Gazette Daily News Podcast, November 11

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This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette digital news desk and I’m here with your update for Thursday, November 11.

Your Veterans Day forecast will feature less rain than Wednesday, but still will be breezy and colder as we transition into an end of the week that could bring the first snow of the year in some parts of Iowa.

According to a forecast from the National Weather Service, the rain should mostly cease by about 7 a.m. Thursday morning. The high will be 51 degrees with mostly sunny skies. A west wind will blow at around 15 mph, and could gust as high as 25 mph. The low will be about 34 degrees Thursday night.

Protests that enveloped the University of Iowa’s Phi Gamma Delta fraternity this fall caused more than $200,000 in damage to the chapter house and displaced 28 members for the semester.

Communications obtained by The Gazette through an open records request show UI officials reached out to the fraternity, which goes by FIJI, offering support in the immediate aftermath of the protests — which started Aug. 31 and went on for days, sparked by widely-publicized allegations that a pair of FIJI brothers last fall sexually assaulted a UI student and disseminated video of the attack.

Damage to the FIJI house from the raucous protests of more than 1,000 will require repair to 120-plus damaged windows, landscaping, a permanent gas grill, four doors and frames “at a cost of over $200,000,” according to an Oct. 15 email from FIJI Assistant Executive Director Todd Rotgers.

UI student Makena Solberg filed a civil lawsuit in late October against FIJI members Carson Steffen and Jacob Meloan alleging them of sexually assaulting her.

Iowa reported 9,067 new COVID-19 cases in the past week, pushing the total cases in Iowa to 500,119 since March 2020 when the virus first appeared in Iowa.

That total — up for the third week in a row — compares to 7,643 cases the previous week and 6,938 new cases the week before that. The rise in new cases could be tied to worsening weather, as cases had been dropping during the pleasant weather in mid October.

Statewide, Iowa’s seven-day positivity rate was 9.4 percent, an increase from the 8.5 percent reported last week.

Republican U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks will seek re-election in Iowa's newly-drawn 1st Congressional District in 2022, avoiding a potentially competitive and contentious race against Democratic incumbent U.S. Rep. Cindy Axne.

The move also sets up a potential GOP primary challenge.

The new 1st District covers much of Southeast Iowa, including Johnson, Cedar, Jones, Iowa, Washington, Keokuk, Louisa, Scott, Clinton and Muscatine counties, and includes 16 of the 24 counties Miller-Meeks currently represents.

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