Letters: Hands-free bill should have been a slam dunk

Stop migrants in Mexico’s south

Let’s collaborate with Mexico and Central American countries. Put US and Mexican border staff in place at Mexico's southeastern land border. Prevent the dangerous trek through Mexico for many Central and South Americans. Promote Central and South American citizens to apply for asylum in their home country. These can then be processed by US officials in a orderly manner.

— Steve Johnson, Des Moines

Gun control is a much better idea than shooter drills

It saddens me and makes me angry that children and school staff in Iowa are being put through active shooter drills for supposed safety. I should think even the trauma of going through a drill will be harmful to many students, especially if they don’t know it is a drill, which happened in Spirit Lake. What on earth are we thinking? What are we doing?

Yes, we want children to be safe. Will a drill do that when we still allow the sale and ownership of guns, especially AR-15 weapons? Even the inventor of that weapon didn’t own one and said they should not be in the hands of the general public, according to his family.

The framers of the Constitution were thinking militia and muskets. But, even if they weren’t, whose rights should prevail: the shooter’s, or those of the one getting shot?

— Catherine Talarico, Des Moines

Iowa GOP sets the standard for selfishness

There is something missing from the Republican Party. Besides compassion, empathy and truthfulness. Republicans have no sense of fairness and working for the common good.

Holding our country hostage in gun violence and in deficit negotiations, phony attempts to care about the children, cuts to social programs that help our vulnerable.

Iowa is leading the way in selfishness. Stealing public money for private schools, taking away power from Rob Sand, our duly elected state auditor, denigrating women and their autonomy over their own bodies, inflicting cruelty through their policies that affect the LGBTQ community.

The outcry must be loud and clear. Stand up and use your voice for good!

— Deb McMahon, Des Moines

And the rocket’s red glare

One thing to take away from the coronation of King Charles III was that the British have a national anthem they can all actually sing. It would be so nice if we had an anthem like that.

— Ivan T. Webber, West Des Moines

Hands-free bill should have been a slam dunk

The Iowa Legislature had one simple bill to pass that would improve the safety of all Iowans: Prohibit use of hand-held devices while driving. Unsurprisingly, lawmakers failed. The governor should publicly identify those responsible for the failure, throw them under the bus, and then call a special session just to pass this single bill, Senate File 547.

— Jeff Aten, Windsor Heights

Library discretion is not censorship

It is confusing, and tedious, to read stories that conflate the decision of governments to not buy books for their library, with censorship. A recent letter claimed teenagers are being "denied access to many” books. This of course is untrue. All these books are available from most book sellers. Libraries cannot purchase every book, and libraries should be controlled by the local community.

Save your outrage for when governments actually prohibit books for purchase, or from bringing these books to school, for example. Censorship in America is real, and thankfully, rare.

— Erich Riesenberg, Des Moines

Freedom is important for teachers, too

Governors may be competing with each other to raise teacher pay, as the Register reported May 9, but they are also competing with each other to make life in the classroom impossible. The egregious spread of censorship by conservatives is enough to send any conscientious scholar screaming for the exits.

Educators are supposed to prepare kids for life beyond the narrow confines of their times, their families, communities, and circumstances. Kids have access to books, media, and experiences that expose them to the broad sweep of human life across cultures and across time. They need to learn how varied – for good and ill – people have lived in varied ways. They need the intellectual and emotional tools to interpret their own experiences, and to put those experiences in historical and cross-cultural context.

Pulling books from library shelves, censoring classroom content, punishing people who dare to tell the stories of the country’s savage treatment of “others” will only drive bright young people away from becoming mission-driven educators.

Yes, pay teachers what they are worth, but give them the freedom the profession needs to prepare kids for life grounded in truth and for a future that will demand broad perspective and great resilience. Prepare kids for unexpected challenges and unpredictable changes, not for some unreal picture of life as some politicians would like it to be.

— David W. Leslie, West Des Moines

Illustration muddied allergy issue

I appreciate the Register's coverage of global climate change and the effects we feel locally such as the recent front-page story about the lengthening allergy season, "Earlier. Longer. Stronger." However, as a botanist who is deeply concerned about the current decline in biodiversity, I must object to the choice of graphic used to illustrate the article.

By portraying bright, showy wildflowers, this image feeds an unfortunate misconception that these are the plants responsible for seasonal allergies. Instead, these flowers have sticky pollen that is carried by insect pollinators. You would have to work very hard to get it up your nose!

The pollen grains that irritate allergy sufferers come from wind pollinated plants. These include grasses and some tree species.

In any case, I'm thankful that you placed the blame for the lengthening allergy season squarely where it belongs: on human caused climate change. Next time, please choose a graphic that matches your message.

— Laura Walter, Cedar Falls

There is indeed a centrist candidate: Joe Biden

Steve Corbin’s “Americans want a centrist president” (May 7) suffers from two false premises: that the most extreme members dominate both the Republican and Democratic parties and that Joe Biden is as unpopular as Donald Trump.

First, any American who closely follows politics and gets their news from reliable sources knows that the Democrats are centered by moderates, albeit influenced by the progressive left. Joe Biden epitomizes the center. In contrast, Trump and MAGA now own the GOP. Moderate Democrats win their primaries; MAGA Republicans win theirs. Nancy Pelosi was not held hostage by the Squad, unlike Kevin McCarthy’s subservience to the Freedom Caucus.

Second, Biden’s numbers are low for two principal reasons. Much of the country lives in a right-wing “news” echo chamber that constantly denigrates and ridicules Joe Biden. And it’s true that many Democrats would prefer a different, younger candidate. I’m a big Pete Buttigieg fan.

ut when it comes to choosing between Trump and Biden the choice is obvious. Vote for the man who believes in the Constitution and democracy, cares about all Americans, has great legislative accomplishments, supports America’s role in the world, and is honorable? Or vote for Trump, who, every day, lies, grifts, defies the rule of law, demeans women and minorities, courts white supremacists, defrauds his supporters, plays the victim, cares only about himself, and sides with Russia. Of course I’d vote for Biden. And I’m not alone. The future of our republic depends on it.

If Americans want a centrist president, they can easily have one. Vote for Joe Biden.

The No Labels effort to field a presidential candidate in 2024 is funded by right-wing billionaires to re-elect Trump or another Republican. Do not be fooled.

— Jim Chrisinger, Ankeny

Nothing noble in book restrictions

The people fighting to control who reads what and where think they're being brave. Actually, they're running scared and angry. They want the world changed to make them feel safer.

It won't work.

— Rich Gralnek, Urbandale

PEO abandoned Iowa Wesleyan

It is a sad day for Iowa when one of its oldest colleges closed its doors. Iowa Wesleyan University had been around for 180 years and graduated thousands of students. The closing could have been prevented.

My great grandmother, Mary Allen Stafford, started PEO with six other young ladies at Iowa Wesleyan in 1857. You would think that an organization like PEO would honor and cherish that connection. Not PEO. It walked away from the school where it was founded. PEO could have made a difference. Instead, it spent millions elsewhere, ignoring where it came from. Shame on PEO International.

— Hugh Stafford, Bettendorf

Iowa doesn’t need foreign legislation

The Republican culture wars blew into Iowa like a derecho. Iowa lawmakers introduced more than 30 anti-education, anti-history, anti-diversity, anti-books, anti-LGBTQ+, and anti-drag bills in this legislative session alone. Not all bills cleared the session deadline, but they will likely return.

But why all the “anti-woke” legislation? Where did it come from? Why now? Didn’t the factors these bills seek to address exist five years ago? Of course, they did! So, what changed?

The origins of these bills are not the Iowa Statehouse nor the Iowa governor’s office. Iowa lawmakers aren’t creative enough to come up with these ideas on their own. They imported the bills from other Republican-majority states like Florida and Texas. These bills are a mass copy-and-paste of text from other states. Our elected officials dutifully jumped on the anti-woke bandwagon. Iowans’ opinions be damned!

Two laws targeting transgender youth were passed. More will follow. These laws hurt people. They make Iowa unwelcoming. They make teachers’ jobs needlessly more difficult. These foreign ideas are not the Iowa values I learned.

We must stand against harmful outside legislation. Write your state representatives. Vote for candidates who oppose these foreign ideas. Let’s put the “Nice” back in “Iowa Nice.”

— Gordie Felger, Hiawatha

Tackle debt by reversing tax cuts, please

So the Republicans in Congress want to hold raising the debt ceiling and our nation's financial welfare and honor, hostage to cuts in spending that would affect our ability to combat climate change! Unbelievable!

Obviously, we cannot and never could afford all those tax cuts for the wealthy! That is where we should go to fix our financial difficulties!

Sen. Chuck Grassley, Sen. Joni Ernst, and Ashley Hinson are putting the interests of their party and their rich campaign donors ahead of the very survival of humanity. This is beyond reprehensible!

— Barbara Aszman Stone, Grinnell

Tracking water quality is key to good science

Since its founding in 2016 as the March for Science Iowa, Science Iowa, the nonprofit organization we lead, has advocated for science in the public interest, publicly supported research and evidence-based policy.

It’s impossible, however, to make good policy if government is unwilling to gather and heed evidence. And science in the public interest is infeasible if lawmakers obstruct research.

As the University of Iowa's Erin Irish and Silvia Secchi noted recently in the Des Moines Register, some lawmakers in the Iowa General Assembly have voted to dismantle a university-run water quality monitoring program. This sensor network measures the levels of pollutants, especially nitrogen and phosphorus from farm runoff, in Iowa streams.

This provision in the agriculture, natural resources and environmental protection budget rejects science and the scientific processes. It blinds researchers who track whether the state’s water quality programs are effective or a fig leaf.

Gov. Kim Reynolds should use her item veto to strike this measure. We urge our more than 400 members to convey their views on this to the governor.

— Science Iowa Executive Board: President Dan Chibnall, Treasurer Ruth Henderson, Secretary Thomas R. O’Donnell

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Letters: Hands-free bill should have been a slam dunk