(Radio Iowa) – Several Iowa communities are holding what are billed as training sessions designed to teach people how to respond to ICE activity. A recent meeting in Cedar Rapids drew nearly 600 people. Reverend Jonathan Heifner at St. Paul’s Methodist Church, where the event was held, says it was about building relationships, and making sure people know their rights. “We don’t want anybody to get hurt,” Heifner says. “We didn’t want anybody to be in a situation they didn’t want to be in, and so the education of this is about knowing what we can do and knowing what the limits are.”

The training comes after weeks of protests across the country and the fatal shootings of two Minnesota residents. Heifner says people told him they felt more informed about their rights after the training. “I think the biggest learning was in the debrief after the first simulation,” Heifner says. “We asked, ‘Pay attention to your behavior. What is it that you did in these moments, and then consider who you want to be in these moments, and let’s live into that the second time.’”

Republican Congresswoman Ashley Hinson says the training encourages interference with law enforcement operations and she questions whether the non-profit that led the training should retain its tax-exempt status. The training session in Cedar Rapids was hosted by the immigrants’ rights group Escucha Mi Voz, or “hear my voice.” Reverend Heifner says there was nothing in the training that would lead to the church losing its tax-exempt status.

(Atlantic, IA) – The Cass County Extension office will be offering two opportunities for private pesticide applicators to attend their annual Private Pesticide Applicator Continuing Instruction Course (P-CIC), led by Extension Field Agronomist, Aaron Saeugling. The first session is scheduled for Thursday, February 12 at 1:30 PM. The course will be offered again on Thursday, March 19 at 6:30 PM. Preregistration is not required. Walk-ins are welcome on the day of the program.

The course will run for approximately 2 ½ hours, including check-in and breaks. The registration fee is $30. With questions or for additional information, contact the Cass County extension office at 712-243-1132 or email xcass@iastate.edu. The course will fulfill 2025-2026 recertification requirements for private pesticide applicators. Topics to be covered include:

• Personal protective equipment and safe handling
• Professionalism, Storage of pesticides, including chemical security
• Pests, pest management, and pesticides

To renew their certification, applicators must pass an exam every three years or attend an approved Private Continuing Instruction Course (P-CIC) between December 1 and April 15 each training period their certification card covers, including the year they passed the exam (if the certification is issued prior to October 1).

Applicators unable to attend in Cass County may take the training online or find another training location in a neighboring county. For more information on the Private Pesticide Applicator program or other upcoming CIC classes, please visit www.extension.iastate.edu/psep/.

(Red Oak, IA) – A traffic stop late Thursday night in Red Oak resulted in the arrest on drug and other charges, of a man from Taylor County. According to the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office, Deputies conducted a traffic stop near S. Broadway and W. Market Streets in Red Oak, at around 11:07-p.m., Thursday.

Following an investigation, they arrested 50-year-old Nathaniel Gene Teeters, of Bedford, for a controlled substance violation-methamphetamine (a Class-B Felony), Possession of a Controlled Substance/2nd offense – Marijuana (A Serious Misdemeanor), and Driving While Barred (Aggravated Misdemeanor).

Teeters was transported to the Montgomery County Jail and held on a $25,000 bond. Montgomery County’s K-9 “Bane” assisted in the arrest, along with officers from the Red Oak Police Department.

DES MOINES, Iowa (IOWA CAPITAL DISPATCH) – An Iowa Senate committee has rejected legislation that would prevent nursing homes from barring residents’ use of in-room cameras to guard against abuse or neglect. Senate Study Bill 3080 would allow a nursing home resident or their representative to conduct electronic monitoring of the resident’s room through the use of video cameras — sometimes called “granny cams” — placed inside the room with the consent of any roommates.

The bill was scheduled to be discussed Wednesday at a meeting of the Iowa Senate Committee on Technology, which is chaired by Sen. Charlie McClintock, a Republican from Alburnett. However, the bill was pulled from the agenda shortly before the meeting began. McClintock said Thursday the bill was removed from the agenda once the panel determined it did not have the support of a majority of the committee members.

Without the approval of the committee, the bill’s chances of making it to the floor of the Senate for a full debate are greatly diminished.  If the bill doesn’t advance, 2026 would mark at least the sixth year in a row such legislation has been rejected by state lawmakers. As in previous years, the granny-cam legislation is backed by Diane Hathaway, a Glenwood resident whose mother, Evelyn Havens, was twice hospitalized for severe dehydration, bed sores and an infection while living in an Iowa nursing home.

Although state inspectors would later determine Hathaway’s complaints about the nursing home were valid, the home had refused Hathaway’s request to place a camera in her mother’s room. After Havens’ death, Hathaway launched a campaign to win approval of legislation that would prevent Iowa care facilities from barring the use of cameras. “Nursing homes need to be held accountable to fulfill their legal obligation to deliver compassionate, quality care to each and every resident,” Hathaway said Thursday. “This bill would have provided a necessary first step for ongoing reforms.”

Publicly, industry lobbyists have said they fear resident-owned cameras will create invasion-of-privacy issues for residents — although many Iowa nursing homes have for years used their own surveillance cameras in hallways and common areas to monitor both residents and workers. In fact, state inspectors have repeatedly relied on such footage to document instances of abuse and neglect – even in state-run care facilities.

Nationally, at least 22 states have passed laws concerning residents’ use of cameras in nursing homes, and at least 16 of those states give residents the express right to use such cameras regardless of the homes’ corporate polices. Some states, such as New Jersey, have gone even further, setting up camera-rental programs run out of the state attorney general’s office. Other states allow nursing home operators to prohibit the use of resident-owned cameras, as Iowa now does.

(Radio Iowa) – Governor Kim Reynolds is proposing new taxes and tax hikes on smoking products that she says are a key factor in Iowa’s high rate of lung cancer.  “We know that’s a known cause of lung cancer and I think it’s something that we need to take very seriously,” Reynolds said. “…National statistics say that 80% of lung cancer is caused by tobacco and when we’re looking at all the other levers, I don’t think we can set that out when it’s 80% of the narrative.”

Reynolds invited University of Iowa researchers to Des Moines yesterday (Thursday) to release preliminary data from their study of what may be contributing to Iowa’s troubling rate of new cancer cases. “This work will have a lasting impact on our state and I appreciate the commitment of everyone involved,” Reynolds said. “…This is how transformation begins — not just with talk, but with action and when it comes to fighting cancer, Iowans deserve nothing less.”

Reynolds proposes raising the state tax on a pack of cigarettes to the national average, which is just over two dollars a pack. Reynolds is recommending that the state start charging a 15 percent tax on vaping products and consumable hemp products. She’s also called for eliminating certain dyes and additives from food served in Iowa schools as well as requiring physicians to complete a nutrition course as part of the continuing education requirements for Iowa medical licenses.

“Today’s research findings make it very clear how important healthy behaviors are for the overall health and well-being,” Reynolds said, “and my bill aims to really amplify that message.” The University of Iowa’s cancer research is focusing on the most common types of cancer and has found Iowa has more cases of late-stage lung cancer than other states. “The numbers aren’t good for lung cancer, they’re really not,” Reynolds said, “and it’s hard to detect.”

The governor’s husband was diagnosed with what she describes as a fast-growing form of lung cancer in September of 2023.  “I don’t think probably if it hadn’t metastasized to the spine and he was in so much pain, I’m not sure we would have found it soon enough and Kevin doesn’t smoke,” Reynolds said. “He’s never smoked. He’s pretty trim and fit.”

Kevin Reynolds underwent immunotherapy that shrunk the tumor in six weeks and his cancer is in remission.

(Radio Iowa) – People convicted of several serious crimes would face a minimum 20-year prison sentence without parole under a bill advancing in the Iowa House. Mahaska County Attorney Andrew Ritland says he’s prosecuted people with more than 10 separate felony convictions, but each sentence was no more than a year or two.

“So I do appreciate the intent of the bill,” Ritland said. “I appreciate holding people who clearly do not care about following the law to a higher account.” Wayne Ford, a former member of the Iowa House, says he and others worked hard to reduce the racial disparity in Iowa prisons after a 2007 report found the ratio of blacks to whites in Iowa prisons was highest in the nation. He’s urging lawmakers to reject the mandatory 20 year sentences for habitual violent offenders.

“I do not out of disagreement with the committee’s intent, but out of concern that expanding mandatory sentencing risks going back to number one,” Ford said. The Iowa State Sheriffs’ and Deputies’ Association supports the bill. A lobbyist for the group says the bill would help address repeat offenders by sending a clear signal they face spending two full decades in prison.

The bill has cleared a House subcommittee.