved a major boost to the governor’s office budget.

The large pay increases took effect in early September, according to salary records Bleeding Heartland obtained through a public records request. All staff in the governor’s office had already received a 3 percent raise at the beginning of fiscal year 2024 in July.

Public employees often receive a small bump in compensation at the start of a new fiscal year, but few are able to obtain raises of 10 percent or more without a promotion or a significant change to their job duties.

A spokesperson for Reynolds described the salary hikes as an “important investment” and asserted that “offering salaries commensurate with experience and job responsibilities is critical to ensuring optimal performance and continuity of state government.”

However, data the governor’s office provided to Bleeding Heartland did not support the claim that many of Reynolds’ staffers were previously underpaid compared to counterparts in similar states.

John and Terri Hale own The Hale Group, an Ankeny-based advocacy firm working for better lives for all Iowans. Contact them at terriandjohnhale@gmail.com. An earlier version of this commentary appeared in the Des Moines Register and Cedar Rapids Gazette.

Twenty-seven years ago, the Quad-City Times published a six-part series on neglect and abuse in nursing homes. The articles told the stories of residents whose physical and mental health needs were not met, who were subjected to verbal or physical abuse by staff or other residents, and had been injured or had died.

The stories were tragedies. And sadly, tragic stories still regularly appear in Iowa Capital Dispatch and other Iowa media written by Clark Kauffman—the same journalist who authored the stories in 1996.

For more than 27 years, horrific stories of neglect and abuse have stemmed from far too many nursing facilities that have employed too few workers; failed to adequately compensate, train, and respect workers; routinely accepted exceptionally high levels of employee turnover; lobbied elected officials to increase annual appropriations of tax dollars but to also minimize oversight of their efforts; avoided criminal prosecution for their misdeeds; and have put the desire for profit ahead of the needs of the Iowans they exist to serve.

In 27 years, little has changed. At too many facilities, neglect, abuse and dehumanization of older Iowans continue.

Scott Syroka is a former Johnston city council member.

North American rail giant Canadian National announced on December 6 it would attempt to acquire the Waterloo-based short line railroad Iowa Northern Railway. Before that can happen though, the deal must undergo review by the U.S. Surface Transportation Board. The board should block this acquisition, and it’s not even a close call.

Short line railroads are the small and medium businesses of rail. Short lines like Iowa Northern Railway operate nearly half of all freight rail track in Iowa, according to the railroad interest group GoRail. These short lines run shorter distances and connect rural areas with larger, national rail networks.

All four Republicans who represent Iowa in the U.S. House voted on December 13 to formally authorize an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. The chamber’s 221 to 212 vote fell entirely along party lines.

House Speaker Mike Johnson wrote in a December 12 op-ed that the vote will allow the House Oversight, Judiciary, and Ways and Means committees to “continue investigating the role of the president in promoting the alleged influence-peddling schemes of his family and associates […].” He said the formal inquiry “puts us in the strongest legal position to gather the evidence” as the House seeks to enforce subpoenas.

Critics have noted that while focusing on business activities of the president’s son Hunter Biden, House Republicans have yet to uncover evidence of any criminal activity involving Joe Biden, and are using unsubstantiated or false claims to justify their inquiry. Democrats have charged that Republicans are pursuing impeachment at the behest of former President Donald Trump.

None of Iowa’s House members spoke during the floor debate, but three released public comments following the vote.

Beckman Catholic High School in Dyersville, Iowa, in photo from the school’s Facebook page

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

Although the Iowa Department of Education won’t release official enrollment numbers until mid-December, available data already show how the new education savings accounts (commonly known as school vouchers) are affecting some of our state’s largest school districts.

The Council Bluffs Community Schools recently announced that they lost 30 students to nearby St. Albert Catholic School. The loss of those students means the district will lose $234,000 in state funding. Since teachers are already under contract for this year, and the decline in enrollment isn’t concentrated on one grade, the district will have a difficult time reducing costs.

In an interview with Sean MacKinnon of Omaha-based TV station KETV, Council Bluffs superintendent Vicki Murillo chose to look on the bright side by noting that while 30 students left the Council Bluffs school district, nearly 9,000 decided to stay.

Ed Tibbetts, a longtime reporter and editor in the Quad-Cities, is the publisher of the Along the Mississippi newsletter, where this article first appeared. Find more of his work at edtibbetts.substack.com.

Scott County continues to have trouble with elections.

Last year, a controversy erupted over a state legislative race. This year, it’s a school board contest.

On December 4, a 3-2 majority of the Scott County Board of Supervisors voted to reject the report of a three-person recount board in a closely contested Pleasant Valley School Board race.

The supervisors claimed the recount board broke the law.

So, the majority responded by breaking the law themselves.

SK Group logo in Kerala, India, in October 2023. Image by Jidev jidu photography, available via Shutterstock

Nancy Dugan lives in Altoona, Iowa and has worked as an online editor for the past 12 years.

On November 28, SK Growth Opportunities Corp., a Cayman Islands exempted blank check company formed in December 2021, filed a Schedule 14A Proxy Statement notifying the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of an upcoming “extraordinary general meeting” of shareholders, with the express purpose of extending a looming December 28, 2023, deadline to consummate a business combination. The meeting is slated to take place December 22.

According to SK Growth’s initial May 23, 2022, Form S-1 Registration Statement under the Securities Act of 1933, the anchor investor in its sponsor, Auxo Capital Managers, LLC, is a wholly owned subsidiary of South Korean chaebol SK Group. A chart depicting SK Growth’s organizational structure is listed below:

In March, Governor Kim Reynolds hailed passage of her state government reorganization plan, saying it would be “an important step” to “reduce the size and cost of government.”

The governor’s commitment to making government smaller and less costly hasn’t extended to her own staff.

In the fiscal year that ended June 30, other agencies spent more than $1 million to cover operating costs in the governor’s office, documents Bleeding Heartland obtained through public records requests show. Those funds allowed the governor’s office to spend nearly 50 percent more than its budget appropriation of $2.3 million for fiscal year 2023.

Reynolds’ chief of staff Taryn Frideres told state lawmakers in February that increasing the governor’s office allocation for the current fiscal year by about $500,000 (a 21 percent bump) would be “more transparent” and ensure that “our actual appropriation is closer to our expenses, so that we can budget in a more straightforward way.”

But records Bleeding Heartland reviewed indicate that the $2.8 million general fund appropriation Republicans approved for fiscal year 2024 will fall far short of what the governor’s office will spend on staff salaries and other expenses.

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

The U.S. House voted 311 to 114 on December 1 to expel Republican member George Santos. It was only the sixth time in the history of the House that members have taken such an action. Republicans split pretty evenly on the vote, with 105 GOP members voting to expel Santos and 112 voting to allow him to retain his seat. Democrats voted almost unanimously in favor of expulsion: the Democratic tally was 206 to 2.

To expel a member from either house of Congress, the U.S. Constitution requires a two-thirds affirmative vote of that body (66 2/3 percent). That’s a high bar in itself, but the vote to remove Santos was about 73 percent affirmative, well above the bar.

To make the expulsion even more unusual, it was achieved when the House was controlled by Santos’ own party. What’s more, it was the first time since the Civil War that the House expelled a member who had not been convicted in a court of law.