(Radio Iowa) – Sioux City’s 185th Air National Guard Refueling Wing has a new recruit with who will potentially have the weight of someone’s world on him. Lincoln is a 10 week old English Cream Golden Retriever puppy that is a therapy dog in training at the base. Lieutenant Colonel Steve Peters is the 185th Air Refueling Wing chaplain and Lincoln’s caretaker. He says the English Cream variation of the golden retrievers seem to want to be with people more and care for them.

ING Therapy Dog

Peters said Lincoln started preparing for his career the day he was born. “After they’re born they begin training that specifically leads them to all the qualities that makes them great therapy dogs,” Peters says, ” calmness, loving people, slow to react to startling noises ARE being distracted from things that are going on around them.” Peters says the calming presence of a dog like Lincoln can put people at ease and make it easier for caregivers to address spiritual, mental and physical health issues.

“When interacting with a dog — especially with the qualities and the training that a therapy dog would have — to then open up perhaps to a chaplain, a therapist, psychologist, medical person, to then get the help that they need. It’s a barrier breaker,” according to Peters. Lincoln’s arrival is just in time for the military’s observation of National Suicide Prevention Month in September. The September training weekend is when most 185th unit members will get their first opportunity to meet the new recruit.

(Radio Iowa) – Two Iowa judges have now ruled in favor of the Republican Party and President Trump’s campaign and nullified about 55-thousand absentee ballot request forms from voters in Woodbury and Linn Counties. A hearing over a similar lawsuit against Johnson County’s Auditor for sending ballot request forms that included the voter’s I-D number is scheduled September 8th. Republicans argue the three county auditors did not follow a state order that only blank absentee ballot request forms be mailed out.

Alan Ostergren, the former Muscatine County Attorney, represented the Republican Party in both of last week’s court hearings. “The secretary of state’s directive specifically ordered auditors — if they were going to send out their own forms…that they needed to be blank because of the need to have it uniform across the state,” Ostergren says. Attorney Jeff Wright, representing Woodbury County’s auditor, argued the secretary of state did not have authority to issue his order. “This is a public health emergency, a public health disaster,” he said, “and the legislature did not give Mr. Pate in the secretary of state’s office emergency powers for a public health disaster.”

In June, the Republican-led legislature voted to require Pate to seek Legislative Council approval for any changes in state election procedures. In July, the Legislative Council gave Pate permission to send BLANK absentee ballot request forms to every active voter. Secretary of State Paul Pate spoke on Iowa P-B-S this weekend, saying “They wanted those forms sent out with no information on those,” Pate says, “particularly with personal information that is confidential.”

That mailing from the state is set to go out on Labor Day weekend. The auditors in Woodbury and Linn Counties — AND in Johnson County if a similar decision is made in that case — face a tight deadline to notify voters that their absentee ballot request has been invalidated by a judge. Pate says his office will coordinate with the two and perhaps three affected counties. “To make sure its being communicated to those folks who’ve already sent in their request on the wrong form, based on what the courts are saying, so they’re successful in being able to vote,” Pate says.

Absentee ballot mailings from OTHER county auditors have not been challenged. Polk County Auditor Jamie Fitzerald oversees voting in Iowa’s largest county and his mailing did NOT include voter I-D numbers. “We’ve had a lot of movement in our county, people moving from one apartment to another, so the blank form allowed us to put “or current resident’ because there was no information on it other than a blank form,” Fitzgerald says.

Iowans may request absentee ballots now. County election officials can’t send out the ballots, though, until October 5th.

Here is the latest Iowa news from The Associated Press at 3:35 a.m. CDT

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The numbers on Iowa’s online coronavirus tracker varied widely this weekend because of a maintenance problem with the site. The Iowa Department of Public Health reported Saturday morning that 1,108 Iowans had died from COVID-19. Later in the day, the number of deaths dropped to 894 before rebounding Saturday evening to 1,109. Several other key statistics also fluctuated on the state website Saturday. Department of Public Health spokeswoman Amy McCoy said that the problem caused by a maintenance upgrade to the state website appeared to be fixed.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Des Moines raised $38.1 million in the first year of a one-cent sales tax increase, but officials expect that to decline significantly in the next year because of the coronavirus pandemic. City officials said sales tax revenue will decline because the retail and travel industries have been hit hard by restrictions related to the coronavirus. Typically, spending by visitors accounts for roughly one-third of the city’s annual sales tax revenue. Mayor Frank Cownie said the new sales tax that took effect in July 2019 helped the city make progress on projects that had previously been delayed because of a lack of funding.

SIOUX CITY, Iowa (AP) — A second Iowa judge has ruled in favor of President Donald Trump’s campaign and ordered a county to invalidate at least 14,000 absentee ballot requests. In his ruling Friday evening, Judge Patrick Tott found that Woodbury County elections commissioner Patrick Gill acted improperly when he sent absentee ballot request forms to 57,000 registered voters that had their personal information filled in. About 14,000 have been returned so far. The Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee and other GOP groups sued three Iowa counties. The decision came a day after another judge ruled that Linn County officials also had violated the secretary of state’s directive.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The numbers on Iowa’s online coronavirus tracker varied widely this weekend because of a maintenance problem with the site. The Iowa Department of Public Health reported Saturday morning that 1,108 Iowans had died from COVID-19. Later in the day, the number of deaths dropped to 894 before rebounding Saturday evening to 1,109.

Several other key statistics also fluctuated on the state website Saturday. Department of Public Health spokeswoman Amy McCoy said that the problem caused by a maintenance upgrade to the state website appeared to be fixed.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Des Moines raised $38.1 million in the first year of a one-cent sales tax increase, but officials expect that to decline significantly in the next year because of the coronavirus pandemic. City officials said sales tax revenue will decline because the retail and travel industries have been hit hard by restrictions related to the coronavirus.

Typically, spending by visitors accounts for roughly one-third of the city’s annual sales tax revenue. Mayor Frank Cownie said the new sales tax that took effect in July 2019 helped the city make progress on projects that had previously been delayed because of a lack of funding.

(Corrected death data) – The Iowa Department of Public Health reports as of 10-a.m. Sunday (8/30), there were two additional deaths and 990 more positive cases statewide. Persons with preexisting medical conditions made up for 774 of the deaths, while 597 of the total number of deaths took place at a long-term care facility, since the beginning of the outbreak.

The COVID-19 dashboard showed a total of 64,102 positive cases have been reported to date. There have been a total of 46,525 persons who have recovered from the virus, 46,525 have recovered, and 1,110 deaths since the pandemic began.

A total of 630,442 individuals have been tested for COVID-19. The total number of test results coming back negative, to-date, amounts to 564,838, for a combined positivity rate (including Antigen tests), of 10.2%.

There are 315 Iowans hospitalized with coronavirus. IDPH reported 91 patients in intensive care, which is the same as the previous day. There are 43 patients on ventilators in the state, up from 41 the previous day. There were 48 patients admitted to the hospital in the last 24 hours. People on ventilators number 43.

In western/southwest Iowa: 10 patients are hospitalized with COVID-19; 5 remain in an ICU and 2 were admitted to area hospitals. Three patients are on ventilators.

There remains 37 coronavirus outbreaks reported at Iowa’s long-term care facilities. IDPH reported 1,172 positive cases and 697 recoveries within those facilities.

Here are the latest positive case numbers for southwest/western Iowa as of 10-a.m. Sunday (County; Positive Case #’s; number of persons who have (recovered); {deaths since the outbreak began}.

• Cass County: 112 cases; (98); 2 deaths
• Adair County: 49 cases; (21); 1 death
• Adams County: 22 cases [up 2 from Saturday]; (17)
• Audubon County: 41 cases [up 4 from Saturday]; (27); 1 death
• Guthrie County: 171 cases [up 3 from Saturday]; (126); 5 deaths
• Montgomery County: 76 cases [up 3 from Saturday]; (60); 4 deaths
• Pottawattamie County: 1,618 cases [an increase of 21 from Sat.]; (1,329); 34 deaths
• Shelby County: 215 cases [1 more than Sat.]; (205); 1 death.

Elsewhere in the area:

• Crawford County has 830 positive cases of COVID-19; (715); 3 deaths
• Carroll County, 371; (197); 2 deaths
• Madison County, 164; (104); 2 deaths
• Harrison County, 147 cases; (117); 1 death
• Page County 111; (106);
• Taylor Counties 111 cases; (102); 1 death
• Union County has 93 cases; (68); 3 deaths
• Ringgold County has 32.; (26); 1 death