Groundhog Day!
Crowdsourcing a Shared Reality
When I woke up this morning and turned on the news, it seemed so familiar. Didn’t I hear this yesterday? Lately I’ve been feeling as though I’m trapped into reliving the same news over –and over– and over again. The same stories, week after week. Sometimes I think I’m reliving past years all over again!
I rushed to the mirror, and stared at my image. Is it my imagination or am I beginning to resemble a certain cynical TV weatherman from a 1993 movie? I turned over the January page of my wall calendar. Sure enough, Monday, February 2 is Groundhog Day.
Let’s roll the tape to see if Groundhog Day is our reality today, beyond a shadow of a doubt:
January 2, 2021: “All I want to do is this. I just want to find, uh, 11,780 more votes, which is one more than we have. Can you help me, Fellas,” Donald Trump asked the Georgia Secretary of State.
January 29, 2025: The FBI entered the Fulton County Election Hub and Operations Center in Georgia, armed with a search warrant and seized election ballots and voter rolls from the 2020 general election. Why?
Trump was caught on tape pressurizing Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” more votes. Despite repeated counting, recounting and investigating by Georgia officials, Trump continues to insist the election was rigged against him. “People will soon be prosecuted for what they did,” he told world leaders at Davos last week.
November 12, 2025: The longest government shutdown in recent history (43 days) came to an end. The debate was over the government’s failure to extend health care subsidies.
January 30, 2026: Eighty days later, here we are again, with the government stuck in a partial shutdown, at least until the House returns from recess. This policy impasse is over funding Homeland Security and ICE, following the killings of two Americans in Minneapolis.
May 13, 2025: The Iowa legislature passed a bill limiting eminent domain for the use of carbon capture pipelines.
January 21, 2026: Eminent domain is back on the legislative calendar. Will it face another veto from the Governor?
Doesn’t it seem as though we’re caught in a time loop, relitigating issues that seem cut-and-dried, regurgitating other issues ad nauseam that stick in our craws: 2020 stolen election lies, government shut-downs, uninsured Americans, immigration policies, banned books – and more. To date there have been 253 active court cases challenging Trump’s actions as president. Federal court cases shuffle back and forth from one district to another, and some twist in the wind for months waiting for a ruling from on high, the Supreme Court.
Time Warp
In the meantime, we plod along. But next to nothing seems to move ahead without a series of painful fits and starts, or outright turmoil. For instance:
Government Shut-downs: 2026; 2019; 2018 (partial); 2014; 1996; 1995. Democrats have refused to back the 2026 appropriations package without major reforms to the Department of Homeland Security and ongoing immigration enforcement actions. The Senate compromised on Friday night, but the legislation requires House approval, and the House is on recess until next week. Other countries find another way to resolve issues without interrupting government services and programs and wasting taxpayer money.
Immigration Impasse. Over 300 bipartisan bills were introduced in Congress between 2015 and 2024. Another 771 more recent bills relating to border security, asylum, and enforcement have been introduced. After the Senate failed to pass the Dream Act in 2010, Obama’s Dept. of Homeland Security created the 2012 Deferred Action Childhood Arrival administrative policy. The Trump administration rolled it back. In 2012 and 2013 the Senate passed a bipartisan immigration reform bill, and the House passed a few bills out of committee. I wrote a story suggesting we were on the verge of passing meaningful immigration reform. Then reforms stalled out.
In 2024, Congress had reached a bipartisan deal to secure the southern border – until Trump killed it by telling Republicans he wanted to campaign on this issue. The U.S. has not had comprehensive immigration reform since Ronald Reagan was president. Instead of passing new legislation to move our country forward, this administration is reaching back into pre-Groundhog Days to use the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelan immigrants to prisons in El Salvador.
Here we are in 2026, and American citizens are being killed on the streets of Minneapolis because there’s no legislative solution in sight.
Eminent Domain Stalemate: 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026.
The controversy over using eminent domain power for pipelines arose in 2016 when the Iowa Utilities Board (IUB), appointed by Gov. Reynolds, approved the construction of the Dakota Access LLC Pipeline across much of rural Iowa. Less than a decade later, after Reynolds reshuffled the IUB, more rural Iowans are threatened with eminent domain by the Summit Carbon Capture Pipeline. The justification for the pipeline is to support farmers and ethanol plants, but Summit recently dropped its pretense that the CO2 would be buried in North Dakota, admitting it could be used for enhanced oil recovery. Tax cuts of almost two billion a year hang in the balance. The current Senate bill doesn’t ban eminent domain; the House bill does. Will the Iowa legislature be stuck in a stalemate again?
Health Care Reform Stalls, 1940 - 2010. Congress failed to pass significant health care reform for sixty years, and over three administrations: Truman, Nixon, and Clinton. For years I wrote about the lack of affordable health coverage, with a focus on self-employed individuals and those without employee-provided insurance.
I followed Hillary Clinton’s efforts to lead the charge in the early 1990s, and watched every proposal on the table abandoned. By 2003 the stalemate on health insurance reform had become such a bitter pill that I wrote an eight-page story, a highly unusual focus for a farm magazine. Finally, I covered the passage of The Affordable Care Act in 2009. Now, here we are, pulled back into Groundhog Day as Congress has stripped away health care subsidies helping more Americans than ever before afford insurance coverage. A total of 22 million Americans will see increased health care premiums; 126,000 Iowans are enrolled in the ACA.
Immunization Angst; By 1998-1999, all but four states had vaccine mandates for students K-12. Decades ago, kids missed school and risked complications due to infectious diseases, including chicken pox, measles, and mumps. As a parent I was glad our kids could avoid these illnesses, thanks to vaccinations. During the Pandemic, small pockets of the population began opting out of vaccinations. Then came the Trump administration, and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the number opting out for personal or religious reasons grew exponentially. Today it’s driving the spread of vaccine-preventable diseases, with recent measles outbreaks in Spartanburg and Columbia, South Carolina. A 2% non-medical exemption rate there in 2014 has grown to 8%. Florida has initiated a plan to remove all vaccine mandates including for public school students.
The science behind vaccinations hasn’t changed. Politics and the level of misinformation has. A study published last year by the CDC estimated that routine childhood vaccinations – such as those included in school mandates – will have prevented about 508 million illnesses, 32 million hospitalizations and 1,129,000 deaths among children born between 1994 and 2003. They also were estimated to avert $540 billion in direct costs. Why do Americans yearn for the good old Dark Ages of Infectious Disease?
Banned books/Censorship Spikes from 2021-2025, with record-breaking numbers of book bans in 2024-2025; 6,870 during the school year.
We’re all witnessing the banning of books in Iowa and other states. It’s not entirely new. Recently I came across a decades-old news clipping I saved with a list of “most censored” books: The Catcher in the Rye, 1984, Lord of the Flies, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Black like Me. Sound familiar?
It’s yet another Groundhog Day issue. Continuing to wage this bogus attack on race-related and LGBTQ content today distracts us from focusing on a more critical concern: Technology’s detrimental impact on our children. Mark your calendar for February 9 and watch the PBS documentary: The Librarians. It explores the big picture impact of censorship on education and public life. No one can ban ideas, and we should celebrate this during our 250th year as a Democracy.
Growing a Shared Reality
In Groundhog Day, the movie, the main character experiences a spiritual crisis. He tries hedonism, nihilism, and eventually stumbles onto the realization that helping other people could be a way out of the sameness. This is what enables him overcome his cynicism and return to a life of meaning and purpose. Only when his actions change does his reality change, too.
But here’s the problem. If Phil sees his shadow on Monday, will Americans accept it as a shared reality? Or will they shrug it off as A.I-generated?
Not all Americans seem concerned about the prospect of rolling the tape. They welcome re-runs of “the good old days,” and believe MAGA is returning them there. They’re listening to politicians who reap personal gain from disrupting the world order, and discounting progress as “woke.” Reducing the suffering of others, or acting selflessly to prevent disease or poverty isn’t important as long as their 401K stock market investments are doing well.
The real disconnect in America isn’t between left and right. It’s between a phony polarizing narrative used by politicians, and the reality that Americans overwhelmingly agree on many issues, including immigration, education, health care, fairness, and opportunity. They’ve been lulled into underestimating the real life consequences of backsliding into chaos or reopening the wounds of injustice. But they know what’s going on isn’t right.
We need to work harder to convince them by our actions. If only we could crowd-source a campaign during our 250th anniversary to promote our shared American sense of reality.
February 2, 2025: Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, dooming us to six more weeks of winter.
February 2, 2026: The Farmer’s Almanac predicts Punxsutawney will have snow on Feb. 2. The National Weather Service says it will be partly sunny. If so, Phil won’t see his shadow, predicting an early spring.
If Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow once again, we must resist the urge to burrow down and hibernate, relying on our fat reserves to keep us alive until spring. Phil doesn’t need to keep his eyes wide open to predict his vision of a future world. But we need to remain vigilant. If not, it’s a sure prediction that tribal reality will take over, and more people will hide behind the shadows. It’s no time to fall asleep at the switch.
I’m proud to be a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. Meet our writers here, or subscribe to our free weekly roundups, “our Sunday morning newspaper,” and our Wednesday “flipside” edition featuring sports, music, culture, and other topics. Thank you!
If Phil doesn't see his shadow on Monday, I can hear the outcry already, "RIGGED!" And an investigation will ensue for years. Just another diversion to avoid doing important things.
Thanks for another great post, Cheryl. Such a wake-up call. Let's hope people will heed it.
Jim, here: Some "spit into the wind" and blame the direction of the wind! What is believed to be wrong could be everyone's failure to see their contribution to a problem —never satisfied unless it is "their way". Truth told ...cooperation by everyone is nearly always necessary to know and receive a greater good.