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Community strong

Behind every emergency call is a powerful partnership built on trust, teamwork, and community strength. When people think about 911, we often picture a phone call in a moment of crisis and flashing lights arriving soon after. What many don’t see is the deep partnership working behind every emergency response, a partnership built on teamwork, communication, and trust. Here in Marshall County, emergency services are not separate agencies working alone. They are a connected system of people who care deeply about this community and show up every day ready to protect it. At the heart of ...

District 53 Newsletter from Rep. Dean Fisher

This week, Iowa House Republicans released a slate of tough-on-crime legislative proposals to ensure Iowa does not become a haven for career criminals. The first bill, which is awaiting a bill number, is the House Republicans Career Criminals bill. We are implementing a “Three-and-Done” Strike System. If you choose a lifestyle of crime, you choose to lose your ability to live freely in our society. This legislation creates a cumulative strike system for repeat offenders, triggering a mandatory minimum 20-year sentence without parole once a career criminal reaches three full strikes. ...

Three Crosses

There are three crosses on the hillside, above a pond, with crops of soybeans or corn in the background and the rising sun if you should pass by early in the morning. They’re right at, exactly, Mile Marker 76 on Highway 218, going north to Iowa City. It’s a mile or so north of the Highland ...

Exactly what business are we in with Measles?

Measles is a “cost of doing business,” says a highly placed official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. I’d like to know what business that is. To be fair, let me finish the CDC principal deputy director’s quote. Ralph Abraham said that measles is a cost of doing ...

Iowa’s farm income projected to plummet. Who is here to help?

Nick Larson and a quarter of Iowa farmers get their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act. When ACA provisions expired at the end of 2025, Larson’s family faced an immediate tax increase of $3,000 per year. Skyrocketing health care prices are only one challenge Iowa farmers are currently facing. An ag downturn hit Iowa family farms hard in 2025. Iowa recorded the second-most farm bankruptcies in the nation during the first six months of 2025. Predictions show things may only get worse this year. Iowa’s farm income is projected to plummet by 24 percent in 2026. Simply ...

Iowa does not need 4-year community college degrees

I love Iowa. After growing up in Ottumwa and graduating from Indianola’s Simpson College, I worked in South Dakota at the start of my career. I enjoyed my years in the Mount Rushmore State, but their higher education system pales in comparison to Iowa’s, and the same is true of other ...