🗣️ It’s Friday; time for reader replies!

My take: I see Northern Dewatering, the Minnesota company that illegally drilled around 40 wells on the site of an under-construction Cedar Rapids data center, is being fined $20,000 by Linn County.

They’re a private company, so quarterly profits aren’t public, but sources say Northern Dewatering’s revenue is $7.1 million. I’ll let you do the math on how much that fine’s gonna hurt them.

Should we have harsher penalties for companies brazenly taking our resources? I know, leading question. Reply and tell me anyway.

Other Iowa news briefs:

• Sign a petition from the Iowa Higher Education Coalition to ask the Board of Regents to reject a proposal that would ban college courses that talk about race or diversity.

• Iowa City’s city council passed a resolution last week boycotting investment of public funds “from entities complicit in the current and ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza,” one of the first in the nation to do so. “This vote is a material step toward severing Iowa City’s connections to the state of Israel and its genocide of Palestinians,” the group Iowa City Action for Palestine said in a statement.

• Iowa is nearly out of drought, save for a dry patch in the southwest. The downside: We’re seeing some super high river levels.

🐶 This is Zayne, the very comfy-looking dog of reader Jay S.

Send me your pet photos here.

🌼 “Two plants that bloom beautifully every year: green-eyed Susan and Day Lillies,” says reader Donna W.

Send me your flower photos here.

Slices of bread in a basket with a serving of bruschetta, tomatoes, and cheese for topping. (Blue Ribbon Bar & Eatery)

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.

Who’s benefiting from deporting Iowa workers:

• “Who is mass deportation helping? There is a popup industry that detains and deports immigrants, and it is very profitable.” — Bill D.

• “Stephen Miller’s fever dream, indeed. Every day, I wonder how many people in Trump’s administration are going to eventually end up behind bars in one of their own concentration camps. That’s my fever dream and I’m stickin’ to it.” — Kevin S.

Alert Iowa:

• “Thank you for your piece about Alert Iowa. It’s a smart system and I’d like to see us make even better use of it. For example, could it have shared the DNR’s air quality alerts regarding [particulate matter] conditions this week? Emails are too slow and passive when dangerous conditions exist.

   

  I’d also like to see aerial spray operators required to give notice to rural neighbors. The Alert Iowa system would be a perfect way to do this, as it can be customized by senders as to delivery area and by recipients as to alert type. The sudden appearance and noise of a very-low-flying plane is startling at best. For people who have been in war zones or other traumatic circumstances it must be even worse. 

  Plus, pesticide delivery is imprecise and I’d like a few hours advance notice so I can cover or harvest garden produce, secure pets, and plan so as to reduce my own exposure. Family, friends, and I have had the unpleasant experience of getting caught in a pasture checking cattle, or fixing fence, or mowing the yard, or on a walk, or just stepping outside, and being sprayed with an unknown and deliberately toxic substance as a neighbor’s field is treated. Drivers, too, deserve a heads-up as to the highly distracting movements of spray planes.

  I’m not asking here for more regulation, just reasonable notice. The Alert Iowa system has the capability to reach people in a timely and targeted way, whether they are residents or passing through the area.” — Karen V., Stuart

Trump lowering disabled workers’ wages:

• “This story does not inform the reader of the whole story. My wife worked for 26 years in a facility that took care of the mentally and physically handicapped. As part of their state mandated ‘programming’ (therapy), the residents had tasks to perform. Some of the residents absolutely could not do the simple tasks by themselves, and a staff member was required to sit with them and perform the task with them—even to the point of having to do the simple job hand-over-hand 100% of the time.

  One of the program tasks was to make simple plastic floor mats out of thick wire and plastic pieces which were sold at the facility’s store. But since this therapeutic task was considered a job, the facility was required to pay a wage, even though the resident was completely incapable of performing the task themselves.

  So now we come to the unintended consequences of mandating a minimum wage. The taxpayer is already paying for the resident’s housing, healthcare, food, recreation, and programming, but also requiring a minimum wage to be paid to this resident by taxpayers for his therapy would no longer justify the ‘job’ being done and it would be terminated.” — Jim H.

Letter of the Week feedback:

• “Thank you for including the letter from Mary H, Salem, IA, about ‘ICE is Violating the Constitution.’ She made numerous great points about her research on the Fifth and Eighth Amendments. In addition, her provision of the oath of office that each of my elected representatives takes, swearing to uphold the U.S. Constitution, really stuck with me. 

  My elected representatives, [Sens. Chuck] Grassley, [Joni] Ernst, & [Rep. Ashley] Hinson, receive an email and a phone call from me to their local and DC offices whenever they vote, or are preparing to vote, against my values. Mary H. helped me see how much my values are aligned with our Constitution. My next interaction will definitely highlight the oath they each took and are breaking.” — Dawn W.

Rob Sand’s voucher stance:

• “Hi Amie, saw the video of Sand saying that all schools in Iowa should follow the same rules if they get public money. What I’m trying to find out (and the campaign is ignoring my questions) is: Does he just want to reform the voucher program, or does he want to end it altogether? Would really appreciate if you folks could get an answer from them.” — Dirk F.

Cancer in Iowa series:

• “Thank you for calling attention to the pesticide/cancer questions.

   

  If you haven’t seen it already, please take a look at this scientific analysis published last year: Frontiers | Comprehensive assessment of pesticide use patterns and increased cancer risk. Figure 4 feels like a punch in the stomach.” — Karen V.

Letter of the Week: I Was in Moscow When Trump Visited

“In 1987 and 1988, I served at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow as a US Marine Security Guard. Every American who served there was briefed in no uncertain terms: if you entered a Moscow hotel, especially as a high-profile visitor, the KGB would attempt to ensnare you—usually with prostitutes—as part of a deliberate effort to gather kompromat (compromising material). Their goal was blackmail. It was standard Cold War operating procedure.

So when Donald Trump visited Moscow in 1987, it was shocking that he never contacted or stopped by the US Embassy. Every American of prominence did. Celebrities. Business executives. Diplomats. Journalists. Not Trump. He was not some anonymous businessman—he was flashy, ambitious, and traveling at the personal invitation of the Soviet Union to explore building luxury properties in Moscow. Yet he made no effort to protect himself through the official channels that every other serious traveler used.

What happened in that Moscow hotel in 1987? We’ll likely never know for sure. But it’s not far-fetched—it’s precisely how the KGB operated. I was there. I lived it. To ignore that is to ignore decades of Russian intelligence strategy.

And what Trump did after returning to New York makes the situation even more suspicious: he launched an aggressive PR campaign, spending thousands on full-page ads in major newspapers, criticizing America’s allies, calling for an end to U.S. foreign aid, and parroting lines that sounded like they came straight out of Soviet talking points. That wasn’t coincidence — it was messaging that benefited the Kremlin.

We can debate the Steele dossier or election interference in 2016. But the real question that has been strangely absent from public discourse is: Why hasn’t anyone seriously investigated Trump’s first Moscow trip in 1987?

As someone who stood post in the heart of the Soviet empire and guarded against exactly this kind of foreign compromise, I find the silence troubling. This isn’t political. This is national security. And it’s personal.” — Kevin Dill, Waukee

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