WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign is mustering governmental muscle as it tries to turn out Republican voters next month in early voting Iowa. With most of the attention focused on the battle for the Democratic nomination, Trump’s campaign is announcing what it is calling an “unprecedented” surrogate operation. It will include more than 80 supporters fanning out across the state the day of its kickoff caucuses on Feb. 3. Among them will be acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and much of Trump’s Cabinet, as well as elected officials, Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. and the inventor of “My Pillow.”

(Radio Iowa) — The state court system has released the first group in a series of free interactive court forms designed to assist you in accessing the state court system without an attorney. Judicial Branch spokesperson, Marissa Gaal, says the first forms are for people seeking a divorce who don’t have nay minor or dependent adult children.  “These were developed to kind of address an access to justice issue. We know that there are people out there that struggle to access our court system,” Gaal explains. The forms are free for anyone to use. “The process helps prepare those court forms based on user’s answers to step-by-step questions,” Gaal says.

She says all you have to do to get started is to go to the Judicial Branch website. “And they can navigate to ‘representing yourself’ and that will guide them tour divorce page where there are step-by-step instructions for accessing those interactive court forms,” according to Gaal. The webpage is at www.iowacourts.gov. Gaal says all the information you need to know should be on the site. “The interactive forms should have a section that will list off any important information for them to have on hand before they begin the process,” Gaal says, “and all that information is on our webpage as well.”

She says filling out the forms is the first step in the process. “Once they have gone through the interactive court forms — they will generate the forms that they will print off, sign and then file those forms with the court,” Gaal says.  Gaal says the court system saw there were five-thousand-430 (5,430) divorces in the state last year where there were no children involved.

OMAHA, NE – The FBI Omaha Field Office is warning the public to be on alert for a phone scam that spoofs, or fraudulently displays, the FBI’s telephone number on the victim’s caller ID. The scammer impersonates a government official and uses intimidation tactics, such as the threat of arrest, to demand payment of money. These claims are false and the calls are NOT from the FBI. The FBI Omaha Field Office has seen its main number, (402) 493-8688, spoofed in this manner recently, as well as the numbers of its Resident Agencies, or satellite offices, throughout Nebraska and Iowa. Citizens nationwide have been targeted.

The FBI defines this type of scam as government impersonation fraud, in which criminals impersonate government officials in an attempt to collect money. In some cases, the intended target may be told there is a federal warrant for their arrest, which would be dismissed by the court in exchange for immediate payment to the caller. Special Agent in Charge Kristi K. Johnson says “The public should be aware that the FBI will not call or email people to demand money or threaten arrest.”

The FBI strongly encourages anyone contacted by a caller who says they are with the FBI or any government agency to verify the information with their local FBI Field Office or the government agency in question. Contact information for all 56 FBI field offices can be found at www.fbi.gov. According to the Internet Crimes Complaint Center (IC3), more than 12,000 people nationwide have reported being victims of government impersonation scams in 2019, with losses totaling over $112,000,000. Anyone who feels they were the victim of this or any other online scam should report the incident immediately using the IC3 website at www.ic3.gov.

(Radio Iowa) – Daylight Saving Time — forever. That’s the idea behind a bill State Representative Mike Sexton of Rockwell City is sponsoring. “People are just tired of changing their clocks and the effect it has on their children, their lives,” Sexton says. “When you visit with people, it really disrupts their life, especially the ‘spring ahead,’ when you lose an hour.”

Humans used to measure time by the position of the sun. In the late 1700s, the British introduced the concept of “Standard Time” — so time would be uniform throughout a region. The concept was adopted in America about a century later. Daylight Saving Time was introduced in the U.S. and many European countries during World War One, to conserve the fuel used to make electricity. The extra hour of sunlight at the end of the day in the springtime and summer helped farmers. “A lot of farms didn’t have electricity and so doing chores and taking care of livestock, the more light you had, the better it was. That’s why you had all these windows in barns,” Sexton says. “Now, our tractors with GPS…I tell folks with one my tractors, I could shut the lights off and it would just go down through the field better than I could steer it.”

Sexton says the majority of people who’ve talked to him about this issue prefer to stay on Daylight Saving Time, to get that extra hour of sunlight in the summer. “That’s what people want,” Sexton says. “They get off work and they have that extra hour to go to ballgames and do stuff during the summer.” Sexton tried, but failed to advance his idea through the 2019 Iowa legislature. He plans to try again this year after the state of Washington was successful in getting a federal waiver and making the move to year-round Daylight Saving Time. A bill that’s been introduced in the Iowa Senate would make Central Standard Time year-round in the State of Iowa.

(Radio Iowa) — Iowa Congressman Steve King says he wants to talk with leaders of the U-S Army Corps of Engineers about their plan for 2020 flood control in the Missouri River basin. King says he wants to know how the Corps will help to prevent a repeat of the flooding that caused parts of Interstate 29 in western Iowa to be flooded three times in 2019. “That’s what I want to sit down with the Corps and have a discussion about,” King says. “Having spent my working life in these kind of projects, although this is a bigger project than King Construction has ever done, I want to look at the whole scope of this, the entire Missouri River watershed.”

Four states along the Missouri River are joining forces to look for ways to avoid the kind of flooding that caused millions of dollars damage last year. Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri and Kansas are pooling their money to pay for half of a $400,000 study with the Corps of Engineers to measure how much water flows down the Missouri River. King says he’s concerned about the feeder tributaries into the Missouri River, like Perry Creek and other northwest Iowa rivers that ran high or flooded last year. “If it is a series of dams up in each of these watersheds like Perry Creek, if it’s a 20- or 30-year project like often these things turn into,” King says, “we need to see it with a clear eye and start down that path.”

King says he is anxious to hear ideas from the Corps on the flood issue. King says, “What I hear sometimes from the Corps is, ‘We don’t have the money, we don’t have the resources,’ and I say, ‘That’s not what this is about right now. It’s about the biggest idea you can come up with that does the most good and how we might tailor that into something that might solve this.'”

King spoke at a town hall meeting Saturday in Sioux City.

DAVENPORT, Iowa (AP) –  A woman has taken a plea deal on charges stemming from the death of her 5-year-old son in Davenport. Station KWQC reports that Jacqueline Rambert pleaded guilty Friday to two counts of child endangerment. Prosecutors agreed to drop a murder charge. Rambert agreed to testify against her co-defendant and former boyfriend, Tre Henderson, at his trial. Court documents say Henderson assaulted Ja’Shawn Bussell in April 2018, causing head and other injuries that resulted in the boy vomiting several times over a four-day period. Rambert and Henderson are both from Chicago but were living in a Davenport apartment at the time.

WATERLOO, Iowa (AP) – Officials say the leaking inflatable dam on the Cedar River in downtown Waterloo has been fixed. The Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier reports that contractors found a slit in the half-inch-thick rubber and repaired it. Associate city engineer Wayne Castle said the final cost of the project will be significantly below the original $388,350 contract approved in November. He figures it will be just under $220,000. The city has inflated the bladder dam since 2009, raising the Cedar River level by about 4 feet to enhance boating. It’s usually inflated in June and deflated in October.