Commentary by Jerry Lanson

I first visited Lenox, Iowa, in the summer 1972 when Kathy and I were moving from Connecticut to Denver.

Kathy’s grandfather, a lifetime farmer, was quiet and in poor health. But her grandmother, the town poetess, embraced me as a kindred spirit even though I was a New Yorker by birth, a city boy and an Easterner. Soon she was driving us both around the grid of dirt roads that intersected the fields of this small farming community, “visiting” an hour or two here and there with friends and neighbors to introduce us over cookies and a glass of lemonade.

It was a way of life, slow, neighborly, grounded in community. Whatever squabbles might flare from time to time, the farmers relied on each other and likely still do. Iowa back then also voted Democratic nearly as often as Republican. (A Democrat defeated an incumbent Republican for the US Senate that year though Republicans controlled the state senate.) Today the state is overwhelming red in its representation.

I was curious how independent Iowans reacted to the mean-spirited cuts in health insurance and food resources under the big, ugly bill that just squeaked past the Congress to become law. I also wondered how the sharp escalation of ICE raids nationwide has played out in farming communities that rely on undocumented immigrants for work in the fields and meat-packing plants. The time to “visit” seemed right when Donald Trump visited the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines the day before signing his bill into law, complete with a military flyover at the ceremony.

I started by stopping by the Ames Tribune in the town where Kathy’s mother grew up. Her father was the town doctor there and, during the Great Depression, helped feed those without enough food. The paper, printed since 1919, today is published by Gannett six days a week.

Money mattered in the news on Saturday, July 5. The lead story was headlined, “Burning through budgets: rising costs strain Iowa fire departments.” Below that was a story headlined: “Trump signs tax-cutting, debt boosting bill in White House ceremony.” And on the letters page, I ran across the headline, “Concerns with the Billionaire Bonanza Bill,” a reference to the trillions of dollars in tax cuts the rich will receive in the next decade in Trump’s new law.

Wrote the first letter writer, “SNAP (food) payments will go down even though Iowa food banks cannot keep up with the current demand. Local food purchase programs were cut, hurting both school children and farmers. Enormous Medicaid cuts will cause some rural hospitals to close and services to be reduced. Medicaid helps fund over 40% of births, so pressure on OB-GYN services will be especially intense.”

Lower down on the home page, I found an interesting headline reporting on Trump’s visit to the fairgrounds. It read: “Trump: ‘We’ll ‘put the farmers in charge’ when deciding to deport undocumented ag workers.”

His words flew in the face of ICE actions nationwide in recent weeks and the administration’s vow, after vacillating, to make no exceptions to meet concerns of farmers and GOP business owners about the arrest of law-abiding workers.

“If a farmer’s willing to vouch for these people, in some way, Kristi, I think we’re going to have to just say that’s going to be good, right?” Trump said to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whose agency oversees ICE. “You know we’re going to be good with it. Because we don’t want to do it where we take all the workers off the farms.”

That presumably became the placeholder for this week’s policy in what the newspaper described as “a string of conflicting messages from the administration on the issue.”

The article added, “Perpetually short of labor, Iowa is the leading U.S. producer of pork and eggs and a top source of beef, turkey and milk. At large meatpacking plants scattered across the state and in livestock operations, immigrants are a major source of labor.”

According to multiple news reports, ICE since Trump took office has arrested law-abiding workers in significantly greater numbers than those who have violated any laws.

From Ames in Central Iowa, I headed southwest to the Sioux City Journal, published by Lee Enterprises. National news at the paper takes a decidedly back seat to local photo-driven stories. But the opinion page did feature a “mini-editorial” headlined “Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill should be headlined the Big Beautiful Billionaires’ Bill.” I couldn’t read more because of a paywall, but it the headline certainly seemed to convey that the paper is none too happy with the GOP’s signature legislation.

It was time to stop by the Des Moines Register,the state’s dominant newspaper. It drew Trump’s ire and a lawsuit when its respected pollster appeared to find a late surge for Kamala Harris during the presidential campaign. Among its lead stories July 3 was one headlined, “5 Takeaways from Donald Trump’s Speech at the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines.” It read a bit like a White House press release, the first takeaway being, “Trump says there’s ‘no better birthday present for America than ;the big beautiful Bill.” The article was accompanied by a picture of Trump 2028 and Gulf of America hats.

But, referring to the states’ two US senators, the editorial in the same edition cut a different tone with the headline “Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst abandon Iowans in need.” Both Republican senators voted for Trump’s bill.

As for Lenox. It’s too small, with a population of only 1,372, to support a newspaper. I imagine much of the news there still spreads through “visiting.” Kathy’s grandma Alice got to meet both our daughters before she died years later. On our earlier visits to the farm she taught both of us to appreciate leftovers, meticulously stowed in the refrigerator meal after meal, and re-served until everything was eaten. In 1974, Alice was thrilled when I entered journalism school a several hours away at the University of Missouri in Columbia.

I can only hope I’ve lived up to her standards as the Lenox town poetess.

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This column first appeared in Lansion’s Substack From the Grassroots.

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Your Turn

There may be a no more definitive expression of our nation’s political debate than arguments about tax and spending. Conservatives, and most Republicans, have been on a quest to cut taxes and spending since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, while liberals and most Democrats argue a country as rich as ours deserves a strong social “safety net” for those who do not get a sufficient share of the wealth.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, in which Republicans in the House and Senate are carrying out President Trump’s agenda, especially extension of his 2017 tax cuts mostly benefitting the rich, upends this conservative-liberal split – kind of. The bill Trump signs on Independence Day will blow up the federal deficit and raise the debt ceiling – unless you buy the “dynamic” scoring of the budget argument that the tax cuts for the rich will trickle down to the middle- and lower-classes via investment and good-paying jobs.

From that perspective, the pro-OBBB argument is much like arguments for President Reagan’s supply side economics. 

Confusing. Even head-spinning. We know. But that’s why today Pundit-at-Large Stephen Macaulay’s commentary criticizing the tax and spending reconciliation bill is in the right column along with pro-MAGA contributing pundit Rich Corbett’s commentary on why the OBBB will spur the US economy.

It is why we ask you to indicate your political leanings in the subject line when you email your COMMENTS on this and other news and issues to editors@thehustings.news.

--Editors