Gazette Daily News Briefing, December 29
This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette Digital News Desk, and I’m here with your update for December 29, 2023.
There will be No exciting weather happenings on your last day of the week. According to the National Weather Service it will be partly cloudy in the Cedar Rapids area with a high of around 39 degrees.
An investigation has cleared a Delaware County sheriff's deputy who shot and injured an Illinois man who police believe had killed a Fareway employee in Monticello.
Delaware County Attorney John Bernau, in a news release, said Deputy Matt Menard’s actions “were reasonable and legally justified under Iowa law, and he will face no criminal liability.”
Nathan Russell, 39, of East Dubuque, Ill., was charged with first-degree murder, going armed with intent and being a felon in possession of a firearm in relation to the Nov. 7 shooting death of Aaron McAtee, 48, of Monticello. Russell has pleaded not guilty.
McAtee worked at Fareway and was outside near the loading dock early that morning when Russell is accused of driving by and opening fire. According to a criminal complaint, witnesses told police that McAtee was shot from a rifle pointed out the driver’s window of a black sedan with Illinois license plates.
Officers believed Russell was connected with the car because of interactions they’d had with him the night before.
After a search was launched, police say Russell fled into nearby Hopkinton, where he was found by Menard. The complaint states the deputy attempted to arrest Russell, but Russell was uncooperative and the deputy shot and wounded him.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis enlisted the help of conservative South Carolina state Sen. Josh Kimbrell, R-Spartanburg, in Iowa as he scrambles to head off Republican presidential rival Nikki Haley.
Haley, a former South Carolina governor and former United Nations ambassador, has gained ground in Iowa, the leadoff nominating state, pulling even with DeSantis for second place in recent polling of likely Republican Iowa caucusgoers.
DeSantis and Kimbrell stopped Thursday evening at Mr. Beans coffee shop in Marion, where they addressed and took questions from a crowd of less than 100 supporters and media.
“The reason I'm here today is because our state is a red state and it’s redder because of Gov. DeSantis being governor of Florida than Nikki Haley being the governor of South Carolina,” Kimbrell, who represents South Carolina’s deeply conservative Upstate region, told the crowd.
The Haley campaign responded with a verbal eyeroll as the candidates continue to bicker as they jockey for a likely second place..
“It’s sad to see Ron DeSantis stooping to such desperate, lame attacks, but nothing will save his dying campaign,” Haley campaign spokeswoman Nachama Soloveichik told CNN.
According to reporting from the Associated Press, Maine’s Democratic secretary of state on Thursday removed former President Donald Trump from the state’s presidential primary ballot under the Constitution’s insurrection clause, becoming the first election official to invoke the 14th amendment to remove Trump from a ballot.
The decision by Secretary of State Shenna Bellows follows a ruling earlier this month by the Colorado Supreme Court that removed Trump from the ballot there under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. That decision has been stayed until the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether Trump is barred by the Civil War-era provision, which prohibits those who “engaged in insurrection” from holding office.
Bellows made the ruling after some state residents, including a bipartisan group of former lawmakers, challenged Trump’s position on the ballot.
“I do not reach this conclusion lightly,” Bellows wrote in her decision. “I am mindful that no Secretary of State has ever deprived a presidential candidate of ballot access based on Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. I am also mindful, however, that no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection.”
Stay safe out there and I'll see you in 2024. It should be an interesting year.
