🗣️ It’s Friday; time for reader replies!

My take: These people are world-class idiots who make up their own science to fit their beliefs, and don’t care if women feel pain. (Also, shout out to all our readers with autism; the world is a better place with you in it.)

Iowa news briefs:

• An elementary school and Kinnick Stadium were among the restaurants and grocery stores around Iowa that were cited for food safety violations this month.

• Special election coming for Northwest Iowa: With Rep. Mike Sexton, a Republican, resigning in House District 7, a special election has been set for his seat on Dec. 9. So far, no candidates have announced. The district covers Calhoun, Pocahontas, and Sac counties, as well as part of Webster County.

• Did your insurance company deny you medically necessary coverage? Don’t panic; follow these steps to get them to pay.

• Get rid of the stats, get rid of the problem: That’s the Trump administration’s mantra lately (like jobs and crime data), and their latest target is getting rid of a report that shows how many Americans go hungry. Guess that means no one is!

• Sing it out: Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rob Sand has been starting his campaign stops across Iowa with an unusual ritual: Asking folks to identify their political party, and then leading crowds in singing “America the Beautiful.”
  
  
• The ACLU of Iowa is looking into School Resource Officers and whether their presence helps or hurts students. Share your story with them by emailing legal.program@aclu-ia.org.

• Democrats want Republicans to restore health insurance subsidies that would otherwise cause Iowa ACA enrollees to pay an extra $1,080 per year for coverage. They say they’ll withhold their votes to keep the government open otherwise, but President Donald Trump is telling Republicans not to negotiate.

• University of Iowa no longer a Top 100 school: It can’t be because Iowa Republicans made medical students not want to go there, or because they’re telling professors what they can and cannot teach, or because they’re making them add a “Center for Intellectual Freedom” to teach Republicans’ preferred topics, or…

• Make America Phosphorus-y Again: The Biden administration proposed a rule that would have imposed phosphorus emission limits on 126 meat industry plants across the US, including in Iowa. Now, the Trump administration has rescinded the proposed rules, and Food and Water Watch has sued.

• ICE violently arrests an Iowa City man on camera: ICE agents abducted essential worker Jorge Elieser González Ochoa at Bread Garden Market in Iowa City yesterday, according to immigrant rights group Escucha Mi Voz. “We demand Jorge’s immediate release and an end to the violent tactics of ICE that put our communities at risk,” said Escucha member Alejandra Escobar. The group held a press conference with González’ family and elected officials today, and is hosting another protective accompaniment training tomorrow morning; RSVP to that here.

A pork tenderloin nestled in a basket with a vegetable-topped bun. (Goldie’s Ice Cream Shoppe)

🐈 These are Betty and Keith “enjoying the cooler weather” we got in mid-August, according to reader Crystal O. in Harlan.

The dog days of summer, redefined!

Send me your pet photos here.

🦋 “An orange sulfur butterfly feeding on a zinnia,” at Terry Trueblood Recreation Area in Iowa City, sent in by reader Marc W.

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.

What should President Trump be doing to help farmers?

• “Exactly the same as he’s doing to help laid-off workers and other family-owned small businesses harmed by his actions; no less and no more. Farmers are no more nor less worthy than any other business owner or worker. Everybody’s input costs are on the rise, everybody’s markets are softening, everybody’s cutting labor.

   

  Subsidizing our farmers wouldn’t help our laid-off ag industry workers. Developing new markets for their products might, but nobody goes to the farmers’ market to buy soybeans. Helping them re-tool their operations to serve other markets, now that the one they’re so heavily invested in has been deliberately imploded, might be a good step in the right direction, and would help other people along with our farmers.

   

  Many of the other business owners bankrupted by Trump did not vote for him like our farmers, who figured he would bail them out like in Trump Term One. Another massive handout—they’re too proud to call it welfare, but that’s exactly what it was—may bail them out short-term, but it’s not the real answer. The real answer is for our farmers to get their head out of the sand and stop supporting politicians who are backstabbing us all.” — Dixon S.

   

• “Help me understand, unless Brazil was able to make a rapid increase of soybean production, isn’t the China change to Brazil just a piece of the circle—whoever bought from Brazil in the past may now have to buy from the USA? Good article.” — Jane K.

  (NOTE: Per the American Soybean Association: “Brazilian farmers began expanding soybean production in the 1990s with substantial investments from China and eclipsed U.S. production volumes in 2019/20.” So, yes, Brazil has been ramping up production. But it still isn’t enough; the ASA does expect China will have to begin buying from other sources when Brazil’s out around this month until February. Which is why the news that we bailed out Argentina, which allowed China access to cheaper soybeans there right now, is especially aggravating.)

Best gravel drive in Iowa:

• “Millville Road to Skip Level Road in Clayton County south of Guttenberg!! You are up on the bluffs and can see for MILES!! SO PRETTY!!” — Ashley M.
• “I enjoy your posts! Just a question from a former Iowan: We always called our rural roads (back in the ’40s) gravel roads. They were really crushed rock. In eastern Iowa, white Dolomitic Limestone? To me, gravel is small round stones (very small) mixed with sand and used in cement mixes. Am I on the wrong path here? We did call them ‘gravel roads.’” — Jim E.

Help with saving a wetland:

• “I am a faithful reader of your newsletter. We live in Lake Park and are blessed to be on Silver Lake. Currently, there is a developer who has received approval to fill in wetlands near the lake by offering mitigation elsewhere. His plan was formed without input from any residents. Knowing that you have amazing sources, I was hoping you could direct me to a group or groups that might want to get involved.” — Karen S. (NOTE: If you know of a group that could help, reply!)

What policy would you enact to reverse Iowa’s cancer crisis?

• “Control the size of CAFOs!” — Patsy S.

• “Follow suggestions from Chris Jones:

   

  1. Regulate agricultural practices

  2. Return zoning authority for livestock CAFOs to counties

  3. Regulate nutrients at the watershed scale

  4. Perennial cover in flood plains

  5. Moratorium on additional agricultural drainage

  6. Plan to retreat from corn ethanol

  7. Incentivize alternate crops

   

  His list goes on and on, but agricultural chemicals are a contributing factor in our state’s cancer rates.” — Jo Ann S., Correctionville

To Gen Z lawyer struggling to find a job:

• “This reply is in response to the article about Sophia Shubatt, the newly graduated attorney who could not find a legal position without compromising her scruples. Hang in there Sophia. Believe it or not, it’s people exactly like you who give us optimism for the future. Hopefully, someone who reads the article will provide you with the proverbial port in a storm somewhere.

  Trumpsters won’t be around forever. When they are relegated to the dustbin of history, (sooner rather than later?) perhaps opportunities for you will spring up at the most unexpected of places. There is a spot for you somewhere without having to pledge a loyalty oath for crying out loud. Just remember: Hope springs eternal.” — Kevin S.

Letter of the Week feedback:

• “Very nice letter of the week! I concur wholeheartedly!

   

  The emphasis on extreme individualism, which has been a theme in the Right in this country for at least the last two centuries, in fact goes against the hopes of the Founders who believed that genuine citizenship not only involved responsibilities as well as rights, but that citizens needed to ALWAYS place the needs of the larger community before their own.

   

  Individualism, on the contrary, not only works against community thriving but also just the possession of extreme wealth to the harm of the majority.

   

  Our current period of rage and hatred comes in large part from the increasing gap between the obscenely rich lives of the wealthy and the worsening challenges facing so many among us, including the poorer and less educated.” — Greg C.

Letter of the Week: What’s causing Iowa to fail?

“Republican leadership is causing Iowa to fail.

Republicans’ culture war issues are intended to distract us from a much bigger problem: Iowa’s failing economy. For the last three years, Iowa’s economy contracted at an average annual rate of -0.23% while the rest of the country grew at an annual rate of 2.3%. Our GDP fell by a staggering 6.1% in the first quarter of 2025, led by the decline in agriculture. This means far fewer opportunities for all of us Iowans.

One of the major reasons for Iowa’s stagnant economic growth is a lack of qualified employees. But Iowa Republicans continue to make the state unfriendly to workers:

Our cancer rate continues to grow, and numerous studies implicate nitrates in drinking water. But the DNR’s sophisticated water monitoring resources have shrunk by more than 25%, and will soon disappear entirely. Many waterways stay on the impaired list for a decade or more. Meanwhile, the Republicans fail to even consider the Clean Water for Iowa Act. Who wants to move their family to a state with the country’s second-highest cancer rate—and one of only two with a rising rate? Would you expose your children to this kind of environment?

Do we really expect businesses to find qualified employees when Republicans strangle public education? A 2% increase in K-12 funding isn’t going to stop our slide. Ph.D. economist Herman Quirmbach estimates that Republicans have underfunded schools by $2.1 billion since the beginning of the Reynolds regime. And the Iowa Workforce Development Board recently dropped critical, high-demand professions, such as law enforcement, firefighting, and medical assistants, from the “Last Dollar Scholarship Program” for community college students who want to get ahead. Whatever happened to Iowa’s status as top five in the nation for education?

The state’s strict abortion ban means young couples seeking to start a family may fear the consequences of a problem pregnancy. I have a friend who strongly advised her daughter and son-in-law not to move here for just this reason.

After Republicans cancelled civil protections for transgender Iowans, stoking fear in the LGBTQ+ community, how much success will Iowa employers have in recruiting talented members of the LGBTQ+ community, whether from another state or a graduate of our own schools, for a high-demand job? It will be tough.

The governor has sought a federal waiver to implement a stricter Medicaid work requirement, even though other states that tried it found that low-income, working people who would have qualified instead lost coverage because of bureaucratic hurdles. Are sick people more likely to find and hold jobs?

As ISU economics professor Peter Orazem put it: “Certainly if you look at the last 10 years or so, most of the attention paid on the political side has not been related to making Iowa a better place to live.”

Iowa Democrats must focus on the barriers that stifle opportunities for all of us. Let the Republicans chase their DEI phantoms.“

— Randy D.

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