(A report from the Iowa Capital Dispatch) – A southwest Iowa nursing home cited for more than two dozen regulatory violations this year has been added to the federal government’s list of the nation’s worst care facilities. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has added the Garden View Care Center in Shenandoah to its list of Special-Focus Facilities.

In February 2025, state inspectors cited Garden View for 15 federal violations, including failure to meet professional standards, overall quality of care, insufficient nursing staff, a lack of competent nursing staff, infection-control issues and the use of unnecessary drugs.

Inspectors reported that on Feb. 12, 2025, the home, which had 37 residents, had no nurse on duty in the afternoon, and no one on staff certified to provide CPR if needed. A worker explained that a nurse from a temp agency had reported for work at 6 p.m. on Feb. 11, and remained on duty until roughly 2 p.m. Feb. 12, when she was told to go to the hotel where she was staying and get a few hours of sleep before reporting back for work at around 5 p.m.

The Garden View Care Center in Shenandoah, Iowa. (Photo via Google Earth)

The nurse’s departure allegedly left the home without a nurse in the building for three hours, despite the presence of several high-risk residents, including individuals who were on dialysis or needed airway suctioning or had COVID-19. “The administrator told staff he is a nurse but not currently licensed,” the inspectors wrote in their report.

State records indicate no fines or penalties were imposed as a result of the inspectors’ findings.

In April 2025, state inspectors returned and cited the home for 11 additional violations related to abuse-and-neglect policies, resident discharges, pharmacy services, medication errors, food quality and infection control. Again, no fines or penalties were imposed.

In the fall of 2021, CMS added Garden View to its special-focus eligibility list after the home was cited for 23 regulatory violations and fined $306,335 by the federal government. According to inspectors’ reports, the staff had withheld one woman’s dinner, with one worker telling a colleague the woman had no right to a meal because of how big she was. Another employee allegedly reported seeing a coworker pull a woman out of a room and drag her backward across the floor into another room while cursing at the resident.

In 2024, the state proposed, but held in suspension, $47,500 in fines against the home for inadequate staffing and the physical and verbal abuse of residents.

According to state inspectors, the home’s director of nursing informed them she was being pressured by management to cut staff due to budget constraints, adding that she felt doing so was “unsafe.”

Between October 2022 and July 2024, CMS imposed $241,479 in federal fines against the facility. Garden View is currently owned by a for-profit, limited liability company called Greenside Healthcare Properties, according to CMS. In addition to Garden View, the other Iowa care facility currently designated a Special-Focus Facility is Pine Acres Rehabilitation and Care Center in West Des Moines.

The other Iowa homes on the eligibility list, and the corrected number of consecutive months they’ve appeared on the list, are:

— Greater Southside Health and Rehabilitation Center in Des Moines, 38 months.

— Harmony West Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in West Des Moines, 23 months.

— Harvest Acres Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Keota, eight months.

— Clarion Wellness and Rehabilitation Center, seven months.

— Caring Acres Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Anita, five months.

— Pioneer Valley Living and Rehabilitation Center, Sergeant Bluff, four months.

— Aspire of Washington, four months.

(Creston, Iowa)  – A car that became stuck on a mud road east of Creston late this (Monday) morning, caught fire and was destroyed. Officials with the Creston Fire Department say crews responded to the fire at 1910 180th Street, a little after 11-a.m.

In a social media post, the CFD says when the first firefighters arrived at the scene, they found the vehicle fully engulfed in flames and requested additional resources. The Toyota Camry had become stuck in the mud on Jaguar Avenue, which is a Level B road that had become impassable due to overnight rain. Officials say the fire was likely caused by the mechanical malfunction that occurred while attempting to free the vehicle from the mud.

CFD Facebook photo

The Creston Fire Department offers these tips on “What to Do If Your Car Is Stuck“:

Stop Immediately: If you feel the wheels spinning, stop trying to accelerate.

Assess the Situation: Get out of the vehicle to check the extent of the problem and determine your vehicle’s drive type (front-wheel or rear-wheel drive).

Use Traction Aids: Place objects like sticks, sand, or mats under the tires to gain traction.

Gentle Rocking: Gently switch between drive and reverse to rock the vehicle back and forth, applying minimal gas to avoid further sinking.

Stay Away: If a fire does start, get out of the vehicle, move at least 100 feet away, and call 9-1-1. Do not go back for your belongings.

(Radio Iowa) – Greene County Attorney Thomas Laehn is planning to run for the U.S. Senate as a Libertarian.

Laehn said Iowans are ready for someone outside the current two-party system who will push back against executive overreach. “The president was never supposed to have the power to unilaterally make criminal law and just put people in prison for violating…his executive orders,” Laehn said, “and we should all be very alarmed in our constitutional history.”

Some Libertarian Party candidates have won non-partisan elections in Iowa for seats on city councils as township trustees, but Laehn is the first listed on the ballot as a Libertarian to win a partisan election in Iowa. “Part of this is an experiment in liberty, an experiment in popular sovereignty,” Laehn said. “I mean, has the two-party system become so entrenched in our system of government that we can’t have elections or people can’t hold office without it? And if so, then things are even worse than I fear.”

Greene County Attorney Thomas Laene plans to run for the US Senate in 2026. (campaign photo)

Laehn will formally kick off his campaign for one of Iowa’s U.S. Senate seats on Saturday. Laehn was raised in the small northeast Iowa town of Allison, where is father was a Lutheran minister and his mother was the school librarian. Laehn’s online biography lists degrees from Drake University and Louisiana State University and a stint as a professor at McNeese State before enrolling and graduating from the University of Iowa law school in 2017. He was elected Greene County Attorney the following year and reelected in 2022.

(By James Kelley, Iowa Public Radio; Radio Iowa’s O. Kay Henderson also contributed to this story.)

(Radio Iowa) – Immigration experts anticipate more federal immigration officers will show up on American farms in the coming months, and legal experts say there are steps employers can take ahead of time. Kristiana Coutu is senior counsel for the Center for Agricultural Law and Taxation at Iowa State University. Coutu recommends farmers work with an attorney to develop a plan for potential immigration actions, including designating a point person to engage with federal officers.

“…to understand why they’re there, know that they can ask for identification and their reason for being there,” she says. Coutu says it’s also helpful to understand the difference between a judicial warrant and an administrative warrant. “That administrative warrant is not going to allow that broader search of the non-public areas,” she says, unless someone gives consent. An agricultural employer can work with an attorney to figure out what areas on a farm are non-public and clearly mark them with signs.

Coutu says the point person should know what’s allowed under those different types of warrants. “And then be able to understand how to then communicate that to either the owner or the attorney, or whoever else,” she says. “I think it’s just really good practice for all employers.”

Employers cannot impede an investigation or tell employees what they can or can’t say, but Coutu says they can document the officers’ activities and ask where employees are being detained to share with their emergency contacts.

(Radio Iowa) – The search committee for the new Iowa State University president is meeting in closed session today (Monday) to narrow down the list of candidates. Regents lawyer Aimee Claeys gave the committee instructions before they went into closed session.”We are hear to enter into closed session to conduct a confidential evaluation of the professional qualifications of the applicants for the I–S-U president. Each of these individuals has explicitly requested that their applications be considered in closed session,” she says.

Clayes told the committee they must focus on this task. She says under the law the only thing they can discuss in closed session is the qualifications of the candidates. The committee is expected to work on evaluations into the early afternoon. They will notify the candidates who have been chosen to move on in the search, but will not identify them at this time.

The search committee is looking to replace president Wendy Wintersteen who is retiring.

(Radio Iowa) – A woman is facing multiple charges after allegedly setting a fire at a Davenport convenience store. The Davenport Fire Department reports they were called out to a fire burning near the storage cage for propane tanks outside a Kwik Star. A witness had used a fire extinguisher to put out most of the fire by the time firefighters arrived. Davenport police say it looked as though the fire was intentionally set, and a woman who fit the description of a suspect had returned to the scene.

Police say 57-year-old Deanne Chanee threatened officers with a knife and tried to set gas pumps on fire before they arrested her. Chanee is charged with first-degree arson, assault on a police officer, criminal mischief, interference with a weapon, and interference with official acts.

(Radio Iowa) – A group led by a retired employee of the State Historical Society’s library and archives in Iowa City is suing to try to stop a plan to close the facility in mid-2026. The lawsuit says many of the artifacts that are being moved to the State Historical Museum in Des Moines were donated with the condition that they be accessible in Iowa City. Adam Steen, a Republican candidate for governor, is the former director of the Iowa Department of Administrative Services, the agency that oversees Historical Society operations. “Just a couple of days ago a group out of Iowa City got up and filed a lawsuit against me for shutting down a wasteful building that was wasting millions of your tax dollars.”

State officials say the building needs 750-thousand dollars in repairs and they announced the closure of the Centennial Building in downtown Iowa City in mid-June as a budget-cutting move. Steen says nobody knew about the building before its closure was announced.”Dig into the details. I’m preserving the history of our state by moving artifacts to Des Moines and I’m deaccessioning artifacts to local historical societies and the left is suing me because they’re saying I’m overstepping my bounds,” Steen says. “That is not true, but they’re coming after me because I’m speaking the truth.”

The lawsuit filed against Steen and other state officials cites a state law that says the state must maintain historical research centers in both Des Moines and Iowa City. Mary Bennett, who worked at the Iowa City center for nearly five decades, leads the Save Iowa History Coalition. Bennett says the center has been a regional hub used by historians, University of Iowa students and kids doing history projects — and moving records, books and letters that date back to the Civil War out of the building will limit direct access to the material. The lawsuit says the State Historical Building in Des Moines doesn’t have enough climate-controlled space to properly house documents in the Iowa City collection.

(Glenwood, Iowa) – Police in Glenwood say a Nebraska man was arrested Saturday, on an OWI charge. 28-year-old Brody Kates, of Omaha, was charged with OWI/1st offense, and Possession of a Dangerous Weapon. His total bond was set at $2,000 (cash or surety). Kates posted bond and was released.

(Atlantic, Iowa) – The Atlantic Rotary Club Charity Dinner and Auction scheduled for Saturday, November 1, 2025 at the Cass County Community Center has auction items coming in daily. Rotary officials says there are some unique items, including autographed memorabilia from Zach Johnson (pro golfer from Iowa), Jan Jensen (Iowa Women’s Basketball Coach). Another special item is a private basketball coaching session with Atlantic native Ryan Hawkins.

If you are curious about those large cranes, you will have an opportunity to learn from Shawn Sarsfield with Cheqed It. Looking to update the décor in your home? How about a great patriotic picture, that features a combine and the bean field from Atlantic Ag and Auto?

Auction item from Atlantic Ag & Auto

There are many more great items available in both the live and silent auction.

The Rotary Charity Dinner and Auction raises funds that are then reinvested back into the community. These funds have benefited organizations such as the Nishna Valley YMCA, local schools and preschools, the Hospital Foundation, the Atlantic Area Chamber of Commerce, as well as scholarships for high school seniors and Iowa Western students, among many others. The event will include a dinner, cash bar, silent and live auction, beginning at 5:30 PM. Tickets are $50 each and can be purchased by contacting any Rotarian or Ted Robinson at First Whitney Bank. All are welcome to attend.

As in the past, a raffle is held in conjunction with the auction. This year, proceeds from the raffle will be donated to the Atlantic Food Bank for the purchase of a commercial refrigerator/freezer. Tickets are $20 each or 6 for $100.

First Prize: 2025 Hustler Raptor XD 54” Mower
Second Prize: $500 cash
Third Prize: $250 cash
See any Rotarian or Food Pantry volunteer to purchase your tickets.

If you have any questions regarding the Rotary Charity Dinner and Auction please feel free to contact Dolly Bergmann, 712-249-9275 or Tori Gibson, 712-254-1070.

(Creston, Iowa) – The Creston Police Department reports a man from Kent (IA) was arrested a little before 2-a.m., Saturday, on drug and alcohol charges. 26-year-old Bradford Guy Boyer was arrested east of Creston, for Operating While under the Influence (OWI) – 2nd Offense, and Possession of a Controlled Substance 2nd Offense – Marijuana. Boyer was transported to the Union County Jail. Boyer was later released on a $3,000 cash or surety bond.

And, at around 12:18-a.m., Saturday, Creston Police detained 40-year-old Jose Raul Flores, of Creston, following a traffic violation at the Intersection of Lucas & Vine, and subsequent investigation. Flores was cited and released on a promise to appear for Driving While Suspended.