🗣️ It’s Friday; time for reader replies!

Iowa news briefs:

• Did you see the Iowan on Wheel of Fortune this week? Read all about Nick Oswald of Ankeny’s appearance (no spoilers, don’t worry!).
• The best gravel drive in Iowa: A car dealership in Florida ranked the best gravel drives in the country, and the Loess Hills through Council Bluffs topped Iowa’s list. Do you agree? Or are there some gorgeous ones near you? Reply and tell me.

• Call for volunteers who love state parks: Iowa’s state parks and forests are putting out the call for volunteers for Statewide Volunteer Day next Saturday, Sept. 27. Volunteering could include picking up litter, trail maintenance, prairie seed gathering and more. Find your nearest park and sign up here.

• 68 people in Marshalltown now have Legionnaire’s disease, and health officials think it’s coming from one of the city’s 12 cooling towers.

• Immigrants suing for due process rights: 29-year-old Yeison Antonio Lopez Lopez, a roofer from Sioux City, is suing county and federal officials for holding him in jail while facing deportation without the opportunity to argue for release on bond.

• ICE black sites in Des Moines? Escucha Mi Voz says a proposal calling for “office space for law enforcement” in Des Moines and other cities around the country will function as makeshift detainment centers for immigrants ICE is holding. “What they call a ‘processing facility’ is really a secret jail to disappear workers and separate families,” said Escucha Mi Voz member Maria Ayala of Ainsworth. “We call on all Iowans to stand up and resist.” Iowa City Catholic Worker is holding another protective accompaniment training next Saturday. You can sign up for it here or donate to the effort here.

• Tied in the 3rd: A new poll released this week shows Democrat Jennifer Konfrst tied with Republican incumbent Zach Nunn in Iowa’s competitive 3rd Congressional District. The race is shaping up to be one of Iowa and the country’s most competitive races for 2026.
• A former teacher is suing Oskaloosa Schools and its superintendent, alleging a violation of his constitutional free speech rights after he was fired for comparing conservative activist Charlie Kirk to a Nazi on social media following Kirk’s slaying. A second Iowa teacher, in Creston, has also been placed on administrative leave for social media comments, while keyboard warriors have been busy finding and reporting others.

• Free speech…for Republicans: The new state-mandated University of Iowa Center for Intellectual Freedom (which Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks wants to name after Charlie Kirk) has a new board made up of mostly Republicans. Exactly as designed, says Todd Dorman.

Aerial view of downtown Sioux City, Iowa, at dusk. (Jacob Boomsma/Shutterstock)

🐈 These are Lola and Luna, “Lilac Himalayans relaxing,” sent by reader BG Neal.

So much fluff!

Send me your pet photos here.

🦋 “Iowa butterflies enjoying the nectar of an orange butterfly weed on 8/11/25,” reader Donna W. wrote.

So many butterflies!

Send me your flowering photos here.

Readers are invited to add to the conversation by emailing responses@iowastartingline.com. Please include your first name and last initial. You may also want to include your city, but that’s up to you. I may edit your content for conciseness or to correct typos.

Iowa’s favorite pizza is a tie between meat lovers and supreme:

• “Supreme pizza is better!” — Zachary L.

• “Meat lovers.” — Warnstadts

• “Supreme.” — Mary A.

• “Meat lovers is my favorite pizza.” — Rob S.

• “Veggie pizza!” — Elizabeth E.

• “If Newsweek says it, it must be true. People have been relying on Newsweek for healthcare ratings for years, and for years UIHC rated near the top for the ‘O’s’: ophthalmology, orthopedics, otolaryngology. I don’t think we’re doing so well these days, and even when we were the boys and girls on the inside (who benefitted from the high ratings and who were happy to fly the flags bragging about them), [we] questioned the opaque selection criteria and dismissed the accolades as junk.

  My guess is that Newsweek’s rating criteria is as equally opaque for pizza.” — Bill R., Iowa City

Cancer in Iowa: Alcohol

• “As a native, and 4th generation, Iowan, (now 77 y/o), currently living in Berkeley, CA, I was pleased to see the drinking and cancer article (9/16/2025). However, I felt the section on binge drinking had a serious problem. I do not at all dispute the estimates; in fact, I expect they were based on self-reporting and therefore were probably low. However, you seem to equate social drinking with binge drinking, which I think is a major error. (5th para, first sentence, in binge drinking section.) 

   

  Also, you leave out one of the major cultural explanations for this high rate of binge drinking: namely, that many Iowans are adherents of a type of Christianity (Methodist, Baptist and some other Protestant sects) that labels alcohol a sin. This means that people do not integrate moderate or light drinking (like one glass of wine with meals) into their lives, but rather, when they drink, drink to get ‘blotto’ and forget that they are ‘sinning.’ I observed this cultural behavior as a child and young adult in the 1950s and 1960s as well as when I returned to Iowa to live in the 1990s. This was at the same time when most ‘religious’ Iowans thought it was very bad that many Europeans gave their kids heavily watered wine at dinners when others were imbibing. These same Iowans were some of the most militantly opposed to the legalization of cannabis, despite its proven less harmful effects than legal alcohol. I think an open discussion of these cultural factors would be a good addition to your coverage.” — Joe B.

How should President Donald Trump help farmers?

• “President Trump should resign.” — Paul S.
• “To help farmers and everyone else, 47 should rescind everything he’s done since regaining office, and then resign.” — Steve D.

Interpreter removed in Cedar Rapids:

• “Was the interpreter banned from the courthouse or was it the ICE center on Square D where the barricade was put up? If it was the federal courthouse, it sure looks to me like a violation of defendants’ right to a fair hearing.” — Art R., Dubuque (NOTE: It was at the US Homeland Security Building.)

More thoughts on capitalism:

• “Unbridled capitalism has brought us where we are today. Capitalism breeds greed, and greed is killing our country.

   

  I still remember our French guide in Paris telling us, ‘We pay a lot of taxes, but we get a lot for it.’ He didn’t mind paying taxes because France had a strong social safety net, unlike America. I want a strong social safety net for everyone. I’m tired of the attitude: I got mine and to hell with you.” — Joan Z.

Iowa DOGE:

• “I am a moderator for the 12,000+ member Facebook group Don’t Touch My IPERS. Today the Iowa DOGE had a meeting. I was not able to start recording until after Mr. Lentz talked about IPERS. I need to hear his words as I have learned he tried to walk backwards on his earlier statements. Any help in getting access to a recording would be greatly appreciated.” — Tammy M. (NOTE: Here’s the full recording from the Sept. 15 meeting.)

Fall activities:

• “I wonder if you might include our farm dinners and events in any upcoming lists you might put out. Thanks for your consideration!” — Beth H.

Correction to free dental clinic brief:

• “Love your column, but need to make one small correction: it’s ‘100-chair clinic,’ not ‘100-bed clinic.’ (I’m a retired Iowa dentist who participated in IMOM.)” — Chris S.

On the Iowa cold cases story:

• “You missed my sister, Angela Renee Buck, murdered on August 9, 1995. Please add her to the list. You can easily find her by Googling Cold Case Iowa, Angela Buck.” — Alana H.

Letter of the Week: Should individual or community rights win out?

“I heard some quotes by Charlie Kirk on the radio. The one that struck me most was something like, ‘I think it’s worth it to have, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year, so we can have the Second Amendment.’

We also have the Fourth Amendment costing innocent lives—a policy like subjecting all drivers to random breathalyzer tests is considered unreasonable search, so we have random drunken drivers out killing our loved ones.

But what if random breathalyzer testing were not considered unreasonable? It could just as easily be seen as a reasonable way to keep more of our loved ones out of the hospitals. Our society has put the individual freedom of driving unchecked above the community right to drive in safety.

In other words, making individual rights more important than community rights has harmed both individuals and communities.

So the tradeoff is, either a few people die every year, or we all get randomly inconvenienced. Our society likes the dying way better, but it could be otherwise. Theoretically, we’re the ones deciding what’s reasonable and what’s not, so if society deemed random breathalyzers reasonable, they would not violate the Fourth Amendment.

The same logic applies to the Second Amendment. Society determines what is and is not an infringement. Our rights are limited many ways—we can’t drive downtown 90 miles an hour, we can’t own army tanks or nuclear bombs, we can’t take our guns to the airport or the courthouse, we can’t go around brandishing a machete. None of these restrictions are considered infringements, but keeping guns out-of-range of the schoolhouse is.

The Second Amendment says the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, but it doesn’t say what kind of arms we get to keep and bear. Our society has decided we get to keep and bear arsenals of firearms that can each mow down a hundred people in 30 seconds; anything less would be an infringement. It could have just as easily decided we get to keep and bear arms like knives and slingshots, not guns.

But again, we have decided the individual right to own the fastest, deadliest gun is more important than the community right to live in safety. And again, both individuals and communities are harmed as a result.

Our Constitution wants ‘to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty.’ The way its Second and Fourth Amendments are practiced today goes against four of those six principle missions, minimum. …

On the flip side, when community rights take precedence, both individuals and communities are better off. Certainly the innocent dead and their communities would be. Also certainly, those who advocate individual rights over community, like Charlie Kirk.“

— Dixon S.

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