Register woes. Congressional stock trades. AI legislation. Iowa’s most common criminal offenses. And Ankeny is a top-5 place to live.
6/3/2026The Des Moines Register’s latest subscription numbers are in, and they are not pretty. The bad news is not just for the printed editions, but let’s start there.
According to a report from Alliance for Audited Media, for the six months ending March 31, 2026, the Sunday Register now has 19,571 subscribers, which includes single copy sales and hotel room/lobby copies. The Monday-Friday average for the daily Des Moines Register now totals 12,755 copies and also includes single copy sales and hotel room/lobby copies.
But it is all going to their digital copies, right? Not exactly.
Total average circulation for the digital replica is 6,664 copies for Sunday and 7,284 copies on average Monday through Friday, All total, that adds up to 26,235 for the Sunday Register and 20,039 for the Monday through Friday average. That’s a far cry — with lots of tears from readers, advertisers and Register employees — from the days of 500,000 subscribers.
Of note, if you were to buy a single copy of the Register at newsstands during the week, it would run you $3.49, and a weekend copy would cost $4.49. …
Calls for Congressional stock trading bans have grown within recent months, and with President Trump in the news for his recently revealed 3,600 stock trades in the first quarter of this year, averaging nearly 58 trades for every U.S. trading day, we decided to look into the stock portfolios of Iowa’s federally elected officials to see if they were acting similarly to the President and other members of Congress.
We looked at unusualwhales.com, a real-time stock market data tool for this information. Iowans will be pleased to hear that, for the most part, their federally elected representatives were not involved in the stock market. No trades were found for Chuck Grassley, Joni Ernst, Mariannette Miller Meeks, Zach Nunn or Randy Feenstra. That does leave one of our representatives: Ashley Hinson.
Hinson, who is running to replace Joni Ernst in the U.S. Senate, posted an article to her official campaign website on May 20, stating that no member of congress should be trading on prediction markets. “That’s why I am pushing to stop Members of Congress from trading individual stocks (my husband and I sold our publicly traded individual stocks shortly after I began serving in Congress and do not trade stocks) and why I’m working to end all forms of corrupt insider trading in Washington, D.C.”
It’s true that shortly after Hinson was elected in 2021, she sold off her stocks in March of 2021, but not without making a pretty penny in the process. Records on Unusual Whales show that Hinson made 15 trades in March of 2021, including on companies Amazon, Tesla and Alibaba. Quiverquant.com, another stock trading website, shows that Hinson’s net worth increased from $1.33 million in 2020 to $5.06 million in 2025. Quiver Quantitative says Hinson has approximately $396,400 invested in publicly traded assets, that appear to be tied to various IRAs and retirement funds.
Other net worths of Iowa’s elected officials, according to the site, are $6.21 million for Chuck Grassley, $1.78 million for Mariannette Miller-Meeks, $1.4 million for Zach Nunn, $827,000 for Joni Ernst and $89,000 for Randy Feenstra. …
This time last year, we looked at some of the artificial intelligence-related bills that were moving through the Iowa Legislature. AI continues to become a hot button topic, and with central Iowa continuing to become a hotbed for the data centers that power AI, we decided to take another look as lawmakers finished the 91st general assembly.
We found 24 bills that included “artificial intelligence” within them. Here are some of the more interesting ones:
HF 2150 states that material generated with AI designed for or against political campaigns, or, for or against ballot measures, must contain a disclosure that it was generated with AI, proposed by Aime Wichtendahl (D).
HF 2204 proposes requirements for chatbot deployers, including protocols, limitations on data collection, requirements for minors interacting with AI companions and therapeutic chatbots, and provides civil and punitive penalties for violating the requirements, also proposed by Wichtendahl (D).
Similar to HF 2204, HF2507 establishes requirements and guidelines for conversational AI services and provides civil penalties for them. Among some of the requirements, it would require conversational AI to disclose to minors that it is artificial intelligence once every three hours of continuous conversation, prevent AI from depicting sexually explicit material, sexually objectifying minors, and that conversational AI would not be allowed to claim it’s sentient or human or simulate emotional dependence on minors. Violators would be subject to a maximum of a $500,000 penalty. This was proposed by the committee for health and human services.
HF2469 would prohibit the use of an automated decision-making system to alter the price of a product or service for a specific individual based on surveillance data. This is what has become known as surveillance pricing. It was proposed by Larry McBurney (D).
SF2414 is an act relating to automated decision systems used by employers. Employers need to provide a written notice that an automated decision system is in use for employment-related decisions, or if an employee will foreseeably be directly affected by it. It also requires employers to notify applicants for jobs if it is using automation when making hiring decisions, and it requires humans to review automated decisions based on discipline or termination, among other requirements. This was proposed by Liz Bennett (D). …
According to the Iowa Legislatures website, these AI related bills only went as far as being introduced. Unrelated, there are currently 11 more planned data centers in Iowa in addition to the 10 that are currently operating. …
U.S. News and World Report released its rankings for the 250 best cities to live in the U.S., and six Iowa cities made the cut with one landing in the top five. Ankeny was ranked the fourth-best city to live in, receiving a 7.1 overall score, just behind first-place Carmel, Indiana, which received a 7.2. Ankeny was also ranked the second-best small city to live in. Factors that go into the ranking are cost of living, commute times, age distribution/marital status and the job market.
The other five Iowa cities to make the list were West Des Moines, 40th, Cedar Rapids (136th), Council Bluffs (160th), Dubuque (208th) and Sioux City (219th). …
Ever wonder what Iowa’s criminals specialize in? Thanks to an analysis of 2024 FBI data by the Injury Lawyer Team (using the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ crime tracker), we now have the greatest hits list. And the winner is… simple assault, topping the charts with 17,395 incidents. Coming in strong at No. 2: drug or narcotics violations (15,209), followed by property destruction and vandalism (13,339).
The rest of the lineup:
• Shoplifting: 11,273
• Other larceny: 9,552
• Drug equipment violations: 8,667
• Burglary/breaking and entering: 6,101
• Intimidation: 5,729
• Aggravated assault: 5,266
• Theft from motor vehicles: 4,584
Nationally, simple assault also takes the crown, and it’s the same story in Illinois, Missouri, and South Dakota. The one bit of sunshine? Crime in Iowa actually dropped 7.3% from 2023 to 2024. ♦
