The Globe Gazette's Top 10 Iowa stories of 2024

As 2024 comes to an end, The Globe Gazette looks back at some of the biggest, most important and most interesting news stories of the year. As many new laws took effect in the state and the entire country realigned its political makeup, politics dominate our year-end list. The choices are presented in chronological order and not by order of importance.

1: On Jan. 4, the nation’s first school shooting of the year occurred in Perry. Seventeen-year-old student Dylan Butler shot five students and three staff members, killing two.



He then killed himself. Butler fired 23 rounds in the commons area, where the high school and middle school connect and students were eating breakfast and leaving before-school activities. Sixth-grader Ahmir Joliff died that day, and Principal Dan Marburger died 10 days later from his injuries.

Marburger had confronted Butler, allowing many students to escape the area. APTOPIX School Shooting Iowa Police respond to Perry High School in Perry, Iowa, on Thursday. Police say there has been a shooting at the city's high school.

A few months later the Legislature passed a law allowing school districts to arm staffers, arguing educators wielding guns on school grounds could prevent situations like the Perry shooting. Gov. Kim Reynolds signed House File 2586 into law in April.

It’s unclear if any school districts have opted to allow staff to carry guns. Teachers and staff who want to carry firearms at school are required to go through a permit process that includes one-time, in-person legal training, emergency medical training and community training, as well as quarterly firearm training and a year of “live scenario” training. 2: In March, Reynolds’ priority of reshaping the state’s nine area education agencies became law.

The system provides special education and other education support services to school districts in the state. Gov. Kim Reynolds signs AEA bill Iowa Gov.

Kim Reynolds signs into law legislation that will alter the funding and operations of Iowa's nine area education agencies, and also set state funding for public schools and boost public teacher pay, during a bill-signing ceremony in the governor's formal office at the Iowa Capitol in Des Moines on March 27. In a stripped-down version of her initial proposal, AEAs will remain as the primary provider of special education in the state. When fully implemented, schools will be required to spend 90% of their special education funding with the AEAs while 10% will remain with the school district and can be spent elsewhere.

However, Iowa’s schools will eventually get all funding currently going to the AEAs for media and other education services. Those districts can then choose whether to contract with the AEA for those services, receive them elsewhere or use the money for other general fund purposes. The bill also increased the minimum pay for public school teachers, requiring schools to pay teachers at least $50,000 a year by the 2025-26 school year.

Teachers with at least 12 years of experience will be paid at least $62,000. 3: Caitlin Clark has held the state of Iowa in the palm of her hand since 2023, and the former Iowa Hawkeyes basketball star was the first overall pick in the 2024 WNBA draft in April and now plays for the Indiana Fever. The draft averaged 2.

45 million viewers – the most in WNBA history. CORRECTION WNBA Draft Basketball Iowa's Caitlin Clark, left, poses for a photo with WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert, right, after being selected first overall by the Indiana Fever during Monday's first round of the WNBA draft in New York. In her debut game with the Fever, she scored 20 points in a 92-71 loss to the Connecticut Sun and had 10 turnovers – the most in a debut in WNBA history.

Clark continued to break records. In the quarterfinal win over Penn State during the Big Ten tournament, she surpassed Stephen Curry’s college record for the most three-pointers in a single season by any Division I player, regardless of gender. On March 3, Clark set a new NCAA career scoring record when she surpassed long-standing record holder Pete Maravich's 3,667 points.

She ended her college career with 3,951 points. During her two final seasons at Iowa, Iowa games set several attendance and television viewership records. Some analysts call the increase of interest for women’s basketball the “Caitlin Clark effect.

” On Dec. 11, Clark was named Time Magazine’s Athlete of the Year, becoming the second female athlete in history to hold the title alongside Olympic gymnast Simone Biles. 4: Floods and tornadoes decimated Iowa in May and June, resulting in six deaths between.

An EF-4 tornado killed five people near Greenfield – about 40 miles southwest of Des Moines – on May 22. Another 35 people were injured in the town of 2,000, and dozens of structures flattened. The tornado reached maximum wind speeds of about 185 mph, just 15 short of an EF-5 tornado.

Winds of up to 318 mph were measured in a subvortex of the tornado by a Doppler on Wheels, making it the third tornado to ever been recorded to be over 300 mph. Just a month later, the northwest Iowa towns of Hawawrden, Rock Rapids, Rock Valley and Spencer all saw record-high river crests. During a multi-day heavy rainfall event, parts of southeastern South Dakota and northwest Iowa saw rain totals between 10 and 20 inches.

The Big Sioux River in Sioux City reached 45 feet, more than seven feet higher than the previous record. Hundreds of residents evacuated as their homes flooded. One man died in Spencer while trying to go around a barricade.

The railroad bridge connecting North Sioux City, South Dakota and Sioux City fell into the river. President Joe Biden approved a major disaster declaration for the flooded areas. 5: In June, the Iowa Utilities Board – now the Iowa Utilities Commission – approved an application from Summit Carbon Solutions to build a liquid carbon dioxide pipeline in Iowa after nearly a year-and-a-half review.

The ruling grants Summit the ability to use eminent domain to force property owners to allow construction crews access to their land to build and maintain the pipeline that will span 29 Iowa counties. The proposed 2,500-mile, $8 billion pipeline would transport CO2 emissions from 57 ethanol plants in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota for underground storage. It would move through the pipeline in a pressurized form and be injected deep underground into a rock formation.

Iowa regulators required Summit to obtain approvals for routes in the Dakotas and underground storage in North Dakota before it can begin construction. South Dakota has not approved Summit’s permit. Safety and environmental concerns have led to numerous county ordinances that attempt to restrict the placement of Summit’s pipes.

The company has since sued six Iowa counties and won two of its lawsuits in district court. 6: Beginning with a March announcement, Deere and Co. staged a series of layoffs that have idled thousands of employees.

Factoring in a layoff announced in October 2023, Deere has let go 3,100 workers companywide, with more than 1,000 of those positions in the Cedar Valley. John Deere's Tractor Cab Assembly Operations 8RX track assembly in Waterloo is shown here. The company blames the layoffs on the farm economy, with the U.

S. Department of Agriculture forecasting receipts from crops like corn and soybeans will be down another 18% in 2024 after a 5% decline last year. Prices for corn, soybeans and wheat are expected to be lower than prices in 2022.

The near future is also bleak, with margins predicted in the red for all major row crops in 2025. The threat of retaliatory tariffs, the possible loss of a huge number of agricultural workers to President-elect Donald Trump's planned mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, and prohibitive interest rates for those considering the purchase of big-ticket items like farm implements are among the factors fueling that negative outlook. In the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2024, net sales and revenues decreased 28%.

The full fiscal year had decreased sales of 16% for a total of $51.72 billion. Deere & Company reported a net income of $1.

25 billion for the fourth quarter, which ended Oct. 27. 7: After years of back-and-forth, the controversial “heartbeat bill” abortion law took force in late July.

Under the law, a doctor is prohibited from performing an abortion once cardiac activity can be detected in an embryo or fetus through a transabdominal ultrasound, usually at roughly six weeks of pregnancy. Abortion Iowa Iowans supporting access to abortion rally in April outside the courthouse in Des Moines where the Iowa Supreme Court heard arguments on the state's restrictive abortion law. The law bans most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy.

Exceptions include some cases of rape, incest, threat to the life of the mother or a fetal abnormality judged by a doctor to be incompatible with life. The debate over when a woman can have an abortion has been volatile. In 2017, former Gov.

Terry Branstad passed a law making abortions in Iowa illegal after about the 20th week of pregnancy. But in 2022 the Supreme Court made it possible for states to ban abortion, overturning Roe v. Wade with its decision in Dobbs v.

Jackson. Republican legislators held a special session and passed a law banning abortions after about six weeks. That decision was immediately challenged and halted, but eventually the conservative Iowa Supreme Court affirmed the law.

8: Iowa made national headlines when Phill the water buffalo escaped slaughter and ran loose for five days in the Des Moines metro area in August. While on the run, Pleasant Hill police shot Phill, but he persevered. Iowa Water Buffalo An escaped water buffalo on the lam from police looks on Saturday, Aug.

24, 2024, in the Des Moines suburb of Pleasant Hill, Iowa. (Madison Pottebaum via AP) He was later tranquilized by law enforcement and transported to the Large Animal Hospital at Iowa State University where he was treated for a severely infected shotgun wound. Iowa Farm Sanctuary, a home for rescued farm animals in Oxford, now cares for Phill, along with two of his water buffalo friends.

He will live out the rest of his life in peace. The man who owned the buffalo, Prem Nepal, was criminally charged for not corralling the escaped Phill. 9: The state’s support of former President Donald Trump's reelection in November solidified Iowa's transformation from swing state to a solidly red state.

Only five counties voted for Vice President Kamala Harris – Black Hawk, Johnson, Linn, Polk and Story. Trump received about 56% of the vote while Harris had 43%. The 13-point win was surprising to many Democrats, especially after a Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll published just before the election found 47% of voters supporting Harris and 44% backing Trump.

Trump also won overwhelming support at the January Iowa caucuses, receiving 50% of the vote despite facing numerous opponents. His margin of victory was so large the Associated Press called the results 30 minutes after voting began. Iowans not only supported a Republican president, voters gave Republicans supermajorities, or two-thirds control, in both the Iowa House and Senate.

The GOP will have a 35-15 majority in the Senate and a 67-33 majority in the House in 2025. It’s the largest majority the party has held since 1970. Iowa's six-member congressional delegation is also completely Republican, as are all statewide elected offices with the exception of state auditor.

10: After Gov. Reynolds signed a law banning public institutions from having diversity, equity and inclusion offices, Iowa's three universities governed by the Board of Regents unveiled how they will do just that in November. UNI DEI 2 University of Northern Iowa students gather for the "Rally for Your Degree" rally in support of the university's diversity, equity and inclusion programs at the Commons Courtyard on Wednesday in Cedar Falls.

The Board of Regents, which released a report recommending that Iowa's public universities change or eliminate programs not legally required for compliance or accreditation, presented their findings to UNI on Wednesday. The law states the official position of the institution cannot promote opinions referencing things such as unconscious bias, microaggressions, systemic oppression, social justice, gender theory or racial privilege. At the University of Iowa, the “diversity and inclusion” general education requirement will be renamed to “understanding cultural perspectives.

” At Iowa State University, the school will close its Vice President for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Office in July, eliminating two positions. There will also be a statement on all syllabi that no one is required to disclose their pronouns. At the University of Northern Iowa, the Diversity, Inclusion and Social Justice Office will be eliminated and reorganized.

UNI also will eliminate the chief diversity officer position and instead create an outreach position in the university’s Center for Urban Education in Waterloo. Waterloo and Cedar Falls speaks up: Letters to the editor for the week of Dec. 20, 2024 Our weekly round-up of letters published in the Courier.

(c)2024 Globe Gazette, Mason City, Iowa Visit Globe Gazette, Mason City, Iowa at www.globegazette.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

.