A Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper
The First Amendment to the Constitution is first for a reason: It is the fundamental building block of freedom. Our basic freedom is under withering attack as federal agents shoot and gas peaceful protesters in the streets, and arrest journalists bearing witness. The violence engendered by the Trump Administration breached the sanctuary, too.
Protesters alarmed by the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti entered a Twin Cities church where a federal immigration official serves as pastor. Reporters Don Lemon and Georgia Fort entered the church with the protesters to observe. Lemon interviewed members of the congregation, who expressed their dismay about having their right to freely worship interrupted.
Lemon and Fort were there to record, not to protest. That was clear from the video, just as the murders were. The protesters should have stayed outside. Once they enter the church, the reporter is obliged to follow until he is told to leave. The video shows that Lemon was welcomed by congregants who wanted to express their disappointment.
The US Justice Department tried to get arrest warrants out of two judges but failed, then found a grand jury willing to hand up an indictment of Lemon and Fort, along with the protesters.
Sunday service in St. Paul used to be quiet until Trump roused the goons. They pumped 10 rounds into Pretti while he lay on the ground. An agent shot Good in the head while firing four rounds into her vehicle.
Trump and Lemon, a former CNN anchor, can’t stand each other. The president celebrated Lemon’s arrest.
It’s all part of the retribution. Tear gas. Fear. Gagging people. Murder. These are dark days.
You may think we are hyperventilating. Thirteen people have been shot by immigration agents since September. Thirty-five have died in Trump’s concentration camps. Citizens are detained for the color of their skin — Native Americans have vanished in federal custody. Minnesota police officers are being stopped and ordered to produce their papers. Journalists are thrown in jail for being there.
We are living in authoritarian times. Freedom was an aspiration. The Trump Administration is gunning down the First Amendment. Too many people have bought into the violence against the people. We do not know how to put a check on it other than through the midterm elections. We fear for the vote. They have shown to what lengths they will go for power and money. They will throw you in jail or execute you, whichever is expedient. There is no neutrality or alternate way of looking at things when you are in their sights.
These facts play out before our eyes. Believe what you see while you are able.
City officials like to blame legislators for causing a steep rise in property taxes. They are right. The legislature writes the laws under which local government operates. Consider, then, that the Storm Lake City Council is moving ahead with plans to spend millions of dollars turning the former dredge spoil site into a recreation area with trails, parking and so on.
Mind you that we cannot afford Community Service Officers for the police department. Our infrastructure is in a permanent state of deterioration. And our property taxes are hideously high. It is not just the fault of our Republican legislators. It also is the fault of city officials who spend like it isn’t their money. They’re charging us so much to live in Storm Lake that you can’t fault our kids for looking at something more amenable elsewhere, walking trails or not.
Or consider Iowa Central Community College, which is a most ardent supporter of adding four-year degrees at a huge cost to the property tax base — at least $20 million. The community college trustees are eager to spend your money on their vanity, with help from misguided legislators.
Local officials also cannot keep track of their tax revenue. Storm Lake and Buena Vista County are spending your money suing each other over how your money was sent to the wrong place and blown to the four winds by other local government outfits.
The problem is not our property tax structure alone. Local officials blithely spend money without bothering to explain themselves to anyone, even though it is your money. You could vote otherwise. They will pave the walking trail and the parking lot if you let them.
Iowa will be among 12 states allowed to apply to the Democratic National Committee for inclusion in the early presidential nominating process, an important recognition that the party is lost to rural America. The first rule of politics is to show up. If you want the rural vote, you have to show up and ask for it.
Iowa will compete with Michigan and Illinois for the Midwestern slot in the first nominating flush. Michigan has Detroit and rural, a significant Black population, and it is purple as opposed to blue Illinois. Iowa is red. It will not revert to purple if the Democratic Party continues to ignore rural voters.
Some DNC members sound like former presidents of Ivy League colleges run off by Trump. They hedge and shuffle when they talk about Iowa, as if we must justify ourselves because Joe Biden could never win a second term. These Beltway grandees should recognize that Trump routed them twice in Iowa, and he just returned to fire up the base for the 2026 midterm elections. The DNC has let Trump own Iowa, which used to be a purple state.
Iowa will be fine without our being first to weigh in on the presidential race. The media intensity surrounding the caucuses and all the attendant money corrupted our civics. We might be better off, but America would not be. Democrats must be forced to appeal to rural voters if they want to remain relevant across the nation. Candidates must be exposed directly to voters, which Iowa offers in spades. We understand well our role to winnow the field. Combined with New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, the early process reflected American demographics.
Trump won by dominating Iowa. Democrats should figure out a way to put Iowa near the front of the nominating process if they ever hope to figure out how to approach rural voters.
Many calls for a general strike and boycott have come in the wake of the mayhem in Minnesota. A reader from Villisca wrote us suggesting that if you can afford to do without during the boycott, perhaps you could do without permanently and simplify your life. He happens to be a fan of St. Francis and his minimalist philosophy. If you don’t need it, don’t covet it.
That would be a real repudiation of the whole Florida resort way of life.
People go to pains to boycott for a day to avoid things they want but obviously don’t need. If you go without it for a day, you can spare yourself for a week and then a month. You free yourself from the “avarice and domineering power” of ownership. Or smoking. Simplicity should come naturally to an Iowan trained in self-denial while waiting for the blizzard to ease up. Living within your means becomes a moral course.
It could be a helpful way of looking at things when the world, or at least America, spins faster than we can. Simplify. When they come to take it all away you won’t miss it as much, maybe. You will have your dignity, and some savings with which to pick up smoking again so you might steady the nerves as these vandals ransack the American experiment.
We are grateful for the suggestion from Villisca. It reminds us of an Iowa we knew, a humbler place that did not put upon the vulnerable who can barely afford simple.
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