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Iowa senators proved sensitive to public pressure when they exempted private colleges from punishment for offering diversity programs. They had thought about pulling Iowa Tuition Grant funding from families whose students attend colleges with diversity efforts like Buena Vista University. Then the backlash came. From places like Orange City, Sioux Center, Waverly and Oskaloosa — all strong Republican towns — they told legislators to lay off private colleges.
The legislature has taken a hostile attitude to higher education for the past few years. It became more intense with Donald Trump resuming the presidency. Trump was having a good time beating up on the Ivy League, so the scholars in the statehouse decided to harass places like Wartburg, Simpson and Buena Vista. Buena Vista offers diversity support for student success. Half of BVU’s freshman class are first-generation college students. BVU offers instruction, help in finding a job and support when things get tough. This is what students are paying for. They expect it.
The donors to Iowa’s private colleges are mainly conservative folks who understand the importance of education. If they thought that helping a Black or Latino student was silliness, the boards of trustees would not approve these programs. BVU Board Chair Mike Pierce is a Houston lawyer, not some freak to be second-guessed by a half-witted legislator.
The whole exercise was an insult to education.
It goes on. Just the private colleges were exempted by an amendment but the anti-DEI bill remains alive. State universities have been ordered to stand down their efforts at inclusion. Same with state agencies. “Policies like this are already hurting Iowa, and we can see it as employers are struggling to attract workers, and our young people move away and don’t come back, and our colleges and universities are having a very hard time attracting students, and our economic growth is lagging behind other states,” said Sen. Sarah Trone Garriott, a Democrat running for Congress. “This is moving in the wrong direction.”
Sen. Ken Rozenboom, R-Oskaloosa, complained about the blowback legislators are getting for attacking higher education, calling it “a lot of fear-mongering, a lot of exaggeration, hyperbole and that sort of thing.” Oskaloosa is the home of William Penn University.
The fear-mongering is to suggest that students at Iowa’s colleges are a radical lot. All we suggested is that big Republican donors give money to private colleges, that these institutions are engines of economic activity in rural Iowa, and politicians were only making things stupidly difficult. Those are facts, not fear.
State Auditor Rob Sand announced this week that he will seek the Democratic nomination for governor. With $7 million in hand raised mainly from his family, the Decorah native probably has a clear field. This will be an open seat for November 2026 as Gov. Kim Reynolds will not seek re-election.
Several Republicans, including Attorney General Brenna Bird and Congressman Randy Feenstra among others, have expressed interest in running. If he chose to run, Agriculture Secretary Mike Naig would be strong. The party has many strong, well-known candidates.
Sand’s announcement Monday mentioned fighting waste and fraud. It will take something more to excite a state’s imagination that has given itself over to Donald Trump. If Sand clears the field with his cash on hand, he has a responsibility to lead the party back from the wilderness. Sand portrays himself as a nonpartisan in a partisan system.
This campaign should explore how far Iowa has gone back under many years of Republican Party governance. That is a decidedly partisan undertaking. Sand must define the Democratic Party vision, which has been lost. He has to provide a solution to the consolidation that has choked Iowa over the past several decades. He needs to fire up a base that is badly beaten down.
The governor’s race offers Democrats their only opportunity to bring some balance back to the statehouse. Sand has the money if he can stir up the passion. Democrats lost Iowa in part because voters don’t know what they stand for. Sand has to make it clear. This is a red state, and it will take some sort of an effort to turn it purple again. It can be done. It must be, before we drive this state over a cliff.
We appreciate that Ryan Melton of Webster City announced his Democratic campaign against Rep. Randy Feenstra, R-Hull, considering that Melton has a slim chance of winning. Melton gets the issues — pipelines, consolidation, rising cancer rates and polluted air and water. He refuses PAC money. But Melton is not a Republican. That is a big problem in the Fourth District.
Melton has run twice before. He worked it but had a day job in the insurance business, unlike Feenstra. The congressman has thought about running for governor. If he did, Melton would still face an uphill battle against Feenstra’s successor, no matter who it is. It can be done. People are not happy with the way things are going. Berkley Bedell surprised everyone by beating Wiley Mayne. It can happen.
Somebody needs to try. Melton is. He deserves our respect and gratitude for running and forcing a discussion of real issues.
Soybeans jumped on the news that the US and China struck a trade deal, or at least a deal to call a halt to an overblown trade war. Not an over-the-moon jump. Markets expressed measured relief early after negotiators came to terms in Geneva last weekend. Still, much uncertainty remains, and uncertainty is the bane of business.
First, this truce is for only 90 days. Trump changes his mind by the day. Each nation reduced their tariffs from 145% and 125% to 30%. That is still a 30% tax on ag export trade. China has been among our biggest buyers of soy and pork, but those sales dissipated in the past few years as China developed closer trade ties with Brazil and Argentina. We lost a lot of our exports already. That has been baked into the price. This goes back to Trump’s trade war with China from his first term.
Each side sobered up to the fact that they need each other. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the US does not want to decouple its economy from China’s. That is a much more realistic position than Trump has taken. It took a beating on Wall Street to define reality for Trump. We need basic materials from China to make computers. China needs our market for those computers.
China is nonetheless committed to food security as its national priority. It will buy beans and pork from us if we can finally get a trade deal, but it will not be the amount that we once had. This escalation of tensions brought on by Trump will not help matters. We can all be relieved, for now, that we are backing away from the precipice.
We have a new pope who is committed to the rights of immigrants, and a new bishop for the Sioux City Diocese, Most Rev. John Keehner, who was just identified for the job by Pope Leo of Chicago. This would be a good time to start amplifying the preferential treatment of the poor message here in Northwest Iowa.
Pope Francis urged us to build bridges, not walls, and his friend Pope Leo follows that course.
Immigrants need someone to speak up for them in clear terms, and remind us in Iowa of our obligation to welcome the stranger. The church has an obligation to serve its flock by informing everyone about the need for immigrants in America, and in our communities. In Storm Lake and Sioux City, that means Latino. They live in fear. They need to know that somebody has their back.
We hope that Bishop Keehner makes it a theme of his tenure, welcoming our neighbors. It’s easy enough to lose sight of what is right when you believe you are under assault. It takes somebody with agency to remind us of our humanity, and to provide a factual counter-narrative to the established political dogma of this time and place. It could make a real difference in people’s lives if the church asserted itself on this issue as it has on others, to great effect right here in Northwest Iowa. What an opportunity!
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