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The Trump Administration has announced another round of payments for farmers, to compensate for lower commodity prices amid trade tensions with China. IOWA Agriculture Secretary Mike Naig said it’s needed because corn and soybean prices are below the cost of producing a crop.
The first set of payments are scheduled to be made in late July or early August, but the final calculations aren’t set. The payments to individual farmers will be based on the impact trade has had on corn and soybean prices in their county.
Survivors of natural disasters across the country, including Iowans recovering from flooding, are waiting for Congress to approve a disaster aid bill.
One of Iowa’s senators would like to see a bill free of partisan wrangling.
Republican Joni Ernst says the House disaster aid bill was dead-on-arrival in the Senate because it included partisan language, such as possible funding for Planned Parenthood. She says the Senate needs to act quickly to help those recovering from recent flooding as well as wildfires and hurricanes many months ago.
A Sioux City native who was sexually abused by a Catholic priest as a child is calling on the state to reform the amount of time victims have to report abuse.
Tim Lennon (LEN-nin) from the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests says that there’s no opportunity for victims in Iowa to get justice if they come forward about their abuse decades later. He says Iowa should have no time limit to file charges for sexual abuse.
((0523lennon 0:15)) The injury caused by sexual abuse is lifelong. I was raped and abused when I was 12. I’m 72. And every day that I wake up … it’s there.
Under state law, victims have 10 years after they turn 18 to file criminal charges.
State lawmakers have considered bills to remove the time limit, but they never made it through the Iowa House.
