Lucia Cheng

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Iowa Public Radio

Fifty years ago, the Vietnam War ended and nearly 7,000 people were evacuated from the South Vietnam capital, Saigon, as North Vietnamese troops stormed in. John Morgan was a 26-year-old Iowan flying people out of Vietnam by helicopter that day.

Morgan says if he hadn’t helped evacuate Vietnamese and Cambodian allies, they could have been tortured and executed.

“Now I feel proud that I served my country in the way that I did, that my missions, my actual combat missions, had to do with saving people and not hurting anyone.”

Morgan says he’s grateful to be alive. In 2020, he wrote a memoir about his experiences, titled Fly the Friendly Skies of Cambodia and Vietnam.

Read more about Morgan’s experience that day 50 years ago.

The University of Iowa Faculty Senate is joining a “shared values” statement with other Big Ten schools, affirming the need to protect academic freedom.

The “shared values" statement was drafted by faculty leaders in the Big Ten Academic Alliance. It’s one way that several of the nation’s largest research institutions are holding the line against the Trump administration’s continued attacks on higher education.

The statement includes a numbered list of commitments, including support for academic freedom, free speech and the right to peaceably assemble without retaliation. It says American research institutions have helped establish the country’s global leadership position, as they bring in students from around the world.

The University of Iowa joins Ohio State University, the University of Nebraska, the University of Oregon, Northwestern University, Michigan State University, the University of Michigan and Purdue University as co-signatories.

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources is trying to prepare northeast Iowa residents for black bear sightings in the area.

DNR biologist Vince Evelsizer says there have already been a few early sightings of bears who stayed in Iowa this winter. He says that most bear activity happens during breeding season in late May through June.

Evelsizer wants anyone who spots a bear to call the DNR so they can keep track of the animals.

He says Iowans can help keep bears away by getting rid of pet food, bird food, human food or garbage outside that attracts them.

Evelsizer says it's exciting for anyone to see a bear wandering around, and it's okay to watch or get a picture, but he says to stay at least 100 yards away.

Democrat Angel Ramirez defeated Republican Bernie Hayes in a landslide victory, earning roughly 80% of the vote. Ramirez will represent House District 78, which includes part of Cedar Rapids.

Ramirez works as a peace facilitator with Kids First Law Center and cofounded a fellowship nonprofit in the area. She says seeing her blowout victory was an amazing moment for her.

“We always try to move cautiously and be cautiously optimistic. But it’s a great number because we see it as support for a progressive movement, support for a progressive candidate, candidates of color, candidates who represent marginalized communities.”

Ramirez will fill the seat vacated by Democrat Sami Scheetz, who resigned from the House to take a new role as Linn County supervisor.

Grant Winterer

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Iowa Public Radio

Iowa 2^nd Congressional District Rep. Ashley Hinson says she is not running for governor in 2026.

There has been speculation about which Republicans will be in the running for the GOP

primary ever since Gov. Kim Reynolds announced she is not seeking reelection.

In a statement, Hinson said she will stay in Washington, D.C., where she says Republicans have a once-in-a-generation chance to make lasting change with President Donald Trump.

Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks from Iowa’s 1st District has also ruled out a run for governor. Former state Rep. Brad Sherman is the only Republican who has announced a campaign so far.

The home appliances manufacturer Whirlpool is delaying the layoffs of more than a third of its employees at its Amana plant.

The 650 layoffs were supposed to go into effect June 1, but Whirlpool says they will now happen later in the year. The corporation did not give a specific date or a reason for the delay, but says it is committed to keeping its employees updated on developments.

When Whirlpool first announced the layoffs April 1, it said they were a necessary response to meet a drop in demand for refrigeration appliances.

The Environmental Protection Agency plans to issue a waiver allowing E15 to be sold through the summer months. E15, also called Unleaded 88, is a blend of gasoline and 15% ethanol, which is typically made from corn.

This is the fourth year in a row that the EPA has issued an emergency waiver bypassing regulation against the product being sold in the summer months. Iowa Corn Growers Association President Stu Swanson says the waiver is good in the short-term for Iowa corn farmers who are facing high costs due to tariffs.

“We’ve seen a lot of volatility, based on news. We’ve seen it both positive and negative. We’re hoping that going forward, trade negotiations open new markets and secure the existing ones. Certainly, we want to maintain our relationships with Canada and Mexico.”

Swanson says while the likely increase in domestic corn use is a positive, recent tariffs may allow foreign producers of corn and soybeans to capture those markets in the absence of American producers.

The EPA waiver will go into effect May 1 and last through May 20. It’s expected to be renewed throughout the summer.

Parents in a northeast Iowa school district are calling for stronger school policies after a group of students allegedly circulated AI-generated nude photos of their classmates.

The faces of 42 students were attached to images of nude bodies using AI. The deepfake images were then circulated throughout Cascade High School in the Western Dubuque Community School District.

At a special meeting Monday night, parents and officials discussed proposals to revise school policies. Superintendent Dan Butler says he’s working on prevention policies.

“It’s a challenging situation for us as school officials, it’s a challenging situation for our students — the victims — and it’s a challenging situation for our families.”

School officials discovered the photos at the end of March. The school is cooperating with law enforcement as they conduct an investigation.

This post was updated at 2:10 p.m. on April 30, 2025. A previous version misstated the number of students impacted. The correct number is 42, not 40.

Natalie Krebs

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Iowa Public Radio

Planned Parenthood is expanding services in its Des Moines clinic, but it will not offer abortion care.

Planned Parenthood North Central States says the Susan Knapp Health Center in Des Moines’ Drake neighborhood has expanded the number of exam rooms from four to nine. It will also be open for extended hours and offer additional services, such as fertility care. But this will not include abortion care.

Planned Parenthood North Central States COO Sheilahn Davis-Wyatt says Iowa’s law that went into effect last year banning abortion at around six weeks of pregnancy has really limited the number of procedures they can perform.

“Most women don't even know that they're pregnant, and so having it consolidated at one site, really has been able to handle the volume.”

The only Planned Parenthood clinic in Iowa that performs abortions is in Ames. The only other abortion clinic in Iowa is the Emma Goldman Clinic in Iowa City.

Sheila Brummer

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Iowa Public Radio

Workers' memorial events took place across Iowa Monday to remember Iowans who died on the job last year. The day marks the anniversary that the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 (OSHA) went into effect. It’s recognized as Workers’ Memorial Day.

At a ceremony in Sioux City, a bell rang for each of the 45 Iowans who died of medical issues or workplace accidents in 2024. Jennifer Pellant, president of the Western Iowa Labor Federation, took part in the event. Her union oversees 37 counties that include Sioux City, Fort Dodge and Council Bluffs.

“We need to make them as safe as we possibly can. We need to make sure those workplaces are being inspected and make sure people working [in] those environments are old enough and experienced and trained enough.”

Pellant worries the Department of Government Efficiency is making drastic and dangerous cuts to OSHA.

Michael Leland

Colorful tulips are already starting to bloom in Pella, where thousands of visitors are expected for this week’s annual Tulip Time Festival.

This marks the 90^th year for the celebration of all things Dutch in the south-central Iowa town. It’s also the 40^th anniversary of the Thistles Flower Market on Pella’s town square. The store is owned by Alie Muller-Heit, who’s been fascinated by tulips and this festival since she was a girl.

“It’s huge. I mean, just last week, my grandpa pulled out the original Tulip Time brochure from 90 years ago. My family has been heavily involved in Pella Tulip Time. Growing up, doing things with my grandparents and my parents in the community for Tulip Time, and to host tours.”

The flower market is offering something unusual to festival visitors this year: a blooming tulip and bulb in a clear plastic gift bag. Muller-Heit worked with Nunnikhoven Farm to grow 5,500 tulips. This way, visitors can take a tulip home with them to plant in the fall.

Photo courtesy of Thistles Flower Market

The store also launched a website where people can purchase 70 different varieties of tulip bulbs sourced from the Netherlands, including two rare varieties in very limited quantities: the Giant Orange Sunrise and the Nightmare tulip.

“The Giant Orange Sunrise is exactly what it sounds like. It is a huge bulb and bloom, maybe larger than the size of even my fist. The Nightmare starts as a deep purple and it actually turns into a pigmentation that is black. So it is the only black tulip. We’re selling both of those by the bulb, whereas everything else is sold in quantities of 50.”

Thistles Flower Market is also offering free classes in tulip care. Muller-Heit says there’s a lot of finesse involved in successfully growing tulips from bulbs, year after year.

Pella’s Tulip Time Festival runs May 1-3.

Rachel Cramer

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Iowa Public Radio

The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship is awarding nearly $2.7 million in matching grants to 14 urban water quality projects across the state. Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig made the announcement Monday in West Des Moines at Legacy Woods Nature Sanctuary, one of the project sites.

Naig says state grant dollars will support water quality features, like native plantings, bioretention cells and a stormwater wetland. The water at Legacy Woods drains into Jordan Creek and then into the Raccoon River.

“I hope it will inspire folks who spend time here to consider what they might do on their own property. But also, other cities can come and see how this can be incorporated into the landscape.”

Over the last decade, cost-share grants through the state’s water quality initiative have supported 140 projects. Naig says the grants play a role in Iowa’s Nutrient Reduction Strategy goals.

Cami Koons

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Iowa Capital Dispatch

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency granted an emergency waiver permitting the nationwide sale of a fuel blend with higher amounts of ethanol through the summer months. Iowa fuel and farm leaders say it will help farmers and fuel producers, and will save Iowans money at the pumps.

Midwestern states, including Iowa, already had waivers in place to allow for summer sales of fuel blended with 15% ethanol, also known as E15. The EPA’s decision Monday waives the agency’s summer restrictions on the fuel for the rest of the country and follows guidance from the president’s executive order from January, declaring a national energy emergency.

The waiver is in place from May 1 through May 20, as the Clean Air Act only allows a 20-day waiver. But considering trends from the past several summers, industry leaders expect the waiver will be extended through the other summer months.

Read more.

Hy-Vee is closing food production facilities in Chariton and Ankeny in late June. The closures affect over 450 employees.

Hy-Vee’s Fresh Commissary in Ankeny employs 332 people and has produced take-and-bake pizzas, sandwiches, salads and bakery items. Hy-Vee’s Short Cuts operation in Chariton employs 129 people who cut and package fresh fruits and vegetables. Both facilities opened in 2018.

A Hy-Vee spokesperson says the employees will be offered jobs at Hy-Vee stores as the company shifts back to making take-out food in stores. The company says the move will improve customer service, as well as the quality and freshness of its sandwiches and other items that have been produced at the Ankeny and Chariton locations.

The facilities are set to close June 24.

The Cedar Rapids Community School District has decided not to build a new middle school after community members said borrowing for it would raise taxes by too much.

The school district’s revised bond proposal — without the construction of a new middle school — cuts costs nearly in half, to $117 million. One reason families said they didn’t want to pay for the initial proposal was economic uncertainty.

Chad Schumacher, director of operations for the district, says the school district is focused on improving the facilities that already exist, rather than building new ones. But Schumacher says new construction may happen down the road.

“That’s our long-term goal, is to make sure that we present a plan that we can afford now. But also [to] look down the road for the future and make sure we’re building a long-term facilities plan that can address all of our needs by the time this is all over.”

The school district’s board will vote on May 12 whether to put the bond on the ballot in November.

Madeleine Charis King

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Iowa Public Radio

Iowa Lt. Gov. Chris Cournoyer has filed paperwork to launch a campaign for state auditor in 2026.

The filing was first reported by the Des Moines Register. Cournoyer was a Republican state senator until Gov. Kim Reynolds appointed her to be lieutenant governor in December.

Reynolds has since announced she won’t run for reelection in 2026.

Democratic State Auditor Rob Sand is expected to run for governor, which would leave an open position for Cournoyer to pursue.

The Polk County Health Department has set up a free vending machine aimed at getting harm reduction resources to the community. The vending machine, located outside of the health department in Des Moines, will provide supplies like the opioid-reversal drug naloxone, emergency contraception, condoms and gun locks — all free of charge.

Polk County Health Department Director Juliann Van Liew says there’s a QR code on the machine so people have directions for how to use everything in it.

“The goal here is to remove barriers. So people can approach it anytime, 24 hours. They can take what they need and they can be on their way.”

Van Liew says the vending machine is another tool to address Polk County’s rates of substance use and firearm-related deaths, which are higher than the state average.

Farmers are planning to grow fewer acres of soybeans this year, in what's become a national shift away from the export-driven crop. Federal data shows producers intend to plant about 4% fewer acres across the U.S. than in 2024.

Bernt Nelson, an economist for the American Farm Bureau Federation, says the soybean market has been hurt by escalating tariffs between the U.S. and China.

"We cannot talk about soybeans without thinking about China, and that's because they are such a massive buyer of U.S. soybeans."

Nelson says many farmers are planning to shift acres to corn since corn prices have been improving in recent months.

The American Soybean Association released a statement earlier in April saying escalating tariffs are not only a threat to this year's growing season, but to the industry long term.

Read more from Harvest Public Media’s Hope Kirwan.

Some food organizations are adjusting their funding models after the federal government ended a grant program for stocking food pantries with locally produced goods.

Hilary Burbank is the grant manager for the Iowa Food Cooperative in Des Moines, a former recipient of the U.S. Department of Agriculture grant. She says the program was one of the main sources of income for the group.

It used the funds to purchase food from local farmers to stock food pantries and community fridges, as well as to help cover operational costs. Now, Burbank says the co-op will have to lean more on their subscription-based program to help cover costs.

“We're just really trying to push more people to learn about the co-op and the importance of supporting local at so many different levels.”

She says the group will continue stocking community programs, but at a much smaller scale. Since the funding was cut in March, the cooperative has also seen an increase in sales.

A new report has found just 38% of rural Iowa hospitals now deliver babies. The report by the nonprofit Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform found three units have closed in the state since 2020, and another two are at risk of closing.

It also found that Iowans who have to go to an alternative hospital to give birth have a median travel time of 32 minutes.

Harold Miller, president and CEO of the nonprofit, says a major driving factor is commercial insurance reimbursement rates.

“Private commercial insurance plans are not paying enough for labor and delivery services in rural hospitals. And they're not paying enough for other kinds of services in the hospitals, which is what's causing the hospitals to have overall losses.”

Many rural hospitals lose money on labor and delivery units because they’re expensive and handle few births.

Iowa's 2025 legislative session is likely to extend past its scheduled last day, which is this Friday.

Lawmakers must finalize the state budget before they can end the session. It's unclear how long that process will take, as most of the bills that need to be passed as a part of that process have not yet been introduced.

Aside from budget conversations, there are some policy proposals that lawmakers hope to finalize before the session ends.

🎧 Listen as IPR Morning Edition host Meghan McKinney and State Government Reporter Katarina Sostaric discuss the latest from the Iowa Legislature.

Attorneys for the federal government say they will restore the legal statuses of more than a thousand international students across the country.

Lawyers in Washington and California made statements that the Department of Homeland Security is developing a new policy for terminating student visas from the SEVIS database, the department’s information sharing system. Until the new system is in place, DHS won’t terminate student records and those who did have theirs terminated will see their statuses restored.

Immigration Customs and Enforcement had been removing student’s statuses from the database, in many cases without notifying them or their universities. But judges across the country have been ruling in favor of those students who are asking for their statuses to be restored.

At the University of Iowa, four international students were recently granted a temporary restraining order against DHS, preventing them from being deported and allowing their statuses to be restored.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds is suing the Des Moines Register to stop it from seeking certain emails from her staff under the state’s open records law.

According to the complaint, a Register reporter requested emails between six employees of the governor’s office that include the terms “Lutheran” and “money laundering” among others.

The governor’s office produced more than 800 pages of documents but withheld four emails citing “executive privilege.” An attorney responded on behalf of the Register saying that’s not an exemption under the public records law, and it wouldn’t even apply because the governor wasn’t copied on the emails.

Reynolds is now asking a court to block the Register from demanding those emails. The lawsuit says her office would be “threatened with substantial and irreparable injury” if they’re disclosed. Reynolds’ spokesperson says it’s an effort to protect the governor’s right to receive confidential communications from her closest advisers.

Gannett, the Register’s parent company, says it doesn’t comment on pending lawsuits.

An Iowa City nonprofit is saying a state trooper held seven Latino construction workers for over an hour in a traffic stop near Dubuque last Friday, violating their civil rights.

Under a task force agreement with Immigration Customs and Enforcement, state troopers may perform federal immigration enforcement duties with specific training. But the nonprofit Escucha Mi Voz says it is unclear whether the state trooper had the authority to do so.

Escucha Mi Voz held a press conference to issue a formal complaint.

Alejandra Escobar with Escucha Mi Voz translates for Ninoska Campos, one of the construction workers. She says the state trooper trailed them for several miles before he pulled them over, confiscated their IDs and called another officer for backup.

“We just wanted to go home. We were tired from work. We’re labor workers. We work in construction. Our days are long. We just want to go back home to be with our kids. We’re not criminals.”

Alejandra Escobar with Escucha Mi Voz shared his concerns at the press conference.

“What happened on April 18 isn’t just troubling. It’s a warning sign. A routine traffic stop turned into an immigration dragnet. That’s what this agreement makes possible.”

A spokesperson for the Iowa Department of Public Safety says the case is still pending and the department is committed to assisting with federal investigations.

Glenn Brunkow, who grows corn and soybeans near Westmorland, Kan., says farmers were already stressed and trade war threats aren’t helping.

“This is about as grim of a time as I've seen for crop production. Nothing looks like it's going to make money right now.”

That’s mainly because the prices for farm necessities have risen much faster than the price of the soybeans and corn that Brunkow grows. The cost of big tractors is up close to 300% over 30 years, according to Farm Credit Services of America, far outstripping inflation. Supply chain issues have also pushed prices up for other farm inputs like fertilizer and diesel fuel. In recent years, dry conditions have cut production in parts of the Great Plains and Midwest.

Until recently, China was buying about a quarter of the U.S. soybean crop. But, when Trump slapped a 145% tax on Chinese imports, China struck back with a 135% tariff on U.S. soybeans, all but closing off Brunkow’s biggest export market.

Meantime, Trump’s import taxes are starting to exacerbate inflation on farm equipment.

“It means we hold on to stuff. We fix things instead of trading them off and just make do with what we have,” said Brunkow.

A federal district court judge has granted a temporary restraining order to four international students at the University of Iowa whose statuses were revoked by the Department of Homeland Security. The order calls for DHS to restore their status information and prevents DHS from arresting or deporting the students.

Court documents filed by their lawyers say the students experienced irreparable stress and educational disruption after their statuses and visas were terminated without any explanation. A preliminary injunction hearing was also set for May 5.

Saturday marks the one-year anniversary of a deadly and destructive tornado that struck the town of Minden in Pottawattamie County. The EF-3 tornado destroyed at least 50 homes and a majority of businesses.

Kevin Zimmerman, mayor of Minden, says the community is determined to move forward, but admits the process will take some time.

“We're rebuilding, we're coming back just as strong as we ever did because there's a lot of houses getting redone. There's gonna be people moving back in here mid-summer.”

Zimmerman estimates about 100 of the town’s 600 residents were originally forced to leave because there was nowhere to live.

He says finding the money to rebuild has been tough since many were underinsured, including himself.

There’s still plenty of work to do, including paying for and replacing the wastewater treatment plant, community center, parks and ball diamonds.

As measles spreads across the U.S., a partnership in Iowa is beginning a vaccination awareness campaign to connect refugee and immigrant communities with their doctors.

Refugee and Immigrant Voices in Action, or RIVA, is partnering with groups including small businesses and local health providers to prevent misinformation about measles.

The campaign’s spokesperson, Christina Fernandez-Morrow, says health providers are relearning how to spot symptoms. She says it’s important to tell people what to look out for to counter medical bias.

“What do measles look like, especially on different types of skin? So if you know, if you've got darker skin, if you've been out in the sun, working in a field, or if you have been, you know, inside all winter, it might look a little different on you.”

Fernandez-Morrow says RIVA learned how to navigate public health communications from their experiences with COVID.

“Ultimately, the goal is to ensure that our communities have a trusted relationship with healthcare providers.”

RIVA is also coordinating with translators who will reach out to communities where English is not the dominant language in a broader push to create healthy habits.

Natalie Krebs

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Iowa Public Radio

The Trump administration is making major cuts to federal agencies like the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as part of a broad government restructuring aimed at saving taxpayer dollars. But some worry these cuts could have drastic effects on the research and outreach programs aimed at lowering Iowa’s high cancer rates.

Iowa has one of the highest cancer rates in the country. While rates are falling overall in the U.S., Iowa is one of just a few states where the disease is on the rise. Experts don't know exactly why.

Oncologists like George Weiner at the University of Iowa are trying to help. Weiner has spent his decades-long career researching cancer and running trials. After 23 years, he stepped down as director of UI’s Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center in 2023 to go back to research full time. He said it’s a really exciting time in the field.

“We now are able to do amazing things with cancer immunotherapy that we couldn't have imagined when I started my career.”

But he’s worried because the federal government is trying to cut funding to the NIH and has laid off thousands of federal health and human services employees. He said this is already disrupting the research pipeline, creating chaos and causing irreversible damage by delaying research and trials.

Read more about how cuts and layoffs may impact cancer research in Iowa.

The American Lung Association’s annual State of the Air Report found air pollution worsened in general across the Midwest, including in Iowa. Des Moines no longer ranks as one of the cleanest cities in the country.

The report looks at ozone and particle pollution.

Kristina Hamilton, who works for the American Lung Association, says it’s partly due to wildfires and the effects of global warming. But she says Iowa still uses coal in certain parts of the state.

“Even though Iowa is a leader in some ways — in clean energy — we're still seeing the harmful effects of coal, contributing to the air pollution problem.”

Hamilton says she encourages Iowa leaders to find more ways to transition away from the use of coal to improve air quality.

She also encourages people to do things at an individual level like walking or biking instead of driving.

The Iowa Board of Regents approved a new civic engagement center at Iowa State University. It expands on an existing free speech initiative on campus.

The proposal for the new Cyclone Civics Center says it will promote free speech and civic engagement. It says that knowledge of core American principles and civil liberties is lacking and that it may work with similar civics programs across the state.

The new center is intended to help create a “civic disposition,” or attitudes and beliefs that support American democracy.

The University of Iowa could also see what Republican lawmakers are calling a new “school for intellectual freedom” if approved by the governor. They say it will encourage more varied perspectives on campus, where they believe conservative views are discouraged.

Both centers were introduced after the regents made changes to their policies on diversity, equity and inclusion, asking the universities to restructure or eliminate DEI offices and positions.

The civics program is expected to cost almost $2 million over the next five years.

Grant Winterer

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Iowa Public Radio

Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson held a town hall in Mason City Thursday, where she faced pushback from constituents on her support of DOGE, tariffs and the lack of a new Farm Bill.

The congresswoman, who represents Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District, reiterated her defense of DOGE, saying that she believes those tax dollars can be meaningfully rerouted toward economic expansion.

“I would much rather see that go to places that are going to incentivize that trade access and market development, which are going to make us more competitive. I think the point of DOGE is to make sure those services are available to Americans long term, and we can strengthen those programs.”

Some voters were also critical of her support for recent deportations.

Hinson replied that she’d been supportive of several measures regarding guest worker permits and skilled labor visas but said the asylum-seeking process has been exploited by some entering the country.

“I’m willing to work on immigration-related issues, but first and foremost we must focus on deporting the people who should not be here. We’ve got millions upon millions of illegal immigrants in this country who abuse the asylum process.”

Hinson added she wasn’t sure if there would be adequate money to pay for the pending deportation hearings.

Seven former nurses are suing the state after six years of reported assaults at a state-run mental health hospital in northeast Iowa.

Independence Mental Health Institute is one of the state’s two inpatient hospitals. While working there, the nurses allege they were assaulted and seriously injured by patients multiple times.

One nurse claims that she had a miscarriage as a result of a patient assaulting her. The nurses say their injuries were preventable, but management did not respond to their concerns.

An inspector fined the institute more than $70,000 for multiple safety violations in 2019.

The nurses say they want the state to admit to wrongdoing and mismanagement.

Public university students spoke out at a meeting of the Iowa Board of Regents to share their frustration over the board’s stance on diversity, equity and inclusion.

During the public comment section of the meeting, students stood up against the Board of Regents’ policy changes relating to DEI — in particular, the dismantling of DEI websites and the elimination of DEI offices and positions at the universities.

The Trump administration is demanding that universities eliminate DEI programs. But students want the regents to take a stand against the administration. Darrell Washington, a student at the University of Iowa, spoke at the meeting.

“It is an erasure. It is a choice to scrub our histories, our identities, our truths out of the curriculum — out of existence. It’s a choice to ignore us, to pretend we were never here. But we are here. We are not a footnote. We are the story.”

Other students said the Board of Regents is the only thing between unchecked federal regulation and their universities.

A research site in Boone is using solar power, air and water to make farm fertilizer. The group behind the project calls it “green ammonia” because it does not rely on fossil fuels, like most synthetic fertilizers do.

Landus Cooperative partnered with the company Talusag to produce the fertilizer. The site in Boone is North America’s first commercial-scale “green ammonia” field trial. Hiro Iwanaga, co-founder and CEO of TalusAg, explains why producing the product in Iowa is a gamechanger.

“Traditional ammonia depends on a global supply chain. That's costly, that's unreliable, that's carbon intensive. We manufacture closer to where the product is used, we cut down risk while giving farmers a stable, more predictable source of one of the most critical inputs.”

Earlier this month, Landus applied green ammonia to corn field trial plots on-site and will compare results with control strips throughout the growing season.

The system in Boone began production in February. The partners are building a larger system in Eagle Grove and hope to have green ammonia commercially available next year.

All of Iowa’s public school districts and charter schools have signed a letter stating that they are complying with federal policies on diversity, equity and inclusion. The letter is part of a nationwide push by the Trump administration to remove what it calls “illegal DEI practices.”

If a state doesn’t agree, school districts could lose their federal funding. For Des Moines Public Schools, $70 million would be at stake.

The school board held a special meeting this week to strike out references to Black and Latinx students in the board’s goals for student performance. DMPS Board Member Kimberly Martorano says even though the language is gone, she is still committed to the original values.

“We must hold ourselves accountable for ensuring that these changes do not disproportionately harm any group of our students.”

A dozen other states are challenging the DEI letter in federal court.

Iowans expressed concerns about the state’s plan to add work requirements to Medicaid during a public comment meeting Wednesday in Urbandale.

The meeting was the first of two required public comment hearings following Gov. Kim Reynolds’ announcement that she plans to seek federal approval to add work requirements to Medicaid.

The proposal would require those ages 19 to 64 who are on the state’s Medicaid expansion plan to work at least 100 hours or earn the equivalent of 100 hours’ worth of pay equal to the state minimum wage each month. It allows some exceptions such as for caregivers of children under 6.

Heather Sanders of Ankeny says she has struggled to find a job while taking care of her 92-year-old mother.

“Nobody will hire me at the age of 54. I have tried everything, and I've even tried to pay somebody to babysit her while I go out somewhere. Nobody will hire me like that.”

The state will have a second public comment meeting in Marshalltown April 29, which is also available to attend online.

A Johnson County Democrat announced that he’s running for Iowa’s 1^st Congressional District.

Travis Terrell is a patient access specialist with University of Iowa Health Care in Johnson County. He’s running to unseat Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks in 2026, who he says has abandoned the district by refusing to talk to her constituents.

Terrell says health care and immigration are areas he wants to see reformed.

“When I'm in Washington and you're wondering who I’m working for, you’ll never have to guess. Because my family is still going to be here, and I’m going to be doing everything I can to protect them and every family like mine that got left behind.”

Terrell also says he wants to reform campaign finance. He says he would not take a single corporate donation, no matter how big.

“I honestly feel like no politician should be taking corporate money, and that is something that I would get behind. I would join the congress people that want to get corporate money out of politics because it’s destroyed our country.”

So far, Terrell is the only Democrat who has announced a run for the seat.

Four graduate students at the University of Iowa are now asking for a temporary restraining order against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. If approved, it would prevent their arrest or deportation based on the termination of their F-1 statuses.

Court documents filed by their attorneys say the international students from China and India have suffered irreparable harm after having their visas revoked and legal statuses terminated without notice.

The students are also suing the Trump administration for its actions and asking for their statuses to be restored.

Photo courtesy of the Rock Valley Community School District

A northwest Iowa school district is making significant progress after historic flooding last summer.

Rock Valley Community School District's high school principal, Nicole Roder, says last month, the final group of students were able to return to classes in a renovated school building.

“We're pretty resilient and, you know, we're happy that we had so many people there for us in our time of need. And they're still there. They haven't left us.”

The flood caused an estimated $35 million in damage to the school district.

Roder says after payments from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and insurance, the district will still need to cover $10 million in expenses. Work still needs to be done on landscaping and the football field.

A group of high schoolers in the Quad Cities built a two-seater airplane that’s soon to be flight-tested.

The PNB Aviation Club is made up of students in the Pleasant Valley, Bettendorf and North Scott school districts. They are mentored by members of the local Experimental Aircraft Association Chapter 75.

Over the past four years, they’ve been building a Van’s RV-12iS airplane, meeting three times a week for a grand total of roughly 4,000 hours.

Tom Shelton, a mentor and member of EAA Chapter 75, says the chapter has been discussing the project for nearly 10 years. He says part of their mission is to promote aviation knowledge with students.

“It is not about building the airplane. It is about educating students and developing a sense of responsibility, accountability and bringing science and math to a practical application, a hands-on application.”

The plane just received its airworthiness certificate and will be test flown in the coming months.

Iowa’s first homeless court launches in Sioux City

A new program to help people who are homeless with legal issues will soon be launched in Sioux City.

The city received a $25,000 grant from the Iowa Finance Authority to launch the state’s first homeless court. People who go through it could potentially have their misdemeanor cases and fines dismissed.

Neighborhood Services Manager Jill Wanderscheid says the program is modeled after others across the country.

“Sometimes that is a barrier to not only securing housing, but employment — all sorts of other things. And so, we really feel like it could have an impact on those that are unhoused in our community.”

Wanderscheid says there are about 300 people waiting for housing in Sioux City. If the program is successful, she says there’s a good chance it will expand to other parts of the state.

South Dakota regulators say Summit Carbon Solutions will need to reapply for a permit application to build a carbon dioxide pipeline in the state.

The Iowa-based company filed an application in November, but requested an indefinite extension after South Dakota passed a law banning eminent domain for CO2 pipelines. The Public Utilities Commission voted 2-1 Tuesday in denying Summit’s request.

Commissioner Kristie Fiegen says Summit’s current application under the new law is incomplete.

“At this point, we really don’t know the route. We don’t know the timeframes. We don’t know their plan. We don’t know their construction timeframes or even cost. The application is not ready to go forward.”

Summit said the decision is disappointing, but the company is committed to South Dakota and will refile the application. Without its pipeline, Summit says “the ethanol industry, farmers and land values in the state will all suffer.”

Pipeline construction in Iowa cannot begin until South Dakota grants a permit.

Read more.

Drake University is the target of a civil rights complaint that claims a scholarship program is discriminatory because it is offered to students of color but not white students.

The university offers a renewable $500 grant to students of color who participate in the Crew Scholars Program. But the Equal Protection Project says it’s unfair.

William Jacobson, the project’s president, says by preferring someone of a certain race, a school excludes someone else from a spot. He says there are other ways to diversify student populations that don’t rely on race.

“This is a systemic discrimination that affects all students who do not qualify based on race.”

The complaint goes to the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights. The Equal Protection Project has filed dozens of similar complaints against colleges across the country, including at the University of Northern Iowa.

A nonprofit that supports 100 soil and water conservation districts in Iowa says most of its federal funding has been restored, which means it can rehire staff that were laid off in February.

Dien Judge is executive director of Conservation Districts of Iowa.

“What it means for landowners and farmers is that, if you’ve got projects you want to get done, there’s staff that can work on that.”

CDI works with locally elected commissioners and state and federal agencies to help protect natural resources on working lands. Judge says the Inflation Reduction Act funds are still frozen, but non-IRA grant money is coming through and invoices are being paid.

He says CDI has offered jobs back to 38 of the 39 staff that were laid off. Some have found positions elsewhere, he says, but most are returning.

Four international students at the University of Iowa are suing the U.S. government for terminating their student visa statuses.

The graduate students say the federal government unlawfully terminated their F-1 statuses without any explanation and are challenging the actions under the Fifth Amendment.

Court documents say the students have not committed any criminal offenses and remained in good academic standing.

Three of the students are studying chemical engineering and one is an epidemiologist for the state. Two of the students are from China and the other two are from India. The students are asking for their statuses to be restored.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s crop report shows farmers have started planting, but wet weather and storms slowed some of their progress.

The report shows 18% of the projected corn crop was planted by April 20 — three days ahead of last year and five days ahead of the five-year average. The report also shows 11% of the expected soybean crop is in the ground. That’s three days ahead of last year and one week ahead of the five-year average.

Some areas of the state had rain and hail, but it’s not yet known how that will impact crops that have already been planted. The forecast shows more rain is expected this week, which could also keep farmers out of the fields.

Amy Gieseke, the Iowa Department of Education's community college bureau chief, says there were 119,310 students enrolled in the state’s 15 community colleges in 2024. That’s up 1.8% over the previous year, bucking the trend where credit enrollment has declined an average of 1.6% over the past five years.

Gieseke says prior to the pandemic, in 2019, community colleges were enrolling more than 128,000 students. At the peak of COVID, that number dropped as low as 116,000, and then slowly started to recover.

She says the number of credit hours has increased, and the makeup of the student body is 56.5% female and 43.5% male, which she says has been very consistent over the past 20 years.

University of Iowa Health Care is asking the Iowa Board of Regents to approve a new facility at their next meeting. It would operate as a new family medicine clinic in Tiffin, which UI Health Care says will bring prenatal and primary care services to one of the fastest growing communities in Iowa.

This comes after it unveiled a new orthopedics hospital in North Liberty earlier this month.

UI Health Care is also proposing new leases for the Center for Disabilities and Development in Iowa City and Mission Cancer + Blood in Des Moines.

The Catholic Church will soon prepare to select a new leader after the death of Pope Francis Monday. In the wake of the pope’s death, Rev. Trevor Chicoine reflects on the teachings Francis left behind.

As the leader of four parishes, Chicoine says he doesn’t want the church to be seen as divided when attention turns to who is named the next pope. Instead, he wants people to remember Francis as someone who showed the world that the church cares for them.

Chicoine says his congregation tries to avoid political polarization. For him, the pope’s job is to pass on the faith.

“I think that's pretty rare these days, that you see somebody who's so across the board, stands up for everybody's dignity.”

Chicoine hopes the next pope will carry forward the care Francis had for all people.

The Diocese of Des Moines is holding a memorial mass for Francis Saturday morning at the Basilica of St. John.

Four out of the six Regional Climate Centers across the U.S. have shut down after funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) ran out. That includes the center in the Midwest that collected data for nine states, including Iowa.

The centers gather climate information for drought monitoring and share online weather tracking tools that many in the agriculture and construction industries depend on.

Matthew Sittel, assistant state climatologist at Kansas State University, says he depends on both the Midwestern and Southern regional climate centers. He’s worried they won’t return.

“It's tough … Do we lose these products for a week? For a month? For a year? Forever? Nobody knows.”

One regional climate center director says the funds were held up due to additional contract reviews. The Trump administration previously proposed a 25% budget cut to NOAA for next fiscal year.

Read more from Harvest Public Media.

Nearly all the staff members at a division that studies blood disorders at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention have been put on leave, according to experts familiar with the division’s operations.

The programs within the division include the Sickle Cell Disease Data Collection program, which gathers information on how patients access care.

Sickle cell disease is a genetic blood illness that mostly impacts Black and Hispanic people in the U.S. Dr. Emily Meier, who cares for people with blood disorders and cancers, says the cuts threaten the project’s future.

“I just think it's such a travesty that all of these years of work and expertise are just kind of thrown out the window. But it’s really depressing.”

Meier says sickle cell patients face a shortage of specialists, which pushes them to seek care at emergency rooms, where providers often do not know how to properly treat them.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced in a press release that staffing changes across the agency are necessary to streamline its processes and save nearly $1.8 billion in taxpayer money.

Read more from Side Effects Public Media.

One of the largest diabetes studies is under threat from the research funding cuts made by the Trump administration. The Diabetes Prevention Program has sites in Midwest states, including Indiana and Illinois. The research aims to study Alzheimer’s in patients with a family history of diabetes.

More than $80 million in federal funds flow through Columbia University. But the Trump administration recently canceled grants to the university.

Dr. David Nathan, a board chair for the project, says the study has surveyed more than 1,000 patients for decades. He says researchers can’t recreate this study without millions of dollars.

Read more about how funding cuts may impact the study.

Madeleine Charis King

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Iowa Public Radio

Iowa Sen. Mike Bousselot, R-Ankeny, announced Monday that he’s exploring a run for governor.

He’s the first to announce a potential campaign since Gov. Kim Reynolds said she won’t run for reelection in 2026. Former state Rep. Brad Sherman had previously announced he’s seeking the GOP nomination.

Bousselot has represented Ankeny in the Iowa Senate since 2023, and he served in the Iowa House for two years before that. He owns and operates real estate development and land investment businesses.

Bousselot worked as state budget director under Reynolds and as chief of staff to former Gov. Terry Branstad. Several other Republican elected officials are considering running for governor.

Red Sky Nation

A jury in Woodbury County recently delivered a conviction in the first-degree murder of a Native American man. Activists say the case is an example of how Indigenous people are at higher risk for gun violence and death.

Marlon Whiteeyes of Sioux City was shot and killed in 2023 by Yasin Abdi, who was convicted last week of first-degree murder. Whiteeyes died after Abdi shot him four times. Investigators say the shooting happened when Whiteeyes ran away after trying to break up a fight on a street in Sioux City.

Josh Taylor is with the advocacy group Red Sky Nation. His group says the firearm homicide rate is four times higher for Native Americans.

“We have too many cases here, just locally, of this — the missing and murdered indigenous relatives — and Marlon's case fell right into that.”

Red Sky Nation works on community awareness, including an annual powwow and keeping cold cases involving Native Americans alive.

The Iowa Supreme Court removed a magistrate judge in Fayette County after determining he showed racial bias and a lack of impartiality.

The Supreme Court says the removal of Magistrate David Hanson comes after he issued a denial of an arrest warrant that included his own disparaging views about young male victims of sexual assault. He also made statements in open court in another case using a derogatory racial slur about a criminal defendant.

The Supreme Court says Hanson was not self-aware and defended his inappropriate actions throughout the Iowa Commission on Judicial Qualifications’ investigation. The ruling says after careful consideration, the justices conclude that Hanson is unsuited to be a judge, and no attempts at behavior modification are going to change that significantly.

Members of the neo-Nazi group the Aryan Freedom Network held a demonstration in Marion, a suburb of Cedar Rapids. The group promotes hardline, white supremacist views and carried a flagpole with a swastika Saturday.

The city of Marion said in a news release that while the group does not reflect the values of the community, the demonstrators were protected by the First Amendment. City Councilmember Gage Miskimen said Nazis do not belong in Marion or anywhere else.

Catholic leaders in Iowa are mourning the death of Pope Francis with messages celebrating his leadership and compassion.

Des Moines Bishop William Joensen said in a statement that Francis was a bridge builder who called on the church to foster unity.

Bishop Dennis Walsh of Davenport called Francis “a great champion for the rights of migrants and refugees.”

Archbishop of Dubuque Thomas Zinkula said in a statement that Francis was humble and compassionate, and was especially committed to helping people on the margins of society. He said Francis will be remembered for his unwavering call to serve the poor and care for creation.

Francis died Monday morning at the age of 88. He was the first non-European to lead the Roman Catholic Church. He served as pope for 12 years.

Lawmakers kept busy last week, sending several bills to Gov. Kim Reynolds' desk for her signature, including a disaster relief bill, a bill to change Iowa’s election recount process and a bill to ban citizen police review boards.

And while the Legislature has yet to finalize a Medicaid work requirement bill, Reynolds announced she’s separately seeking federal approval for her plan that would require certain people receiving Medicaid to prove they’re working at least 100 hours per month.

The Legislature has also been exploring changes to the state's open records laws, but changes made in the Senate version are drawing some pushback.

🎧 Listen as IPR reporters Katarina Sostaric and Meghan McKinney review the latest in Iowa politics.

It’s still unclear how federal funds will be released from a federal program that helps struggling customers pay utility bills after the Trump administration fired the staff this month.

The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, disperses billions of dollars each year to U.S. states, territories and tribes.

Karen Lusson, a senior attorney at the National Consumer Law Center, says without federal staff to coordinate, it could be a while before states see those funds.

“That's a significant amount of money … the health and the safety of all of these vulnerable populations are in jeopardy.”

In Iowa, more than 90,000 households received financial assistance to pay for heating and cooling in fiscal year 2024.

Lusson says without access to the funding more people could be at risk of heat stroke this summer, especially children and the elderly.

Mark Wolfe of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association says he worries the remaining funds won't be dispersed, which could put many in the Midwest and Great Plains at risk.

“Low-income families will have more problems paying their energy bills without federal assistance. We've done surveys. We know what happens. People go without. They don't buy medicine. They cut back on food. They cut back on clothing and other essentials in order to pay that bill.”

A Senate committee called on Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to testify this week about the layoffs at LIHEAP and elsewhere. The hearing has been delayed.

The U.S. has about 70 new citizens today after a naturalization ceremony at the University of Northern Iowa. The process was a relief to many who feared possible deportation.

The new Americans came from 26 countries, with ages ranging from 20s to 70s.

Ya Hya was one of them. He was born in Sudan and has been in the U.S. for about 6 years.

He said through an interpreter that gaining citizenship means a passport for travel and puts to rest fears of deportation.

“If you have a US passport, you can travel, you can stay here. You don’t have to worry about deportation.”

Chuyu Lee emigrated to the U.S. from Taiwan on a student visa, and said he’d like to see the government clarify what is permitted for international students who rely on those visas.

“It would be great if the government could give a clear indication of what people can or can’t do under which visa. That would be helpful, and would clarify some confusion in the future.”

The ceremony was the first to be held on UNI’s campus since the Covid pandemic.

Some members of the federal service agency AmeriCorps have been sent home as part of the DOGE team’s efforts to reduce government spending. In eastern Iowa, members at the Vinton office were suddenly laid off just two months into their ten-month program.

AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps members partner with local organizations to provide volunteer work across the country. Members stationed at the Vinton office were eight weeks into serving at the Indian Creek Nature Center. Some of the work they were doing included woodland cleanup and prescribed burns.

John Myers, the executive director of the center, says the AmeriCorps office in Washington, D.C., called to notify him about the layoffs, but did not say why they were happening.

“AmeriCorps was very effective at their work. They were hard workers, they were in 40 hours a week and really made a huge difference all the way around, and that’s something that’s hard to backfill with volunteers.”

The Iowa Department of Education is one step closer to approving new K-12 science standards, after amending some controversial wording changes.

Earlier this year, members of the public accused the department of watering down language around evolution and around climate change and human impacts and activities. The Department of Ed said a public survey garnered over 5,300 responses. The current version restores some, but not all, of the phrasing in question.

It also adds Iowa connections to the material and incorporates what the department calls career connections to show relevant science career paths students can pursue.

The standards were last updated in 2015. An executive order by Gov. Terry Branstad in 2013 required the state to regularly review education standards and incorporate opportunities for public feedback.

The Board of Education could adopt the new standards at its next meeting in May.

A handful of Iowa City’s largest buildings downtown are facing foreclosure after a ruling by a district judge. They’re properties owned by local developer Marc Moen and his associates. One of the properties is the landmark Chauncey Hotel.

Court documents say Moen and others owed roughly $28 million in unpaid loans. The lawsuit, filed by Green State Credit Union, says they owed the highest amount of debt on the Chauncey – almost $20 million. The properties will be auctioned off at a special sheriff’s sale.

The Family Planning Council of Iowa said it’s concerned that its services could be affected after unexpectedly receiving significantly less federal funding this year.

The nonprofit is one of two organizations in Iowa that receive federal funding through Title X, a 55-year-old federal program that supports reproductive heath care and family planning services at nearly 4,000 clinics nationwide for low-income people. The other is the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services.

Allison Smith, the executive director of the Family Planning Council of Iowa, said it had been expecting to receive $2.2 million this month as part of its allocated funding for the fourth year of a five-year project period. Instead, she said it has received just over $1 million with no explanation from federal officials.

The Family Planning Council of Iowa assists with contraception, sexually transmitted infections (STI) testing and treatment, pregnancy support and cancer screenings. It's been a Title X grant recipient for more than 40 years.

Smith said she's concerned if the organization doesn't get the rest of the funding, it could mean reducing services or even closing clinics.

"This funding supports about 30,000 Iowans. And so, when we're looking at halving that amount of care, that's a pretty significant cut," she said. "Oftentimes, it's the only way for people to see a doctor. It's their main source of care."

Read more from Natalie Krebs.

Photo courtesy of Storm Lake Police Department

Storm Lake in northwest Iowa is without power after high winds blew through the community early Friday morning.

The police department says the city is facing “significant challenges.”

There is widespread damage, including downed power lines and trees. Some roads are blocked.

The Buena Vista County Emergency Coordinator tells the Sioux City Journal that power could be out until tonight.

The National Weather Service tells the Des Moines Register that a tornado was reported in Fremont and Page counties in southwest Iowa last night. Video from storm chasers showed it on the ground for several miles in rural areas. No small towns in the region appear to be directly impacted.

Many places saw large hail. Photos show that baseball-sized hail fell in Pottawattamie County near Underwood. Two-inch hail fell in Waverly, according to the National Weather Service in Des Moines.

James Kelley

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Iowa Public Radio

The Trump administration has been cutting federal funding for colleges and universities across the country, and its effects at the University of Iowa are upsetting some students and faculty.

In the middle of campus Thursday, students and professors gathered to share testimonials about how the White House’s attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion and higher education have been impacting them.

Christopher Merrill, the director of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, said the cuts to his program impact writers from around the world. Three alumni have gone on to win Nobel Prizes in literature.

“We ended up getting about $1 million taken away from us, when all of our grants were terminated. Ninety percent of that million dollars would have been spent in the United States — at the Graduate Hotel, at all of our wonderful eateries and cafés and bars around town.”

Additionally, five international students have had their visas revoked by the Trump administration, which has created a culture of fear at the university, according to a graduate student.

The Iowa Department of Public Safety signed an agreement with federal immigration officials to establish an immigration enforcement task force.

The Des Moines Register reports the group will be made up of three officers from Iowa who will be trained to identify and detain people in the U.S. without legal status.

Iowa DPS says the agreement formalizes a relationship that already exists between the state and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The ACLU of Iowa criticized the agreement, telling the Register it undermines trust between immigrant communities and local law enforcement.

The Linn County jail has started housing a small number of people for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as part of a new contract signed in January.

The Linn County Sheriff’s Office renegotiated a longstanding agreement with the U.S. Marshals Service, which included housing some federal inmates. Recently, it began taking in a small number of ICE detainees.

Sheriff Brian Gardner says ICE had been reaching out to his office, asking the jail to house detainees, leading up to the renegotiations.

“With the agreement with the Marshals Service, we provided them up to 70 beds. Last, when I checked, they were at the 50-ish range, so that left about 20 additional spaces that they could have filled and haven’t. And so, we told ICE that they were able to make up that difference if necessary.”

Gardner says Linn County is currently holding one or two people for ICE.

The Iowa Flood Center at the University of Iowa is facing new funding cuts due to the federal government pulling funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The center, which is partly funded through NOAA, expected to get around $5-6 million through the federal agency. But now, it will get less than $700,000.

Director Larry Weber says the center’s work saves lives with better flood forecasts.

“The program provided roughly $40 million over the last four years to the state of Iowa for these small communities. And in many of those communities, that's the difference between a project being built and simply not being built.”

He says without the flood center’s sensors, there won’t be accurate monitoring.

Weber made his comments on IPR’s River to River.

This story was updated to reflect the correct amount of funding NOAA will receive. It is less than $700,000, not $7,000.

Democrat Kevin Techau announced his intent to run against Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson in Iowa’s 2^nd Congressional District.

Techau is a sixth generation Iowan. He served in the U.S. Air Force and was Iowa Department of Public Safety commissioner under former Gov. Tom Vilsack. Techau says he’s running for Hinson’s seat in part because he believes the congresswoman has been a divisive presence in the district.

“There’s just no reason we can’t work together for the benefit of Iowa. And right now, that’s not happening with Ashley Hinson. I’m dedicated to making Iowa safer and bringing economic opportunities back to Iowa.”

Techau says he believes Hinson isn’t living up to her campaign promises.

“Washington is full of broken promises, and Ashley Hinson is right at the front of that line. She ran the most recent campaign on economic issues, bringing prices down, fighting inflation — and she’s done nothing of the sort.”

Hinson was reelected last year with nearly 60% of the vote.

The Iowa Department of Transportation saw a record number of visits to its offices last week from people applying for Real ID cards. After May 7, travelers 18 years and older will need a Real ID or a valid passport to board domestic flights and enter some federal facilities.

As of this week, about 76% of Iowans with driver’s licenses or state IDs have transitioned to the new cards, which are designed to be counterfeit-proof.

The Department of Homeland Security said, as of April, about 60% of the country’s driver’s license and state ID card holders had Real IDs.

The Real IDs won’t be required for driving, voting or showing proof of age to buy alcohol.

Read more from the Midwest Newsroom’s Holley Edgell.

Des Moines Performing Arts

A southeast Iowa native who’s been dancing almost as long as he’s been able to walk is performing in central Iowa Thursday night as a veteran member of the Chicago Tap Theatre.

Isaac Stauffer, who grew up in Wayland, is performing at the Civic Center in Des Moines with the Chicago Tap Theatre. Now in his seventh year with the Chicago-based troupe, Stauffer’s performance in Des Moines will be his professional debut in his home state. He says he’s thrilled.

“Ever since moving to Chicago and joining Chicago Tap Theatre, I’ve been wanting to get the company to perform in Iowa. But you know, there’s contracts and a lot of things that have to align for that to happen. So, I’ve been all around the country — I’ve toured internationally — but this one, back in Iowa, will really be something special.”

The University of Iowa graduate says this company fuses storytelling with a high-energy celebration of tap dance, with each show blending rhythm, creativity and emotion. He says one of the reasons he joined the company was because of their unique style of performing exclusively to live music.

“It’s something that was always really important to the artistic director and founder, and it’s been true since the company’s inception.”

Stauffer’s dancing career began when he first appeared on an Iowa State Fair stage at age 6. He eventually won the Sprout division of the Bill Riley Talent Show, and then moved up to the 13 and older bracket. He says working his way up to winning “the whole thing” at age 21 — the cut off age for performers — was fate.

Dancing can be exceptionally hard on professional dancers, as they have to keep their bodies in peak shape. But at age 35, Stauffer says he still has a long, promising career ahead.

“People perform professionally as tap dancers into their 50s and 60s sometimes, so there’s no end in sight for me currently.”

The Iowa Environmental Council and the Harkin Institute at Drake University are launching an initiative to examine cancer in Iowa. The two groups want to better understand how Iowa’s agricultural industry and other unique environmental factors could be contributing to the state’s high cancer rate.

Iowa Environmental Council Executive Director Sarah Green says there are a lot of environmental factors that stand out in the state.

“Iowa has the most factory farm waste of any other state in the country. Iowa has more concentrated animal feeding operations than any other state in the country.”

Green says the initiative will include a literature review, a listening tour, the creation of an expert coalition and a public outreach campaign.

“It's critical that our findings and communications campaign reach every single county. When people are informed, they become part of the solution, when they make different choices and advocate for positive change.”

Iowa has the second highest rate of new cancer diagnoses in the country and is one of just two states with increasing cancer rates, according to the Iowa Cancer Registry.

Long emergency room waits in the U.S. are common, especially for older patients. Some wait for many hours or even days to get a hospital bed. Experts say this will only get worse as the population ages and patients arrive at the hospital with more complex diseases and more cases of dementia.

In 2022 — the most recent year with available data — 3 million visits to an ER that led to a hospital admission had a wait of four hours or longer before getting a regular hospital bed. The majority of the patients who were boarded were 65 or older.

Arjun Venkatesh, who studies emergency medicine at Yale University, says part of the problem is a lack of staffed hospital beds.

“We have about just as many hospital beds in America today as we did 20 years ago. The reason that's a problem is that emergency department visits are up 30-40% over that time.”

National organizations like the American College of Emergency Physicians have been advocating for systemic changes on the policy and hospital levels to tackle the issue. But those groups say the efforts haven’t moved the needle far enough.

Read more from Ben Thorp and Devna Bose with Side Effect’s Public Media.

National Weather Service

Iowans will want to keep an eye on the sky late Thursday afternoon and into the evening, as severe weather is possible.

National Weather Service Meteorologist Alexis Jimenez says much of the state may see a few powerful storms rumble overhead. However, the risk is strongest for southwest Iowa.

“They have the enhanced risk down there in southwest Iowa, and we’re even looking up towards that hail threat continuing up towards Des Moines as we get to the evening hours.”

Tornadoes can appear at any time of day and during any of the four seasons, but Jimenez says the odds of seeing a twister late Thursday may be greater.

“The tornado risk can’t be completely ruled out as you get towards far southwest Iowa. But as storms move towards Des Moines, once the sun sets, that threat really diminishes. Similarly, for any damaging wind, damaging hail — even in excess of two inches in diameter — is possible through this evening.”

The forecast calls for another chance of rain Saturday night and for much of the day Sunday.

Lucia Cheng

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Iowa Public Radio

Iowa cold case investigators now have a new tool to help find leads on unsolved cases: a deck of playing cards.

Attorney General Brenna Bird introduced the cards Wednesday. The deck contains the information and pictures of 52 cold case victims. The decks will be distributed to prisoners in order to spark conversations that Bird hopes will help investigators.

“This card deck is a way we get the word out to people who might hold that missing piece of information that could unlock the truth.”

Bird says other states have had these kinds of playing cards for years and successfully solved cases because of them.

There are more than 400 unsolved cases across Iowa.

The Iowa House Oversight Committee questioned state court officials Wednesday about IT errors that sent more than $27 million of court debt money to the wrong government funds. Lawmakers asked why officials waited three years to tell the Legislature about the mistake.

State Court Administrator Bob Gast says the judicial branch spent that time studying the problem. He says in hindsight, they should have told lawmakers sooner.

“At the outset, it seemed premature to notify the Legislature about issues about which we did not know the scope or have a resolution. But again, we did not try to hide it.”

Rep. Steven Holt, R-Denison, says it looks like the court system tried to hide the problem. He asked for documents to prove money wasn’t stolen.

Court officials say they have fixed the problem and they will provide documentation. However, they say it’s up to the Legislature to restore previously misallocated funds and to simplify the court debt system.

The Cedar Rapids Community School District is eliminating 27 full-time jobs in its Educational Leadership and Support Center. This is on top of a previous announcement from the school district saying it would lay off 6% of its teachers and support staff.

The new layoffs will save the district $1.6 million as it faces a $12 million budget deficit going into the next school year. The district says it hasn't eliminated any student programs.

Roughly 60% of the reductions will happen naturally through unfilled vacancies and attrition, while the rest will be let go starting June 30.

Two candidates will soon face off in a special election in eastern Iowa’s House District 78. The election was set after Rep. Sami Scheetz resigned in March to serve on the Linn County Board of Supervisors.

Democrat Angel Ramirez will face off against Republican Bernie Hayes in the special election April 29.

Ramirez is a peace facilitator for Kids First Law Center. She’s also the executive director of a fellowship nonprofit in Cedar Rapids, and previously worked as a legislative aide for state Sen. Rob Hogg.

“Our communities are being impacted, not only by our federal government being ran by billionaires who have no regard for the American people, but also a state government that’s stripping away civil rights,” Ramirez said. “They want bold, progressive, human-centered leadership here in Iowa.”

Her opponent, Hayes, is the chair of the Linn County Republicans. He said focusing on building strong families will be a priority of his if he is elected.

“We can design a system that rewards doing life the right way, to the point where it stabilizes families and encourages them to stay together and to work together and discipline their kids and motivate their kids.”

The winner of the special election will serve the rest of Scheetz’ two-year term.

Madeleine C. King

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Iowa Public Radio

Des Moines Area Regional Transit (DART) is losing its electric buses due to safety concerns.

In the two years since DART bought seven electric buses to use in their fleet, the buses have had suspension problems, transmission problems and structural failures. The transit system’s typical hybrid fleets usually last for 12 years.

Chief Operating and Planning Officer Luis Montoya says its current repairs have been under warranty, but once repairs become DART’s responsibility, Montoya says he can’t justify the future cost.

“These buses were rusting from the inside, and that, long term — they were not going to be safe for continued use.”

DART bought the electric buses with help from federal grants. Now that DART has received a waiver to avoid repaying a portion of those grants to the federal government, it will sell the bus parts.

Iowa State University Insect Zoo

A petition and letter-writing campaign is being launched in an effort to save the popular Insect Zoo at Iowa State University. Officials at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences plan to close the facility at the end of the semester after three decades.

Ginny Mitchell says in her 13 years as the educational program coordinator, the Insect Zoo has reached more than 500,000 Iowans — mostly children — through the Ames campus and during visits to schools, libraries and other facilities across the state.

The Insect Zoo is home to more than 175 species of arthropods, as well as millipedes, spiders, scorpions and all sorts of other creatures. Mitchell’s job is being eliminated, along with those of 10 ISU students from the Department of Plant Pathology, Entomology and Microbiology, who help run the zoo and take it on the road.

“The Insect Zoo does not just belong with Iowa State University. It belongs to the children of Iowa. These are the foundational humans of our state — of our country. It is very important, it’s very vital, especially as an agricultural state, to have information, knowledge and a lack of fear for insects. And that’s what the Insect Zoo does.”

While ISU’s Reiman Gardens may be able to add some of the insects from the zoo to its collection in the butterfly habitat, the future remains uncertain for the many dozens of other rare, living specimens from around the globe.

The petition is collecting digital signatures and supporters’ stories about the Insect Zoo and donations can be made to help with its deficit through the ISU Foundation. The deficit started to mount during the shutdowns of the COVID-19 pandemic and snowballed, according to Mitchell. She says the Insect Zoo is now about $150,000 in the red.

The facility is slated for closure June 30.

Courtesy of the Sage campaign

The first Democrat to declare a campaign for the U.S. Senate in 2026 is a first-time candidate who says he will work to repair the party’s relationship with working class voters.

Nathan Sage of Indianola will compete for the Democratic nomination against incumbent Republican Sen. Joni Ernst, who is running for a third term in the Senate next year.

Sage is currently the executive director of the Knoxville Chamber of Commerce. He’s a veteran who was deployed to Iraq three times while serving in the U.S. Marine Corps and the Army.

He believes he can connect with voters who have felt left behind by the Democratic Party.

“That’s who I am. I work for the working class. I’m part of the working class. I want to make the working class … give them a seat at the table because they built the table, they should have a seat at it.”

More Democrats are reportedly considering running for Ernst’s seat in the Senate. Ernst also faces multiple challengers in the Republican primary, including former state Sen. Jim Carlin.

Read more.

Iowa storm victims were not included in an automatic extension on Tuesday’s Tax Day, like other parts of the country.

Most Americans must file their taxes on or before April 15. However, taxpayers in places that were declared federal disaster areas received an extra two weeks — until May 1 — to file. This includes a large portion of the southeastern part of the U.S. ravaged by hurricanes.

People impacted by catastrophic wildfires in Los Angeles have until October to file their taxes.

Last year, extensions were available for Iowans impacted by tornadoes and flooding. A spokesperson for the Internal Revenue Service says there is no disaster-related relief for Iowa this year.

James Kelley

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Iowa Public Radio

Sen. Chuck Grassley hosted a crowded town hall meeting Tuesday in southeast Iowa’s Fort Madison. The area voted overwhelmingly for President Donald Trump in 2024, but people at the town hall criticized the administration’s handling of tariffs, immigration and veterans’ affairs.

Grassley faced special criticism for Congress not reigning in the executive branch, leading to what one audience member called a constitutional crisis. In response, Grassley said his new bill limiting executive authority on tariffs would restore power to Congress.

Grassley said he’s trying to correct decades of Democratic leadership in the 20th century that are to blame for executive overreach on interstate and foreign commerce.

Read more.

Gov. Kim Reynolds is asking the federal government to issue a presidential disaster declaration for four western Iowa counties impacted by a blizzard in March.

Reynolds is requesting funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for people and communities in Crawford, Harrison, Monona and Woodbury counties.

It’s estimated that the weather caused more than $8 million in damage.

Strong winds and heavy snow caused widespread power outages across the area. Some residents lost power for an extended period of time.

Madeleine King

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Iowa Public Radio

Multiple murals on a laundromat in Des Moines were painted over this weekend without warning, including a mural of the late civil rights leader and Congressman John Lewis.

The image and the words “Black Lives Matter” were painted by artist Reuben Cheatem in 2020 as part of a community mural initiative. He says he wasn’t notified that it would be painted over by the property owners, JBD Investments, to prep the building for sale.

“I understand the impermanence, but it's still destroying artwork that had been established there. And so, it just would have been nice to have known beforehand."

Cheatem says he hopes other businesses are able to see how much the mural meant to the community and that a replacement can be painted elsewhere.

As Des Moines continues to seek out solutions to homelessness, people can now be cited for camping downtown and in other public areas. At the same time, the city is dealing with a chronic shortage of affordable housing.

But providing affordable housing is only one part of the equation to solve homelessness. What happens after people get into housing also matters, especially as those people adjust to being in a permanent home.

Homeward, Polk County’s homelessness planning organization, analyzes how different housing solutions will affect the community. CEO Angie Arthur says she has seen an example of what can happen when people get into housing but don’t have case managers to provide continued support.

“We're going to need partnerships from the county, from cities, from employers, from nonprofits, from service providers, from private citizens. This is going to take a community response.”

Read more about Polk County’s services to help people stay housed through aftercare support.

Five students at the University of Iowa have had their visas revoked.

The graduate student union, Campaign to Organize Graduate Students (COGS), says the announcement came during a webinar with International Programs Dean Russell Ganim.

University officials say U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has not directly encountered students who have had their visas revoked. COGS is encouraging students to contact the Immigration Clinic at the UI College of Law.

Inside Higher Ed says the Trump administration has changed the legal status of more than 1,200 international students at over 180 colleges and universities across the country.

The Sioux City City Council reversed course Monday on budget cuts proposed for the local human rights commission.

The council unanimously decided to trim the budget by about $35,000, instead of the $140,000 approved in February. Officials say this will allow the department that investigates discrimination claims to continue its work and keep full-time staff. Two part-time jobs will be impacted.

Sioux City Human Rights Commission Executive Director Karen Mackey says now is not the time to stop important civil rights work in the community.

“We’re law enforcement. Especially during this time of our country, having a local civil rights enforcement agency is vital.”

Funding for an annual multicultural fair will come from the city’s business budget instead of the human rights commission.

A state-run residential care facility is facing a lawsuit from the family of a deceased nurse. Shannon Billheimer took her own life after she was allegedly fired for reporting abuse at the Woodward Resource Center.

Woodward is the only state-run facility for people with intellectual disabilities.

The lawsuit says Woodward has a history of retaliating against employees who report abuse. It also says after Billheimer reported the abuse, the investigation focused on her rather than the alleged abuser.

The center has been fined three times in the last five months for deficiencies in resident care.

A law requiring certain counties to elect their supervisors by district was signed by Gov. Kim Reynolds last week. It says Black Hawk, Johnson and Story counties — the three counties with a public university — must create equal-sized districts, rather than elect their supervisors at-large.

Rep. Bobby Kaufmann, R-Wilton, helped manage the bill. He said it’s designed to reduce voter suppression in rural areas. However, Black Hawk County Supervisor Tavis Hall said there’s no way to draw a district where rural voters get the only say without gerrymandering.

“There is not a way to draw a strictly rural district. We have 131,000 population, and over 100,000 live between Waterloo and Cedar Falls. In order to achieve a strictly rural district, you would have to do the sort of gerrymandering that’s not legal within the state.”

The three counties are assembling committees to begin the redistricting process, which must be approved by the Legislative Services Committee before Dec. 31.

Madeleine C King

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Iowa Public Radio

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird hasn’t said whether she will be campaigning for reelection as attorney general or running to succeed Gov. Kim Reynolds.

The crowd at the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition spring event over the weekend watched a video message from Reynolds about her decision not to seek reelection and later heard from Bird in person.

“I will stand for freedom. I will fight for Iowa, and we will fight alongside each other as we work to make America great again.”

The event’s master of ceremonies hinted Republicans would “hear more from her later,” and Bird suggested that she’s wrestling with the decision about her political future.

“I’ve had a verse on my mind. Sometimes as you pray, sometimes something comes to you, but one is, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’ Have you ever prayed that one before? We probably all have at different times, but I am certainly listening. I appreciate your prayers.”

Bird touted a series of court rulings, policy changes and new laws at the state and federal level, but told the crowd that the conservative movement has more work to do.

“We won those fights, and I’m sure glad we did. But they’re never going to be over, are they? We have to keep on fighting.”

The Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition’s members are a crucial voting block for the Republican Party, and many speakers at the event stressed the stakes in the upcoming midterm election, which is typically tough for the president’s political party.

University of Northern Iowa

Researchers from the University of Northern Iowa are exploring some of the nation’s deepest caves to learn about life in extreme environments, and their findings could ultimately help NASA in its search for life on other planets.

UNI Astrochemistry and Astrobiology Professor Joshua Sebree has led undergraduate students on 50-60 fact-finding missions far underground, both in Iowa and surrounding states.

“We go out to Cold Water Cave, which is the longest cave in Iowa at over 17 miles … and we visit there once a month for various research projects.”

While it would be difficult for people to live in those subterranean environments for long, Sebree says other creatures can thrive in caves, but they can be quite elusive.

“We’re always on the hunt for an extreme fish, the fish that can survive in caves. But then we’re also looking for different chemical fossils that have been preserved in the rock over time. We’re looking at how the glow-in-the-dark properties of these rocks can tell us about the different waters that made the caves eons ago and so we can get a picture of how the cave has evolved over time.”

The team of UNI cavers uses ultraviolet light, or blacklight, to examine mineral formations in the caves. He says the glowing patterns can offer new insight into how water — and potential life — once interacted deep underground and could indicate how life might exist in places like Jupiter’s moon Europa.

UNI’s research is being supported by NASA and the Iowa Space Grant Consortium.

Liz Martin

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University of Iowa

University of Iowa Health Care’s newest hospital was unveiled Friday in North Liberty. It’s a one-of-a-kind medical center in one of the fastest growing areas of the state.

The new 469,000 square-foot facility was designed with a special focus on orthopedic care. It has a walk-in clinic, emergency room, pharmacy, laboratories and a state-of-the-art physical therapy center.

Soon, the halls will be filled with 700 staff members. Officials estimate roughly 300 will come from inside the UI Health Care network.

U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Iowa Senate Minority Leader Janice Weiner and the mayors of Cedar Rapids and Iowa City were among the crowd.

UI Health Care CEO Bradley Haws says the new facility will allow innovation to flourish.

“We view this as an ideal place, where we can innovate and actually challenge and develop orthopedic care into an even more renowned service that we provide. And this will provide us a learning laboratory from which we can do that.”

Construction for the new hospital began in October 2021. It’s scheduled to open April 28.

Rachel Cramer

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Iowa Public Radio

Jefferson, a town of 4,000 people in western Iowa, is receiving national recognition for its historic preservation and investments in public art.

The nonprofit Jefferson Matters is one of three recipients across the U.S. to receive the 2025 Great American Main Street Award.

Since 2012, Jefferson Matters has led efforts to rehabilitate over 100 buildings and open new businesses. Rooftop murals are visible from the top of the town’s bell tower, which attracts an average of 6,500 visitors each year. Public art installations, events and studios are another draw.

Jefferson is the 10th Iowa community to receive a Great American Main Street Award. The last award in Iowa went to Woodbine in 2014.

Read more.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds announced she won’t be running for reelection on Friday. That means the governor's race won't have an incumbent on the ballot, leaving the spot open for other Republicans to throw their name in the ring. Former Rep. Brad Sherman had already announced he'd be running in the primary, and Attorney General Brenna Bird has indicated she might be interested in joining the race as well.

Meanwhile, under the golden dome of Iowa’s Capitol, lawmakers passed a series of bills, sending them to Reynolds’ desk for her signature. That includes the K-12 school funding package, which was finalized nearly two months after the deadline to decide education funding. Lawmakers also passed a bill to lower the minimum age to carry handguns to 18 and a bill to restrict cellphone use in schools. Other bills that were passed last week include a measure aimed at improving math scores and another proposal from Secretary of State Paul Pate that aims to strengthen checks of voters’ citizenship status.

🎧 Listen as IPR State Government Reporter Katarina Sostaric and Morning Edition Host Meghan McKinney discuss what happened last week — and what to expect this week — in Iowa's 2025 legislative session.

Police officers in Davenport are increasing their foot patrol presence downtown as part of a larger partnership with local mental health and housing agencies.

The partnerships between the Davenport Police Department, Vera French Mental Health Center and Humility Homes and Services have existed for years. But now, they’re using those connections to employ a taskforce of 15 off-duty police officers to check in on local businesses and engage in harm reduction practices.

Megan Brown-Saldana is the chief development officer with Humility Homes and Services.

“People don't have to know everything, and we cannot expect our police officers to also know every single thing about every social service agency and every risk factor. This is how we partner together, to make sure that when we can do something to help.”

The pilot program was created in response to a variety of factors, including reports of people feeling less safe downtown and a shortage in housing supply. It’s scheduled to run for one year and has been given $65,000.