South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg twice caused police officers to hit their brakes to avoid his errant driving in the months before he struck and killed a pedestrian in 2020. The Highway Patrol’s scrutiny of the attorney general’s driving record is coming to light ahead of the House meeting next week. Lawmakers will consider a majority report from a Republican-controlled impeachment investigation committee that recommended he not be impeached. However, Gov. Kristi Noem is pushing for Ravnsborg’s ouster. The Highway Patrol is offering a public briefing for lawmakers on Wednesday.
The leader of the South Dakota House says impeachment proceedings into Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg will cost state taxpayers at least $87,000.
The South Dakota Department of Public Safety will hold a public briefing for lawmakers Wednesday about the investigation in a deadly crash in 2020 where Ravnsborg hit and killed a man walking along a highway.
The briefing comes before the House of Representatives is scheduled to convene on April 12 to consider whether Ravnsborg should be impeached.
Last week, the House Select Committee issued a formal recommendation that Ravnsborg should not face impeachment.
Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley is a “no” on President Biden’s nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Radio Iowa Reports Grassley said he and Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson have “fundamentally different views on the role judges should play.” In written remarks prepared for delivery at the Senate Judiciary Committee meeting, Grassley described one of Jackson’s rulings as “extreme” and he said Jackson’s “approach to criminal law and sentencing” is too lenient.
Grassley also accused the Senate’s Democratic Leader of opposing Republican President George W. Bush’s nominees to the high court on ideology alone, so Grassley said that means he and other Republicans in the Senate no longer need to “defer” to a Democratic president’s choices for the Supreme Court and vote yes if that person is qualified.
Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee are voting on Judge Jackson today. The full Senate will vote on the nomination this week.
Two GOP lawmakers who are working on changes to Iowa’s bottle deposit law say if they can’t fix it, they may consider repealing it.
House and Senate Republicans have competing proposals to allow grocery stores to stop accepting bottles and cans. They’d also give more money to redemption centers and allow beverage distributors to keep the money from unredeemed containers.
Republican Senator Jason Schultz of Schleswig says he’s meeting with the House to try to reach a deal. But he says if they can’t, quote, “we need to be looking at repeal.”
State and federal agriculture officials confirmed two more cases of bird flu in Iowa over the weekend.
The Iowa Department of Agriculture says bird flu struck a flock of 37-thousand commercial turkeys in Sac County and a commercial flock of nearly 15-thousand breeding chickens in Humboldt County.
The Siouxland Soup Kitchen plans to build a new facility in Sioux City. The charity is launching a campaign to raise money for a bigger space after outgrowing the current location on West 7th Street. The Sioux City Journal reports the new facility will be built at the corner of 9th and Nebraska Streets, near The Warming Shelter.
The Siouxland Soup Kitchen was founded in 1987 with the goal of addressing food insecurity in the community. The Soup Kitchen operates solely through donations and volunteers from local businesses, churches, and the community.
All of the birds are being killed to stop the virus from spreading.
Iowa has had 14 outbreaks of bird flu since March. More than 13 million chickens, turkeys and backyard birds have died in the state or been killed to stop the spread.
A 32-year rivalry between two Storm Lake newspapers ended after the Storm Lake Times Company recently purchased the Pilot-Tribune from Hallmark II Publishing of Charles City. The Sioux City Journal reports the terms of the sale, announced Friday, were not disclosed. But it will mean the Times and Pilot-Tribune will be merged into a single, twice-a-week publication called The Storm Lake Times Pilot. Art Cullen — who won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 2017 — will be editor and publisher. His brother, John, will be the president. The newspaper will be published on Wednesdays and Fridays, delivered by mail.