She made it official at a news conference in Washington, D.C. yesterday…U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst will support moving forward with approving a Supreme Court Justice to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died Friday. Enough other Republicans have made their views known to suggest there are enough votes to confirm a justice; the president says he’ll announce his nomination on Saturday at the White House.
Officials say two eastern Iowa officers shot and injured a man they say was waving a gun. It happened Monday night in rural Wyoming, Iowa. Someone called 911 around 7:30 p.m. with a firearms complaint, and officers from various agencies found 51-year-old James Orval Bartram of Wyoming displaying a gun. An Iowa state trooper and a Delaware County sheriff’s deputy both fired their weapons, hitting Bartram in the upper torso. Bartram was flown to an Iowa City hospital; his medical condition was not made public.
More than 66-thousand Iowans are living with Alzheimer’s and other dementias…that’s according to Briget Meyer of the Iowa Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association, who told me on KXEL Live & Local yesterday that a variety of diseases fall in the category. The annual Cedar Valley Walk to End Alzheimer’s will be held this Saturday, in different form due to COVID-19; for more information, go to alz.org/walk. Listen to the interview as a podcast at kxel.com.
Iowa health officials are working to determine what’s causing a spike in coronavirus cases in the northwest corner of the state. Sioux County has a 14-day positivity rate of 30%. Neighboring Lyon and Osceola counties each have rates above 20%. Public health officials usually recommend significant mitigation measures to slow the spread when an area surpasses 5% positivity. Gov. Kim Reynolds says there isn’t a specific outbreak and health officials are investigating the cause.
Police say an Iowa City man shot a woman living with him before turning the gun on himself. Iowa City police said yesterday their investigation showed no other people were in the home that 49-year-old Floyd Rush and 45-year-old Latoya Smith shared when they died Sept. 15. Police also said both died from injuries from a single handgun found at the scene. Emergency responders were called to the home by concerned family members who saw through a window that Smith was lying on the bathroom floor.
House Democrats were under fire for blocking support for Iowa’s farmers in their proposed stopgap government funding bill. Without something passing, the government will shut down at the end of the fiscal year next Wednesday. U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst criticized the House plan yesterday, pointing out that Congress has replenished funding for the Commodity Credit Corporation, the CCC, in a bipartisan way for more than three decades. Last night, House Democrat leaders changed their minds and CCC funding is now included in that bill.
Police have arrested four people in connection with the death of a man whose body was found burning last week in a rural central Iowa ditch. 31-year-old Steven Vogel of Grinnell was arrested yesterday morning and charged with causing the death of 44-year-old Michael Williams of Grinnell. Williams’ body was found on fire around 5:30 p.m. last Wednesday in a ditch near Kellogg. Investigators said yesterday they believe Vogel strangled Williams four days before that, and that Willliams’ body was then wrapped and bound and dumped in the ditch on Sept. 16, where it was set on fire. Three other people have been charged as accessories.
Supporters lobbying to reinstate four recently-eliminated University of Iowa sports programs say they have obtained $1.65 million and counting in pledges if the university decides to keep them going. Save Iowa Sports, a group that includes hundreds of athletes, alumni and donors, said in a letter to Iowa President Bruce Harreld that the pledges have come together in a few days and are “just the beginning” of its fundraising campaign. The university last month eliminated men’s and women’s swimming and diving, men’s tennis and men’s gymnastics. Athletic director Gary Barta said the cuts were “100% driven by” the coronavirus pandemic, which caused the postponement of football, and tens of millions of dollars of lost revenue.
The Des Moines School board has set a date for returning to school but put off establishing a coronavirus infection rate that would force the district to revert to online-only instruction. Des Moines schools has been the state’s only school system that has refused a state order that they hold at least half their classes in-person unless they have received a waiver because of high infection rates. The board voted to gradually start a hybrid plan of in-person and online courses, starting with pre-kindergarten on Oct. 12. However, the board will hear from public health experts on metrics that would trigger a return to online-only classes. The board will meet next Monday to set such metrics.
