Gazette Daily News Podcast, June 10

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After a day of sustained rain Tuesday, there should be a little bit more rain on Wednesday, but nothing comparable in amount. According to the National Weather Service, there could be occasional showers in the Cedar Rapids area, mainly between 1:00 and 5:00 p.m. It will be fairly cold for mid June, with a high of 64 degrees, and winds could gust as high as 25 mph.

An 8 p.m. curfew put in place in the city of Coralville after a clash between a gathering of people and Coralville police a week ago has now been removed. This could be both a sign of the reduced tensions between protesters demanding racial justice and police, as well as a sign that those protesters had some effect, as removing the curfew was one of their demands. 

Further evidence of the influence of Black Lives Matter protests in the past week was shown by the city councils in both Cedar Rapids and Iowa City meeting on Tuesday to discuss demands presented to them by protesters. While no major changes have been made so far, both councils indicated an openness to both remove military type equipment from their police forces and to institute additional layers of oversight, such as empowered police review boards.

While daily death totals from COVID-19 had been going down in Iowa, Iowa's death total Tuesday jumped back up to 15, bringing the total of those dying from the disease since early March in the state to 629. In general, however, hospitalizations in the state continue to decrease every day.

Republicans in the Iowa Legislature began work Tuesday on a $7.85 billion state budget proposal for next fiscal year that they called a 'status quo' spending plan for much of state government. As Republicans control the House, Senate, and Governor's seat in Des Moines, it is mostly them negotiating with themselves at the moment. While the status quo is usually lower than many, especially those in education would like, considering the effect that COVID-19 has had on revenue collection, this year holding steady will likely be looked at as a win for many agencies, including the universities, who are already worried other economic factors such as reduced enrollment could necessitate cuts.

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