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Happy Wednesday, and Welcome to Cornhole Champions. I’m Zachary Oren Smith, coming to you TWO days in a row. You deserve nothing less, fair reader.

Today, I’m airing a finale for this season.* We’ll be back in 2026, after I get done with some parental leave. On to the show…

XX GDP was down in the first quarter of the year 6.1% thanks to Trump’s tariff policies—and if you haven’t heard about it, that’s by design.

On this episode of Cornhole Champions, I dig into a story from the New York Times that breaks down something you already know: Iowa is in rough shape and we need to turn it around. I’m joined by Liz Fleming and Chase Seibert to dig into how Trump’s $20 billion bailout to Argentina is shipping Iowa soybean markets to South America while local farmers watch their livelihoods disappear.

Toss some bags about Iowa’s economic woes… health insurance costs going up… and some reflection on a year of Cornhole Champions.

Cornhole Champions is a weekly politics and policy podcast powered by Iowa Starting Line, hosted by Zachary Oren Smith and produced by Rebecca Steinberg, with music by Avery Mossman and art by Desirée Tapia.

Before you go

Support this work by doing these four things:

1. Subscribe to Cornhole Champions on YouTube and like our videos to improve their reach.

2. Join the game by signing up for my Substack newsletter and get these episodes straight to your email on Wednesday mornings.

3. Sign up for Iowa Starting Line’s flagship newsletter.

4. Follow our work on Instagram and TikTok.

Cornhole Champions is a weekly podcast powered by Iowa Starting Line. It’s produced by me and edited by Rebecca Steinberg. Our music is by Avery Mossman and show art by Desirée Tapia. We are a proud member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative.

Your friendly neighborhood reporter,

Zachary Oren Smith
Political correspondent
Iowa Starting Line

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Happy Tuesday, and Welcome to Cornhole Champions. I’m Zachary Oren Smith. Tomorrow, we’re going to air our 2025 finale for the show. But before I do I have some conversations from the Democratic primary in one of Iowa’s most competitive congressional districts.

Former Iowa House Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst of Windsor Heights is challenging Republican Congressman Zach Nunn for Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District. As the first woman to lead Iowa House Democrats, Konfrst has spent seven years fighting for reproductive rights, healthcare access, Medicaid funding, and school voucher accountability while building power in the minority.

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This week on Cornhole Champions, Konfrst explains why voters feel frozen by political uncertainty, how Democrats can win even when outnumbered, and what effective opposition actually looks like in Iowa politics.

Catch my conversation with state Sen. Sarah Trone Garriott of West Des Moines, one of the other Democrats running for this seat, on Friday.

Cornhole Champions is a weekly politics and policy podcast powered by Iowa Starting Line, hosted by Zachary Oren Smith and produced by Rebecca Steinberg, with music by Avery Mossman and art by Desirée Tapia.

Before you go

Support this work by doing these four things:

1. Subscribe to Cornhole Champions on YouTube and like our videos to improve their reach.

2. Join the game by signing up for my Substack newsletter and get these episodes straight to your email on Wednesday mornings.

3. Sign up for Iowa Starting Line’s flagship newsletter.

4. Follow our work on Instagram and TikTok.

Cornhole Champions is a weekly podcast powered by Iowa Starting Line. It’s produced by me and edited by Rebecca Steinberg. Our music is by Avery Mossman and show art by Desirée Tapia. We are a proud member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative.

Your friendly neighborhood reporter,

Zachary Oren Smith
Political correspondent
Iowa Starting Line

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Happy Wednesday. I’m Zachary Oren Smith, and welcome back to Cornhole Champions, a weekly podcast where we throw bags at the state’s biggest stories. I’m back for a short spell on the news desk before I’m off again.

I’m happy to say that our baby girl—and how can I write about anything else—is healthy. She’s also very loud. I’m told it’s probably a good thing. A sign of healthy lungs. Now that I think about it, it’s certainly hereditary.

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It’s easy to romanticize small-town Iowa — cornfields, calm mornings, and hardworking families. But behind the postcard image is a story of consolidation, pollution, and the steady draining of civic power.

For my penultimate episode of the 2025, I spoke with Pulitzer Prize–winner Art Cullen has spent decades writing from Storm Lake about the forces reshaping rural life. In his new book Dear Marty, We Crapped In Our Nest: Notes from the Edge of the World, he reflects on how we got here, what we have left, and what it would take to turn things around after a century of extraction.

Toss some bags about Iowa’s petrochemical farm economy… the hollowing out of our small towns… And the politics of pollution and power…

It’s a hard read. But if you like this show, I think it’s up your alley. A conversation about responsibility, hope, and the cost of pretending everything’s fine. And for my money, it has one of the best essays I’ve read on the history of corn in the US. Super interesting.

Cornhole Champions is a weekly politics and policy podcast powered by Iowa Starting Line, hosted by Zachary Oren Smith and produced by Rebecca Steinberg, with music by Avery Mossman and art by Desirée Tapia.

Before you go

Support this work by doing these four things:

1. Subscribe to Cornhole Champions on YouTube and like our videos to improve their reach.

2. Join the game by signing up for my Substack newsletter and get these episodes straight to your email on Wednesday mornings.

3. Sign up for Iowa Starting Line’s flagship newsletter.

4. Follow our work on Instagram and TikTok.

Cornhole Champions is a weekly podcast powered by Iowa Starting Line. It’s produced by me and edited by Rebecca Steinberg. Our music is by Avery Mossman and show art by Desirée Tapia. We are a proud member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative.

Your friendly neighborhood reporter,

Zachary Oren Smith
Political correspondent
Iowa Starting Line

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Happy Wednesday. I'm Zachary Oren Smith, and welcome back to Cornhole Champions, a weekly podcast where we throw bags at the state’s biggest stories. It’s week four of my paternity leave and the walls, they’re closing in… but first:

Iowa has the second-highest cancer rate in the nation, and it's getting worse. State Rep. Austin Baeth isn't just a politician. He's a practicing physician who sees cancer patients every day and watches people die from this disease in his palliative care work. His unique perspective as both doctor and lawmaker reveals the harsh reality: Iowa's cancer crisis has identifiable causes and policy solutions, but special interests keep blocking progress.

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On this episode of Cornhole Champions, I speak with Baeth about why Iowa's cancer rates are skyrocketing when other states are improving. From radon in 70% of Iowa homes to untaxed vaping products, from water contamination to landlord lobbying, we explore the specific regulatory tools that could save lives—and the political roadblocks preventing action.

Before you go

Support this work by doing these four things:

1. Subscribe to Cornhole Champions on YouTube and like our videos to improve their reach.

2. Join the game by signing up for my Substack newsletter and get these episodes straight to your email on Wednesday mornings.

3. Sign up for Iowa Starting Line's flagship newsletter.

4. Follow our work on Instagram and TikTok.

Cornhole Champions is a weekly podcast powered by Iowa Starting Line. It’s produced by me and edited by Rebecca Steinberg. Our music is by Avery Mossman and show art by Desirée Tapia. We are a proud member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative.

Your friendly neighborhood reporter,

Zachary Oren Smith
Political correspondent
Iowa Starting Line

YouTube | Instagram | TikTok | Twitter | Bluesky | Threads | LinkedIn

Happy Wednesday and welcome to Cornhole Champions. Iowa Starting Line’s weekly podcast where we throw bags at the state’s biggest stories. I’m Zachary Oren Smith. If you’re reading this, it’s week three of my time off taking care of a new baby girl. Are the walls closing in? Have the smells overtaken me? Who’s to say? In the meantime…

There's something deeply unsettling about learning that justice can hinge on geography. That's what struck me most about my conversation with Sarah Hedlund and Diana Mondragon, co-hosts of the podcast "Blooming After Grooming."

Twenty years ago, both women were students groomed and sexually abused by the same high school teacher. When they found each other decades later—through a cold LinkedIn message that Hedlund described as "the most stressful" she'd ever sent—they discovered their paths to accountability looked completely different simply because of which state they lived in.

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What stayed with me wasn't just the complexity of navigating different legal systems. How you think you're dealing with being abused by a teacher, but then you peel back layers and confront how your family, your school, and your state failed to protect you. "

Write in and let me know about a time you realized something important about your past that you couldn't see when you were living through it.

Before you go

Support this work by doing these three things:

1. Subscribe to Cornhole Champions on YouTube and like our videos to improve their reach.

2. Join the game by signing up for my Substack newsletter and get these episodes straight to your email on Wednesday mornings.

3. Sign up for Iowa Starting Line's flagship newsletter.

4. Follow our work on Instagram and TikTok.

Cornhole Champions is a weekly podcast powered by Iowa Starting Line. This podcast is produced by me and edited by Rebecca Steinberg. Our music is by Avery Mossman and our show art is from Desirée Tapia.

Your friendly neighborhood reporter,

Zachary Oren Smith
Political correspondent
Iowa Starting Line

YouTube | Instagram | TikTok | Twitter | Bluesky | Threads | LinkedIn

Happy Wednesday, and welcome back to Cornhole Champions. I'm Zachary Oren Smith. If you’re reading this, it’s week two of my time off caring for our new baby girl. I’m probably fine.

Iowa has the second-highest cancer rate in the nation, and it's getting worse. A million-dollar study confirmed what many suspected: agricultural pollution is poisoning our water and making Iowans sick. However, after scientists completed their research, the $400,000 set aside to tell Iowans about it simply disappeared.

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On this episode of Cornhole Champions, I sit down with investigative journalist Carey Gillam, editor-in-chief of The New Lede and author of "The Monsanto Papers" and "Whitewash." She spent 17 years as a senior correspondent with Reuters international news service. Her work has been at the center of how powerful agricultural interests suppress critical public health research while Iowa families pay the price.

From EPA officials grilling pork chops with polluters to the revolving door between Big Ag and government regulators, we explore how corporate money corrupts the science that should protect us all.

Before you go

Support this work by doing these four things:

1. Subscribe to Cornhole Champions on YouTube and like our videos to improve their reach.

2. Join the game by signing up for my Substack newsletter and get these episodes straight to your email on Wednesday mornings.

3. Sign up for Iowa Starting Line's flagship newsletter.

4. Follow our work on Instagram and TikTok.

Cornhole Champions is a weekly podcast powered by Iowa Starting Line. It’s produced by me and edited by Rebecca Steinberg. Our music is by Avery Mossman and show art by Desirée Tapia. We are a proud member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative.

Your friendly neighborhood reporter,

Zachary Oren Smith
Political correspondent
Iowa Starting Line

YouTube | Instagram | TikTok | Twitter | Bluesky | Threads | LinkedIn

Happy Wednesday and welcome to Cornhole Champions. Iowa Starting Line’s weekly podcast where we throw bags at the state’s biggest stories. I’m Zachary Oren Smith.

If you’re reading this, it’s because my baby girl has just dropped. I’m going to be in and out over the next few weeks while I figure that out… I’m sure I’ll have mastered fatherhood by then. In the meantime, I’ve got a run of interviews that I think you’re really going to like.

There's something humbling about watching someone who's been at the top of their game willingly become a rookie again. That's exactly what Ty Rushing did when he left his role as a veteran Iowa journalist to become an assistant professor of practice at the University of Iowa. In this episode of Cornhole Champions, Rushing reflects on it's like to go from being "one of the top dogs" back to "the bottom of the pecking order."

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The transition hit him in ways he didn't expect. Listening to Rushing talk about his students—how they keep him young, roast him mercilessly, and have zero idea who Mike Jones is—you hear someone who's found something he didn't know he was looking for.

Write in and let me know about a time you had to start over in something you thought would be easier.

Before you go

Support this work by doing these three things:

1. Subscribe to Cornhole Champions on YouTube and like our videos to improve their reach.

2. Join the game by signing up for my Substack newsletter and get these episodes straight to your email on Wednesday mornings.

3. Sign up for Iowa Starting Line's flagship newsletter.

4. Follow our work on Instagram and TikTok.

Cornhole Champions is a weekly podcast powered by Iowa Starting Line. This podcast is produced by me and edited by Rebecca Steinberg. Our music is by Avery Mossman and our show art is from Desirée Tapia.

Your friendly neighborhood reporter,

Zachary Oren Smith
Political correspondent
Iowa Starting Line

YouTube | Instagram | TikTok | Twitter | Bluesky | Threads | LinkedIn

Happy Wednesday. I'm Zachary Oren Smith, and welcome back to Cornhole Champions, a weekly podcast where we throw bags at the state’s biggest stories.

Today on the show, we dig into the upcoming city-school election cycle, why Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds wants to withhold emails from the public, and I unveil my most controversial take yet. But first…

One week ago, conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot on a college campus in Utah. The scene was a familiar one to people who spend too much time in the scroll.

A crowd of rowdy college students huddled around an EZ-Up tent. Kirk was standing there, mic in hand, prepared to deflect whatever criticism a college student brought forth.

It’s a format that I’ve seen do numbers. Whether Kirk makes mincemeat of them or the student gets Kirk stumbling, it’s the kind of thing that people like me, hoovering up content, can’t get enough of. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who came across the snuff film last Wednesday while scrolling. I wish I hadn’t.

My feelings on it haven’t changed much since I spoke about it last Thursday. I’m still heavy from seeing more violence in my country: the college in Utah, the high school in Colorado, and the encampment in Minneapolis. I’m still cold from the glee I saw from folks I share values with. I don’t think anyone can hate gun violence the way I do and have anything but a heavy heart in this moment.

We lose everything this way. And I think the lessons we learn from it matter. We still have little to explain what motivated the 22-year-old shooter. Yet that didn’t stop folks from grabbing onto the details that best validated the narrative needed. And least for the American Right, that’s of coming conflict.

“War is coming,” wrote one user on pro-Trump message board The Donald.

I wasn’t surprised to find Iowa Republicans going to the mat to cancel teachers and professors over what they said or what they shared about Kirk’s murder. I wasn’t surprised to find an embattled representative clinging to the backlash, hoping to score some points. I suppose I was a little surprised when I saw them go after the Iowa National Guard for the crime of having other priorities that day.

A week later, I’m left wondering whether in my lifetime I’ll see a normal politic. One focused on ordinary things like ending suffering for my neighbors. I’m wondering whether we’ll find the moral spine to feed kids in schools, to give people shelter, and yes, to end gun violence.

There’s a bit from Hannah Arendt’s On Violence (1970) that I keep returning to:

(W)e can control the most complicated processes with a precision that makes trips to the moon less dangerous than ordinary weekend excursions, but the allegedly "greatest power on earth" is helpless to end a war, clearly disastrous for all concerned, in one of the earth's smallest countries (Vietnam). It is as though we have fallen under a fairyland spell which permits us to do the "impossible" on the condition that we lose the capacity of doing the possible, to achieve fantastically extraordinary feats on the condition of no longer being able to attend properly to our everyday needs.

We’re a long way from everyday needs.

Food for thought

Good writing zigs while others are zagging. Or at least that’s what I like reading. As I’ve been thinking about Kirk’s assassination, there were a few pieces I read that stood out as morally clear and thoughtful. Food for thought?

John Ganz from Unpopular Front writes about the paradox between safety and the constitutional rights we enjoy. He argues the conditions that free us from political violence are incompatible with liberty. And that’s exhausting:

We’ll see if this is truly the turning point people seem to think it is. With some weariness, I ask, “What’s going to change exactly? America will become a violent country filled with guns and inflammatory rhetoric? The power of the state will be used without the restraint of the law or rights to attack its enemies?” We’re there already. The true disaster would be to use this to end or injure free political life in this country.

I remain a big reader of Jamelle Bouie—despite all my issues with The New York Times—and so when I saw he was thinking through Kirk, I had to read. He writes that the man eulogized as a paragon of free speech probably has his greatest legacy in “MaCarthyite” watchlists.

It is sometimes considered gauche, in the world of American political commentary, to give words the weight of their meaning. As this thinking goes, there might be real belief, somewhere, in the provocations of our pundits, but much of it is just performance, and it doesn’t seem fair to condemn someone for the skill of putting on a good show.

But Kirk was not just putting on a show. He was a dedicated proponent of a specific political program. He was a champion for an authoritarian politics that backed the repression of opponents and made light of violence against them. And you can see Kirk’s influence everywhere in the Trump administration, from its efforts to strip legal recognition from transgender Americans to its anti-diversity purge of the federal government.

Many—several of whom are neighbors—want to see him as a martyr of conservatism. Backlash has been tremendous for those of us who have troubled the waters of Kirk’s legacy. One of the ways people have approached this is by listing the offense. I think Erin Reed did a good job in the newsletter last week. The conclusion:

His model of politics was not dialogue, but trolling: hopping from campus to campus to bait students, churn out sound bites, and spread hate. And his rhetoric was not debate—it was violent, dehumanizing, and designed to put targets on people’s backs.

Ben Burgis and Meagan Day wrote for Jacobin that the attack is not just a tragedy. It’s a disaster for the future of building a broader left through debate and inquiry. I thought explanation of some of their primary principles was interesting in light of the assassination:

The fundamental premise of left politics is that ordinary people are capable of self-government, at their workplaces and in society as a whole. That goal is only a coherent one if we trust our fellow citizens to be exposed to every point of view, even the worst ones, and to make up their own minds. And our democratic goals can only be achieved by democratic means. We seek to overturn deeply entrenched structures of wealth and power. There’s no realistic way to do that except by winning over the vast majority of the population to our side.

As Burgis and Day conclude their essay, “there is nothing to celebrate here. Indeed, there is much to fear.”

Before you go

Support this work by doing these four things:

1. Subscribe to Cornhole Champions on YouTube and like our videos to improve their reach.

2. Join the game by signing up for my Substack newsletter and get these episodes straight to your email on Wednesday mornings.

3. Sign up for Iowa Starting Line's flagship newsletter.

4. Follow our work on Instagram and TikTok.

Cornhole Champions is a weekly podcast powered by Iowa Starting Line. It’s produced by me and edited by Rebecca Steinberg. Our music is by Avery Mossman and show art by Desirée Tapia. We are a proud member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative.

Your friendly neighborhood reporter,

Zachary Oren Smith
Political correspondent
Iowa Starting Line

YouTube | Instagram | TikTok | Twitter | Bluesky | Threads | LinkedIn

Happy Wednesday, and welcome back to Cornhole Champions. I'm Zachary Oren Smith.

Sometimes the loudest political victories turn out to be the quietest defeats. Take what happened with federal health funding this year. Blue states sued the Trump administration over $11 billion in CDC grant cuts. Red states like Iowa? They didn't. The result: blue states kept about 80% of their funding while red states like ours lost everything.

It's a strange kind of winning. Iowa lost all 12 of its targeted CDC grants—money that funded research, mental health services, and disease detection systems. Meanwhile, states that pushed back got to keep doing the work that makes communities healthier and creates jobs for scientists and health workers.

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The phrase "owning the libs" keeps bouncing around my head. Because when the strategy is built around showing loyalty instead of fighting for resources, who is it that’s getting owned here? And in this case, it's not just politicians who pay the price—it's Iowa families who lose access to services, researchers who lose their jobs, and communities that lose the infrastructure that keeps people healthy.

But first...

Musical chairs begins - The 2026 scramble is officially underway. US Rep. Ashley Hinson jumped into the Senate race three hours after US Sen. Joni Ernst announced she wouldn't seek reelection. As former State Rep. Jim Carlin said, the whole thing seemed "orchestrated." He's probably right, but that's just how these open seats work when opportunity knocks. What's more interesting: Hinson's move opens up the 2nd Congressional District, turning what looked like a safe Republican seat into one of Iowa's most competitive races. We go over it on the podcast today, but I also wrote about it for the newsletter.

Still no town halls - US Rep. Zach Nunn continues to avoid public town halls, calling them "taxpayer-funded protest events." That's a telling phrase. When did citizen feedback become something to avoid rather than seek out? Meanwhile, his Democratic opponents are already making the case that we need leaders who will show up—not just for donors, but for everyone.

And now, as part of The Hot Spot: Investigating Cancer in Iowa, I’ve assembled some insight from cancer experts answering the question many of you emailed me about…

What you can do to reduce your cancer risk: The big six for Iowans

Iowans are comparatively more likely to be diagnosed with cancer than our neighbors across the country. But one clear message that keeps appearing in our investigation, The Hot Spot, is that you can reduce your cancer risk.

We spoke with multiple oncologists and other specialists who stressed that just because cancer rates are high, just because environmental causes are prevalent, doesn’t mean that personal decisions don’t have a role to play. We’ve collected six pieces of advice from the experts we spoke with in hopes to give you a sense of what you can do to reduce your risk today.

1. Don't smoke. And if you do, try to quit.

This remains the single most important thing you can do. Smoking causes nearly 20% of all cancer cases and 30% of cancer deaths, making it far and away the leading preventable cause of cancer.

"Even in this day and age, with as long as we've known about cigarette smoking and with public policy, it still is the number one cause of cancer in terms of modifiable risk factors," said Dr. Richard Deming, the medical director of MercyOne Richard Deming Cancer Center in Des Moines.

The connection runs deep. Smoking increases your risk for lung cancer, mouth cancer, throat cancer, bladder cancer, kidney cancer, pancreatic cancer, and more. Between 80% and 90% of lung cancer deaths are linked to smoking cigarettes.

Iowa has made progress here. We've dropped from 47% of adults smoking in the 1970s to about 12.5% today. But we still smoke slightly above the national average. And as Dr. Andrew Nish, the medical director for the John Stoddard Cancer Center at UnityPoint Health in Des Moines, points out, we haven't raised the state’s tobacco tax since 2007.

"The biggest impediment for a teenager to start smoking is price," Nish said.

2. Maintain a healthy weight and stay active

Obesity and lack of physical activity together cause almost as many cancers as smoking. Being overweight is associated with a higher risk of cancers like breast cancer, colon cancer, endometrial cancer, liver cancer, kidney cancer, and others.

"Obesity is emerging, in some ways, as just as potent of a risk for people as smoking is," said Dr. Marcus Plescia, the chief medical officer for the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, in an ABC News report.

Dr. Nish emphasized that movement throughout the day matters more than formal exercise routines.

"The longer we sit, the higher risk for diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and even cancer," he said. "Every 45 minutes, you need to be out of the chair, walking, do pushups, wall sits. I don't care what you do, but you gotta move."

The American Cancer Society recommends 150 to 300 minutes of moderate exercise or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous exercise each week. But even small changes help. Take the stairs. Park farther away. Stand while talking on the phone.

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3. Eat real food

Ultra-processed foods have flooded our grocery stores over the past 50 years, and our bodies are paying the price. Dr. Nish described how we've moved from the occasional TV dinner in the 1950s to entire aisles of processed foods today.

"If it didn't come from nature, don't eat it," he tells his patients. This means choosing whole fruits and vegetables over fruit snacks, fresh meat over processed lunch meat, and foods with ingredients you can pronounce.

The American Cancer Society recommends eating at least 2.5 to 3 cups of vegetables and 1.5 to 2 cups of fruit daily. Focus on variety and color. Dark leafy greens, bright orange vegetables, berries, and citrus fruits all pack cancer-fighting nutrients.

4. Limit alcohol

Even small amounts of alcohol increase cancer risk. There's no controversy here among cancer researchers, even though you might hear conflicting messages about heart health.

"A little bit of alcohol still can increase the risk of cancer," Dr. Deming said. "The more you drink, the more likely you are to get one of the cancers caused by alcohol consumption."

Alcohol increases your risk for cancers of the mouth, throat, liver, breast, and colon, among others. Iowa has particular challenges here. We're third in the nation in binge drinking, defined as four or more drinks for women or five or more for men in a single sitting.

Surprisingly, the highest rates of binge drinking occur among people with higher incomes, suggesting this isn't primarily a socioeconomic issue but a cultural one.

5. Protect your skin

Iowa ranks fifth nationally for melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer. Dr. Marta Van Beek, a dermatologist at UI Health Care, explained this largely comes down to our agricultural workforce spending long hours outdoors.

"It’s much more common in people who work outdoors. Much more common in people with fair skin," she said, describing Iowa's particular risk factors.

The recommendations are straightforward: wear sunscreen (reapply every two hours), cover up with long sleeves and hats when possible, and stay out of tanning beds entirely.

"The recommendation is do not use a tanning bed," Dr. Van Beek said emphatically.

If you must have darker skin, spray tans are completely safe and, as Dr. Van Beek notes, "they've come a long way in the last couple decades."

6. Get vaccinated and stay current on screenings

Some cancers are caused by viruses you can prevent. The HPV vaccine, typically given around age 11 or 12, prevents cervical cancer and several other cancers. Hepatitis B vaccination prevents liver cancer.

Regular screening saves lives by catching cancer early when it's most treatable. Current guidelines recommend:

• Mammograms starting at age 40, every 1-2 years

• Colonoscopies starting at age 45 (or 50 depending on risk), every 10 years

• Pap/HPV tests starting at age 25, every 3-5 years depending on the test

• Lung cancer screenings for people 50-80 with significant smoking history

"Do screening to find cancers at an early stage," Dr. Deming emphasized. "Screenings don't reduce the risk of getting cancer, but they allow you to find it at an early stage when treatment is most effective.”

Before you go

Support this work by doing these four things:

1. Subscribe to Cornhole Champions on YouTube and like our videos to improve their reach.

2. Join the game by signing up for my Substack newsletter and get these episodes straight to your email on Wednesday mornings.

3. Sign up for Iowa Starting Line's flagship newsletter.

4. Follow our work on Instagram and TikTok.

Cornhole Champions is a weekly podcast powered by Iowa Starting Line. It’s produced by me and edited by Rebecca Steinberg. Our music is by Avery Mossman and show art by Desirée Tapia. We are a proud member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative.

Your friendly neighborhood reporter,

Zachary Oren Smith
Political correspondent
Iowa Starting Line

YouTube | Instagram | TikTok | Twitter | Bluesky | Threads | LinkedIn

Welcome to Cornhole Champions. Iowa Starting Line’s weekly podcast where we throw bags at the state’s biggest stories. I’m Zachary Oren Smith. It’s Friday.

I keep thinking about my conversation with radiologist Dr. Andrew Nish. For our cancer investigation, The Hot Spot, I asked him about what stopped the state from addressing the cancer crisis. He put it simply:

“Politics and big money.”

Dr. Nish is the medical director at the John Stoddard Cancer Center, and he's watched Iowa climb to second in the nation for cancer rates. When I sat down with him in Des Moines, I expected to talk about lifestyle factors: diet, exercise—the usual suspects. Instead, we ended up discussing something much more systemic: how the same forces that shape our economy also shape our health.

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The conversation stuck with me because it cuts to the heart of a frustrating pattern. We know tobacco causes cancer, so we regulated it through public policy. And that intervention worked. Smoking rates dropped from 42% in the 1970s to 11.6% for adults and 3.8% for youths, according to CDC data. But when it comes to other environmental factors—nitrates in our water, pesticide exposure, lack of green spaces—we seem stuck in a cycle of "more research needed" while our cancer rates keep climbing.

Dr. Nish connects Iowa's high cancer rates to everything from our drinking culture to our agricultural practices. But what struck me most was his point about causation: we'll never get the kind of definitive proof that tobacco gave us because cancer isn't caused by a single factor. It's what he calls the "exposome" - everything we're exposed to over a lifetime, from the food we eat to the stress we carry.

The exposome is potentially a license to do nothing. To wait. But if we take Nish seriously—which I think his experience demands—the exposome is a framework, a roadmap for what we need to for a healthier world.

As always, write in with the thoughts and questions this story left you with. I love hearing from you.

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A crow’s feast

Welcome to Crow’s Feast. Our show within a show, where we eat crow early and eat crow often. It’s time for some correct some errors. Or maybe they’re errors by omission? And isn’t that the worst of all?

In Wednesday’s letter, I took the blood pressure of Iowa’s marquee races following Ernst’s announced retirement. There were two candidates in two races that I omitted.

The first, Iowa Tea Party founder Ryan Rhodes is running in Iowa’s 4th Congressional District. Rhodes, a Republican, directed Dr. Ben Carson’s presidential campaign in Iowa.

The other is in Iowa’s 3rd where Xavier Carrigan is in the Democratic Party primary.

Send your corrections in to zach@iowastartingline.com.

Before you go

Support this work by doing these four things:

1. Subscribe to Cornhole Champions on YouTube and like our videos to improve their reach.

2. Join the game by signing up for my Substack newsletter and get these episodes straight to your email on Wednesday mornings.

3. Sign up for Iowa Starting Line's flagship newsletter.

4. Follow our work on Instagram and TikTok.

Cornhole Champions is a weekly podcast powered by Iowa Starting Line. It’s produced by me and edited by Rebecca Steinberg. Our music is by Avery Mossman and show art by Desirée Tapia. We are a proud member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative.

Your friendly neighborhood reporter,

Zachary Oren Smith
Political correspondent
Iowa Starting Line

YouTube | Instagram | TikTok | Twitter | Bluesky | Threads | LinkedIn

Happy Wednesday. And welcome back to Cornhole Champions. I'm Zachary Oren Smith.

It’s official. US Sen. Joni Ernst will not seek reelection in 2026. If you’ve been with me this year, you’re pretty familiar with the will-she, won’t-she of it all. But at last, we have an answer. She won’t and that opens up a galaxy of possibilities heading into 2026.

Iowa Governor (OPEN) - We already knew Gov. Kim Reynolds wasn't running again in 2026. That's one open seat at the top of the ticket. While Republicans haven’t settled on a champion, Democratic State Auditor Rob Sand has been sprinting for a town hall near you. Just looking at his August stops: Des Moines, Clarion, Garner, Dakota City, Webster City, Ames, Cedar Rapids, Page, Fremont, Mills, Montgomery, Cass, Adair, Waterloo, Van Horne… and those are just the stops he announced to the press. It’s been enough to make Iowa GOP Chair Jeff Kaufmann sweat.

There are a lot of Republicans running for governor this year: State Rep. Eddie Andrews of Johnson, former State Rep. Brad Sherman of Williamsburg, and former Iowa Department of Administrative Services Director Adam Steen. State Sen. Mike Bousselot and US Rep. Randy Feenstra have both formed exploratory committees. The latter is considered a frontrunner… despite it being past Labor Day and there’s still no announcement…

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US Senate (OPEN) - Incumbents have an advantage. With Ernst out, the Senate race is in play. After claiming just this month that she was running for her IA-02 seat, US Rep. Ashley Hinson did what we thought she would and sprinted for Ernst’s soon-to-be-open seat. She is a strong candidate, but because of her lock-step with Mike Johnson’s Big Beautiful Bill (BBB), she will have to answer for cutting Medicaid and SNAP to pay for billionaire tax cuts—that still somehow manage to raise the national deficit. Hinson has also been supporting the Trump Administration’s continued “truth and transparency” about not releasing the Epstein list, despite agreeing that he was a pedophile. Interesting that we haven’t heard from US Ambassador to NATO Matt Whitaker and Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird.

Meanwhile, the Democratic primary has been winnowed, though only slightly. When State Rep. Josh Turek of Council Bluffs jumped in, State Rep. JD Scholten of Sioux City dropped out and endorsed him. Turek quickly made up for his late entry, raising $500,000 in his first week. His campaign has been grabbing up support, including in my neck of the woods Bob and Sue Dvorsky (if you know, you know).

State Sen. Zach Wahls of Coralville has also been hitting prime time—that is MSNBC’s The Weekend Primetime, as well as CNN’s Laura Coates Live and The Briefing with Jen Psaki. He has also been hitting more of us new media folks with a spot on Brian Tyler Cohen’s show. All along, he’s been talking about a Public Policy Polling poll that put Wahls not just ahead of the pack, but ahead of a pre-announcement Ernst. Now that was on what they called the “informed ballot,” that is when a voter knows about the candidate’s support of the BBB.

Nathan Sage of Indianola is still on his 99 counties in 99 days. He spent some time with AFGE workers at the Iowa City VA calling attention to the Trump Administration’s refusal to recognize their contract.

Also Des Moines School Board Chair Jackie Norris entered the race in August. And Bob Krause of Fairfield changed his mind on running in IA-01 and has decided to run in the even more crowded Senate primary.

Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District (OPEN) - Hinson’s departure leaves IA-02 incumbent-less. Until now, the seat has been considered “likely Republican” by election forecasters. While the district’s voter registration numbers still favor Republicans, Hinson’s departure is widely seen as putting the district in play.

Quick on the heels of yesterday’s shakeup, Republican State Rep. Shannon Lundgren of Peosta threw her hat in the race. She is probably best remembered as the House floor manager for the near-total abortion ban that is now in effect in Iowa.

The Democratic frontrunner—though it is early—is State Rep. Lindsay James of Dubuque. She is a Presbyterian pastor and has served four terms in the state House. She did a lot of work trying to pass some protections for mobile home residents. The other announced Democrats are Mathew 25 founder Clint Twedt-Ball of Cedar Rapids and Kathy Dolter of Dubuque, a former nursing dean at Kirkwood Community College.

Iowa’s 1st Congressional District (Miller-Meeks) - US Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks has made a career out of squeaking by. Her 2020 victory was decided by just six votes—literally six—making it one of the closest House races in modern history. She won by a more comfortable but still narrow margin in 2022, but this district remains one of the most competitive in the country. Democrats have been eyeing this seat for years, and with the political winds shifting, Miller-Meeks could find herself in the fight of her political life.

Democrat Christina Bohannan is back in the saddle to go after the seat. Even in her loss in 2024, she outperformed the top of the ticket in a year when Republicans had a major advantage. A point I’ve made previously is Iowa is Trump country, but it’s not necessarily Miller-Meeks country. And I think there’s a reason why the congresswoman’s staff has a once again reupped their cadence of tweets.

Muscatine lawyer Taylor Wettach is running in the Democratic primary. And so is Travis Terrell.

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Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District (Nunn) - US Rep. Zach Nunn's situation is almost as precarious as Miller-Meeks'. He flipped this seat from Democrat Cindy Axne in 2022, but he reportedly had to be pressured by Donald Trump just to run for reelection this cycle. That's not exactly the sign of a confident incumbent.

The Democratic ticket has two big bicameral names former Iowa House Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst and State Sen. Sarah Trone Garriott. This district, which includes parts of Des Moines and its suburbs, has been a political ping-pong ball in recent years. Whoever wins the primary will benefit from a national scene that has been eyeing this district for a flip for years now. It's the kind of seat that swings with national political winds, and if 2026 turns into a tough year for Republicans, Nunn could find himself looking for a new job.

Iowa’s 4th Congressional District (OPEN) - Like I said, Feenstra is out with dreams of the Governor’s Mansion. But this isn’t a seat that’s likely in play. The 4th District is reliably Republican—think Steve King territory before Feenstra ousted him in the 2020 primary. This seat will almost certainly stay red, but the question is which Republican gets it.

They include Iowa House Majority Leader Matt Windschitl of Missouri Valley, land appraiser Kyle Larsen of Humboldt County, and Siouxland Chamber of Commerce President Chris McGowan.

Democrats who have said they are running include former State Rep. Dave Dawson of Lawton and Ashley WolfTornbane of Storm Lake

AND THOSE ARE JUST OUR TOP OF THE TICKET. Come 2026, there will be a ton of interest in Iowa Legislature races, particularly after the special election victories that the Iowa Democratic Party has seen.

What we’re looking at is something voters should pay attention to. As one source put it to me: if bigger states like Texas and California redistrict, Iowa could end up with more competitive seats than almost anywhere else in the country. We may only be 1 percent of the nation's population, but we might just be ground zero for the 2026 fight for congressional control.

Before you go

Support this work by doing these four things:

1. Subscribe to Cornhole Champions on YouTube and like our videos to improve their reach.

2. Join the game by signing up for my Substack newsletter and get these episodes straight to your email on Wednesday mornings.

3. Sign up for Iowa Starting Line's flagship newsletter.

4. Follow our work on Instagram and TikTok.

Cornhole Champions is a weekly podcast powered by Iowa Starting Line. It’s produced by me and edited by Rebecca Steinberg. Our music is by Avery Mossman and show art by Desirée Tapia. We are a proud member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative.

Your friendly neighborhood reporter,

Zachary Oren Smith
Political correspondent
Iowa Starting Line

YouTube | Instagram | TikTok | Twitter | Bluesky | Threads | LinkedIn

I thought I understood sunscreen. Apply it before you go outside. Before you go to the Coralville Aquatic Center. Maybe reapply if you're helping mow the neighbor’s lawn too. It felt like a responsible amount of protection.

Then I sat down with Dr. Marta Van Beek, a dermatologist at UI Health Care who studies melanoma, and learned I've been doing just about everything wrong. Sunscreen?

"Yeah, every two hours," she said matter-of-factly. "The sunscreen degrades."

Even if I’m not sweating? Yes. Even if it's cloudy? That’s right. Join me for a humbling conversation. This is all part of The Hot Spot, our investigation into why Iowa ranks so high for cancer rates. And this week, you can read my full story over on our website.

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In today’s show, the good doctor walked me through the confluence of forces that contribute to our higher-than-average skin cancer rate. What was fun about it was how it became about some of the skin cancer myths and bad practices I had absorbed over the years.

Write in and let me know if you’ve been on your sunscreen game.

Answer from you

In Wednesday’s letter, I asked if you’ve ever been impressed by how someone responded to being corrected?

David from Des Moines: "My teenage daughter corrected my pronunciation of some slang word I used, and instead of getting embarrassed, I just started laughing and said, 'Okay, teach me the right way.' She lit up and spent the next ten minutes explaining all the words I'd been butchering. It turned into this great conversation where she actually seemed proud to be teaching me something instead of just rolling her eyes at me."

ZOS: God. One of the most humbling experiences in radio was the All Things Considered shift I worked in like 2022. I was doing the weather. Easy enough. Name a town. Say what the temperature is there. I mispronounced like three Iowa towns in a row. How did I know? Because I got like 5 emails in the hour that I ‘really should know this by now.’ The worst part. They were right. To have the humility to make it a conversation, a learning opportunity… a chance for your daughter to teach you something? Incredible parenting.

Jay from Sioux City: "I was giving a presentation at work and confidently stated some stat that was completely wrong. A colleague raised her hand and politely corrected me with the real numbers. I stopped, said 'You're absolutely right, let me fix that slide right now,' and updated it on the spot. After the meeting, three different people told me they were impressed that I didn't try to brush it off or get defensive.

ZOS: Credibility is relational. You either have habits that engender it or you don’t. A little showy to stop a presentation like that but at the same time, it shows attention. And its not like editing a slide is a huge lift… An edit, a correction is a kindness. It shows care. That's the kind of person people want to work with.

Before you go

Support this work by doing these three things:

1. Subscribe to Cornhole Champions on YouTube and like our videos to improve their reach.

2. Join the game by signing up for my Substack newsletter and get these episodes straight to your email on Wednesday mornings.

3. Sign up for Iowa Starting Line's flagship newsletter.

4. Follow our work on Instagram and TikTok.

Cornhole Champions is a weekly podcast powered by Iowa Starting Line. This podcast is produced by me and edited by Rebecca Steinberg. Our music is by Avery Mossman and our show art is from Desirée Tapia.

Your friendly neighborhood reporter,

Zachary Oren Smith
Political correspondent
Iowa Starting Line

Happy Wednesday pt. 2. And welcome to a particularly timely Cornhole Champions. I’m Zachary Oren Smith.

, a first-time Democratic candidate, decisively won a special election in Sioux City this week. The race will have a significant impact on the Iowa Senate and the process of appointing state department heads. It’s become a national focal point for Democrats hoping for grassroots momentum heading into the midterms.

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I sat down with the ALWAY GREAT (of ) to chat with Senator-elect Drey just on the heels of her win last night. And then hear from Senate Minority Leader of Sioux City reflecting on what went in to this win.

Big thanks to everyone who joined to watch live. Special thanks to , , , , and .

Join me for my next live video in the app.

Read null in the Substack app

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Before you go

Support this work by doing these three things:

1. Subscribe to Cornhole Champions on YouTube and like our videos to improve their reach.

2. Join the game by signing up for my Substack newsletter and get these episodes straight to your email on Wednesday mornings.

3. Sign up for Iowa Starting Line's flagship newsletter.

4. Follow our work on Instagram and TikTok.

Cornhole Champions is a weekly podcast powered by Iowa Starting Line. This podcast is produced by me and edited by Rebecca Steinberg. Our music is by Avery Mossman and our show art is from Desirée Tapia.

Your friendly neighborhood reporter,

Zachary Oren Smith
Political correspondent
Iowa Starting Line

YouTube | Instagram | TikTok | Twitter | Bluesky | Threads | LinkedIn

Happy Wednesday. And welcome back to Cornhole Champions. I'm Zachary Oren Smith.

Thirty-nine years ago this month—August 23, 1986—something happened that would shake Iowa to its core. At 12:01 a.m., thousands of UAW workers walked off the job at John Deere facilities in Waterloo and Dubuque. It was the beginning of what would become the longest strike in the company's history: 163 days of picket lines, lost wages, and a fight over job security that split communities and families.

I've been thinking about that strike this week because of what happened this month.

John Deere announced 238 more layoffs across Iowa and Illinois—71 at the Foundry in Waterloo, 115 at the Harvester Works in East Moline, and 52 at the Seeding and Cylinder in Moline. In a recent earnings call, the company blamed tariff costs that could reach $600 million by the end of this year. The company has already seen $300 million in tariff expenses year to date.

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Former Vice President Mike Pence... *checks script* Yes, Mike Pence and the Wall Street Journal... have been raising the alarm about the impact that tariffs are having on an industry already experiencing strain due to low corn, soybean, and wheat prices. Pence tweeted: "American Companies and American Consumers Pay the Cost of American Tariffs."

The policies change—from the Farm Crisis to trade wars—but Iowa workers keep getting stuck with the bill. Different decade, different crisis, same result: Iowa workers bearing the cost of decisions made elsewhere.

But first...

• Drey breaks supermajority - Last night, Democrat Catelin Drey won a special election for a Sioux City seat in the Iowa Senate. That puts the Iowa Senate’s split at 33-17. In other words, Republicans lost their Iowa Senate supermajority. Catch Laura Belin of Bleeding Heartland and me at 8 a.m. this morning. We’ll be walking through the results live with Drey herself.

• Empty desk policy - 157 Iowa school districts are now on a budget guarantee, meaning they're losing so many students the state has to make up the funding shortfall. The Gazette reported that 157 has grown by 43 since before the pandemic. Of Iowa's 325 districts, 211 lost enrollment this year while only 114 gained. Nearly a third of our districts serve fewer than 500 students total.

• Homeless encampment attack - The news has limitations. It’s why at this job, I’m glad we’re building a platform that sees the value in telling a complicated story:

• Not even past - The State Historical Society will close its Iowa City research center next summer to save $800,000—a minuscule part of the state budget. Only 40% of the collection can fit in Des Moines. The other 60%? Well, it's working on that... Meanwhile, hundreds gathered in Iowa City to rally against its closure. We're talking about 168 years of Iowa history, including irreplaceable records from women's suffrage movements and the Meskwaki Settlement.

• Town hall not found - US Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks still hasn't held an in-person town hall in her district. She has promised to do so, but still no word on whether that promise will be kept. Also this week, US Rep. Zach Nunn, in a profile in courage, said he wouldn't do town halls now, calling them "a taxpayer-funded protest event."

And now, why there's no such thing as a health tan... don't @ me...

Under the Iowa sun: The work that drives the state’s high skin cancer rates

Iowa has the fifth-highest rate of skin cancer in the country, with numbers similar to states with far more UV radiation levels. This week on The Hot Spot, we look into the forces impacting our cancer rate.

Kim Schmidt pumps sunscreen from a bulk dispenser in the barn, slathering it on her arms and neck before going to work at Rhubarb Botanicals near Mount Vernon. The 39-year-old farmer has been working outdoors for the last 15 years, and the ritual is as routine as grabbing her harvest buckets or feeding the three barn cats: Parsley, Rosemary, and Sage.

"When you have to apply multiple times a day, you just buy it in bulk," Schmidt said, adjusting her wide-brimmed lifeguard hat before walking into rows of cosmos and dahlias.

When wildfire smoke drifts down from Canada, when pesticides blow in from nearby fields, and when the sun feels especially unforgiving, Schmidt is one of more than 5,000 Iowa workers regularly toughing it out on the job.

She knows the stakes. Her grandfather, a dairy farmer, battled multiple cancers, including melanoma. Her father, a veterinary technician, died of cancer at 49. As she nears 40, Schmidt said cancer is never far from her mind.

"It's hard not to think about as I get older and as I continue in this line of work," she said.

Schmidt’s concerns reflect a broader public health problem. In a state where agriculture dominates the economy, few restrictions exist on indoor tanning, and access to health care for rural residents is limited, Iowa’s rate of melanoma is among the highest in the nation.

An agricultural state's hidden risk

In 2025, there were 104,960 new cases of skin melanoma diagnoses in the United States, according to the National Cancer Institute data. The 2025 Iowa Cancer Registry reports 1,420 of those cases were here, making melanoma the fifth most common type of cancer in the state.

Most skin cancer cases are caused by too much exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun. The UV rays damage skin cells. While sunburns are the common short-term symptom, UV damage adds up over time. It can change skin texture, age skin prematurely, and sometimes cause cancers to develop.

UV radiation in general increases the further south in the US you are, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Maine has a very low level UV exposure. Arizona has among the highest. However, the rate of skin cancer incidence does not follow that gradient. To be clear, Arizona does have a high incidence rate of cancer (31.4 cases per 100,000). But so does Iowa, which has the same rate.

"It's because of our agricultural population," said Dr. Marta Van Beek, a dermatologist at UI Health Care. She's spent decades treating Iowa patients and said the research is clear. "We know that melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancer, such as squamous cell carcinoma or basal cell carcinoma, are much more common in people who work outdoors."

According to a systematic review and meta-analysis from the World Health Organization (WHO) and International Labour Organization (ILO), workplace exposure to UV radiation increases a person's risk of skin cancers. And Iowa's economy depends heavily on outdoor work. According to the USDA's 2022 Census of Agriculture, nearly three-fourths of Iowa's area is used for crops and rotational pastures.

No such thing as a healthy tan

Aaron Knight is a musician in Iowa City, but by day he works outside as a stone mason. On job sites, he said, some precautions are taken less seriously than others. He recalled a tile job he was doing some years back, where he spent hours hunched over the floor. Someone ribbed him about it when they noticed he was using knee pads.

"'You're using a knee pad? Really?'" Knight said. "Some people use face masks when they're cutting stone and some people are like, 'I don't need a mask. I don't need glasses. I don't need earplugs.' Sunscreen's one of those too, where some people are like, 'I'm not gonna waste my time.'"

He said it's normal to get burned on the job in the beginning of the season.

"It's kind of a running joke," he said. "You get a good baseline burn."

But Knight takes it pretty seriously. His sister died of liver cancer, and his mom had a melanoma removed from her skin. He joked that sometimes he goes out behind the truck to put sunscreen on out of view.

Van Beek said Iowans working outside should reapply sunscreen every two hours, but she understands the practical challenges workers face. "When you are out in the fields or with livestock and trying to get things done, to pause and remember to do that can be quite disruptive."

When asked about the two-hour sunscreen reapplication recommendation, Knight said it was probably a good idea, but he didn't know anyone who reapplied sunscreen that often.

"That's a lot of sunscreen," he said.

Even if people aren’t reapplying sunscreen perfectly, Van Beek said skin cancer rates in the US show people are taking UV risk more seriously. In her decades of practice, she’s seen attitudes toward sun protection improve, protective clothing become more accessible, and tans fall out of fashion. Even farm equipment has evolved, with enclosed tractor cabs replacing open models that left workers exposed.

Still, the fundamental risk for Iowa's outdoor workforce remains.

Iowa allows minors to use tanning beds

While Iowa outdoor workers face unavoidable UV exposure, a preventable danger comes from indoors: tanning beds. According to the American Academy of Dermatology, indoor tanning increases the chances of developing squamous cell carcinoma by 58% and basal cell carcinoma by 24%.

Van Beek's recommendation on tanning beds is firm: "Do not use a tanning bed. That's an emphatic: do not use." Many of her melanoma patients were chronic tanning bed users. And using tanning beds before age 20 can increase your chances of developing melanoma by 47%; that risk increases with each use.

The US has a "patchwork" of legislation regarding the restriction of tanning bed use by minors. According to a 2022 review, Iowa is among just five states with no restrictions for minors using tanning beds on the books. (Twenty-two states and the District of Columbia ban minors completely.)

Iowa state Rep. Hans Wilz, an Ottumwa Republican, sponsored a bill this year to require parental permission for minors to use tanning beds. It passed in the House, but was among the bills that stalled out this session.

The challenge for both patients and policymakers is that skin cancer often develops decades after exposure occurs. Van Beek said she frequently encounters patients in their 50s who assume it's "too late" to start protecting themselves because of childhood sun damage.

"My answer is, if you want to spend a lot of time with me in your seventies, then you can be very cavalier about your sun exposure," Van Beek said. "But if you want to decrease how much time you see me and spend on my operating table, then it behooves you to wear sunscreen in your fifties because that directly affects how much skin cancer you get a decade or two later."

The cumulative nature of sun damage means that every day of protection matters, regardless of past exposure.

Rural Iowans face barriers to care

For many, the biggest obstacle isn’t recognizing the cancer risk associated with tanning beds or working outdoors unprotected—it’s reaching a doctor in time. Rural residents often live far from dermatologists, creating delays in diagnosis that can affect outcomes.

"We know that the earlier we diagnose you—whatever type of skin cancer it is—the better you do," Van Beek said. "The longer ways you live from a board-certified dermatologist, the more likely you will get diagnosed later because access is more difficult."

While primary care providers help bridge this gap by conducting biopsies and making referrals, Van Beek emphasized that diagnosing skin cancer is often more complicated than it seems. In other words, sun damage can go unchecked until it becomes serious.

For farmers like Schmidt, the health risks don't diminish their connection to the land. She spends eight hours or more outside most days, harvesting flowers, deadheading spent blooms, and managing the acre and a half of growing space at Rhubarb Botanicals.

Many workers in her crew wear long sleeves to protect their arms from the unrelenting sun, but she trades extra coverage for mobility and comfort on muggy summer days.

"There's corn sweat everywhere," she said, referring to the humidity corn crops release into the air. "It's just uncomfortable."

No single day of exposure—or sunburn—causes melanoma. But every day in the sun raises that risk.

"I love being outside. I love touching plants and being in relationship with nature. But it does come at a cost, right?" Schmidt said. "It's still a very taxing job on your body, and the sun, it's part of that."

Question for you

It's probably clear from my video on this story, but I learned I'm not using best practices when it comes to protecting my skin from the sun. Like, not even close. Two hours!? In my reporting, I'm trying to do my best to establish some vulnerability—or maybe more accurately—I'm trying to tell you when I'm wrong about something. When I don't know something. When I've made a mistake.

My adage has always been, Eat crow early; eat crow often. Dealing with it when you're wrong is a lifestyle, and its the only responsible way to live for someone who writes as much as I do for you. And so here's my question...

Send your answers to zach@iowastartingline.com. I might feature your response in Friday's edition.

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Before you go

Support this work by doing these three things:

1. Subscribe to Cornhole Champions on YouTube and like our videos to improve their reach.

2. Join the game by signing up for my Substack newsletter and get these episodes straight to your email on Wednesday mornings.

3. Sign up for Iowa Starting Line's flagship newsletter.

4. Follow our work on Instagram and TikTok.

Cornhole Champions is a weekly podcast powered by Iowa Starting Line. This podcast is produced by me and edited by Rebecca Steinberg. Our music is by Avery Mossman and our show art is from Desirée Tapia.

Your friendly neighborhood reporter,

Zachary Oren Smith
Political correspondent
Iowa Starting Line

YouTube | Instagram | TikTok | Twitter | Bluesky | Threads | LinkedIn

Happy Friday. And welcome back to Cornhole Champions. I'm Zachary Oren Smith. Our investigative series The Hot Spot has been hurtling closer and closer to the center of Iowa’s cancer crisis, and it’s never been clearer to me how much interest there is in this subject. We’ve seen a ton of engagement. Folks writing in wanting to know why. And I hope with the series, we’re helping answer that question while sparking other questions about how we got here.

In the weeks ahead, we’ll talk about skin cancer and radon. But I wanted us to also take a beat and talk about what you can do about your chances of getting cancer. A future issue will drill deeper into this topic, but I think it’s at the heart of some of this. I don’t want me and mine to get cancer. How do I stop it?

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There is nothing you can do to rule out 100% of your cancer risk. That’s just not reality. But what I really dug about this conversation is Des Moines oncologist Dr. Richard Deming said there ARE things that you can do to greatly reduce your cancer risk.

Deming has been treating cancer patients in Iowa for four decades. He's watched treatments evolve from blunt instruments to precision medicine. He's also watched Iowa climb to the second-highest cancer rate in the country. What emerged was a conversation about mortality, meaning, and what it actually takes to reduce your cancer risk.

Here are some insights that stuck with me.

The mortality wake-up call

Deming said something that reframed how I think about cancer diagnosis. It's "like a two by four up the side of the head" because it reminds you of two things you try to forget: "you are going to die someday" and "you don't know when that's going to be."

Even with stage one cancer, where survival is likely, that brush with mortality changes people. "You have the opportunity to create the autobiography you would like to read," Deming said. "You now can get off the treadmill for a second and ask yourself, is the life I'm living the one I want?"

This isn't about cancer being a "gift" or finding silver linings in suffering. It's about how confronting our limits can clarify what matters.

The Iowa problem has two clear culprits

When you look at all the cancer risk factors Iowa tracks—smoking, obesity, diet, alcohol—we're pretty average. But two things make us an outlier.

First, radon. "We happen to be sitting on a big bed of radon," Deming said. It's a colorless, odorless radioactive gas that seeps into our homes and increases cancer risk.

Second, agricultural chemicals. Iowa uses way more chemicals per square mile than surrounding states because of how much land we have dedicated to crop production. "There's lots of evidence showing correlations between the various chemicals and cancer," Deming said. We may never sort out which specific chemicals cause which cancers, but the association is clear.

This is no more about demonizing farming as it is about demonizing the soil composition underneath our feet. But we have to acknowledge that the system we've built has consequences. We have to think about whether this system is in the service of Iowans.

The 45% solution

Here's the most striking thing Deming told me: if everyone did everything we already know works, we could reduce cancer cases by 45% and cancer deaths by 42%. No new research needed.

The list isn't sexy: don't smoke, eat real food, maintain a healthy weight, exercise, limit alcohol, protect yourself from sun exposure, get vaccinated against cancer-causing viruses like HPV, and do your screenings.

"I have a feeling that you and I would get an A plus on a written test on what's healthy to eat," Deming said. "The problem isn't the written test, it's the practical test."

The gap between knowing what to do and doing it is where most of us live. That's not a personal failing; it's a design challenge for how we structure our communities, our food systems, and our daily routines.

You wrote in

This week, I asked: If you had the power, what's one policy that you think would start helping people out tomorrow?

Lisa from Cedar Rapids: "Universal childcare. I spend $1,200 a month on daycare for my two kids. That's more than my mortgage. If we had reliable, affordable childcare, parents could actually work without going broke paying for it."

ZOS: When I tell you this is one that’s on my heart… Yes, childcare costs are out of control. And I wish I could tell you that the operators were getting fat off all this money. They’re doing poorly. We’ve also deregulated the sector, and that doesn’t appear to have done the trick either. Seems like we all agree that childcare slots are insufficient and are needed for a strong economy. If that’s true, where’s the conversation for a major public subsidy? Or publicly run slots?

Tom from Ames: "Medicare for all. I'm paying $800 a month for health insurance that doesn't even kick in until I've spent $6,000 out of pocket. My neighbor in Canada pays nothing and sees a doctor whenever he needs to."

ZOS: Healthcare costs are ALSO out of control. When people are rationing insulin or skipping preventive care because they can't afford it, we're not just hurting individuals; we're making our whole system less efficient. I always hear about concerns of long wait times, but what I think people mean is disruption in care. Which is something I buy. However, any major change will come with implementation pain. AND we agree that the current private insurance system is not making us healthier or less in debt.

Before you go, thanks to everyone who followed along with The Hot Spot series. Your emails, comments, and questions helped shape how we told this story. We’re not done. There’s more writing to come in this long conversation about health, environment, and what kind of future we want to build in Iowa.

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Before you go

Support this work by doing these three things:

1. Subscribe to Cornhole Champions on YouTube and like our videos to improve their reach.

2. Join the game by signing up for my Substack newsletter and get these episodes straight to your email on Wednesday mornings.

3. Sign up for Iowa Starting Line's flagship newsletter.

4. Follow our work on Instagram and TikTok.

Cornhole Champions is a weekly podcast powered by Iowa Starting Line. This podcast is produced by me and edited by Rebecca Steinberg. Our music is by Avery Mossman and our show art is from Desirée Tapia.

Your friendly neighborhood reporter,

Zachary Oren Smith
Political correspondent
Iowa Starting Line

YouTube | Instagram | TikTok | Twitter | Bluesky | Threads | LinkedIn

Happy Wednesday, and welcome to Cornhole Champions, Iowa Starting Line's weekly newsletter and podcast, where we throw bags at the state's biggest stories. I'm Zachary Oren Smith.

Things don't always hold up to scrutiny. It's why it's always important to look a little closer. This is unfortunately true about "no tax on tips." It's part of President Donald Trump's tax and spending bill. And it's something Iowa Republicans like US Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks are foregrounding as proof of their support for working-class people.

On a stop at Williamsburg's Sun Down Bar and Grill (don't skip out on their broasted chicken), she proudly posed for a picture with her receipt.

The bill was for $18.19. She left in the frame a twenty-dollar bill, another dollar and some change (is that a penny?). Unless there are some silver dollars hiding in there... we're looking at a small tip. Lucky for me, I'm always looking for teachable moments:

First, what you tip is often what a server makes during their shift. For some reason, restaurants have been allowed to unload the wage burden from themselves and onto customers. It allows them to pay $2.13 an hour, the so-called "tipped minimum wage" (vs. the $7.25 minimum wage--which ITSELF hasn't been raised since 2009). If you are posing as the server's champion and you'd describe the level of service as "wonderful," you should be tipping 20%. In this case $3.46, but help a server out: Round up.

Second, let's talk about how the "Big, Beautiful Bill" actually impacts taxation on tips. The tax break only applies to the first $25,000 in tip income. Which sounds like a lot, but it requires you to report all your tips to your manager (which every server does, every shift). The IRS wants to make sure you're paying taxes on everything above that $25,000 threshold. And crucially, you still pay payroll taxes on every dollar—Social Security and Medicare aren't going anywhere.

Here's the kicker: about 36% of tipped workers already don't pay federal income taxes thanks to the standard deduction. So for more than a third of the people this policy is supposed to help, it changes nothing. The average worker who does benefit saves about $1,700 a year—not nothing, but hardly transformative for someone making poverty wages.

The policy also comes with some strange limitations. If your restaurant automatically adds gratuity to large parties, that doesn't count as a "tip" under the law. If you're a rideshare driver getting tipped through an app, you're out of luck—contractors don't qualify. And the whole thing expires in 2028, meaning Congress will need to renew it or watch it disappear.

But here's what really undermines the "helping workers" narrative: the same bill that creates this modest tax break also cuts SNAP food assistance and Medicaid benefits. So while tipped workers might save a few hundred dollars on their tax bill, many could lose out on support for food and healthcare.

Finally, something doesn't have to be uniformly good to help. And that's kind of how I think about taking the tax off of tips. The more precarious your rung is in the economy, the more support there should be for stabilizing your household and helping you climb higher. By taking the federal tax off the first $25,000 in tipped income, that is a material step in the right direction.

But unfortunately, it's being used by bad tippers to launder a bill that destabilizes local hospitals, will knock 86,000 Iowans off their insurance, and kneecaps the high-paying jobs the state's renewable energy sector was creating. All so that we can add an additional $4.1 trillion to the national debt over the next decade and so the richest 10% of Americans will see their income increase by $13,600 from tax cuts.

At least when Miller-Meeks leaves a bad tip, she's only shorting them a few bucks. It's the rest of the bill that's going to cost us trillions.

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In this newsletter, catch up on this week's entry in The Hot Spot: Investigating Cancer in Iowa. We asked readers to share their cancer stories. And they offered some really gripping glimpses into the cancer crisis.

But first...

• James 4 Iowa - State Rep. Lindsay James of Dubuque officially launched her campaign for Iowa's 2nd Congressional District, setting up a Democratic primary challenge to take on Rep. Ashley Hinson in 2026. James brings seven years of legislative experience and a compelling personal story about fighting for insulin access after meeting a constituent forced to choose between rent and life-saving medication. “ I had this moment in the Legislature where I was looking around and I thought to myself, Where are the advocates for everyday Iowans?” she told me. “Where are the people who are fighting for my constituents who are struggling to afford insulin and rent?” Read more about her announcement here.

• Catelin Drey's special sprint - With just a week until the August 26th special election, Democrat Catelin Drey is knocking doors across Sioux City's Senate District 1. The founder of "Moms for Iowa" started her political activism after Uvalde, making phone calls to legislators about gun violence prevention. Now she's hoping that grassroots energy can flip a seat in western Iowa, an area that hasn't seen many Democratic victories lately. Early voting has already begun.

• Teachers vs. business logic - Veteran educator Skyler Snickberg penned a powerful piece in the Des Moines Register pushing back against Iowa DOGE's proposal for performance-based teacher pay. His argument? "Students aren't products that can be recalled if they don't meet standards." The proposal would tie teacher compensation to test scores, but as Snickberg wrote, teachers don't get to pick and choose their students like private schools do. They serve everyone, especially those who need the most help.

And now for our feature. A few stories from the frontlines of our cancer problem...

Facing cancer in Iowa: Patients share their stories

Cancer in Iowa isn’t just about treatment—it’s about surviving the system, asking why it happened, and living with the aftermath. Five Iowans share their stories.

Gano Whetstone settled into the infusion chair at Des Moines’ Mission Cancer + Blood and asked for her usual: black coffee and a warm blanket. On treatment days, she takes the paratransit bus to the hospital, arriving early to wait in the lobby until it's her time.

The 80-year-old retired teacher has done this routine every three weeks for nearly a year now. The nurse wheels over a machine and hooks it up to Whetstone’s infusion port—a device surgically installed in her shoulder that allows her to receive her slow drip of Herceptin on treatment days without requiring the poke of a needle.

"I don't feel anything," she says, watching the IV work. "I just sit here, drink my coffee, and watch TV."

It sounds mundane, but Whetstone said catching the cancer feels miraculous.

Last July during a routine mammogram, doctors found what was likely a cancerous tumor in her breast tissue.

"I just looked at the floor,” she said, as the doctor delivered the news.

For the last year, Whetstone has been navigating the aftermath of that moment—a journey familiar to many cancer patients across Iowa who face a complex matrix of decisions about their care.

This week on The Hot Spot: Investigating Cancer in Iowa, we‘re sharing some of those stories. Cancer in Iowa isn’t just about receiving a diagnosis and figuring out the right treatment. It’s navigating hurdles related to insurance and care; wondering what might have caused the disease in the first place; and living with the physical and emotional aftermath long after the last scan.

Whetstone’s doctor offered her three options: radiation, chemotherapy, and immunotherapy. When her mother went through cancer treatment decades earlier, she remembered watching her struggle with the side effects of chemo. Seeing her mother lose her hair was a memory that stuck with her.

"You never really understand a lot of it when they're explaining it to you," Whetstone said.

Instead of chemotherapy or radiation, she decided to go with immunotherapy because it had more side effects she was willing to manage. Keeping her hair was a bonus.

Her doctor prescribed a course of Herceptin. It’s sometimes used to treat breast and stomach cancers by blocking a particular protein that promotes cancer cell growth. The drug is estimated to have saved more than 3 million lives since its introduction in 1998. The rub: Herceptin—a brand name for the chemical trastuzumab—is expensive.

Whetstone said each infusion treatment costs around $5,000, a fortune on a fixed income. Even with Medicare, Whetstone couldn't afford the mounting costs. She applied for an elderly waiver to get Medicaid coverage, then hit another wall when the surgeon's office initially said they wouldn't take her insurance. Three phone calls and three and a half weeks of waiting later, she finally got approval for the surgery.

"If [the insurance companies] make mistakes and stuff, you know, then you're stuck waiting," she said. "And you can't have your surgery or treatment because they have to get the insurance straightened out."

Whetstone lives in an apartment complex with a number of other elderly Iowans. When they meet once a week in the common area to talk about politics or the news, she said she wonders how her neighbors would fare navigating the system.

"There's no way they can do this themselves," she said. (She herself had help thanks to a service coordinator from Broadlawns Medical Center.)

As the machine beeps to signal her treatment is finished, Whetstone cautiously reflected on the road ahead. In two weeks, she'll have her final infusion. And come September, a mammogram will determine if she's in remission.

“They said, it looks good, and I feel really confident that it'll be okay,” Whetstone said. “But the thing is, I did this before.”

Before starting her first dose of Herceptin, surgeons operated to remove the tumor in Whetstone’s breast. But within weeks,the cancer came back, and she needed a mastectomy. Now, with her immunotherapy complete, she hopes next month’s mammogram brings good news.

“ I don't wanna get false hope in here,” Whetstone said, “because I did last time. A lot of times I don’t even think about it. I just … go to the activities of my building and, you know, meet people and do things.”

Read all the stories at Iowa Starting Line.

Question for you

Here's what's bugging me about the tip thing---yes, I'm still stuck on it. I keep thinking about raising the minimum wage, increasing the child tax credit, expanding the housing voucher system... all things that we could be spending our time on if our goal is to help out the work class. Which leads me to my question:

If you had the power, what's one policy that you think would start helping people out tomorrow? Blue sky. Everythings on the table. What would it be?

Send your answers to zach@iowastartingline.com. I might read your answer on the show.

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Before you go

Support this work by doing these three things:

1. Subscribe to Cornhole Champions on YouTube and like our videos to improve their reach.

2. Join the game by signing up for my Substack newsletter and get these episodes straight to your email on Wednesday mornings.

3. Sign up for Iowa Starting Line's flagship newsletter.

4. Follow our work on Instagram and TikTok.

Cornhole Champions is a weekly podcast powered by Iowa Starting Line with music by Avery Mossman and show art by Desirée Tapia. We are a proud member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative.

Your friendly neighborhood reporter,

Zachary Oren Smith
Political correspondent
Iowa Starting Line

YouTube | Instagram | TikTok | Twitter | Bluesky | Threads | LinkedIn

Happy Friday. And welcome back to Cornhole Champions. I'm Zachary Oren Smith. As part of our cancer series, I’m featuring full conversations with folks who got me thinking while writing this series.

Today, we’re talking to Chris Jones about how we built a system that prioritizes big Ag over the common good. Jones spent years studying Iowa's water quality before his work became too politically uncomfortable for some state lawmakers. He's the author of "The Swine Republic" and president of the Driftless Water Defenders.

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What emerged was a conversation about what was possible—both literal and political—and what it would take to build something better. Based on the emails and comments you’ve been submitting to me, I think y’all’ve been waiting for this conversation for a long time.

Here are some interesting moments from the conversation.

The chemical cocktail

Jones made a point about how we think about chemical exposure in Iowa. It's not just one pesticide.

"Many times, one thing might not be harmful to us, but in combination with other things, it then does become harmful," Jones said. "We have this cocktail of stuff. We never really know what we're being exposed to."

This includes neonicotinoids—chemicals coating almost all corn and soy seeds. They're showing up everywhere: in Iowa City's drinking water, in ethanol plant discharge, even in remote areas. "This stuff is becoming ubiquitous in the environment," he said.

When weeds fight back

Weeds are getting resistant to glyphosate. A single pigweed plant can produce a million seeds. If just one seed is resistant to herbicide, next year you've got a million herbicide-resistant plants.

So farmers are going back to older, more toxic chemicals like dicamba. The problem? Dicamba drifts. On hot, windy days, it gets blown across Iowa. "Everybody in Iowa now is breathing in this dicamba," Jones said. "What are the health consequences? We don't know."

The sacred cow

Jones argued ethanol exists for one reason: it’s a policy that creates a guaranteed market for corn.

"60% of our corn in Iowa goes to produce ethanol," Jones said. "An area of land the size of 20 counties is growing corn just to produce ethanol. How dumb is that? We get all this water pollution, and perhaps cancer from this production."

Every American born since 1930 has given the government about $1,000 for farm conservation, he said, "and we still have not gotten the environmental outcomes that we want." Instead of spending money on "Band-Aids" for the current system, Jones argued we should help farmers transition to systems that don't pollute in the first place.

You wrote in

This week, I asked: What would it take to make public service attractive to young Iowans if we strip away one of its main benefits?

Sarah from Iowa City: "I'm 24 and just finished my teaching degree. IPERS was honestly part of why I chose this path instead of private sector work. … If that security goes away, I'm not sure Iowa can compete with what I could make elsewhere."

ZOS: We need good teachers now more than ever. Obviously, IPERS isn’t enough—or else the school districts wouldn’t be struggling to recruit new teachers. But benefits like IPERS are part of how we make a case for you to spend time in a classroom right here.

Mike from Des Moines: "I've been a state employee for 15 years. IPERS isn't why I took the job, but it's definitely why I've stayed.”

ZOS: The institutional knowledge angle is huge. When experienced people leave, it's not just about filling positions—it's about losing expertise. That 4-7 year vestment period is a great reason to stick it out…

To everyone who shared their two cents, thanks. I hope you’ll keep engaging with me about these stories.

Subscribe now

Before you go

Support this work by doing these three things:

1. Subscribe to Cornhole Champions on YouTube and like our videos to improve their reach.

2. Join the game by signing up for my Substack newsletter and get these episodes straight to your email on Wednesday mornings.

3. Sign up for Iowa Starting Line's flagship newsletter.

4. Follow our work on Instagram and TikTok.

Cornhole Champions is a weekly podcast powered by Iowa Starting Line with music by Avery Mossman and show art by Desirée Tapia. We are a proud member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative.

Your friendly neighborhood reporter,

Zachary Oren Smith
Political correspondent
Iowa Starting Line

YouTube | Instagram | TikTok | Twitter | Bluesky | Threads | LinkedIn

Happy Wednesday, and welcome to Cornhole Champions. Iowa Starting Line's weekly newsletter and podcast where we throw bags at the state's biggest stories. I'm Zachary Oren Smith.

It's an off-year, but the news cycle hasn't been acting like it. On the show today: Another candidate raised his hand to take on US Sen. Joni Ernst. My colleague Amie Rivers has new reporting on how funding cuts will gut cancer research. And I have some reporting looking at why we shouldn't be surprised to see an outgoing Iowa Republican once again taking a swing at hundreds of thousands of Iowans' retirement plans.

Remember, we're able to assemble these missives because of your support. If you haven't become a supporter, now's a great time. If now's not a great time, help us get this work out there by sharing it with your friends. It makes a difference.

Before the big show, here are some stories to keep in mind...

• Turek 4 Iowa - State Rep. Josh Turek of Council Bluffs launched his bid for US Senate Tuesday morning. It's been an open secret that he would launch in August, a secret the Register confirmed. As part of his launch, he spoke with me for the podcast about his story, his work in the Legislature, and why he's optimistic about Democrats' chances in 2026.

• Research cuts kill - As Iowa faces the nation's worst cancer crisis, federal funding cuts are shuttering labs and canceling promising studies. The NIH has slashed over $33 million in research funding at the University of Iowa alone, with only 4% of new cancer research proposals getting funded. Medical school student Claire Brown of Iowa City said she’s worried about the impact that it will have on the future of the medical profession.

• Merit pay returns - Gov. Kim Reynolds's DOGE task force is recycling a failed idea of merit pay for teachers, despite Iowa's repeated unsuccessful flirtations with the concept. In Bleeding Heartland this week, Randy Richardson and Bruce Lear detail how Iowa has tried merit pay schemes multiple times since the 1980s—all ending in failure. The plans created competition instead of cooperation among teachers, relied on flawed standardized test measures, and administrators found little variation in teacher performance when pay was tied to evaluations. But unlike previous attempts when teachers had collective bargaining rights, any new plan could be imposed without educator input since Republicans stripped those rights in 2017.

And while we've got DOGE on the mind, let's take a look at another one of its recommendations...

[Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds appointed a board of wealthy Iowans to recommend ways of making state government more efficient. Pictured, Reynolds speaks during a news conference, Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2024, at the Statehouse in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)]

Iowa DOGE targets retirement pensions for teachers, law enforcement

A task force appointed by Gov. Kim Reynolds recommended eliminating the state pension system for new employees and replacing it with a 401(k)-style plan. Iowa DOGE's proposal has sparked fierce, bipartisan opposition.

Governor Kim Reynolds promised in 2018 she’d “protect and defend” Iowa’s public employee retirement program, IPERS. Approaching her final year as governor, her administration is reaching once again for this third rail of Iowa politics, all in the name of so-called government efficiency.

When she chartered it earlier this year, Reynolds said Iowa DOGE—a task force based on the federal DOGE headed by Elon Musk—would make recommendations to further her administration’s efforts to make government more efficient. The board has been criticized for only including Republican ex-officio members.

During a meeting last Wednesday in Des Moines, the task force met to discuss the recommendations they plan to submit to Reynolds and the Legislature by a Sept. 29 deadline. They supplied 45 recommendations, including tying teacher pay to student performance and a "red tape hotline" for reporting bureaucratic problems.

Iowa DOGE also floated a recommendation to replace IPERS for new state employees with a 401(k)-style retirement plan. The proposal would apply to newly hired employees, not current workers who've already been paying in.

IPERS is the state’s largest public retirement system, affecting over 414,000 public workers, including teachers, police officers, and firefighters.

“Currently, the state is contributing nearly 70% to an employee’s retirement plan; where the employee is contributing only 30%. In the private sector, these percentages would almost be the opposite,” Terry Lutz of McClure Engineering Co. told the board. He called IPERS a creator of "huge liabilities for our state."

Pensions, often called defined benefit plans, are employer-sponsored retirement plans providing a guaranteed stream of income and therefore stability for retirees. By comparison, defined contribution plans provide a savings account where the final payout depends on contributions. Where pension systems shift investment risk to employers, defined contribution systems, like 401(k)s, shift that risk onto employees.

Lutz was among the 13 business leaders Reynolds named to the task force representing large Iowa employers like Fareway, Principal Financial Group, and Well Enterprises. These wealthy members of Reynolds’ inaugural Iowa DOGE task force said the change was aimed at reducing liability for the state.

However, even when accounting for benefits, public-sector workers make 14.5% less than their counterparts in the private sector nationwide. Pension plans like IPERS help make up that gap, allowing government jobs to compete for qualified workers.

While seen as a liability by Iowa DOGE, IPERS is among the most stable pension plans in the country. A common measure for a pension’s financial health is its funded ratio; the value of the plan's assets divided by its liabilities. According to an Equable analysis. Iowa’s funded ratio, 91.6% in 2024, was the 11th highest in the country. When IPERS’ quarterly investment board met in December, its CEO celebrated its increased financial stability over the years.

“Because of superior management of its investment portfolio and sufficient contributions from members, IPERS is growing its funded ratio and shrinking its unfunded liability more quickly than anticipated,” IPERS CEO Greg Samorajski said.

Reynolds administration returns to IPERS

Years before Iowa DOGE was a glimmer in the governor's eye, Iowa Republicans explored changing how IPERS works.

In 2017, then-State Sen. Brad Zaun started the conversation with a bill to study moving newly hired Iowa public employees into a defined contribution 401(k)-style retirement system, a massive change to the benefit and the way it’s administered by the state.

On his way out the door that year, former Gov. Terry Branstad announced a study of IPERS, but neglected to establish the task force before departing to become President Donald Trump’s ambassador to China. Nevertheless, things were already moving in the Senate.

Sen. Charles Schneider, R-Des Moines, led an IPERS study committee working with the Reason Foundation, a Libertarian think tank that opposes pensions. While Schneider told the Des Moines Register that no decisions were made, Reason had published a handbook with options for replacing a pension with a 401(k) style.

"I support his (Schneider’s) efforts in doing that," Reynolds said.

The issue became a flashpoint in her 2018 reelection campaign. On a stop in Jefferson, Reynolds called it a scare tactic by Democrats, The Green County News reported.

“They (the legislators) are not going to do anything that will impact your IPERS today, tomorrow, or into the future. It is not going to happen,” Reynolds said.

Many Iowans received mailers echoing this suddenly full-throated support for a program that one in ten Iowans have a stake in.

Now, Reynolds’ hand-picked task force appears to be recommending she go back on that promise.

Labor unions, legislators come out against IPERS changes

Iowa DOGE’s proposal was met with severe opposition from groups that represent the affected employees. In a statement, Iowa State Education Association President Joshua Brown said Lutz and the rest of the board were “out-of-touch.”

“Their recommendation to ‘save’ taxpayer money on the backs of public employees is not just an outrageous and unimaginative attempt to distract from future revenue challenges, but also a deeply concerning one,” Brown said. “It has the potential to harm every community in Iowa. IPERS is not broken; rather, it is a model across the country, and their idea is a solution in search of a problem.”

In a social media post, the Iowa Federation of Labor AFL-CIO said, “If Governor Kim Reynolds was actually sincere about making government work better, she’d assemble a task force of public employees, not business executives or pay-to-play donors for advice. Hands off IPERS.”

Democrats joined in the pile-on Iowa DOGE's recommendation, with party Chair Rita Hart saying: “Iowa’s public employees keep our streets safe, our children educated, and our communities vibrant. They deserve a strong pension system like the one they currently have.”

Rob Sand, a Democrat running for governor in 2026, said weakening IPERS only stops people from taking public service jobs, leaving the public worse off.

“Police officers, firefighters, teachers, plow drivers, and more paid into IPERS and should be thanked for their service. They take salaries lower than typical private sector salaries, some because of the promise of IPERS,” Sand said. “This proposal could result in reductions of retirement benefits that these workers have already paid into for years.”

Some Iowa Republicans also oppose the recommendation. State Reps. Ray Sorensen of Greenfield, Ann Meyers of Fort Dodge, and Jason Gearhart of Strawberry Point all made posts to social media saying they’d heard from constituents and didn’t support the recommendation.

State Rep. Brian Lohse of Bondurant told Iowa Starting Line he doesn’t believe there’s support within the Iowa House for changing IPERS in the 2026 Iowa Legislative Session. He said Iowa Republicans already made a number of changes to state government—reduced cabinet level entities, boards, and commissions—and many of those reductions needed to “marinate” for longer before more changes are made.

“We shouldn't shy away from conversations about what’s a better outcome, but if we start down that road, it’s going to have to be with some extremely knowledgeable experts about how any changes affect our current beneficiaries,” Lohse said. “Right now, IPERS is run so well and everyone has gotten used to it. It’s hard to envision a change that would be beneficial.”

Members of the Iowa DOGE:

• Emily Schmitt (Task Force Chair), Sukup Manufacturing Co.

• Nick Bowdish, Elite Octane

• Brianne Schulte, Vermeer

• Adam Keune, University of Iowa Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center

• Craig Dozark, Crawford County Board of Supervisors

• Terry Lutz, McClure Engineering

• Beth Tinsman, Twin State Technical Services

• Kathy Kay, Principal Financial Group

• Ryan Schaap, Well Enterprises

• David Spalding, Iowa State University College of Business

• Reynolds Cramer, Fareway

• Joe Murphy, Iowa Business Council

• Mark Campbell, Former Webster County Supervisor

• Hans Wilz (ex-Officio Member), Iowa House of Representatives

• Dan Dawson (ex-Officio Member), Iowa Senate

Question for you

Here's what I keep thinking about: if you're a 22-year-old considering whether to become a teacher, police officer, or firefighter in Iowa, you're weighing a lot of choices. IPERS has been a great reason to pick one of these difficult, often thankless jobs. Meanwhile, these are the exact jobs Iowa desperately needs filled. We have teacher shortages, nursing shortages and an aging workforce across state government. So here's my question:

I'm genuinely curious how you think this plays out. If you're a public employee—or thinking about becoming one—how does this change your calculation? And if you're not, do you think we should be making it harder or easier for people to choose careers serving the public?

Before you go

Support this work by doing these four things:

1. Subscribe to Cornhole Champions on YouTube and like our videos to improve their reach.

2. Join the game by signing up for my Substack newsletter and get these episodes straight to your email on Wednesday mornings.

3. Sign up for Iowa Starting Line's flagship newsletter.

4. Follow our work on Instagram and TikTok.

Cornhole Champions is a weekly podcast powered by Iowa Starting Line. It’s produced by me and edited by Rebecca Steinberg. Our music is by Avery Mossman and show art by Desirée Tapia. We are a proud member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative.

Your friendly neighborhood reporter,

Zachary Oren Smith
Political correspondent
Iowa Starting Line

Happy Friday. And welcome to Cornhole Champions. I’m Zachary Oren Smith. Over at Iowa Starting Line, our team is laser-focused on our ongoing cancer investigation, The Host Spot. Some data needs parsing. Sources who need calling. And conversations—like this one—that I’m excited to share with you.

If you’ve been following the series—signing up for ISL’s flagship newsletter is the best way to do that—you know we’ve been looking at pesticides this week. And while I’m pretty happy with how we dug into it, I think about this series as a first step. An inception point. A place where you can get some good information about the causes and realities of Iowa’s cancer problem. But it’s not an endpoint.

To that end, I sat down with Dr. David Cwiertny to expand on the conversation on environmental contamination and its impact on our health. Cwiertny is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Iowa. He studies how agricultural chemicals move through our water, our air, and even the dust that blows around our homes. What emerged was a conversation about the messy reality of living in the gap between what science suggests and what policy actually does about it.

You can catch the full interview at our home on YouTube. Here are some interesting moments from the interview.

But first…

• I said what I said - I had some folks in the comments saying I was using the word pesticide incorrectly… Here’s a teachable moment just for them.

Chemicals don’t just disappear

An idea Cwiertny hit on was “mass balance.” It’s the application of the law of conservation of mass: that mass is neither created nor destroyed. That we should be able to account for material entering and leaving a system.

"When you add something to the environment, it doesn't go away. It might transform, it might take on a new shape. It certainly can move, but it's still there,” Cwiertny said.

His team measures pesticide concentrations throughout agricultural regions. And he said they rarely find a water sample that does not contain one or two major chemicals—even in remote areas. That “ubiquity,” as he calls it, reflects decades of sustained use.

Take neonicotinoids, a class of insecticides you might have heard about because of their connection to bee colony collapse. Many farmers told Cwiertny it's hard to even find seeds that don't come pre-treated with these chemicals. The result? Background levels show up everywhere, even before anyone sprays anything.

The science-policy gap

Easily the most striking thought from this interview was what he termed the “grey area:” how scientific understanding evolves and how slowly policy follows.

The evidence around what chemicals are safe and which ones aren’t changes. In 2011, researchers published findings from the Agricultural Health Study showing no strong associations between atrazine use and cancer. But that same study, with more years of data, recently published updated findings in 2024 showing atrazine use is now associated with different forms of cancer.

"It's the same study, the same authors, and a completely different takeaway," Cwiertny said.

This isn't unusual. He pointed to forever chemicals (PFAS), where researchers have known about problems since 2000, but we're just now getting drinking water standards in 2025. That decade-to-two-decade lag between scientific discovery and policy change creates a "gray area"—where policy still considers something safe while emerging science suggests it may not be.

"That's really hard when you live in a place like Iowa where a lot of these chemicals get used," he said. "We could be in this gray area of, well, the legislation or the policy still says it's safe, but there's all this emerging science that says it may not be. What do we actually do?"

Reality > simple answers

If there’s a good come-away from the interview, one might be Cwiertny’s sober assessment that a clear cause for Iowa’s cancer rates isn't going to happen. Unlike toxic burn pits for veterans or chemical exposures in a factory, this kind of chronic, low-level exposure makes definitive connections nearly impossible to establish.

"Here in Iowa, the challenge is there's a variety of risk factors and it's not any one thing," he said. "It's diet, it's physical activity, it's our genetic history and family history. There are behavioral choices like do we smoke, do we drink? And then you throw in the environment."

If you remember last week’s conversation with Mary Charlton of the Iowa Cancer Registry, you’ll remember her remarks on the kinds of cancers differing across the state. There are different environmental risks associated with different areas. And we move from one to another, meaning we’re exposed to different environments at different times.

“If we’re waiting around for like, ‘Oh yeah, in Iowa, it’s this thing causing our main problem,’ we’re going to be waiting a long time,” Cwiertny said.

So what do we do?

Just because information is imperfect doesn’t mean we should wait to act.

“We know plenty to know where there are folks that deserve better protections,” Cwiertny said.

He pointed to research showing different models of agriculture—less chemically intensive approaches that might not get the same yields but don't require buying as much product, potentially maintaining profitability.

"I just wish we could have a more forward-looking conversation that it doesn't have to be either or," he said. "There are ways we could do this that could be productive and start to say that we don't necessarily have to do it this way, particularly if we're concerned there might be problems resulting from it."

Cwiertny's perspective stuck with me because it reframes how we think about uncertainty. Instead of using incomplete information as a reason to maintain the status quo, he said we could use it as a reason to be more proactive, to think about what options are at our disposal.

You wrote in

This week, I asked you how we bridge the conversational gap between farming interests and public health concerns. Your responses showed the complexity of the challenge:

Sophia from Ames: “My dad farmed for 40 years. He used what the extension office told him to use. What kept the farm profitable. He wasn’t trying to hurt anyone. But when he got diagnosed with lymphoma at 68, you can’t help but wonder. How do we have this conversation without making farmers the bad guys?”

ZOS: We are destined to enact those things we incentivize as a society and to avoid those things we disincentivize. We’ll get into this with next week’s interview with Chris Jones, so stay tuned. But I like your point that many folks involved in our ag system are doing what they are told is the right thing. There’s not malevolence here. It’s people working within the system that we created for them.

Bill from Iowa City: “Every chemical we sell is EPA approved. If there’s an issue, why is the EPA taking so long to change course?”

ZOS: Some argue it’s regulatory capture. Some argue its the slow process good science demands. Whatever the reason, it is frustrating.

To everyone who shared their two cents, thanks. I hope you’ll keep engaging with me about these stories.

Before you go

Support this work by doing these three things:

1. Subscribe to Cornhole Champions on YouTube and like our videos to improve their reach.

2. Join the game by signing up for my Substack newsletter and get these episodes straight to your email on Wednesday mornings.

3. Sign up for Iowa Starting Line's flagship newsletter.

4. Follow our work on Instagram and TikTok.

Cornhole Champions is a weekly podcast powered by Iowa Starting Line with music by Avery Mossman and show art by Desirée Tapia. We are a proud member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative.

Your friendly neighborhood reporter,

Zachary Oren Smith
Political correspondent
Iowa Starting Line