Politics

There’s a new potential solution for Iowa’s shortage of substitute teachers: unpaid volunteers. The Iowa Senate passed a bill Monday to allow school districts to accept volunteer substitute teachers to help with the shortage of paid teachers and substitutes in the state. The bill, Senate File 2356, is simple. People with substitute licenses or authorizations…

Chuck Grassley was honest when asked if he would join former President Donald Trump’s new social media platform, Truth Social. “I hope they’ll have me,” Grassley said. “I don’t know if they will or not.” Iowa’s senior US Senator was asked the question during an Audubon town hall Wednesday as part of his annual 99-county…

Iowa women would have more support during their pregnancies and postpartum period under a new bill approved by an Iowa Senate Human Resources subcommittee Wednesday afternoon, but there is a catch. SSB 3145 would require the department of human services to create a statewide “More Options for Maternal Support” (MOMS) program which would support nonprofits…

The Osage School Board made two requests in a letter it wrote to the Iowa House and Senate education committees: More funding and no school vouchers. State lawmakers agreed to a 2.5% increase to State Supplemental Aid on Monday, although some Iowa Democrats proposed a 5% rate instead. In their letter, signed by all five…

Iowa Rep. Ashley Hinson praised yesterday a new, $11 million project that will bring drinking water and sewage services to the Field of Dreams site at Dyersville. She just forgot to mention one important thing about the project: Hinson voted against the funding. The grant comes through the state’s Water Infrastructure Fund, established last year…

Deidre DeJear wants to fix the state’s mental health care system so that Iowans can access the same type of help that once got her through an extremely difficult time. When she was eight years old, DeJear’s mother died from childbirth complications. At the time, her father connected DeJear to a grief counselor. In school,…

Last Friday, Rep. Cindy Axne announced the first round of funds for Iowa bridge repair that’s coming from the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act she helped pass last year. In Iowa, 4,571 bridges are rated structurally deficient, the most in the country, according to the American Road and Transportation Builders Association. The state has…

Iowa Rep. Ashley Hinson is trending nationally online today, and not in a good way. Reaction to Hinson taking credit for funding for locks and dams coming from President Joe Biden’s Infrastructure plan—which she voted against—was swift, angry and often mocking. Her tweet yesterday about the $829 million from the Infrastructure bill drew national attention.…

US Rep. Ashley Hinson compared the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to socialism, but that didn’t stop her from taking credit for funds from the legislation that she voted against. The US Army Corps of Engineers allocated $829.1 million from the infrastructure bill to modernize the lock and dam system on the upper Mississippi and…

Sen. Chuck Grassley holds the distinction as being the only still-serving legislator who cast a vote in the US Senate against making Martin Luther King Jr. Day a federal holiday back in 1983. The ranks of those members have dwindled in recent years, though Grassley does have a current Republican colleague—Sen. Richard Shelby—who voted against…