(Radio Iowa) – A Democrat who represented the Fort Dodge area for 16 years has published a memoir that begins with her childhood during the early years of the civil rights movement and ends with her hopes for the future. Helen Miller was first elected to the Iowa House in 2002 – just three years after she and her husband moved to Fort Dodge. “I had to figure out being a black person with a vastly majority white legislature, how to get things done for my constituents,” Miller says.

Miller was born in 1945 — the day before World War II ended. “There was a racial incident in South Carolina and my mother and father had to leave,” Miller says. “They wound up moving to New Jersey as a result, so race determined where I was literally born.” Miller, who is 79, started writing the book about four years ago, after attending the Okoboji Writers Retreat.

“By the second one I had the idea in my head about what I wanted to do that would make the story interesting and, especially in light of the times that we’re in, relevant,” Miller said. Miller writes about the riots that erupted in her hometown of Newark in 1967 and other milestones in the civil rights movement, including her endorsement of Barack Obama before the 2008 Iowa Caucuses.

Miller, who is an attorney, spearheaded a summit in Waterloo in 2015 that featured bipartisan leaders working on criminal justice reform at the national level.  “There were things that were done because we started paying attention,” Miller says. “And that was a very, very bipartisan effort because, I tell you very honestly, it probably wouldn’t have happened with Koch.” The company was run at the time by brothers Charles and David Koch, prominent Republican donors who supported criminal sentencing reform. After Miller left the legislature in 2019, Republican Governor Kim Reynolds appointed her to chair the Iowa Board of Parole.

The title of Miller’s book is “I Can’t Swim: A Memoir.” Her late husband was a physician in the military and a former commander of the hospital at Langley Air Force Base. He retired from the U-S Air Force in 1999 and the couple moved to Fort Dodge, where he joined a medical practice.

(Radio Iowa) – Our nation’s three most important and revered documents are enclosed in titanium display cases in the rotunda of the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and they rest on custom-made archival paper created at the University of Iowa. Tim Barrett, the now-retired director of the U-I Center for the Book, says he got the call in 1999 to create the special paper to cradle the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence. Was that his dream job?

“I and my coworkers were all more immediately focused on, ‘Okay, they want us to go ahead and do this. Now, we actually have to do it and we can’t mess up. This is kind of a big deal,'” Barrett says, laughing. “Rather than letting it go to our heads, we really focused on making the paper and getting it to the National Archives.” The center on the Iowa City campus had developed a sterling reputation for being able to create special types of handmade paper from pure American-grown, textile-quality cotton using a custom-built press.

There was just one problem: “Most of the paper we made was smaller than what they needed. They needed 36-by-36-inch sheets and we didn’t have a press to squeeze out the water from the damp sheets,” Barrett says, “so we had to construct a larger press and build other pieces of equipment to be ready to go into production.” It took a few months to assemble and perfect using everything, and then it was just a matter of minutes to create the paper, which took another day to press and dry. In all, they shipped a few dozen sheets of the additive-free paper to the National Archives, and it should be good for many decades to come.

Photo from the National Archives

The highly-fortified cases were designed with aluminum plates as a base for the precious documents, which were written some two-and-a-half centuries ago on vellum, a parchment made from animal skin. “They wanted the paper in there to provide a lighter background to help illuminate, to help show off the parchment documents, to provide a cushion against the perforated aluminum plate,” Barrett says, “and also to provide a relative humidity buffer within the encasement.” The U-I Center for the Book is dedicated to preserving arts that date back centuries, like bookbinding, letterpress printing, and making paper by hand.

Barrett says it was a tremendous honor to be chosen for this project by the National Archives, which hosts more than a million visitors every year.”I’ve been there several times and it’s well worth a visit because the lighting is subdued and there’s an atmosphere of real reverence,” Barrett says. “You can wait your turn in line and walk up there and get your face literally within inches of these very important pieces of American history.” He says all residents of the state, when they go to see the Declaration of Independence and the other documents, should feel a sense of gratification.

Tim Barrett (UI photo)

“The most important thing for me, and I think for any Iowan who goes to the National Archives Rotunda, once you get in there and you get up close to those documents, if you move your head off to the side a little bit, underneath them all, you can see this white piece of paper and you know, that was made in the state of Iowa,” Barrett says, “and that’s something to be really proud of.” And by the way, the masterminded theft of the Declaration of Independence depicted in the 2004 film “National Treasure” starring Nicolas Cage? Barrett says rest assured, it’ll never happen.

https://uicb.uiowa.edu/

DES MOINES, Iowa (IOWA CAPITAL DISPATCH) – Amid allegations of “gamesmanship” and forum shopping, a federal judge has blocked, at least for now, President Donald Trump’s attempt to move his lawsuit against the Des Moines Register and its pollster out of federal court and into state court.

Noting that Trump recently filed an appeal on one specific issue within the federal lawsuit, U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Goodgame Ebinger found that because the president’s appeal had conferred jurisdiction of the case to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, he must first dismiss that appeal before voluntarily dismissing the underlying lawsuit.

For now, that means the president and his lawyers are pursuing the same legal case against the newspaper and pollster Ann Selzer in both state court and federal court.

The lawsuit was initiated in December 2024 when Trump sued the Register, its parent company, Gannett, and the Register’s former pollster, J. Ann Selzer, in Polk County District Court. The president alleged the newspaper’s Iowa Poll, which was published shortly before the Nov. 5 election, deliberately overstated support for the Democratic nominee for president, Vice President Kamala Harris, by 16 percentage points.

Trump argued the poll amounted to “brazen election interference” and violated Iowa’s Consumer Fraud Act — claims the defendants have denied.

Attorneys for the president later expanded the lawsuit, adding claims by U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, a Republican who narrowly won reelection in the state’s 1st Congressional District, and by Brad Zaun, a former Republican state senator from Urbandale, who lost his bid for reelection.

At the defendants’ request, the case was transferred to federal court. However, a legal dispute soon arose over whether federal court was the proper forum for the case given the fact that Miller-Meeks and Zaun, like the defendants, are based in Iowa.

On May 23, 2025, a federal judge denied Trump’s motion to remand the case from federal court back to state court. In that decision, the court allowed the president to file an appeal on the issue but also ordered Trump to file an amended complaint removing Miller-Meeks and Zaun from the case, eliminating any claims that were exclusive to the two Iowa-resident plaintiffs.

(Des Moines, Iowa) – This holiday weekend, 13 beaches in Iowa have advisories posted with regard to swimming. (More information can be found HERE) Beaches are updated each Friday with advisories Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day.

The Iowa DNR’s State Park Beach Monitoring Program indicated the following:

10 Beaches with an E. coli Advisory:
Backbone Beach (Dundee, Delaware County, IA)* 
Beed’s Lake Beach (Hampton, Franklin County, IA)* 
Denison Beach (Black Hawk Lake, Lake View, Sac County, IA)*
Lake Darling Beach (Brighton, Washington County, IA)*
Lake Manawa Beach (Council Bluffs, Pottawattamie County, IA)* 
Lewis and Clark Beach (Blue Lake, Onawa, Monona County, IA)* 
Lower Pine Lake Beach (Eldora, Hardin County, IA)* 
Nine Eagles Beach (Davis City, Decatur County, IA)* 
North Twin Lake West Beach (Rockwell City, Calhoun County, IA)*
Prairie Rose Beach (Harlan, Shelby County, IA)* 

3 Beaches with a Microcystin Advisory
Green Valley Beach (Creston, Union County, IA)*
Lake Darling Beach (Brighton, Washington County, IA)*
McIntosh Woods Beach (Clear Lake, Ventura, Cerro Gordo County, IA)*

3 City and County Beaches exceed the state’s advisory threshold for E. coli.*
(City and County beaches do not report levels of algal toxins) 
View the map on our website to see where.

*Data from the Iowa DNR State Park Beach Monitoring Program
**Data from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Rock Island District

Note: Monitoring has been suspended at Lake Keomah due to renovation activities. George Wyth Park is closed due to flooding.

 No advisories
 E. coli advisory
 Microcystin advisory
 E. coli and microcystin advisories
 Exceeds state advisory threshold for E. coli (what does this mean?)
 Beach closed

(Radio Iowa) – Des Moines Police say a man driving a classic car hit a police patrol car nearly head on early this (Friday) morning and drove away. Des Moines Police says they found the vehicle and the driver about three minutes after the patrol car was hit.

The officer and the driver of the 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air had minor injuries. Sixty-two-year-old Daniel Thornburg of Des Moines has been charged with first offense drunk driving, improper lane use and leaving the scene of the accident.

Des Moines PD Facebook page photos

(Radio Iowa) – The Figge Art Museum in Davenport is one of just ten museums chosen to receive historic works from the National Gallery of Art’s permanent collection. Co-Senior Curator Vanessa Sage says the exhibition includes major Northern European works that are typically reserved for cities like New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C.

The loaned works are part of the gallery’s two-year “Across the Nation” initiative marking the 250th anniversary of the United States.

Sage says the paintings date from 1537 to 1700. The exhibition will be on display through April of 2027.

(Radio Iowa) – Nearly 150 workers at two Marshalltown facilities are facing lay offs. On August 1st, 62 workers at the Lennox factory will lose their jobs. Lennox is Marshalltown’s third largest employer.

A spokesperson for the company told the Marshalltown Times-Republican newspaper that Lennox has transitioned to new regulations requiring chemicals used in air conditioning to have a low Global Warming Potential score and the company has adjusted production to normalize its inventory. FedEx has also notified state officials it will be laying off 84 workers at its Marshalltown facility on September 1st. A

spokesperson for the company says those workers were notified of the layoffs several months ago.

(Red Oak, Iowa) – An investigation in Montgomery County resulted in the arrest on Thursday, of a man from Stanton. According to Red Oak Police,  43-year-old Jason James Suggs, of Stanton, was arrested Thursday afternoon on 11 counts of possessing a depiction of a minor in a sex act–1st offense.

He was taken into custody at around 3:30-p.m, in the 2700 block of 220th Street, as the result of a joint investigation between Red Oak Police and the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office.

Suggs was being held in the Montgomery County Jail on a $55,000 bond.

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources is in the middle of its annual Canada goose banding effort across the state.

Geese that nested and had young are currently flightless, allowing staff and volunteers to capture the waterfowl, collect some demographic information, and place a metal band on their leg before being released.

“This is one of the best sources of information on Canada geese – it allows us to monitor where the birds are captured, where they are recovered, either by hunter or by the general public who can report the band, which provides important estimates for demographic rates, such as survival rates, recovery rates – and that’s really the fine scale information that allows us to manage the population,” said Orrin Jones, state waterfowl biologist with the Iowa DNR.

To learn more about the Canada goose banding project, go to the DNR’s YouTube channel

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is looking for help with the annual wild turkey production survey.  During the months of July and August wild turkey sightings are recorded to estimate this year’s nesting rates and nest success.

Participation is easy – just note the date and county in which the turkey was seen, if it was an adult female or adult male – males have beards on their breast – and if and how many poults (baby turkeys) were present. The survey is available online at www.iowadnr.gov/turkey, then click on Wild Turkey Survey. There is also an identification guide on documenting wild turkey broods on the survey webpage, that provides tips on how to determine males from females, and different flock scenarios with poults of different ages.

Annual population surveys conducted by the DNR are an important component of managing the wild turkey. Turkey populations can fluctuate annually across all regions of the state.  All participation is appreciated.