Rep. Dean Fisher (R-Montour) is set to open a new private school in his district in 2025 and its future financial backing will depend on taxpayer-funded private school tuition vouchers he helped vote into law. Fisher serves as the board president for the upcoming Tama-Toledo Christian School, which is in the midst of renovating the former St. Patrick Catholic Church in Tama to serve as its school building. Fisher and the rest of the six-person board of directors—which includes his wife—are fundraising to cover the school’s start-up expenses, but the six-term state representative told the Tama ..read more

For decades, birth control has been a cornerstone of freedom. And that freedom doesn’t only apply to straight, cisgender women. Max Mowitz, a gender-affirming care doula who is also training to be a birth and postpartum doula, said birth control does a number of things for LGBTQ+ populations in addition to preventing pregnancy. Dysphoria is one example: If a client has a period, and would like to get rid of it because it makes them feel uncomfortable about their gender, they talk about goals for mitigating that, Mowitz said. “Pretty often, I’m working with folks who are very interested in some ..read more

Are you looking for the best bowling experience in Iowa? We’ve got you covered, thanks to our recent reader’s poll. From Decorah to Pleasant Hill, here are your top three picks for the best bowling Iowa has to offer. Courtesy of King Pin Entertainment Center King Pin Entertainment Center, Decorah King Pin Entertainment Center shines as the crown jewel in our reader’s poll for the best bowling in Iowa. This isn’t just your run-of-the-mill bowling alley. What sets King Pin apart is its dedication to providing an entertainment experience that the whole family can enjoy. From bowling to axe thro ..read more

I want to thank Iowa State University President Wendy Wintersteen for doing us all a favor by finally saying the quiet part out loud: all the pushback on diversity is about protecting whiteness above all.  While speaking to the Iowa Board of Regents on Thursday during a discussion on how all three regent universities are defunding and eliminating their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) offices thanks to Iowa Republicans, Wintersteen let the cat out of the bag. “So one of the first things we did was establish learning communities so that a young man—young white man—from rural Iowa, co ..read more

Iowa has committed nearly $180 million in taxpayer funds to support private school tuition in the 2024-25 school year, which is almost $50 million more than the initial Iowa Legislative Service Agency (LSA) projections. Initially, the LSA projected Iowa would spend $106.9 million in the first year of Gov. Kim Reynolds’ private school voucher program—called Students First Education Savings Accounts—and $132.3 million in the second year. However, the first year of the program cost Iowa taxpayers nearly $128 million. The Iowa Legislature allocated $179.2 million to the program for the upcoming fi ..read more

The Biden administration announced a new rule Tuesday to expand overtime pay for around 4 million lower-paid salaried employees nationwide. The regulation will increase salary thresholds required to make workers exempt from overtime pay laws.  In other words, salaried employees who work more than 40 hours per week and make under a certain amount annually—at a higher threshold than before—will be required to receive overtime pay from their employers. The new rule does not change standards for hourly employees, who are already protected by overtime regulations.  The present annual thre ..read more

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) voted on Tuesday to ban noncompete agreements—those pesky clauses that employers often force their workers to sign which effectively bar them from starting their own business or finding a new job in the same field within a certain area or timeframe after leaving their current job. An estimated 30 million American workers are currently affected by noncompete clauses—that’s roughly 18% of the US workforce. These clauses have been shown to lower workers’ pay and restrict their opportunity and mobility.  The final rule agreed upon on Tuesday bans new noncomp ..read more

Under the new rules, state officials and law enforcement cannot obtain medical records related to lawful reproductive health care with the goal of pursuing legal action.  The Biden administration announced new regulations Monday to strengthen privacy protections for abortion patients and health care providers.  The updated rules, supported by the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), promise to bolster patient-provider confidentiality regulations under the Health Insurance Portability Act of 1996 Privacy Rule (HIPAA). The modified code ..read more

Iowa agriculture has undergone substantial changes over the past 40 years. We see it all around us. Rather than crops and livestock being raised on tens of thousands of diversified family farms, Iowa has become ground-zero for concentrated industrial factory farms with unmanageable levels of manure, chemicals and pollution.  The impact on our water and the failure of public officials to hold polluters accountable are two of the biggest issues facing our state. In mid-April, I attended a meeting of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources Environmental Protection Commission (EPC), a govern ..read more

Does 1873 sound like a really, really long time ago? Well, that’s because it is—but if Republicans and far-right anti-abortion activists have their way, an 1870s law could soon be at play in the modern world as a tool to make abortion care all but impossible, even in states with legal protections for the procedure.  The law in question is called the Comstock Act. Its earliest iteration was passed in 1873 (yes, really) as a means of restricting distribution of “obscene” materials that would contribute to societal “vices.” The initial ruling made it illegal to distribute “lewd and lasciviou ..read more