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So the National 250th Birthday celebration was a flop. You must have been watching the main media networks who did not carry Trump’s Washington, D.C., 11 p.m. address or the national fireworks display. Or maybe you did see it on Fox since that’s the only one I could find that carried it. A fine way for the networks to show their patriotism and love of country! Just because they do not agree with the President or like him, they should respect the office and America. Not only was it a lack of respect for the President but also a great way to diss the American people and block them from their own birthday party…a celebration that regards the ability to disagree and yet agree to disagree and honor what was wrought 250 years ago.
America is not perfect but find one country that is. Nor is any leader perfect. This side of heaven there are none. But what makes America stand out is that we (at least used to) argue amongst ourselves, come to a consensus, and try to remedy what we find is wrong.
I for one am thankful the Founding Fathers gave me the right to free speech. Ask yourself: what am I doing to make America great…tearing it down and complaining or having honest discourse and trying to reach a positive solution that is best for the country without consideration of who is in office. Can your love for America and all the blessings we have outshine your hatred of one man? It’s not Trump’s 250th but America’s 250th. We have the chance to elect someone new every four years. That is a right our forefathers fought and died for. Thank you patriots… old and new!
Barb Ansorge, Storm Lake
On behalf of the Storm Lake Youth Softball Association, we would like to thank the many sponsors, donors, families, volunteers and community members who supported our program this season.
Because of your generosity, nearly 120 girls had the opportunity to play Storm Lake Youth Softball this year.
Your support helps us provide a safe, positive and affordable place for girls to learn the game, build confidence, make friends and be part of a team.
We would like to give a special thank you to our business sponsors: The Storm Lake Police Association, Central Bank, The Citizens First National Bank, Security Trust & Savings Bank, United Bank of Iowa, Three B Real Estate, Merrill Manufacturing, Stickers & Posters, BVRMC, Northwest Iowa Bone, Joint & Sports Surgeons, Tyson Foods, Storm Lake Rotary, and Northwest Auto Plaza. Their contributions help cover the cost of equipment, uniforms, field improvements and other expenses, making it possible for more girls to participate.
We would also like to thank everyone who supported our recent fundraiser. Whether you made a donation or simply helped spread the word, your generosity made it a success. The funds raised will help purchase new batting cages, providing our players a better place to practice and continue developing their skills.
We have enjoyed watching our players grow both on and off the field. Thank you for supporting the girls who proudly represent our community each season.
Storm Lake Youth Softball Association Board
Iowa has one of the highest cancer rates in America, and unlike most states, our rate is still rising. That should alarm every family in this state. Yet for years, Iowa's agricultural leadership has treated polluted water and environmental contamination as problems that can wait.
They can't.
We learned a painful lesson from Agent Orange. Waiting for absolute proof before taking action costs lives. Cancer cells do not carry a label identifying what caused them. Science finds answers by studying patterns of disease and environmental exposure—not by waiting decades while more people become sick.
For 15 years, Republican-controlled state government has refused to activate the voter-approved Natural Resources and Outdoor Recreation Trust Fund, leaving billions of dollars that could have supported cleaner water, healthier soil, and stronger conservation unrealized. While politicians delayed, Iowa families continued to face rising concerns about pollution and cancer.
Chris Jones understands that agriculture and public health are partners, not opponents. Iowa farmers deserve support to protect our land and water, and Iowa families deserve leadership that makes clean drinking water and healthy communities a priority.
This is not about attacking farmers. It is about demanding accountability from policymakers who have accepted the status quo for too long.
The question facing Iowa voters is simple: How many more cancer diagnoses, hospital visits, and funerals will it take before we decide that prevention is better than excuses?
Iowa deserves leadership that confronts problems instead of denying them. Chris Jones is offering that leadership. It's time to give him the opportunity to put Iowa's health, water, and future first.
Joel E. Wells, PhD, Iowa City
Mary’s article “Teachers Remember 1976 Europe Trip” has been shared with me and I in turn shared with my daughter. It is above and beyond a good article and gets down to “the rest of the story.”
Thank you, Mary, a job well done.
Kay Kordik, Pocahontas
Reflecting upon the extraordinary 250th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence, it seems important to again contemplate and admire the bravery and devotion of our founding fathers to the cause of liberty. The incomparable creation of this everlasting document and its corollary Constitution are nothing short of a miracle penned by extraordinarily gifted men coming together at a moment in time that rarely presents itself.
Their genius provided us with living parchments establishing lofty ideals and aspirations for a new nation and the construct to preserve it. One principal, unmistakeable safeguard to its preservation was the formation of three co-equal branches of government, each responsible for providing checks and balances to excesses of the other. Today, regrettably, one could reasonably conclude that our current executive branch has purposefully, methodically, and with sycophant assistance, assent, weakness, and/or cowardice, co-opted these essential, intentional safeguards. How, one should ask, could this happen.
One illustrative instance of the intentionality and purposefulness that brought us to where we are today can be laid squarely at the doorstep of Iowa's senior Senator Chuck Grassley, previously, and now, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Recall, if you will, President Obama’s March 16, 2016, nomination of Appellate Judge Merrick Garland to serve as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, some 237 days before the Nov. 8, 2016, Presidential election. Supremely qualified, Judge Garland’s nomination was ended by Chairman Grassley and every other Republican on his Judiciary Committee by way of their (coordinated with Senator Mitch McConnell) steadfast refusal to hold confirmation hearings. This marked the first time since the Civil War that a nominee whose nomination had not been withdrawn had failed to receive consideration for an open seat on the court.
Justifications were offered by Iowa’s honorable Senator, the most salient of which was that short timing before the election dictated the next President should possess this selection, thereby reflecting the will of the American people. (Recall candidate Hillary Clinton won the popular vote and received approximately 65.85 million votes (48.18%) compared to Donald Trump’s 62.98 million votes (46.09%), leading by nearly 2.9 million votes). Looking back at President Trump’s Sept. 26, 2020, nomination of Appellate Judge Amy Coney Barrett and her remarkably expedited Oct. 27, 2020, seating on the court in advance of the Nov. 3, 2020, Presidential election, the expressed justifications for Senator Grassley’s treatment of Judge Garland’s nomination are scarcely credible. This 31-day turnaround marked one of the fastest nomination-to-oath cycles in modern U.S. history. However, our honorable Senator’s unabashed hypocrisy doesn’t end there.
Because it would be next to impossible to argue that today’s makeup of the court is fair, or balanced, or even an accurate reflection of the will of the American people, some Democrats have considered whether the composition of the court might be altered in such a way as to achieve more judicious outcomes. Now, lifetime appointments by one political party or the other of a disproportionate number of nine sitting Justices can be seen as flawed imbalance. Rotations, term limits and other solutions are being discussed. These discussions are occurring in the context of the “Trump Court’s” numerous, unprecedented, exceedingly impactful decisions (some upending long standing precedent), the court’s overuse of its “Shadow Docket,” the Court’s seismic shifting of power through the unitary executive theory, etc. To add further context, many are monumental rulings (e.g. voting rights, abortion, deportations, civil rights, due process, gun rights) that have already and will continue to irrevocably change/damage lives, diminish personal liberties and forever alter the course of history. Ethical considerations regarding some of the sitting Justices also factors in.
Despite the inherent value and reasonableness of this discussion, our honorable Senator Grassley recently chose to not let sleeping dogs lie. On June 25, he authored and published a rebuke of Democrats’ Court revision considerations, likening them to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1937 “Court packing scheme to rig the Supreme Court.” (https://www.grassley.senate.gov/blog/democrats-revive-fdr-court-packing-scheme-to-rig-the-supreme-court).
The honorable Senator’s entire publication is important reading because (please read it yourselves) it exposes deliberate gaslighting by Iowa’s senior Senator (who occupies the No. 3 spot in the line of succession as the Senate’s President Pro Tempore), blind to his very own actions that intentionally and actually resulted in his very own rigging of the Supreme Court.
One of the honorable Senator’s most outrageously ironic statements in his June 25 commentary relates to his apparent recognition that “...our constitutional system of checks and balances...aims to prevent any one of the federal government’s three branches from gaining too much power.” The Senator must either be delusional or unwilling to acknowledge that this is exactly the problem that has raised such concern: his and his Republican party’s abdication of their constitutional duty to rein in their drunk with power President. Senator Grassley also writes in his commentary that “Iowa’s own former President Hoover exposed the outrageous effort [by FDR] to reduce ‘the sword of the people’ to ‘a tool of the executive.’”
It would be laughable for Senator Grassley to have written this as a part of his critique of Democrats’ Supreme Court discussions if it wasn’t so very applicably dangerous today.
Given the pervasive Republican tutelage from the headmaster’s throne inside the Trump & Roy Cohn Center for Government Deceit, Dishonesty, Corruption and Abuse, none of the Honorable Senator’s conduct is at all surprising.
Dean Lerner, West Des Moines
Zack Nunn, in a letter to the WNBA commissioner, called out the league for not addressing violence toward Caitlin Clark. Nunn, you are way off target.
First of all, Caitlin Clark can take care of herself and your actions probably did nothing more than enlarge the target on her back.
Secondly, this country and this state are in economic and social turmoil right now and need your attention. In other words, stay in your lane!
Thirdly, and perhaps most important (and certainly within your lane), if you really want to curb violence please direct your focus toward the White House, where the principal occupant (incidentally, a convicted felon, 34 times) has authored lethal violence here at home, on the open seas, in Iran, and who knows where else.
When you have done that, you are a worthy candidate for the office you now occupy.
David Weiss, Ankeny
Data centers are a huge concern for thousands of Iowans. That’s what Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement has learned from a statewide member survey, along with meetings, phone calls and other conversations done over the past five months.
We know data centers gobble up our water, energy and farmland. And we also know they gobble up our tax dollars to the tune of billions each year through property tax abatements, sales tax exemptions and other subsidies.
The technology that data centers use may be new, but their underlying story has been around a long time: big corporations profit by extracting and over-using our finite resources, while offloading the costs onto taxpayers and our communities.
People are turning out in large numbers to tell their elected officials: No new data centers in Iowa! So far, nearly 20 Iowa counties have passed data center moratoriums. More are needed.
Analysts say the current AI data center expansion far exceeds what we need for our normal, day-to-day lives, which makes me wonder: Is this mostly about putting a lot more money in the pockets of Big Tech’s wealthy tycoons?
Let’s use some common sense and put a long pause on this expansion. Prudence will serve us well.
Hugh Espey, Des Moines
We continue to read about rising electricity rates that are exacerbating the inflation that is making our lives more expensive and difficult. While some states have been proactive in addressing the problem, a national solution is needed.
Our existing grid can be made more efficient, but in the end we will need to build new transmission lines and create stronger connections between each of the regional grids. A major problem is that it takes too long to build these lines due to outdated regulations. The cost of solar and battery storage has decreased so dramatically that virtually all new generation capacity is clean.
Unfortunately, the grid hasn’t been able to keep up and this new capacity often has to wait years to get plugged in. Federal legislation is already being considered in DC to help ease these bottlenecks while still encouraging public input. Ask your Member of Congress to join you in support of comprehensive clean energy permitting reform so we can build our way out of these high electricity rates.
Jon Berman, Elmhurst, Ill.
Two political rising stars recently flamed out due to morality problems: Eric Swalwell, a California Congressman, and Graham Platner, a Maine U.S. Senate candidate.
The lesson here is that “power corrupts.” People just cannot be trusted with political power for an extended period of time.
Ancient democratic Rome was so sensitive to term limits that their chief executives, called “consuls,” were only allowed to serve for one year before they were turned out to pasture.
Abigail Adams, the wife of America’s second President, warned her husband, “Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could.” She knew what California and Maine need to learn.
America added term limits to the Constitution for our presidents in 1951, but set the term way too long. We also have failed to regulate terms for Congress and the Supreme Court.
We need to open our eyes to history. We are asking for trouble and we are getting it.
Kimball Shinkoskey, Woods Cross, Utah
The One Nation TV ad commending Representative Ashley Hinson for working the save family farms from the “death tax” brings back memories. (One Nation, a Political Action Committee aligned with Senate Republican leadership, has committed $11 million to supporting Hinson’s Senate campaign.)
For several years after I completed military service and a degree at Iowa State I worked for the Iowa State University Extension Service. This was in the 1970s before the farm crisis of the 1980s. Iowa was experiencing a farmland price boom and the Federal Estate Tax (aka death tax) was a hot topic. The amount of estate value exempt from Federal Estate Tax was doubled in 1976 from $60,000 to $120,667. Under current law the basic exempt amount is $15 million, and a husband and wife have a combined basic exemption of $30 million. If the family farm assets qualify for Special Use Valuation, a total of $31.46 million can pass to the younger generations completely exempt from Federal Estate Tax. According to the Iowa Chapter of the Realtors Land Institute’s Spring 2026 survey the average market value of medium quality Iowa farmland was $10,805. A $31.46 million estate tax exemption would protect about 2,911 acres.
I had the privilege of both taking classes taught by and working with Dr. Neil Harl who was a nationally recognized authority on farm estate and business planning. Dr. Harl was quoted in an April 8, 2001 New York Times article that, although he had looked far and wide, he “had never found a case in which a farm was lost because of estate taxes.” As was true 50 years ago, often the much more daunting business and estate planning challenge for farm owners who want the business to continue into succeeding generations is how they can also treat their non-farming sons and daughters fairly.
The concerns I hear most often from the Iowa farmers I visit with today are very high production costs — driven higher by tariffs and the war in Iran, grain markets lost due to tariffs and trade wars, losing healthcare access in their rural communities, their inability to purchase affordable medical insurance, and the struggles faced by their local public schools.
Al Charlson, Waverly
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