(Radio Iowa) – President-elect Donald Trump has announced he’s chosen an Iowan — Matt Whitaker — to be U.S. Ambassador to NATO. Whitaker was the acting U-S Attorney General for three months during Trump’s first term in office. During a September fundraiser for Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Whitaker talked about his tenure in the Justice Department, where he had served as chief of staff before his stint as acting attorney general.

“What I learned is that you have to lead. You have to lead from the front and you have to be willing to take unpopular positions. I think the biggest challenge we have in Washington, D.C. is…we have way too many people that want to be somebody instead of do something,” Whitaker said. “…If I was succssful at all at the Department of Justice in the Trump Administration, it was because I was unafraid of what would came next. I knew I was never going to work at a big law firm. I knew that I may never work and be able to feed my family…We had a country to save and a mission.”

Whitaker campaigned extensively for Trump’s reelection. This is what he told the crowd in Iowa City in early September. “This is the election that is going to not just set the next four years, but really it’s going to set decades of American history,” Whitaker said.

Trump says Whitaker is a strong warrior and loyal patriot who will ensure U-S interests are advanced and defended. Whitaker’s nomination to be NATO Ambassador is subject to a confirmation vote in the U-S Senate. Whitaker has won Senate confirmation before. He served as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Iowa during President George W. Bush’s second term. Whitaker has run for statewide office twice. He was the Republican Party’s nominee for state treasurer in 2002 and he ran for the U-S Senate in 2014.

Whitaker, who grew up in Ankeny, played football for the Iowa Hawkeyes and credits that experience for his success as an adult. “When I came on the national scene suddenly and unexpectedly as acting attorney general, I was an overnight sensation 10 years in the making because no one ever saw when I was doing Newsmax hits in 2014 and 2015 and 2016,” Whitaker said. “And all the radio and all of the practice and so much of what you learn from sports is you’ve got to practice and you’ve got to get better and you’ve got to constantly improve.”

Whitaker earned a communications degree and an M-B-A and a law degree from the University of Iowa in 1995.

(Radio Iowa) – The red kettles are out for the annual holiday giving campaign for the Salvation Army. Spokesperson Tamyra Harrison says the Des Moines Salvation Army says they have volunteers out ringing bells across central Iowa. “We keep ringing that bell all the way through Christmas Eve. So we need a lot more bell ringers out there doing that. And we’re really hoping to raise quite a bit more money between now and Christmas Eve. Our goal is one-point-two million,” Harrison says. Harrison says she hears the same thing about the need for more volunteers from her colleagues across the state.

“I never hear anybody say, ‘Oh, we’ve got plenty. Could you go over to this corps?’ It just doesn’t happen,” she says. “I wish it did. I wish that was a problem that we had to deal with. But it’s not.” She says some areas do better than others at filling all their shifts of volunteers needed at the kettles. ” The size of the area can certainly depend on, you know, how many are filled. But you know, like with here in the central Iowa area that we cover, we’ve got 58 different kettle locations, six days a week, and, you know, 10 hours a day. That’s a lot of shifts to fill in. And last year, we only filled 38 percent of those shifts,” she says. You can go to registertoring.com (register to ring.com) and get signed up.

“If they do have all their bell ringer shifts filled, if you go to volunteer, there’s always some other way that you can help,” she says. “There’s always something you can do to help those in need, in the community that you know you can lend a helping hand to.” Harrison has done shifts ringing the bell and says  “I seem to think and feel when I’m out there that it’s the people that you would think might be struggling themselves that tend to give more, or that are more likely to stop and give because they’ve been there and they want to help somebody else, you know, they want to help the next person, or they understand what you know somebody’s going through,” she says.

Harrison says she hopes everyone will remember that any one of us is one disaster, one event, one something in our lives away from needing that extra hand ourselves  “You know, we may need that someday, and so being there for others in our community, our friends, our neighbors, You know our fellow Iowans, when they’re needing that help is just so important, and that’s who we are as Iowans. And you know, we need to, we need to do that,” Harrison says. Harrison says the Christmas campaign raises the funds to help the Salvation Army provide services to people across the state all through the year.

(Greenfield, Iowa) – The Adair County Board of Supervisors met Wednesday morning (Today), in Greenfield. During their regular weekly session, the Board approved trash bids from Grantham Sanitation for various sites around the County. The company was the only sanitation business to place bids.

The Board received an update from Adair County Auditor Mandy Berg, with regard to Windstream Internet. She said the company’s representative told her his original math was off, an additional $7,000 is needed to bore align the fiber cable into the ground. Berg said she doesn’t know how much she can move around in her budget to cover that extra cost, but Board Chair Jerry Walker and others agreed, the current state of the internet for county courthouse and other operations doesn’t leave much of a choice.

Windstream serves as a back-up to the primary provider, which is Mediacom. Jerry Walker motioned to pay for the extra cost through ARPA funds, and the Board approved. In other business, the Board approved the appointments of Terri Queck-Matzke and Ken Sidey to the Adair County Tourism Office. They approved also, the awarding of a contract for the W-22 Lee Township bridge to Murphy Heavy Contracting Corporation of Anita, for $441,063. Murphy was the low bidder for the project. The next lowest bid came in at $578,000.

In his report to the Board, County Engineer Nick Kauffman said Murphy Construction is done crushing concrete resulting from the May, 2024 tornado that destroyed more than 150 buildings and homes. Kauffman said he hadn’t received the bill for that service yet, but the intention is to use $250,000 from insurance coverage to pay for it. He also said he’s crunched the numbers for the Secondary Roads Department, and will need to amend the department’s budget, due to a variety of factors. More information is expected to come during the Board’s meeting next month.

(Iowa City, Iowa) – A semi tractor-trailer accident Wednesday morning (Nov. 20th) north of Iowa City, has claimed the life of the truck’s driver. The Iowa State Patrol reports a 2021 Volvo semi was traveling eastbound on Interstate 80 at mile-marker 245 at around 6:15-a.m., when for reasons unknown, the tractor-trailer left the road and struck a bridge guardrail. Following the collision, the semi entered a ditch and rolled onto the driver’s side. The driver – whose name was not immediately released – died at the scene. They were not wearing a seat belt.

The crash remains under investigation. The State Patrol was assisted at the scene by the Iowa City Police Department, Iowa City Fire, and the Iowa Dept. of Transportation.

(Radio Iowa) – The U-S Navy submarine that’s named after the state of Iowa is back at port in Connecticut after its first test drives — and test dives — in the Atlantic Ocean. Mat Tanner, a retired Navy Chief submariner and executive director of the U-S-S Iowa Commissioning Committee, says the 377-foot long nuclear-powered submarine has completed both its Alpha and Bravo levels of testing. “Alpha trials is the initial underway for the submarine. That’s the very first time they take it out and dive it and test it and run it through its paces for a couple days,” Tanner says. “They come back in and go back out with a different test group for Bravo, and they test different systems out for six, seven days, and then come back in, make any repairs, and then they’ll go out for an in-service trial here in a couple of weeks, probably.”

Once those in-service trials are finished, likely in mid-December, Tanner says the Iowa will be “delivered” to the U-S Navy. “That means it’s in full custody of the government until their commissioning date, which will be sometime in the spring,” Tanner says “We haven’t released the date yet, but we’re trying to make sure we have everything ready to go for all the guests from Iowa that want to come see it. We want to make sure we have all the hotels and everything blocked off and ready to go.” Officials say the three-billion-dollar submarine will have a crew of 120 enlisted personnel and 14 officers. During these tests, there are military and civilian personnel onboard the Iowa.

USS Iowa (Photos from the Iowa Commissioning Committee)

“It’s a combination of both. So the full complement of the crew that’s stationed aboard, plus we’ll take out additional shipyard riders that are test engineers for specific equipment, and make sure there’s no issues, no problems,” Tanner says. “It’s still under our responsibility to make sure there’s no issues.” The submarine will become the fourth U-S Navy vessel to be named after the state of Iowa and Tanner says all appears on schedule for commissioning and the start of full-service military duty early next spring. “So far, so good, no major issues, no major delays,” he says. “It’s been a long time coming for the boat to get out to sea, and feels like everything’s going on track and looking good. We’re excited.”

Earlier plans suggested the submarine might be commissioned in the Pacific waters of southern California, beside the retired World War Two-era Battleship Iowa, which is now a floating museum in Los Angeles Harbor. The plan now calls for the sub to be commissioned instead at the shipyards in Connecticut.

(Johnston, Iowa) – Fareway Stores Inc. and the Iowa Farm Bureau have partnered together to donate 26,950 lbs. of ground protein to food banks across Iowa in the ‘Meat the Need’ campaign. For every 10 lb. tube of ground beef sold at Fareway Sept. 16th – 21st, one pound of lean protein was donated to local food banks in partnership with the Iowa Food Bank Association and the Food Bank of Iowa.

The donation took place Tuesday, Nov. 19th, at the Food Bank of Iowa in Des Moines. Fareway Stores, Inc. President Garrett Piklapp, Iowa Farm Bureau President Brent Johnson, and Food Bank of Iowa CEO Michelle Book spoke on the importance of local food donations, food insecurity challenges, and the important partnerships through the ‘Meat the Need’ campaign.

“Food insecurity is something we take seriously, and we understand it requires a collective group of partners to address the growing number of Iowans who need access to quality meat products,” Fareway President, Garrett Piklapp said. “Thank you to our generous customers for participating, Iowa stores and meat markets, and our partners at Iowa Farm Bureau for helping secure lean protein for local food banks going into the holiday seasons.”

Brent Johnson – Iowa Farm Bureau president, Michelle Book – Food Bank of Iowa CEO & Garrett Piklapp – Fareway Stores, Inc. president

“As farmers, we take tremendous pride in growing and raising the food that sustains our communities,” Iowa Farm Bureau President Brent Johnson said. “Food insecurity is a harsh reality of the challenging times many families currently face, so Iowa Farm Bureau is proud to join Fareway again to help ‘Meat the Need’ by providing lean, high-protein ground meat to our neighbors in need across the state.”

(Atlantic, Iowa) – Officials with the Atlantic Area Chamber of Commerce report Henningsen Construction, Inc., of Atlantic, has donated $100,000 to Vision Atlantic’s transformative project, which will bring a housing development, new childcare center, and YMCA expansion to Atlantic. Henningsen Construction owner Brad Henningsen, says “We are grateful to Vision Atlantic for their commitment to our community. We are happy to support this important project because it addresses needs in our community that will help Atlantic grow and thrive.”

As we’ve mentioned, Vision Atlantic, through extensive research and surveying of the community and surrounding region, identified three areas that will help increase Atlantic’s population: expanded childcare, quality housing and quality of life amenities. Construction of the 144 mixed unit housing development, 300 capacity child development center and expansion of the current YMCA facility is slated to begin late spring of 2025. Infrastructure work for the housing development and child development center is currently underway.

With substantial monetary support from the Charles E. Lakin Foundation and local donors, $18.8 million has been raised in the past 11 months, over 61% of a $30 million goal. In addition to the Lakin Foundation’s $8.6 million grant, Vision Atlantic has also received an additional $23 million from the Foundation, which will act as a line of credit and help Vision Atlantic construct homes in the Camblin Hills Housing Development. As the dollars are paid back each year, the Foundation will donate 5% of those dollars back to Vision Atlantic, which will be used to help operate the child development center.

Pictured left to right: Christina Bateman, Brad Henningsen, Brian Mixan and Debbie Waterbury (Photo submitted)

The $23 million is not part of Vision Atlantic’s $30 million fundraising goal. Vision Atlantic’s Project Committee is actively working to secure the remaining $11.6 million needed to meet the fundraising goal. If you are interested in helping transform Atlantic, whether it’s through monetary donations or acts of volunteerism, please contact Vision Atlantic at visionatlanticiowa@gmail.com. Follow Vision Atlantic on Facebook for behind-the-scenes access to project updates or visit www.visionatlantic.org.

Vision Atlantic is a 501(c)(3) non-profit whose mission is to empower growth, enhance lives, and build a thriving community together through the economic development of Atlantic, Iowa.