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With hope for the holidays in his heart, Sen. Chuck Grassley predicted — when the Storm Lake Times Pilot prodded — that a farm bill should pass by Christmas. It is three years overdue already. A new farm bill is unlikely to take shape before the midterm elections. A radical version passed the House that bogged down in the Senate, where it will be moderated.
Republicans control the House, Senate and White House but could not muster the homely old farm bill that provides vital funds to production agriculture and nutrition aid to families (especially rural children and seniors). The lack of urgency is explained by the fact that the so-called Big Beautiful Bill threw a ton of money at agriculture over Trump’s disastrous trade wars, and propped up crop insurance. Ad hoc reactionary bills have replaced the regular process in one-party government.
Democrats may well end up winning the House in November, so Republicans would like to get a farm bill wrapped up and delivered to President Trump for his signature before a new Congress is seated. Cuts to nutrition programs and increases to crop insurance subsidies without conservation strings attached can then be codified into law for five years.
The Trump Administration will spend what it takes to keep the senate seat from Iowa occupied by a Republican. The farm bill is a big yawn to Trump, he said as much. If he has to spend another $11 billion on ag and food processing to hang onto the Senate, that is small change. You don’t need a farm bill to win an election.
Grassley might have just drawn his Christmas prediction from wishing on a star. The farm bill may be history. If you can put it off for three years, why not four or five or forever? Destroy the urban-rural farm bill coalition and see how long subsidized crop insurance lasts on an ad-hoc basis.
Gov. Kim Reynolds during a GOP fundraiser last week threatened to take her legacy tour to all 99 counties. Rob Sand should pray every night that she follows through. She would like to remind Iowans of a record that made her the least popular governor in the nation for a long time running. The Don’t Tread On Me caucus in Lyon County would grind its teeth if she showed up with outcast Rep. Randy Feenstra to talk up carbon dioxide pipelines.
It would be a hoot if she could visit the former site of the Newell Good Samaritan nursing home, which closed on Medicaid cuts. The Good Sam was a good operation, but who needs senior citizens close to home to remind you that you are all going to die? No doubt a crowd would show up to congratulate her at the closed maternity wards in Council Bluffs and Newton. Perhaps she could make a stop at Iowa State University and see how that nutrient reduction program is working out — you pulled out the water quality monitors so the problem must be gone!
If Reynolds comes to Storm Lake, she should reminisce fondly of how she bragged about chasing out immigrants down at the border. Well over half this town is immigrant.
At the same fundraiser, the man who would succeed Reynolds, Zach Lahn of Belle Plaine and Kansas, sang her praises and celebrated his endorsement from Donald Trump, who rains trouble on farmers and says he loves inflation amid war. Trump is underwater even in Iowa. Affordability is a problem when your health-care deductible is $10,000 and you lost your Obamacare subsidy.
It would double the fun if Trump could join Reynolds for a stop in Ottumwa, which used to be someplace but now can’t keep a health clinic. Lahn could explain how the whole Make America Healthy Again groove is so cool that it makes vaccines so yesterday.
Sand is a strong candidate with a lot of money who has won a statewide race as auditor. Give him credit. A key reason he leads in the polls is that Kim Reynolds is so unpopular, and Zach Lahn just endorsed all of it. We have put up with 10 years of decline and Lahn would continue it.
“You passed the largest tax cut for the middle class in the history of our state, and you passed school choice reform,” Lahn said. “That’s the envy of so many states in the nation. We have so much to thank you for, and I thank you.”
The tax cuts leave us with a billion-dollar annual deficit. The school choice reform gives private school vouchers to wealthy people in West Des Moines. Meanwhile, the Storm Lake School Board just cut $500,000 from the budget, and people are not bashing down the doors of St. Mary’s with their vouchers. Boone is laying off a cadre of teachers.
Sand should advertise the tour.
Democrats held their own fundraiser with special guest Pete Buttigieg, who tied with Bernie Sanders in the Iowa Caucuses. As such, Buttigieg suggested that the Iowa Caucuses should be first with Democrats again. “I am very proud of the fact that I was forged in the political furnace of the Iowa Democratic caucuses,” Mayor Pete said, according to The Iowa Mercury.
He described how you have to campaign in diners and at barbecues and submit to questions from average folks, and then argue it out at the caucus. “I just think there is incredible value in that process,” Buttigieg said.
The caucuses remain first with the Republican Party. The Democratic National Committee under President Biden’s directions unseated Iowa from its leadoff position. After Kamala Harris lost, the DNC may revisit its decision. Recent appearances by presidential aspirants like Buttigieg and Kentucky Gov. Andy Brashear suggest Iowa may be in the mix. If the state flips the governor’s office and Senate seat from red to blue, the argument becomes a lot stronger. Democrats need to figure out a way to engage with rural voters again. Iowa is as good a place as any to start.
From Houston, Texas, to Biddeford, Maine, masked federal agents are gunning people down in the streets. On Monday, it was Joan Sebastian Guerrero, a 26-year-old legal resident, dead in Biddeford. An ICE agent shot him, pulled him out of a vehicle and handcuffed him as he lay dying. He was not the subject of any investigation. He was just in the wrong place up against a malignancy. ICE said they shot at the employed father because they thought he posed a threat to public safety.
Days earlier, legal resident Salgado Araujo, 52, was shot through a vehicle’s open passenger window in Houston. He was not the subject of any investigation.
Two citizens were shot dead by ICE agents in Minneapolis. ICE has shot at 29 civilians during Donald Trump’s second term. Mexico protests the deaths of 17 people in US custody.
Citizens are dead. Legal residents murdered because they are Latino. Nobody is safe.
For now, it appears that meatpacking is a haven. Enough fear has been instilled to keep everyone with their heads down. Tyson claims all its employees are documented. That protects nobody if they are tagged as suspicious. If they see a masked man with a gun and so much as twitch, they could be shot down — the Department of Homeland Security will just say they were a threat.
ICE sows distrust and fear. That is the whole point. Terrorize the people and they will have no choice but to submit and do what they are told. Freedom dies with Renee Good.
Ashley Hinson is a strong supporter of Trump’s anti-immigrant campaign that terrorizes our hard-working, God-fearing Latino neighbors in Storm Lake, The City Beautiful. People here who have their papers are afraid of being deported or murdered. They have no voice. You are their voice at the ballot box. We need a Senate that will put a check on murder in the streets.
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