CLINTON — In sweltering noon-day heat at a park in Clinton, about 100 people showed up for the newly minted Democratic ticket for governor. And the man at the top of the ticket, Fred Hubbell, confessed he may not be the main attraction.

Not here. Not today.

"I am smart enough to know you're not all here to see me," the retired Des Moines businessman said.

Indeed. Hubbell's selection of state Sen. Rita Hart, a Wheatland Democrat, over the weekend to be his running mate has charged up Clinton County Democrats.

Dozens of them showed up at the kickoff for the new ticket, crowding into the party's small headquarters before they had to move across the street to a park.

Read more: https://qctimes.com/news/local/government-and-politics/hart-and-hubbell-stump-in-clinton-county/article_d89d0865-b14c-5db5-bcb9-01a2888ea3fb.html

IOWA CITY — Two years after the American Association of University Professors placed the University of Iowa on its ignominious list of sanctioned higher education institutions over the hiring of UI President Bruce Harreld, it changed course last weekend and lifted the blackball — now offering praise to the university.

During the association’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C., delegates voted to remove the UI from the list, citing progress in relations between its faculty and the Board of Regents.

“Recent reports from multiple faculty members described the current state of faculty-board relations at Iowa as the best in the past twenty years or more,” according to an AAUP news release.

The AAUP has placed the UI on its sanctioned list following the contentious regents’ decision to hire former IBM businessman Bruce Harreld as the school’s president.

Read more: http://www.thegazette.com/subject/news/education/university-of-iowa-leaves-sanction-list-school-was-added-to-following-controversial-presidential-hire-of-bruce-harreld-20180618

Newspaper publisher Tronc Inc., whose name was widely ridiculed after its debut two years ago, is considering abandoning the moniker, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Executives have discussed the idea but no decision has been made, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are private.

In June 2016, while fighting a hostile takeover bid from Gannett Co., Tribune Publishing Co. announced it was renaming itself Tronc, which stands for Tribune Online Content, to reflect its new digital ambitions. The name sparked ridicule online, with the entertainment site Deadline asking, “Is ‘Tronc’ The Worst Corporate Brand Name Ever?”

In a story published Saturday, Patrick Soon-Shiong, Tronc’s second-largest shareholder, told the Los Angeles Times that he hoped to convince the board to replace the Tronc moniker.

Read more: http://www.thegazette.com/subject/news/nation-and-world/tronc-is-said-to-consider-changing-widely-mocked-corporate-name-source-says-20180618

Students planning a gun control event in Sioux City on Wednesday will memorialize the dead as much as they call for change to public policy.

Survivors from Parkland, Florida, where 17 people died in a February mass shooting, will bring their political movement to three Iowa communities this week.

Emma González, a survivor of the shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School and national figure in the March for Our Lives movement, will be with a group of students hosting a candlelight vigil Wednesday and Thursday in Sioux City for victims of gun violence.

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The vigil is planned in U.S. Rep. Steve King's district, putting students in the backyard of one of the country's most fervent supporters of gun rights.

Read more: https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/education/2018/06/18/emma-gonzalez-iowa-steve-king-david-hogg-march-our-lives/710198002/

THOR, Ia. — Two bachelor farmer brothers lived together much of their lives on a small farm in Humboldt County. They were friendly, if a bit reserved. Not many folks knew them well, so the word "reclusive" was tossed around.

Palmer Larson died at age 86 in January 2012, and his brother Roger died at age 82 six months later.

One would not expect much to be heard about them again.

But they left a surprise: a legacy that is just now coming into full bloom.

Here, in the middle of one of the most heavily farmed counties in Iowa, where public land is scant, the Larson brothers left 150 acres of highly productive land to the state to establish a prairie and wetland. Three Rivers Wildlife Management Area immediately became the largest wildlife area in Humboldt County, but it left some scratching their heads.

Read more: https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/2018/06/18/iowa-bachelor-farmer-brothers-native-prairie-three-rivers-wildlife-management-area/695386002/

A woman accidentally shot to death in front of her toddler by a Burlington police officer — in a scene caught on video that remains hidden from the public — will be paid $2 million as part of a wrongful death settlement that alleged a cover-up.

Autumn Steele, 34, was fatally shot in January 2015 by Officer Jesse Hill, who had been responding to a domestic disturbance and said he had fired his gun in part to fend off an attacking dog.

Burlington Police, the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation and the Des Moines County Attorney have refused to release more than a 12-second clip of the footage captured on Hill’s body camera during the shooting.

The family and the Burlington Hawkeye newspaper have fought for more than three years for the public release of the full video in a separate and ongoing case before the Iowa Public Information Board.

Read more: https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/crime-and-courts/2018/06/18/burlington-police-shooting-autumn-steele-jesse-hill-wrongful-death-settlement/709794002/

The family of an Orange City woman who died while receiving a CT scan at a health center three years ago has been awarded a $29.5 million verdict.

A Sioux County jury awarded the verdict Wednesday to the family of 40-year-old Carrie DeJongh, who died on June 9, 2015, at the Sioux Center Community Health Center.

DeJongh was at the center to receive a CT scan. She had an allergic reaction to the contrast dye given to her for the scan and went into anaphylactic shock and lost consciousness, said one of her attorneys, Nicholas Rowley.

Roy Slice, the doctor administering the scan, gave DeJongh Benadryl, but failed to immediately take her vital signs and did not administer epinephrine, which could have reversed her anaphylactic shock, Rowley said.

Read more: https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/crime-and-courts/2018/06/13/jury-awards-29-5-m-verdict-womans-death-medical-malpractice-case/699854002/

Polk County routed $844,000 in public money to nine Catholic schools and one Christian academy in 2012 and 2013 — despite state law and county policies that prohibit public funding for religious institutions.

The county paid out the money in the form of grants to a corporation set up to pass the money on to the schools, a Des Moines Register investigation has found.

The corporation's founder wrote the county Board of a Supervisors, notifying them of the Catholic schools that would receive grant money.

The money was derived from Polk County’s share of gambling revenue generated by the Prairie Meadows Casino and Hotel.

Read more: https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/investigations/2018/06/17/polk-county-iowa-private-schools-money-nonprofit-company-law-violation-john-mauro/641795002/

State Rep. Ilhan Omar won the DFL Party endorsement on Sunday in the crowded race to fill U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison's seat in Congress.

Omar, a first-term state lawmaker from Minneapolis who has quickly gained national media attention as the first Somali-American to serve in a state legislature, won the three-way endorsement contest after two rounds of voting. She told a cheering crowd of supporters that she is excited to build on the momentum from the party convention as she heads toward a competitive August primary election.

"I am ready for all of us to go out tomorrow and door-knock and continue to have conversations with the people of Congressional District Five," she said.

The endorsement is functionally a symbolic gesture, since all five DFL candidates in the race will appear on the Aug. 14 primary ballot, and the three who participated in Sunday's endorsement convention in Minneapolis — Omar, state Sen. Patricia Torres Ray and real estate broker Frank Drake — all said they intended to continue with their campaigns with or without the party's endorsement.

Read more: http://www.startribune.com/dfl-meets-sunday-to-endorse-candidate-for-ellison-s-congressional-seat/485770022/#1

The Austin lawyer nominated by Democrats for state attorney general saw big-as-Texas significance in Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens announcing plans to resign.

Justin Nelson said in a tweet posted the day that Greitens announced he’d resign on June 1, 2018: "The Missouri Governor under indictment just quit. This means our Indicted Attorney General Ken Paxton is back to being the only statewide official in the country under indictment. Texans can make their decision to fire Indicted Ken Paxton in November."

Greitens, a Republican, revealed he’d resign weeks after being charged with felony computer tampering for allegedly using a list of donors to his charity, The Mission Continues, to raise campaign donations. As recapped by St. Louis Public Radio, that indictment occurred after KMOV-TV reported that the governor had had an extramarital affair and had allegedly taken a photo of the woman without her consent while she was bound and semi-nude. The governor, the woman said, then threatened to make the picture public if she talked about it. See Greitens’ resignation letter here.

Paxton, a former state legislator running for a second term as Texas attorney general, was indicted on charges of securities fraud in the summer of 2015 though the case has been mired in a dispute over how much several appointed prosecutors will be paid.

Read more: http://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2018/jun/07/justin-nelson/justin-nelson-ken-paxton-only-indicted-statewide-o/