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Iowa’s senior U.S. Senator visited business owners and residents impacted by flooding in eastern Iowa Friday. Republican Senator Chuck Grassley heard from community leaders in the cities of Davenport and Buffalo, which were hit by record high crests of the Mississippi River.
Grassley says he’s pushing for federal disaster aid in Congress. Senate leaders have set a deadline of Memorial Day.
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“We’re going to have a vote one way or the other, we should not go home for the Memorial Day recess, which is losing four working days in Washington, that…without having tried once again to get this bill passed one way or the other.”
The 17 billion dollar package would include funding for western Iowa, communities impacted by wildfires in California, and additional aid for hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico. Partisan fights over the funding for the island territory have stalled previous attempts to pass the bill.
Iowa's Supreme Court on Friday narrowly upheld a 2017 law that took away bargaining rights for many state employees, an early signal of the court's new conservative majority solidified by two recent appointments by Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds.
In cases filed by the Iowa State Education Association and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees the divided court ruled 4-3 that the law withstands constitutional challenges and will remain in effect.
The law rewrote the state code that had been in place for 40 years by drastically reducing the number of issues public employee unions could negotiate with state and local governments.
