The Gazette Fact Checker

Iowa is emerging from a record-breaking COVID-19 surge that nearly pushed the state’s hospitals to the breaking point.

But according to Gov. Kim Reynolds, the novel coronavirus was not the sole reason for those high patient counts. The Republican governor told reporters at the Iowa State Capitol Feb. 9 that data is showing patients infected during this latest surge were more likely to be admitted to hospitals for reasons aside from COVID-19.

“At the height of our hospitalizations in November 2020, for 75 percent of hospitalizations, the primary reason was COVID-19,” Reynolds said. “Today, the number of hospitalizations primarily because of COVID-19 are under 50 percent.”

The Fact Checker team checks statements made by an Iowa political candidate/officeholder or a national candidate/officeholder about Iowa, or in ads that appear in our market.

Claims must be independently verifiable. We give statements grades from A to F based on accuracy and context.

If you spot a claim you think needs checking, email us at [email protected].

This episode of the Fact Checker podcast is researched and hosted by Michaela Ramm and features Elijah Decious, Erin Jordan, and Marissa Payne. The Fact Checker Podcast is produced by Stephen M. Colbert and music is Lobby Time by Kevin MacLeod.

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3986-lobby-time/

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

This week, The Gazette Fact Checker team dives into the meaning of "literally" and a tweet from the Iowa Senate Democrats: “@KimReynoldsIA is proposing a budget cut to the already underfunded Iowa State Patrol. Kim Reynolds and Iowa Republicans are literally the only ones proposing to defund the police.”

Read this fact check and others at thegazette.com/fact-checker.

The Fact Checker team checks statements made by an Iowa political candidate/officeholder or a national candidate/officeholder about Iowa, or in ads that appear in our market.

Claims must be independently verifiable. We give statements grades from A to F based on accuracy and context.

If you spot a claim you think needs checking, email us at [email protected].

This episode of the podcast is researched and hosted by Erin Jordan and features Marissa Payne and Michaela Ramm. The Fact Checker Podcast is produced by Katie Brumbeloe, and music is "Lobby Time" by Kevin MacLeod.

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3986-lobby-time/

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Iowa Sen. Mike Klimesh, R-Spillville, wrote in a Jan. 14 legislative newsletter about legislative proposals to ensure Iowans “keep more of their hard-earned money.” Democrats have criticized these plans as disproportionately benefiting higher wage earners.

Gov. Kim Reynolds has proposed a 4 percent flat tax rate, which would be less than half the current top Iowa income tax rate if approved. The House and Senate have both unveiled different packages that staff estimate would provide $1.7 billion and nearly $2 billion in tax relief, respectively. Those both carry higher price tags than Reynolds’ $1.6 billion proposal.

The governor’s proposal also calls for a gradual reduction in the corporate tax rate each year revenue surpasses $700 million, until the top rate is 5.5 percent. The Senate proposed a five-year gradual reduction of the top rate from 9.8 percent to 7.8 percent, while the House plan does not make any changes.

“Data has long shown the states with low or no income tax grow more quickly than states with high, punitive tax rates,” Klimesh wrote.

The Fact Checker team checks statements made by an Iowa political candidate/officeholder or a national candidate/officeholder about Iowa, or in ads that appear in our market.

Claims must be independently verifiable. We give statements grades from A to F based on accuracy and context.

If you spot a claim you think needs checking, email us at [email protected].

This episode of the podcast is researched and hosted by Marissa Payne and features Elijah Decious, Erin Jordan, and Michaela Ramm. The Fact Checker Podcast is produced by Stephen M. Colbert and music is Lobby Time by Kevin MacLeod.

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3986-lobby-time/

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

As social justice movements and multiple high-profile trials have brought increased scrutiny to law enforcement officers, some lawmakers and citizens alike have voiced more support for law enforcement and empathy with the challenges of the positions.

Republican U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa was among those calling on Americans to “back the blue” on Jan. 14, when he tweeted about the number of police killed on the job in 2021.

The Fact Checker team checks statements made by an Iowa political candidate/officeholder or a national candidate/officeholder about Iowa, or in ads that appear in our market.

Claims must be independently verifiable. We give statements grades from A to F based on accuracy and context.

If you spot a claim you think needs checking, email us at [email protected].

This episode of the Fact Checker podcast was researched and hosted by Elijah Decious, and features Erin Jordan, Michaela Ramm and Marissa Payne. The Fact Checker Podcast is produced by Stephen M. Colbert and music is Lobby Time by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3986-lobby-time/

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

With the start of a new year comes reflections of the past year, and many lawmakers highlighted their accomplishments in 2021.

Iowa’s U.S. Rep. Cindy Axne was among them, touting her accomplishments for 2021 in an end-of-year report published Dec. 21. The Democrat representing Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District listed her legislative accomplishments, including bills signed into law and grants awarded to Iowans. We’ll look into four of the claims Axne makes in the report.

The Fact Checker team checks statements made by an Iowa political candidate/officeholder or a national candidate/officeholder about Iowa, or in ads that appear in our market.

Claims must be independently verifiable. We give statements grades from A to F based on accuracy and context.

If you spot a claim you think needs checking, email us at [email protected].

This episode of the Fact Checker podcast is researched and hosted by Michaela Ramm and features Elijah Decious, Erin Jordan, and Marissa Payne. and produced by Stephen M. Colbert. Music is Lobby Time by Kevin MacLeod.

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3986-lobby-time/

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Gov. Kim Reynolds’s 2022 Condition of the State address Tuesday night was 48 minutes and covered topics ranging from education and the environment to technology and taxes.

Some statements drew cheers, while others might have angered listeners. The Fact Checker checks only verifiable claims — so if the governor expressed an opinion or a made a vague statement that can’t be proved, we didn’t check it. The Gazette Fact Checker checked 10 claims for accuracy.

Read the full fact check: Fact checking 10 claims in Reynolds’ Condition of the State

Support for this podcast is provided by New Pioneer Food Co-op. Celebrating 50 years as Eastern Iowa’s source for locally and responsibly sourced groceries with stores in Iowa City, Coralville and Cedar Rapids; and online through Co-op Cart at newpi.coop.

The Fact Checker team checks statements made by an Iowa political candidate/officeholder or a national candidate/officeholder about Iowa, or in ads that appear in our market.

Claims must be independently verifiable. We give statements grades from A to F based on accuracy and context.

If you spot a claim you think needs checking, email us at [email protected].

This Fact Checker podcast is produced by Katie Brumbeloe, and the music is "Lobby Time" by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3986-lobby-time/

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The end of the year brought several Iowa politicians touting their accomplishments in 2021. U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson tweeted Dec. 28: “This year I helped lead the charge against the Administration’s proposal to pay some illegal immigrants $450,000 after they broke our laws.”

The 1st District Republican representative’s tweet linked to a Nov. 3 opinion piece she wrote in the Washington Times. In it, Hinson said she was “disturbed, but frankly unsurprised” to learn the Biden administration “has a plan in the works to pay individuals who tried to enter our country illegally $450,000 — each.” The payouts could cost nearly $1 billion, Hinson said.

Hinson does not mention in her opinion piece what the payouts would be for, and the only hyperlinks in the online story go to the Times’ collection of other stories about the Biden administration.

The Fact Checker team checks statements made by an Iowa political candidate/officeholder or a national candidate/officeholder about Iowa, or in ads that appear in our market.

Claims must be independently verifiable. We give statements grades from A to F based on accuracy and context.

If you spot a claim you think needs checking, email us at [email protected].

This episode of the Fact Checker Podcast is researched and hosted by Erin Jordan and features Michaela Ramm and Marissa Payne.

The Fact Checker podcast is produced by Stephen M. Colbert and the music is Lobby Time by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3986-lobby-time/

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Support for this podcast is provided by New Pioneer Food Co-op. Celebrating 50 years as Eastern Iowa’s source for locally and responsibly sourced groceries with stores in Iowa City, Coralville and Cedar Rapids; and online through Co-op Cart at www.newpi.coop.

A deadly school shooting near Detroit once again has sparked debate over tightening gun control measures at the federal level, as lawmakers split largely along party lines over how to keep the weapons out of the hands of the wrong people and improve safety while protecting Second Amendment rights.

After a Nov. 30 shooting at Oxford High School in Michigan, when 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley is accused of opening fire and killing four people and injuring seven, the Iowa Democrats — the verified Twitter account of the Iowa Democratic Party — took to the platform to point fingers at Republican U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, who is seeking re-election in 2022, for not taking sufficient steps to stop gun violence.

To read the full Fact Checker and past checks, visit thegazette.com/fact-checker

The theme music is Lobby Time by Kevin MacLeod

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Bonus episode for our Gazette Fact Checker podcast listeners. Hear this week's On Iowa Politics podcast.

On this week’s edition of the On Iowa Politics Podcast, reporters discuss Iowa Senate Republicans’ effort to ban some LGBTQ books in schools, U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley’s GOP primary issues, Iowa Auditor Rob Sand running for reelection instead of governor and Davenport Sen. Roby Smith running for state treasurer.

On Iowa Politics is a weekly news and analysis podcast that aims to re-create the kinds of conversations that happen when you get political reporters from across Iowa together after the day's deadlines have been met.

This week’s show is hosted by The Gazette’s James Lynch and features Amie Rivers of the Waterloo Cedar-Falls Courier, Tom Barton of the Quad-City Times, Lee newspapers Statehouse Bureau chief Erin Murphy, and Gazette opinion editor Todd Dorman.

The show was produced by Katie Brumbeloe, and the music heard on the podcast is courtesy of Iowa bands Copperhead and Milk & Eggs.

Each year at the holidays, agricultural organizations report on how much a turkey dinner and all the fixings will cost. This year, that price tag ballooned as supply-chain breakdowns and other factors have caused inflation.

Republicans have been eager to blame rising prices on Democratic President Joe Biden, and an animated video tweeted Nov. 23 by U.S. Joni Ernst of Iowa does just that.

“Let’s tally up the cost of your Thanksgiving trip,” Ernst narrates as we see a cartoon Biden using a bike pump to inflate the words “Thanksgiving trip” until the words explode.

Claims are peppered through the video like bits of celery in your favorite stuffing:

“Gas is at a seven-year high,” Ernst says, as the screen says “$63.08 to fill the tank.”

“Heating bills this winter are jumping up by 54 percent,” Ernst says.

“The price for turkeys this year has nearly doubled,” she says as we see a label saying “$55.20 for a 16-pound turkey.“

The Fact Checker team checks statements made by an Iowa political candidate/officeholder or a national candidate/officeholder about Iowa, or in ads that appear in our market.

Claims must be independently verifiable. We give statements grades from A to F based on accuracy and context.

If you spot a claim you think needs checking, email us at [email protected].

Members of the Fact Checker team are Erin Jordan, Michaela Ramm and Marissa Payne. This Fact Checker was researched and written by Erin Jordan.