It’s Friday, June 20, 2025.

🗣️ It’s Friday; time for the takes! 

 

My take: Juneteenth was yesterday, the anniversary of when our country actually granted freedom to all. I’ll be celebrating at the 30th annual Waterloo Juneteenth this weekend (while trying to stay cool amid this heat wave).

 

If you’re looking for an event in eastern or central Iowa, Little Village has a good list here.

🐱 This is Ryder, “a ten year old, Olde English Bulldog that we’ve had since he was a puppy,” says reader Martin D.

 

(Cupping his face in his paws! ❤️)

 

Send me your pet photos here.

🌼 “My Japanese peonies always take my breath away,” says reader Sue O.

 

Send me your flower 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.

On an Iowa DOGE proposal to combine some of Iowa’s 99 counties:

• “Counties can be combined. We also need to incorporate small towns. It is time to move forward with better ideas. It may not create a lot of savings, but we have some counties with very low populations. The way the state is going now though, there may not be much for local government.” ~Dylan M.

• “I have thought Iowa has had too many counties for a long time. Getting rid of Cedar County would maybe make Jeff Kaufmann more vulnerable in a supervisor election. Or he would have to supervise a county with an actual city in it.” ~Russ P.

• “As for the notion of reducing the 99 counties in Iowa, I am a liberal who is in favor of cutting counties. Look at Louisa. No stop light, dying small towns, and a four-lane road bypassing a lot of stuff. If you live in Letts for example, are you better off paying for a county board and department heads? Or would a larger Muscatine County with less overhead and more money for deputies and road guys, etc. be better?” ~Tracy H.

On the Regents trying to ban college courses on diversity:

• “Are book burnings next?” ~Gordy G.

• “Hoorah for UNI!” ~Donna N.
• “My father attended the U of I, worked on the Daily Iowan and was in the Hawkeye Marching band before he served in the Navy in WWII. We attended Hawkeye football games when Forest Evashevsky was coach. The U of I was revered in our family. My father was a member of the Press and would be appalled by this violation of constitutional rights. He was a lifelong Republican.

   

  This decision is a shameful lapse in character and judgment. I am a retired attorney and as such have taken the oath to defend the US Constitution. The persons who have made this indefensible decision must immediately reverse course and uphold the values of this venerable institution, which includes a school of law.” ~Lynn J.

• “I am a graduate of the School of Social Work at the University of Iowa. Diversity, education & inclusion are the very backbone of learning how to work with people different from ourselves and actually make a difference. If the Board of Regents wishes to fall backwards in time like this, beware of what will come next. Male students will have to wear shirts, ties & dress pants to class. Women will have to wear dresses or skirts & before long their admission as students will be curtailed. You might think it absurd that this would follow—it’s just as absurd as mandating how the Academy conducts itself.” ~Janice H.

On our upcoming series investigating cancer in Iowa:

• “I read with interest your content on Iowa Cancer rates. I draw a parallel to similar statistics on catastrophic kidney failure.

  Since moving to the Coralville area, I have lost two bull terriers to kidney failure, as well as having my kidneys shutting down and requiring dialysis for 3 years. During that time I found out that the area has one of the highest per capita rates of kidney failure nationally. Before converting to Home PD dialysis, I found there were no ‘chairs’ available in Johnson County and I had to travel to Cedar Rapids for Hemo Dialysis 3 times a week.

  I’m thinking ag runoff is the issue. One of my neighbors who is a PHD candidate in environmental chemistry had all of his research funding cut in early February. That research was tracking ag chemical migration through the Iowa groundwater table via well sampling. It could make an interesting line of investigation.” ~Douglas N.

• “Concerning cancer; the American Cancer Society has raised millions and millions of dollars every year for decades and yet there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight. Healthy people don’t make any money for the pharmaceutical/medical complex but sick people earn them billions of dollars. Might the incentive be to keep people sick? Finally, it looks like RFK Junior is going to remove some of the poisons that are allowed in our food but Big Ag is vehemently opposed to removing glyphosphate. There is much evidence that alternatives can cure cancer such as fenbendazole, cannabis, and ivermectin to name a few, but the established medical community poo poos any talk of these alternatives and immediately go to the dangerous treatments of radiation, chemo, and super expensive drugs like Keytruda. Cui bono?” ~Jim H.

On Sen. Joni Ernst’s “We are all going to die” comment:

• “‘We’re all gonna die;’ New Democrat mantra. Amore fati.” ~Jim A.

Newsletter feedback:

• “Great reporting.” ~Lynn J.

• “Thanks for tracking the layoff data. It’s powerful to see it all in one place.” ~Jackie N.

• “Ugh, I just donated to what I thought was YOU, Amie Rivers @ Iowa Starting Line, but once I clicked on DONATE NOW, the confirmation came from The Courier. I hope the $$ gets to you this way. I very much enjoy the variety of news ,and interesting bites of Iowa life.“ ~Kenneth M.

  (NOTE: It will! Courier Newsroom is our parent company, and they keep track of where the donations come from. Thank you for your donation!)

Cornhole Champions feedback:

• “Hi folks just catching up with the pod, hope as Wahls and Sand and all continue to attack their own party you all with ask them to be more specific about what Dems are they talking about and on what issues.” ~Dirk F.

On asking Congress to save NPR:

• “Hurray for National Public Radio and Morning edition. I listen to their 2 hours of unbiased news every morning (WVIK.org, Rock Island, Illinois).” ~David G.

Letter of the Week: A new Gilded Age attacking workers

• “So far in this second Trump administration we have seen not only a continuation of the biases and vengeance that the first administration manifested—such as genuine hatred towards immigrants of color and of other cultures that has been disguised as an effort to deport only those who arrived here without observing legal requirements for entry—but also a much more reinvigorated return to the kind of property-ownership and upper (wealthy) class society last seen in this intensity in the 1880s and 1890s at the height of what Mark Twain dubbed The Gilded Age. …

  Because of the ‘noise’ created by truly louder and more raucous figures and events, and also because so many of these measures against labor have been coated in the honey-covered lie that such measures actually are taken to help the majority of citizens as well as non-union workers, we have been slow to connect the dots in order to recognize that this current age of extreme wealth inequality has come to pass precisely as the rights of all kinds of workers and the existence of unions have been steadily weakened. There is a correlation between them! …

  Consider, too, how the coalition of like-thinking businessmen and politicians have used the development of the so-called 401k—defined contribution—plans to initially reduce but then totally eliminate what had been once a widespread pattern of defined benefit pension plans. …

  With the rise of self-employment, such as Uber drivers, which seems to be one of the hallmarks of our current economy, the so-called ‘liberation’ gained by working for oneself on one’s terms has often proved to be more of an illusory advantage than a real one. The costs of self-employment can be considerable and are often—usually?—not well considered before launching such a venture. …

  As the Right continues its assault on any and all forms of cooperative assistance—whether this be in the form of unions, Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, or health care—we can expect to see both a further weakening of programs and laws designed to protect the many from the predations of the few and a continuation of the flow great wealth from the many to those already obscenely rich and powerful.
  Unless, somehow, a sufficient number of us wake up, recognize the truth of things, and organize to fight to return this country to the rest of us!” ~Greg C.

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