From the Associated Press (11:20 a.m.):
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – Iowa Democrats are hoping to salvage their leadoff presidential selection position with two key changes to increase participation and avoid the chaos that marred their 2020 caucuses. One change would allow Iowa Democrats to submit presidential preference cards by mail or in person before caucus night. The other would eliminate the rule requiring a candidate to receive at least 15% support to be viable. Iowa Democrats were long granted the leadoff status automatically, but this year they were forced to apply for the coveted spot after a smartphone app failure in 2020 delayed final results for nearly a week and led to The Associated Press declining to name a winner.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – Republican House primaries on Tuesday will set the table for the most competitive U.S. House races this fall. A handful of districts will decide whether Democrats can hold their paper-thin margin amid bracing economic headwinds. GOP House primaries in New Jersey, Iowa and California will determine who will face the most prominent and most vulnerable Democrats. Among them are New Jersey’s Tom Malinowski and Iowa’s Cindy Axne. They won by fewer than 2 percentage points in 2020, and their districts have become slightly more Republican since new congressional district lines were set last year.
LOS ANGELES (AP) – Primary elections in seven states Tuesday will set the stage for U.S. House and Senate battles this fall that will play into control of Congress. Many contests are being shaped by political divisions in both major parties – and the lingering shadow of former President Donald Trump. A string of Republican House incumbents are contending with challenges from the political right. Some challengers are embracing Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud in his 2020 loss to President Joe Biden. No incumbent governors or senators appear to be in imminent danger. The primaries are in California, Iowa, Mississippi, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico and South Dakota.
Authorities say a man who fatally shot two women before killing himself in the parking lot of an Iowa church had been romantically involved with one of the women and faced a court hearing next week on a charge of harassing her. They say 33-year-old Johnathan Lee Whitlatch, of Boone, pulled up in a pickup truck to 22-year-old Eden Montang, 21-year-old Vivian Flores and another woman just before 7 p.m. Thursday outside Cornerstone Church on the outskirts of Ames and began shooting with a 9 mm handgun. Story County Sheriff Paul Fitzgerald says Montang and Flores were killed, and Whitlatch shot himself. The sheriff says the women were friends and students at Iowa State University who were walking together to the church for a weekly service.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – The Biden administration has set new requirements that increase the amount of ethanol that must be blended into the nation’s gasoline supply. The Environmental Protection Agency says it will set the 2022 levels for corn-based ethanol blended into gasoline at 15 billion gallons. But even as the new rules increase future ethanol requirements, the EPA is retroactively reducing levels for 2020 by 2.5 billion gallons and by 1.2 billion gallons for 2021. That reflects the lower amount of ethanol produced and decreased sales of gasoline during a period when the virus led to a drop in driving.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – A Des Moines utility has filed lawsuits, proposed legislation and even tried public shaming in an effort to clean up drinking water that comes from rivers teeming with agricultural pollutants. None of it has worked, so Des Moines Water Works is trying another approach. The utility is working with grain cooperative Landus to teach farmers the latest techniques for reducing pollution at riverfront plots of corn and soybeans in the sprawling park where the utility filters the city’s drinking water. It’s a surprising turn in a long-running dispute between the state’s dominant industry and a utility that supplies drinking water to 600,000 customers in Iowa’s largest metro area.
