SPM News

The Sioux City council will look at potentially throwing out the community’s pit bull ban. It was passed 11-years-ago. However, the city attorney says the ban doesn’t legally hold up and doesn’t comply with Fair Housing Regulations or the Americans with Disabilities act. Omaha's mayor says she supports a proposal to expand a tobacco tax to including vaping. The change would spur an estimated $1 million increase in the tobacco tax, which now raises about $3.5 million annually. Vaping retailers

10119 504 The national weather issued a freeze warning for tonight through tomorrow morning for parts of northeast Nebraska as temperatures are expected to dip into the 20s. The state is asking a Polk County judge to dismiss a second lawsuit challenging recent changes to the process for selecting Iowa Supreme Court justices and appeals court judges. Attorney Bob Rush argues this challenge is different from the first. His client Thomas Duff applied to be an appeals court judge, but the nominating

101019 504a Iowa and the Midwest have some of the starkest disparities in racial equality in the country. A new report from the Iowa Policy Project found patterns of segregation and discrimination are pervasive, impacting employment, homeownership, and school test scores and suspensions. State Representative Ras Smith from Waterloo says he’s very aware of these disparities, but he feels many white Iowans are not. Honestly, I think sometimes in our Midwest mindset of being very neighborly people,

101019 404 More than 16 percent of Iowa’s children are obese, that’s the latest from a new report by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. This is slightly above the national average of 15.3 percent. Jamie Bussel is the senior program officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. She says the report recommends changes to federal nutrition programs like SNAP as well as changes at the local level. State policymakers should be allowing cities and then county leaders with the flexibility to regulate

101019 304 A powerful winterlike storm moving through the Great Plains was closing schools and causing travel headaches in several states, authorities said today. However, in Siouxland, we should see temperatures in the 30s overnight with some drizzle. Winter storm warnings and watches stretched from Wyoming and Montana through western Nebraska and into the Dakotas and Minnesota. Forecasters said the storm packs strong winds and double-digit snowfall totals, along with blizzardlike conditions

Journalist and award winning author Bob Woodward spoke about the American presidency last night when he gave the annual Morningside College Waitt Lecture. Woodward and Washington Post colleague Carl Bernstein investigated President Richard Nixon’s actions against his Democratic opponents and Nixon’s downfall. Speaking with local journalists before the speech, Woodward talked about possible parallels in the impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says

Students at Western Iowa Tech Community College learned an important lesson on October 9, 2019; A lesson, about different walks of life. “Being Native American a lot of our stuff is specific and spiritually oriented.” Twenty-two-year-old Michael Shonie wears lavender nail polish on one hand along with white dangling earrings as he sits at a round table sharing his story with other about his age. “I’m talking about my experience being a two-spirited indigenous person in the modern world.”

100919 304 The United States and China are set to resume trade talks this week and Iowa’s senior senator wants to see some progress. Republican Chuck Grassley praised President Donald Trump’s efforts to pressure China to comply with World Trade Organization expectations. And Grassley says if the talks succeed at securing ways to enforce those rules, the whole world will benefit. I think this uncertainty of the trade settlement is affecting world trade, slowing down the world economy. And that’s

Driving around Sioux City you might have noticed brightly colored signs supporting nurses at MercyOne in Sioux City. They’re in the middle of a contract dispute with the hospital. Jennifer Beacom has been a nurse at Mercy for a dozen years. She’s part of the negotiating committee for the UFCW local 222 That’s the union representing the nurses at MercyOne. Beacom shared the latest on the situation with Siouxland Public Media New’s Sheila Brummer on Tuesday night, including her thoughts on safety

Coming up this week on The Exchange, We hear from Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds who was in Siouxland yesterday to open a new fiber-optic network center downtown. She also met up with teachers and students in a Western Iowa Tech program that teaches students how to build homes. It’s part of the Future Ready Iowa Initiative. A report on the needs of the nurses at Mercy One, who are involved in a contract dispute with their employer. We talk with a Siouxland native who has created an app to help