Gazette Daily News Podcast, May 3

Tuesday will start rainy before gradually becoming more clear. According to the National Weather Service, rain from Monday night will carry over into Tuesday morning until around 10 a.m. It should reach a high of around 51 degrees, with the skies eventually shifting from mostly cloudy into mostly clear by Tuesday night. The low Tuesday night is predicted at 38 degrees.

Politico reported late Monday night that The U.S. Supreme Court is poised to strike down the landmark Roe v. Wade decision protecting women’s rights to abortion, according to a draft majority opinion circulated inside the court.

Politico said it obtained the initial draft majority opinion, which was signed by Justice Samuel Alito. The decision has not been released, yet, but this is in line with the way the majority of justices indicated they were leaning after they heard legal arguments on the subject last December.

The immediate impact of the ruling, as drafted in February, would be to end the half-century-old guarantee of federal constitutional protection of abortion rights and allow each state to decide whether to restrict or ban abortions.

Iowa Republican lawmakers have recently tried to restrict abortion several times before getting stopped up by court challenges. They indicated earlier this legislative session that such a decision by the Supreme Court would encourage them to try again, so they were content to wait until it arrived.

Bridge Under the Bridge is in search of a new location after Linn County notified the nonprofit it needed to move from its spot under the Eighth Avenue SW bridge where it has provided free hot meals to people in need since the 2020 derecho.

The organization formed after the Aug. 10, 2020, derecho pummeled Cedar Rapids was ordered to remove its equipment and food trailer from the site under Interstate 380 along Eighth Avenue SW, near the Linn County Juvenile Justice Center, after the county says a time frame lapsed for the couple to clean the site after numerous complaints from neighbors.

The nonprofit was offered a few different locations and will make an announcement later this week about a final selection,

The state will pay an $8 million settlement, believed to be one of the largest in state history, to the family of a Quad Cities-area man who was left unable to walk after being struck by an Iowa Department of Transportation snowplow blade in 2019.

The State Appeals Board approved the deal at its regular meeting Monday afternoon. The $8 million settlement is believed to be one of, if not the largest, in state history, according to spokespeople for multiple state agencies. It is more than the state panel approved for all settlements in the entirety of the 2021 state budget year, and also more than five of six fiscal years between 2013 and 2018.

According to state records, on Jan. 23, 2019, the blade of a snowplow owned by the Iowa DOT struck Terry Bunting, of Silvis, Ill., on Highway 67 in Scott County, causing serious injuries.

In 2019, Bunting told WQAD-TV in Davenport that he was on his mail route through LeClaire when his windshield wipers began freezing over. He pulled off the interstate and pulled over to clean his wipers. As he was returning to his truck, he was struck by the snowplow blade.