Gazette Daily News Briefing, December 1

The Gazette Daily News Podcast

This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette Digital News Desk, and I’m here with your update for December 1, 2023.

There will likely be rain and snow mix in the Cedar Rapids area on Friday. The National Weather Service prediction is for rain and snow before 9 a.m. and snow after. Looking at the day as a whole, the chance for precipitation appears to be most likely in the evening, especially between 4:00 and 9:00 p.m.

The high temperature will be around 37 degrees.

Penguin Random House, the Iowa State Education Association and some bestselling authors are suing the state of Iowa over a new law that bans books with sexual content from public school libraries, arguing the law violates First Amendment free speech rights.

The publishing giant filed the lawsuit in federal court Thursday, naming Iowa State Board of Education President John Robbins, Iowa State Department of Education Director McKenzie Snow and a number of local school districts and officials as defendants.

Bestselling authors including John Green, Jodi Picoult and Malinda Lo are named as plaintiffs. An anonymous high school student and a parent, along with three teachers, also joined the lawsuit.

It is the second lawsuit filed this week against the law. Iowa Safe Schools, an LGBTQ advocacy organization, along with the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, filed a separate federal lawsuit Tuesday challenging the law.

According to reporting from the Associated Press, U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst, a Republican from Iowa, was choking on food during a luncheon Thursday when fellow Republican U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky performed the Heimlich maneuver on her.

The Kentucky senator has some medical experience, as he formerly worked as an eye doctor.

The incident occurred during a closed-door Republican lunch in the U.S. Capitol. Shortly after, Ernst posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, to thank Paul. Ernst joked that she was choking on “woke policies” from Democrats.

All five ousted members of the Benton County Board of Health, who were let go without warning in October, are suing the county and its Board of Supervisors for violating Iowa law by going into improper closed sessions leading up to the terminations.

The board’s former members contend the county supervisors didn’t have any public meetings where they discussed terminating the health board or disbanding the panel, which would be required under Iowa Code Chapter 21, according to the petition.

The health board, whose members are appointed by the supervisors, oversees public health services in the county. For 29 years, those services were provided under an agreement with Virginia Gay Hospital in Vinton.

But last spring, the hospital ended that agreement effective in June.

According to the petition, the board terminations were connected to a county-based medical system the board proposed as an alternative — and that the supervisors had approved. The lawsuit asserts that system came with a higher price tag, but the supervisors blamed the health board for the expense,.