After the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, now Secret Service actions at that rally will get a hard look.
Iowa Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks said Monday that Congress will have “valid questions” about how the Secret Service performed at Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania.
“Having been in the military, there is always an after-action report,” Miller-Meeks said during a Radio Iowa interview.
“You want to know, you know, how was a shooter on the building? How did that occur? Why and how were they close to the perimeter?”
Miller-Meeks, who is a Republican, said she has “additional perspective” because her oldest brother was a Secret Service agent who guarded and traveled with Presidents Carter, Ford, Reagan and Bush before ending his career working at the Reagan Ranch in California.
Miller-Meeks said she’s heard directly from Iowans from both political parties who have expressed shock and horror after the shooting.
In a weekend statement, the Woodbury County Democratic Party echoed the comments of President Joe Biden. The party said “we are grateful to hear Former President Trump is safe and doing well,” while adding that it was “yet another tragic example of gun violence in our country.”
Miller-Meeks will be in Milwaukee with Iowa delegates at the Republican National Convention, when that takes place from Monday through Thursday. She anticipates there will be enhanced security at the event.
Northwest Iowa people who are delegates to the national convention are Republicans Shontelle Blair, of Sergeant Bluff, Jeff Taylor, of Sioux Center, Lynn Evans, of Aurelia, and Teresa Paulsud, of Danbury.
Additionally, tourism is down in the Iowa Great Lakes after heavy rains and high water forced officials to issue boating restrictions.
The Executive Director of Vacation Okoboji, Kylie Zankowski, estimates flooding has decreased tourism by 40-to-60 percent.
“We're a very seasonal community. So, we definitely depend on tourists coming here. And so, it's been a pretty big hit, especially hitting around the biggest holiday of the summer with the Fourth of July," Zankowski said.
Zankowski says some hotel occupancy was cut in half during the recent holiday. But she says there’s hope as water levels and quality continue to improve. Plus, the area offers other attractions, such as an amusement park, food, and entertainment.
The crowds attending a Saturday free concert in the Greenspace area was visibly less from usual sizes,
Juli Redig has been coming to the Iowa Great Lakes from Minnesota since she was the age of her grandchildren.
They visit Arnolds Park, where very few boats are out on the water due to a 5-mile per hour rule to preserve shoreline.
“We drove around the lake here in Okoboji and it’s just sad, sad to see everybody's boat dock, you know, up out of the water," Redig said.
Relatedly, officials say they are working to make sure that school districts impacted by flooding start on time in late August, about five weeks away.
Iowa Department of Education director McKenzie Snow says public school districts in Spencer and Rock Valley and the Rock Valley Christian School are dealing with extensive losses and damage.
Snow told KUOO News that those schools have lost instructional items, damaged buses, and learning spaces like libraries, band rooms and classrooms have been impacted by the late June flooding. Some students in Rock Valley and Spencer have had their homes completely damaged.
Snow said some progress has been made, but her agency has been working to locate portable classrooms in other school districts that can be transferred to Spencer and Rock Valley.
Last year, more than 2,000 students were enrolled in Spencer and the public schools in Rock Valley had just under 1,0000 students, plus there were 236 students enrolled in Rock Valley Christian School.
n other news, the campaign to put a South Dakota abortion rights measure before voters on the November ballot claimed a major victory Monday in state court.
Circuit Court Judge John Pekas ruled in favor of Dakotans for Health, the grassroots organization behind Amendment G.
He granted a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by anti-abortion group Life Defense Fund that sought to keep the measure from the ballot, according to South Dakota News Watch.
