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Over the last two weeks, Marshalltown has hosted the 2026 Iowa YMCA State Swimming Championships and the Iowa High School Esports Association Winter State Showdown. These events bring big increases in hotel stays, bustling restaurants, and championship memories for competitors who travel here from across the state. For a few days, Marshalltown becomes the stage for hundreds of young people chasing their moment of competition, connection, and celebration. But every time we host events like these, I find myself thinking less about the spotlight and more about the people behind the ...

District 53 Newsletter from Rep. Dean Fisher

We continued with a heavy debate schedule this week as we approach the second funnel date where our House bills must be passed to the Senate. On Wednesday of this week, the Environmental Protection Committee that I chair and the Health and Human Services committee held a joint meeting so that we could hear a report from the College of Public Health at the University of Iowa. This was an interim report on their research into the drivers of cancer in Iowa. This research project was funded last year by the legislature so that we could gain science-based insight into this horrible disease ...

The Warme Wire: Week 9

On Friday I had the honor to help welcome home 175 Iowa National Guard soldiers from the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 34th Infantry Division after successfully completing their mission with Operation Inherent Resolve. A total of 575 brave Iowa soldiers are making a phased return to the United States following critical work alongside coalition and regional partners to significantly reduce the capabilities of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, helping make the region safer. As I chatted with families in the Des Moines hangar, I met young sons awaiting their dad’s return, parents whose child was ...

The high cost of being cheap

The Iowa Legislature is at it again, trying to eliminate publication of legal notices in newspapers. And it will cost Iowa’s citizens way more money than it saves. Republican sponsors say it will save money for cities and counties, but as editor Art Cullen noted in his editorial last week, scrapping public notices will keep Iowans in the dark about the public’s business. Legal notices are the minutes of city council and board of supervisors meetings, the bills that they pay, the people that they hire and other official actions they take. They are the notices that alert you if a ...

E.L. Doctorow

Since I seem to lack the resilience to bounce back with any speed to my previous pre-cancer, healthy condition of medium-to-high energy, and have been forced into what you might call a palliative existence, it has left me ample time to read and write. I am thankful that, although my body may be failing, my mind is as active as ever, probably over active. When I find an author I like, I like to read all or most all of that author’s works. Thanks to Kindle, for a few bucks and the touch of a finger, this is possible without leaving my recliner. When I was still living and working in ...

Democrats done with democracy

Last month, Susan Rice showed herself to be one face of the ugly left authoritarianism so prevalent in today’s Democrat party. Gateway Pundit quoted her letting the wicked cat escape the bag. “When it comes to elites, you know, the corporate interests, the law firms, the universities, the media...it’s not going to end well for them,” she recently told a podcaster. Not, Rice elaborated, “for those that decided they would act in their perceived very narrow self-interest, which I would underscore is very short term self-interest, and, you know, take a knee to ...