Co-founder and artistic director of Revival Theatre Company Brian Glick is combining nostalgia with the glitz of Chicago and New York City for this year’s holiday decorations in downtown Cedar Rapids. This is Glick’s second year decorating downtown. He described it as “quite the undertaking at times” but added that because he’s been able to […]
Community/News
Citing 22 votes she said weren’t counted, Rita Hart asks House of Representatives for a recount in Iowa’s 2nd District

Rita Hart said she would file a Notice of Contest with the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday, her campaign announced in a statement, asking the House Committee on Administration to investigate the results of the election for the open seat in Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District and possibly conduct a recount of […]
Kirk Ferentz tests positive for COVID-19

Hawkeye football Head Coach Kirk Ferentz has tested positive for COVID-19 and “will remain home until Dec. 27,” the University of Iowa Athletics Department announced in a statement on Friday morning. According to UI Athletics, Ferentz tested positive using a rapid antigen test on Thursday morning, and the results were confirmed by a PCR test. […]
Uncertainty remains about how many doses of COVID vaccine Iowa will receive this month

There was confusion on Thursday over how much COVID-19 vaccine Iowa will receive in its initial shipments from the federal government. During her Dec. 3 news conference, Gov. Kim Reynolds said the state had been told it would receive 172,000 doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines by the end of December. But on Wednesday […]
Gov. Reynolds relaxes COVID-19 restrictions while Trump administration cuts Iowa’s allotment of vaccine by 30 percent

At her news conference on Wednesday, Gov. Kim Reynolds highlighted how much virus activity in Iowa has declined since she imposed some new COVID-19 restrictions on Nov. 16, before announcing she was relaxing some of those restrictions. “Bars and restaurants can resume their normal hours of operation,” the governor said. In her Nov. 16 emergency […]
Iowa is spending $10m in federal pandemic aid on state police salaries

After insisting for two months that spending $21 million in federal pandemic aid on a new computer system unrelated to COVID-19 was a legitimate use of that money, Gov. Kim Reynolds reversed her position on Monday and ordered those funds returned to the state’s Coronavirus Relief Fund. Iowa Auditor Rob Sand first informed the Reynolds […]
Healthcare workers in Linn County begin receiving the COVID-19 vaccine

Two Linn County hospitals received their first allotment of the COVID-19 vaccine on Tuesday, Linn County Public Health (LCPH) announced in a news release. Mercy Medical Center and UnityPoint Health-St. Luke’s Hospital each received 975 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to distribute to frontline healthcare workers as part of the first phase of vaccine distribution. […]
Report: Arrests of journalists in the U.S. reached an all-time high in 2020

The number of journalists arrested or detained in the United States jumped 1,200 percent in 2020 compared to last year, according to a new report released by the Freedom of the Press Foundation on Monday. The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker was founded in 2017 as a repository of press freedom violations in the U.S. Using […]
Marvin Bell, UI professor and first Iowa Poet Laureate, has died

Marvin Bell, first Poet Laureate of Iowa, longtime Iowa Writers’ Workshop professor and first poetry editor of The Iowa Review, died on Monday, Dec. 14 after a months-long illness. He was 83. Bell earned his MFA from the Writers’ Workshop prior to his 40-year tenure teaching there. His students included such luminaries as James Galvin, […]
COVID-19 vaccinations begin at UIHC as 60 new deaths are reported in Iowa

Frontline healthcare workers at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics started receiving COVID-19 vaccinations on Monday morning. Vaccination programs around the country have begun following the FDA’s emergency use authorization of Pfizer’s vaccine Friday night. Emergency room RN David Conway was the first person at UIHC to receive the vaccine. “How’d it feel?” one […]
The Takeaway: IC newbie Bollywood Grill earns its place in the local scene
Gov. Reynolds returns $21 million in misspent federal aid to state’s Coronavirus Relief Fund

On Monday afternoon, Gov. Kim Reynolds gave up trying to claim she could use $21 million in federal pandemic relief funds to pay for a computer system upgrade that wasn’t related to COVID-19. In a written statement, the governor’s office shared that “Governor Reynolds has directed the Iowa Department of Management to return $21 million […]