Update: On Thursday afternoon, Attorney General Brenna Bird announced she had filed the threatened lawsuit against in Winneshiek County and Sheriff Marx. In a report released Wednesday afternoon, the Iowa Attorney General’s Office said AG Brenna Bird will ask a district court to cut off all state funds for Winneshiek County over a Feb. 4 Facebook […]
Brenna Bird
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Federal judge issues new injunction halting Iowa’s school book ban
The book ban signed into law by Gov. Kim Reynolds in 2023 has once again been blocked by a federal judge. On Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Locher issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting the state from enforcing the law requiring schools to remove all books with “descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act,” […]
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Sheriff vows to pursue ethics complaint against lieutenant governor
The Scott County sheriff says although an Iowa Senate committee has rejected his ethics complaint against the state’s new lieutenant governor, he intends to pursue the matter. On Dec. 16, Scott County Sheriff Tim Lane filed a sworn ethics complaint against Chris Cournoyer, a former Iowa state senator from LeClaire, with the Iowa Senate Ethics […]
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Iowa, 19 other states sue feds to block staffing mandates for nursing homes
The state of Iowa, where nursing homes have compiled one of the nation’s worst records for staffing-level violations, has joined 19 other states in suing the Biden administration to block the implementation of new staffing requirements. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa, seeks to overturn the nursing home […]
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Brenna Bird joins other Republican AGs to threaten the American Academy of Pediatrics over its support for transgender young people
Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird joined a group of other Republican state attorneys general this week in sending a letter to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) accusing the organization of possibly violating consumer protection statutes. The Republican group claims the AAP’s guidance on standards of care for transgender and gender diverse (TGD) young people […]
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Gov. Kim Reynolds job approval rating hits a new low in the Iowa Poll
The number of Iowans who approve of the job Gov. Kim Reynolds is doing has dropped to an all-time low, according to the latest Iowa Poll. In the poll published Tuesday by the Des Moines Register, only 45 percent of respondents approve of Reynolds’ actions as governor. That’s the lowest job approval number for the governor […]
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Polk County Public Health is providing free Plan B as part of efforts to keep reproductive care accessible in Iowa
As Iowa adjusts to one of the most draconian abortion bans in the country, the Polk County Public Health Department is working to make sure people have access to emergency contraception. “We have FREE emergency contraceptive (aka Plan B/morning after pill) located in the bathrooms here at the Health Department – 1907 Carpenter Ave in […]
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Appeals court lets SF 496, Iowa’s infamous book ban and ‘don’t say gay’ law, go into effect
When Iowa students return to school later this month, they may notice books, including important works of literature, have disappeared from library shelves, and younger students will find certain topics can no longer be discussed in their classrooms. That’s because on Friday, a three-judge panel of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals lifted the preliminary […]
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Iowa Democrats praise Biden and endorse Harris; Iowa Republicans demand Biden resign as president
Despite three weeks of op-eds in national news outlets and a small but growing number of Democrats in Congress calling on President Biden to quit the 2024 presidential race, it still came as a surprise when he did so on Sunday. “I believe it is the best interest of my party and the country for […]
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Federal judge hears arguments in lawsuits challenging Iowa’s attempt to create its own system to deport immigrants
A federal judge in Des Moines heard arguments on Monday on the attempt by the Reynolds administration to appropriate the federal government’s power to create and enforce immigration laws. SF 2340 makes it a state crime for a person to be in Iowa if they have previously been denied entry into the U.S., or been […]
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As jury finds Trump guilty on 34 felony counts, chorus of Iowa Republicans denounce trial as a ‘sham’
“We should all be thankful for the careful attention that this jury paid to the evidence and the law, and their time and commitment over these past several weeks,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said during a news conference on Thursday after former president Donald Trump was convicted on “34 counts of falsifying business records […]
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‘Baloney,’ ‘a political lynching’ and ‘an egregious act’: Ernst, Grassley and Reynolds join Bird in denouncing Trump’s trial
As Donald Trump sat through his fourth week in a Manhattan courtroom, listening to prosecutors present evidence he committed 34 acts of business fraud to help his 2016 presidential campaign, Iowa’s leading Republicans spoke out, echoing his message that people shouldn’t trust the legal system because all the criminal cases against him are without substance […]
