Sweeping cuts to the federal Health and Human Services Department could remove 10,000 jobs, including those working in a program that helps 6 million people nationally with utility payments assistance.
All the federal employees who work in the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, have been fired.
The Community Action Agency of Siouxland, in Sioux City, processes applications for local people, and its director said LIHEAP benefits for the current year won’t be cut off mid-year. Some families will receive $400 or more, in money that is directed to the utility companies.
Jean Logan told Siouxland Public Media on Thursday that, “At this point, it is business as usual for us.”
Logan said full funding of LIHEAP through the end of the fiscal year on September 30 is in place, but it is possible the federal changes could delay the last amounts of the funding getting distributed locally.
“There is a plan to ensure no disruption will occur if that happens,” she added.
Logan said the current period for applications runs through April 30, and she encouraged low-income people to apply at Community Action Agency, or other agencies in other Northwest Iowa counties. So far this year, 2,700 Woodbury County households have been approved for LIHEAP assistance.
*In other federal cuts impact news, National Weather Service offices in the region are seeing cuts.
President Trump's Department of Government Efficiency has dismissed hundreds of employees at the National Weather Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The NWS provides weather forecasts and warnings and employs roughly 12,000 people across the country.
As a result of the cuts, the National Weather Service in Sioux Falls is cancelling its in-person Skywarn Spotter classes.
NWS officials say part of the reason is due to a lack of staff, which is an upshot of funding cuts.
Skywarn Spotter classes train everyday citizens to identify severe weather and then pass that information to the NWS, whose personnel then gets the word out to people in affected areas.
Todd Heitkamp is the Meteorologist In-Charge for the Sioux Falls agency: “Due to staffing shortages not only in our office, but in surrounding offices, we really need to place the resources where they belong.”
In eastern Iowa, Ray Wolf is a retired meteorologist with the Quad Cities branch of the National Weather Service, and he said staffing shortages had been a chronic issue, even before the latest cuts.
There is no National Weather Service station in Sioux City.
*An Iowa House committee has advanced a bill that would give additional protections to people who refuse medical procedures during public health emergencies.
The bill would prohibit people from being denied service or losing their job among other protections if they refuse a medical service, such as a vaccine or a test that has received emergency use authorization – or requirements during a public health emergency.
Representative Megan Srinivas, a Democrat from Des Moines, said the bill goes too far by eliminating enforcement of some requirements needed to protect people, such as cancer patients.
“When we can't even say ‘hey, you can't come in because you're sick, or you have to test to make sure it's not the flu, before you expose a vulnerable patient in a setting when they need to feel safe,” Srinivas said.
Proponents of the bill say it would allow people like health care workers more freedom to refuse certain tests or vaccines without retaliation.
The bill is now eligible to come up for debate on the House floor. It has already passed in the Iowa Senate.
*In related news, it is uncertain how many Nebraskans have post-COVID, and doctors are still searching for answers.It's been a little more than five years since the World Health Organization identified COVID-19 as a pandemic.
There are still many unknowns about long-COVID, or post-COVID, the illness that causes long-lasting effects that persist more than 30 days after a COVID-19 infection.
Even four years after it opened, doctors at Nebraska Medicine’s Post-COVID clinic still estimate their patient numbers do not reflect the true number of Nebraskans affected by long-COVID.
The clinic sees approximately 20-25 post-COVID patients a month. The majority are from Nebraska, but patients also travel in from Iowa, South Dakota, Kansas and Missouri.
And with potential cuts from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, clinic director and associate professor of internal medicine Dr. Andrew Vasey said it’s uncertain how research for the illness will be impacted.
Vasey added that the varied symptoms of post-COVID also make it difficult for patients to understand what is affecting them. The illness can cause anything from dysfunction of the nervous system to extensive fatigue and what's known as "brain fog."
*Additionally, the Iowa House on Thursday declined to advance a bill shielding pesticide companies from certain health-related lawsuits ahead of a key legislative deadline.
House Speaker Pat Grassley says some House Republicans are concerned with the public perception of the bill, which he says is just about correctly labeling pesticides.
The bill narrowly passed the Senate last week. Republican Senate President Amy Sinclair says, quote, “The House can be entitled to their wrong opinion.” Statehouse leaders have various ways of reviving so-called “dead” bills later in the session.
