Opinion
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OPINION: If Trump really cared about Main Street, Iowa would feel it
President Donald Trump visited Iowa this week, touting his economic record and asking voters to believe he stands with working people, small businesses, and farmers. As business and farm leaders who live this economy every day, we wish that were true. But what matters to Main Street Iowa is not the stagecraft. It is whether…
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OPINION: Why Iowa deserves a queer library
In a world that demands more of our time and attention be spent online, it can be easy to forget how much we need in-person community and connection too. The Des Moines Pride Center exists because LGBTQ+ people have always needed places to gather, learn, and simply be ourselves together. The Des Moines Pride Center…
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Guest post: Correcting the record about Carrie Chapman Catt
I appreciate Sam Cohen January 12, 2026, essay, “All about Arabella Mansfield and 3 other Iowa women to made history.” Yet I must object to Cohen’s third paragraph in her discussion of Carrie Chapman Catt.
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OPINION: I donated Iowan artifacts to preserve their legacy. The state is breaking its promise to protect them
Some 40 years ago, my mother donated a 1915 landscape plan to the State Historical Society of Iowa’s (SHSI) library in Iowa City. The plan, a rare surviving hand-painted sketch by landscape architect Joseph Krieger for Waterloo architect Howard Burr (1885-1964), was part of their design of what later became my family’s home in rural…
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OPINION: As a future pediatrician, I shouldn’t be preparing for diseases from the past
As an Iowan, I’ve always been drawn to helping people. Growing up “Iowa nice” transformed into a desire to become a pediatrician, connecting with families like the ones I grew up alongside. Entering my fourth year of medical school at the Carver College of Medicine — I am alarmed by the dangers our state’s children…
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OPINION: Republican Congress members from Iowan have abandoned their constituents
Despite overwhelming public outcry, Republicans in Congress passed their Big, Ugly Bill, which includes the largest cuts to health care in history. After years of expanding health care coverage and working to eliminate barriers to coverage, GOP Sen. Joni Ernst, and every other Republican Iowa member of Congress, decided that tax breaks to billionaires were…
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OPINION: Iowans need to stand up to agricultural monopolies for the sake of our water
After years of consolidation in the agriculture industry, just a handful of companies control how our water is treated. When political leaders and regulators were focused on ensuring a distributed economy that supported diversified farming operations, small farmers, and thriving rural towns, there were less nitrates in the water. Unfortunately, when Iowa officials decided to…
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Opinion: Zach Nunn is my congressman. I had to travel to DC just to talk to him.
I recently traveled to Washington, D.C. with a group of Iowans to talk with my representative: Congressman Zach Nunn. We weren’t sightseeing. We were there because it’s clear to us our economy is rigged for the ultra-wealthy, and the people who represent us in Congress aren’t listening to us back here at home. We went…
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Op-ed: Iowa School Chaplain Bill is a Christian Nationalist Knock Off
The School Chaplain bill is currently rushing through the Iowa legislature – it’s now heading to the Iowa Senate floor as H.F. 884, having passed the House and gone through the Senate Education committee. Despite the fact it seems to clearly violate most interpretations of the establishment clause – letting public school districts hire chaplains…
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Op-ed: Facing The Climate Crisis
Before his appointment as U.S. Energy Secretary, Chris Wright was the CEO of Liberty Energy, North America’s second largest fracking company. Wright recently asserted: “I am a climate realist. The Trump administration will treat climate change for what it is, a global physical phenomenon that is a side effect of building the modern world…The only…
