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Editorials

Conservation impacted due to USDA staff cuts

For producers, federal conservation programs are complex compared to straightforward transactions with equipment or seed vendors. Enrolling in a three-to-five-year federal contract requires extensive data logging, compliance reporting, and strict implementation guidelines. Producers rely on ...

The colonists’ grievances are surprisingly relevant, 250 years later

The Declaration of Independence, with its block of cursive letters scrawled onto parchment, looks like a relic from the distant past. Likewise, you might think the 27 grievances against King George III, his government and the British people listed in the body of the document would have little ...

This old dog might catch the bumper

Chris Jones fancied himself trolling for walleyes in the backwaters of the Upper Mississippi River near Lansing in his retirement. Instead, the 65-year-old found himself disembarking at Philadelphia for the NetRoots conference on his way to a goal of raising $1 million in his uphill Iowa ...

How out‑of‑work fishermen saved the American Revolution

George Washington knew his forces could not win the American Revolutionary War without some measure of sea power. “It follows then as certain as that night succeeds the day,” he later wrote in a letter, “that without a decisive naval force we can do nothing definitive, and with it ...

Q&A: Federal Tax Cuts Help Working Families

Q: What does the 2026 federal tax filing data show? A: The U.S. Treasury released data showing American families and workers claimed $82 billion in individual direct relief from the Working Families Tax Cuts Act signed into law one year ago on the Fourth of July. The Republican-led Congress ...

Feenstra learns lesson about showing up

You might have attracted as many people to a Unitarian Universalist fellowship hour in Sioux Center as to a Randy Feenstra rally in Sioux Rapids. Just about 40 people showed up for his gubernatorial campaign event at the farm of Rep. Megan Jones. He had won the endorsement of President Trump at ...

Why Trump’s call to pull 5,000 US troops from Germany will hurt America

President Donald Trump announced on May 1, 2026, that the United States will withdraw 5,000 U.S. troops from Germany – personnel who had been deployed there as a response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Germany-U.S. tensions started after the U.S. invasion of Iran. German Chancellor ...