Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) staff conducted on-site inspections of two more Iowa meatpacking plants this week, the Iowa Division of Labor confirmed to Bleeding Heartland on June 2.

Documents provided the following day show regulators closed at least four coronavirus-related complaints against Iowa pork processors with no inspection.

Inspectors toured the Tyson Foods turkey plant in Storm Lake and the Perdue Premium pork facility in Sioux Center on June 1. Both site visits stemmed from “media referrals” rather than complaints, meaning officials acted on unspecified news reports or information relayed to OSHA by a journalistic source.

The fields are set for Iowa’s 2020 federal campaigns. The U.S. Senate race and three out of four House races could be highly competitive this November. However, Democratic prospects for picking up the fourth Congressional district took a big hit last night.

The Iowa Supreme Court will determine whether a law designed to deny sex education grants to Planned Parenthood violates the Iowa Constitution’s equal protection guarantee. The state of Iowa filed a notice on June 1 that it will appeal last month’s Polk County District Court ruling, which found the law unconstitutional.

UPDATE: As of August, people of color who will appear on the general election ballot as candidates for the Iowa legislature include nine Democrats, seven Republicans, one Libertarian, and one independent. I’ve added details in the original post, which follows.

After a decade of little change in the racial breakdown of the Iowa House and Senate, more people of color are running for the state legislature this year.

Candidates appearing on today’s primary ballot include eight Democrats and seven eight Republicans, which to my knowledge is a record for the Iowa GOP.

In addition, three people of color representing minor parties have filed as general election candidates in state legislative districts.

Susan Nelson spoke to Mike Franken about claims made in an attack ad funded by a group supporting Theresa Greenfield. -promoted by Laura Belin

The polling must be tightening up in the U.S. Senate primary.  A tsunami of dark money is washing up on our TV screens. Women Vote!, the political arm of EMILY’s List, is spending $1 million to attack Admiral Michael Franken on behalf of the Democratic establishment favorite, Theresa Greenfield.

Their ad claims that Mike Franken is a former Republican, an accusation that was flung at Elizabeth Warren every day in the 2020 primary campaign. If true, I am not so sure that would be a bad thing in a general election in Iowa, and it did not seem to hurt Warren. Republican support and donations have not hurt J.D. Scholten either. They also attack Franken for being a defense contractor, and accuse him of being a carpetbagger, an attack Warren received during her first Senate campaign.

Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) staff have conducted five on-site inspections of Iowa meatpacking plans during the past six weeks, the Iowa Division of Labor confirmed to Bleeding Heartland on May 28.

According to Mary Montgomery, who works in the office of Iowa Labor Commissioner Rod Roberts, OSHA inspectors examined COVID-19 mitigation measures at the Tyson Fresh Meats pork processing plant in Waterloo on April 20, the Tyson plant in Columbus Junction on April 30, Iowa Premium Beef in Tama on May 21, the JBS pork plant in Marshalltown, also on May 21, and the Tyson plant in Perry on May 26.

Montgomery indicated that a complaint prompted the Waterloo inspection, while “media referrals” led to the others. Asked to define that term, Montgomery said either “news items reported in the media” or information relayed “directly to OSHA by a media source” had prompted the site visits. She did not specify which news reports or journalistic sources influenced OSHA staff.

A little more than two months after Iowa recorded its first death attributed to novel coronavirus, the number of reported COVID-19 deaths in the state has surpassed annual deaths by suicide in recent years.

Governor Kim Reynolds denied 35 requests to sign Iowa on to multi-state legal actions during the first year of an unusual arrangement in which Attorney General Tom Miller ceded some of his authority.

Reynolds refused to allow the state to weigh in on lawsuits related to federal or state policies on immigration, reproductive rights, environmental regulation, consumer protection, gun safety, LGBTQ rights, and access to President Donald Trump’s personal records.

During the same time frame, the governor approved eighteen requests from Miller to join cases involving a wide range of legal matters.

Leslie Dow: “What if just by wearing a mask and paying attention to social distancing you could save every person in the Twin Towers?” -promoted by Laura Belin

The town of Le Claire is a special place. Our amazing firefighters have an I-beam from the Twin Towers as a tribute to their service when firefighters from Scott County went to ground zero to help with rescue and recovery. They are moving the beam to an area where more people can view it, and they are asking for donations.

One comment on the page was a link to a video of the beautiful and terrible rendition of Sounds of Silence by Disturbed. The video is a series of still shots of the Towers, the survivors, and the men and women from around this country who dropped everything to help.

Moved by the song and the visuals, I felt compelled to donate.

Randy Richardson: “As a former baseball player and coach, I miss the sport as much as anyone, but is opening high school baseball and softball seasons really a good decision?” -promoted by Laura Belin

Governor Kim Reynolds announced on May 20 that summer athletic seasons may proceed for high school baseball and softball in Iowa, following a two-month activities suspension due to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Her proclamation allowed the reopening of school facilities and practices beginning on Monday, June 1.

David Weaver: To win statewide, candidates must demonstrate service, strong critical thinking skills, and the ability to understand rural Iowa. -promoted by Laura Belin

I have been an Iowan all my life, other than a two-year stint teaching English in Japan. I have lived in small towns like Grinnell, Pella, and Perry. I spent several years living in the city of Davenport, and I have lived in rural towns like Westside and Rippey (my hometown), as well as the farmhouse where my family currently resides.  I have been farming since 2006.   

I have always paid fairly close attention to politics and government, and ran for the Iowa House in 2018. 

Democrats have a (recent?) problem winning statewide elections. Zero for six in the past six races for governor or U.S. Senate. We know Democrats can win, and have won. Barack Obama did it a couple of times, and Rob Sand did it in 2018. Looking at my Iowa House district 47 results from 2018, one thing stood out to me that I believe is important and translates to winning any statewide race in Iowa.

Governor Kim Reynolds has enacted three rounds of reopening businesses and venues across Iowa this month already, and bars are next in line to resume indoor service on May 28. The governor has argued, “We have to move forward” as we “learn to live with” having novel coronavirus in our communities.

However, the judicial branch is approaching the COVID-19 pandemic more cautiously. Under an order Iowa Supreme Court Chief Justice Susan Christensen issued on May 22, in-person bench trials will remain on hold until July 13, and jury trials won’t resume in Iowa until September 14.

UPDATE: Hours after this piece was published, the plus/minus feature disappeared from the state website. Original post follows.

The state of Iowa’s official website for information about the novel coronavirus pandemic incorporated a few tweaks this week. The most noticeable: Department of Public Health staff update various statistics throughout the day, rather than once in each 24-hour period. During her May 18 news conference, Governor Kim Reynolds asserted that the new practice would make data on COVID-19 more “transparent.” Critics pointed out that the frequent updates would make it harder for Iowans to keep tabs on daily changes in coronavirus cases, tests, hospitalizations, and deaths.

Reynolds didn’t announce another addition to the website, which has attracted relatively little notice. Several of the bar graphs can now be adjusted to project the number of daily cases, tests, hospitalizations, or deaths weeks or months into the future.

The trouble is, those projections are not grounded in any principles of epidemiology.

Less than two months after Iowa recorded its first death attributed to novel coronavirus, the number of reported COVID-19 deaths in the state reached 404 on May 21, surpassing the highest number of annual fatalities in Iowa vehicle crashes over the past decade.

Two strong candidates are seeking the Democratic nomination in a top-targeted Iowa House seat.

No court will ever consider the merits of two challenges to a 2019 law that changed Iowa’s judicial selection process and shortened the chief justice’s term.

The State Hygienic Laboratory has expanded its novel coronavirus testing criteria to include some children and staff in day care centers who have respiratory symptoms and no alternative diagnosis.

However, the state still will not cover COVID-19 tests for most people living in the same household with someone confirmed to have the virus.

For the fourth time in less than two months, President Donald Trump has fired an inspector general who had stirred up trouble for him or his political allies.

Iowa’s senior Senator Chuck Grassley has championed whistleblowers and inspectors general for decades. Yet just like last month, he declined to condemn Trump’s retaliatory move. Grassley didn’t mention State Department Inspector General Steve Linick’s dismissal on his widely-viewed Twitter feed this weekend. Meanwhile, his office released a statement that dinged Linick for not looking into “the State Department’s role in advancing the debunked Russian collusion investigation.”

Racial disparities continue to widen as the number of novel coronavirus cases grows in Iowa.

Data published on the state’s COVID-19 website on May 17 indicate that Latinos make up 25.1 percent of Iowa’s 14,651 confirmed COVID-19 cases. That’s more than four times the share of Latinos in the state population (6.2 percent according to the latest Census Bureau estimate).

Another 57.1 of Iowans who have tested positive are not Hispanic or Latino, while the remaining 17.8 percent of cases are pending further investigation of the person’s ethnicity.

Iowa’s two first-term members of the U.S. House were among fourteen Democrats to oppose the latest bill drafted to address the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The so-called HEROES Act cleared the lower chamber on May 15 by 208 votes to 199 (roll call). It called for an estimated $3 trillion in spending, including “nearly $1 trillion in aid to battered states, cities and Native American tribes, and another round of bolstered jobless benefits and direct government payments to Americans.”

Republicans in control of the U.S. Senate oppose the bill, so its passage in the House serves primarily to communicate preferred Democratic policy.

Days after announcing the Test Iowa program last month, Governor Kim Reynolds described the expanded capacity to test for coronavirus infections as a “significant advantage” for Iowa compared to other states, and a “tool that allows us to make evidence-based decisions about how to mitigate and manage the virus with precision.”

The governor revealed on May 14 that only a few thousand Iowans had been tested for COVID-19 through a program that was supposed to provide 3,000 tests a day.

Staff at Iowa’s State Hygienic Laboratory have been working around the clock to process tests that reveal the scope of the novel coronavirus epidemic. Governor Kim Reynolds has often lauded their “yeoman’s work” at her daily news conferences.

But as former Vice President Joe Biden famously said, “Don’t tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.” In real terms, state support for a facility critical to Iowa’s COVID-19 response dropped considerably over the last decade.

The Iowa legislature hasn’t increased dollars allocated to the State Hygienic Lab since 2013, when Senate Democrats insisted on doing so. Not only has state funding failed to keep up with inflation since then, the laboratory’s annual appropriation has yet to recover from a mid-year budget cut in 2018.

A company hired to ramp up Iowa’s capacity to test for novel coronavirus has been sending messages to sick Iowans that could discourage them from seeking a COVID-19 test.

Some people who reported respiratory symptoms when completing the Test Iowa online assessment, but did not qualify for an appointment at a drive-through site, received a message warning that COVID-19 testing “is quite invasive and uncomfortable” and that tests should be reserved “for those who need it the most.”

Neither Nomi Health nor state officials have clarified whether the Iowa Department of Public Health helped write or approved the wording.

Iowa is among a dozen states picked to receive shipments of the antiviral drug remdesivir for use in treating patients hospitalized for novel coronavirus, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced on May 9. Our state will receive ten cases, which works out to 400 vials of the medication.

Governor Kim Reynolds implied at her latest news conference that when federal officials approved the shipment, they didn’t understand the reasons Iowa’s COVID-19 case counts have been rising. Publicly available information does not support that explanation.

The Iowa Department of Public Health launched a new version of the state’s website for information and statistics on novel coronavirus on May 7.

The updated coronavirus.iowa.gov replaces a dashboard officials rolled out less than a month ago. That site debuted a demographic breakdown of COVID-19 cases and more details than had previously been available about hospital usage by region.

At her May 7 news conference, Governor Kim Reynolds said the latest changes were designed to make it easier for Iowans to access data about the virus.

After the jump I’ve reviewed what struck me as the most significant changes, for better or worse. My list isn’t exhaustive, so I encourage readers to spend some time exploring the website.

Iowa Republicans were too clever by half when they slipped language targeting Planned Parenthood into a budget bill last year. Instead of prohibiting state agencies from awarding sex education grants to all entities that provide abortions, GOP lawmakers wrote an exception into the law so that UnityPoint facilities could remain eligible for the funding.

For that reason, a Polk County District Court determined this week that the prohibition violated the Iowa Constitution’s equal protection guarantee.

Karl Keeler, president of MercyOne Central Iowa Medical Center, told staff during a May 5 information session that “We have a lot of work to do” to stay safe from novel coronavirus, since Iowa is among five states with the highest level of community spread. The hospital group has adopted new rules requiring patients and visitors as well as staff to wear masks at its facilities.

Keeler also said the 77 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 infections at MercyOne’s Des Moines and West Des Moines facilities as of May 5 was “the highest we’ve had.” The number of Iowans in the hospital because of coronavirus has steadily climbed, reaching a new statewide high of 414 on May 6.

A disproportionate number of African Americans and Asians are among the 188 Iowans who have died due to novel coronavirus, according to figures the Iowa Department of Public Health published for the first time on May 4.

Religious institutions across Iowa are now allowed to hold large services, under Governor Kim Reynolds’ latest proclamation related to novel coronavirus, which took effect on May 1. While most churches declined to schedule in-person services for this Sunday morning, some are looking at ways to modify their space or practices in order to resume face-to-face worship soon.

In mid-March, the governor temporarily prohibited religious or spiritual gatherings of more than ten people. Her April 27 order lifted that ban, provided that houses of worship “implement reasonable measures […] to reduce the risk of transmission of COVID-19 consistent with guidance issued by the Iowa Department of Public Health.” Among other things, the department recommends that people practice good hygiene and adjust the layout so congregants not from the same household can “sit at least six feet apart.”

That advice is insufficient to keep those carrying the virus from infecting others.

One of the country’s largest Democratic-aligned political action committees announced its first Iowa legislative endorsements for the 2020 cycle this week.

Iowa Workforce Development Director Beth Townsend acknowledged on April 30 that Iowans who refuse to go back to their jobs because of unsafe working conditions will not automatically be excluded from receiving unemployment payments.

However, she warned that “it takes more than a mere assertion by the employee” to qualify for benefits under those circumstances.

A great scoop by Lachlan Markay prompted U.S. Senator Joni Ernst’s campaign to back down on a “subtle accounting maneuver” used to avoid “reporting the names of the campaign staffers on her payroll, how many of those staffers there are, and the extent of payments they’ve received.”

Democratic State Representative Bruce Bearinger will not seek re-election after all.

According to an April 28 news release from Iowa House Democrats, Bearinger “has been selected as the new Dean of Agriculture, Animal Science, and Business Technologies at Northeast Iowa Community College.” He will serve out his current term in the legislature but will withdraw his candidacy after the June primary.

House district 64 was already a top-tier target for Republicans, who recruited a strong candidate in Chad Ingels. When I previewed this race last month, I gave a slight edge to Bearinger, who has consistently outperformed the top of the Democratic ticket.

For weeks, Governor Kim Reynolds told reporters at her daily news conferences that “data” and “metrics” informed her approach to slowing the spread of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) in Iowa.

That narrative flew out the window on April 27, when she unveiled her plan to lift some mitigation measures statewide and allow many kinds of businesses to reopen in 77 Iowa counties, effective May 1.

Reynolds and Dr. Caitlin Pedati, the state medical director and epidemiologist, sought to spin the new policy as “evidence-based.” In reality, they are betting Iowans’ lives on the potential for data collection that has barely begun.

“If China hadn’t covered up #Covid19, the effects of this pandemic could have been lessened,” U.S. Senator Joni Ernst posted on her political Twitter feed and Facebook page on April 25. “We need to hold China accountable.”

Her words were practically a carbon copy of how the National Republican Senatorial Committee has advised endangered GOP incumbents to discuss the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Nine Iowa Republican legislators released an open letter on April 24 applauding Governor Kim Reynolds’ plan “to open the state of Iowa for business as soon as possible,” so Iowans can get “back to a sense of normalcy in a timely fashion.”

The number of Iowans known to have died because of novel coronavirus infections reached 107 on April 24, as reported cases and deaths each hit new one-day highs.

COVID-19 has now claimed more Iowa lives than all foreign military conflicts of the last three decades.

Iowa’s confirmed novel coronavirus infections have sharply increased since the state expanded testing late last week. As hundreds of new cases were identified among employees of meatpacking plants, the share of Iowans with COVID-19 who are people of color also rose.

“I do want to encourage every Iowan to go to TestIowa.com and take the assessment,” Governor Kim Reynolds said as she rolled out a program to increase the state’s coronavirus testing capacity during an April 21 news conference. The governor announced the following day that more than 80,000 Iowans had completed an initial assessment during the first 24 hours the website was online.

However, the online survey at the new site is not accessible to all Iowans in high-risk groups for COVID-19 infections and complications. Representatives of the governor’s office and Iowa Department of Public Health did not respond to Bleeding Heartland’s repeated questions about barriers to taking the survey.

The Iowa Department of Public Health has refused to disclose the state’s pandemic emergency response plan, Barbara Rodriguez reported for the Des Moines Register on April 20.

Bleeding Heartland has tried without success to obtain the department’s current guidance on rationing ventilators, should that become necessary in Iowa hospitals.