Here is the latest Iowa news from The Associated Press at 3:05 a.m. CST

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa public health officials have posted another 99 coronavirus related deaths, raising the state’s death toll to 3,120. The state this week modified the methodology for counting COVID-19 deaths and that added 399 deaths to the state total in the past three days. Iowa coronavirus positive cases increased by 2,246 Thursday pushing the state total to 251,028. Hospitalizations and admissions are lower with 863 people hospitalized with COVID-19. Hospitalizations and new positive cases have been trending lower, giving health care officials hope that Iowa may have avoided a post-Thanksgiving surge. Concerns remain around Christmas and New Year holiday gathering activities.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa’s Republican governor prevented Democratic Attorney General Tom Miller from joining on Thursday a brief opposing the Texas legal challenge to the 2020 presidential election in four other states filed with the U.S. Supreme Court. Miller says if he had been asked to join a Republican led brief supporting the Texas lawsuit he would have declined because he believes the 2020 elections were fairly and safely conducted by election officials of both parties. He said he was asked Thursday by a group of Democratic attorneys general to join a brief supporting the four states the Texas attorney general is suing but Reynolds refused to allow him to join.

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP) — The Trump administration has carried out its ninth federal execution of the year in what has been a first series of executions during a presidential lame-duck period in 130 years. Federal prison officials in Terre Haute, Indiana, on Thursday executed a Texas street-gang member for his role in the 1999 slayings of an Iowa religious couple. The case of 40-year-old Brandon Bernard was a rare execution of a person who was in his teens when his crime was committed. He was 18 when he and four other teenagers abducted and robbed Todd and Stacie Bagley, of Iowa, on their way from a Sunday service in Killeen, Texas. Four more federal executions, including one Friday, are planned in the weeks before President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration.