Six of the seven managers fired from the Tyson’s Food Plant in Waterloo in December 2020 for creating a betting pool to wager on workers getting COVID-19 are suing the company, claiming they earned incentive payments for meeting production goals they never received. The Des Moines Register reported on Tuesday that five fired managers filed […]
Gov. Kim Reynolds
Posted inCommunity/News
Iowa will not receive $30 million in federal aid for child care
The state of Iowa is losing $30 million in federal money that would have helped families access basic child care services. The governor’s office says the loss of that money is the result of a deliberate decision to avoid having to commit $3 million in matching state funds toward child care. But a Democratic state […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Election 2022: Johnson County remains a Democratic stronghold, as Republicans sweep to victories statewide
Johnson County remained a bright spot for Iowa Democrats on Tuesday, even as Republicans dominated Election Day statewide. Every Democrat in a statewide race carried the county by a large margin, even as they were defeated by Republicans. The only possible exception to that pattern is the Auditor of State race, which was still too […]
Posted inElection Coverage
Election 2022: Gov. Reynolds wins reelection; Iowa GOP bans KCRG from its victory party
Less than five minutes after the polls closed on Tuesday, the Associated Press declared Gov. Kim Reynolds had won reelection, defeating Democrat Deidre DeJear and Libertarian Rick Stewart. Within minutes, Reynolds herself had declared victory in a tweet. THANK YOU! pic.twitter.com/RzyKil67hT — Kim Reynolds (@KimReynoldsIA) November 9, 2022 As rapid as it was, the AP’s […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Advocates, candidates gather to discuss cannabis legalization — ‘This is a winning issue’
Both the setting of the meeting, a hotel conference room in Des Moines on a Saturday morning, and the average age of attendees, over 50, were standard for Iowa politics. The subject matter, however, wasn’t. “This is probably the first public event since at least the 1970s in Iowa for anybody to have a serious […]
Posted inCommunity/News
‘Healing is fundamentally a political act’: Future doctors grapple with the encroachment of anti-abortion laws on Iowa health care
Medical students in Iowa watched with growing concern as the Iowa Supreme Court decided in June to no longer recognize the right to abortion as a fundamental right. A week later the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Both of the state’s medical schools, the University of Iowa’s Carver College of Medical and Des […]
Posted inCommunity/News
New Iowa Poll finds Franken almost tied with Grassley, Reynolds still far ahead of DeJear
Over the weekend, the Des Moines Register published the results of a new Iowa Poll on the two big races in the Nov. 8 general election. The reported results show the Republican incumbents still lead their Democratic challengers, but in the case Iowa’s longest-serving senator, that lead continues to get smaller. Mike Franken is now […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Election 2022: Public Measure 1 would eliminate ‘current and future common-sense gun laws’
Linn County Attorney Nick Maybanks was blunt in his assessment of Public Measure 1, which would amend the Iowa Constitution in a way that would stop most attempts to regulate guns in the state. “This amendment is a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” Maybanks said at a news conference on Tuesday at the Cedar Rapids Public […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Deidre DeJear, facing funding gaps and racist jabs in her quest to defeat Gov. Reynolds, says ‘Iowa is worth the work’
Deidre DeJear worked on her first campaign while she was still in high school. Her grandmother, Mattie Washington, was running for a seat on the Election Commission in Yazoo County, Mississippi, and a young Deidre Howard spent the summer of her sophomore year helping with the campaign. Washington already had a long history as a […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Have incumbents met their match? An overview of the statewide races on Iowans’ midterm ballots
It’s a truism of American politics that with rare exceptions, incumbents always have a big advantage in an election. And nowhere is that truism truer than Iowa. Chuck Grassley has been in the U.S. Senate longer than all but one of his colleagues — Democratic Patrick Leahy, who is retiring this year — and longer […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Biden issues pardon for simple possession of marijuana convictions; DeJear promises to ‘legalize cannabis in Iowa’ as governor
On Thursday, President Joe Biden announced “a pardon of all prior Federal offenses of simple possession of marijuana.” “There are thousands of people who have prior Federal convictions for marijuana possession, who may be denied employment, housing, or educational opportunities as a result,” the president said in his statement announcing the pardon. “My action will […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Iowa Republican leaders line up behind Trump after FBI raid: ‘We’ve got a right 2b skeptical’
Iowa’s leading Republicans once again followed Donald Trump’s lead and used social media on Tuesday to suggest corruption led to FBI agents executing a search warrant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property on Monday. Not corruption on Trump’s part, of course. Iowa GOP leaders have consistently ignored or avoided acting on evidence of Trump’s corruption, whether personal, […]
