(WASHINGTON. D.C.) — Like the migratory ducks and geese that fly over Iowa each Fall, a similar “migration” will soon begin for Iowa Republicans hoping general election voters will soon forget that MAGA style extremism was their style in the 18 months of the second Trump regime.

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) - With the Iowa Republican primary elections and state convention now behind them, look for the “Great Republican Migration” to begin in earnest in the immediate days and weeks ahead.

Watch for Iowa congressional Republicans to migrate to create more “bi-partisan” images, even though they have been hard core MAGA partisan extremists up to now.

They repeatedly adopted the MAGA / Trump style extremism to avoid Republican primaries where MAGA voters wield great influence.

General elections are a different matter.

MAGA extremism may attract voters in Republican primaries. but are more likely to repel in general elections, where winners must reach beyond their ideological base.

Don’t misunderstand. Their actual position on the political spectrum won’t change. What they vote for and against won’t change. Only their rhetoric will moderate - and that just a little - as they try to bamboozle non-MAGA voters into believing they are not the Trump extremists the record clearly shows them to be.

They hope general election voters will forget their constant genuflecting to Trump; their abandonment of their congressional oversight responsibilities; their blank check support for Trump’s unconstitutional war in Iran; their silence in the face of Trump’s long string of broken promises; the blind eyes they turned toward Trump’s non-stop corruption, etc. (This list can go on and on.)

They know that general election voters forgetting those sad and sorry records is the only way they can win in November.

Trump will not be the “wind beneath their sails” they were hoping he would be when compiling those records that please Trump but hurt Iowa.

Trump will have little to no coat tails here.

Republicans who win, will have to do so on their own.

Trump, himself - public opinion polls prove this - is in the midst of general disintegration. Even significant numbers of Republicans are experiencing a bad case of “buyers remorse” as the many failures of Trump’s policies come into focus and his general corruption becomes increasingly blatant and systematic.

Many others who have voted for Trump in the past are now thoroughly disgusted by him and won’t consider doing so again.

Iowa Republicans in Congress can’t erase their records, but they can use rhetoric that they hope will soothe voters concerned about their extremism, corruption, and abandonment of responsibilities assigned to Congress by the Constitution.

For an example of what to look for as this “migration” gets underway, turn your attention to US Rep. Zach Nunn (R-3rd IA) who has been on this road for some time now (and doing it badly.)

Nunn jams the word “bi-partisan” into most of his press releases. As if saying he is bi-partisan actually makes it so.

Every time I read a Nunn press release, I’m reminded of a story President Abraham Lincoln reportedly used to tell:

• “If you count the tail on a horse as a leg, how many legs does a horse have?” Lincoln used to ask visitors. They would inevitably reply “Five.”

  “No. Just four,” Lincoln would reply. “Saying a horse’s tail is a leg doesn’t make it so.”

Nunn can say the word “bi-partisan” as often and as loudly as he wants, but it doesn’t make him a “bi-partisan” member of Congress. His record is one of a Trump acolyte and that record cannot be erased by misleading rhetoric.

Nunn is such a Trump errand boy that when he thought about running for Governor of Iowa, his first stop was the White House, to ask for Trump’s permission. When Trump told him to “forget about it,” Nunn readily agreed to drop his planned candidacy, went home and ballyhooed Trump’s endorsement for his re-election race - to the US House seat he already held.

That support was a “given” before Nunn even visited the White House to ask permission to run for Iowa Governor, given his rigid, lock step, march behind all things Trump.

Yet we’re supposed to forget about what we’ve seen with our own eyes, heard with our own ears, and witnessed with nearly every vote Nunn cast during his time in Congress, because he put the word “bi-partisan” in a press release?

Zach Nunn is bi-partisan in the same way that I’m a leaping Lipizzaner Stallion. Which is to say, not at all. He is on board for Trump’s highly partisan, right wing agenda every step of the way.

Claiming otherwise is false. It is an attempt to fool voters.

Nunn knows that with Trump’s general collapse and steady deterioration on issues, Nunn has to convince voters he is something he is not - because what he is, a flaming MAGA, right wing, authoritarianism, Trump supporter - has lost much of its former “market value.”

The same with Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-2nd IA). She’s an enthusiastic supporter of Trump’s illegal war in Iran, even though she identifies it as a political burden in her race for US Senate. Apparently, it’s a burden she’s all too happy to bear. She’s said or done nothing to stop it, and has voted to allow it to continue without an authorization by Congress.

Hinson also apparently shares Trump’s disinterest in enacting a long over due Farm Bill to replace the that expired in 2023. She has done nothing real to drive any action on it before or after it expired.

Across the board, few of the votes Hinson has cast have any daylight between them and Trump and his far right MAGA agenda.

But don’t expect Hinson to tell it that way on the campaign trail.

She’s already claiming to be “bi-partisan.”

Again, truth be told: she’s bi-partisan in the same way Count Dracula loves to work on his tan in bright sunshine.

As the campaign accelerates and moves beyond the hard core, right wing universe of primary voters, look for Iowa Republicans to increasingly attempt to convince Iowa general election voters that they are anything but the Trump acolytes they enthusiastically became to get past possible primary challenges.

To win, voters need to forget about their full support of Trump’s corrupt, fascist, authoritarian policies which only make the issues and problems he once promised to to fix “on day one” grow rapidly worse.

They’ll still “talk MAGA” to Republican audiences, of course. But for general audiences, look for them to tone the MAGA rhetoric down and pose as much more reasonable people.

Their rhetoric will metaphorically shout “Pay no attention to the MAGA extremism, silence in the face of Trump corruption, and the illegal wars behind the curtain.”

Your job? Pay attention. Don’t forget. Hold them all accountable.

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OVER-DUE FARM BILL NOW 987 DAYS LATE

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — Iowa’s congressional “Can’t Do Caucus” still can’t get it done when it comes to enacting a new Farm Bill to replace the one that was written in 2018 and expired on September 30, 2023. That date is not typo. The basic federal farm program that family farmers urgently need to plan their crop years has been one big black hole on Capitol Hill for 987 days, as of Sunday, June 14.

As representatives of a major farm state, the economy of which depends heavily on agriculture, Iowans in Congress had and still have a special responsibility to ensure that old Farm Bill did not expire before a new one was in place, and to enact a new one as soon as possible if that - once unthinkable - deadline for a new one was missed.

Iowa’s “Can’t Do Caucus” - and the rest of Congress - failed to meet both challenges. A new Farm Bill continues to “twist slowly, slowly in the wind,” unenacted to this day.

Two thirds of Iowa congressional delegation bear special responsibility for these failures, the four who sit on chairs at their respective Agriculture Committees.

(Given their actual results, it seems a bit of a stretch to say they “serve on” the Agriculture Committee, so I’m going with the “sit on chairs” at the Agriculture Committee as a more accurate description of what they do.)

The four Iowans who are especially culpable for the failure to enact a new Farm Bill for 987 days and still counting are: US Reps. Zach Nunn (R-3rd IA) and Randy Feenstra (R-4th IA); in the Senate: Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Joni Ernst (R-IA).

You can call them special Iowa’s Profiles in Failure, when it comes to the Farm Bill.

The remaining two members of Iowa’s “Can’t Do Caucus” when it comes to the Farm Bill: Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-1st IA) and Ashley Hinson (R-2nd IA) who seems to think her failure to see that a new Farm Bill is enacted in a timely manner deserves a promotion to the US Senate.

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SOUNDBITES & RUMBLES

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) - Donald Trump, in his mind is never wrong. When he lost his 2020 re-election, it had to be because he was the victim of a rigged and stolen election.

It was pathetic to watch then, and as he continues whining, it is still pathetic to witness.

He has never offered ANY credible evidence to back up that big lie. Don’t take my word for it. Federal and state courts have repeatedly ruled against him for exactly that reason.

Trump’s is also rationalizing his last minute endorsement of Republican gubernatorial primary loser Rep. Randy Feenstra (R-4th IA) as another adventure in victimhood.

It wasn’t Trump’s fault. He was given bad information.

As is always the case with Trump, the “buck stops” over there. Not here.

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(PHOTO CREDIT: Sen. Joni Ernst’s Facebook page)

(WASHINGTON, DC) - This may look like a photo of what I call Iowa’s New Farm Bill “Can’t Do Caucus” - which it is (see below) - but this week, it became something much more: a photo of the only entire Iowa congressional delegation in history to vote to do nothing to stop a president who is waging an unconstitutional, unauthorized, unlawful, deadly, extremely costly and deeply unpopular war.

Left to Right: U.S. Reps. Randy Feenstra ((R-4th IA) and Ashley Hinson (R-2nd IA); U.S. Senators Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Charles Grassley (R-IA); and US Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-1st IA) and Zach Nunn (R-4th IA)

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — A few weeks ago I wrote in this space that Iowa’s current congressional delegation is both the most tone deaf and worst congressional delegation Iowa has ever dispatched to Washington, D.C.

This weeek they were all voting as if to prove both points beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Not that there has ever been any doubt about it.

There was plenty of evidfence to back those two conclusions up long before this week’s firehose of outrage-a-rama votes took place.

Upon Donald Trump’s arrival in Washington, DC all six Iowans in Congress seemed to instantly forget who they were and who sent them to Washington, DC.

They became - each of them - Trump acolytes - no, make that sycophants - who act as if Trump is the one who gave them their charter to go to Congress, and that he is the one who will decide whether they stay.

With staying being the number one, top priority goal.

Do the voters who sent them here want and need a new federal farm bill to replace the one that was written in 2018, and expired two and a half years ago?

Yes they do.

But Trump apparently could not care less.

So Iowa’s four House members and two senators have turned into the new Farm Bill “Can’t Do Caucus” - even the two thirds of the delegation that are taking up chairs in the respective Ag Committees do little to nothing to get a new Farm Bill enacted.

We still don[t have one. (See more below)

Trump’s retribution agenda? They are all for it.

Trump’s bring back institutionalized bigotry, racism, sexism and xenophobia agenda? They are good with that.

His self glorifying projects, all without a single request to Congress to authorize or even debate any of it? Sure, why not. Let’s go!

The laundry list of wars of choice he wants to start without bothering Congress for their constitutionally required authorization? What’s the problem? There is no problem.

Even a nearly two billion dollar slush fund for the MAGA goons who invaded the U.S. Capitol on January 6 and tried to overthrow our democracy.

“Of course. Would you like cash or ceertified check for that, sir?” seems to be their response.

It’s really sad to watch - grown men and women, Iowans no less, bending the knee so often and without question to a 34 times conivicted felon, twice impeached, adjudicated rapist, grifter, con man, hider of the Epstein files, and probably the most ignorant man to ever enter the White House.

What Trump wants, Trump gets from this crowd. No. Questions. Asked.

It must be awful to be a grown man or woman and still live in fear of a bully the way they apparently fear Donald Trump.

I’’m being charitable, by the way, when I explain their pathetic votes to please Donald Trump and that ignore Iowa, as a reaction to a president they fear.

I say that because if fear of Trump is not what motivates them, the alternative is that they actually believe the often belligerent and mean-spirited nonsense they are voting for or against to please Trump is actually good for the country.

Even I can’t believe they are capable of that. But I’m starting to wonder.

On May 17, I also wrote about specific votes Senators Grassley and Ernst cast that week to allow Trump to continue to violate the Constitution - and to dodge the War Powers Act like he dodged the draft during the Vietnam War.

Given those votes, I wrote that they - Grassley and Ernst - now “owned” Trump’s costly, deadly, unauthorized and unconstitutional war as much as Trump does. They’ll have to defend it, because they are all in on his illegal war and all outside the Constitution now.

This week in the US House all four Iowa Republicans joined their Senate colleagues in casting similar votes.

For unconstitutional war.

For unauthorized war.

For continuing to dodge the War Powers Act.

For wasting billions and billions of dollars on a war that nobody wants, spending money we urgently need to actually do something about the problems Trump promised to solve “immediately” when campaigning, but promptly ignored or made worse once back in office.

To make matters worse, this week, back over on the Senate side of the Capitol, Iowa’s two senators were unloading even more, new outrages - doubling down on their support for Trump’s nearly $2 billion slush fund for MAGA thugs - actually the amount is $1.776 billion, to be handed out by Trump and his cronies with no oversight.

Do you see how cute he was there: $1.776 billion. You can tell he really put pencil to paper to calculate how much of your tax dollars would be needed for such a program, right?

Such a serious man.

There were three votes this week on that little gem. Grassley and Ernst consistently chose Trump’s personal priorities over Iowa’s values.

• An amendment by Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to block Trump’s slush fund entirely.

Both Grassley and Ernst voted against Schumer’s amendment.

For the slush fund.

• An amendment by Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) that would have let Trump have his $1.776 billion, but would have re-directed it to law enforcement that targeted fraud.

Ernst voted for it. Kudos for that vote. It was the least she could do. Literally.

Grassley voted against it.

There was a time when Charles Grassley was a self-proclaimed fearless opponent of waste, fraud and abuse. Now the one time fighter against $500 hammers at the Pentagon is afraid to take away the $1.776 billion that Trump intends to give to cop beaters and killers and insurrectionists who also tried to over throw democracy that day and he sure as h*ll doesn’t want any of that nearly $2 billion of your taxes used to fight fraud in this - the single most corrupt administration in America’s history.

After that vote, I am not at all certain that Senator Grassley, at age 92, even remembers who he used to be, let alone where he puts his car keys.

• An amendment by Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA), which would have blocked the $1.776 billion dollars for Trump’s cop killing insurrectionists, and prevented any revival of it by using those funds to compensate the more than 140 police officers who were beaten and injured on January 6, and the families of those police officers who lost their lives as a result of the insurrectionist attack Trump orchestrated.

Both Grassley and Ernst voted against the Cassidy amendment.

For keeping the door open for funneling slush fund billions to those who tried to over throw democracy on January 6, 2001, and who beat and killed police officers in the process.

Against compensating the police officers beaten and - in some cases killed - by the January 6 insurrectionists.

Those votes do not represent Iowa values.

Violently over throwing our democracy and beating and killing police oficers have never had big constituencies in Iowa. Thank goodness.

Why do Grassley and Ernst think they do now?

Or are they just trying to keep Trump off their backs?

It’s a heck of a way to run a country, much less a democrcy.

After the votes Iowa Republicans cast in Congress this week, I’d say the 2026 campaign ads pretty much write themselves.

Worst Iowa congressional delegation in history? Absolutely.

Unbelievably tone deaf? Big time.

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LATE FARM BILL CLOCKS “OVERDUE DAY” #980, AS NEW FARM BILL CONTINUES TO FESTER IN FAILURE

(WASHINGTON, DC) — Despite the presence of two thirds of Iowa’s all Republican congressional delegation on either the House or Senate Agriculture Committees, there is still no new Farm bill to replace the old one which was written in 2018 and expired over two and a half years ago, on September 30, 2023.

The failure to write a new, urgently needed federal farm program for 980 days (as of 06/07/2026) after the old one expired is unprecedented in the history of congressional failures.

The four Iowans who occupy seats on the Agriculture Committees in the U.S. Senate and U.S. House are: U.S. Senators Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Joni Ernst (R-IA); and U.S. Rep Zach Nunn (R-3rd IA) and Randy Feenstra (R - 4th IA).

When it comes to enacting a new Farm Bill - even one already two and a half years late - they are literally Iowa’s “Can’t Do Caucus.”

An up to date, modern Farm Bill is vital for family farmers, to enable them to plan for coming crop years and to ensure that the nation’s basic farm program reflects current needs, given changing farm markets and ag economy circumstances.

While all six members of Iowa’s congressional delegation have a special responsibility for moving legislation so important to Iowa’s economy to enactment, the four Iowa members of the House and Senate Agriculture Committees are especially culpable.

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(WASHINGTON, DC) - The Smithsonian Castle Building, located on the national mall in Washington, DC. (PHOTO CREDIT: Smithsonian Institution

IOWA IN DC: SMITHSONIAN SPOTLIGHT WILL SHINE ON IOWA ARTIST GRANT WOOD WEDNESDAY, JUNE 10

(WASHINGTON, DC) - Iowa artist Grant Wood will be the focus of a nearly 2 hour scholarly and historical lecture at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC on Wednesday, 06/10/2026 - a lecture Iowans can watch from the comfort of their own home over Zoom.

The lecture on Wood, Iowa’s most famous artist, will be available via Zoom to ticketed members and non-members of the Smithsonian Associates program anywhere in the world Wednesday, June 10, beginning at 6:45 PM. (ET) / 5:45 PM (CT).

As a painter, Wood was a leading member of the “Regionalism” school, and became a “star” among the public and art critics alike for his work that often featured homespun depictions of farm, rural, and small town life.

“American Gothic” is his most famous work, but numerous others paintings by Grant Wood have been prominent, widely known and much admired for decades.

The lecture on Wood’s life and career will be delivered by R. Tripp Evans, an award winning historian and author of the 2010 book, “Grant Wood: A Life.” The lecture will draw from that book which covered aspects of Wood’s life that were not widely known during his lifetime, as well as the depth of his study of classical art, which Wood down played when describing himself as a “farmer painter.”

The Smithsonian Associates is the year round, on going educational arm of the Smithsonian Institution and its museums, which offers lectures, courses and guided tours to enhance its museum holdings throughout the year on a wide variety of topics

Smithsonian Associates memberships and tickets to Wednesday’s lecture, are available on line at the link below. Tickets are $20 for members; $30 for non-members.

Tickets are available at: https://smithsonianassociates.org/ticketing/programs/grant-wood and should be purchased at least two hours prior to the lecture’s scheduled start time.

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(WASHINGTON, DC) — Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) rose to fame as a once young United States Senator railing against the “waste, fraud and abuse” of $500 hammers at the Pentagon.

Which makes it all the more astounding that on May 20, Grassley, now. 92, voiced his support for the $1.776 billion - that’s with a “b” as in BILLION, people - slush fund to make millionaires out of the J6 insurrectionists who who beat police, injuring 174 (according to the Office of Government Accounting) and caused the deaths of several others on January 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol.

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The attack on the U.S. Capitol January 6, 2021 was insurrection, plain and simple, a flat out attempt to reverse the election by the people of an American president in a democratic election.

The man who once fought “waste, fraud and abuse” in government - especially those famous $500 Pentagon hammers is now on the wrong side of the waste, fraud and abuse issue - not to mention the Constitution - as he now supports a unilateral Trump-decreed plan that financially rewards those who tried to overthrow an American presidential election.

The Trump slush fund for J6 cop beaters and killers that Grassley supports will also likely help finance, with a stream of taxpayer cash, the next violent attack on democracy by Trump’s violent supporters.

It will likely fund a veritable private army at Trump’s command, all funded by your federal tax dollars.

If that’s not “waste, fraud and abuse,” I don’t know what is.

Grassley embraced the nearly $2 billion Trump slush fund in a May 20 phone call with Iowa reporters. Ostensibly, anyone who feels they have been unfairly targeted by federal law enforcement can apply for the money.

Anyone who knows how Trump operates, however, knows that’s just a cover story to funnel taxpayer cash to his political allies.

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Trump claims to have the power to siphon the nearly $2 billion dollars out of the federal treasury without even consulting Congress, much less asking Congress to vote to authorize it.

The U.S. Constitution, quite clearly, has a very different view of Trump’s authority to do so:

Article I, Section 9, Clause 7 says:

• No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law.

Which is to say that all federal expenditures must be authorized by Congress.

Spending federal tax dollars requires a vote to approve doing so by Congress. It is not an option, or an opinion. It is a constitutional fact and requirement.

The $1.776 billion Trump is attempting to lift out of the US Treasury and funnel to his violent allies, would be handed out by a Trump appointed board, with no law governing who may serve on that board or what criteria it must use in handing out the tax dollar cash.

Trump is clearly the most corrupt president by far in the history of America. No one, not even Richard Nixon nor Warren Harding even come close any more.

But what about Charles Grassley, he of the long, long ago $500 Pentagon hammers fame? Surely he knows better, doesn’t he?

One would think. But then again, apparently not.

Not only has Grassley chosen to support Trump’s scam - embrace it, really - as Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committe he has not even scheduled a single hearing on this theft from the U.S. treasury to pay off Trump’s violent January 6 insurrectionists whose crimes were witnessed on live television in real time by millions of Americans,

They weren’t “unfairly targeted” or the victims of a weaponized system of justice. Their crimes were televised live, nationally. They were convicted of those crimes by juries of their peers, with full due process. Many others simply pled guilty.

That is justice working the way it is supposed to work.

Trump pardoned them all, over 1,600 of them.

Now he wants to financially reward them, too. With your money. Lots of your money. Nearly $2 billion of your tax dollars.

Today, Senator Charles Grassley, who once did battle with purveyors of $500 hammers at the Pentagon, is just fine with Tump’s latest rip off of taxpayers. and Trump’s lies about what happened at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Grassley once had a different view of things.

In the immediate aftermath of the January 6 attack, Grassley had this to say about Trump: “I think he has a tremendous amount of blame for this. He stood on the Ellipse outside the White Housee and actually encouraged people to go to the Capitol.”

Iowa’s senior senator even declared the January 6 attack “un-American” and described it as an assault on democracy.

Yet, as the Republican Party’s partisan talking points changed abruptly - at Trump’s insistance - about the attack, Grassley’s tune changed too. By the time the Senate voted on impeachment of Trump for his role in the violent insurrection, Grassley voted against impeaching Trump, apparently proud to stand with what Grassley himself had described just a month before as Trump’s “un-American” assault on democracy.'

Grassley apparently does not even see the irony of embracing Trump’s financial payout to the cop beaters and cop killers who attacked the Capitol, and doing so less than a week after celebrating National Police Week as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committe.

Praise and celebrate police officers one week.

Five days later, support subsidizing and financially rewarding (to the tune of $1.776 billion) those who beat and brought about deaths of police officers on January 6, 2021.

Not much coherence in that line of thinking. Iowans should reject it out of hand.

Grassley’s explanation for his support for Trump’s slush fund for violent insurrectionists borders on theater of the absurd.

“First of all, don’t forget that this is subject to congressional oversight,” said Grassley who has been asleep at the congressional oversight switch from Day #1 of Trump’s second term when it comes to conducting actual, meaningful oversight over anything Trump and his political co-conspirators have done.

According to the Des Moines Register, Grassley’s office said that the senator expects the Department of Justice (DOJ) to continue engaging with Congress “to provide further clarity, particularly regarding the eligibility, application and disbursement process.”

Why does Grassley expect that to happen? His office doesn’t say. There’s no evidence the DOJ cares about that or is likely to do that. Or if they did, that their rules for dispersing the money would be legal or acceptable.

The DOJ has not said they would do what Grassley’s office explains that the senator epects them to do.

And why would they? The DOJ knows Grassley and his fellow Republicans in the House and Senate - who hold a majority in both chambers - are not going to push back on anything they do.

This is a simple looting of the treasury to benefit Trump’s violent, anti-democracy allies. There is no excuse for Grassley nor anyone else in a position of authority to protect tax dollars to not see that, and not recognize that for what it is.

BTW, regarding that “clarification” coming the senator’s office. That’s code for the Senator never mentioned this to reporters because it’s not going to happen. He knows it, and is fine with that.

You’ll also note that Grassley didn’t bother to ask for that clarification before embracing the slush fund, or bother to wait to receive any such clarification before supporting the slush fund. He simply wrapped in a big bear hug and giant wet kiss the idea of Trump’s nearly $2 billion slush fund for those who tried to put a violent end to American democracy.

What evidence is there that Trump and his MAGA goons would even be interested in operating within the confines of the law and accepted norms when it comes to dispersing this nearly $2 billion when the very establishment of the slush fund itself is a clear violation of constitutional authority.

At every turn, on virtually every subject, during his second term Trump has chosen the least lawful, most self serving, most partisan, most blatantly political path before him.

Every time.

Yet, Senator Grassley “expects” they are going to come to Congress and explain the standards they will follow regarding the lawful “eligibility, application and the disbursement process.”

He also expects that a Republican Congress which has been in permanent hibernation and suspended animation regarding its oversight responsibilities since the day Trump’s current term began, is suddenly going to spring into action.

He apparently even seems to lack the self awareness to recognize that he - Charles Grassley - has been one of Donald Trump’s most reliable lap dogs when it comes to conducting oversight of Trump’s criminal presidency.

“And there’s one sure thing that can’t come out of this is that President Trump can’t benefit from it.,” Grassley claims.

That is probably Charles Grassley’s most absurd justification of all. Donald Trump and his minions - who do whatever he wants - are in charge of this slush fund and they will continue to do whatever Trump wants them to do.

That money will absolutely benefit Trump.

It rewards those who engaged in a violent attack on democracy at Trump’s behest.

It encourages future violence, on Trump’s behalf, by those who now have reason to assume there will be billions in pay off money waiting for them, too.

Most concerning of all, it creates a cash flow of tax dollars to people who will need financing to fund the next attack on democracy.

It should be lost on no Iowan that after Trump came up with this scheme, an actual shouting match erupted in the weekly meeting of the Senate Republican Caucus which, according to news reports, included about half the Republicans in the Senate yelling privately - of course privately because they all fear Trump - at the other half that Trump’s J6 slush fund was a “bridge too far” and that Trump had crossed a line.

Senator Grassley was not reported by anyone to be among those objecting. He was already out front supporting Trump’s scheme with his by now supine, ridiculous nonsense.

OVERDUE FARM BILL TRACKER: DAY #966

(WASHINGTON, DC) - It has been 966 days (as of Sunday, May 24, 2026) since the old Farm Bill, last enacted in 2018, expired on September 30, 2023. A lot has changed in the farm economy since 2018, but basic farm policy has not been updated for eight years.

Two thirds of Iowa’s congressional delegation serve on the House or Senate Agriculture Committees: US Representatives Zach Nunn (R - 3rd IA) and Randy Feenstra (R. - 4th IA) and Senators Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Joni Ernst (R-IA).

All have a special responsibility, as Agriculture Committee members and as members of Congress from a major farm state, to move this legislation to timely enactment. They have failed. There is work yet to be done.

They need to do their jobs They can’t legitimately claim to work hard for farmers when they can’t even get the most basic farm legislation passed 966 days after the previous Farm Bill expired.

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(WASHINGTON, D.C.) - These are the recorded votes of Iowa’s two U.S. Senators to block implementation of the War Powers Act to halt the unauthorized - and now clearly illegal - war in Iran. The votes of Senators Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Charle Grassley (R-IA) were cast Wednesday,May 13. The “Nay” votes represent their votes against allowing the Senate to even debate invoking the War Powers Act to stop the costly, unpopular, and unauthorized war in Iran.

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — The war in Iran is often referred to as “Donald Trump’s War of Choice.” It is that. But on Wednesday, May 13, Iowa’s U.S. Senators Joni Ernst’s (R-IA) and Charles Grassley’s (R-IA) took formal, undeniable co-ownership of it as well.

They both voted - again - “Nay” on a measure that would have allowed debate and a vote on invoking the War Powers Act to stop the war. That measure was blocked on a near party line vote of 50-49. Ernst’s and Grassley’s “Nay” votes blocked that debate and the effort to stop the war.

Which means had either Iowa senator voted differently, the measure allowing a War Powers Act debate would have passed by a vote of 49 - 50. Instead, they both voted to “green light” Trump’s now clearly illegal war.

The Constitution places authority for taking the nation to war squarely in the Congress. Presidents, the Commanders in Chief of US military forces, have often “worked around” that constitutional congressional authority over our history by taking military action on their own, but claiming that it was in self defense, or urgently needed to respond to a pressing emergency.

In 1973, during the Vietnam War, Congress sought to clarify authority to take the nation to war with the War Powers Act: Only Congress can declare war, but presidents can take short term, emergency action that lasts no more than 60 days without congressional authorization. After 60 days, the law requires Congress to vote to authorize such action, or the military hostilities MUST be halted.

The war in Iran has always been legally suspect. There was never any imminent threat that required an immediate military response. Even Trump’s own US. Director of Intelligence declined to say there was, under oath, in congressional testimony.

That requirement that hostilities must stop after 60 days without congressional authorization - the key provision of the War Powers Act - is not ambiguous or up to interpretation. After 60 days, Congress either authorizes military action, or US military hostilities must stop. Period.

That 60 day “clock” for the Trump-Ernst-Grassley War in Iran expired on May 1.

The Republican Congress has never even attempted to vote to authorize our military action in Iran.

Democrats, on the other hand, have tried in the Senate six times to invoke the War Powers Act to stop the war before last week’s vote. They were blocked each time on narrow, near party line votes by Republicans who control the Senate.

Here’s what was different about the vote in the Senate this past week. It it is an important difference.

The vote on May 13 was the first time a vote in Congress has been taken on invoking the War Powers Act since the 60 day deadline passed.

Ernst and Grassley voted with all but three of their fellow Republicans to block debate on the War Powers Act - even after the 60 day deadline had been passed.

Which means two things:

• Trump’s unauthorized war is now clearly operating outside the Constitution and outside the law, specifically the War Powers Act.

It is now, obviously and beyond rational dispute, an illegal war.

• Senators Ernst and Grassley now own this illegal war as much as Donald Trump. On May 13, they had the opportunity to vote to activate the War Powers Act - an opportunity they had six times before May 13, too - to bring the war back within the boundries of the War Powers Act law and the Constitution.

They made a deliberate choice not to do so.

It’s now their war, too.

As the senior member of the U.S. Senate - and the Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee - Grassley is ideally positioned to insist that Trump obey both the Constitution and the law in his conduct of this war. Predictably, he hasn’t uttered a peep in that direction.

Grassley continues to allow Trump, a five time Vietnam War draft dodger, to wage the war illegally in Iran as president.

Ernst, as a military veteran, and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, surely knows what the law requires when the nation goes to war. She is choosing to ignore it, make excuses, and offer false choices.

Fat lot of good her military background - which she touted in both her Senate campaigns - is doing as she chooses to close her eyes and let Trump act like a tin horn authoritarian dictator with regard to making war.

Standing up for the military? Hardly. She is allowing Trump to misuse and abuse the military. In a way that gets military personnel, including Iowans, and Iranian civilians, including school kids, killed.

Both Ernst and Grassley - the word is appropriateere - are cowards for not even being willing to let the Senate debate and vote on the fundamental issue of whether to authorize continuation of the war in Iran.

What are they afraid of so much that they cower at the prospect of even a debate and a vote on the war?

Public opinion. That’s what scares them so much.

The war is deeply unpopular. It is costing billions of dollars - $29 billion so far, minimum - at a time when Trump and his party claim America can’t afford to provide basic functions and protections to the American people like affordable health care, and food aid to the hungry.

The Constitution requires Congress - acting as the elected represenatives of the citizens of this country - to make the call about whether launching and sustaining a war is the right choice.

Not a president, acting alone, and certainly not an authoritarian-wannabe president acting alone.

Ernst and Grassley are no innocent bystanders in this war. They have supported it all along, but on May 13, it became more than support for the war.

As of May 13, they now own it - every bit as much as Donald Trump owns it.

That they would purport to buy Trump’s laughable rationale for continuing the war without congressional authorization because a “cease fire” that has never really been operational re-set the clock is shameful and embarrasing. Under that line of reasoning, the War Powers Act - the law - means nothing.

That claim would allow Trump to make the Trump-Ernst-Grassley War another never ending war simply by employing such sophomoric verbal gymnastics.

Iowans deserve better than the subservience Ernst and Grassley are currently serving up to Donald Trump.

The Constitution and the law deserve better, too.

Ernst and Grassley betray the Constitution and ignore what the law requires under the War Powers Act when they deliberately choose to let Trump run amok on the fundamental issue of war and peace.

Both of Iowa’s US Senators swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution.

Instead, they are joining Trump in ripping it to shreds.

Happy 250th birthday, America.

OVER DUE FARM BILL TRACKER: DAY #959

(WASHINGTON, D.C) — The Farm Bill, last written and enacted in 2018, expired on September 30, 2023. Congress continues to fail to enact a new one. The “Over Due Farm Bill Tracker” now counts that continuing failure at 959 days long, as of Sunday, May 17, 2026.

And the clock is still ticking.

Two thirds of Iowa’s congressional delegation serves on either the U.S. House or Senate Agriculture Committee, and therefore have a special responsibility to enact a new Farm Bill on time - which obviously didn’t happen. They also have a special responsibility to get it enacted as promptly as possible following the failure to enact a new Farm Bill before it expired, which has often been promised but never delivered.

Iowans serving on the House Agriculture Committee are US Reps. Zach Nunn (R-3rd IA) and Randy Feenstra (R-4th IA). Both Iowa Senators serve on the Senate Agriculture Comittee: Senators Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Joni Ernst (R-IA).

All four talk often and loudly about how important their Ag Commmittee seats are to Iowa - but the fact remains: 959 days (as of 05/17/2026) after the old Farm Bill expired, they still haven’t been able to use those positions on the Ag Comittees to enact new basic farm policy legislation Iowa farmers urgently need in a time of farm economy upheaval.

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PHOTO CREDIT: Screen grab from US Senate Judiciary Committee website

(WASHINGTON, DC) - US Senator Chuck Grassley, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is one of the chief enablers - through his silence and inaction - of massive corruption in Donald Trump’s Washington, DC.

(WASHINGTON, DC.) As a young U.S. Senator, Charles Grassley (R-IA) cut a path in Washington, D.C. that was part hype, but also part accurate, as a vigorous fighter against waste and corruption in government, especially against the easy targets like $500 Pentagon hammers.

Now in his 90s, Grassley reserves most of that effort these days for partisan skirmishes - his leading role in stealing a Supreme Court seat from President Obama, and his long vendetta against President Biden’s only surviving son, Hunter, in a non-scandal lie that was cooked up and fed to Grassley by literal Russian operatives.

Grassley - who should be settling into the role of respected senior statesman at age 92 - is instead, regarded by many as Iowa’s senior partisan, top Trump toady and Iowa’s frequent embarrassment.

Time passes. Things change.

There will be no grand monument to - or loud accolades for - Senator Grassley when he finally leaves the Senate. Nor should there be.

He has squandered any chance of that.

He’ll be lucky to be remembered in the Iowa history books for anything positive at all, despite the fact that he has been in public office since John F. Kennedy was a young U.S. Senator from Massachusetts; Richard Nixon was Vice President; Dwight Eisenhower lived in the White House; and even before there was a pop band over in England called the Beatles.

He’s a long time supporter of term limits, by the way. How he pulls that one off with a straight face is beyond me.

These days, with a Republican in the White House - even one who has wrecked foreign farm markets important to Iowa, driven up fertilizer and fuel prices, and sparked a farm bankruptcy crisis that rivals the days of Ronald Reagan - Grassley doesn’t even fight the easy fights like those old $500 Pentagon hammers any more.

Like most other Republicans in Washington, DC, Grassley, appears to fear Trump.

Corruption, waste, fraud and abuse - by any measure - have never in history been worse than they are today in the Trump White House and throughout the Trump administration.

Within that rejuvenated, re-energized, and bigger than ever swamp of corruption, there is no bigger epicenter of corruption - aside from the Oval Office itself - than the Department of Justice (DOJ).

That’s the cabinet department over which the Senate Judiciary Committee - which Grassley chairs - has oversight jurisdiction.

Grassley has the authority to launch investigations into the acres of DOJ corruption and political weaponization of what was once the nation’s premiere law enforcement agency, but has done little but issue the occasional press release.

When routine department oversight hearings have been held by Grassley’s committee with the likes of former Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel, Grassley spent an inordinate amount of time praising both and politically attacking former President Joe Biden.

Oh, if only the mountains of corruption the Trump crowd is piling up could rise to the level of Hunter Biden’s lap top and the Russian lies that surrounded it that Grassley pushed at taxpayers’ expense.

Grassley once told a reporter friend of mine, in answer to a question, that he doesn’t care much about what his legacy will be and doesn’t spend much time thinking about it.

That’s pretty obvious.

I don’t think I would want to go down that road either, if I were him.

But at age 92, Senator Grassley should be thinking about it. If not for sake of the Iowans who voted for him, then at least for the sake of the generations of little Grassleys yet unborn who are otherwise going to have a very troubling and embarrassing series of “Family History Days” at school decades from now.

If Grassley’s advancing age and the relentless march of time aren’t enough to convince him that he ought to think a bit more about what future generations of Iowans will think of his extreme partisanship, his subservience to the authoritarian Trump, and the impact the Trump policies Grassley supports are having on Iowa and the nation, a little reflection on those questions might do the trick.

America is currently experiencing the greatest period of government and political corruption since the days of Richard Nixon and Warren Harding - and the first Trump presidency.

Senator Grassley is Iowa’s senior senator, the Senate’s senior senator, and the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee - the committee that should be leading the fight to stop Donald Trump’s massive corruption and of those around him. - especially at the DOJ.

Grassley’s early career in the Senate when he did battle against the likes of those $500 hammers at the Pentagon, should have prepared him to lead such a fight, right?

His decision, instead, to curl up and take a long nap when faced with Trump’s corruption is, therefore, as perplexing as it is unacceptable and outrageous.

No Iowan should tolerate it.

At this point, despite Grassley’s multiple decades in public office, his time in the government when it comes to an end has earned him no grand memorialization at the state’s history museum in Des Moines.

His legacy, by his own doing, is in ashes.

At the end of his current term in the Senate, Senator Grassley - the term limits supporter, remember - will have been in public office for 70 years.

• He stayed too long.

• He came to believe term limits should only apply to others, but not - of course - to him.

• He grew comfortable enabling the flames of corruption, lit by his fellow partisans, that now engulf Washington, DC. and imperil American democracy.

Iowa’s senior senator, had the opportunity to do great service for his country by leading a fight against Trump’s massive corruption and assaults on justice and democracy.

Instead Senator Grassley chose to enable and support that corruption with his silence, his inaction, and his hyper-partisanship.

No Iowan should support that or celebrate any of it.

But that is now Senator Grassley’s legacy. It is the legacy he chose and the legacy he built.

It is a sad one, to be certain, especially since there was a day when it could have played out much differently.

But it is the one Chuck Grassley has earned.

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OVER DUE FARM BILL TRACKER: DAY #952

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) The clock continues to tick on the new Farm Bill, now 952 days over due as of Sunday, May 10, 2026..

The US House finally passed its version of the Farm Bill on April 30 by a vote of 224-200. It still must be passed by the Senate and signed by the president before it becomes law. Current thinking is that the Senate won’t get to even considering it for months.

In years past, the legislation was always considered “must pass” legisltion, before it expired. Farmers need to know what long term federal farm policy is in order to plan.

The fact that a new Farm Bill, to replace the old Farm Bill written and enacted back in 2018 and that expired 952 days ago, has STILL not passed Congress is another reflection of the inability of Republicans to govern, and the low priority Congress and the President give farm legislation and policy.

Two U.S. House members from Iowa serve on the House Agriculture Committee: Reps. Zach Nunn (R-3rd IA) and Randy Feenstra (R-4th IA). Both of Iowa’s U.S. Senators serve on the Senate Agriculture Committee: Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Joni Ernst (R-IA). Those four had and continue to have a special responsibility to get this legislation enacted on time, which they failed to do, and for letting it fester still unenacted 952 days later.

Rep. Randy Feenstra has been traveling across Iowa reporting on what he claims to have “delivered” in the Farm Bill. While Feenstra’s connection to those provisions are sometimes, at best, debatable, one thing is certain: he has “delivered” nothing until the bill is actually enacted into law.

Feenstra’s claims to the contrary are just gas lighting.

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(PHOTO FROM SEN. JONI ERNST’S FACEBOOK PAGE)

Iowa’s “Silent Six” congressional delegation in Washington, D.C. You can add to their resume enabling Donald Trump’s unconstitutional war and the war crimes he employs to wage it.

They have become Iowa’s “War Crimes Caucus.” Too harsh? They had the power to check Trump’s military abuses, but chose to vote against using it - every single time. Every single one of them.

So yes, it fits.

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) —- When I think of state congressional delegations that would be most likely to ignore the unconstitutionality of a war, enable widely recognized war crimes being committed to wage it, and refuse to use the power they have to stop that war and those war crimes — I have to acknowledge that Iowa does not immediately come to mind.

That notion, however, is becoming as quaint and old fashioned under Iowa’s current congressional delegation as the practice of churning your own daily butter on the back porch.

It may have once accurately reflected reality. But those days are long gone today.

You can thank Iowa’s “Silent Six” in Congress for that.

You can also start calling them Iowa’s “War Crimes Caucus.” They’ve earned it.

Senators Grassley (R-IA) and Ernst (R-IA); and Reps. Miller-Meeks (R-1st IA), Hinson (R-2nd IA), Nunn (R-3rd IA), and Feenstra (R-4th IA) have all been too busy routinely genuflecting to Mr. Trump to worry about mere technicalities like staying within the boundaries of the US Constitution and the law.

There have been six attempts in Congress this year to advance War Powers Act authority that could stop Trump’s unconstitutional war and thereby check his ability to commit war crimes in pursuit of his war.

Four of those votes took place in the Senate. Two in the U.S. House.

Every Iowan in Congress - every time - voted against using the War Powers Act as it was intended to be used - to stop presidents from unilaterally sending American men and women off to fight and die in foreign wars that have not been authorized by Congress, power the Constitution clearly put in the hands of Congress, and thereby, in the hands of the people.

That power was also placed with Congress - with the people - to protect the people from having to pay for a war they do not support and did not authorize.

Which you may have noticed is exactly where we are today: taxpayers paying a billion dollars a day for a war they do not support, that their Congress did not authorize, in a region where wars never end.

All without Trump so much as asking Congress or the citizens of America for even a whiff of their opinion on the matter.

The “Silent Six” tried to justify their votes against following the Constitution and the law by claiming that Trump had to do what he did and is doing to protect national security from the imminent threat Iran posed.

No one argues we should not protect national security. But even if Trump’s lies on that front were true, it was not, and is not, necessary to violate both the Constitution and the law to do so.

There is also the fact that most observers argue there was no imminent threat from Iran that made any of this necessary. And not just any observers:

• In March 2026, the U.S. Intelligence community accessed that Iran was '“not building a nuclear weapon.”

• Trump himelf bragged in June 2025 that American attacks on Iran “totally obliterated” Irans’s nuclear capability to the point where it could not be rebuilt .

• No one, certainly not Trump, has offered any actual evidence to the contrary.

Yet here we are.

Even if there was a threat from Iran, and even if it was imminent, that does not mean presidents are excused from the following the Constitution and obeying the law.

Nor does it mean that Congress has no responsibility in the matter - it does - or that it does not have a responsibility to ensure that presidents obey and follow the Constitution and the law, or that it does not have an obligation to reclaim its constitutional power by invoking the War Powers Act when a president tries to steal it away.

I have a unique perspective on what the Constitution and the War Powers Act require when a president wants to take the nation to war.

In early 1977, I had the unique privilege to sit in on a small college classroom discussion at American University in Washington, DC with a freshly minted former President Gerald Ford and hear him discuss his experience as President with the attack on the Mayaguez at Koh Tang in Cambodia.

There were no more than 25-30 of us in the room with Ford, where he discussed his experience with the War Powers Act for well over an hour. Ford had left the presidency just a few months earlier so all of this was still very fresh on his mind,

Ford was no fan of the War Powers Act, which was enacted in November 1973, over President Richard Nixon’s veto.

He was especially not happy about the requirements that a president consult with congressional leaders if at all possible, before any military action is taken.

He thought those requirements were cumbersome and created unacceptable and dangerous delays in emergencies.

But Ford he understood - exactly - what the Constitution required when the nation goes to war, and he understood what the War Powers Act allowed a president to do - on a temporary basis - until Congress could get back in the saddle when an immediate response was required.

Neither the Constitution, nor the War Powers Act, in Ford’s view, allowed what Trump and his Iowa “War Crimes Caucus” now assume they do:

• allow a president to take the nation to war at any time or place; for any reason, true or false; and do so unilaterally without any congressional involvement. Ever. Period.

Ford understood - deeply - that no matter how inconvenient or cumbersome it might be, Congress was very much involved in these decisions. The Constitution and the law required it.

Trump violated the Constitution and the law with how he launched his war.

The Iowa’s congressional delegation enables that illegal launch of a war when they voice or vote no objection.

Trump is also employing war crimes to wage his unconstitutional war.

• It is an international war crime - and a war crime under U.S. law - to even threaten actions that are war crimes against civilians.

• It is an international war crime - and a war crime under U.S. law - to target civilian infrastructure or civilian populations that are unrelated to a belligerent’s war effort.

Both of the above are exactly what Trump is doing when he threatens to destroy Iran’s oil wells, electric power plants, oil export hub of Kharg Island, and desalination plants.

Both are exactly what Trump is doing when he threatens to destroy Iran’s entire civilization.

Those threats were made, publicly and after the U.S. had already hit a girls school in Iran, killing more than 160 young girls. Iran had every reason to believe they are real.

That’s the nuttiness coming out of Trump’s mouth these days. Most of his threats target a multitude of strictly civilian targets.

They are all war crimes if and when he actually strikes those targets.

They are war crimes now that he has threatened to do so.

This is no longer theory.

The President of the United States is committing war crimes daily just by running his mouth.

He is doing so in our name.

Yet, none of this is apparently enough for Iowa’s “Silent Six” to be willing to suggest that Trump tap the brakes a bit on his rhetoric; nor to suggest that Congress step up and do its job if Trump won’t stop committing war crimes daily; nor take action to stop Trump’s war if he insists on continuing to run it as an endless, tragic parade of war crimes.

What will it take for any of the enablers in Iowa’s “War Crimes Caucus” - several of whom are former military personnel and presumably know the law - to step up and actually do their jobs?

I recently saw the 2025 movie “Nuremberg,” starring Rami Malek and Russell Crowe.

I never thought I would see the day when it might be possible that Americans are the ones in an international tribunal’s dock answering for war crimes.

And I certainly never thought I would see the day when Iowans in Congress - with their silence and refusal to do their constitutional duty - helped put them there, by . refusing to lift a finger, raise their voice, or cast their vote to stop those war crimes in their tracks.

But here we are.

You’re going to hear a lot from these folks about working to advance Iowa’s values this election year.

Remember these votes. Remember this silence when they start selling that line.

None of this is “Iowa Nice.”

What they are enabling isn’t even legal.

OVER DUE FARM BILL TRACKER: DAY #931

(WASHINGTON, D.C) — It has been 931 days (as of Sunday, April 19, 2026) since the 2018 Farm Bill expired. Congress has so far failed to enact a new one. As farmers in Iowa and across the nation launch the new 2026 growing season, they are still operating under federal farm policies and programs that have not been updated for 8 years.

Even though the farm economy has changed massively - wih the imposition of Trump’s export market destroying tariffs, rapidly increasing fuel and fertilizer costs as a result of his unilaterally launched war against Iran, and with rapidly escalating levels of farm bankruptcies not seen since the Farm Crisis of the 1980s.

The clock still ticks.

Iowa’s “Silent Six” own a special part of this colossal failure: two thirds of the Iowa delegation are members of either the US House or US Senate Agriculture Committee. They are: US Reps. Zach Nunn (R-3rd IA) and Randy Feenstra (R-4th IA); and US Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Joni Ernst (R-IA)

When it comes to a new Farm Bill they the “Silent Six” are charter members of the “Can’t Do” Caucus.

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SOUND BITES & RUMBLES: TRUMP VS THE POPE

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) - President Trump’s on-going “fight” with Pope Leo XIV is a classic bully’s fight. Pick on someone who either can’t or won’t fight back. In Leo’s case, he chooses not to “fight” back. That’s not what Pope’s do.

This dust up reminds me of a quote from former. President Harry Truman who once said about his remarkable come from behind 1948 campaign , “I never gave anybody hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was Hell.”

Pope Leo never picked a fight with anybody. He just preached the gospel of peace. And Trump thought it was Hell. Aimed at him.

(If the show fits, Mr. President, by all means, wear it.)

I can’t help but wonder how many gallons of ketchup have already been splattered on the kitchen walls at the White House during this exchange which - by the way - Trump is losing badly.

This week’s sound bite: “What I am really waiting for is the moment President Trump tries to fire the Pope.”

Will Vatican City be the next country Trump tries to invade? Let’s hope not.

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US MINT ISSUES NEW “IOWA DOLLAR” IN 2026

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — A new one dollar coin, featuring Iowa, Nobel Peace Prize Winner Dr. Norman Borlaug and hs role in the “green reveolution” to fight world hunger was released by the US Mint in January. I haven’t seen a lot of press on it, so I thought I’d mention it here in case you missed the release announcement.

The coin is part of a multi-year program honoring American innovation, with dollar coins honoring each state’s historic contribution to American innovation.

The coins will be popular with coin collectors and collectors of all things Iowa, but it is also a circulating coin. You might want to hold onto yours, if you get one, just the same. They have a face value of $1.00 each, but if you buy them directly from the mint - by the bag - you’ll pay 1.50 for each coin for a bag of 100.

Even at that price they are selling briskly at the Mint’s online sales office and their sales shop in Washington, DC. The on-line site currently reports them as “not available.” Very limited supplies are still available if you can walk into the Mint’s sales shop in downtown Washington, DC.

Your local bank may have some in stock at face value, or your local coin collector hobby shop. You can buy directly from the Mint, at that premium price mentioned earlier - IF - it has any in stock.

Go to usmint.gov

There is no mintage cap, so it is possible the mint will get more in stock.

The Iowa Innovation Dollar will only be minted in 2026. So, get them while you can!

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PHOTO CREDIT: Official U.S. Senate photo.

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) —-Few newly elected members of the U.S. Senate arrived in Washington, DC with more fanfare, promise and potential than Iowa’s junior senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) did when she succeeded Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) in January 2015.

Harkin was a legend in Iowa who first ran for - and lost - a seat in Congress in 1972. He ran again in 1974 and won, defeating an incumbent, and never looked back. He never lost another election, despite having faced more incumbent members of Congress in election match ups than any other Iowan in history.

When Harkin retired, Ernst, a state senator, jumped into the race to succeed him and won.

As the Republican who had the daunting task of filling the legendary Democrat Harkin’s seat in the Senate, she was the subject of significant national interest.

Her Republican colleagues almost immediately gave her a national platform, selecting the freshman Iowa Republican to deliver the nationally televised Republican response to the State of the Union Address by the President of the United States, Barack Obama, on January 20, 2015.

That’s the infamous speech in which Ernst gave the first early hint that she might not quite be ready for prime time - telling a whopper, supposedly from her childhood, about a school bus full of rural Iowa farm kids - including her - every one of whom couldn’t afford winter over shoes and wrapped their feet instead in plastic bread wrappers.

While no one doubted that some kids in Iowa may have used bread wrappers in place of over shoes during the winter, no one belived every single kid on a single school bus route did.

It just wasn’t credible.

That “made for Hollywood” hyperbole quickly became the main thing Ernst was known for in her early days in the US Senate.

During Trump’s first term as president, Ernst generally, but not always supported Trump. She criticized him especially for his unnecessary and often unilaterally launched trade wars with America’s agricultural trading partners, including China, a major customer of Iowa soybeans.

Yet, if she didn’t support Trump’s policies 100% of the time, she did most of the time.

She was selected to head the Senate Republican Policy Committee in 2023, a post she held through 2025. It is the fourth ranking Republican leadership post in the Senate, and is not an insignificant one.

It was definitely a “feather in her cap,” a notable achievement in any Senate career.

It was also the beginning of her decline.

In this post she became a more predictable partisan for Republicans, especially after Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announced he would not serve in the new Congress as Senate Republican Leader, which opened up his top leadership post and others in line behind him.

Ernst sought to move up to the third ranking Republican leadership post - Chair of the Senate Republican Conference. Her partisanship hardened, and became more consistent and routine at that point as she sought to curry favor with fellow Republicans in the Senate who would vote in that race, which she lost to Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) who chairs the conference today.

Ernst may not have pleased Democrats often with her votes in the Senate, but she had been generally seen as an honest broker who sided with Republicans often enough to stay in their good graces. She previously had a reputation as someone who focused more often on the issues at hand, rather than the politics of issues that came before the Senate and the country.

All that changed with she began seeking the Republican Conference Chair. Her boilerplate partisanship became much more predictable and routine.

Who will ever forget her throw away line at an Iowa town meeting when an Iowan pointed out to her that the Trump policies she was voting for and boosting were going to cause people to die?

“Well, we’re all going to die,” she repiied.

As Joni Ernst approaches the close of her Senate career in the last half of 2026 - she’s retiring at the end of this term - her stature and reputation isn’t half what it was in the beginning when she came to the Senate with so much potential and promise.

Today:

• She has become a symbol of Iowa’s “Silent Six” congressional delegation who rarely speak up to disagree with Trump on anything, even on policies that are clearly bad for Iowa and Iowans.

• As a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, she owns a big chunk of the failure of Congress to enact a new Farm Bill during the past 924 days since the old Farm Bill - enacted in 2018 - expired.

• She siill touts the so called “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) effort and policies championed by Elon Musk but which are now routinely reversed and over turned by the courts which repeatedly find that DOGE often acted inappropriately, illegally and without proper authority.

  Today’s Joni Ernst apparently thinks America needs more of that.

  Her continued support for DOGE suggests either a lack of concern about DOGE’s multiple violations of law, or a lack of imagination about how to pursue an actual legal way to improve government efficiency. At worst, it suggests a casual and unserious willingness to simply go along with Trump’s demagoguery on the issue and play to the Republican crowd - cruelty and all - despite the law violations.

Ernst’s greatest disappointment, however, is in the area of what was once thought likely to be be her greatest strength - the expertise and personal experience she would bring to the consideration of military issues, as a military veteran and as a woman military vet.

Yet:

• As Trump unilaterally decided to launch a war with Iran - not once, but twice this year - without consulting Congress, Ernst - ever a member of the “Silent Six” Iowa congressional delegation - said nothing, even though the Constitution clearly gives Congress authority for launching military action and wars, not any President.

Ernst not only remained silent.

She voted against invoking the War Powers Act in early March, which could have stopped Trump’s unconstitutional war or at least allowed Congress to reclaim its constitutional war making authority.

• Even as Trump threatened what are widely recognized as war crimes against Iran, Ernst has remained silent about them. As a veteran, and as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, she knows the law, both U.S. and International. She knows the legal consequences for carrying out such war crimes orders, even for Iowans in the military who follow illegal orders. But she has never cautioned Trump nor told him to stop.

• When Trump unilaterally launched unauthorized military strikes against Venezuela, Ernst said nothing. Again, she knows the law, but said nothing and did nothing to object,

• As Trump deployed thousands of National Guard troops to the streets of Washington, DC and other US cities as political props, for missions that amounted to nothing more than political street theater, Ernst did not object to this misuse of the nation’s military forces. She said nothing.

• When Trump declared Democrats - nearly 600,000 of whom are Iowans - as the most serious threat to America after Iran which we are at war with, Ernst said nothing to defend her constituents or to even suggest to a president who appears increasingly deranged that he ought to cool his rhetoric.

• When the nomination of Pete Hegseth came before the Senate Armed Services Committee - with allegations of excessive drinking and sexual abuse of women, Ernst voted for him!

So much for being a voice for women in the military.

Not has she spoken up as Trump and Hegseth systematically derail the careers of women officers in the military who have served with honor and distinction.

She has even had precious little to say about the January 6 insurrection attack on the U.S. Capitol or Trump’s mass pardons of its perpetrators.

The fact is, Senator Ernst has been “phoning it in” for some time, trading thoughtful and honorable service in the Senate for partisanship and silence in the face of serious issues - and even a series of outrages - that should command her attention.

Ernst’s loyalty these days appears to belong more to Donald Trump than the Constitution she swore an oath to protect or to her Iowa constituents who she promised to serve.

Normally, as a public servant winds down their time in public office - from either party - I would thank them for their service and focus on the contributions they made to the public good as they prepared to ride off into the sunset.

Public service is hard and difficult work. My instinct is to thank those willing to engage in it.

I can’t do that for Senator Ernst, who started out with so much promise and potential and then just kind of squandered it over the years as she chose to become just another member of Iow’s “Silent Six” and Trump’s corps of partisan lackeys in Congress.

I can’t help but think she knows better.

That’s not a defense.

It’s what makes it even worse.

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OVERDUE FARM BILL TRACKER: DAY 924

PLUS - A NEW, ADDITIONAL INACTION TRACKER ACTIVATED! IT’S A NEW WAY TO MEASURE THE EPIC FAILURE OF CONGRESS TO ENACT A NEW FARM BILL

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — It has been 924 days (as of Sunday, April 12, 2026) since the 2018 Farm Bill expired and was not replaced with a new one.

The clock continues to tic with no end in sight,

Farmers are operating with basic farm policies that have not been updated for eight years - even while changes in the agriculture economy have been and continue to be massive.

• Trump’s unconstitutional tariffs. have destroyed numerous overseas markets for US farm products that took years to develop.

• Farm bankruptcies are high and increasing.

• Trump’s unconstitutional war in Iran is driving up production costs - especially for inputs like fertilizer - to record levels.

Still, nothing but failure and inaction from Congress and the administration when it comes to enacting a new Farm Bill.

On March 5, 2026, the House Agriculture Committe finally voted to report a new Farm Bill. Given the continued inaction that has followed that vote, it now appears to have been purely performative action, designed more to give Republicans on the ballot in November in farm states something to talk about other than their failure to actually pass a new Farm Bill.

Case in point: US Rep. Randy Feenstra (R-4th IA), a member of the House Agriculture Committee.

Feenstra spent the past two week US House vacation/recess/district work period campaigning across Iowa in his race for Governor, telling Iowans what he “delivered” in the new Farm Bill. What Feenstra claims to have “delivered” in Congress is almost always a gross exaggeration - both in terms of actual fact and his imaginary responsibility for it - but there is an even bigger problem with this disingenuous boast.

Note for Mr. Feenstra: No new Farm Bill has been enacted. Until one has been enacted, Mr. Feenstra has “delivered” exactly nothing in a Farm Bil, which remains 924 days over due at this count.

There IS something Iowans in Congress - two thirds of whom serve on either the House or Senate Agriculture Committee - could do to move this bill but haven’t:

• initiate or sign a “discharge petition” which would force Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson to schedule the bill for action by the full House.

Feenstra and Rep. Zach Nunn (R-3rd IA) - members of the House Ag Committee - have done no such thing. Nor have U.S. Reps. Mariannette Miller Meeks (R-1st IA) or Ashley Hinson (R-2nd IA). Miller-Meeks and Hinson are not members of the House Agriculture Committee, but still - as members of the US House - they can start or sign a “discharge petition” to force action by the full House.

Hinson has been busy campaigning for the promotion to the US Senate she believes she deserves, but which this failure argues against.

If she’s not going to fight for Iowa farmers, really, who needs her in the Senate?

BTW, if. you are interested in keeping track of how many days the new Farm Bill which increasingly looks like it was passed for show by the House Agriculture Committee has been dormant without any action by the US House, that count now stands at 38 days, as of Sunday, April 12, 2026.

Let’s call it the LOST FARM BILL INDEX, the number of the days since the Farm Bill expired and a new one has not been enacted, plus the number of days since the House Ag Committee finally sent a Farm Bill to the House for floor action - even if that vote was purely for show - where it is now collecting cob webs, and no member of the “Silent Six” Iowa congressional delegation has lifted a finger to move it along to enactment by initiating or dining a discharge petition.

That total? 962 days.

Your tax dollars at work, friends.

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SOUND BITES & RUMBLES: MELANIA TRUMP’S SURPRISE ENTRY INTO THE EPSTEIN SCANDAL

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) —- First Lady Melania Trump jumped head first into the Jeffrey Epstein scandal with a bizarre White House press conference, Thursday, in which she denied ever having a “close relationship” with Epstein or any knowledge of his sex crimes.

No one knows why she felt compelled to do this, or why she felt compelled to do so now. Especially since her husband - the President of the United States who has led the cover up of Epstein’s criminal files and is reported to be named throughout them - has been claiming for months now that it is time to move on from the scandal, which he say is a hoax and fake news.

On that front, Melania just threw her husband under the bus.

“Epstein was not alone,” she said at the press conference. Since President Trump himself claimed to have no advance knowledge of the First Lady’s press conference, one can only wonder what “Epstein was not alone,” actually meant coming from his wife.

Her press conference prompted far more questions that it answered.

My response is a simple one:

Say it under oath, Melania. Take questions, and answer them, under oath, as well. Like Hillary Clinton did.

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PHOTO CREDIT: US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — President Richard Nixon’s letter of resignation which ended his presidency after the shame of Watergate.

How did Iowans in Congress at that time react to such monumental corruption, and what lessons are there to be learned by Iowa’s “Silent Six” from that experience more than 50 years ago?

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) Donald Trump - it will surprise no one who has been paying attention - has reached new levels of corruption and lawlessness reached by no other President of the United States.

By a country mile.

Iowa’s “Silent Six” in Congress, surprisingly, has had little to say about any of it. As in almost nothing to say about it

Congress, of course, has a very special - and constitutionally mandated - responsibility and obligation for putting an end to that corruption and holding the president accountable.

Yet the current Iowa delegation has pretty much ignored that responsibility to keep Trump honest and true to the Constitution. They have consistently “looked the other way” and done essentially nothing to hold Trump accountable.

Is this normal?

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No. Of course it is not normal.

It is an abnormal abdication of their duty, and - in my view - a violation of the oath of office each of them swore to when they entered their offices.

Iowans in Congress have been down this road before, over 50 years ago, with a manifestly corrupt president in the White House, Richard Nixon, and Iowa and the nation counting on members of the US House and US Senate to do their jobs and defend democracy, the integrity of the federal government, and the US Constitution.

How that generation of Iowans in Congress faced up to, and responded to those crimes and that corruption can be instructive as we assess how this generation of Iowans in Congress, today, is responding to the even bigger threat Trump’s crimes present.

The year was 1974.

The president was Richard M. Nixon.

The scandal was Watergate.

It was the gravest and biggest case of corruption by a president in the history of the country. At least up to that point.

Trump’s sins, of course, make Nixon’s crimes look more like a walk in the park by today’s standards.

But Nixon’s crimes were and remain real. The country’s outrage was well deserved. His departure from office - made official by his resignation letter pictured above - was appropriate.

Iowa’s congressional delegation at the time was more balanced - or divided - depending on how you see these things - in 1974.

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The state’s two US Senators were Democrats - Harold Hughes (D- IA) and Dick Clark (D-IA).

The state’s House delegation was evenly divided: three Democrats and three Republicans -Democrats Ed Mezvinsky (D-1st IA); John Culver (D-2d IA); and Neal Smith (4th IA); and Republicans H.R. Gross (R-3rd IA); Bill Scherle (R-5th IA); and Wiley Mayne (R-6th IA)

While they reached different conclusions as a delegation - as one might expect - they did so with a minimum of blatant partisanship and also with the appropriate sense of seriousness and constitutional responsibility and obligation.

They viewed things through the lens of what the evidence suggested to them needed to be done to protect the constitution, the nation, and the institution of the presidency - not their political party.

Senators Clark and Hughes supported the initiation of the impeachment process. Both indicated the accusations against Nixon were serious and, if confirmed, warranted impeachment and removal from office.

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Congressman Neal Smith and John Culver also supported launching impeachment proceedings, but were not in a rush and believed the process needed to proceed in an orderly, serious and non-partisan way.

The common denominator for all four was this: they believed the allegations were serious enough, and the early, available evidence significant enough, that hearings should be begin; but they wanted to see all the evidence before reaching final conclusions about Nixon’s guilt.

Republicans in Iowa’s delegation over 50 years ago had similar views, though as one might expect, they started from a place that was a bit more favorable to the Republican Nixon.

Rep. H.R. Gross was critical of Nixon, but made clear he didn’t really support impeachment as a general principle. He feared it could be used as a political weapon, a view some would argue foresaw the rise of House Speaker Newt Gingrich and what many consider to have been the political weaponization of impeachment against President Bill Clinton.

Congressman Bill Scherle was also occasionally critical of Nixon, and his staff. More often, and more visibly, however, he supported Nixon and defended him.

As late as the summer of 1974 he was still passing out campaign flyers at Republican Party booths at county fairs throughout southwest Iowa, prominently featuring a photograph of him and Nixon in the Oval Office.

While generally supportive of Nixon - but not always - neither Gross nor Scherle ever formally broke with Nixon on impeachment. Neither was a member of the House Judiciary Committee where votes on the Articles of Impeachment were taking place, so they never had to cast a vote.

Neither Gross nor Scherle was a robust partisan defender of Nixon, but they did both defend him, leavened with occasional criticism. While they did not work to support or advance impeachment action, they were open to hearing the evidence before reaching final conclusions.

In retrospect, they were a bit more partisan than was probably warranted, but for Republicans - members of the same party as Nixon - their position was a not an unreasonable one at the time.

The two other members of the Iowa delegation didn’t have the luxury of having a “let’s wait and see” position on Nixon and impeachment.

Reps. Edward Mezvinsky, a Democrat, and Wiley Mayne, a Republican, were members of the House Judiciary Committee. That’s the committee that was holding the impeachment hearings, and voting on live national TV on the Articles of Impeachment.

Mezvinsky - the Democrat - had seen enough. He supported and voted for the Articles of Impeachment, which were approved by the committee.

Mayne - the Republican - continued to defend Nixon, mainly on the grounds that he thought there was insufficient evidence of impeachable offenses. He voted against the Articles of Impeachment in committee.

Then the Supreme Court ordered the release of what became known as the “smoking gun” tape, in which Nixon’s own secret White House audio recording system had caught him and his Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman planning how to obstruct the FBI’s investigation into the Watergate scandal.

Rep. Mayne later said after the release of that tape, and hearing it, he would have voted to impeach Nixon on the House floor.

He never got the chance to do so. Nixon resigned and there was no House vote on the matter.

Mayne’s epiphany about - and break with - Nixon came too late.

A look at the history of how a previous generation of Iowans in Congress handled a fundamentally corrupt president in the White House reveals several things worth noticing today.

Though members from both political parties started out about where one would expect they would, given their party affiliation, neither Democrats nor Republicans at the time adopted the blazingly partisan approach to the president’s corruption that today’s “Silent Six” have chosen to pursue with Trump’s infinitely greater degree of corruption.

They all ultimately chose to leave room in the process for the Constitution to be defended and for due process and evidence - not partisanship - to determine the outcome for Nixon.

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I see at least four other important take aways here.

• First, the blind, mute, and partisan approach to Trump’s corruption adopted by Iowa’ “Silent Six” Republicans in Congress is way out of step with the traditional approach taken by the previous generation of leaders Iowa sent to Congress at a time of gross presidential corruption.

• When it next came time face the voters, late criticism of a corrupt president did not insulate those who earlier defended that president or save them from defeat on the very next election day,

• Those who openly recognized the president’s deep corruption relatively early, called it out, but let due process work, were rewarded by voters with election victories in the next election.

• Defending a corrupt president - or worse yet, looking away from the obvious corruption of a crooked president - is a very bad strategy for anyone hoping to win their next election contest.

Since doing the right thing for the Constitution, the country, democracy - and for future generations of Americans who would probably like to enjoy the fruits of democracy and freedom - does not seem to be much of a motivator for Iowa’s “Silent Six,” perhaps they will find a bit of a message in this history from another era when corruption was the defining element at the top of the Republican Party

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OVER DUE FARM BILL TRACKER: DAY #917

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) —- The clock just keeps ticking, measuring each new day added to the long over-due status of a new Farm Bill.

It has now been 917 days (as of Sunday, April 5, 2026) since the old five year Farm Bill expired without Congress enacting a new one.

917 days!

Remember all those press releases back in early March when the House Agriculture Committee finally voted to pass a new Farm Bill out of committee? Remember how Republicans on the committee talked about how urgent it was to get that legislation enacted into law? How urgently farmers needed it?

It was plenty clear at that time that talk is cheap on that front, but that is especially true given this fact:

• Nothing has happened with that legislation since then.

  I warned that the committee’s action mght well have been performative - designed to take a little pressure off Republican House members who are members of the House Ag Committee and are facing either re-election or are running for higher office in November.

  I’m even more suspicious of that today.

  I’ve warned that committee action could just be aimed at creating the illusion of progress on the bill to give Republican committee members a talking point back home - in their campaigns - about how a new Farm Bill is “making progress” (pay no attention to that 917 days way over due ticking clock behind the curtains!) without it actually making any real progress.

Do you know what a member of the US House - on the committee or not - would do if they were serious about moving this bill to enactment, the bill they claimed over a month ago was so urgently need now?

They’d organize a discharge petition to force the urgently needed legislation onto the full House’s calendar since the people who run the Republican controlled House apparently are in no hurry to bring it to the House floor on their own.

Do you know what every US House member did instead?

They went on a two week vacation / spring break. They are in the middle of that break right now,

But the new Farm Bill - remember, it is a BIG priority for the Republicans running Congress and the president who is also wrecking the farm econmy every day.

Not a single member of the Iowa delegation - the “Silent Six” - has done or said anything to generate a discharge petition in the House to force the Farm Bill onto the House floor.

Not even the two who are members of the House Agriculture Committee- Zack Nunn (R-3rd IA) and Randy Feenstra (R-4th IA).

Former Iowa Congressman Neal Smith used to say there are two kinds of members of the Congress: work horses and show horses.

The perpetually stalled Farm Bill makes clear which of those two Iowa has in Nunn and Feenstra.

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SOUND BITES & RUMBLES

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) - A timely and well aimed quote from Pope Leo XIV is this week’s “Sound Bite & Rumble.” It comes on the heels of US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s pathetic prayer asking God to make sure that “every round find its mark” and for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”

The Pope:

“God does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rjects them, saying “Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood.”

The Bible quote comes from the book of Isaiah, Chapter 1, Verse 15.

Must they bastardize everything? Even the Bible?

By the way - when I read Hegseth’s “prayer,” I’m reminded of the short story by Mark Twain titled “The War Prayer,” written in 1905. Twain brutally satirizes the same kind of “war prayer” Hegseth offered up. It’s worth reading yet today. Especially after reading Hegseth’s nonsense.

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(WASHINGTON, DC) - Iowa’s “Silent Six” in Congress allowed Donald Trump to launch - without a response from any of them - an ugly, bitterly partisan and un-American attack on a group that includes nearly 600,000 of their own Iowa constituents.

The “Silent Six,” pictured above, left to right: US Reps. Randy Feenstra (R-4th); Ashley Hinson (R-2nd IA), Senators Joni Ernst (R-IA, and Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R 1st IA), and Zach Nunn (R-3rd IA)

(WASHINGTON, D.C) —- Iowa’s “Silent Six” congressional delegation allowed a brutal, ugly, bitterly partisan and un-American attack on a group that includes nearly 600,000 Iowans to go unanswered this past week.

Trump’s attack targeted nearly 600,000 of their own Iowa constituents. Yet there. was not a peep of protest from the “Silent Six.”

The attack was one of Trump’s most stupid ever:

• “Now with the death of Iran, the greatest enemy America has is the Radical Left, Highly Incompetent, Democrat Party, (sic)” Trump - the President of the United States - wrote in a “Truth Social” post last Sunday.

According to the Iowa Secretary of State’s office, there are currently about 561,130 registered Democrats in Iowa (active and non-active) - all members of a group Trump now characterizes as “America’s greatest enemy.”

Yet not a single member of the Iowa congressional delegation so much as bothered to clear his or her throat to speak up in their defense, not even to meekly mumble that it might be a good idea to ramp down the rhetoric a bit.

By the way, for the record:

• Iran is not dead;

• The Democratic Party is made up of loyal American citizens - millions of whom serve or served in the US military to defend this country, by the way; (Which is more than Trump - a five time draft dodger during the Vietnam War - ever did).

• The Democratic Party is one of America’s two major political parties, a major participant in American democracy; nearly a majority in both the US House and US Senate, and is not an enemy of America; It is part of the heart and soul of America.

• The Democratic Party is neither “radical left” nor “highly incompetent.'“

As has long been the case with Trump, every accusation turns out to be a confession.

Under Trump’s toxic “leadership,” the Republican Party is more radical today than it has ever been. As the unilaterally launched, unauthorized war Trump started with Iran spirals out of control, bringing with it an entirely predictable new round of across the board inflation, rapidly rising fuel and fertilizer prices, and the serial government shutdowns Republicans now routinely stumble into, I’ll let you decide which is the “highly incompetent” of America’s two major parties.

U. S House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, took a very different approach than Iowa’s “Silent Six” whose chose to cower in the face of Trump rather than speak up for nearly 600,000 of their constituents whose loyalty and patriotism the president needlessly, inaccurately, and dangerously attacked.

“Donald Trump should keep his reckless mouth shut before he gets someone killed,” Jeffries told CNN.

Under Trump, he added, “life is more expensive, life is more chaotic, and life is more extreme.”

In the interest of equal time - the response from the “Silent Six:” crickets.

The loyalty and patriotism of Iowa Democrats is beyond question. But it is worthwhile to note that if they were “America’s greatest enemy,“ you’d know it because you know plenty of Democrats in Iowa. Everyone does.

• They are the farmers struggling to save the family farm in the face of Trump’s high fertilizer and fuel prices and wrecked foreign farm markets because of his unilaterally imposed - and unconstitutional - tariffs on what were once major customers of America’s farmers but who now shop elsewhere for more reliable supplies.

• They are the Little League coaches who volunteer in small town Iowa to help our kids learn to play and love the national pastime, baseball.

• They are members of the local fire department, PTA, and our church choirs.

• They are the folks who bake and donate cherry pies to the local community fundraising dinners and summer ice cream socials.

• They are 4-H leaders.

• They raise and fly the American flag with pride on Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and the Fourth of July at our community services.

• They are board members and ushers at our local places of worship,

• They are us. They are our neighbors, our friends, and our family.

• Yet, Donald Trump wants you to believe they are not only an enemy of America, but are bigger enemies than his buddies Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.

It is important to know that this is how fascist authoritarianism works - from Adolph Hitler to the modern day.

There must always be an “enemy”. A random but easily identifiable group becomes the scapegoat and the list of groups identified as “the other” or “the enemy” constantly expands.

With Trump it started out with “Muslims,” whom he wanted to ban from entering the country within weeks of the start of his first term.

The courts said that was unconstitutional, so he moved on to new manufactured “enemies.”

You read the news. You know who has been on that ever-expanding list since then in our steady descent into Trump’s bigotry, racism, and fabricated hate - all of it designed to divert attention from his own failures and focus attention on easy targets.

There always has to be an “enemy.”

There must always be lies to prop up the case for hating that “enemy.”

Now would be a pretty good time to recall the famous words of Martin Niemoller, a prominent Lutheran pastor in Germany during the 1920s and early 1930s, during the rise of Nazism and Hitler. Niemoller was an early supporter of Nazi ideas and radical right wing political organizations as fascism and Nazism tightened their grip on Germany.

But as Nazism gained power in Germany, and as the list of “enemies” ever expanded, things changed for Niemoller.

He eventually became the “enemy” too. He spent the last eight years of Nazi rule in Germany in Nazi prisons and concentration camps. After the war, with hindsight, he said this:

• “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not spek out - because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out - because I was not a Jew.

  Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak for me.

Iowa’s “Silent Six” have one job to do in Washington, DC: to speak and act on behalf of all Iowans. They don’t do it.

They have chosen blatant, dangerous partisanship over doing their jobs: which, by definition includes having the backs of nearly 600,000 patriotic hard working Iowans when the president unfairly and unjustly attacks them.

Trump is coming for those Iowans now.

Silence is the Iowa delegation’s response..

Iowa’s “Silent Six” chose silence. They chose silence as the President of the United States, the leader of their political party, the politician they apparently fear to cross on anything, at any level - even when he is demonizing and groundlessly smearing patriotic citizens they are supposed to represent in Congress.

“America’s greatest enemy.” Donald Trump’s words. And not a word from anyone in Iowa’s congressional delgation to push back or tell him he is wrong.

I’m reminded of the words of Attorney Joesph Welch from the 1950s. He turned the tide against the reckless demagogue Senator Joseph R. McCarthy (R-WI), during the Army-McCarthy hearings in the US Senate when Welch asked this question directly to McCarthy: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?”

We know Trump’s answer to that question. No. Not a drop of it.

Welch, by the way was an Iowan by birth. He was born in Primghar, Iowa, in 1890.

He would be a good role model for today’s “Silent Six” who now sit by quietly and twiddle their thumbs as Trump smears nearly 600,000 Iowans, and millions more across the country.

We might ask the “Silent Six” a similar question, paraphrasing Welch:

“Do you have no sense of decency, ladies and gentlemen, at long last?”

Shockingly, we are discovering the answer to that question is also “no” as the “Silent Six” sit mute as frosted pumpkins as Trump smears nearly 600,000 of our friends, our neighbors, our families - the very fabric of our communities who, along with our Republicans friends, neighbors, and families, make our Iowa cities and towns and farmsteads the places and communities we love.

Now it’s Democrats Trump wants us to hate - and not just a mild or middling hate, but as if they were enemies in war.

Hate them all! Including Democrats in Iowa. It’s their turn to be Trump’s targets, to be turned into “America’s greatest enemy.

Trump is coming for Democrats now, at least at this point, rhetorically. The rest will follow. It always does as fascist authoritarianism takes hold.

Yet the “Silent Six” say nothing.”

They offer not a syllable of protest in defense of their fellow Iowans.

They, too, apparently now have no sense of decency. At long last. That much is now chrystal clear.

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PHOTO CREDIT: Rep. Randy Feenstra’s (R-4th IA) Facebook page

(Left to Right: U.S. Rep. Zach Nunn (R-3rd IA); Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA); and Rep. Randy Feenstra (R-4th IA) pose in front of the White House at the “Great American Agriculture Celebration” on March 27. It was kind of a self congratulatory Trump pep rally.

There is still no new Farm Bill to celebrate.

Despite over 900 farmers and a golden tractor reportedly being on hand, these two House members and a US Senator - all who serve on the House or Senate Agriculture Committee - apparently couldn’t find a farmer to join them in the photograph. That might not be an omission. It might be a strategy that makes sense if the most important “must pass” legislation for farmers is 910 days late and the clock is still ticking.

Rather than attending a “happy talk” party for agriculture, the time of these Ag Committee members would have been better spent back on Capitol Hill moving a new Farm Bill over the finish line to final passage. Which remains nowhere in sight.

OVERDUE FARM BILL TRACKER: DAY #910

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — The long over-due new Farm Bill still languishes, un-enacted 910 days after the old Farm Bill expired. Basic farm policies have not been updated since the old Farm Bill was enacted in 2018 - 8 years ago!

Have things changed in the past 8 years? You bet! Big time!

But not for the better on Iowa farms where farm bankruptcies are rapidly rising as farm input costs - especially for fertilizer and fuel - sky rocket as a result of Trump’s war in Iran and the collapse of foreign farm markets due to Trump’s tariffs.

One thing that has not changed - there is still no new Farm Bill to help farmers cope with the wreckage of the farm economy Trump’s policies are leaving behind.

The above photo was taken on March 27 at the White House where three of the four Iowans who serve on the House or Senate Agriculture Committee posed for a photo during the “Great American Agriculture Celebration.”

The event honored and celebrated farmers and American agriculture.

It did not celebrate a new Farm Bill, because there still isn’t one.

There was a golden tractor on site, however - great optics in the middle of a rapidly collapsing farm economy.

Here’s something else that’s interesting. This pix comes from Rep. Randy Feenstra’s (R - 4th IA) Facebook page. He claims there were more than 900 farmers at the White House, the largest number of farmers ever to gather at the White House he says.

Funny, then, isn’t it, that the three Iowans couldn’t find a single farmer to pose with them in the picture above. It’s like they were afraid if they got close to a farmer, they might be asked by that farmer why there is still no new Farm Bill and to go back to the Capitol and get a new Farm Bill enacted.

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(WASHINGTON, DC) — I know. It sounds crazy.

But hear me out. The 2026 campaign - still in formation stage - is shaping up to be one in which, if Iowa Democrats play their cards right, they have a chance to win it all: All four congressional seats, and the marquee races for Iowa Governor and US Senator.

Seriously.

Of course, this all comes with the caveat that there is still a lot of time left in this campaign, and things can change a dozen different ways in the space of a single day in politics.

Republicans seem determined to do whatever it takes - lie, cheat, steal, even cover up the criminal files of Jeffery Epstein which appear to allegedly implicate Donald Trump in some way, and even start a war in the Middle East if that’s what it takes to change the subject away from Epstein, ICE’s atrocities, and the Republican record of mass failure to govern.

And, God Bless them, there is still not sufficient evidence to conclude that Democrats have lost their ability to miraculously “snatch defeat from the jaws of victory,” which they have done far too often.

Yet, facts about this election are lining up in a perfect storm for Iowa Republicans that suggest, with hard and focused effort, solid fundraising, strong messaging, and effective organization, there could - possibly - be a big blue wave for Democrats in Iowa, at least in the races for the US House, US Senate, and the Governorship.

My suggestion here is not that Democrats should take the week off, but rather that they should redouble their effort because a big victory is more possible than I think many of them have yet to realize.

Here’s my case:

• First, historically, the president’s party usually loses seats in Congress in the off year elections.

• Second, this is perhaps the worst year in decades to be running for re-election as a member of the president’s party. This president is profoundly unpopular - even increasingly among Republicans. No Iowan in Congress has done anything to separate themselves from this unpopular president.

• Third the president’s problems hit Iowa particularly hard. His policies have wrecked the farm economy - for a second time - with tariffs and trade wars that destroyed important foreign farm markets.

• Fourth, his unconstitutional war in Iran is spiking the cost of fuel and fertilizer, making the problem of inflation one that Trump - and his “Amen Chorus” of Iowans in Congress now own, lock, stock and barrel.

  Iowans are reminded of this new and brutal round of inflation everytime they go to the grocery store, fill up the gas tank, or pencil out their fuel and fertilizer costs on the farm as planting season approaches.

• Fifth, two thirds of Iowa’s congressional delegation serves on the House or Senate Agriculture Committee which let the old Farm Bill expire 903 days ago and which has still not been replaced 903 days later (as of Sunday 03/22/2026).

  Not only does the failure to enact a new Farm Bill - critical and vital legislation for a farm state like Iowa - but that failure rests squarely on the shoulders of two thirds of the state’s congressional delegation who are members of the committees with responsibility for passing a new Farm Bill.

• Sixth, the troubling political winds blowing across Iowa not only come from the tradition of tough sailing for a president’s party in the off year election, they are made worse by a string of outrageous policies and actions that are sickening even some Republicans. That will dampen Republican turnout and enthusiasm on election day, and boost turn out and enthusiasm by Democrats on election day.

  Among those other issues:

• The Epstein files cover-up by the president, without protest or action by any Iowan in Congress.

• ICE atrocities, with no protest or action to stop it by any member of Iowa’s “Silent Six” congessional delegation.

• Republican flat out inability to govern within the boundaries of the law and the Constitution, as evidenced by near daily court rulings against Trump administration actions that almost always had the support of Iowa’s “Silent Six.”

• Runaway inflation. Republicans - including the “Silent Six” - now own this issue as Trump’s unconstitutional war, which the “Silent Six” all applauded, causes prices, especially energy prices to spike.

• Trump’s general and public lawlessness and massive grifting.

• The sky rocketing national debt Trump and his allies in Congress - including Iowa’s “Silent Six” - have created with massive tax cuts for the billionaires and war spending.

• The Iran war itself. He launched it unilaterally, and unconstitutionally. Iowa’s “Silent Six” are just fine with that. Trump, who never did coherently explain why he was launching the war, also never explained what its objectives are, but never the less claimed we had won the war in mere days. Then he asked for $200 billion to continue it. None of that makes sense.

I don’t think a majority of Iowans are interested in sending another pack of Trump enablers to Congress. Nor are they interested in installing another Trump “impersonator” in the Governor’s office to replace the current one who is leaving.

A number of special elections have already been held in state legislative races across the country and every district that fllipped from one party to the other - about 30 - flipped from Republican to Democrat, even in districts where Trump carried the district by double digit percentages as recently as 2024. Republicans flipped none.

Not exactly an early sign of an imminent Big Red Wave.

But there’s an even bigger reason I think a big victory for Democrats this Fall is possible, bigger than any I’ve mentioned so far:

• the weakest Republican ticket in Iowa in decades.

There is no “top of the ticket” star on the ballot for Republicans. Neither Governor Reynolds nor Senator Ernst are seeking re-election. Their likely replacements as Republican nominees for those offices - Reps. Randy Feenstra (R-4th IA) and Ashley Hinson (R-2nd IA) - have never run for statewide office, have never built a statewide campaign organization, and have never won a stateside election.

And then there is this:

• Feenstra and Hinson are both two of the most tone-deaf politicians Iowa has produced in decades.

For example:

• In this year of voter anger at incumbents in general but Republican incumbents in particular, Feenstra just recently released a list of endorsements of - you guessed it - Republican incumbent elected officials, primarily state legislators.

  One non-incumbent on his list was former Governor Terry Branstad, whose latest claim to fame was failing to head off a Trump launched trade war with China during Branstad’s time as US Ambassador to China. I’m not sure I’d be putting that front and center again, especially with a new, second Trump driven trade war with China in progress.

• Meanwhile, earlier this month, Rep. Hinson declared that what America needs is more DOGE (the so called “Department of Government Efficiency”) to make the government more eficient and save money.

  This follows revelations that DOGE was riddled with personal data thefts, and a record of costing the federal government MORE money by creating chaos, and greater inefficiency, and the destruction of resources and missions it took years to develop.

  Some say DOGE actually saved the federal government little to no money as much of what it did has been reversed by federal court which ruled its actions were often illegal or unconstitutional. Thousands of federal workers DOGE fired without much thought have been ordered back work by the courts who reviewed what DOGE did.

But according to Hinson - it’s that. We need more of all that.

Don’t look for any innovative thinking, campaigning, or messaging from those two between now and November.

Tone deafness and borrowing somebody else’s old and outdated playbook is more their style.

The other two members of the “Silent Six” delegation are the only current major office holders on the ballot seeking the same office they now hold.

They are Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-1st IA) and Zach Nunn (R-3rd IA). They are also the weakest members of the Iowa delegation both electorally, and regarding actual congressional accomplishments.

Both have been elected to Congress with narrow margins and have spent most of their time in Congress campaigning to win the next election. Neither has star power capable of igniting party-wide enthusiasm, fund raising or message development or delivery beyond the borders of their current district, and not much within those borders.

I know there will be those who say all this may be true, but the defining fact is the massive voter registration Republicans have in Iowa over the Democrats, and that fact makes a big win unlikely.

I get that. That is not an insignificant fact. I do not believe, however, that it is the defining fact.

There are a lot of other factors at work in determining election outcomes.

In my view, the climate for Republicans this year is going to be worse than it was even in 1974 after Watergate.

The defining factors in 1974 were scandal (Watergate) and inflation. Sound familiar? Democrats took 48 seats from Republicans in the US House in that election year. This year there are many more problems for Republicans and many of them hit much closer to home and specifically to Iowa.

Voters watch. They listen. They think. And eventually, even rock ribbed, registered Republicans get fed up when their party loses its way big time, as today’s Republican Party has done.

I know that what I am sharing here is not the conventional wisdom. It may sound like I’m off my rocker. But the bottom line is this: if you were running for any of these offices today, which would you rather be running as: a Republican or a Democrat?

My money would be on the Democrat, every time, in every one of these races - assuming the needed work gets done across the board to make it happen.

That won’t be easy. But it can be done.

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OVER DUE FARM BILL TRACKER; Day #903

The Countdown to 1,000 Days Has Begun

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — The Over Due Farm Bill Tracker has now reached 903 days since the old Farm Bill - enacted in 2018 - expired on September 30, 2023. It is still counting.

The action in the House Agriculture Committee on March 5, to approve a committee version of the bill, is beginning to look a bit performative. It is an election year, after all. No action has been taken in the full House on that legislation.

The failure to enact a new Farm Bill, ideally before the old one expires - but certainly still not having done so 903 days later - is a massive failure by Congress for farm country.

Two thirds of Iowa’s congressional delegation serves on the House or Senate Agriculture Committee and have a special and direct ownership of this failure. As members of the committees it is their job to help get this bill written and enacted on time. They failed, and have continued to fail for 903 days.

The ticker is now counting toward 1,000 days of failure. Let’s hope we don’t reach that milestone.

Iowans who are members of the House Ag Committee are: U.S. Reps. Zach Nunn (R-3rd IA), and Randy Feenstra (R-4th IA) Members of the Senate Agriculture Committee are Sens. Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Joni Ernst (R-IA).

As much as anyone in Washington, DC, they share authorship of this failure.

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THE CONGRESSIONAL MAIL BAG: SHOULD TAXPAYERS REALLY BE PAYING FOR THIS?

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — Readers continue to share replies they received from members of Iowa congressional delegations to letters or emails they sent to their elected representatives. Those letters are a vital and important part of our democracy, and deserve serious responses. That is not always what they get.

I appreciate those share what they receive in reply to their thoughtful letters, especially those who feel there is something “off” about the response, and they’ve been unable to get a responsive reply. Thank you for sharing and keep sending them!

One thing I’ve noted that frequently appears in these replies is an almost gratuitous effort to cast partisan blame for whatever issue is at hand. That’s a continuing theme in most letters, and I’ve seen it in letters from all six members of the Iowa delegation.

Keep in mind that Republicans control the House and Senate and the presidency. It is their responsibility to govern, and that means it is their. responsibiity to fix the problems their constituents bring to their attention. Most letter writer are either calling a problem to the attention their elected senator or representative, or sharing their view about a public issue they think might be helpful to that elected official.

I have never seen a letter that asked the question: Who should I blame for this?

Yet, in virtually every reply from this delegation, there is at least a line, more often a paragraph or more, blaming “Biden” or “Obama” (rarely “President Biden” or “President Obama” by the way) for whatever issue is being discussed.

And rarely is their a direct response to the question or suggestion that was asked. Usually just a filibuster of partisan talking points.

I think it’s a fair question to ask: Should tax payers really be paying for this?

It’s pure partisan messaging, in my view.

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SOUNDBITES & RUMBLES

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) —- Donald Trump launched an unconstitutional, unauthorized war against Iran, failed to coherently tell the nation why he was committing it to war, what the objectives of the war would be, and how we would know if and when we won.

Then, within days, he told us we had won the war.

Within days of that, he told us he needed $200 billion to continue his war. He said he would know when we won when he “feel it in my bones.”

As self confessed stable geniuses go, he’s not really much of either.

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(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — With the Trump administration approval of the Nexstar/Tegna merger this week, 80 percent of American TV households will soon receive a Nexstar owned station. That’s 4 out of every 5 homes in America.

Nexstar, of course, is aligned with President Trump and was one of the national ownership networks that dropped Jimmy Kimmel’s show when Trump was trying to get him off the air, in his famous attack on Freedom Speech and Freedom of the Press.

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(WASHINGTON, D.C.) - US Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), above, seems determined to reduce to rubble whatever legacy and reputation remains from his long-ago glory days as a leading congressional watch dog. He is now more of a chief enabler of the on-going cover up of the Epstein files. PHOTO CREDIT: Screen shot/US Senate Judiciary Committee webpage

(WASHINGTON, DC) - U.S. Senator Chuck Grssley (R-IA) is using his Chairmanship of the US Senate Judiciary Committee to enable the on-going effort by Donald Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) to cover-up the Epstein criminal files in which President Trump is reportedly named thousands of times.

It’s a very odd role for a senator to choose, especially one who was once one of the US Senate’s most active investigators of government corruption. Now he enables it. By doing nothing.

Trump’s Justice Department was required by law to release the full Epstein criminal files by December 19, 2025, a date it missed. Half of the documents remain unreleased yet today. The DOJ says it isn’t releasing any more.

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The law also required that redactions to those documents be very limited - only to protect “victims’ privacy and national security. It specifically prohibited redactions based on reputational harm or political sensitivity.

Yet not only did the DOJ ignore the required release date, it went way over-board with out of control redactions, with documents often so heavily redacted as to be useless.

When members of Congress insisted on privately viewing un-redacted copies of the files, they discovered the number and scope of the redactions was only part of the problem. Many reported much of the redactions violated the law, were not limited to protecting victims’ privacy or national security as the law required, and often seemed aimed to shield reputations and political figures from public exposure.

Allegations against Donald Trump were among the improper redactions several said, with some documents that appeared to name Trump held back entirely, also in violation of the law.

Last summer there were reports that 1,000 FBI agents had been ordered to review the files and “flag” Trump mentions.

Oddly enough, Grassley has shown no interest in, and has scheduled no investigative hearings on, how or why any of that happened.

Crickets, in fact, from Grassley.

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Grassley’s silence and inaction on the DOJ’s massive violation of the law enables its on going Epstein files cover-up by refusing to do what most other Chairmen of the Senate’s Judiciary Committee would have normally done long ago when confronted with on-going, wholesale, public violations of the law by the Department of Justice:

• Conduct investigative hearings to hold accountable the department and individuals responsible for violating the law.

Grassley claims to want the truth to come out about Epstein’s sex trafficking crimes and those who were involved with him in committing them.

Yet, he has done precious little as Chairman of the Senate committee with legislative jurisdiction over the Department of Justice to make that happen. That inaction is particularly hard to explain given Grassley’s background as a very active investigator of corruption in the federal government earlier in his career.

The DOJ’s failure to comply with the law is a daily violation of that law. Many contend it also a slap in the face to every Epstein survivor seeking justice.

That’s a very strange position for the Department of Justice to be in.

It’s an even stranger one for the once dogged investigator of government corruption to be ignoring.

Now, a bi-partisan group of Grassley’s Senate colleagues, apparently also fed up with his enabling of the Epstein files cover-up, have launched an “end run” or “work around” effort to get answers that Grassley apparently doesn’t want asked or to which he does not want to hear the answers.

The bi-partisan Senate group includes Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), the Ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

On Wednesday (March 11), Durbin and Senators Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Lisa Murkowski, (R-AK) and Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM) wrote to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to ask the independent, nonpartisan agency to conduct an audit and report to Congress on the DOJ’s and Executive Branch’s redaction process and decisions.

“As Congress continues to seek justice for the victims of Epstein and his co-conspirators, GAO can offer an independent inquiry into the process undertaken by DOJ in redacting and releasing these files - assessing DOJ’s diligence and whether the release of these files has served to cover up child sexual abuse,” the Senators - from both parties - wrote in their letter.

BTW, I wrote last week about an email response an Iowan received from Senator Grassley to a letter asking that he hold hearings to investigate the DOJ’s wholesale failure to comply with the “Epstein Files Transparency Act.”

Grassley’s reply was a 22 paragraph e-mail which amounted to an electronic filibuster. It never did directly answer the question - will Grassley convene investigative hearings to get to the bottom of the DOJ’s utter failre to comply with the law - much less promise to do so.

The letter was sent to me out of the writer’s frustration with Grassley’s inaction and unresponsiveness to the question Grassley’s constituent put to him.

It appears Grassley’s Senate colleagues are also growing weary of the same enabling behavior from Grassley and are now moving on - on their own - to get answers to the questions Grassley should be asking but won’t.

One of those questions is: Has the DOJ’s handling of the release of the Epstein documents, “served to cover up child sexual abuse?”

It is sickening to know that such a question needs to be asked, especially when the context for such a question includes a President of the United States.

It’s even sadder to know that Iowa’s senior senator - who first entered elective office when John F. Kennedy was a Senator from Massachusetts and Ike Eisenhower was in the White House - is choosing to close out his public career enabling such a cover-up by not being willing ask that question or hear the answer when there seem to be as many red flags as there are cornstalks in Iowa.

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LONG OVER-DUE FARM BILL TRACKER: DAY #896

No Iowa Farmer Would Operate This Way. Why Should Congress?

(WASHINGTON, DC) - Imagine harvesting a field of corn 896 days late. There is not a farmer in Iowa who would consider that acceptable.

Yet, that is exactly what Congress has done with a new federal Farm Bill to replace the one that expired 896 days ago (as of Sunday, March 15, 2026).

There is, however, one big difference.

In this imaginary, hypothetical situation, the corn field got harvested on Day #896.

In Congress, on Day #896, there is still no new Farm Bill.

The old Farm Bill, written and enacted in 2018, expired on September 30, 2023. That’s 8 years ago! Two full crop years and heading into a third, the clock is still ticking on a new Farm Bill, way past the deadline for enacting a new one to replace the old one before it expired.

The House Agriculture Committee finally at least woke up from its 886 day nap on March 5, and “marked up” HR 7567, the new Farm Bill. Little has been heard about it since. It has not passed the House or Senate. Cob webs are still gathering on what used to be urgent, “must pass” federal farm legislation.

Iowans have a special role in, and a direct, hands-on responsibility for this spectacular failure of Congress to do right by farmers. Two thirds of Iowa’s congressional delegation serve on either the House or Senate Agriculture Committeess: Reps. Zach Nunn (R-3rd IA) and Randy Feenstra (R-4th IA) in the House; Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Joni Ernst (R-IA) in the Senate. As members of the Agriculture Committees, they have a special responsibility to move this legislation to enactment, a responsibility they have either shirked or failed to deliver on for 896 days so far.

The other two Iowans in Congress - Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-ist IA) and Ashley Hinson (R-2nd IA) - as representatives of one of the nation’s leading farm states also have a special obligation to get Congress to enact a strong Farm Bill, but there is even less evidence that either has been working to do so over the past 896 days.

And counting.

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THE CONGRESSIONAL MAIL BAG:

US Rep. Randy Feenstra’s Disingenuousness Exposed

(WASHINGTON, DC) - When it comes to disingenuousness in Congress, it’s hard to beat US Rep. Zach Nunn (R - IA 3rd) but Rep. Randy Feenstra (R- IA 4th) is giving him some good hard competition.

The following comes from Feenstra’s taxpayer financed government web page:

“Farmers don’t have the luxury of waiting on Washiington, D.C. gridlock and endless policy debates. In Iowa, agricluture is not just an industry, it is the backbone of our economy. That’s why, as a member of the House Agriculture Committee, I was proud to pass the Farm Bill out of committee, to deliver a strong five=year commitment to put farmers, ranchers, and rural communities first.”

Unmentioned by Feenstra, of course:

• Feenstra has “delivered” nothing, since no bill has been enacted. It still has a long, and very uncertain road ahead of it.

• The new Farm Bill Feenstra is so proud of it passing out of the House Agriculture Committee, of which - yes - he is very much a member, is 896 days over due as of Sunday, March 15.

• As a member of the committee which has failed to enact it all that time, he very much bears a big and direct responsibility for that failure.

• The bill has not been delayed by “endless policy debates,” over it. It’s barely been mentioned by anybody - Feenstra or any other Republican on the Ag Committee or off - over the past 896 days.

• The reason it is so late is because Republicans - who control the committee and the Congress - have intentionally neglected and ignored it. They have been content to let it ”twist slowly, slowly in the wind” while they chase other priorities: slashing taxes for America’s biggest billionaires, destroying access to affordable health care and health insurance for millions of Americans, making it harder for American citizens - and for millions of Americans, impossible - to vote on Election Day, and allowing Trump to pour gasoline on the fires of inflation without protest.

  And of course, hiding the Epstein files and dismantling American democracy.

  Republican majorities which run Washington, DC have other priorities. Farmers, ranchers and rural communities - and the Farm Bill - aren’t on any of their priority lists.

But now Mr. Feenstra wants us to think he’s been in a hurry to pass the Farm Bill all along and that its all these non-existent, Feenstra-imagined “endless policy debates” over the bill that have been the problem rather than his own negligence, inaction, silence and ineffectiveness as a member of the committee.

If Randy Feenstra has been busy putting farmers, ranchers, and rural communities first - why are we 896 days down the road from the expiration of the old Farm Bill and still don’t have a new one?

Feenstra’s disingenuousness is on a scale that Rep. Zack Nunn must truly envy.

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SOUNDBITES & RUMBLINGS:

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) - Donald Trump has turned governing into a demolition derby. By the time he gets done wrecking everything, we’re going to need a “Marshall Plan” to rebuild American democracy.

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(WASHINGTON, DC) - It’s official. All six members of Iowa’s congressional delegation - the infamous “Silent Six” - now co-own “Donald Trump’s War” in Iran.

He launched it on his own whim, without the bother of congressional authorization

So, it is “Trump’s War.”

But they co-own it because after the 34x convicted felon, twice impeached president and five time draft dodger took the nation to war that way, they quickly issued statements of support and then voted against invoking the War Powers Act once others forced that issue.

Without a single question.

Such quick and total obedience when asked to “roll over” would surely make any mutt in America a contender for a “Best of Show” award at any kennel club in the country.

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If they paused at all to actually think about what they were doing - “cutting and pasting” the Constitution to make it more amenable to Donald Trump’s authoritarian delusions - there is little public evidence of it.

So they own it now, too.

But supporters of the American Constitution are not the only ones who were short changed in this transaction.

The “Silent Six” betrayed not only the Constitution with their quiet acquiescence to Trump’s unconstitutional war.

They sold out their own constituents - Iowans.

The Founders put authority for declaring war - starting wars - in Congress for a reason.

• They did not want one person - any Chief Exeecutive - to be able to take the nation to war on their own. They wanted to protect the nation from a rogue or delusional president taking the country to war, unbothered, for nefarious reasons.

Yet that is exactly who Trump is, and exactly what Trump did, with full knee-jerk support of Iowa’s “Silent Six.”

• The Founders also wanted buy-in from the whole country before a war was launched. If the nation was going to go to war, they thought it was important that “We, the People,” agree to it - speaking through a recorded vote in Congress by their elected representatives.

Wars are fought at enormous cost, both in terms of treasure and tragically lost lives. The Founders wanted to make sure the people who were going to be asked to pay the high costs of war were on board before the bullets started to fly. It seemed the right and sensible thing to do when drafting the Constitution and remains so today.

Yet that is exactly the process Trump’s unilateral war short-circuited. It did so without so much as a peep or a question from anyone from Iowa in Congress.

The result is predictabe in terms of public support: the latest PBS News Hour/NPR/Marist poll shows 56% of Americans already oppose the war, just a week into it, a time when support is usually highest for military action.

Iowans in Congress - Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Joni Ernst (R-IA); and US Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-1st IA), Ashley Hinson (R-2nd IA), Zach Nunn (R- 3rd IA) and Randy Feenstra (R- 4th IA) - not only betrayed the Constitution, they took away the right of Iowans to have a say in this monumental national decision by shutting Iowans out of what should have been a national conversation about the need and wisdom of going to war. In a place where wars never end.

Not only did they not ask Donald Trump for an explanation or at least a coherent rationale for going to war, they didn’t even bother to ask Iowans what they thought about the prospect of going to war with Iran.

They simply outsourced all the thinking and deciding to Donald Trump.

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There are those who argue that Iran is a very bad actor on the international stage and that Ayatollah Khamenei was an evil man.

They also argue that the case for war is strong.

I don’t disagree with the first two points. I don’t know anyone who does.

Whether war was the best option available to the US, however, remains very open to debate - especially since Donald Trump or anyone in his administration has so far failed to coherently explain to Congress or the American people what the problem is that Trump is trying to solve with war.

And also especially as new winds of war now race through the entire Middle East, Russia now enters the fray as a militarily helpful ally to Iran, China now sees opportunity, Trump talks of sending ground troops to fight in Iran, gasoline and oil prices spike here at home, the stock market plunges, and inflation heats up.

All of which, before the war started, were absolutely predictable outcomes of launching a war in the Middle East.

None of these likelihoods were discussed or debated before Trump started his war.

There is also the open question of why Trump went to war which still remains unanswered. Trump and his administration have offered multiple, different, and often contradictory explanations for why the war was necessary and why it was needed now.

The nation now has no clear idea why he took us to war, what our objective is, or how we will know if and when we succeed at whatever it is we are trying to do.

All of that should have been discussed and debated. In public.

None of it was.

Yet we are now spending ONE BILLION DOLLARS A DAY on this war, and coffins are already starting to come home.

Worse, those in Congress who held ultimate authority for getting answers to those questions and more? They didn’t get any answered.

Because - at least as far as the “Silent Six” from Iowa are concerned - they never asked.

They just rolled over.

Of all the many failures of this weakest and worst congressional delegation that Iowans have ever sent to Washington, DC, this may turn out to be their worst failure.

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LONG OVERDUE FARM BILL TRACKER: DAY #889

- A SURPRISE DEVELOPMENT

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) - It has been 889 days (as of Sunday, 03/08/2026) since the old Farm Bill expired without a new one being enacted by Congress.

On Thursday, the Republican controlled US House Agriculture Committee finally got around to “marking up” the “Farm, Food and Nationaal Security Act of 2026.” That’s the long name for what most people, at this point, simply call the “long overdue new Farm Bill.”

Unless you are a farmer, it is easy to lose track of just how long the nation has been without an operative new Farm Bill.

The old one expired over two crop years ago - now nearing three calendar years ago - on September 30, 2023. A baby born on that date would have been talking and walking for about two years by now. He or she would be getting close to being just two years away from starting Kindergarten.

Yet, it is only now that the House Agriculture Committee is bestirring itself to “mark up” the bill, readying it for consideration by the full House of Representatives. The US House may or may not get around to considering it this year, but if it does, God only knows when it will.

Despite the fact that Trump tariffs have destroyed numerous foreign markets for US farm products and that there have been massive, wholesale changes in the farm economy since the old Farm Bill was written and passed nearly eight years ago, the committee - on which Iowa Rep. Zach Nunn (R-3rd IA) and Randy Feenstra (R-4th IA) both sit - has been content to ignore the need to pass a new Farm Bill which sets the nation’s basic farm policies.

The fact that the House Agrculture Committee actually did something on the Farm Bill, however, is not the biggest surprise. It is just a modest one.

The big surprise came in a statement from Committee Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson (PA-15) which contained this statement:

"Throughout this markup, it became clearer than ever before that our country needs a new farm bill, and we don’t need it next year, or next Congress. We need it now.”

How magnanimous of him to finally recognize the urgency of enacting a new Farm Bill after the old one expired - 886 days ago (on 03/05/2026) - and he sat on the process of writing a new one for each of those 886 days and did nothing.

One would think the two Iowans on the committee, Nunn and Feenstra, would have been honking the horn daily on the urgent need to complete work on this legislation.

How is it that it is only just now that the Chairman of the House Agriculture Committee is learning that the nation’s farmers need a new Farm Bill “not next year, or next Congress. We need it now.”

Shouldn’t that have been obvious to Thompson in 2023?

And if for some reason it wasn’t, shouldn’t Nunn and Feenstra have been shouting that fact in his ear every day since the old Farm Bill expired, if not before.

Apparently they weren’t.

Otherwise this fact would not be something Thompson is just learning. Every family farmer in Iowa now trying to survive a rapidly changing and deteriorating farm economy has known it all along. Why didn’t he?

Why, apparently didn’t Nunn and Feenstra ever mention this fact to him?

“We need a new Farm Bill not next year, or next Congress. We need it now. “

True enough. But it was just as true on September 30, 2023 - 889 days ago,

Mr. Chairman? Mr. Nunn? Mr. Feenstra? Where have you been?

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CONGRESSIONAL MAILBAG: WHAT TO DO WHEN THE PEOPLE WHO WORK FOR YOU IN CONGRESS DODGE YOUR QUESTION

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) If you have recently written a letter or email to one of your Iowa US Representatives or Senators, you know it can be a frustrating experience. Iowans tell me they either don’t respond, or if they do, what they send are letters filled with a lot of hot air that don’t say anything at all.

We shouldn’t be surprised, I guess when they’ve turned their work into full time jobs supporting and defending the indefensible. As tax payers - and as constituents who pay their salaries - however, we should never find it acceptable.

Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) gets this week’s focus for his absurd response to an Iowan who wrote him and asked two simple questions:

• (1) You’re the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Why no hearings on the failure of the Department of Justice to comply with the law - THE LAW - that required the full release (except for limited redactions to protect survivor’s identities) of the Epstein files months ago;

• (2) A simple request: please hold such hearings and hold the DOJ accountable.

In response she got a 22 paragraph e-mail loaded with information about which she had never asked. The electronic filibuster, of course, was designed to make it look like he was responding and in detail. Which he was not.

Maybe the point was just to wear her out on the topic.

Clearly, answering her two simple questions, was not on his agenda.

• In all 22 paragraphs, there was not one explanation for why Grassley has convened no hearings on the DOJ’s failure to do what the law requires re: the Epstein files;

• Nor was there a response about whether he would hold hearings in the future on this topic.

There was plenty of boiler plate claiming to be very concerned about sex trafficking and details about bills sponsored, legislative action elsewhere, etc.) but no actual answers to either of her question.

The closest he came was to state that he hopes “Attorney General Pam Bondi and (FBI) Director Patel will work together to answer questions about the investigation and bring any perpetrators to justice” and to promise that “my oversight efforts will continue in order to bring complete transparency and accountability to the American people.”

Will continue?

The Iowan’s original letter was prompted in the first place by Grassley’s failure to do anything at the Judiciary Committee to hold the DOJ responsible, his failure to use his authority to convene hearings to keep the pressure on until they obey the. law and bring justice to Epstein’s survivors.

Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Patel are the two people most responsible for ignoring the law that required release of the files by a fixed deadline which passed months ago. Why would Grassley’s “strategy” now be to “hope” that they work together to answer questions and bring perpetrators to justice?

Does that even make sense?

He’s the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, with the power and authority to compel them to do what they have refused to do, their refusal to comply with the law being a violation of the law.

He should use that power and authority to get answers not “hope” Patel and Bondi work together to get answers.

As the chief suspects (beyond Trump himself here), they are more than a bit compromised.

Even if they weren’t, hope is not a strategy or a plan.

If he thinks it is, then he becomes just another enabler of the cover up

Apparently, this is a matter that just doesn’t rise to the level of - say - Hunter Biden’s lap top. Or maybe the problem is that the storyline didn’t originate as disinformation from Putin’s operatives, both of which prompted lots of frenetic activity at Grassley’s Judiciary Committee during the Biden administration.

When you receive a “response” - to use the term loosley - like this from an Iowan in Congress, remember: they work for you. You pay their salary. You are among those who hire and fire them on election day.

Insist on a straight answer.

You can do this:

• Return the letter with an explanation that it wasn’t responsive and ask them to try again. Ask them to actually answer the question. Directly.

• If that doesn’t work, just call the Washington, DC office and ask for the Chief of Staff. Tell the Chief of Staff (if they will put the call through) that you received a response that did not remotely reply to the question you asked, so you’d like to give them - the Chief of Staff - a chance to answer it.

They’ll hate that you did this.

But that’s OK. Everyone in that congressional office works for you, too.

Don’t forget it.

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(WASHINGTON, D.C.) - A US flag hangs from a federal office building on Pennsylvaania Avenue just blocks from the White House in the dark of a winter night in Washington, DC. As Trump steadily attacks American democracy, the feeling for many here is that darkness is descending on American democracy as well.

(WASHINGTON, D.C) — The U.S. Constitution is dying. It is steadily being asphyxiated week by week - if not day by day - by Donald Trump as he chokes the life out of it by ignoring it, pretending it doesn’t exist, pretending the laws written under it don’t apply to him, and doing whatever he damn well pleases.

Donald Trump is an authoritarian now. Not just an authoritarian risk or threat. But an authoritarian in actual fact. Democracy - in his view - be damned.

His private army - ICE - roams American streets, entering homes without a warrant, arbitrarily kidnapping people, even shooting and killing American citizens - all without consequence.

The sad fact is that Iowans in Congress - the “Silent Six” - have simply watched it happen, and have said and done nothing to stop it.

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Allowing Trump to take the nation to war - again - without congressional consultation, debate or authorization - in Iran is the latest example of what “bark-less” lap dogs they have become for Trump.

There is no congressional authority or constitutional responsibility the “Silent Six” will not quietly surrender to him.

War making? See Iran.

And the 7 other military attacks Trump has launched unilaterally, without authority from Congress as required by the Constitution, in the first 13 months of his second term.

The power to tax? See tariffs.

Even when his misuse of that power to tax through tariffs destroys significant and major farm export markets their constituents rely upon for a major portion of their income.

Even when those tariffs fuel even more spikes in inflation.

The pattern is now clear: Iowa’s “Silent Six” have not in the past - and will not in the future - offer a syllable of support or defense for the Constitution they swore to support and defend when they were sworn into their offices.

And so it is dying.

Their “contribution” to the national conversation about Trump’s assault on democracy is to simply applaud that assault.

This failure, alone, should be career ending and disqualifying for each of them.

Perhaps, eventually, it will be. Time - and the mid-term elections in November - will tell.

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We have seen such epic failute before.

Thomas Paine, in a pamphlet titled “The American Crisis No. 1” wrote in December 1776, a very troubling time during the American Revolutionary War, the following:

• “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands by it now, deseerves the love and thanks of man and woman.”

Paine might as well have written those words about our own times which certainly try the soul of every democracy loving American.

He might as well have been writing about Americans - especially those who serve in Congress - who wave the flag, talk a good game about patriotism, democracy and loving America, but do nothing to protect any of it when it is under attack from within.

The summer soldiers and sunshine patriots?

Thomas Paine couldn’t have described the failure of Iowa’s “Silent Six” congressional delegation to defend democracy in one of its darkest hours any better if he was yet walking among us and observing their betrayal of the Constitution with his own eyes.

Iowa’s “Silent Six” believe every lie Trump tells. Even when they are polar opposites and cannot possibly both be true.

For example, when Trump launched his first unilateral attack on Iran without the constitutionally required congressional authority, in June 2025, Iowa’s delegation simply applauded, and then repeated that applause when Trump bragged that his unauthorized attack “totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear weapons capability.

Military professionals came along behind him not long after to clean that claim up by making a more sober assessment. They said it was more likely Iran’s nuclear weapons program had been set back two years, not “totally obliterated.”

Yet, now, just eight months later Donald Trump attacks Iran - again without congressional authorization - and offers as one of his ever changing justifications the claim that Iran is just days away from developing nuclear weapons they can use to attack the United States.

How can both claims be true?

From “total obliteration” to “days away” from developing offensive nuclear weapons they’d use against us. In just eight months.

The answer to that question is - they can’t both be true. One was a lie, or at best, a serious miscalculation.

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The reason the Constitution put the power to make war in the hands of Congress, and not one individual - the executive - was so questions can be asked by Congress, the elected representatives of the American people, and answers provided to Congress before a president commits American lives and treasure to often lethal and costly military action.

Every president before Trump has approached the Middle East region with great caution and trepidation. It has been the land of “wars that never end” for centuries. There are ample reasons to ask a truckload of questions about a planned military offensive by the US in that region and to insist on getting expert, satisfactory and complete answers before America’s sons and daughters are sent to war.

But, rather than follow the constitution, Iowa’s “Silent Six” uniformly followed Trump - the five times draft dodger and 34 times covincted felon - who has been desperately trying to come up with something - anything - that will change the national conversation away fromt he Epstein files he is hiding in violation of the law.

Rather than protect, defend and support the Constitution, they have merely cheered Trump’s violation of it.

They and their fellow Republicans applaud Trump’s violation of the Constitution in attacking Iran without so much as even asking the most basic questions: Why is this war necessary? What will it accomplish? How will we know when we’ve accomplished what we set out to accomplish?

Even though Trump is not volunteering answers to any of those most basic questions, they don’t ask, let alone insist on answers.

Let me add an additional point for clarity.

The attack on Iran has become a crisis for American democracy not because anyone feels sorry for the Iranian regime. Or because anyone will miss the now dead Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The regime is vile and cruel and The Ayatollah, by all account, was the same.

If there was a case for invading Iran now, then Donald Trump should have made it to the Congress and the American people - as the Constitution requires. There are laws and rules for dealing with such matters that have governed this nation since its founding.

All were put in place to prevent a demented or rogue president from spilling the blood of Americans in foreign wars of his or her own choosing without making the case to the American people and the Congress and letting them decide if it is necessary and worth the cost in blood, lives, and treasure.

Those basic protections make good sense, served us well for 237 years, and need to be preserved, protected and defended.

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The worry about a demented or rogue president getting into office and taking the nation to war for nefarious reasons or on a whim, is not simply theoretical.

It’s what we’re up against today.

Yet Iowa’s “Silent Six” say and do nothing to protect the nation from Trump now, or taking the long view, from someone who may come along like Trump in the years to come.

Trump’s assault on democracy - his over reach for dictatorial powers, and easy acquisition of them with little to no objection from the likes of the “Silent Six” are, to my way of thinking, unforgivable sins.

That Iowa’s “Silent Six” have spoken not one word to stop him, slow his assaults down, or even to ask basic and obvious questions means those sins not Donald Trump’s alone.

Iowa’s “Silent Six” own those sins against our democracy now, as well.

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OVER-DUE FARM BILL TRACKER: DAY #882

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) —- A new Farm Bill - 882 day overdue (as of Sunday, March 1, 2026) - showed a flicker of life this past week. House Republicans scheduled a “mark up” for the bill on Monday, February 23, 2026. First order of business - taken on the day before, on Sunday, February 22, was to cancel the mark up and reschedule it for a week later.

It snowed in Washington, D.C. you see.

Snowfall in the DC region measured 1-6 inches, not enough to cause an Iowa farmer to even pause heading out the door to do morning chores, but plenty enough, apparently, to stop the Republican controlled House Agriculture Committee from finally getting to work on a new Farm Bill to replace the one that expired on September 30, 2023.

Yes. Not a typo: 2023. Seriously.

The new mark up is now scheduled to begin at 5:00 pm, Monday, March 2, 2026.

Yes. Not a typo: 5:00 pm start time. Seriously.

I guess they wanted to get an “early” start on the long overdue work of enacting the nation’s basic farm legislation. If that were the case, though, they are about 882 days late.

Make that 883 days late as of Monday.

The House Ag Committee is certainly not working on this bill at a family farm daily work schedule. I don’t know if the aim here is to intentionally send a message to farmers that their Farm Bill is not a priority - even for the House Agriculture Committee - but that sure looks like the message being sent.

This bill has already become a definition of “slow walking” legislation, when the committee departs from its practice of “not walking” it at all.

Two members of Iowa’s congressional delegation are members of this committee: Reps. Zach Nunn (R-3rd IA) and Randy Feenstra (R-4th IA). If anything actually happens on March 2, both will likely claim credit for it, though the 883 day delay during which nothing happened - you can count on this - as always, it will be somebody else’s fault.

Probably President Joe Biden’s since they blame him for everything. Even their own work they didn’t do and their own responsibilities they didn’t meet.

It remains to be seen what, if anything happens on Monday, and if anything does, whether it turns out to be anything worth cheering. After imposing farm export market wrecking tariffs - with the support of farm state Republicans in Congress, including Iowa’s “Silent Six”, that is a big question mark. Good farm legislation just doesn’t appear to be much of a priority for them, but let’s hope they surprise us.

Stay tuned for updates.

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SOUNDBITES & RUMBLES:

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) —- It’s tragic, but let’s call Trump’s new war in Iran what it actually is: “OPERATION EPIC DIVERSION - CHANGE THE SUBJECT AND KEEP THE EPSTEIN FILES HIDDEN.” This is Trump’s 8th use of millitary force in the 13 months of his second term, all unauthorized by Congress, all pretty clearly part of an unceasing effort to get people to stop talking about, thinking about, and working to release all the Epstein files. Iowans in Congress have objected to eactly 0 of those 8 military actions, despite the fact that the Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the authority to go to war.

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PHOTOS FROM MY ARCHIVES: 1976

(KANSAS CITY, MISSOURU) — Remember that little boomlet at the Kansas City, Missouri, Republican National Convention in 1976, boosting Iowa Governor Robert D. Ray. for Vice President. The nod eventually went to Senator Bob Dole (R-KS). I don’t know how real the Ray boomlet ever was. It seemed to be a case of home state Iowa boosterism, a “favorite son” type effort to me - not that Ray wouldn’t have made a good choice. He would have. But I don’t think it ever spread significantly beyond Iowans at the convention. In any event, here’s pix of one of the buttons handed out during the boomlet, fromAugust 1976.

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(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — Iowa’s all-Republican congressional delegation made a very poor decision when they each chose to follow the 34x convicted felon and outlaw Donald Trump rather than the U.S. Constitution which they swore an oath to uphold and defend.

With the US Supreme Court’s ruling, Friday, rejecting Trump’s tariffs as unconstitutional, the poor judgment of Iowa’s “Silent Six” in choosing Trump over the constitution is laid bare.

The ruling also exposes some big political new vulnerabilities Iowa’s congressional delegation will have to defend in the 2026 campaign.

Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) is not seeking re-election but two of Iowa’s US House members are , and two others are running for higher office.

Those election campaigns all just got tougher.

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At issue are Trump’s tarriffs, which he put in place unilaterally, without even a pretense of consultation with Congress in April of last year

Article I Section 8 of the US Constitution grants Congress the authority to impose tariffs, not the president.

A 1977 law does give the president authority to regulate foreign commerce in times of national emergency, but writing for the majority, Supreme Court Justice John Roberts said the claim made by Trump - that he’s acting during a national emergency - “falls short.”

Each member of the Iowa delegation took the same oath at the beginning of their term in the US House and Senate. It begins with: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States……”

Yet, when presented with the choice of supporting Donald Trump’s obviously unconstitutional scheme to unilaterally impose chaotic, inflation spiking, and foreign farm market wrecking. tariffs, or supporting and defending the Constitutioin as they swore to do in their oath of office, they chose Trump and ran away from the Constitution and their oath to defend it.

They did so without question.

All four Iowans in the House have had ample opportunity to separate themselves from Trump’s unconstitutional tariffs since Trump first imposed them in early April 2025. The made no such effort.

The most recent and most specific opportunity was on February 11, when the House voted to rescind Trump’s tariffs on Canada. All four Iowans voted to uphold those tariffs and keep them in place.

Senator Grassley claims to “have always” favored congressional involvement in tariff policy and introduced legislation that would have required congressional approval of any presidential tariff actions. The bill has not advanced significantly within Congress. Grassley has voted against legislation that would have blocked Trump tariffs.

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This is a particularly bad issue for any senator or representative - but especially those from farm states - to get caught running away from the U.S. Constitution to embrace Trump’s authoritarian tariff power grab.

The trariffs have already cost US farmers and consumers dearly.

So far Trump’s tariffs have…..

• Collected about $133 billion - $185 billion. Estimates very, of course, but That’s $133 - $185 billion in higher prices passed on to US consumers. Experts says the tariffs have cost the average American family about $1,000 - $1,700 this year.

  Republicans in Congress - including Iowa Republicans in Congress now “own” the spike in inflation Trump’s tariffs have caused. Republicans will try, of course, but there is no more blaming this on Joe Biden. This is Trump’s inflation now, and it also belongs to those who blindly supported his inflation spiking tariffs, and did so despite the fact that they were obviously unconstitutional..

• Cratered foreign U.S. farm markets. Trump has introduced a level of chaos, arbitrariness, acrimony, and unreliability to US trade policy that is unprecedented. Major foreign customers of US farmers have understandably looked elsewhere for more reliable sellers - and found them.

  Some former major US farm markets are gone for good now.

  For example, China, which bought half of all US soybeans in 2024 - $12.6 billion worth - has purchased none since Trump’s tariffs were imposed. That market is likely gone forever, as China is one of the countries that quickly found more reliable, long term sellers.

Here’s an even bigger problem, exposed by the Court’s ruling Friday. This one is massive, politically and goes right to the heart of what used to be the Republican brand.

It lays bare the lie Trump tells that his tariffs are paid by foreign governments, or shippers, and cost Americans nothing. The Supreme Court ruling - by the Republican majority court, in an opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts, makes clear tariffs are taxes, paid by Americans and that the power to tax Americans exclusively belongs to Congress.

Republicans have run for decades in Iowa as favoring low taxes - which they often do as long as you are a millionaire or billionaire - but its hard to see this delegation pulling that off again having just backed what the Republican majority Supreme Court identifies as a $130 - $185 billion tax increase.

The Supreme Court’s ruling against Trump’s tariffs is not only bad news for Trump.

It could be catastrophic news for Iowa’s all Republican congressional delegation, most of whom will be on the ballot in November.

The Supreme Court just handed Trump a devastating defeat on a core element of his program.

It also just handed the Iowa Republicans who supported his unconstitutional tariffs three monstrous political problems - massive new liabilities - they’ll have to defend against vigorously, if not desperately, n the coming campaign.

If Democrats are smart enough to make them.

The bottom line:

Republicans chose to follow the authoritarian outlaw Donald Trump on tariff policy instead of honoring their oath to “protect and defend” the constitution which grants Congress the clear authority and responsibility over tariff policies.

In so doing, Iowans in Congress helped impose a $133 billion - $185 billion tax on Americans; wrecked foreign farm markets essential to Iowa; and spiked a new round of massive inflation that affects Iowans and all Americans.

If ever there was a wake up call that Republicans in Congress - and specifically Iowa’s congressional delegation - need to follow the Constitution rather than Donald Trump - the outlaw, 34x convicted felon and, God only knows what the Epstein files will add to this list - it arrived Friday from the U.S. Supreme Court.

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OVER DUE FARM BILL TRACKER: Day 875!

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) A new five year Farm Bill to replace the one that expired on September 30, 2023 is now 875 days over due. And we’re still counting.

875 days!

The Farm Bill sets the nation’s basic farm policies and programs and is vital to helping farmers plan and for the nation to respond to changing farm and market circumstances. A new Farm Bill used to be considered “must pass” legislation. For this Congress, and President Donald Trump, it’s no longer even an after thought.

.Two thirds of Iowa’s “Silent Six” congressional delegation serve on either the House or Senate Agriculture Committee: Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Reps. Zach Nunn (R-3rd IA) and Randy Feenstra (R-4th IA). The other two members of Iowa’s congressional delegation, Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-1st IA) and Ashley Hinson (R-2nd) are not on the House Agriculture Committee, but as congresswomen from Iowa, also share a special responsibilty for making sure that this legislation not only puts a strong farm program in place, but is enacted on time. Which is to say, they also have a special ownership of this failure.

All Iowa congressional incumbents who are on the ballot this Fall, will tell audiences over and over and how important their work in Congress has been for farmers. Two of them even think they deserve a promotion to higher office, despite their failure on this most basic, yet vital, priority for Iowa.

What they won’t tell you is that:

• they failed “big time” on the biggest priority there is when it comes to farm legislation;

• 875 days (and counting) after the old Farm Bill expired there still isn’t a new one;

• and they they are doing nothing to move a new one along the path to enactment.

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SOUND BITES & RUMBLES: This Week - Letters from Congress

This week, another letter was shared with me by a constituent of one of the members of the Iowa congressional delegation who was astonished at the level of deception the letter contained. The letter came from (not surprisingly), US Rep. Zach Nunn (R-3rd IA).

(BTW: I don’t know, but I may need to start a new recurring feature as part of this column:“The Congressional Mailbag.” or something like that. It would deal soley with the letters Iowans are receiving from their US House and Senate members. Let me know what you think.)

Readers often send me the responses they get from members of the Iowa delegation in Congress. Those replies are often borderline absurd - also often not responsive at all, filled with partisan talking points - or, they tell me, they get no reply at all.

Last week I wrote about a letter Chuck Grassley sent a constituent who expressed concern about the ICE assaults, kidnappings, even unprovoked shootings of American citizens, and unjust - indefensible - incarcerations of innocent kids - even infants - legal immigrants, etc.

Grassley took ICE’s side. He accepted iCE’s narratives, despite lots of evidence we’ve all seen to the contrary - including tons of video evidence and eye witness reports.

Check last week’s column if you missed it, but the long and short of it is that he wants to wait and let the investigations of what happened in Minneapolis “play out” before committing to doing anything on his part.

Not mentioned by Grassley: the fact that the federal government is doing all it can do to block state and local investigations, refusing to share evidence and information with state and local investigators, something that is usually done routinely, and the fact that any “investigation” by the FBI is already so compromised it is not worthy of the name.

This from the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Commiittee - who once had a reputation as a hard nosed investigator, but long ago self incinerated that reputation in the service of hyper-partisanship and the authoritarian serial lawbreaker, Donald Trump.

This week’s letter came from a constituent of US Rep. Zach Nunn (R-3rd IA). The letter concerned his vote for the SAVE Act. You know, the legislation that passed the House billed as an “election integrity” bill despite the fact that it will - and is clearly designed to - keep people from voting, a partisan goal for Republicans who want to keep non-Republican voters awa;y from the ballot box.

It would require that voters produce a passport or a birth certificate that matches their current name in order to vote. A citizen’s right to vote is clearly guaranteed by the constitution. Those two requirements alone - a passport or a birth certificate - would make it impossible for millions of Americans to vote. Half of all Americans don’t have a passport; and millions of Americans don’t have a birth certificate. Millions of married women, in particular, are going to have a hard time producing a birth certificate that matches their current name if they took their husband’s last name after marrying.

In his letter, true to Republican talking points, Nunn frames the SAVE Act as an “election integrity” issue - despite every study, even by Republicans, show that fraudulent voting occurs only rarely - extremely rarely - and never in numbers even remotely largely enough to effect the outcome of an election. Most reports of fradulent voting, in fact, turn out to be false.

Nunn likens his vote for the SAVE Act (to solve a non-existent problem) - to his combat service to defend American democracy.

“Likewise in Congress, I will fight for these exact same values: protecting the right to vote and defending the Constitution in a way that does not favor one party over another,” Nunn wrote.

“The bottom line is that many men and women have died for Americans’ right to choose their own elected representatives. I am committed to defending this right with every fiber of my being,” Nunn writes.

The Save Act that Nunn voted for does exactly the opposite of what he claims.

• It will have the practical effect of blocking millions from casing a ballot on Election Day - including many Iowans. It' doesn’t help guarantee the right to vote, it intentionally disenfranchises millions.

• It is part of the Repulican vote suppression plan that intentionally aims to block people from casting a ballot, in order to improve Republican chances of wining. It absolutely favors one party over the other, and does so in an un-American, anti-democracy way.

• It puts in place requirements for documents many Americans don’t have and won’t be able to get by Election Day. This has nothing to do with election integrity. It has everything to do with making it harder - and for some impossible - to cast the ballot they have a constitutional right to cast. It aims to fix a “problem” that does not exist, and to do so at a cost of blocking millions of qualified voters from casing the ballot the constitution guarantees them the right to cast.

• In order to obtain those documents, voters who don’t already have them are going to have to pay substantial fees - no doubt legal fees, too in some cases - to obtain them. That amounts to a poll tax, which the 24th Amendment to the US Constitution prohibits. It violates the constitution.

Virtually every justification Nunn gives for voting for the SAVE Act is a disingenuous falsehood.

To be honest, it kinds of turns my stomach to see him building his case for this partisan, anti-democracy. legislation by standing on the graves of patriots who fought and died for this country to defend and save our democracy, and debasing his own honorable service by enlisting it in this pretty pathetic appeal.

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PHOTOS FROM MY ARCHIVES: VICE PRESIDENT AGNEW ATTACKS THE NEWS MEDIA IN HIS FAMOUS DES MOINES SPEECH: NOVEMBER, 1969

(DES MOINES, IOWA) — This is the photo of me that ran with my story on Vice President Spiro Agnew’s famous speech attacking the news media in Des Moines, on November 13, 1969. The speech was carried live on all three television networks, something unheard of in those days before the all news channels, especially for a Vice President.

I was in the audience for the speech to cover it, and tried to ask Agnew some questions as he walked the short distance between the ballroom in the Hotel Ft. Des Moines and the “holding room” just a few steps down the hallway, both before and after the speech.

Agnew did not respond. He looked disdainfully at me (at least that’s what it looked like to me), and just kept walking. Silently. He literally spoke to no one in the hallway as he entered and exited the event.

At 16, I was now old enough to have a drivers license, so when I picked up from crowd chatter that there was a reception for Agnew at the Governor’s mansion following the speech, I drove to the home of Iowa’s Governor at the time, Robert Ray, knocked on the door, and asked if I could come in and ask Agnew a question or two about the speech.

It was a rather bold move, in retrospect, considering the Vice President of the United States had just delivered a speech lambasting the news media in terms unprecedented at the time. But I almost made it inside. I was admitted a step or two past the threshold, and then asked to show some identification.

I showed my press pass. Big mistake.

I was quickly turned around and escorted out the door.

The most remarkable thing for me about this pix, after all these years, however, remains: I had so much more hair then.

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(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — If you are a regular reader of this column, you know it delivers “consistently ahead of the curve” political analysis, insight, commentary and opinion, all based on decades of experience of close up observation as an Iowa poltical reporter, long time top staffer in the US House and Senate, and in local, state, congressional and national political campaigns - including two presidential campaigns. That depth and breadth of expierience allows me to not only write about what’s happening, but also why, and what it means. I can also spot pretty quickly what public officials are NOT saying, what THAT means, and why.

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(WASHINGTON, D.C.) —- What color is the sky in U.S. Rep. Zach Nunn’s world? That’s a question one can’t help but ask after regularly reading his press releases and social media posts these days, posts which are some of the most disingenuous - false, misleading and overweening - among the Iowa delegation.

To put it directly, Nunn often seems to inhabit a world very different from the one in which most of us live. Most of us live in a world defined by facts. Nunn’s world seems to be built mainly of political spin, exaggeration, and often what appears to be deliberate deception.

In his press releases and social media posts, Nunn seems to believe that if he just says the word “bipartisan” often enough, people will think he is bipartisan.

In fact, Nunn is one of the most partisan members of the Iowa congressional delegation. And that’s a pretty high bar. Most Iowans in Congress are now routinely siding with Trump rather than with Iowa - or democracy - when the choice comes down to that.

Nunn’s votes in the House almost always toe the party line. His public statements are almost always trying to advance the quite questionable partisan, Republican narrative.

Nunn is even - for gawd’s sake - still trying to blame former President Biden. For everything. More than a year into the Trump presidency.

Even on something as clear cut as whether to sign the discharge petition to force a House vote on legislation to require public release of the Epstein files, Nunn refused to do so - thereby supporting the Trump directed effort by House Speaker Mike Johnson to keep the files secret, enabling continuation of Trump’s cover-up.

When that battle was lost, and the bill was forced onto the House floor, Nunn, like most House Republicans, voted for it and then issued a tough sounding statement about how he has always been for bringing those who took part in Epstein’s criminal activites to justice.

But that wasn’t true. He enabled the continuing cover up at least twice:;

• Once when he said nothing to protest Speaker Mike Johnson keeping the House out of session for most of the summer to avoid voting on the legislation that would require release of the Epstein files; and

• when he refused to sign the discharge petition for the bill that required the House to vote on requiring release of those files.

Zach Nunn even went to the White House to ask Donald Trump of New York City, Washington, DC and Palm Beach, Florida for permission to run for Governor of Iowa last year. When Trump told Nunn, “no,” Nunn dutifully returned to Capitol Hill like a dog whose master had just taught him the “Sit. Stay.” command and was overly eager to show he’d learned the command.

Nunn’s partisanship - his choosing Trump over Iowa - took a new turn this past Wednesday, when he had the opportunity to vote to take back the constitutionally mandated authority of Congress over US tariff policies.

More importantly, it was an opportunity to begin the process of ridding farm country of Trump’s arbitrary and farm economy wrecking tariffs.

It was - to most political observers - a classic and golden opportunity for Nunn to put a little daylight between himself and Trump - a pretty good strategic choice as Trump’s popularity continues to plummet and voters continuing to sour on Trump’s tariffs.

It was an especially golden opportunity for a highly partisan congressman trying hard to convince voters there is at least one non-hyper partisan bone in his body.

Nunn apparently didn’t see it. He let the opportunity pass.

Rep. Nunn just couldn’t bring himself to “quit” Trump even on that issue, even though Trump’s tariffs are - once again - decimating rural America.

Tarrifs are destroying foreign farm product markets for American farmers, making this iteration of Trump’s assault on rural America both a long term as well as short term problem.

But Nunn just couldn’t bring himself to do it. He chose Trump - again - over Iowa farmers.

The best Zach Nunn could manage was a meek suggestion that, yeah, he could see himself voting against a Trump legislative matter at some point. Some day. Maybe.

A real profile in courage there, and - I might add - a not very well honed political survival instinct in passing up that golden opportunity.

Again, it. makes you wonder what color it is that Zach Nunn sees politically, when he looks at the sky in his world. Not what most observers see, that’s for sure

As a membr of the US House Agriculture Committee, Nunn demonstrates his hyper partisanship again as he silently goes along with the Republican failure to write a new Farm Bill to replace the one that expired 868 days ago.

Smart move for a farm state Republican seeking re-election in a tough re-election year?

Hardly.

But Nunn continues to go along with Republicans in Congress and Trump, rather than get to work as a member of the House Ag Committee to move the bill to enactment.

What Nunn sees in that calculation remains a mystery.

Finally there was the vote Nunn cast this past week for the “SAVE Act.” Nunn describes it as “election integrity” legislation. It is nothing of the sort. It is a “voter supression” bill, designed to stop people unlikely to vote Republican from casting a ballot at all.

Keep in mind that American adults have a constitutioal right to vote.

The SAVE Act Nunn voted for would make it more difficult, and for many impossible, to exercise that right to vote by requiring that they present a passport or birth certificate - which matches their birth name - before they can vote.

Millions of Americans don’t have a passport.

Older Americans often don’t have eitheer a passport or a birth certificate.

And married women - good luck with this one. How many of you have a passport that matches your birth name, or a birth certificate where the name matches your married name?

The SAVE Act would make it harder for millions of Americans to cast a ballot, which is their constitutional right. But Nunn apparently thinks thats it’s a good idea to block millions from voting.

All he offers by way of explanation is partisan, boiler plate talking points.

Keep in mind that voter fraud on Election Day is very, very rare. An individual in America is more likely to be struck by lightng than to attempt to commit voter fraud. The rate at which voter fraud is attempted ranges from 0.0003 to 0.0025 percent.

To “solve” that essentially non-existent problem, Republicans - including Zach Nunn - are willing to disenfranchise millions more Americans with onerous new requirements that many citizens - who have a constitutional right to vote - will not be able to meet.

It’s like the poll tax and “literacy” tests of old in the South. The old Confederate states often required a poll tax from Black voters that they couldn’t afford, or required them to pass a very difficult “literacy” test they - by deliberate design - could not pass in order to exercise their constitutional right to vote.

The SAVE Act is the same sort of thing, just dressed up in more modern clothes. And Zach Nunn - always ready to do Trump and his party’s bidding - voted for it.

As usual, Nunn has found a way to disingenuously discuss this bill.

According to a recent Nunn meme on Facebook, it seems everybody is for this bill. Why it’s practically a unanimous no-brainer: “Democrats, Republicans, and Independents Agree: Voter I.D. Should Be Law of the Land.”

The truth is, everyone does not agree.

The bill Nunn voted for passed with the votes of all Republicans voting for it and all Democrats but one voting against it. Its purpose and methods are highly partisan and so was the vote to approve it - which was also far from unanimous - 218 “for” and 213 “against.”

That may signal party, universal approval in Zach Nunn’s world, but in the world most people live in, its signals division, hyper partisanship another attack against democracy, and yet another vote against what’s in the interest of Iowans.

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OVERDUE FARM BILL TRACKER: DAY 868

PHOTO CREDIT: Barry Piatt

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) —As of Sunday, February 15, 2026, a new Farm Bill is 868 days overdue. The 2018 five year federal Farm Bill which set basic federal farm policies - expired on September 30, 2023. It used to be “must past” legislation, but Republicans in Congres have made it not even an afterthought. They’ve essentially forgotten it. That goes for Iowa’s entire “Silent Six” congressional delegation, two thirds of which serve on either the House or Senate Agriculture Committees. Reps. Zach Nunn (R-3rd IA) and Randy Feenstra (R-4th IA) serve on the House Ag Committee and Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Joni Ernst (R-IA) are on the Senate Agriculture Committee.

They all let a new Farm Bill die on the vine 868 days ago, and “twist slowly in the wind,” unattended, ever since.

Iowa’s other two Reps. - Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-1st IA) and Ashley Hinson (R-2nd) have also said and done little to get a new Farm Bill moving, despite supposedly representing one of the nation’s most significant farm states in Congress.

The clock keeps ticking, and the calendar pages keep turning as family farmers across Iowa and throughout rural America continue to wait for vital farm legislation to be enacted, over due for 868 days now….and still counting.

Iowa has some of the most productive family farmers in the nation. When it comes to a new Farm Bill, the same cannot be said about its “Silent Six,” all Republican congressional delegation.

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PHOTOS FROM MY ARCHIVE: January 16, 1969

PHOTO CREDIT: Tom (Tucker) Straight

(DES MOINES, IOWA) - This photograph was taken, literally moments before Governor-elect Robert D. Ray entered the hall at Veterans Auditorium in Des Moines to be sworn in as Iowa’s 38th Governor. It was his first inauguration. He would serve nearly 14 years as Governor. This photo was taken in the box office at Veterans Auditorium, which was serving as Ray’s “green room.”

I noticed he wasn’t on the dias as the ceremonies were about to begin and left the hall to look for him. I wanted to know what was going on. I found him alone in the Vets ticket office. I thought nerves must have gotten the best of him, and couldn’t believe no one was with him to help clam him down. So I went in and chatted with him. Got a quick quote, and then we just visited.

I thought I was helping to calm him down, but in retrospect, I’m pretty sure that’s not how Ray saw it. He was probably there to have a few moments to himself before his life changed forever as he stepped into the governorship.

Yet, here was this cub reporter consuming his final moments as a priate citizen before officially becoming Governor. I got a brief, and final “private citizen” interview/comment from him. Literally less than two minutes after this photo was taken, he was introduced, walked to the dias from the back of the auditorium, took the oath and delivered his inaugural address.

On this day, i was 16 years old and not yet old enough to drive. With a note from my parents, I was excused from school for the day to cover Ray’s inauguration.

You can’t tell from the picture, of course, but Bob Ray turned out to be a pretty good governor, especially compared to the current one.

And this you can tell from the picture: I had a lot more hair back then.

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SOUND BITES AND RUMBLINGS:

An reader this weekend sent me copy of a response she received from Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) to a letter she sent him about the killing by ICE agents of two American citizens in Minneapolis, MN.

It’s difficult to believe that the letter came from the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, much less the current longest serving member of the US Senate.

In the response, Grassley:

• claimed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) “is responsible for ‘national security.’” That will certainly come as a surprise to the Department of Defense, which, under the US Constitution, has had that authority and responsibility since 1789.

Most astonishing, however, was Grassley’s deflection of the reader’s concern about the shootings in Minnapolis with these words:

• “I understand that there are ongoing investigations concerning the recent shootings in Minneapolis. We ought to let these investigations play out before making any judgments.”

Excuse me?

The “investigations” he is referencing barely deserve to be called investigations. On the federal level, DHS started out investigating itself after declaring its own conclusion without any investigation at all, just minutes after each shooting.

Later, the FBI was put in charge, but it has blocked. state and local investigators from conducting a thorough investigation by refusing to share evidence and generally not cooperating with local officials - in whose jurisdiction the murders by ICE occurred - and who would normally conduct an investigation in cooperation with the FBI.

But, yes, Senator, let’s not make any judgments about any of those compromised investigations, until they “play out” like it was some game in which innocent American citizens are being gunned down in the street.

Despite what we all saw on television.

Despite the old adage: Justice delayed is justice denied.

Despite the fact that the MAGA/ICE goons are still out there, and unless brought to justice prmptly will certainly shoot and kill again.

By the way, the real gem in Grassley’s nonsense response to an Iowan writing to express concern about ICE agets murdering two US cirizens in the streets of Minneapolis is this:

“I want to be clear though, that our officers should never be threatened or harmed while enforcing our laws.

“To that end, I believe there is a clear difference between the conduct protected by the First Amendment and unlawful obstruction.”

Unlawful obstruction?

In case Grassley missed it, neither murdered Minnesotan was unlawfully obstructing anything. That has never really been the issue here, beyond the rush to judgment by federal authorities who couldn’t wait to lie about what happened and did so from the start.

One would think the Chairman of the Judiciary Comittee - especially one who once had a reputation as an objective investigator - might be taking a more sensible approach to this.

Grassley’s response not only dreadfully misreads what happened in Minneapolis and what his role in forcing a legitimate investigation into it should be, it adds yet another level of deterioration to whatever slivers and shards remain of his ever-eroding legacy.

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(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — It’s award season in America!

On Sunday, February 8, the Super Bowl will determine the overall professional football team champion in America for 2026. The Winter Olympics are underway, awarding gold, silver and bronze medals to world class athletes from across the globe. The Golden Globe awards were presented in January, the Grammy Awards in February, and the Academy Awards are set for March.

This year I want to add to that list of recognition of truly memorable performances with an award of my own: “Iowa’s Worst Congressional Delegation Ever.”

This year’s winner of the “Worst Iowa Congressional Delegation Ever,” award is - of course - the current delegation, the Silent Six: Senators Grassley & Ernst, and Representatives Miller-Meeks, Hinson, Nunn, and Feenstra.

Sadly, selecting the winner this year wasn’t even a close call.

That’s really saying something, by the way, when you consider that over the years Iowa has sent to Washington, DC delegations that included:

• US Senator George Wallace Jones (D-IA), one of Iowa’s first two senators who served from 1848-1859. During the Civil War, he was arrested and briefly detained by the federal government for possible pro-Confederate sympathies, held briefly, and ordered freed by President Abraham Lincoln.

• U.S. Senator Roger Jepsen (R-IA). Jepsen served in the Senate from 1979 - 1985. In that single term he managed to pretty much single handedly implode the farm bloc in Congress which had worked since 1921 to enact strong farm legislation, by banding together and voting for all farm interests.

• U.S. Rep. Jim Nussle (R-2nd IA), who served from 1991 to 2007. He once delivered.a speech on the US House floor with a paper bag over his head. Seriously.

So, while there have been some very weak links in past Iowa delegations, there has never been a time - in my judgement - when the entire delegation, from top to bottom, was as bad as this one.

Here are just some of the concerns that made this year’s choice an easy one.

• Farm Bill Failure: Congress let the 2018 Farm Bill expire 861 days ago and has yet to write a new one. Two thirds - 4 of the 6 members - of this delegation serves on the House or Senate Agriculture Committee and bear special responsibility for this failure. The other two have done little to nothing to advance a new Farm Bill, either. They don’t even talk much about it, don’t push for it, and add a new day to the failure count every with every sunrise..

  This is failure on an unprecedented scale.

• Collapse of Chuck Grassley: There was a time when Grassley showed promise as a member of Congress. His work with whistle blowers, while often tinged with partisanship, provided real value. That hasn’t been the case for years, maybe decades. It’s all about politics now.

  For example, Donald Trump has corrupted broad swaths of the federal government - including the Justice Department - to an unprecedented degree.

  Grassley seems not have noticed any of that.

  Grassley is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee but has done little to nothing to combat or even investigate that corruption. Today, he is little more than a partisan shill for Donald Trump and the hyper partisans who surround him and run Congress.

  Former Senate Reublican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who now says he regrets much of what he did to save Trump from two Senate impeachment convictions, used to order Grassley around like his personal valet when it came to running the Senate Judiciary Committee. It was embarrassing to watch.

  Long ago, Grassley appeared to be on track to be a giant in the Iowa history books. Over the last couple of decades he has pretty much ensured the chapters in the Iowa history books that focus on Grassley will be the “Don’t Let This Happen to You” ones.

• Joni Ernst, the Incredible Shrinking Senator: Iowa’s current junior senator received a big welcome when she arrived in Washington, DC. As a freshman she was given the prized spot of delivering on national TV the Republican response to the State of the Union speech by the President. She blew it with a melodramatic story, obviously untrue, about a school bus on which every kid was wearing bread wrappers on their feet instead of winter boots.

  Ernst served two years (2023-2025) as Chair of the Senate Republican Policy Committee - a not insignificant post - but she did little to advance a coherent legislative plan for America for Senate Republicans during that time. When she tried to move up the ladder, her Republican colleagues in the Senate passed over her.

  She was supposed to bring a woman’s perspective to the Senate and an insider’s view on military issues. She did neither. She voted for Pete Hegseth’s confirmation as Defense Secretary despite a well documented history of mistreatment of women, and did little to object to Trump’s politicization of the military and - many argue unconstitutional - unilateral decision to invade Venezuela.

  At a Town Meeting when Iowa voters legitimately noted that people were going to die as a result of policies she was supporting, she brushed those concerns off with a simple and dismissive, “Well, we’re all going to die.”

• Rep. Marianette Miller-Meeks (R-1st IA) Her inability to win a congressional race by a comfortable margin has kept her focused on her next congressional race rather than her congressional work. She has little to show in terms of legislative accomplishments for her two terms in the U.S. House.

  When speaking to the crowd gathered for Donald Trump’s visit to Clive for a political really in January, Miller-Meeks provided one of the most bizarre sound bites in recent years. “As a veteran,” she said, “ I wanted to give the one finger salute to our welcoming committee. How many of you wanted to do that?” To Iowa’s credit, apparently not many because there was not much of a crowd reaction.

  The “welcoming committee” - a bigger crowd than the one gathered inside to hear Trump, as reported by IWC’s Bob Leonard - to which Miller-Meeks referred were average Iowans there to protest the president’s misuse of ICE and the military, and the killing of two unarmed, non-violent American citizens in the streets of Minneapolis.

  The remark ignored the fact that Miller-Meeks’ job is to listen - respectfully - to all Iowans, and insulted many veterans who put their lives on the line to ensure that Americans have the freedom to protest government actions.

• Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-2nd IA) - What Ashley Hinson has done to think she deserves a promotion to a US Senate seat remains a mystery. She failed a major leadership test when, following the murder of an unarmed, non violent Mother in Minneapolis, she praised the ICE agents, claimed they were keeping cities safe - even as it instigated violence, kidnapping, and murder in Minneapolis.

  She even harshly criticized - and grossly misrepresented - the work of a non profit in Iowa City training protesters in how to do so legally and non-violently. After misrepresenting the group’s work and claiming it was promoting violence, Hinson disingenuously added that we need to “lower the temperature.”

  Falsely accusing an organization promoting peaceful protest methods as one promoting violence against federal agents certainly isn’t moving in that direction.

  Violence by federal agents acting under Trump’s direction is a defining characteristic of these times and Hinson has misjudged and misplayed it every time.

• Rep. Zach Nunn (D-3rd IA): Nunn may be the most politically inept politician ever elected to major public office in Iowa. He has yet to hold a public Town Meeting this term. Readers tell me he often doesn’t respond to mail, and if he does, it is often full of political talking points, or non responsive.

  His press releases are comical as they claim way too much credit for just about everything that happens in Washington, DC that he favors. He still almost excuslively plays the partisan blame game, criticizing former President Biden for everything, rather than performing genuine, thoughtful analysis. Most observers I know stopped taking his press releases seriously in his first term becasue of all the metaphorical stomping around he did in them, “demanding” action from President Biden on what seemed to be every issue on which Nunn had opinion,

  When he decided he wanted to run for Governor of Iowa, Nunn went to the White House and asked for Trump’s permission to do so. When Trump said “no,” Nunn returned to his office and issued a giddy press statement announcing he’d just won Trump’s endorsement - for the office he already holds.

• Rep. Randy Feenstra (R-IA 4th): Feenstra also has little to show for his time in Congress, but at least was willing to admit that he’s not a Congress kind of guy. While that conclusion might be a strong argument for retirement, Feenstra makes it as a case for running for Governor.

  Why does he want to be Governor of Iowa? As far as I can tell he hasn’t really said much about that beyond that he wants to do whatever Trump wants him to do in Iowa.

  Feenstra appears to have not noticed that Trump is underwater on most issues, even in Iowa. Running as a Trump sycophant - even in Iowa - appears to be a very poor strategy in 2026.

  In any event, it would be nice if Feenstra had a platform or program he was pushing - a reason for running - beyond that he doesn’t like being in Congress and doesn’t think he’s very good at it. (Which he isn’t.")

  Elections are not high school “Career Fair Day.” Feenstra’s musings about what he likes and other jobs he’d like to try, are not enough. Randy Feenstra owes Iowans a serious analysis about Iowa’s problems and proposed solutions that amount to more than “what Trump said.”

  Feenstra’s other hallmark as a candidate is that he seems to think it is enough to get elected Governor if all he does is call State Auditor Rob Sand - the likely Democratic nominee - an “extreme liberal.”

  First, Sand is no “extreme” anything.

  Second, some argue whether the label “liberal” even fits Sand.

  Finally, I’m pretty sure Iowans are catching onto the idea that decades of Republican campaigns based primarily on name calling is really just a substitute for thinking.

  A state with serious problems - a glass of cancer water anyone? - deserves and needs more than name calling from its leaders.

  Few accomplishments in Congress. Part of the congressional surrender of congressional power to Trump’s increasingly fascist presidency; In hip deep in the failure to pass a new Farm Bill. No honest analysis of the state’s problems or thoughtful proposals for solutions.

  Sounds like a great program on which to run for Governor, right?

I think Election Day 2026 - if the fascists allow one - is going to be a disaster for Republicans. I see no reason that Iowa will be an exception to that.

This delegation certainly doesn’t have the public record or political skills to rise above a Trump backlash that delivers wholesale Republican defeat along with it.

In fact, this delegation of Iowa Republicans have positioned themselves - perfectly - to be part of exactly such a backlash.

OVERDUE FARM BILL TRACKER: 861 days

It has now been 861 days since the 2018 Farm Bill expired and has not been replaced with new basic federal farm legislation. The failure to pass a new Farm Bill ranks right up there with some of the most colossal failures of Congress in history. Somehow, Congress just hasn’t found time to get around to what used to be considered “must pass” legislation for American farmers. Meanwhile, President Trump has been busy doing permanent damage to foreign farm markets with his aritrary, unilateral trrifs that even a one year $12 billion bailout won’t fix and allowing the purchase of an additional $800 million worth of beef into the US from Argentina.

The goal of allowing $800 million in additional beef imports from Argentina: to help depress the price American farmers get for their cattle. So much for a so-called free market.

A political fact of life: Farming is vitally important to Iowa’s economy. But if Iowa farmers keep voting for Trump and his fellow Republicans who keep doing this kind of economic damage to them - and then riding it out with multi billion dollar bail outs - it is going to be hard to expect anyone to feel sorry for them

Elections, as they say, have consequences.

Two thirds of Iowa’s congressional delegation bear direct responsibility for the failure to enact a new Farm Bill, as members of the US Senate and House Agriculture Committee: Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst; and U.S. Reps. Zach Nunn (R-3rd IA) and Randy Feenstra (R-4th IA).

Iowa’s other two members of the state’s delegation - Reps. Mariannete Miller-Meeks (R-1st IA) and Ashley Hinson (R- 2nd IA) also bear a big chunk of the responsibility for letting the expired Farm Bill “wither on the vine” for 861 days and still counting.

They represent a major farm state. They ought to be honking the horn on this issue and building coalitions every day, but they aren’t.

The urgent need for a new Farm Bill appears to have largely been forgotten by the entire delegation.

Iowans in Congress have also failed to stop Trump from opening the flood gates to massive new beef imports from Argentina.

Some members of the delegation have opined against them.

But here’s the thing: they are not podcasters or talk show hosts. Their opinions might be interesting, but those opinions don’t change anything. Have they persuaded Trump to reverse course and stopped Trump’s market intervention with the sole aim of depressing prices? What have they actually accomplished on this issue? The answer; nothing.

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PHOTOS FROM MY ARCHIVE:

If this item from my files looks worn and tattered, it’s because it has a lot of miles on it and has seen a lot of history. It’s the press credential I carried in my wallet for years as a cub reporter for the Dallas County News. It traveled with me through the streets of Chicago in August 1968 as I covered the Democratic National Convention and the protests that engulfed it. I carried it into the convention hall when Hubert Humphrey and Edmund Muskie were nominated for president and vice president. I carried it at the first inauguration of Iowa Governor Robert D. Ray in January 1969. It was in my wallet when I covered the December 1967 press conference when Sen. Bourke Hickenlooper (R-IA) announced he would be retiring and at the fund-raising dinner boosting the candidacy of then Governor Harold E. Hughes to succeed Hickenlooper (which he did), a fundraising diner at Vererans Auditorium in Des Moines headlined by Senator Robert F. Kennedy (R-NY)

The credential was prepared by, and is signed by George T. De Ford, Editor and General Manager, a man whose confidence in my ability to start covering politics before I was old enough to obtain an Iowa driver’s license quite literally changed my life.

As the mass layoffs at the Washington Post in the nation’s capitol reminded us this past week, our traditional sources of news and information are shrinking. The Iowa Writers Collaborative (IWC) exists to help fill those holes, by ensuring that Iowans and others have ready access to a variety of local news, commentary, and features.

I’m proud to be part of the IWC and invite you to check out the the weekly columns by the more than 80 professional writers who write on the Substack platform about topics important to Iowa and beyond.

Check them out, find some you like, and support them by reading and sharing them, and subscribing to them. Tell your friends, family and neighbors when you find some you like and urge them to read them, too.

Here’s the Sunday roundup of the latest columns from the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative.

https://iowawriters.substack.com

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Plus a thoughtful discussion of what it all means.

I bring more than 50 years experience of close observation of politics and government - nationally, and in Iowa - to my work here. I’ve worked as a political reporter in Iowa and as a long time senior advisor and staffer in major political campaigns, and in both the US House and Senate.

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PHOTO CREDIT: US Rep. Randy Feenstra’s official Facebook page

Left to. Right: Rep. Zach Nunn (R-3rd IA), Randy Feenstra (R-4th IA); Speaker Mike Johnson (R-4th LA), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-1st IA), and Ashley Hinson (R -2nd IA)

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) —- Technically, the above photo is Iowa’s all Republican US House delegation, celebrating the birthday last week of Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson (R- 4th LA) on the House floor.

While last week was awful for most Americans, Iowa’s House delegation apparently found time to celebrate the Speaker’s birthday on the House floor - but not to avoid yet another government shutdown. Which is underway - again - as I write this on Saturday night.

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Seriously, Republican elected officials must have all been born without the “governing” gene - or they have it surgically removed upon taking the oaath of office - because they are pretty lousy at governing - across the board.

The Speaker’s birthday was Friday, January 30 - which happens to also be the same day Donald Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) released more of the Epstein sex trafficking criminal files that were required by law to be released in full no later December 19, 2025.

The DOJ release of the Epstein files brought the total portion of the files released so far - a full month and more after the lawful deadline for releasing 100% of the files - to only 50%.

Just half of what’s required by law, and much of what has been released is so redacted to be useless.

At the same time, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche (Trump’s former personal lawyer) also announced that this is it. At 50 %, they aren’t releasing any more. They are done releasing material. There’s nothing more of interest.

Nice try, Mr. Blanche, but that decision is not yours, the Attorney General’s, the DOJ’s or the President’s to make - given the law. And given the subpoena requiring full release of the files that dates back to last summer.

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In other words, the DOJ effectively announced it is “thumbing its nose” at the law and at the subpoena from here on out. It will do whatever it wants to do. The law and Congress be damned.

Now, what would you do if you were a Republican member of the Congress from Iowa; part of a co-equal branch of government under the Constitution; facing these same circumstances?

Party on the House floor and get your picture taken with Mike Johnson the Speaker who kept the US House out of session for five weeks last summer to avoid having to vote on the bill that required full release of the Epstein files in the first place?

That would not have been my choice.

According to pubic opinion polls, it would not have been your choice either.

But it certainly appears to have been the choice Iowans in the US House made.

Now technically, we do not know when this photo was actually taken.

But we do know Rep. Randy Feenstra (R - 4th IA) proudly put it up on his Facebook page Friday with a cheery “Happy Birthday Speaker Johnson!” message, so at the very least it was a “virtual” party on the House floor, celebrating the Speaker’s birthday.

Friday was also the same exact day Epstein’s victims were once again denied justice, gas lighted, and short changed by Donald Trump’s DOJ.

Iowa’s House members will be quick to tell you that they all voted for the bill that required full release of the Epstein files.

What they won’t tell you is that they voted for that bill only when they had no other choice.

What they won’t tell you is that not one of them objected to Johnson keeping the House metaphorically circling the airport for five weeks this summer as a dodge against voting on that bill at all.

They won’t tell you that not one of them asked, wrote, or called on Speaker Johnson to stop stalling, bring the bill to the House floor and hold a vote on it - and get some justice for the victims and accountability for the the very wealthy, powerful criminals who raped them.

Nor, most importantly, will they tell you that not one of them signed the discharge petition which finally forced the bill to the House floor, where - kicking and screaming - Johson finally had to bring it for a vote, and the Iowans had no choice, politicallly, given the polls - to vote for it.

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It passed, just as Johnson and most House Republicans feared it would all along, a fear which drove Johnson’s five week shuffle to keep it off the floor and away from a House vote.

Once Iowa’s silent enablers had to vote on the bill, and had no choice but to vote for the bill that they previously would not lift a finger to rescue from Johnson’s strangle hold, they all talked tough about Epstein and justice for the victims and accountability for those who abused and raped young girls, because, of course, what else would they do once they were forced into the spotlight on the issue, with public opinion piled high against them.

But when DOJ missed the required-by-law deadline, when it started trickling out the files at a snail’s pace weeks past the legal deadline; when more than a month after that legal deadline had passed and DOJ unilaterally announced - with just half the documents required by law to be released actually released - what did Iowa’s all Republican delegation have to say in response

Nothing.

Nothing.

And exactlly nothing.

Now, I don’t believe Iowans in Congress suddenly became pro-child sexual abuse and pro-sex trafficking.

What I do think, however, is that there is an unavoidable conclusion to be drawn from their disgusting silence: they are more than willing to look the other way - to remain silent - about those crimes to protect Donald Trump who clearly does not want the Epstein files released and who has done everything he can do to keep them out of sight short of piling all six million documents, videos and photographs in the middle of Fifth Avenue and burn them.

The only reason, probably, that he hasn’t done that already, come to think of it, is beause he didn’t think of it yet. Now I’m sorry I mentioned it.

Staying silent.

Looking the other way.

Aiding and abetting Trump’s perpetual game of “deep sixing” the Epstein files; Being unwilling to do anything to bring justice to the victims or accountability to their rapists and traffickers unless backed into a corner by events beyond their control

None of that would have been my choice. And as I said, according to pubic opinion polls, I know those choices likely wouldn’t have been your choices, either, nor the choice of Iowans or most Americans.

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For the Iowans in Congress, however, it appears to have been a no-brainer.

Friday’s announcement by the DOJ that it plans to ignore the law, continue to openly and fully disobey it from here on out, unilaterally declare its noncompliance with the law somehow full and complete compliance?

Not a problem for Iowa’s U.S. House Republicans apparently.

Not enough to cause them to speak up on behalf of the victims. Not enough to prompt them to demand accountability for the abusers.

Not enough to stop party time on the House floor, that very day, with the Speaker of the House who did everything in his power to keep the Epstein files hidden, including “locking out” House members from the House chamber for five weeks to avoid the vote that required the release of those files.

Epstein’s victims deserve so much better.

So do Iowans.

PHOTO CREDIT: Barry Piatt

OVERDUE FARM BILL TRACKER: DAY 854

Iowa’s farmers produce and deliver excellence.

The same, sadly, can’t be said about Iowa’s congressional delegation when it comes to the five-year federal farm bill, vital legislation for Iowa’s farmers.

The last Farm Bill expired 854 days ago. No new Farm Bill has been enactd to replace it, 854 days later.

Two thirds of Iowa’s congressional delegation serve on either the US House or US Senate Agriculture Committees. They are: US Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA), and Joni Ernst (R-IA); and US Reps. Zach Nunn (R-3rd IA) and Randy Feenstra (R-4th IA).

Those four had - and still have - special responsibilities to get a new Farm Bill enacted and to make sure it supports family farm agriculture.

Grassley, Ernst, Nunn, and Feenstra failed to meet that responsibility before the old Farm Bill expired. They have failed to meet that responsibility each of the 854 days since.

The clock is still ticking.

US Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-1st IA) and Ashley Hinson (R-2nd IA), who are not on the House Agriculture Committee, but are members of one of the nation’s most important farm states, share that responsibility - and that failure.

Compounding the failure by Feenstra and Hinson is the fact that - despite failing so miserably and for so long on what is probably the most important bill for Iowa’s farm economy that Congress ever writes - they both think they deserve a promotion.

Both are running for higher office - instead of working to pass a new Farm Bill.

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SOUND BITES & RUMBLINGS:

Attorney General Pam Bondi once claimed the Epstein criminal files were “on her desk” with their imminent release pending her final review and sign off. Nothing happened.

Then as the DOJ tried to explain why nothing was happening, they offered as an excuse that the Epstein files consist of six million documents, plus photographs and videos.

Friday, Assistant Attorney General Todd Blanche (Trump’s former personal lawyer) said the latest batch of Epstein file documents DOJ was releasing - which brought the total percentage of existing documents now released to just 50% - would be the DOJ’s last release. They were done. Nothing more of interest to be found or released.

Nice try, Mr. Blanche, but this is not the DOJ’s call to make, nor the president’s. There’s a federal law requiring 100% release - deadline was December 19, 2025, by the way - and a congressional subpoena from last summer requirng full release as well.

Not to mention reporters and victims are calling out obvious missing evidence from what has been released.

Tons of unanswered questions, of course, remain. But there’s one question that hasn’t even been asked yet. It is this week’s “Sound Bites & Rumblings” entry.

How did six million of anything fit on Pam Bondi’s desk?

Bondi’s claim that the Epstein files were on her desk with full release just around the corner was an obvious lie

As is Todd Blanche’s latest assertion that there’s nothing to see here, folks. Move along.

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PHOTOS FROM MY ARCHIVES: SEN. BOURKE HICKENLOOPER (R-IA) ANNOUNCES HIS RETIREMENT

This pix is former Iowa Governor and U.S. Senator Bourke Hickenlooper (R-IA) moments after concluding a press conference at the Kirkwood Hotel in Des Moines on December 28, 1967. At that press conference, Hickenlooper announced he would retire from the Senate at the end of his current term rather than seek re-election in 1968.

It was the first “big” political press conference I covered. I was a freshman in high school. I was excused from school that day so I could cover it, and my parents drove me to the Kirkwood Hotel early that Thursday morning. At age 14, I was too young to have a driver’s license, didn’t have a car, and couldn’t legally drive myself.

Hickenlooper, as I recall, was in a nostalgic mood at the press conference, ready to reminisce. But it was also clear he was announcing a reluctant decision to leave politics and elective office behind. There was an air of sadness and resignation about him. At age 71 he said he was resigning because of his age and “a number of other personal reasons,” one being that the people of Iowa deserved an energetic campaign for his Senate seat in 1968. He wasn’t sure he could deliver that at his age.

He told a lot of stories that morning, but my favorite was the one about accompanying a college friend home for Christmas. The friend introduced him to his grandmother, who didn’t hear well.

“Who?” she said. “I’m not hearing his last name. Say it again.”

The friend repeated, louder this time: “Hickenlooper, Grandma, Hickenlooper.”

“I’m sorry, I’m not getting it. Say it louder. Speak up,” the grandmother said, raising her own voice now, in frustration.

“Hickenlooper!” the friend shouted this time. “Hickenlooper! His last name is Hickenlooper!”

His grandmother turned away and walked off. “Oh, never mind,” she said with a wave of her hand. “All I can make out is "Hickenlooper"

The retiring senator laughed as he told the story, and said he’d been telling it his entire career in politics since the 1930s.

It was a funny story. Hickenlooper was, indeed, a mouthful. Senator Hickenlooper said he recognized that fact.

The story, he added, helped voters not only pronounce his name, but remember it.

And he insisted the story was true.

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