Iowa Capital Dispatch
June 25, 2026

The federal government is taking an Iowa dog breeder to court, seeking a court order that will allow inspectors onto the property for the first time since 2024.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is suing Wuanita Swedlund of Farmington for allegedly barring federal officials from conducting unannounced inspections of her dog-breeding operations.

According to the USDA’s lawsuit, licensed breeders are required, during business hours, to allow inspectors to enter their place of business to inspect and photograph the property, the animals and business records. The lawsuit alleges Swedlund has failed to provide the USDA’s APHIS inspectors with access to her facility the last five times they have visited the Farmington operation, all of which fell between November 2025 and May 2026.

Iowa Capital Dispatch
June 22, 2026

A judge has ordered the federal government to state why it has jailed, for almost two years, an immigration detainee now being held in the Muscatine County Jail.

A lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa by Mutasim Ibrahim Abdoulrahman Nour, a citizen of Sudan, against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Muscatine County sheriff seeks Nour’s immediate release as well as a court order preventing him from being transferred to a detention facility outside of Iowa while the case is pending.

The lawsuit alleges Nour entered the United States on July 7, 2024, and was immediately apprehended by ICE and placed in federal custody at the Freeborn County Detention Center in Albert Lea, Minn. In December 2025, Nour was transferred without warning to the Muscatine County Jail, where he now remains, the lawsuit alleges.

by Cami Koons, Iowa Capital Dispatch
June 17, 2026

Nearly 79% of students who used Iowa’s funding program for K-12 private schools were “already projected” to attend private schools, according to a report released Wednesday by Iowa Auditor Rob Sand. 

Iowa Department of Education called the report a “policy advocacy brief” that critiqued statutory provisions of the Iowa Education Savings Account (ESA) program.

Iowa’s ESA program provides funding to students to use on tuition and associated costs at private schools and had an estimated appropriation of $329.6 million for fiscal year 2026, according to the Legislative Services Agency. The auditor’s report said this means the state paid roughly $38,000, per student for the 20% of ESA program users who were not already projected to attend private schools. 

“The program itself, though, is still paying tuition for the wealthiest families in the state of Iowa, who can barely even feel the check that they write, and a lot of people who don’t mind doing it at all,” Sand said in a news conference Wednesday. 

Iowa Capital Dispatch
June 9, 2026

The Attorney Disciplinary Board of the Supreme Court of Iowa has sanctioned a former attorney for the City of Davenport for allegedly withholding information from select city aldermen.

Former Davenport City Attorney Thomas D. Warner violated professional ethics rules by excluding elected officials from critical financial settlement discussions and also by acting without authorization from the full Davenport City Council, the board recently concluded.

The board’s order of public reprimand states that, as the city’s attorney, Warner had intentionally communicated only with select city council members, opting to exclude others from settlement discussions before entering into agreements exceeding $50,000 without obtaining the approval that’s required by law.

by Kadin Luhmann, Iowa Capital Dispatch
May 18, 2026

Three environmental groups are suing the Trump administration over the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to remove seven Iowa waterways from the state’s Impaired Waters List.

Food and Water Watch, the Iowa Environmental Council (IEC)  and the Environmental Law and Policy Center are asking the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa to order that the EPA relist the seven bodies of water, or require the EPA to issue a final determination.

The IEC said the EPA had previously determined that parts of the Cedar, Des Moines, Racoon, Iowa and South Skunk rivers were contaminated with dangerous nitrate levels months before the waters were removed from the agency’s list in July 2025.

Davenport-based Lee Enterprises, Inc. – owner of the QC Times and Daily Dispatch/Argus – has a new CEO, a new chief financial officer, several new board members and a new majority owner.

The initial financial results, however, look very much the same: declining revenues and negative earnings.

The company's second quarter results – a loss of $2.2 million – were an improvement from a year ago – a loss of $12.6 million.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced Monday (5/4/26) it will conduct comprehensive reviews of cleanup work beginning this spring at four Superfund sites, including the Arconic (formerly Alcoa) Davenport Plant site in Riverdale and the Mississippi River Pool 15.

The sites undergo a review every five years to ensure ongoing or completed remediation efforts continue to protect human health and the environment, according to the EPA news release. "Upon completion of the review, EPA will make a Five-Year Review Report available on the Superfund Site Profile page," the EPA stated.

by Brooklyn Draisey, Iowa Capital Dispatch
April 30, 2026

Both chambers of the Iowa Legislature have approved education appropriations legislation for fiscal year 2027, with Democrats decrying what they called straying priorities and a lack of will to fully support Iowa’s students.

House File 2783, as amended in the House to reflect agreement with the Senate, would allocate more than $1 billion to Iowa’s education systems, representing a 1% increase in the budget but keeping funding for the Iowa Board of Regents and Iowa Tuition Grant program flat for the upcoming fiscal year.

Sen. Mike Zimmer, D-DeWitt, thanked his predecessors for investing in public education when he was in high school, as it was the only reason he was able to go to college. He’s paid that investment back several times over, he said, through living, working and raising a family here.

“We didn’t view this as an expense, we viewed it as an economic development to keep people in Iowa,” Zimmer said. “And when I look at the funding that’s in here now, it’s certainly not indicative of looking at Iowans as an investment, it looks at, more as, Iowans as an expense.”

Iowa Capital Dispatch
April 28, 2026

A federal judge has cleared the way for ICE officials to deport a Bolivian asylum-seeker from Iowa to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Noting that José Yugar-Cruz is part of a class of people for whom the Supreme Court has twice issued orders lifting injunctions that prohibited such deportations, U.S. District Judge Stephen H. Locher ruled this week that he had “little choice” but to deny Yugar-Cruz’s motion to have the court block his removal from the United States.