Gazette Daily News Briefing, May 13 and May 14

Welcome to the weekend!

This is Stephen Colbert from the Gazette Digital News Desk, and I’m here with your update for Saturday, May 13, and Sunday, May 14, 2023.

There’s a chance of showers and thunderstorms all the way through this Mother’s Day weekend. According to the National Weather Service there will be showers and chance of a thunderstorm, particularly after 5pm on Saturday. Chances of showers and thunderstorms will persist through Sunday morning, with high chances of a thunderstorm again after 7pm on Sunday. 

Fortunately, expect Monday to kick off next week with a sunny day and a high of 74.

Iowa justices decide transgender care still covered by Medicaid 

Transgender rights advocates celebrated an Iowa Supreme Court decision Friday to leave in place a lower-court ruling that a 2019 amendment to the Iowa Civil Rights Act is unconstitutional.

The Iowa Supreme Court declined to offer its own ruling on the constitutionality of 2019 legislation that stated the Iowa Civil Rights Act does not require state or local governments to provide for gender transition surgery, calling the question “moot.”

The Supreme Court’s unanimous opinion, written by Justice Thomas Waterman, said the court declined to offer its own opinion of whether the changes made to the Iowa Civil Rights Act were unconstitutional because, in the case before them, the issues had been resolved — the state has complied with the lower court ruling and has paid for gender-transition treatments for Medicaid recipients, even while appealing that lower court ruling.

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy pitches raising the voting age to 25

Vivek Ramaswamy started an event on a swing through Iowa this week with a promise: “We’re not going to be angry tonight.”

“Tonight we're going to start a little curious,” he said.

The 37-year-old biotech entrepreneur from Ohio is making a long-shot, largely self-funded campaign for the Republican nomination for president.

And he’s doing it, in part, by lobbing hard-line conservative policies — including his suggestion in Dallas County on Thursday to institute “duty-based voting” for young adults between the ages of 18 and 24.

Ramaswamy’s proposal, which would require a constitutional amendment, would raise the voting age from 18 to 25, unless a person is in the military, a first responder or can pass the U.S. citizenship test.

It’s the latest of a number of proposals — dismantling the Department of Education, stationing the U.S. military at the southern border and using military force on Mexican drug cartels, and reversing affirmative action policies — that are part of his promise to take former President Donald Trump’s “America First” agenda “far further” by exerting presidential powers in ways Trump never did.

Johnson County reveals its first-ever greenhouse gas inventory finding a 28 percent decrease in emissions between 2010 and 2020, largely thanks to cleaner and more efficient energy usage

Some human activities release greenhouse gases — such as carbon dioxide and methane — that rise into the atmosphere and trap heat. They are causing the climate to change faster than ever before in known history.

“They genuinely are a threat to life on Earth,” said Becky Soglin, the Johnson County sustainability coordinator and project co-lead. “Because of those effects, we want to be able to reduce the emissions.”

The report has been in the works for about a year. She worked with staff from the University of Northern Iowa Center for Energy and Environmental Education to complete the inventory. First, they collected data from different sectors — like energy usage and road travel. Then, they calculated emission total from the data. And they finished the project by reviewing and interpreting their findings.

They found that the more than quarter decrease in emissions was largely due to residential, commercial and industrial energy being generated more by wind power than coal. Energy equipment also became more efficient. Emissions from the commercial and industrial energy sectors — the top contributors in 2010 — dropped by about half by 2020.

Have a good weekend, everyone.