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Sen. Lynn Evans should be commended for trying to get a school budget number out as soon as possible as superintendents try to set their own budgets next month. Evans chairs the education committee, which recommended a 1.75% growth in state aid to schools. The Aurelia Republican said that this is a starting point, not a conclusion. We should hope so.
It amounts to a tacit recognition that the cost of the Republican education agenda is being felt. Lean state aid will put pressure on property taxes to rise. The GOP wanted vouchers for private schools with their income tax cuts. This is what you get: Local schools losing pace to inflation. It is a sure way to help drive teachers out of Iowa, and especially out of places like Aurelia.
Gov. Reynolds, the architect of this disaster, suggested 2% growth in state aid. The teachers union would like to see 5%. The Senate position is unreasonable. But this is the choice we made to cut taxes and divert existing revenue away from K-12 public schools. We are stuck in an untenable position because of short-term political choices made by the majority Republicans. Voters should remember this at the midterm elections. Rob Sand, the Democratic nominee for governor, would scuttle the private schools vouchers. That is a reasonable position. Reality is a bearcat. If your child turns out stupid and resentful, remember whom you voted for.
Rep. Matt Windschitl of Missouri Valley dropped out of the Republican race for the Fourth District congressional nomination last week after having raised no funds in the last quarter of 2025. The former Iowa House majority leader has been a rising star in the GOP but lost in the Trump endorsement race to Chris McGowan, president of the Siouxland Chamber Alliance.
Iowa Tea Party founder Ryan Rhodes of Ames remains in the race, along with Christian Schlaefer of Lakota. Windschitl endorsed McGowan as he exited the race. McGowan is full-throated in his support of Trump and touts his farm roots near Fonda, so the chamber man must like these soybean markets and tariffs. McGowan respects the “mission” of the goons in the Twin Cities, the secret police. He must, in order to be a good trooper. Trump demands debasement.
Democrats seeking the nomination are Ashley Wolf-Tornabane of Storm Lake, Stephanie Steiner of Sutherland and Dave Dawson of Lawton. Any one of them would be better than somebody who grovels before Trump.
Hey, culture warriors, dig this: The Latina ladies of Storm Lake are into Bad Bunny. They were posting in English on Facebook about how they loved his message of love, in Spanish. President Trump did not approve. He said “nobody” understood a word of the show. The Latinas of Storm Lake are not nobodies. They are quietly running the place while you were complaining about your ignorance of Spanish. They are bilingual, smarter than we are, and they want some more Bad Bunny. Keep on snoozing, Boomers, while the world turns right past you.
It makes us a little bit nauseous to think that the State of Iowa is begging Corteva to put its seed company headquarters in Johnston. It used to be called Pioneer Hi-Bred International. Founded by Henry Wallace, who was mentored by seed scientist George Washington Carver of Iowa State Agricultural College. Pioneer was Iowa. Then it got sold, of course, and changed to that stupid name Corteva, and moved to Indianapolis whence they forgot where they were planted.
Johnston, Iowa. That’s where Henry Wallace planted his corn.
That we should have to go begging for the seed headquarters is revolting.
These corporate interlopers sold off our legacy, invested in by the state particularly through cooperative research efforts with Iowa State. It is offensive.
Pioneer would be nothing were it not for Iowa. Ingrates and beggars. They should be ashamed of themselves. There are hungry people needing to be fed. That’s what Henry Wallace would say. We’ve lost a lot of pride since Wallace bred corn.
A lot is wrong with college athletics because of money. It bugs us when a star is at his or her fourth destination. They are stars, after all. They deserve to go where they are paid the most, we suppose, since this is America. The whole NIL thing mystifies us, why people would donate millions of dollars so somebody who plays in your colors for a year gets a million dollars.
Then we watched Bennett Stirtz lead the Iowa Hawkeyes over Northwestern by pouring in 36 points at Carver Hawkeye Arena on Sunday. It was way more entertaining than the Super Bowl. He must be the best point guard in the USA. And to think that two years ago this kid was playing for peanuts at Division 2 Northwest Missouri State in Maryville for Coach Ben McCollum, the best coach in America whom only hoops fanatics had heard of. McCollum jumped to Drake in Des Moines last year and dominated the Missouri Valley with Stirtz at the point. They came in because Coach Darien DeVries decamped with star son Tucker for West Virginia last year, and Indiana this year (where McCollum & Co. beat the Hoosiers).
It was sad they left good old Drake but that’s the way the ball bounces in the mid-major Mo Valley. Stirtz deserves to wow Carver Hawkeye on national TV while McCollum patrols the sidelines. Iowa is in the Big 10 mix because of a bunch of guys from nowhereseville. It is an amazing thing to watch. Go Hawks.
Iowa maintains a deep reservoir of cruelty for people who do not fit conventional dogma. Those who swear by the Good Book should bear witness to the legislature, which has been staging an all-out assault on the rights and personal safety of gay people. You could say they are the least among us, among the most vulnerable because they are seen as different. Those who are vain and proud may exact their cruelty on gays or cross-dressers, and they are too arrogant and ignorant to remind themselves that they will have to answer for this.
We are attempting to deny civil rights to transgender people as a class. Another “Don’t Say Gay” bill will wend its way to the signature of Gov. Kim Reynolds. These perverts in Republican garb are obsessed with homosexual sex. They are thinking about bathroom use when they should be worrying about our rising property taxes and toxic surface water.
If Iowa wants to drive out young people, shame queers. If we want to live up to our image as a place for hicks, just put a towel in the teacher’s mouth and clear the library of books because they might teach kids how to understand each other.
These clowns are ruling like ayatollahs. This is America, where you are supposed to be free. This is Iowa, which is supposed to be a place of community. This campaign of cruelty is wrong on its face. More subtly, it unravels the fabric that holds us together as a state. It is a rot upon us. It makes us weaker. It eats at our soul. It is sinful.
To treat any person, Latino or gay or disabled, as something lesser and apart is an intrinsic evil that will destroy us. That is how Auschwitz got built.
Check yourself. Is this who you are? Are you prepared to reckon with the judgment you render in the here and now? Are you prepared to answer for the slander of your neighbor, and for her suffering?
We try to restrain ourselves from preaching but we find that you must fight fire with fire. The people who would make queers miserable make themselves poorer by driving off customers and friends. Worse, they commit the sort of sin that permanently separates them from the divine. Ponder the consequences of your cruelty. Go ahead — it’s right there in the Bible. “For he who is least among you all is the one who is great.”
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