Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
Colorado gubernatorial candidate Tom Tancredo, a fixture in Iowa during his failed bid for president in 2008, told CNN Tuesday that if he is elected he would trigger a court fight by denying public education to immigrant children in the country illegally, echoing a position held by Iowa GOP gubernatorial hopeful Terry Branstad.
Last month, Branstad said a 1982 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that struck down a Texas statute denying funding for education to children who were illegal immigrants needed to be overturned. The court found that the Texas policy was in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, as immigrant children are people “in any ordinary sense of the term,” and therefore had protection from discrimination unless a substantial state interest could be shown to justify it.
Branstad said, “it’s not a good decision and it should be overturned.”Tancredo takes the position one step further, saying he would immediately cut off all undocumented children from receiving public education, which would “immediately start a lawsuit just like that and hopefully it would get to the Supreme Court right away.”
Branstad has stopped short of saying he would formally challenge the ruling or take Tancredo’s position of provoking a lawsuit by ignoring it. His campaign did not respond to a request for comment by The Iowa Independent Wednesday morning.
Branstad’s position was greeted with outrage by immigrants-rights activists, who said denial of things like basic education, police protection and emergency health care to any segment of society has ripple effects for everyone.
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