Q: How did the Working Families Tax Cut law boost the farm safety net?

On July 4, 2026, the United States marks its 250th birthday. Two and a half centuries after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Americans have a chance to reflect not only on where we have been, but also on where we are headed.

With the 2026 midterms approaching and the 2028 presidential election right behind them, Democrats are raising a discredited ruse to pack the Supreme Court with additional justices.

There’s just something about summer in a small town.
Maybe it’s because everything seems a little slower. Maybe it’s because there’s no packed schedule telling you where you need to be every minute of the day. Or maybe it’s because some of the best memories are made from the simplest things.
In the small town where I grew up, summer meant freedom.

It has been a while since you heard a United States leader say, “The fault is mine alone.”
If you visit Abilene, Kansas, the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Museum offers countless artifacts of leadership — far from the battlefields of Europe and the White House where the five-star general left his mark.
One museum artifact that caught my eye on a visit several years ago stands out because of what it says, and its backstory. 

This Sunday is the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. Across the country, it is also a day set aside to honor those affected by Alzheimer’s disease. Known as The Longest Day, the observance is a reminder of the long journey families face when a loved one begins to lose pieces of themselves to a disease that currently has no cure.

There’s a particular kind of silence that settles over a town when its newspaper closes. It’s not loud, not immediate. It creeps in slowly. It may not be noticed immediately when the final edition is delivered,  the last byline runs, and the office lights go dark. 
And then one day, people realize something is missing. Not just the paper, but the thread that quietly stitched the community together.

Hold on to your bonnets and circle the wagons, because  it’s official. The Ingalls family is going back to the prairie.
And by that, I mean Little House on the Prairie is getting the remake treatment from Netflix. 
I imagine somewhere in the heavens, Michael Landon is looking down, squinting across the prairie grass, and wondering how many episodes it will take before someone invents Wi-Fi in Walnut Grove.

Each March, the calendar turns and prompts us to pause for Women’s History Month. While it might seem like just another observance in an already packed calendar, that view misses its true purpose. 

Spring rarely arrives all at once. It begins in small, almost unnoticed ways with the softening of the ground, a bit of green pushing through the dirt, a little more light at the end of the day. After months of cold and stillness, the world slowly stirs back to life, offering a quiet but persistent reminder that renewal always comes. What once seemed dormant or dead returns with a steady, undeniable hope.

My grandson likes to find the moon in the daytime sky. He’ll point with the certainty only a child possesses and say, “I found the moon. It’s always there.”
He’s right, of course. It is always there, steady, patient, almost waiting for us to look up and notice it again.
Lately, it feels like a lot of us have stopped looking up.

When I first ran for office back in 2014, I remember an admonition I was given on the front porch of a voter who pledged to support me but issued this warning: “Don’t become one of them.“ I processed that statement for days and came to the conclusion that becoming “one of them” meant compromising my principles for political expediency; rationalizing the violation of my principles because a certain vote might mean favor with the politically pow

This week marks a victorious step forward for Northwest Iowa and our national security.

At one time, the first day of May carried a certain kind of magic, one made of a small, thoughtful gesture. May Day baskets, usually handmade and filled with popcorn, candy, and flowers, would appear on doorknobs and front steps, left anonymously by children who then darted away before being seen. 

Graduation is treated as a defining milestone, a clear transition from preparation to purpose. Yet for many graduates, including myself at one time, it feels less like arriving at a destination and more like standing at the edge of an unfamiliar road without a map. One day you are attending classes, meeting deadlines, and following a fairly structured routine.