It's time to get loud about cancer in Iowa
Also, news from Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley. And did Donald Trump commit fraud in Iowa?
I think we all can agree that political leaders are elected to solve problems. But there is a big, glaring problem in the state of Iowa that isn’t getting the attention it deserves, and Iowa lawmakers need to put it front and center: Cancer.
The Iowa Cancer Registry reported in 2023 that Iowa had the second highest overall cancer incidence of all US states, and in its 2024 report said about 6,100 Iowans were expected to die from cancer last year.
The Registry’s 2025 report is due out next month, and according to an article in the Iowa Capital Dispatch, the Registry is aiming to engage in significant outreach, as it “plans to deliver county-specific reports to all 99 counties in Iowa and meet with communities to point out particular policies or trends that might be driving higher rates of one particular type of cancer.”
I hope Iowans and their political leaders are paying close attention.
The 2024 report by the Registry, which was published last February, estimated there would be 21,000 new cancers diagnosed in Iowa during the year, with breast, prostate, lung, colon and rectum and skin melanoma the most prevalent. The report also emphasized the link between alcohol consumption and cancer, saying Iowa has the 4th highest incidence of alcohol-related cancers in the US and the highest rate in the Midwest.
According to the Iowa Capital Dispatch article:
Mary Charlton, director of the Iowa Cancer Registry, said Iowa continues to have increasing cancer figures where other states are seeing steady or declining rates. She said it’s important for Iowans to know this research and to get involved in pushing for changes that could lower these rates.
“What we’re really wanting to make people aware of is: We have a high cancer burden here in Iowa,” Charlton said. “We have to start getting loud with our elected officials about doing something about it.”
There are some efforts in the Legislature to address the problem, but more needs to be done.
Earlier this week, Art Cullen, a colleague at the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, wrote a fine essay that makes the case that we need to start making some noise about this problem, to get loud.
I’ve been aware of Iowa’s high cancer rates for quite some time, but I haven’t written about it. No longer. It’s time to say something. It’s time for all of us to get loud.
Grassley: RFK more reasonable than expected
A Politico story yesterday about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s effort to win Senate confirmation as head of the US Department of Health and Human Services quoted Sen. Chuck Grassley saying he was surprised at Kennedy’s views on agriculture.
Politico reports:
Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, a longtime advocate of farm interests, told reporters Kennedy’s views on farming and food production are “much more reasonable than I expected,” despite Kennedy’s past criticism of genetically modified plants and pesticides.
“The reports I read didn’t reflect what he actually believes and how he will act in those areas,” Grassley said.
This was surprising to me. It was only a year ago that Kennedy ran for president saying he would upend farm policy in the US.
Here’s an excerpt from what he said last year on his YouTube page when he was running for president:
“I’m going to reverse 80 years of farm policy in this country, which has directed us toward industrial agriculture, industrial meat production, factory farming, chemical-based agriculture, carbon-based fertilizers, all of these things that are destroying the soils in our country. It’s poisoning the food. The food that they produce is not even food anymore. It’s commodities.”
I know some people who agree with Kennedy’s point of view—but they’re mostly on the left—and I don’t believe that Iowa’s big agricultural organizations and leaders are among them. It’s not likely they think reversing 80 years of farm policy is a reasonable point of view.
I doubt many Republicans in the Iowa Legislature would agree with Kennedy, either. They are preparing to debate another bill this year that potentially shields Bayer from lawsuits stemming from its weed killer Roundup, according to an article by reporters from the Gazette in Cedar Rapids.
Perhaps RFK has promised senators like Grassley that he won’t act on his opinions, or maybe he’s softened them.
Either way, I’m looking forward to hearing how he addresses them at his confirmation hearing.
What inflation?
Republicans swept to victory two months ago in large part out of dissatisfaction with inflation and high prices. But now that the GOP is in control of Congress, one of Iowa’s top Republicans made pretty clear this week she isn’t focused on fixing those problems.
Her priorities lie elsewhere.
Sen. Joni Ernst bragged this week about the first bills she introduced in the 119th session of Congress, and none of them have anything to do with the economy, inflation or high prices.
Instead, the proposals demonstrate that Ernst is focused on trying to build her own political career. The measures she introduced relate to tracking the computer usage of government employees, moving agency headquarters out of Washington, D.C., and reducing the government’s real estate holdings.
What do those bills have to do with bringing down the cost of gasoline or groceries?
I’ll answer that: Nothing. They don’t really do much to control spending, either. They seem to be aimed at convincing Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy that she’s serious about budget cutting.
This isn’t surprising. Ernst boasted to Musk and Ramaswamy that she’s been engaged for years in a valiant and lonely fight against waste and excessive spending. But it’s not true. As I have pointed out before, spending is up 65% and debt 100% since Ernst was elected to Congress. Even though the GOP has been in charge much of that time. Meanwhile, some of the most ardent budget hawks in Washington contradict her claim she’s a leading fiscal conservative.
Joni Ernst can try all the gimmicks she wants, but they don’t erase the truth: She has been a full-time partner in the fiscal decline of the US government.
Did Donald Trump commit fraud in Iowa?
As you probably already know, Donald Trump filed a lawsuit last month against pollster J. Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register, claiming they deceived Iowans with their last pre-election survey that said, wrongly, that Kamala Harris was leading Trump in the state by 3 points. (Trump won by 13.)
Trump’s lawsuit—which has been panned by legal experts and is widely seen as an attempt to intimidate the news media—claims Selzer and the Register deliberately tried to mislead Iowa voters, citing a part of the Iowa Code that is mostly associated with deceptive advertising.
However, a new book raises the question whether it was, in fact, Donald Trump who tried to mislead Iowa consumers/voters last year.
A CNN story this week says Politico reporter Alex Isenstadt writes in “Revenge: The Inside Story of Trump’s Return to Power” that before a Fox News town hall in Iowa in January 2024, somebody at the network fed Trump’s team the questions ahead of time.
According to CNN:
“About thirty minutes before the town hall was due to start, a senior aide started getting text messages from a person on the inside at Fox. Holy s–t, the team thought. They were images of all the questions Trump would be asked and the planned follow-ups, down to the exact wording. Jackpot. This was like a student getting a peek at the test before the exam started,” Isenstadt writes.
Apparently, Trump wasn’t pleased with the questions. The CNN story continues.
“Trump was pissed,” Isenstadt writes, as he felt the questions were “like attacks designed to put him on the defensive.”
But “with the questions in hand” ahead of the telecast, the team “workshopped answers.”
Fox said it planned to investigate the allegation.
As for whether this constitutes fraud, think about it this way: The crux of Trump’s lawsuit against Selzer and the Register is the Iowa Poll was a consumer product that misled Iowans. But if by some stretch of the imagination a newspaper poll could be construed as deceptively marketed merchandise, then what about a TV show in which a political candidate takes ostensibly spontaneous questions that, unbeknownst to the audience, his team has already seen and prepared for?
I look forward to seeing Brenna Bird’s forthcoming lawsuit.
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Every accusation from Trump's team is projection. Remember how they accused Kamala Harris of getting questions in advance? Probably they said that because that's just what Trump would do.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for that Bird lawsuit.