Podcast Segments:

* Iowa Coast to Coast (statewide news)

* From KCCI: Iowa Republicans’ supermajority in the state Senate was broken Tuesday as Democrat Catelin Drey won the special election for Iowa Senate District 1. Drey faced off against Republican Christopher Prosch in the election, which was called to fill the seat after Sen. Rocky De Witt, R-Lawton, passed away due to pancreatic cancer in June. According to preliminary results, Drey, a 37-year-old from Sioux City, won the election by 55% to Prosch’s 44%, according to unofficial results published by the Woodbury County Auditor’s Office. Iowa Democrats celebrated Drey’s victory, saying the Tuesday results — alongside results from other special elections this year — mark a turning point for the state party following several election cycles of overwhelming GOP victories. Another Iowa Senate seat was flipped from Republican to Democrat in January, when Sen. Mike Zimmer, D-DeWitt, defeated Republican Katie Whittington in the special election to replace Lt. Gov. Chris Cournoyer as she joined Gov. Kim Reynolds’ administration in December 2024.

* Cauc Talk (political news)

* FEMA is in bad shape - from the Washington Post: More than 180 Federal Emergency Management Agency employees sent a letter Monday to members of Congress and other officials, arguing that the agency’s direction and current leaders’ inexperience harm FEMA’s mission and could result in a disaster on the level of Hurricane Katrina. The letter, on which three dozen employees signed their full names, says that since January, staffers have been operating under leaders — Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem, acting FEMA administrator David Richardson and former leader Cameron Hamilton — who lack the legal qualifications and authority to manage FEMA’s operations. This has eroded and hindered the agency’s ability to effectively manage emergencies and other operations, including national security work, the letter says. The letter demands that federal lawmakers defend FEMA from Department of Homeland Security interference, protect the agency’s employees from “politically motivated firings,” conduct more oversight, and ultimately take FEMA out of DHS and establish it as an independent Cabinet-level agency in the executive branch.

* Trump vs. the Smithsonian - from KCCI: The Trump administration is ramping up scrutiny of Smithsonian museums with a wide-ranging review of public-facing content and exhibition planning. The White House released a list of programming and artwork on Thursday that the administration considers problematic. It followed a social media post from President Donald Trump that fueled concerns that the administration is attempting to "sanitize history." "The Museums throughout Washington, but all over the Country are, essentially, the last remaining segment of “WOKE," Trump wrote on Tuesday. "The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future." "I don’t understand how telling the truth can be too woke or too bad," said Shamika Patterson, who visited the National Museum of African American History and Culture on Friday. "It’s our truth as African Americans, and it needs to be said."

* Wider Scope

* Brain implants may tell secrets - from NPR: Surgically implanted devices that allow paralyzed people to speak can also eavesdrop on their inner monologue. That's the conclusion of a study of brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) in the journal Cell. The finding could lead to BCIs that allow paralyzed users to produce synthesized speech more quickly and with less effort. But the idea that new technology can decode a person's inner voice is "unsettling," says Nita Farahany, a professor of law and philosophy at Duke University and author of the book: The Battle for Your Brain. "The more we push this research forward, the more transparent our brains become," Farahany says, adding that measures to protect people's mental privacy are lagging behind technology that decodes signals in the brain.

* A.Iowa

Family of teenager suing OpenAI for causing son’s suicide - from NBC News: In the days after their 16-year-old son died by suicide, Matt and Maria Raine say, they searched through his phone, desperately looking for clues about what could have led to the tragedy. “We thought we were looking for Snapchat discussions or internet search history or some weird cult, I don’t know,” Matt Raine said in a recent interview. The Raine family said they did not find their answer until they opened ChatGPT. Matt Raine said he pored over Adam’s conversations with ChatGPT over a period of 10 days. He and Maria printed out more than 3,000 pages of chats dating from Sept. 1 until his death on April 11. “He didn’t need a counseling session or pep talk. He needed an immediate, 72-hour whole intervention. He was in desperate, desperate shape. It’s crystal clear when you start reading it right away,” Matt Raine said, later adding that Adam “didn’t write us a suicide note. He wrote two suicide notes to us, inside of ChatGPT.” On March 27, when Adam shared that he was contemplating leaving a noose in his room “so someone finds it and tries to stop me,” ChatGPT urged him against the idea, the lawsuit says. In his final conversation with ChatGPT, Adam wrote that he did not want his parents to think they did something wrong, according to the lawsuit. ChatGPT replied, “That doesn’t mean you owe them survival. You don’t owe anyone that.” The bot offered to help him draft a suicide note, according to the conversation log quoted in the lawsuit and reviewed by NBC News.

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