Gazette Daily News Briefing, June 14
This Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette Digital News Desk, and I’m here with your update for Wednesday, June 14.
It may not be summer, yet, but it's going to feel like it on Wednesday. According to the National Weather service it will be mostly sunny in the Cedar Rapids area on Wednesday with a high near 90 degrees. On Wednesday evening it will be partly cloudy, with a low of around 62 degrees.
According to reporting from the Associated Press, Donald Trump became the first former president to face a judge on federal charges as he pleaded not guilty in a Miami courtroom Tuesday to dozens of felony counts that he hoarded classified documents and refused government demands to give them back.
Trump approached his arraignment with characteristic bravado, posting social media broadsides against the prosecution from inside his motorcade and insisting as he has through years of legal woes that he has done nothing wrong and was being persecuted for political purposes.
But despite his swagger, he still will have to answer to 37 felony counts that accuse him of willfully retaining classified records that prosecutors say could have jeopardized national security if exposed, as well as trying to hide them from investigators who demanded them back.
Meanwhile, back in Iowa, drama continued for Iowa Democrats.
Mike Gronstal, a Democrat from Council Bluffs and former Iowa Senate majority leader, was asked to resign from his statehouse lobbying job for the Iowa State Building and Construction Trades Council after the organization learned of his involvement in Senate Democrats’ recent removal of Sen. Zach Wahls as their leader.
The Iowa State Building and Construction Trades Council is a collection of nine regional building trades councils that represents thousands of Iowa construction workers. The organization lobbies state lawmakers on proposed legislation related to the construction industry.
The nature of Gronstal’s involvement in Senate Democrats’ leadership change was not detailed by the council or made public by Senate Democrats. But the two longtime staffers who were fired had worked for Gronstal when he was majority leader.
The council asked for Gronstal’s resignation the next day.
The two staffers who were fired by Wahls — Erik Bakker and Deb Kattenhorn — have been rehired and are once again working for Iowa Senate Democrats, a caucus spokesman confirmed.
And one staffer who Wahls had hired, Kaity Patchett, was fired by Jochum. Patchett previously worked in the office of former Central Iowa U.S. Rep. Cindy Axne.
A portion of Tower Terrace Road in Cedar Rapids and Hiawatha, which has been closed for a little over a year for the construction of an interchange connecting the road to Interstate 380, is scheduled to open later this month.
A ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new interchange — a “diverging diamond” design — is scheduled for June 22, and the Iowa Department of Transportation is hoping to have the roadway open on or shortly after that date.
This will be Iowa’s third diverging diamond interchange, and the first on the east side of the state. Diverging diamond is an interchange design in which traffic switches to the left side of the roadway while crossing over the interstate, allowing those turning left onto the interstate a clean turn, rather than turning across incoming traffic.
