Sen. Joni Ernst wants to make one thing clear: President Donald Trump’s latest racist statements haven’t diminished her support for him. “I’d love for you to make that clear,” Ernst told Politico on Tuesday. “While I don’t appreciate the tweets, but I still support the president.”
Iowa News
Posted inCommunity/News
Jury finds Gov. Terry Branstad violated the state’s LGBTQ discrimination laws, awards former employee $1.5 million
Gov. Terry Branstad illegally discriminated against the former Iowa Workers’ Compensation Commissioner Christopher Godfrey when he slashed Godfrey’s salary in 2011 in an attempt to force Godfrey to resign, a Polk County jury decided on Monday. The jury agreed with Godfrey that Branstad had singled him out because Godfrey is gay, and awarded him $1.5 million in damages.
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Iowa sheriff’s department settles lawsuit filed by man arrested for rude Facebook post
A southwest Iowa county sheriff’s department has agreed to settle a lawsuit brought by a man who was arrested in July 2018, because he called a deputy a “fucking pile of shit” and a “STUPID sum bitch” on Facebook.
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Iowa Board of Regents receives almost meaningless penalty for violating the law in contract talks with UI grad student union
The Board of Regents acted in bad faith and broke the law during contract negotiations with the Campaign to Organize Graduate Students (COGS) in 2016 and 2017, the Iowa Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) ruled last week. As punishment for its dishonest and illegal behavior, the Board of Regents will be required to post public notices at the University of Iowa
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‘Peak pig’ in Iowa leads to a ‘staggering’ amount of shit in the state
It’s probably not an accomplishment state officials will want to boast about, but Iowa out-performs the rest of the country when it comes to producing shit. That is, literal fecal waste. Chris Jones, a research engineer and an adjunct associate professor at the University of Iowa, IIHR, has done the math: Iowa, with a population of 3.2 million, produces more than twice the amount of fecal waste per square mile than California, which has almost 40 million people.
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Federal appeals court rules saying ‘fuck you’ to the police is free speech
Yelling “fuck you” at a police officer is an act of free speech protected by the U.S. Constitution, a federal appeals court ruled on Monday. “As protected speech, it should be free from retaliatory government actions,” the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals declared in a case from Arkansas.
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Democrat Theresa Greenfield announces a run for Ernst’s U.S. Senate seat
Real estate executive Theresa Greenfield announcing on Monday that she is joining the race for win the Democratic nomination to challenge U.S. Senator Joni Ernst in 2020. Greenfield stressed her “farm kid values” in the video, which features high production values—including dramatic reenactments from her life as a farm kid in rural Minnesota—and is, so far, the only 2020 campaign video to use the word “castrate.”
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Transgender Iowans sue over state’s latest attempt to restrict Medicaid funding
On Friday, the ACLU of Iowa filed a lawsuit in state district court on behalf of two transgender Iowans and the LGBTQ rights group One Iowa, that seeks to overturn the state’s ban on the use of Medicaid funds to pay for sex reassignment procedures deemed medically necessary by doctors.
Posted inLetters
Letter to the editor: Iowa legislature should override veto of CBD bill
We all make mistakes. Gov. Reynolds made a mistake when she vetoed legislation that would make essential improvements to Iowa’s medical cannabis program. She got bad advice and didn’t listen to the Iowans most directly involved. These are our friends and neighbors who suffer every day with such debilitating, life-threatening conditions
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Ernst and Grassley claim Trump is cleared after Mueller’s comments
Iowa’s U.S. senators, Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, both issued written statements on Wednesday following Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s press conference. In his brief public remarks, Mueller stressed that his investigation found “Russian intelligence officers who were part of the Russian military launched a concerted attack on our political system.”
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Judge issues injunction blocking the state’s latest restriction on Planned Parenthood
A state district court judge issued a temporary injunction on Wednesday, blocking new regulations designed to prevent Planned Parenthood of the Heartland (PPH) from receiving government grants to provide sex education programs. PPH currently uses that grant money to provide sex education programs in 31 schools and 12 community-based, youth-service organizations across Iowa. PPH has […]
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Sen. Grassley applies for federal farm bailout money for the second time in six months
Sen. Chuck Grassley wants a share of the $16 billion in federal aid to farms and other agricultural-based businesses the Trump administration announced last week, the Des Moines Register reported on Friday. The aid package includes $14.5 billion in direct payments to farmers, and Grassley, who co-owns a farm in Butler County with his son […]
