John Kearney is a retired philosophy professor who taught at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He has lived in Waterloo, Iowa for the past six years.

On January 9, 2025, Robert Barron, Roman Catholic Bishop and prelate of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester in Minnesota, posted on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter):

I was watching highlights from President Carter’s funeral service at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC. I found some of the speeches very moving. But I was appalled when two country singers launched into a rendition of John Lennon’s “Imagine.”  Under the soaring vault of what I think is still a Christian church, they reverently intoned, “Imagine there’s no heaven; it’s easy if you try” and “imagine there’s no country; it isn’t hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too.” Vested ministers sat patiently while a hymn to atheistic humanism was sung. This was not only an insult to the memory of a devoutly believing Christian but also an indicator of the spinelessness of too much of established religion in our country.

I respectfully disagree with Bishop Barron’s criticism, especially his claim that “Imagine” is a “hymn to atheistic humanism.”

One of the biggest spenders on behalf of U.S. House Democrats launched digital advertising this week targeting U.S. Representatives Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Zach Nunn in Iowa’s first and third Congressional districts. The ads, enclosed in full below, claim the GOP incumbents “could cost you more,” because they support President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for health and human services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

The House Majority PAC’s 501(c)4 affiliate, House Majority Forward, is funding the 30-second spots, part of a $10 million campaign targeting nine potentially vulnerable House Republicans.

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.

Bruce Lear lives in Sioux City and has been connected to Iowa’s public schools for 38 years. He taught for eleven years and represented educators as an Iowa State Education Association regional director for 27 years until retiring. He can be reached at BruceLear2419@gmail.com   

Often when a politician gives a speech, what’s not said speaks volumes. The details left out are as important or more important than what’s said.

That’s the case with Governor Kim Reynolds’ Condition of the State on January 14—especially when it comes to what she left out about public education.

The Cedar Rapids Gazette and Dubuque Telegraph-Herald will switch next month to printing the paper only three days a week.

A January 14 email to subscribers from president Kelly Homewood and executive editor Zack Kucharski said that effective February 17, the Gazette will print editions on Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays, rather than the current seven days a week. Telegraph-Herald publisher Mike Fortman wrote in a January 12 column that beginning February 15, the newspaper will move from its current six-day print schedule to printing on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays.

Leaders of both newspapers pointed to economic realities as they explained the decision.

Fourteenth in a series interpreting the results of Iowa’s 2024 state and federal elections.

As Iowa legislature began its 2025 session on January 13, members of the LGBTQ community held more seats than ever, and representation for people of color matched the record set following the 2022 elections.

However, fewer women now serve in the Iowa House and Senate. Religious diversity will also decline, even though State Senator Janice Weiner became the highest-ranking Iowa legislator to adhere to a non-Christian faith tradition.

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.

Thirteenth in a series interpreting the results of Iowa’s 2024 state and federal elections.

When the Iowa legislature reconvenes in Des Moines on January 13, fifteen state House members and six state senators will be sworn in for the first time. But one of them is marking more than a personal milestone.

Aime Wichtendahl will make history as Iowa’s first transgender state lawmaker. She starts her new job as a Democrat outnumbered by the largest GOP majority in the Iowa House since 1970. Not only that: House Republicans have recently approved or considered numerous bills that would discriminate against LGBTQ people broadly and transgender Iowans in particular. Wichtendahl has spoken against those bills in subcommittee meetings and at rallies.

Iowa’s first trans legislator spoke to Bleeding Heartland in November and December about her campaign, takeaways from the 2024 elections, and plans for legislative work.

A year-end review from U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley’s office boasted that the senator’s oversight “touched on 97% of all taxpayer-funded agencies” during 2024. “Nearly every corner of government received Grassley’s thorough inspection – it’s all part of Grassley’s constant efforts to ensure the government is a service to the American people,” the report added.

One area that escaped Grassley’s “thorough inspection” was the collapse of bribery allegations against President Joe Biden and Hunter Biden. For months in 2023, Grassley publicized an FBI informant’s explosive claims about the Bidens.

But he’s had nothing to say since Alexander Smirnov, the original source of those allegations, pleaded guilty in December to making up the whole story.

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.

Bruce Lear lives in Sioux City and has been connected to Iowa’s public schools for 38 years. He taught for eleven years and represented educators as an Iowa State Education Association regional director for 27 years until retiring. He can be reached at BruceLear2419@gmail.com   

Most veteran educators will tell you public education often falls in love with shiny, new trends. A school administrator goes to a conference and comes home with the latest, greatest idea, and is convinced every classroom should implement it immediately. 

It happened so often we called it the “flavor of the month.” Trends like the Madeline Hunter method, Cooperative learning, McRel, Open classroom, and Individual learning, are just a few examples. All had their day in the sun and died a slow or quick death.

The nonprofit Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) announced on January 7 that it will defend longtime Iowa Poll director J. Ann Selzer at no charge in the lawsuit Donald Trump filed last month. Trump sued Selzer, her polling company, the Des Moines Register, and its parent company Gannett over the final pre-election Iowa Poll, which showed Vice President Kamala Harris leading Trump by 3 points. The Republican later carried Iowa by a 13-point margin.

FIRE’s chief counsel Bob Corn-Revere said in a news release, “Punishing someone for their political prediction is about as unconstitutional as it gets,” adding, “This is America. No one should be afraid to predict the outcome of an election. Whether it’s from a pollster, or you, or me, such political expression is fully and unequivocally protected by the First Amendment.”

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

With the Iowa legislative session beginning January 13, it is time for a rundown of important maternal health policies that should become priorities for state lawmakers in 2025.

Since I am focusing on access to midwifery care, it is worth noting that in October 2024 the World Health Organization issued a new position paper on “Transitioning to Midwifery Models of Care.” That paper offers an international definition by describing the guiding principles of midwifery models of care and reviewing the advantages of adopting them. 

According to the World Health Organization’s position paper, 

One of President-elect Donald Trump’s top advisers on judicial and legal matters stepped away from a University of Iowa alumni advisory board late last year. Mike Davis has long been an aggressive Trump ally, known for his “combative presence on right-wing media.” Some of his posts on the X/Twitter platform prompted calls in November for the university to remove him from the political science department’s alumni advisory board. But in a statement provided last month, Davis said, “With President Trump’s victory on November 5th, I will not have the necessary bandwidth to serve on this important volunteer board, so I decided on my own to step down.”

The Article III Project, which Davis leads as founding president, told Bleeding Heartland that no one from the university asked Davis to resign from the advisory board or take down any of his social media posts.

Communications staff for the University of Iowa declined to comment on the situation. Professor Brian Lai, the interim department chair listed as the point of contact for the alumni advisory board, did not respond to inquiries.

Both major parties have selected their nominees for the January 28 special election to in Iowa Senate district 35. Central DeWitt school board president Mike Zimmer was unopposed at the Democratic Party’s special nominating convention on December 30. Clinton County activist Katie Whittington prevailed in a three-way competition at the GOP special convention on January 4.

Iowa House Republican Tom Determann, who has represented House district 69 (the Clinton area) since 2023, and Clinton County farmer Dennis Campbell also competed for the GOP nomination.

Whittington has never held elective office but has volunteered for various causes locally, including Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. She describes herself as a “health freedom advocate” and has been active with the anti-vaccine organizations Children’s Health Defense and Health Freedom Iowa, for which she has served as vice president.

Randy Evans is executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that promotes openness and transparency in Iowa’s state and local governments. He can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com. 

I have been kicking myself since being reminded that procrastination comes with a price.

This lesson arrived the week before Christmas when I spotted a small obituary in the Bloomfield Democrat. Seven succinct paragraphs informed readers of the death of Titus Wagler, 66, a longtime Davis County business owner.

In 1997, Wagler and relatives began Midwest Truss Co., a small manufacturing operation whose employees produce wooden trusses for builders in southern Iowa and northern Missouri.

For several years, I had been promising myself, and Titus, that I would drop by “soon” for coffee and conversation. Unfortunately, “soon” kept getting delayed—because of work, because of the weather, because of other distractions … because … because … because.

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.

Essential workers. What comes to mind first for most folks are the EMTs, police, nurses, and firefighters. Then, if they think a bit more, I’ll hear about postal workers, logistics personnel like truckers and train conductors, waste management workers, and utility workers. If you badger folks again, they will mention food service workers, grocery store shelf stockers and clerks, and maybe some of the folks specific to their industry or lifestyle. You really gotta dig down a lot of times to get to folks like teachers, home health care workers, or retirement home staff. 

However, there is a profession that I consider more crucial than many of the above, because without it the others might become non-starters.

I’m talking about child care workers, in particular, early childhood education workers and day care providers.

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.

There once was a time, now no longer true for Democrats, when if Iowans wanted to see, meet, probably visit with a candidate seeking to become president of the United States, you could. It wasn’t especially difficult. They came around, perhaps to your county, certainly to your region… and spoke, took questions, engaged with potential voters. For maybe a four-month period every four or eight years, presidential aspirants were about as accessible as U.S. Senate or U.S. House candidates.

As many have noted, this is largely because of a certain presidential campaign in 1976.

This is my way of introducing that, over the years, I had numerous small encounters with the late President Jimmy Carter. I chuckle at the thought, in part because in his presidential campaigns, I was never a staunch Carter supporter.

For many Iowans, myself included, Jimmy Carter’s recent death brings forth a fresh wave of memories.

“You suck, Joni! That’s just the nicest way I can summarize how we’re all feeling about your reign so far,” says Joshua Smith in the first digital ad promoting his Republican campaign for Iowa’s U.S. Senate seat.

The video previews what will be an aggressive campaign by Senator Joni Ernst’s 2026 primary challenger from the right.

Twelfth in a series interpreting the results of Iowa’s 2024 state and federal elections.

Phil Montag is a Des Moines area activist, serves on the Iowa Unity Coalition Board of Directors, and is one of the founders of Veishea Analytics.

Every election cycle produces a wealth of public data, from polling station statistics to voter turnout figures, campaign fundraising and spending data, absentee ballot requests, and audited results. This data exists not just for politicians and media outlets, but for the public as well. It provides transparency, accountability, and evidence-based debunking of misinformation that is prevalent today. With this analysis of the 2024 Iowa State House races, we are hoping to present the data in a new way that will be easy for everyday voters to understand.

In the Iowa State House races that concluded a few weeks ago, the Republican Party of Iowa was able to campaign with a serious cash advantage, although Democrats had much more success at promoting absentee ballot requests and turning out early votes.

The combined fundraising totals for Republican candidates running for the Iowa House was a little more than $12 million. For Democrats it was $6.7 million. Those totals represent what was donated to campaigns directly as well as in-kind contributions that other organizations spent on their behalf. The fundraising graphs enclosed below represent only what was raised in 2023 and 2024. Incumbent candidates whose campaigns started 2023 with cash on hand may have spent more.