Since 2006, the Community Health Center of Fort Dodge has been taking care of thousands of people from north central Iowa and doing so in a way that won’t bankrupt their patients. The center is dedicated to providing care to everyone regardless of their financial status or what kind of ...

For more than one year now, we have been talking about the superheroes who are our front-line workers. We paid tribute to their sacrifice and showed our gratitude for their service. They faced the challenge of working where they were needed through a global pandemic. And then, just as we ...

Recently, the world has often seemed like a dark and scary place. COVID-19 still remains a threat, mass shootings strike fear in the soul of America and economic uncertainty burdens too many people. In the midst of all these grim developments, it can be easy to forget that goodness still ...

Everyone is well aware that law enforcement officers, firefighters and emergency medical personnel risk their lives every day to protect us. On Tuesday, Iowans received a horrifying reminder that there is another group of people that risk their lives every day to protect the public. ...

Amid the endless and often meaningless bickering in Washington, a representative and a senator from Iowa have introduced measures that would actually do some good for the public. In a move that shows bipartisanship is still possible, U.S. Rep. Randy Feenstra, a Republican who represents ...

As another growing season approaches, today has been set as National Ag Day by the Agriculture Council of America. The council designates the week within it falls as National Ag Week. One goal of National Ag Day is to recognize the contribution agriculture makes in the lives of all of us. The ...

Here we go again. The weekend of March 13-14 marked the biannual changing-of-the-clocks ritual known as daylight saving time. Why do we do this, again? Sure, we’ve all had more on our minds in 2020-2021 than getting Congress to abolish daylight saving time (or permanently stick with it). ...

As the Fort Dodge community continues to struggle with a shortage of available child care openings, it received some welcome news recently. Iowa Workforce Development has awarded more than $1 million in grants to support a couple of local child care projects. Those grants won’t close the ...

The value of preschool can be summed up in one statistic found in Fort Dodge Community School District assessments from the current academic year. Those assessments revealed that kindergarteners who did not attend preschool performed on average about 18 percent lower than their classmates who ...

Spring break is underway in the Fort Dodge Community School District, but that doesn’t mean the learning has to stop. In fact, students in the afterschool program called Dodger Academy have a fun way to learn some things about science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) thanks ...

Iowa continues to lag behind the rest of the nation in one economic category, but in this case, that is a good thing. Iowa’s unemployment rate for January, the most recent month for which statistics are available, was 3.5 percent. The national unemployment rate for January was 6.3 ...

For more than two centuries, the bedrock of our liberty and prosperity as Americans has been our right to know what is going on around us and to discuss it freely. Our nation’s founders believed that was so important that when they wrote the Bill or Rights, they made freedom of speech the ...

President Biden is facing a critical test as a surge of migrants, emboldened by the end of the Trump era, is arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border in hopes of forging better lives here in the U.S. One challenge in particular is the sharp increase in unaccompanied minors. Federal agents ...

For those living for their next high and turning to crime so they can afford it, the future is bleak. They will inevitably end up in one of two places: the cemetery or the penitentiary. In Webster County, there is a relatively new program that offers people a chance to avoid both ...

Like most small town fire departments, the all-volunteer Badger Fire Department has a small budget. The cost of the specialized gear needed to fight fires, perform rescues and provide emergency medical care is not small, however. The Badger firefighters have dealt with that reality for ...

To experts in the field, Webster County is a child care desert. This desert has nothing to do with sand, however. Just as a desert is an open and empty space, Webster County is open and empty when it comes to available positions in programs for children who need care while their parents are ...

When Joe Biden was running for president, he was asked if — unlike then-President Trump — he would punish senior Saudi leaders for the 2018 murder of U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Biden answered "Yes," and went on to say that he believed ...

Tom Vilsack is back at the helm of the United States Department of Agriculture. The former Iowa governor was confirmed by the Senate on Feb. 23 to begin his second stint as secretary of agriculture, having served in the role for eight years under former President Barack Obama. Having an ...

Corn growers and ethanol producers finally got a bit of good news from the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA has reversed its position on a policy issue in a move that, in the long run, will grow the market for ethanol. Refineries are required by federal law to blend billions of ...

U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley is well known for visiting all 99 counties in Iowa every year. Many of his annual stops are in small, rural towns often overlooked by politicians. But Grassley, a Republican, is a farmer who knows all about life in rural communities because he has lived it. He ...