Gazette Daily News Briefing, August 12
This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette digital news desk and I’m here with your update for Friday, August 12.
It appears all of the rain chances for Thursday got shifted back to Friday morning. According to the National Weather Service showers and thunderstorms will be likely in the Cedar Rapids area, mainly before noon. It will be mostly cloudy, with a high near 75 degrees. The overall chance for rainfall is listed at 60 percent. Friday night it will be partly cloudy, with a low of around 67 degrees.
There was some great news for a local arts organization.
The IRS has notified iconic Cedar Rapids arts organization CSPS that it has reinstated the group’s tax-exempt status, opening access to more funding sources as the nonprofit grapples with charting a long-term path toward sustainability.
“This is wonderful news for this important community arts organization as we enter a full season of programs to inform, entertain and transform,” CSPS board President Monica Vernon said in a statement.
CSPS previously was notified in July 2021 that its 501(c)(3) status, which allows the group to receive charitable contributions and access to certain grant funds, was automatically revoked for failing to file tax returns for three consecutive years from 2018 through 2020.
The failure to file those tax returns happened under previous CSPS staff and board members, after leadership changes and COVID-19 disruptions already had dealt the group a blow it worked to pay off more than $100,000 in debt.
Abortion would be illegal in Iowa after six weeks of pregnancy — often before the woman knows she is pregnant — if Gov. Kim Reynolds’ request to the Iowa courts is granted.
Reynolds filed a motion Thursday asking a state court to lift an injunction on legislation passed in 2018 that would have banned abortions in Iowa at six weeks. That bill, passed by the Republican-led Iowa Legislature and signed into law by Reynolds, was halted at the time by a district judge who cited a previous Iowa Supreme Court ruling that negated a 24-hour waiting period for an abortion.
But since the U.S. Supreme Court and Iowa Supreme Court earlier this year issued rulings that effectively repealed a pregnant person’s right to abortion access, Reynolds is asking the state courts to now lift the injunction on the six-week ban.
Currently, abortion is legal in Iowa through 20 weeks of pregnancy.
The Iowa Capitol Dispatch reports that drought conditions may be imminent for swaths of Iowa during an important period for corn growth.
Drought conditions are likely to develop over the southern half of Iowa in August as the month starts with a string of abnormally hot days with little chance for rain, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
The portion of the state that is abnormally dry or in varying degrees of drought expanded last week to more than half of the state. It’s the first time the dry area has been that large since April, when persistent rains delayed corn planting.
The latest Drought Monitor report released last week showed an expansion of severe and extreme drought in northwest Iowa and the extension of abnormally dry conditions across much of southern Iowa.
