Growing up in Iowa in the 1980s and 1990s, Kelcey appreciated the “live and let live” attitude that Iowa took toward most things. Keep to yourself, you do you, and as long as no one gets hurt, we’re good.

Part of that “live and let live” attitude was home rule for cities and counties. “Home rule” means that local governments can make any law that isn’t prohibited by a state or federal law. Iowans recognized the sense in letting the governments that know them best–their local ones–set their local laws, so they amended the Iowa Constitution to grant home rule to cities in 1968 and to counties in 1978.

Prior to the amendment, Iowa operated under “Dillon’s Rule,” named after the Iowa Supreme Court justice whose 1868 legal opinion stated that local governments could only take actions when expressly authorized to do so by the state legislature. This opinion only applied in Iowa initially but was later adopted by other states.

Dillon’s Rule was, in short, a pain for everyone. According to the Iowa League of Cities, its disadvantages included:

(a) a city needed legislation to make sure that it had the necessary express power to carry out its functions of governing; (b) the legislature spent an inordinate amount of time dealing with essentially local matters; (c) the legislature either would fail to grant the power or would hamstring the exercise of the power; and (d) city attorneys were frequently unable to ascertain whether their cities had the necessary authority to act in given circumstances.

100 years later, the state had had enough of leaving cities guessing and spending excessive time on matters best left to cities and counties. The legislature passed those two amendments and got out of the business of micromanaging local government.

Until recently.

After becoming a Republican trifecta in 2017, Iowa’s state government first passed several bills remaking the state in the party’s image (anti-union, anti-choice, anti-education, anti-woman), then turned to micromanaging local government.

These micromanaging bills and laws frequently appear to target specific local governments, especially those run by Democrats. Some examples from this long list are:

• Prohibiting local minimum wages;

• Restricting locals’ ability to oversee their police departments;

• Prohibiting local governments from banning discrimination based on gender or rental income source;

• Prohibiting local plastic bag bans;

• Prohibiting county auditors from choosing satellite voting locations;

• Prohibiting masking requirements;

• Forcing the county boards of supervisors for Johnson, Story, and Blackhawk Counties to be elected in districts instead of county-wide votes.

And they aren’t done meddling. Among others, this year’s session has included bills dictating where, how, and to whom local libraries can provide services, removing the semi-autonomous library board powers, and prohibiting local governments from issuing local identification cards to their residents.

The last one would kill the popular Johnson County Community ID program. The program has existed for 11 years without controversy. But, as one Republican legislator wrote to Kelcey when she contacted him expressing her support for the program, undocumented immigrants could get those IDs, and the lawmaker’s constituents agreed that this was a problem. He declined to say how the people of his district–more than an hour’s drive from Johnson County–were impacted by our ID program in any way.

And that disconnect is itself the problem. Even (and perhaps especially) when their constituents have no skin in the game and no knowledge of the local conditions, Iowa legislators are micromanaging our local governments based on their constituents’ perceived preferences. In other words, rather than addressing truly statewide issues like water pollution, our lagging economy, population loss, or so on, the Iowa Legislature is back to “[spending] an inordinate amount of time dealing with essentially local matters.”

Iowa’s legislature has become like an incompetent boss: it is failing to do its own job and micromanaging its subordinates out of doing theirs. This is exactly what our home rule amendments were meant to prevent.

Kelcey Patrick-Ferree and Shannon Patrick live in Iowa.

Originally published in the Press-Citizen on March 28, 2026.

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“A man’s home is his castle” isn’t just a proverb. It’s a principle that runs deep through American culture and law. Coming into someone’s house and disrespecting them is a cultural taboo, enshrined in film and internet forum alike. And in law, government agents are generally forbidden to come into someone’s house without either their permission or a judicial order.

This principle is enshrined not just in law but in the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution:

Our experiences as English colonies gave us plenty of reason to include these protections in our Bill of Rights. In England, subjects could defend their homes even against unlawful entry by the king’s agents. But in the American colonies, for purposes of foiling smuggling, authorities relied on generalized “writs of assistance” that allowed their bearers to enter any house and search for and seize anything that was illegal. They were valid until six months after the signing sovereign’s death. This power to invade any space at any time was intolerable to the colonists and the Founders.

Under the Fourth Amendment, American law prohibits government agents from entering your home without swearing an oath, giving a very specific reason (probable cause), and obtaining a warrant stating the place to be searched and the people or things to be searched for. The warrant must be issued by a third party, a magistrate or judge who is responsible for ensuring that law enforcement is being specific and reasonable.

There are exceptions to the general rule that a warrant is required. One of those–which has caused a great deal of controversy recently–is that some kinds of administrative search, those looking for evidence of a regulatory violation or for the public interest, don’t require a warrant. But those searches historically have been special cases, like factory or inventory searches, not ones that invade peoples’ homes.

Trump’s Department of Homeland Security ignores our history and our rights. DHS takes the position that its heavily armed, masked ICE agents, inexplicably clothed in camo designed for plant-based concealment, can use unsworn “administrative warrants” issued by their co-workers to break into houses.

A federal district judge recently characterized DHS’ position as “the fox guarding the henhouse.” DHS’s actions look like clear Fourth Amendment violations; the Constitution protects all people who are in the United States, so every person, citizen or not, has the right to be secure in their home.

To understand why it is important to protect everyone, consider U.S. citizen ChongLy “Scott” Thao. ICE agents broke down Thao’s door, pointed guns at his family (including his 4-year-old grandson), and dragged him outside with nothing but a thin blanket around his shoulders, his underwear, and his sandals on a 16-degree day. They would not let him show his identification. They claimed to be searching for a sex offender who, it turned out, had no relationship with Mr. Thao and had been in prison in another city for over a year. Had the agents been forced to seek a warrant, to swear an oath, and to present their plans to a judge or magistrate, they probably would have identified the right person, the right address, or at least the right city.

Injustices like this are exactly the sort of things that the Founders experienced and wanted to protect themselves, their fellow Americans, and their descendants from. And it is absolutely not the kind of thing our government should be inflicting on us or anyone else. Americans are right to be enraged at these abhorrent, unconstitutional, and un-American actions.

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Kelcey Patrick-Ferree and Shannon Patrick live in Iowa.

Originally published in the Press-Citizen on February 14, 2026.

With thanks to Andy and Sandra for their assistance.

As we settle into 2026, we reflect on the muted New Year’s celebrations we experienced: people seemed happy to put 2025 behind them, but trepidatious about what this year would bring. And we couldn’t blame anyone for their lack of enthusiasm. While not everything about 2025 was bad, it was a blockbuster year for Project 2025 and a dire year for the American Republic.

Since returning to office, the president has acted exactly how you might expect of someone who tried to overthrow his own government.

Congressional Republicans, with a handful of occasional exceptions, have capitulated. Their spinelessness enabled a breakdown of our Constitutional balance of powers. No more is Congress fulfilling its constitutional duty to decide taxes and spending, to declare war, to create or eliminate government agencies. This Congress instead issues simpering homages to the would-be king as he assumes their powers. Meanwhile, they keep failing to keep the government up and running–after the last record-breaking shutdown, it is still only funded through the end of January.

The Supreme Court is also complicit, giving the president immunity from prosecution and greatly expanding his power. As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson observed in one dissent, “Perhaps the degradation of our rule-of-law regime would happen anyway. But this Court’s complicity in the creation of a culture of disdain for lower courts, their rulings, and the law (as they interpret it) will surely hasten the downfall of our governing institutions, enabling our collective demise.”

Here in Iowa, our state government has been eagerly awful. The Republican government has tanked the state budget, given the wealthy hundreds of millions of tax dollars for private school tuition, and seemingly given up on following regular order.

But there were bright spots in 2025, too.

Below the Supreme Court, the justice system is largely holding the line. Judges are demanding evidence and due process. Political prosecutions are foundering. Grand juries are rejecting trumped-up charges leveled against protesters, even those armed with dangerous sandwiches.

The military has also remained apolitical. When, after firing many, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth called together the nation’s generals on short notice, many feared he would demand a Nazi-style loyalty oath. Instead, he complained about beards and “fat” officers. (But don’t be complacent: the operations in Venezuela are a step towards conditioning the military to obey orders that are questionably legal at best.)

And while conservative state governments are sometimes kowtowing to the “crown,” there are limits: while Iowa was surrendering its state sovereignty and its residents’ privacy by sharing sensitive data with the federal government, several Republican states rejected calls for redistricting. Indiana is the most notable of those, where Republican lawmakers overwhelmingly rejected redistricting despite pressure from the president and the accompanying violent threats.

And even in Iowa, some good things might finally be coming. Our politicians seem, at long last, to be acknowledging our water quality problems, and they actually passed eminent domain reform–even though Governor Reynolds ultimately vetoed it.

The brightest spot of all is that the American people are not taking this lying down. The “No Kings” protests were among the largest in US history. Special election voters have loudly signaled their disapproval. People have been pushing back against ICE kidnappings, causing scenes and trying to make America again a place where people are not “disappeared” from our streets and stores.

And even as partisan as things are, no one likes pedophiles. Trump’s ongoing protection of the Epstein files was too much for some Congressional Republicans. After defying him there, they now seem likely to overturn his first vetoes of this term. We can only hope they remember that he’s a lame duck and make independence a habit.

So even when it all seems to be going down the drain, don’t give up. Give your representatives an earful. Show up. Shame them. Pay attention. America’s enemies–foreign and domestic–want you to give up. Instead, give ‘em hell.

Kelcey Patrick-Ferree and Shannon Patrick live in Iowa.

Originally published in the Press-Citizen on January 10, 2026.

Share Our Liberties We Prize

America’s founding documents declared King George a despot and a tyrant, so naturally we enshrined broad rights in our Constitution, including an expansive right to speak our minds in the First Amendment. Unlike people in other countries, we can insult our leaders, spread Nazi propaganda, and indulge in hate speech with only social, not legal, consequences.

But there are limits even here. Laws cannot limit what we are protesting, but they can limit where and when we protest, forbid us from inciting crimes, and prohibit us from groundlessly harming others or their reputations.

That last one is a major – and complicated – exception to our First Amendment rights: we have no right to defame others. Defamation is negligently making untruthful statements that injure the reputation of another, either in writing (libel) or verbally (slander).

When it concerns public figures, though, particularly politicians, our First Amendment rights to speak and debate are strongest. We still cannot share information about them that we know or should know to be false, but we have more leeway to be wrong accidentally.

A case called New York Times v. Sullivan recognized this right. According to David Enrich’s Murder the Truth, Sullivan responded to a series of lawsuits brought by Southern governmental authorities that tried to make it too expensive for national media to cover the civil rights movement, not because of defamation, but because the Southern authorities didn’t like the coverage. The decision was uncontroversial, even revered, for decades after it was rendered.

But like so many Constitutional rights, this right has come to be at risk as billionaire donors like Peter Thiel, Republican politicians like Donald Trump, and Republican-appointed judges like Clarence Thomas work to reverse it.

At least for the other side of the aisle.

Once again, this is a case of “freedom for me but not for thee.” Rich donors and largely Republican politicians want the ability to lie about the rest of us while “opening up” the libel laws against whomever they proclaim to be their enemies.

This is the legal equivalent of the Charlie Kirk situation: just as Kirk could say terrible things while people who quoted him after his death were hounded online or fired, Trump wants free reign to commit fraud and spread conspiracy theories while suing the Des Moines Register for publishing a poll that made the wrong call, threatening newspapers and networks for unfavorable coverage, and siccing the FCC on stations whose late-night comedy offends his delicate sensibilities. There are even signs he plans to start sending masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents after citizens whose speech hurts his feelings. Such thin skin. So anti-democratic.

This isn’t just a national issue. With book bans, teaching bans, and ag gag laws, Iowa’s GOP has been getting in on the anti-free speech action. Meanwhile, true to form, it set up a mouthpiece at the University of Iowa, the ironically named “Center for Intellectual Freedom.”

The Center’s vaunted desire to “provide a space where lively discussion on topics can occur” extends to including just three Democrats in its 26-member board, seeking closed doors for its inaugural meeting and, when that wasn’t possible, setting invitation-only speaking privileges, an agenda full of unfounded, right-wing talking points, and making the “open” meeting so difficult to get into that one state legislator needed “6 phone calls, 4 emails, and repeated texts” to get in. That legislator – a member of the Iowa House’s Higher Education Committee, but a Democrat – was, of course, neither invited nor allowed to speak.

Free speech does not by itself make us a democracy, but there is no democracy without it. Share your concerns with your friends, your elected officials, and especially candidates for office in 2026 before we all find out what they come for after it’s gone.

Kelcey Patrick-Ferree and Shannon Patrick live in Iowa.

Originally published in the Press-Citizen on December 13, 2025.

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The President is a Republican. The Senate and the House of Representatives have Republican majorities. Even the Supreme Court is stacked with Republicans.

These are basic and glaringly obvious facts, but somehow, when it comes to who is responsible for… well, anything the government does, our elected officials seem to forget just who is in charge.

Take Iowa’s Representatives. They harp on about what the Democrats will or won’t “let” them do, but the Speaker of the House, the Majority Whip and most Representatives are Republicans. And the person who made the call to adjourn the House in mid-September? Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.

Or Iowa’s Senators. They have bemoaned the impacts of the government shutdown on air travel and healthcare. Our governor has tried to claim the mantle of the savior replacing food assistance by giving less than a day’s worth of funds to Iowa’s food banks. All of them have blamed the Democrats for the shutdown.

Funny how the people in charge of the government can’t seem to govern.

But wait, you say, what about the filibuster? Doesn’t it take 60 votes to pass a budget and reopen the government?

In a word, no. The Constitution has no rules about how many votes are needed to pass budgets.

In fact, with only a few Constitutional exceptions, the rules about how many votes are required to pass bills (or stop debate on bills) are made by vote of the Senate--meaning the majority party can control them. And the majority party can change the filibuster rules with a simple majority vote. The House of Representatives used to have a filibuster but got rid of it. In this year’s shutdown, Senate Republicans have not been willing to get rid of the filibuster on budget bills to reopen the government.

That still leaves Senate Republicans a tried and true option to pass a budget: negotiating with the other party.

But in the 2025 shutdown, there isn’t even a budget on the table. The House of Representatives, way back in mid-September, passed a continuing resolution to fund the government through the end of the year. A continuing resolution is a bill that says “we can’t agree on spending priorities well enough to pass a budget, so we are just going to keep doing what we’re doing right now.” With a House Republican majority, that continuing resolution was a failure of the Republicans in the House to agree with one another well enough to pass a budget.

As soon as that continuing resolution passed, Johnson adjourned the House. House Republicans left Washington. It’s hard to say where they left to go, because in Iowa, at least, it certainly wasn’t to hold town halls in their districts.

And that continuing resolution? Well, the last time Congress passed a real budget was under President Biden in March 2024, with a Democrat-controlled Senate and a Republican-controlled House. They weren’t even continuing their own budget.

If this whole mess gives you a sense of déjà vu, you may be sensing the ghost of 2017-2019, when the Republicans last controlled the government–and shut it down three times. The party of victimhood just can’t seem to figure out how to keep the lights on when it is in power.

How times have changed. Our governing party’s mantra has gone from Democratic President Harry Truman’s “The buck stops here” to the current President dodging all responsibility with the constant refrain: “I know nothing about it.” Sad.

Kelcey Patrick-Ferree and Shannon Patrick live in Iowa.

Originally published in the Press-Citizen on November 8, 2025.

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The Constitution is the law of our land, the cornerstone of our government, the principles to which our military, our judges, our attorneys, and our public officials pledge themselves. It establishes the most fundamental structure of our government and the rights of our states and the people.

If you’ve been paying any attention to the news this year, though, you might not think so.

Over the last 9 months, the Trump administration and its many colluders have established a pattern. First they violate the Constitutional rights of non-citizens—whether in the country legally or illegally–even though it is well-established that the Constitution protects any person physically present on U.S. soil, not just citizens. Then, once they have shown that they can get away with it, they expand those violations to American citizens.

Let’s start at the top, with the First Amendment. Among other critical rights, it provides that “Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech.”

This is an extremely clear principle: if the government punishes you for your speech, your speech is not free. But this government is doing exactly that.

Consider Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish PhD student whose secret-police-style arrest, complete with masked agents and an unmarked van, generated headlines earlier this year. After being arrested, she spent six weeks in an overcrowded cell with 23 other women. Her offense? An op-ed she had written a year prior, where she referred to the war in Gaza as “plausible genocide.”

Ozturk is hardly alone. Even greencard-holding, permanent U.S. residents have had their First Amendment rights blatantly violated this way, and international students are now encouraged to scrub their social media postings before entering the U.S., as though they were visiting China, North Korea, or Iran.

In other words, under this administration, if you are not a full U.S. citizen, your speech is not free. Even “making light” of the wrong topic risks government action.

And citizens, even prominent ones, are not entirely free to speak their minds. The Late Show with Stephen Colbert appears to have been cancelled so that its parent company could complete a merger, one that had to be approved by the government. President Trump and FCC chair Brendan Carr managed to temporarily suspend Jimmy Kimmel Live! by threatening, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct to take action on Kimmel or, you know, there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

We could write a whole column on other First Amendment violations, but let’s instead talk about the Fourth Amendment, which protects us from unreasonable searches and seizures and requires probable cause for search warrants.

On September 30, Border Patrol, FBI, and ATF agents raided an apartment building in Chicago. Witnesses reported that every person in the building was removed from their home and made to wait outside for hours while federal agents ransacked the building and destroyed the residents’ property. The raid led to 37 arrests of immigrants from Mexico, Venezuela, Nigeria, and Colombia. Only two were allegedly members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, the supposed target of the raid. The rest of the apartment building’s residents, many of them U.S. citizens, were apparently subject to this raid merely for living in the same building as those two individuals.

That search and seizure was unreasonable.

Sadly, there are many more recent examples of the federal government violating both Constitutional rights and common decency. By electing an insurrectionist President, we have given the current federal government an authoritarian inch. They are in the process of taking a totalitarian mile. If we do not take our power back soon, it will be too late.

The next No Kings protests will be on October 18. Let’s use them to begin to create a more perfect union once again grounded in the rights of the people.

Kelcey Patrick-Ferree and Shannon Patrick live in Iowa.

Originally published in the Press-Citizen on October 11, 2025.

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America’s Constitution established bold principles about the relationship between the people and their government. One of those is that while subjects are governed, citizens in democracies organize to govern themselves.

This fundamental distinction is implicit throughout the document. It secures the tools for citizen governance: universal rights to speech, assembly, and publication. It sets up juries of our peers, not of the peerage. It assigns government spending to the House, ostensibly our most representative body.

The principle of self-governance has so seeped into the bones of our country that many of us become incensed when we see it violated. Texas politicians change their districts to choose their voters. Bureaucracies and barriers prevent voter registration and voting itself. Billionaires sink fortunes into manipulation and outright bribery. These are all actions of those who would have subjects.

Most citizens have some means, if imperfect, of pushing back though state legislatures and federal elections. But not all.

Millions of Americans have limited local protections and cannot elect anyone to Congress or the presidency simply because of where they live. A full Iowa-worth of them live in Puerto Rico. An Alaska-worth of them live in Washington, D.C. A smaller group, about as many as live in the greater Cedar Rapids area, are in Guam, the Virgin Islands, and Northern Mariana Islands.

The District and these territories are American soil, and those living there are full American citizens who have all the corresponding rights and responsibilities. Or at least they should have. Instead they have a voice without a vote in the House, not even that in the Senate or the presidency, and the federal government can meddle with their affairs in ways that no state would tolerate.

If you think that difference is only academic, you haven’t been watching the news.

In August, President Trump unilaterally seized control of Washington, D.C.’s police and National Guard, and pulled hundreds of federal law enforcement officers away from their duties – like stopping international crime and terrorism – to patrol the District, make traffic stops, and chase out the homeless. His pretext for doing so was a supposed “crime emergency,” even though violent crime in Washington was at a 30 year low and falling.

The principle here, that the president can at any time and for any crime strip away local police control, should be repugnant to all Americans. And it gets worse.

D.C.’s locally elected attorney general sued to stop Trump’s military takeover. So House Republicans have introduced bills to replace him with a political appointee. Many other bills would strip away District residents’ ability to participate in their governance, and one would entirely abolish its local government. We can see why, as one resident put it, “Not being a state and not having representation here, it feels like we are powerless against literally anything anyone wants to do to us and against us.”

Those living in our other territories have similar, second-rate experiences. For example, thousands died in Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria, but because it is not a state, it could not draw on the same resources or agreements for support. It has also been the involuntary testing ground for everything from the pill to napalm. Meanwhile, Guam and the Northern Marianas lack leverage to address the large U.S. military presence there.

Making the principle that all of us are created equal a reality is an enormous challenge, one we’ve been trying (and sometimes failing) to live up to for almost 250 years. It is tempting to be discouraged by how far we have to go, let alone when we fall back. But we take heart that so many of us, red or blue, get riled up by our failures.

That any U.S. citizen is subject to taxation without representation is one such failure. It’s past time we give our fellow citizens the statehood they need to be our equals, not our subjects.

Kelcey Patrick-Ferree and Shannon Patrick live in Iowa.

Originally published in the Press-Citizen on September 13, 2025.

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Nothing is more fundamentally American than a commitment to truth, discourse, and understanding the world. That’s why the First Amendment is, well, first. It’s why our democracy has historically been committed to free public education. Without real information and the education necessary to evaluate it, citizens cannot understand, advocate, or vote for what is best for themselves or their country.

Repressive regimes are aware of the foundational nature of truth, too, so they work relentlessly against it. That’s why book burnings are a hallmark of Communists and Nazis and other dictators. It’s why repressive regimes from Russia to China have a history of scrapping or manipulating data collection when it shows that government policies are harming the populace. It’s why dictators target and defund universities and dumb down public schools.

And all of this is happening in America today.

Little is more un-American than a book ban. This was something we understood viscerally and instinctively in the 1950s, when book bans were in service of McCarthyist fear-mongering against Communism, so close on the heels of Nazi book burnings. But we seem more tolerant of them these days.

In schools throughout the country, books by and about the majority of humankind (women and people of color and LGBTQ+ people) have been removed under the guise of protecting children. Under the Trump Administration, books have been banned and “flagged” at military academy libraries as part of anti-DEI initiatives. It gives the lie to the school book bans. Military servicepeople are not children who need to be “protected” from potentially upsetting knowledge of how the world works; they are adults doing the work of our country in the world.

Similarly, thousands of government webpages and datasets have been taken down, especially ones related to health and climate. The Library of Congress website even deleted portions of the Constitution briefly. When books are pulled from libraries or webpages go dark, we lose facts as surely as if they had been burned to ash. These are modern book burnings, and the virtual bonfires are roaring.

Meanwhile, we are losing avenues for creating, sharing, and learning new information about the world. Billions of Congressionally-awarded dollars have been clawed back from science, research, libraries, and museums. The auditors who track taxpayer money have been fired en masse (a challenge their long-time champion Senator Grassley has disgracefully met with silence). After a national slowdown in hiring, the president personally fired the nation’s chief employment statistician, and his administration threatened to stop publishing the job report monthly. The administration ignores inconvenient statistics, like Washington, D.C.’s 30-year low in crime rates that shows how fabricated the administration’s so-called state of emergency is.

Thousands of employees have been fired from the agencies charged with creating a clear, nonpartisan report of the state of our country: the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That means less data is created, making Americans, American business, and American communities less able to understand and react to world events. But it makes it harder to contradict Trump administration lies.

And following a long history of starving public schools and universities for budget, red states have started overturning local policies, dictating what schools can or cannot teach, and taking books out of schools. States–including Iowa–have banned teaching about racism, LGBTQ+ people, and even sex. The result? Teachers fear reprisals for teaching historical facts.

What can we do about this? First and most important: do not obey in advance. Keep speaking out, calling out lies, and supporting fact-finders and truth-tellers. Preserve what you can. Keep paper books and prints of important historical documents and information. Nothing is more un-American than a book burning. The more people recognize book burning, the less they like it, and public backlash has forced the administration to back off before. Spread the word and put their feet to the flames.

Kelcey Patrick-Ferree and Shannon Patrick live in Iowa.

Originally published in the Press-Citizen on August 23, 2025.

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Many people have told us lately that they aren’t feeling patriotic. They give us powerful reasons, too.

The so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” is a good one. It is as big as it isn’t beautiful. This Republican law will leave millions without healthcare, including tens of thousands of Iowans using Hawki, Fee-For-Service, Iowa Health Link, and other Iowa Medicaid programs. It will dramatically worsen rural healthcare, reproductive healthcare, and hunger among children. It will blow up the cost of college along with the budget. Its litany of evils continues for a thousand pages. All Iowa Senators and Representatives voted for it.

Further, the health of our democracy has precipitously declined. People are being grabbed off the streets by agents with no uniforms, no badges, and no warrants. We are witnessing extortionary executive orders, threats against political adversaries, breaches of the constitutional order, and attacks on the press, while the President abandons both those who fought with us in Afghanistan and the Ukrainian people.

It’s no wonder that pride in being an American is at a record low, with many people in a funk, wondering what happened to the America that they loved.

But there are no solutions to be found in despair or by giving up on the American ideal.

While it is important to hear the drumbeat of awful news, it’s more important to see the beacon of what America has been, should be again, and could be for the future.

Over its centuries, America has committed many sins, both of action and inaction, but we have also been a force for good of historic proportions.

On the purely material level, America has catalyzed unprecedented global wealth and security. From the Marshall Plan to USAID to private international investment, the United States has helped drive the dramatic decline in global poverty. We ended two World Wars, prevented others, and kept the seas free. We routinely saved millions of lives from famine, disease, and disasters while pioneering medicines that save many millions more.

In the meantime we produced technological marvels, the stuff of literal science fiction. American inventors, often with government funding backing them, gave us everything from telephones to light bulbs to airplanes. Then they produced nearly every component of our digital world, from transistors to integrated circuits to the internet and smartphones. Even most computer languages are American, as is every Big Tech company.

America has also propelled discovery and exploration. Consider space exploration. We put a man on the moon. We populated Mars with robots. We explore the cosmos with probes and wonders like the Hubble and Webb telescopes. From electricity to DNA, from the human genome to agronomy, Americans have pushed the boundaries of science and knowledge. Fully 71% of all Nobel prizes have gone to Americans.

America has been good for humanity’s soul, too.

Our revolution, our principles, and our Constitution have inspired many worldwide to pursue liberty, opportunity, and equality before the law. They have provided a model for other nations to enshrine the rights of their people in their own laws, often with the help of American lawyers and Constitutional scholars. And those principles–as well as our values that have been so well articulated by our past Presidents–have helped to make the world a better world, where rules, morals, and universal human rights matter, not just raw national interest.

But America has never been perfect. Our history has been one of extremes, swinging between cruelty and generosity, repression and rights. Sometimes we even do both at once. Beholding our great country being shaken by such crass, unprincipled ineptitude is demoralizing, but it’s not our first trial. So don’t let the red-hats claim to have the only true patriotism. Hold firm to yours. Celebrate our history, our democracy, our accomplishments. No man or movement can take those away from us. Then decide what actions you will take to help preserve them for future Americans.

Kelcey Patrick-Ferree and Shannon Patrick live in Iowa.

Originally published in the Press-Citizen on July 19, 2025.

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“Corrupt” is perhaps one of the President’s favorite words. The leader of the Republican party, for whom it seems every accusation is a confession, uses the word to describe others constantly. President Biden. The media. Secretary Clinton. The entire country.

Corruption (bribery) is and ought to be of great concern to the American people. The authors of the Federalist Papers, founders who advocated for adoption of the Constitution rather than the failed Articles of Confederation, worried greatly about the possibility of dishonest or illegal behavior by the powerful. As Alexander Hamilton wrote:

“Nothing was more to be desired, than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their aproaches [sic] from more than one quarter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils.” Federalist No. 68

“One of the weak sides of republics, among their numerous advantages, is that they afford too easy an inlet to foreign corruption.” Federalist No. 22

So the Constitution was written with an eye toward prohibiting corruption. The Foreign Emoluments Clause specifically prohibits any “Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under” the United States from accepting “any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”

Congress has made several more laws targeting corruption, including the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the federal anti-bribery law, and laws requiring government employees to give the public their honest services.

However, our country has a pattern of passing laws, regulations, and even Constitutional provisions that are then whittled away over time. “No law” in the First Amendment’s protection of free speech eventually means “no law but….” with a long list of exceptions. Laws requiring equal access to the ballot eventually allow all kinds of underhanded actions to undermine voting rights. And laws prohibiting corruption have diminished dramatically over the last decade.

In 2016, the Supreme Court began weakening anti-corruption laws by overturning ex-governor Bob McDonnell’s conviction for taking bribes for pushing state universities to conduct studies showing that certain uses of tobacco were benign; the court said he was not acting in his official capacity as governor. The Court imposed further limitations in the 2020 “Bridgegate” case, overturning convictions of Governor Chris Christie’s aides who manipulated traffic into a New Jersey town for political reasons. Similarly, in 2023, it overturned the conviction of a former aide to the New York governor who was working for his re-election campaign and using his influence in exchange for bribes. In 2021, it dismissed cases alleging Emoluments Clause violations during Trump’s first term because he was no longer in office. Last year, it ruled that the President, once understood to be subject to the law, cannot be convicted for his official acts as President.

We cannot lay all blame at the feet of the court. The executive branch has also failed us. Prosecutions for corruption have been dropping for years. The president “paused” enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and effectively abolished the Justice Department’s task forces on political and foreign corruption. He also pardons corrupt politicians. A lot.

And Congress? The last anti-corruption law was adopted over 40 years ago.

Given the cycle we seem to go through with our laws (egregious violations, dramatic reforms, whittling the reforms into oblivion, rinse, repeat), it is time for new reforms. Our current laws, including the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, are not up to the tasks they were written for. Our current legislatures, executives, and courts will not restore them on their own. Instead, they will fire the investigators and hobble the auditors.

It is up to the people to force these changes. Our elected officials must serve us, not kings who give them $400,000,000 jets or multi-billion-dollar crypto “investments.”

Kelcey Patrick-Ferree and Shannon Patrick live in Iowa.

Originally published in the Iowa City Press-Citizen on June 28, 2025.

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“Money is the transfer of work and time, and we’ve decided our kids will need to work more in the future, and spend less time with their families, so wealthy people can pay lower taxes today.”

-Scott Galloway, Post Corona

May is the time for gardening, graduations, and, for the most wonkish, government budgeting. Unfortunately, government budgets are so far off the rails this year that they need everyone’s focus.

In Iowa, years of skimping on infrastructure, divesting from the future, lining the pockets of private school owners, and cutting taxes are starting to bite: Governor Reynolds’ miserly budget pulls hundreds of millions from our rainy day fund. Worse, this one-time money budget assumes a good economy, not one upended by trade wars, a recession, or DOGE’s reckless chainsaw destroying the subsidies that support Iowa’s farm economy (23% of net farm income will come from the government this year).

And Iowa’s mess is small next to the federal budget, where the morass has layers.

For starters, we are working from an outdated foundation. Congressional Republicans simply failed to set this year's national budget. Instead, they limped through the year by repeatedly extending the funding levels of the 2024 budget. So our default spending levels are stale and do not even reflect inflation, much less our nation’s changing needs.

Enter the Musk-led demolition of Americans’ public goods: our health, our civil service, our libraries, our public lands. These chaotic cuts hit agencies keeping us safe and healthy–for instance, preventing the spread of disease–further slashing their outdated budgets. Congressional Republicans propose to cement many of these cuts, seemingly without considering the consequences to critical services like Medicaid. We have already felt these cuts locally at the University of Iowa, FilmScene, the Bur Oak Land Trust, and the VA, and those are but an omen of what is to come.

You might think that Musk’s reckless cuts are part of a plan to wean us off of foreign creditors. You would be wrong. Tax cuts in this year’s proposed budget would add almost $6 trillion to our $36 trillion debt. That debt is already high–it recently surpassed our GDP, a level we have not seen since WWII–and substantially caused by giveaways to billionaires. Trillions more in debt will push us towards a debt bomb causing future high taxes, a massive debt crisis, or both.

And $6 trillion may be a lowball estimate, ignoring the risks that Congress is allowing the president to take with tariffs. When the US issues bonds (i.e. lets bondholders make loans to the government), someone must buy them. China and Japan--both countries subject to high tariffs--have been two major buyers. What if they stopped buying or, worse, dumped the bonds that they hold? Interest rates would go up. If a percentage point or two makes a big impact on a mortgage, it’s pouring gasoline on a $36 trillion debt problem.

So what does this all mean? “Trillion” is such a mind-boggling number that it’s hard to understand, much less the difference between 36, 50, or more trillions.

For one, it means less safety and security for our future selves, our children, and our grandchildren. More of the budget will go to debt. Less to education. Less to healthcare. Less to defense. Less to Social Security. Less take-home pay as taxes go up. Fewer ways to achieve the American dream. Worse, if our politicians print money to get us out of debt, we risk hyperinflation.

Equally importantly, it means that we will have prioritized tax cuts for the already-wealthy over building a better tomorrow, sold out our children’s futures to greedy rent-seekers.

So call the borrow-and-spend Republicans in Washington and Des Moines and tell them to stop selling out our children, our cultural heritage, our technological progress, our well-being, and our future to their greediest donors.

Kelcey Patrick-Ferree and Shannon Patrick live in Iowa.

Originally published in the Press-Citizen on May 10, 2025.

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In his 1961 inauguration, President Kennedy pledged that America would do more for the world.

“To those…struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required--not because the communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”

And we did. We founded the Peace Corps and joined our many foreign assistance programs together as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). For decades after, we dedicated a tiny fraction of our federal budget, just 0.6%, to making the world a better place. Where there was famine, we brought food. Where natural disasters struck, we brought relief. Where wars and disease came, so did our doctors and our medicines.

While it was hardly the only factor, our contributions have helped transform the world for the better: in 1960, 54% of the world’s population survived on the equivalent of less than $5 per day. Fewer than 15% do now. Global literacy rose from around 40% to around 90%. Two of polio’s three strains and smallpox were eradicated. Americans have been able to take pride in being the greatest source of good in the history of the planet while spending just one dollar in a thousand on aid. And incidentally, America became well-admired abroad.

But that was the past 74 years. Today we have a new Elon Musk-Donald Trump regime with new priorities, and those do not include the greater good.

USAID has been abruptly and illegally closed. As a result, billions of dollars’ worth of US-grown food rots in warehouses. Life-saving medications expire unused. Clinics are shuttered. Famine spreads. AIDS and polio bloom. Tens of thousands of people are dead. As many as 3.3 million will die within a year.

So rather than do what is right, we will waste and watch as people die.

Which makes us wonder: if not the greater good, what does this Republican regime value?

As former President Biden said, “Don't tell me what you value. Show me your budget--and I'll tell you what you value.”

It can’t be the science and research that have kept America at the forefront of innovation for decades; the regime has tried to cut the funding that underpins the U.S. scientific research system. It can’t be the land that once made up America’s frontier; it has cut national park staffing and opened the parks to logging. It can’t be America’s veterans; the regime has cut VA staffing and vets’ crisis hotlines. It can’t be arts and culture; the regime has slashed funding for the NEH, libraries, and museums. It doesn’t even value the military or avoiding war; it has cut the Wilson Center, Institute for Peace, and the Department of Defense. It isn’t even Americans’ basic needs; it has eliminated programs that keep Americans from freezing in their own homes and children from going hungry.

With all of these cuts, it must be debt and deficits, right? Wrong. America’s deficits do not exist because of what we spend, but because we stopped collecting taxes on the wealthy and large corporations. Of our $35 trillion debt, $10 trillion is attributable to President Reagan’s tax cuts and $10 trillion more to those of Presidents G.W. Bush and Trump. All of these cuts have benefited the rich over the rest, and Trump’s proposed IRS cuts and new budget will further benefit the rent-seeking class.

For over 75 years, Presidents, Congresses, and Americans of both parties have understood that our values are not the myopic values of misers. Rent-seekers Musk and Trump are betraying American values, American interests, and American traditions. Don’t let them get away with it: contact your Senators and Representatives and tell them to reinstate America’s programs.

Kelcey Patrick-Ferree and Shannon Patrick live in Iowa.

Originally published in the Des Moines Register on April 9, 2025.

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“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”

There are many jokes about lawyers, but this line, one of Shakespeare’s most famous, isn’t one of them. It’s a serious line from an enforcer-type character who is plotting a coup and doesn’t want the law between him and power.

Why start out by killing the lawyers? Because on the whole, the profession commits its members to supporting the rule of law even over their own interests and the interests of their clients. In order to practice law, lawyers must commit to:

• Take oaths to support the Constitutions of the United States and their own States.

• Follow strict ethics rules.

• Bring only cases or claims that have merit.

• Not lie to judges.

• Not provide legal services that aid someone in committing a crime.

• Quit cases that would violate ethics rules.

• Zealously advocate for their clients.

All of this is a threat to a coup or any actor who is trying to overcome the rule of law. Right now, we are seeing unprecedented attacks on America’s attorneys, both inside and outside the government.

Government attorneys

Zealous advocacy for clients is especially important for federal government attorneys. Their client is the American people by way of the federal government, not any specific elected or appointed official. When they speak in court, they say they are appearing “on behalf of the United States.”

Attorneys’ duties to the rule of law mean that they, and especially federal attorneys, can tell exactly when the legal system is being twisted in ways that foster corruption, selective justice, and lawlessness. In other countries, lawyers even lead street protests against corruption and in support of the rule of law.

So we should listen to what America’s attorneys are saying right now.

Resignations

The loudest statements by attorneys for the United States are their resignations. Last month, a series of federal attorneys resigned rather than drop charges against New York City mayor Eric Adams. They were ordered to drop these charges, but not because they lacked merit. Instead, as Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon, who had been sworn in only 3 weeks prior, described in detail in her resignation letter, the charges would be dropped as part of a trade, a quid pro quo: the Trump regime would withdraw the charges, and Adams would ensure New York City’s cooperation on immigration. Conveniently, the charges would be dropped in a way that would allow the government to revive them if Adams failed to cooperate or otherwise displeased Trump.

Acting US Attorney Danielle Sassoon Resignation Letter

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"I do not repeat here the evidence against Adams that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed federal crimes; Mr. Bove rightly has never called into question that the case team conducted this investigation with integrity and that the charges against Adams are serious and supported by fact and law. Mr. Bove’s memo, however, which directs me to dismiss an indictment returned by a duly constituted grand jury for reasons having nothing to do with the strength of the case, raises serious concerns that render the contemplated dismissal inconsistent with my ability and duty to prosecute federal crimes without fear or favor and to advance good-faith arguments before the courts."

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These attorneys resigned instead of dropping the charges partially because they thought the judge in the case would not allow it, partially because it would violate attorney ethics rules, and partially because they believed it was simply wrong. Sassoon’s letter is full of statements of the ideals of the Justice Department: impartiality, consistent application of the law, equality before the law regardless of station. Another resigning attorney, Hagan Scotten, put it succinctly: “No system of ordered liberty can allow the Government to use the carrot of dismissing charges, or the stick of threatening to bring them again, to induce an elected official to support its policy objectives.”

Hagan Scotten Resignation Letter

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"I can even understand how a Chief Executive whose background is in business and politics might see the contemplated dismissal-with-leverage as a good, if distasteful, deal. But any assistant U.S. attorney would know that our laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials, in this way. If no lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me."

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Firings

On the other end of the spectrum are the government attorneys whom the Trump regime is firing. Most prominently, the purge of top military officials included the leadership of the Judge Advocate General corps, more commonly known as JAGs. JAGs are the lawyers for the military. Their duties range from drafting wills for deployed troops to handling courts-martial to advising the heads of the military about when and whether military branches can legally act under the Constitution, international treaties, and federal laws.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters that the firings were necessary because he didn't want JAGs to pose any "roadblocks to orders that are given by a commander in chief." In other words, the firings were a way to ensure that the military will unquestioningly obey the orders of the President.

This has raised alarms among both serving and retired JAGS, who point out that this means that the military may follow any illegal orders that Trump issues, and that Trump has a history of making public statements about his desire to use the military illegally. They also say that Hegseth’s vagueness on the topic of who, exactly, will replace top JAGs is alarming: military law is a highly specialized area of practice, and appointing just any attorney off the street to replace these skilled and experienced attorneys could have devastating consequences for the entire military.

And the attacks have not stopped with attorneys who are part of the Executive Branch.

Attorneys in Private Practice

Privately practicing attorneys--meaning those in law firms--commonly join groups called bar associations. These groups are mostly optional and provide services to attorneys such as continuing legal education courses, advocacy for the profession, and opportunities to provide free legal services to those who need them.

Attacks on Professional Associations

The nation's largest such lawyers’ group is the American Bar Association (ABA). The ABA is also the organization that accredits law schools--that is, it decides which law schools have programs that are good enough that their graduates can practice law.

The ABA recently released a statement condemning attacks on the legitimacy of the courts. Apparently in response, the Justice Department has threatened to revoke the ABA’s accreditation authority if it does not revoke its diversity requirements–even though those requirements had already been suspended because of earlier executive orders. The regime has also threatened the organization’s funding and prohibited government employees from attending ABA events or renewing their memberships.

Bondi Letter To ABA

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Letter from Attorney General Pam Bondi to ABA demanding that the ABA end its diversity, equity, and inclusion policy for law school accreditation.

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Attacks on Law Firms

As we mentioned, one of the primary duties of lawyers is to serve as zealous advocates for their clients. This does not mean that they always agree with their clients; defense attorneys, for example, do not believe that people should be free to commit crimes but do believe that everyone deserves a fair trial. Bear this fact in mind before judging attorneys who represent clients you dislike. Indeed, with President Trump appearing poised to follow through with his campaign promises to sic the Justice Department on his political enemies, many people will find themselves needing lawyers.

In that context, it is especially alarming that the Trump regime is punishing specific law firms for representing clients that he does not like.

The first victim was Covington & Burling, a so-called white-shoe firm, one of the long-established and prestigious large firms that provide services to wealthy clients. Such large firms are highly hierarchical: employees (attorneys and staff alike) work on matters that they are told to by senior attorney-owners (usually called partners). Like all law firms, Covington is exhorted by attorney ethics rules to provide some legal work for free (pro bono publico, for the public good). One of Covington’s pro bono clients is Jack Smith, the former government prosecutor who brought two criminal cases against Trump. Trump recently ordered federal agencies to review any contracts it might have with Covington & Burling and “align their agency funding decisions with the interests of the citizens of the United States.” He also suspended security clearances for firm staff who assisted Smith--meaning that they are no longer able to work on Smith’s case or any other case that involves government secrets. This could easily result in an attorney or staff member--even one who did not choose to work on the Smith matter--having to switch to an entirely new practice area, not an easy thing to do in large firms that thrive on hyper-specialization.

More recently, Trump issued an order suspending all security clearances for the entire law firm Perkins Coie, a law firm that has strong ties to the Democratic party, in retaliation for its work for the Hilary Clinton campaign in 2016. According to that order, this work included hiring Fusion GPS, which in turn commissioned the Steele dossier. The dossier is best known for alleging connections between the Trump campaign and the Russian government and that the Russian government had compromising material on Trump.

The same order started Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigations into 15 law firms, currently not publicly known, for their hiring practices that promote diversity. It is unclear why those 15 firms were chosen, but it seems unlikely to actually be for their hiring practices.

These attacks on law firms send a clear message: do not give legal help to those that the Trump regime considers its enemies--including political opponents. If you do, you will risk the administration taking whatever steps it can to make your life more difficult.

What’s Next

Despite these attacks, America’s lawyers are not yet showing signs of caving to the pressure. Like Nixon era lawyers, current government lawyers are resigning rather than carrying out illegal orders. Both Covington & Burling and Perkins Coie have responded that these attacks on their firms are illegal and they will challenge them in court. Thousands of lawyers have signed a statement warning about the risks of recent executive actions. State bar associations are considering how to best support the rule of law. The profession will not give up without a fight.

Terms like the “rule of law” or “system of ordered liberty” sound abstract, but they are the foundation of the American house of law. They mean that we apply our laws fairly to everyone, that we have the right to choose the people who make and enforce those laws, that our elected officials follow known procedures, laws, and traditions. America doesn’t always live up to those ideals, but our lawyers, both those who represent our country and those who engage in private practice, strive to fulfill them.

So when government attorneys raise the alarm by publicly resigning rather than following orders they consider illegal, immoral, or unconscionable, they are not doing so because of politics. When attorneys zealously advocate for those the administration considers its “enemies,” they are not engaging in politics. When lawyers make public statements about their concern for the rule of law, they are not siding with a political party. They swore oaths to protect the Constitution and are following those oaths as best they can. We should listen to them.

Kelcey Patrick-Ferree is a third-generation Iowa lawyer. Shannon Patrick is not a lawyer. They both live in Iowa.

This is a revised and expanded version of the op-ed published in the Press-Citizen on March 8, 2025.

Minnesota and Iowa Attorney Oaths

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The oaths that Kelcey took in Minnesota and Iowa when she was sworn in as an attorney.

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I have always been interested in what the past can teach us about the present. The analogies are never perfect because every time has its own sociopolitical stew. But human nature, what motivates us, what frightens us, what fools us? That stays pretty constant. I have been thinking a lot lately about the nature of attacks on small groups of people, what motivates them, how some people are frightened and fooled into attacking others who are just trying to live their lives. And the easiest places to see those patterns can be the most dramatic ones: the fall of the Roman republic, the excesses of the French Revolution, the rise of Communism in Russia and Nazism in Germany.

More specifically, I have been thinking about Pastor Martin Niemöller. You may not have heard of him. He was a pastor in the large and powerful German Lutheran church in the early 1930s, and was initially an antisemitic supporter of the Nazis. It was only when the Nazi regime came for control of the churches that he finally spoke out—and was sent to a concentration camp for his troubles.

You may not have heard of Pastor Niemöller, but you have probably heard of the poem he wrote in 1946:

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then 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 speak 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 out for me

I remember first reading the poem in middle school. I had learned about the Holocaust from elementary school books like When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit and Number the Stars, so I thought I had an idea of what to expect from a book of Holocaust poetry.

I did not. Like many others in that collection, Niemöller’s poem is succinct and devastating. It sticks in your head. You’ll find yourself thinking of it and wondering where a similar progression might stop when things change around you.

And right now, things are changing in Iowa. On Thursday, Iowa Republican legislators introduced HSB 242, a bill that legally erases transgender Iowans. If you know nothing else about this bill, know this: it states explicitly that, in Iowa, “Separate accommodations are not inherently unequal.”

This is segregationism in Iowa, the first state in the Union to outlaw segregation in schools. HSB 242 continues the dangerous trend that started with gutting Iowa’s public trade unions, taking away workers’ rights more broadly, and the forced-birth law. That trend? Making laws to take away civil rights instead of making laws to recognize them.

Where might this trend go? Pastor Niemöller has warned us about this slippery slope: they will come for one group at a time, claiming all the while that they are protecting the rest of us from the evils of first one group, and then another. But they will keep coming.

To be perfectly clear, I do not think that Iowa’s Republican legislators are Nazis. But I do think that history teaches us that they are headed down a very, very dangerous path. And I fear that the trend of taking away civil rights, one group at a time, will not be ending any time soon.

So I am speaking out, and I ask you to join me. Right now, that means opposing HSB 242. Iowa LGBTQ rights organization OneIowa Action is sharing updates on this quickly evolving situation. This bill is being fast-tracked, so please follow OneIowa Action (HSB 242 page, Facebook, Twitter, main website, Anti-LGBTQ bill tracker) to find out how and when you can act most effectively to oppose its passage.

I will speak out for you. I hope you’ll speak out for me.

Kelcey Patrick-Ferree lives in Iowa.

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🚨 URGENT ACTION ALERT – Iowa Civil Rights Removal Act (HSB 242) 🚨

The Iowa legislature has introduced the most dangerous bill we’ve ever seen. The Iowa Civil Rights Removal Act (HSB 242) would:

❌ Strip transgender Iowans of protections under the Iowa Civil Rights Act

❌ Remove the ability for Iowans to update gender markers on their birth certificates

❌ Erase transgender Iowans under the law

❌ Weaken protections for intersex and cisgender Iowans who don’t fit rigid gender norms

This bill is expected to have a hearing on Monday, February 24th, in the afternoon. We don’t know the exact time or room, but we will update you with details as soon as possible. Whenever it is, we will need YOU at the Capitol to show legislators we will not stand by while they push this harmful bill forward.

Here’s what you can do NOW:

👉 Contact subcommittee members Holt and Fett and demand they reject this bill

👉 Reach out to the Republican members of the House and tell them to STOP this hateful, dangerous legislation.

Find everything you need to send those emails on our website: https://oneiowaaction.org/iowacivilrightsremovalact/

As always, our team is fighting for you. If you need resources, please reach out to us.

This bill is being fast-tracked, so please follow OneIowa Action (Facebook, Twitter, website, Anti-LGBTQ bill tracker) to find out how and when you can act most effectively to oppose its passage.

The U.S. Agency for International Development was first created in 1963, during the Cold War, as a way of exercising soft power worldwide and combating the spread of authoritarian systems like Communism. In a nutshell:

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is the United States’ government agency that leads international development and humanitarian assistance efforts to partner countries.

We work together with individuals, communities, and countries globally to improve everyday lives. USAID’s efforts provide humanitarian assistance, reduce poverty, strengthen democratic governance, advance economic opportunities, and help achieve progress beyond programs. Our work benefits people around the world, including those in the United States. USAID’s investments help achieve sustainable development progress, advancing our collective security, health, and prosperity.

Although the agency’s website isn’t currently available, you can still find it through the Internet Archive if you want to learn more about its programs.

USAID was established by an act of Congress in 1961. Its spending is determined by Congress using the “power of the purse.” The president does not have (and should not have) the power to put in place the spending freeze that the Republican administration has put in place.

On top of that, according to the Iowa Farmers Union, USAID spends large amounts on Iowa agricultural products. The cuts to federal spending could harm Iowa’s economy by causing over-production by Iowa farms.

What to do: Call your Senators and Representative today and urge them to take action to ensure that USAID continues its vital work. Consider mentioning:

• USAID is pro-democracy.

• USAID helps Iowa farmers and the Iowa economy.

• They should not allow the Executive to usurp Congressional powers this way.

U.S. Capitol Switchboard: (202) 224-3121

Call the White House and tell them that you do not support ending USAID’s important work. Consider mentioning:

• USAID is vital to Iowa’s economy.

• Iowa farmers support continuing USAID’s work because it helps them, too.

White House Comments Line: 202-456-1111

Updated February 9:

People are having trouble getting through to the switchboard. If you don’t know who your Congressperson is, you can find your Senators here and your Representative here. If you are in Iowa, here are direct numbers for each of our state’s reps’ offices:

Senator Ernst:

• Cedar Rapids (319) 365-4504

• Council Bluffs (712) 352-1167

• Davenport (563) 322-0677

• Des Moines (515) 284-4574

• Sioux City (712) 252-1550

• Washington, D.C. (202) 224-3254

Senator Grassley:

• Cedar Rapids (319) 363-6832

• Council Bluffs (712) 322-7103

• Davenport (563) 322-4331

• Des Moines (515) 288-1145

• Sioux City (712) 233-1860

• Waterloo (319) 232-6657

• Washington, D.C. (202) 224-3744

Representative Feenstra:

• Council Bluffs (712) 256-5653

• Fort Dodge (515) 302-7060

• Sioux City (712) 224-4692

• Washington, D.C. (202) 225-4426

Representative Hinson:

• Cedar Rapids (319) 364-2288

• Dubuque (563) 557-7789

• Waterloo (319) 266-6925

• Washington, D.C. (202) 225-2911

Representative Miller-Meeks:

• Davenport (563) 232-0930

• Indianola (515) 808-6040

• Washington, D.C. (202) 225-6576

Representative Nunn:

• Creston (641) 220-9093

• Des Moines (515) 400-8180

• Ottumwa (641) 220-9641

• Washington, D.C. (202) 225-5476

If you are not in Iowa, you can use the “find your representative” links above or Google to find your Senators’ and Representative’s phone numbers for local offices.

Democrats spent most of 2024 sounding the alarm: reelecting Donald Trump was a threat to American international leadership, American prosperity, and especially to American democracy.

Were these fears realistic? As we write this, two weeks into the second Trump presidency, the answer is a resounding "yes."

The unrelenting wall of news Trump generates makes it hard to find the signal in the noise, but it’s clear that "Team Trump’s" calls for a “post-Constitutional” America were not just sound and fury.

Trump has already:

• Unconstitutionally usurped Congress’ power of the purse by freezing federal money that is not going to his priorities.

• Disingenuously declared a state of emergency.

• Illegally fired 18 inspectors general, whose jobs were to identify government corruption.

• Unconstitutionally attempted to disband the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

• Pardoned 1,500 Jan. 6 insurrectionists − 170 of whom assaulted law enforcement officers with deadly weapons–including the leading conspirators.

• Fired or threatened to fire thousands of apolitical civil servants for doing their jobs, notably including agencies devoted to public safety such as the FBI, TSA, and FAA.

• Violated or threatened to violate U.S. treaties–including one he personally made–with our allies: Canada, Mexico, Columbia, Panama, and Denmark.

• Unconstitutionally (and unsuccessfully) declared an end to birthright citizenship.

And that’s just a sample of his first two weeks.

Some of these clearly illegal or unconstitutional actions are being challenged in the courts, and some will be stopped or partially stopped. But the guardrails are weak.

The main one, Congress, should be both protecting its power and fulfilling its duty to protect the Constitution. Congressional Democrats have been opinionated but lack power. Congressional Republicans are ceding power by the day. They could hold up or disapprove unqualified Cabinet appointees. They have not. They could stand up for the ability of apolitical civil servants to do their jobs. They have not. A case in point: our Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst launched an Inspector General Caucus last month. They have been conspicuously quiet since the illegal mass firing of IGs, even though Grassley co-authored the law that Trump violated by firing them.

And the courts? Between overt corruption at the Supreme Court and blatantly political rulings like those on Presidential immunity, relying on the courts to rein in this President would be optimism bordering on naivete.

It’s easy to despair for the future. Trade wars usually make their participants poorer and less productive. Eroding oversight enables escalating corruption. Neglecting problems abroad invites them to find us at home. Discarding soft power means taking up hard power when adversaries move against us. And all of this raises more fundamental questions, ones we thought we’d settled as a country decades ago: do we believe in friendship between nations? Will our government be a force for good? Will we be a nation of laws or of robber barons?

Fortunately, this danger is not our destiny. It’s easy to imagine the U.S. going downhill fast as the new administration races to make us the next Russia. But this is America. We will oppose this administration’s authoritarian impulses, and adversity can spur resolve and revitalization. Those are what we need now and for the future.

And what to do if you find the news difficult to absorb these days?

Consider the wisdom of the Serenity Prayer: let go of what you cannot change and decide on two or three things you can do to contribute to American revitalization. That might be supporting independent news, caring for refugees, helping your neighbors, or anything that makes your community shine. And the next time you see something awful in the news (and the next, and the next…), don’t get mad, and don’t despair. Instead, remember your choice, and resolve to do a little more to support it. Your focus and love for your community are what will help us all to not just survive, but thrive in the long run.

Kelcey Patrick-Ferree and Shannon Patrick live in Iowa.

Originally published in the Iowa City Press-Citizen on February 8, 2025.

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“All that you touch

You Change.

All that you Change

Changes you.

The only lasting truth

Is Change.”

-Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower

We live in a time of change. Climate change wreaks havoc from our weather to our home insurance. Political change is realigning our politics, causing fights within both parties, paralyzing Congress, and re-elected a chaos president. Economic change has spawned a yawning wealth gap and pervasive resentment that expresses itself everywhere from the celebratory reaction to the death of CEO Brian Thompson to the envy poorer rural Iowans express toward more prosperous urban Iowans. And that’s not even getting into the disruptions caused by changing societal norms or AI and other technologies.

A guide is helpful in times like these. Not a guide for each specific change, but a guide to living through change. Those exist from Hellenistic philosophy to management frameworks to novels like Octavia Butler’s bestselling Parable of the Sower, in which change is literally a religion. Butler did not recommend “change” as an actual religion, but the book has a solid set of ideas for dealing with change.

For one: it’s better to lead change than to be at its mercy. As Parable says:

“A victim of [Change] may,

Through learning adaption,

Become a partner of [Change],

A victim of [Change] may,

Through forethought and planning,

Become a shaper of [Change].”

Adapting and shaping change does not mean that we abandon our institutions, our rights, or our interests. It means that no amount of wishing will rewind time and give us back that past. It means that in order to succeed, we need to see what has changed and what has not, and consider how to use these new circumstances to support what we value.

How would we do that?

For one thing, avoid analysis paralysis. Take the last election. If you want to understand what happened, pundits have unlimited, opposing hot takes. For example, Democrats were too progressive, too centrist, or too conservative. The national party provided too little support to down-ballot candidates or exerted too much control over their messaging. Republicans alienated women with their focus on abortion or won them over with their focus on inflation. Democrats lost on social issues or economic ones. And so on.

In the long term, some sense may be made of this muddle, but for now, looking back can be a distraction from understanding the current situation and fighting the current war, not the last one.

And what is our current situation? Nationally, we remain closely divided, with the incoming President elected by a weak margin and the House settled by gerrymandering. Many voters responded to calls for stability. More rejected the idea that the old status quo was acceptable. Venerable institutions, which many believe are divorced from their original purposes, risk being dismantled or falling apart.

So roll with the changes: there is opportunity in a vision for a future that builds new institutions on the neglected promises of the old.

Our little blue dot of Johnson County already demonstrates pieces of that vision. We show it in how we invest in conservation, in our schools, in literature, and in the arts. On the strength of what Butler would call our “powerful positive obsession” for caring for everyone, from the greatest to the least of these, Johnson County has attracted jobs, wealth, and people and become a better place to live.

There is more we can still do. Creating economic opportunities. Working to make housing affordable and end homelessness. Using local funds to prevent crime instead of always being one step behind. Let’s support these goals and keep our local officials focused on building institutions that make Johnson County a beacon in turbulent times and a shining example of how great we are when we care for everyone.

Kelcey Patrick-Ferree and Shannon Patrick live in Iowa.

Originally published in the Iowa City Press-Citizen on January 11, 2025.

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The 2024 Presidential election is now behind us. In many ways, it was magnificent. More than 150 million Americans voted in myriad elections on over 15,000 candidates. Thousands of election officials and election workers quietly stepped up to yet again orchestrate this complicated and hectic day with no significant issues.

But while the election’s scale was inspiring, its competitiveness was anything but. Despite some nail-biters here in Iowa, few races for the House or Senate were truly competitive.

Then there was the Presidential race. Yet again, only seven so-called swing states determined the outcome. Those states attracted the press, the candidates, and a jaw-dropping amount of money. The other 43 “non-competitive” states did not.

Most states get no attention in our presidential elections because, unlike other democracies, we do not follow the principle of “one person, one vote.” Between our antiquated Electoral College and winner-take-all systems, any votes beyond the 50% mark in a state simply don’t matter.

So if a state is reliably going to vote at least 51% for one candidate, why campaign there? A party wins just as well with 51% of the votes as with 95%. And 49% is just as much a loss as 5%. That’s why no one competed for the 100,00+ Iowans who swung us from 50% to 56% for Trump. The same applies in most states, from California’s 3 million “extra” Democratic voters to Wyoming’s 60,000 “extra” Republican ones.

The Electoral College makes many of our votes irrelevant, but it makes others too important. Consider this: in 2016, Trump defeated Clinton, even though Clinton had 3 million more total votes. Four years later, Biden crushed Trump in the popular vote, winning by 7 million votes. But almost none of those extra votes mattered. Biden won because of a handful of voters in Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. If just 63,000 voters in those states had voted for Trump instead, Biden would have lost the election despite winning the popular vote.

2024 followed the same pattern; if just 116,000 voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin had voted differently, we’d be getting ready to usher in the Harris administration, regardless of President-Elect Trump’s roughly 2 million-vote popular vote win.

It is not healthy for our elections to disregard most states and obsess over the few that happen to have a balance of Republican and Democratic voters. This system leaves the majority of the voters and their concerns outside of the national media spotlight and the attention of future Presidents. It keeps candidates from spending time or money in states they won’t win, and when it allows candidates to win without a popular mandate, it erodes the democratic foundation of the presidency.

Unsurprisingly, the Electoral College has long been unpopular. A majority of Americans have long supported replacing it and electing the president with a simple and intuitive system: one person, one vote. Everyone’s vote matters and none are undervalued or overvalued because of an accident of geography. Almost two-thirds of Americans support this change.

The best path to a popular vote is to amend the Constitution. We should do that. But while that slow process happens, Iowa should enact the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. If states with the majority of electoral votes join it, the signatories will all cast their electoral votes for the candidate who wins the popular vote. Our neighbors, Illinois and Minnesota, have joined the compact, and it only needs states representing 61 more electoral votes to go into effect.

So let’s seize these opportunities to strengthen our democracy and force candidates in 2028 to campaign for all Americans’ votes, not just battleground state votes. Contact Governor Reynolds and your state legislators and urge them to join the National Popular Vote Compact so that presidential candidates will give Iowans the attention they deserve.

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Kelcey Patrick-Ferree and Shannon Patrick live in Iowa.

Originally published on December 14, 2024, in the Iowa City Press-Citizen. Also published in the Des Moines Register December 15, 2024.

Note: This piece was written the day before the election. Tense has been changed in a few places to reflect that it is being published after the election.

Calling this a big week for American democracy is like calling the Super Bowl a little ballgame. We wrote this on the day before the election while hundreds, if not thousands, of candidates nationwide made their final pitches for the favor of more than 240 million eligible voters. Those voters’ impact on America’s economics, policy, and climate (literal and figurative) are immense and will have long-lasting, global impacts.

But that’s election week. What about tomorrow?

After too many months of buildup, excitement, drama, and dread, the campaign season is ending. Next, despite each campaign’s claims about the end of America, is not the apocalypse. It’s just tomorrow, which is a lot like today, but mercifully lacking in campaign ads.

Whether your favorite candidate wins or loses, most of today’s problems and opportunities will still be there tomorrow. A Harris victory wouldn’t have, by itself, restored Roe v. Wade or reined in monopolies. Trump’s victory will not, by itself, create a police state or purge the country of immigrants. And neither candidate’s victory would restore Iowa’s school budgets, clean our water, provide rural health care, or keep our rural counties from losing population.

Each of those issues is a big issue, but together they are still only the tip of our iceberg of unsolved problems. And, no matter how gifted any candidates are, they are still just people with limited time, energy, and authority. Expecting otherwise is a recipe for disappointment, one seen too often in disenchanted voters who say some version of, “I voted my person in. Why didn’t they fix things?” But “we the people” give our elected officials offices, not superpowers.

It turns out that the work of making a more perfect union is never done. While we believe that our representatives generally make good faith efforts to do what they said they would, they still need us, their constituents, to remind them how their action (or inaction) affects us and to hold them accountable. If the person you voted for wins, you should have someone you can negotiate with. If not, remember the lesson that Iowan advocates have learned over the last years: even when you can’t stop bad ideas, you can often make them less bad.

In other words, to paraphrase the League of Women Voters: if you want it to succeed, democracy is not a spectator sport.

So take a little of the energy you committed to campaign season and decide on a change you want to see in the world. Join a group that supports that change or start one of your own. It could be a club, a cause, or even a union. Working together, not electing saviors, is how things get done in democracies. Groups not only make our voices louder; they also help us share the work, keep on task, and sometimes even find our friends. And, in this time of political realignment, you might be surprised to find out who those friends are.

The election was a spectacular group effort, but we and all of our friends are still needed. Making changes in America usually requires not just the right people in office but the rest of us holding them to their promises. From too-big-to-fail corporations to healthcare to immigration to school closings, hard problems are, well, hard. To get them over the finish line, our superpower-free politicians need us to cheer them on and to hold them to task. When we don’t do that, we get things like Guantanamo Bay and Remain in Mexico instead of immigration reform. Those broken promises are on our elected officials, but they are on us, too.

So today, hold our all-too-human leaders to account and revel in the absence of political ads.

Kelcey Patrick-Ferree and Shannon Patrick live in Iowa.

Originally published in the Iowa City Press-Citizen on November 9, 2024.

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