WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16, 2025
Refugee resettlement pause impacts Iowans
Refugees slated to come to Iowa are left behind, causing families to be separated.
Roxy Ekberg Politics Editor roxy.ekberg@dailyiowan.com
Benedicte Chubaka’s family members were slated to fly to the U.S. from Uganda through a refugee resettlement program. After undergoing a week of medical checkups, a final step before reuniting with Chubaka, their flight was canceled, and they received the news they would not be granted refugee status after President Donald Trump’s administration put a pause on all resettlement programs.
The University of Iowa graduate student’s great uncle, aunt, and their children were set to resettle in San Antonio, Texas, before receiving the news they would not be granted refugee status.
The family had fled the Democratic Republic of Congo, or DRC, and were refugees in Uganda. Data from the Council on Foreign Relations shows internal conflict and genocide in the DRC have led to six million deaths since 1996.
Escalation of violence in the country since January 2025 has also increased the number of people displaced to an all-time high of 7.3 million and forced more than 86,000 to flee to neighboring countries, according to data by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR.
Chubaka’s extended family were planning to attend her wedding in June, but now she does not know when she will see them again.
She said seeing her family’s plans to come to the U.S. collapse and disappear so quickly made her very emotional. She is unsure if her family will get another opportunity to come to the U.S.
The U.S. vetting process to determine whether to accept a refugee for resettlement takes roughly two years. To receive refugee status in the U.S., a person must first be referred by the UNHCR, a U.S. embassy, or a designated nongovernmental organization to be considered for resettlement.
Then, they must pass background checks and security clearance processes, go through in-person interviews to determine if they qualify, undergo medical screening, and then match with a sponsor agency.
Chubaka’s family was in the last few
steps of the process — medical screening.
Unless Chubaka’s family is granted refugee status in the next six months, their medical checkups will expire, and they will have to go through that stage of the process again.
Trump paused refugee resettlement processing and halted all federal funding for resettlement programs with an executive order on his first day in office. The president cited concerns about the U.S.’s ability to take in large numbers of refugees.
Iowa’s congressional delegation says the
programs are on hold while they investigate the potential for waste, fraud, and abuse.
The initiative upended several families’ lives and left refugee resettlement programs, including those in Iowa, with no federal support.
According to a document obtained by the Associated Press, a little more than 10,000 refugees who had already been vetted and approved to enter the U.S., including Chubaka’s family, have been left behind with no answers.
As litigation over the freeze plays out in
court, a federal U.S. appeals court ruled that the Trump administration does have the right to pause refugee resettlement efforts; but the ruling requires the administration to admit the roughly 10,000 people granted refugee status before Jan. 20. Chubaka said in an email, as of April 1, there has been no change to her family’s status or situation.
As the pause continues, Iowa’s refugee resettlement programs, such as the Catherine McAuley Center, face severe depletions
A never-ending effort of gratitude
Iowa athletics continues to invest heavily in the women’s gymnastics program, with the unveiling of the new Nagle-Duda Training Center being a major display of involvement with a
UI grounds get into the swing of spring
University of Iowa landscapers are preparing for warmer weather.
Kate Perez Senior Reporter news@dailyiowan.com
As leaves begin to bud on trees on the University of Iowa campus, new flowers seem to magically appear in front of the Old Capitol Building on the Pentacrest. While students might think those flowers popped up overnight, the UI landscaping team is responsible for the new plants — a task they are beginning for this spring, among other jobs.
UI Landscape Services Manager Michael
Weikamp said his team, which includes a landscape meeting supervisor, a landscape construction supervisor, an urban forestry supervisor, and a total crew of about 36 full-time employees, is gearing up to transform the 2,000 acres of campus they cover into spring mode.
“We’re just coming out of winter, so making that winter transition from plowing and shoveling snow to getting our mowers ready, our string trimmers ready,” Weikamp said. “Tree work is in full swing … It’s kind of a year-round affair — getting our mulch in planting beds ready, growing our annuals out in the greenhouse, just getting ready for spring.”
Weikamp and the team are starting to focus on putting out and planting the annual flowers and shrubs ahead of the commencement ceremonies in May. The team typically brings those plants in at the end of April or early May, around the last frost date of the year.
The flowers are planted and maintained at a greenhouse at the UI’s Oakdale Campus. An automatic irrigation system is used to grow the plants, and staff check on them regularly before they are transported to the main university campus.
It is then that the landscaping service’s installation team goes to work, replenishing parts of
University of Iowa landscaping employee Matt Dugger shovels mulch
on April 11. The landscaping crew is responsible for over 8,000 trees and 6,000
campus with the new plants and new mulch.
“It’s a pretty big undertaking. It’s not just putting annual flowers out,” Weikamp said. “That’s whole new landscaping beds, retaining walls, big limestone blocks that we’re out doing.”
While the weather can impact how plants are handled each season, Weikamp said the landscaping team follows a landscape management plan that illustrates what tasks they will com-
• University of Iowa Health Care unveiled its new $525.6 million orthopedics hospital over the weekend. Check out our latest coverage at dailyiowan.com.
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plete around campus each year. That document helps the team stay on task while also navigating the seasons themselves.
“There’s a monthly calendar in there that has tasks that generally we’ll be doing,” Weikamp said. “Obviously, that’s subject to change, but how we plant trees, how we take care of trees, it’s
UI leads returning Native American remains
Iowa became the first state to pass a law protecting ancient Native burial
Emma Jane News Reporter news@dailyiowan.com
federal law mandated it.
“Of all the institutions that the tribes deal with, the University of Iowa has served as the template for how you do it right .”
Suzanne Wanatee Buffalo Indian Advisory Council member
More than three decades after the passage of a federal law mandating the return of Native American remains, the University of Iowa has emerged as a national leader — making nearly all of its holdings available to tribes. In 1990, Congress passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA, a landmark law that compelled museums and universities to return thousands of stolen Native American remains and cultural items to their tribe of origin. Over a decade prior, Iowa passed the Iowa Burials Protection Act of 1976, the first law in the nation to protect ancient Native American burial sites. It required that all discovered human remains be reported to the state archaeologist and allowed for their return to tribal communities — setting a precedent for repatriation long before
In response, the UI established an Indian Advisory Council to the Office of the State Archaeologist, creating a formal role for tribal voices in decisions about ancient human remains. Today, Suzanne Wanatee Buffalo, the daughter of founding member Don Wanatee, continues to serve on the council and said the UI has played a part in reshaping the relationship between the field of archeology and U.S. tribes.
“Of all the institutions that the tribes deal with, the University of Iowa has served as the template for how you do it right,” Wanatee Buffalo said. Wanatee Buffalo said in the 1980s and 1990s, many Native Americans viewed the field of
Wyatt Goodale | The Daily Iowan
Director Anne Dugger visits an empty classroom at the Catherine McCauley Center in Cedar Rapids on April 10. Due to recent cuts in funding for refugee resettlement services, many of the staff and services have been laid off. According to Dugger, the work that used to be done by 20 people
Wyatt Goodale | The Daily Iowan
on the Pentacrest in Iowa City
shrubs on campus.
of funds and have been forced to lay off staff.
Iowa familiesprograms, suffer cuts to federal support
Because of Trump’s order and a stop work order from the U.S. State Department, the Catherine McAuley Center has laid off half its staff— 20 employees — and lost 60 percent of its funding since January.
Director of the Catherine McAuley Center Anne Dugger said the organization anticipated cuts under the Trump administration but assumed they would be given more time to make adjustments rather than need to react quickly to an abrupt message on Friday, Jan. 24, at 4:30 p.m.
The center had five refugee resettlement cases slotted to arrive in February. The individuals had plane tickets and were cleared to travel before receiving the notice they no longer received refugee status from the U.S. Overall, the center lost $3 million in federal funding. Dugger said they received a few thousand dollars in reimbursement funds, but the amount is nowhere near what the center requires, as they had expected tens of thousands in reimbursements.
“We got the brunt of it right up front, and now we’re just trying to regroup,” Dugger said.
The center is affiliated with the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, or USCRI, a nongovernmental, nonprofit international organization that works with affiliates to provide legal, social, and health services to refugees.
Director of the USCRI’s Des Moines Field Office Samantha Huynh said the office had to lay off 50 percent, or 14, full-time employees as a result of the funding cuts.
Four resettlement agencies in the Des Moines area were scheduled to receive a total of 480 refugees before the freeze was announced, Huynh said, and her agency had 50 individuals scheduled for resettlement in February, many coming from the Republic of Congo, Thailand, and Afghanistan.
Huynh is charged with the task of informing families that their relatives will not be coming to the U.S. and that there is no more known information.
“It’s very disheartening,” she said. “We have families that haven’t seen each other for over 10 years. During the war in their home country, they get separated, not knowing where they are, not knowing if they’re even alive, and then to get the news that their family is coming, there’s so much joy and so much hope built up to that point, and then to find out that they’re no longer coming, and we are the ones that have to break the news to them.”
Huynh said pausing refugee services will negatively impact the economy and harm diversity in Iowa.
Data from the American Immigration Council found that refugees paid $89.6 million in local and state taxes in Iowa in the last fiscal year. The data shows that refugees in the Hawkeye state had $844.6 million in spending power, which was money they were likely to put into Iowa’s economy.
“Refugees bring a lot of diversity into the state,” Hunyh said. “You have all these different restaurants, bakeries, grocery stores that are owned by former refu-
gees and immigrants. How is that going to look?”
Huynh said the best part of her job is letting people know they will be reunited with their families and preparing for refugees to arrive.
Now, instead, Huynh and her team have to deliver the news that families, despite having undergone the entire process and receiving a plane ticket, will not be coming.
“When the executive order took place, every day, slowly, we started seeing flight cancellations one at a time,” she said. “So, it wasn’t all at once, where you feel that hurt and share the bad news to families. It was every time we got that notice, and that was almost daily. As the staff and I had to go through that, it’s kind of like we were going through that heartbreak every day.”
Iowa politicians urge a pause is necessary
Many of Iowa’s Republican congressional delegation said in interviews with The Daily Iowan in Washington, D.C., that the funding pause is needed to reevaluate the refugee resettlement process for potential waste.
“I do think a pause is appropriate, and I don’t think that’s going to affect how we as Iowans perceive people who come to our state and how we welcome people, such as the Vietnamese boat people,” U.S. Rep.
Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa, said. Iowa has a storied history of welcoming refugees into the state and offering supporting services.
Former Iowa Gov. Robert Ray made Iowa the first state to welcome refugees displaced by the Vietnam War. Ray established a task force to resettle 1,200 Tai Dam refugees and later welcome other Vietnamese refugees.
The Hawkeye state continued its commitment to resettle refugees by welcoming Eastern Europeans in the late 1980s and Bosnians in the 1990s.
U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, pointed to the importance of refugee resettlement for Iowa and Ray’s work to help the effort.
Ernst said it must be ensured that funding for such services is being spent well and that dollars are being used to further American interests.
“While we evaluate all of that, there has been a pause, but already, some of those dollars have been restored,” Ernst said. “So, I do anticipate we’ll see more of that in the future. But again, we just want to make sure that taxpayer dollars are being safeguarded, but at the same time, yes, refugee resettlement is important.”
Miller-Meeks and Ashley Hinson expressed similar sentiments about ensuring money going to the program is used as efficiently as possible.
Miller-Meeks said the pause aligns with Iowa’s values, and the Biden administration was too loose with granting refugee status on the southern border.
“I think that there needed to be some restructuring and some pause so that we have a handle on what’s a refugee and their true refugee status,” she said. There needs to be knowledge and vetting of who’s coming into the U.S., Miller-Meeks said, pointing to the record-high U.S.-Mexico border crossings under former President Joe Biden. Hinson said the review of
all federal spending and all federal programs is important, and the government has to “peel back the onion” to make sure taxpayer dollars advance U.S. interests. There is a place for refugee resettlement, she said, and the pause is preventing dollars from going to wasteful spending.
The congresswoman said she would like to advocate for speeding up the processes if people are in unsafe situations; however, she said these spending reviews take time.
“We have to balance all of those things, and sometimes those things do take time,” Hinson said.
Iowa Democratic Party Chair Rita Hart and leaders of the state’s refugee resettlement push for humanitarian practices.
Hart said immigration and refugee policies are something the nation has struggled with for too long, and we need solutions that hold up humanitarian values and treat people with respect, no matter where they come from.
“We’ve got to be humanitarian,” Hart said. “We’ve got to make sure that we’re treating people in a way that we can be proud of.”
The pause does not align with Iowa’s values, both Dugger and Huynh said.
Dugger said the refugee resettlement process is not inefficient, and the funding
pause should have been enacted in a more humane way.
The pause also impacts families already resettled in the U.S.
Trump’s cuts to the refugee resettlement program don’t only impact refugees trying to come to the U.S. but also those currently in the country.
The USCRI and Catherine McAuley Center have shifted their focus to further support families already resettled in the U.S., however, funding cuts severely limit their programs.
The USCRI’s Des Moines Field Office shifted its priorities to help resettled refugees become self-sufficient by maintaining housing, enrolling in school, and finding employment.
The organization also offers English classes, provides legal services, provides case management for medical needs, and offers youth programs.
Both operating with half of their staff and a slashed budget, Huynh and Dugger said offering these critical services is extremely difficult.
The Catherine McAuley Center is no longer able to offer long term case management for refugees in the area, including rent and utility assistance. The center is still able to help with employment, Dugger said, but not to the extent that they could before the funding pause.
Dugger said the center was able to keep two people to help with resource navigation and get everyone into permanent housing.
“It’s just hurt the families that we brought here and that we said we would take care of. Not having that funding is, is really, really difficult,” Dugger said.
The center is continuing education services for refugees, utilizing the services to help with employment, health, and resource navigation.
“What else to say other than I’m just heartbroken for all of them, and if we can, we’ll help them and support them as much as
possible with even just a listening ear,” Dugger said. “But there’s just no recourse for these families.”
Chubaka, who currently serves as a refugee support specialist for the U.S. Bureau of Refugee Services, went through the refugee resettlement process as a child when she and her family came to the U.S. roughly 13 years ago.
She said she has fuzzy memories of the dangerous journey leaving the Democratic Republic of Congo; she just remembers always being on the go, always hiding until they made it to Uganda.
She and her family stayed in a refugee camp for months, and she remembers she and her brother were often sick because of the overcrowding and lack of sanitation. Chubaka’s parents decided to move them to Kampala, Uganda’s capital, and from there, the family began the process to try and enter the U.S.
Chubaka said the process took roughly 10 years, and the family was resettled in Houston, Texas.
As soon as she got into high school, she immediately started mentoring refugees or working with agencies that were resettling.
“Once the refugees come here, they need a lot of support to be able to know where to go for certain things, what to do for certain things, questions that need to be answered. Just that guidance,” she said.
Chubaka said the children in her family who were slated to come to the U.S. were so excited, and it broke her heart when she found out they would no longer be coming. However, she still maintains hope that she and many others will be reunited with their families.
“I just want to inform everyone to not be fearful, to not be worried, but to just have hope because that’s the only thing that can keep us and sustain us, to get to the results that we will eventually get to,” she said. “Let’s not give up on hope and to not let fear rule over us.”
Isabella Tisdale | The Daily Iowan
U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, speaks with The Daily Iowan in the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C., on April 7. The senator spoke about the Senate’s support for DOGE and the closure of the U.S. Department of Education.
Isabella Tisdale | The Daily Iowan
U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa, speaks with The Daily Iowan in the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, D.C., on April 7. Miller-Meeks spoke about her support of DOGE and the commissioning of the USS Iowa.
Isabella Tisdale | The Daily Iowan
U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson, R-Iowa, speaks with The Daily Iowan on April 8. Hinson spoke about the House budget reconciliation bill and DOGE efficiency.
all in there. And so that’s how we guide our work because that’s also the expectation of our customers, which are our students, staff, the various colleges across campus.”
The spring season is also when a lot of tree maintenance is done on campus, alongside planting and maintaining flowers. These tasks often fall to UI Urban Forestry Supervisor and Campus Arborist Andy Dahl, the top tree maintainer at the university. Many tree removals and relocations take place in the springtime because it is more likely the trees will be able to recover in their new location, such as the spading of a Chinese Catalpa tree on the medical campus that Dahl moved on April 7. Spading allows a tree to be picked up and moved to a new location without the cutting of all of the tree’s roots, only some.
“It’ll take them two to three years to get back to their previous growth rate and how it was growing before [moving],” Dahl said. “It just sets them back because roots go way past the [tree’s] drip line … So, it’s going to take a while for those roots to regrow.”
The Chinese Catalpa is just one of many trees the UI landscaping team will plant this month. The team is also partnering with the university’s Undergraduate Student Government, the UI Office of Sustainability and the Environment, and the Iowa City-based organization the LENA Project to plant 4,000 trees near Hillcrest Residence Hall.
The event, which will start April 25 and could last until April 29 if the planting takes multiple days, uses the Miyawaki Method to plant thousands of trees in a densely populated area where the trees are then able to sustain themselves, Dahl said.
“It’s really high density, so they grow really fast,” Dahl said. “Akira Miyawaki was a Japanese botanist, and he figured this out. So, it’s a way to make a forest mature faster. It’s all native species. You plant them and basically forget them, so that’s pretty neat.”
“Spring is one of our busiest seasons of the year and one of our favorite seasons of the year. The days are getting longer and warmer, trees and plants are coming back to life, and there are lots of events and activities celebrating nature .”
Beth MacKenzie Sustainability program manager
Spring is also an active time for the Office of Sustainability and the Environment. In an email to The Daily Iowan, Sustainability Program Manager Beth MacKenzie wrote that the office is also collaborating with the Johnson County Conservation Department and the Iowa City Public Library for the City Nature Challenge, a global event encouraging people to get outside and explore nature by using the iNaturalist app on their phones.
“The iNaturalist app will help you identify what you’ve taken a picture of, and then it documents your findings as part of our Johnson County project,” MacKenzie wrote. “It’s easy, fun, and people can participate at their own pace from anywhere in Johnson County.”
The office’s main goal this spring is to get the word out about the events that UI students and Johnson County community members can engage in within nature, like the planting of the Miyawaki forest, MacKenzie wrote.
“Spring is one of our busiest seasons of
REMAINS from 1A
archeology as one that was inherently predatory and more interested in dealing with deceased Indigenous people than living ones.
“Fast forward to today, and we do have young people in our tribal communities who are archeologists and anthropologists,” Wanatee Buffalo said. “Because of laws like NAGPRA and laws like what Iowa passed, we have the opportunity to learn from each other and improve and increase the amount of information and education so everybody gets a more complete sense of the history of this land we call Iowa.”
As historic preservation director for the Meskwaki Tribe, Jonathan Buffalo has played a leading role for decades in reburying human remains returned to the tribe by the UI and other institutions.
“In the ‘90s, we decided that when we rebury human remains, we would not conduct any funeral ceremony,” Buffalo said. “We believe those people already received their funeral, and it wasn’t up to us to add anything to that.”
Buffalo said the reburial process is respectful and simple, as the human remains are returned to the earth with a brief expression of sympathy for the disturbance and a promise of respectful reburial.
Due to the challenges of determining the exact tribal origin of some remains, Buffalo said the Meskwaki Tribe has taken on the responsibility of reburying not only confirmed Meskwaki ancestors but also remains whose tribal affiliations are unclear.
“When it’s non-Meskwakis, we’re still respectful. We don’t say too much because we don’t know what language they spoke, what customs they had, so we’re just putting them back to the earth,” Buffalo said.
For decades, looters have deliberately targeted Native American burial sites, desecrating sacred ground in search of remains and artifacts. One such incident in 1971 — when the remains of white settlers uncovered during road construction in Glenwood were reburied while the remains of a Native American woman and her child were sent for study — prompted Yankton Sioux activist Maria Pearson to demand change, ultimately leading to Iowa’s 1976 Burials
the year and one of our favorite seasons of the year,” MacKenzie wrote. “The days are getting longer and warmer, trees and plants are coming back to life, and there are lots of events and activities celebrating nature.”
For Weikamp, maintaining the 2,000 acres, 8,000 trees, and more than 6,000 shrubs the landscaping team is responsible for at the UI is essential to curating the impression the campus gives off to visitors.
“If you show up to a place, and it doesn’t have a tidy, kept landscape, you’re a little bit more off-put,” Weikamp said. “[Landscaping] creates a welcoming environment,
a place where you want to be, and that’s our first impression for students and staff and their parents when they come to campus, is how well is campus maintained?”
He added that a poorly kept campus might shift visitors’ perspective of the university and what it can offer students.
“If it’s not maintained well, then they probably don’t want to be sending their kid here because it might be an indication of how well everything else is or how stringent the curriculum is,” Weikamp said. Weikamp said the most challenging part of the spring season is the coordination
between the large team and the multitude of campus spaces the landscaping team is responsible for. However, he added that the team often runs like a well-oiled machine.
“Luckily, we have some good people here that have been around a long time,that know what needs to be done and make sure we have the right pieces in the right places,” Weikamp said. “We’re being accountable for ourselves, not only for our operation, but for the students. We’re here for the students to make sure they have a good place to come to school and learn.”
Protection Act. Buffalo said the Meskwaki Tribe is familiar with such incidents.
“As recently as the 1900s, there were people coming into the settlement to raid our graves,” Buffalo said. “That’s [why] today we don’t talk about our cemeteries, their location to be well known.”
earth-moving is going on or individuals finding bones when they’re out on the landscape,” Doershuk said.
“When it’s non-Meskwakis, we’re still respectful. We don’t say too much because we don’t know what language they spoke, what customs they had, so we’re just putting them back to the earth.”
Jonathan Buffalo Historic preservation director for the Meskwaki Tribe
John Doershuk, director and state archaeologist at the UI’s Office of the State Archaeologist, said he is unaware of any intentional disturbances of Native burial sites in Iowa since he began working in the office in 2007. Most discoveries of Native American human remains in the state, he said, are accidental.
“Most of those have to do with largescale construction events where a lot of
He said any human remains discovered in Iowa after 1976 that are at least 150 years old fall under the responsibility of his office, which must comply with both the Iowa Burials Protection Act and NAGPRA.
“We have a long history of both state and federal compliance with repatriation,” Doershuk said. Since 1976, Doershuk said his office has documented the repatriation and reburial of more than 2,000 individuals and currently consults with over 20 tribes with historical ties to Iowa land.
According to a ProPublica database,
the UI has made 98 percent of the Native American human remains in its possession available for return. Doershuk estimated that his office has returned about 85 percent of those remains, with the rest still in its custody due to the complex challenges that can arise in the repatriation process.
“Some [tribes] don’t have any kind of museum or storage facility or even personnel to deal with the [remains] being returned,” Doershuk said. “They want them, but they don’t have the wherewithal to actually deal with them. So, they’re very happy for us to continue to respectfully hold them in our facility.”
For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, museums and universities across the U.S. routinely collected — and in some cases publicly displayed — Native American human remains, often without the knowledge or consent of the tribes to whom they belonged. Doershuk said the UI has no history of such practices, and his office would never consider doing so.
“If NAGPRA was abolished or the state law was discontinued, I think our activities would still be guided strongly by working with our Native American colleagues and what their interests are,” Doershuk said.
Map by Marandah Mangra-Dutcher | The Daily Iowan
Wyatt Goodale | The Daily Iowan
University of Iowa landscaping employee Rachael West spreads mulch in Iowa City on April 11. Mulching for these trees and shrubs is done in the springtime. West said she enjoys her job because she gets to play in the dirt.
Wyatt Goodale | The Daily Iowan
University of Iowa arborist Al Allgood cuts down a tree to make way for a campus utility project in Iowa City on April 11. The university has over 8,000 trees and 6,000 shrubs on campus.
OPINIONS
Will the new ‘White House Faith
Office’ end an age-old argument?
In a ploy for political support from Christians nationwide, President Donald Trump may have actually opened the door to diverse religious representation in the U.S.
Julia Anderson Opinions Contributer opinions@dailyiowan.com
There has been a centuries-long debate in the U.S. about the position of faith in government and the line between church and state. Democratic values argue for representation for all, but reality has demonstrated when religion is institutionalized, it’s often imposed on others.
Despite constitutional protections against the state establishment of a religion, Christianity has by far been the most aggressively injected into the foundation of the country. All levels of courts in the nation have inconclusively navigated how church and state should be separated, but the new presidential administration may have accidentally figured it out.
In early February, President Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing a two-year trial of a White House Faith Office, or WHFO. As a part of his alleged agenda to restore and protect Christian values in the nation, the office intends to address concerns about policies that infringe on the free practice of religion.
Explicitly, the order aims to “combat anti-Semitic, anti-Christian,” and “anti-religious” bias. In a nation where two -thirds of Americans already identify as Christian, this is speculated to further marginalize minority beliefs. The establishment of this office has been met with stark criticism for its speculated usage to further a Christian nationalist agenda. This new approach has emboldened moves that likely would not have taken place in prior political climates. The Iowa legislature recently passed House File 884, allowing public schools to hire religious chaplains as a support service for students. Although 62 percent of the state’s general population identifies as Christian, 36 percent identify as unaffiliated or with another minority religion.
The U.S. has always claimed to be a land of religious freedom — which includes the right to practice and to refrain from practicing any religion. Despite the nation’s founders fighting religious imposition themselves, Protestant Christian values have historically been forced on the American people to justify atrocities like the genocide of Native Americans, the enslavement of Africans, and in more modern times, the revocation of previous rights like abor -
tion. There is an abundance of reasons to reject religion in government. However, with the prominent presence of Christianity in the nation, it is apparent these values will continue to seep into government.
Could a taskforce like the WHFO help clarify that separation? Or conversely, could this office offer more room for minority practices?
In pining for political support, Trump has almost impressively united a hodgepodge of practices. Trump himself is said to have grown up Presbyterian and sits alongside Vice President JD Vance, who converted to Catholicism. He also notoriously endorsed the launch of the “God Bless the USA Bible” — commonly known as the “Trump Bible” — embedded with the King James Version, originally translated for usage by the Church of England. Earlier in the year, he hosted a non-denominational Prayer Breakfast at the White House to highlight religious liberty, and although not Catholic himself, he recently issued a
Is college really worth it?
Many students are pressured into attending college despite associated rising costs, mounting debt, and uncertain futures.
Morgan Brunner Opinions Columnist opinions@dailyiowan.com
College is a less practical decision than it used to be, and those who choose to abstain from higher education may be making the right choice.
One reason is because of the rising price of higher education. As of March, the average student debt loan was $38,375 per person, not even including private loan debt. In terms of the whole country, students owe $1.693 trillion to the federal government, with 42.7 million borrowers. Additionally, college tuition has risen at a faster rate than wages have. Between the 1999-2000 year and the 2019-20 year, average college tuition showed an increase of 84 percent. At the University of Iowa, the Iowa Board of Regents, which governs the state’s public universities approved a tuition increase of 3 percent for the 2024-25 academic year. Meanwhile,
average, nationwide household income increased by 15.7 percent.
Despite this, many people go to college to avoid being in difficult financial situations. The chance of living in poverty with only a high school degree is 13.1 percent, compared to only 4 percent with a bachelor’s degree or higher.
But there are alternative paths to college that are definitely becoming more popular, like apprenticeships and going into the trades. In fact, many of these options might even pay more than an entry-level, post-college position, and anyone in those positions doesn’t have to worry about all their student debt. People who don’t go to college are also able to be successful in areas outside of just trades.
Oliver Weilein just won a seat on the Iowa City City Council, defeating property developer Ross Nusser — a definite sign of success. Weilein didn’t attend college and instead gained his knowledge through travel and experience, defying the rhetoric of higher education being a one-way path to a successful life.
Jack Fassbender, a high school junior in Madison, Wisconsin, is committed to his decision to take a less conventional path
Jami Martin-Trainor | Executive Editor
Columnists: Cole Walker, Muskan Mehta, Abigail Jones, Caden Bell, Reese Thompson, Grace Dabareiner, Julia Anderson, Aaron El-Kadani, Kennedy Lein, Jackson Mendoza
Editorial Board: Jami Martin-Trainor, Marandah Mangra-Dutcher, Jack Moore, Stella Shipman, Muskan Mehta, Charlie Hickman
COLUMNS, CARTOONS, and OTHER OPINIONS CONTENT reflect the opinions of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Editorial Board, The Daily Iowan, or other organizations in which the author may be involved.
EDITORIALS reflect the majority opinion of the DI Editorial Board and not the opinion of the publisher, Student Publications Inc., or the University of Iowa.
message to the public in celebration of Lent.
He clearly will appeal to any religious audience for his own gain under the ruse of empowering the diaspora of Christianity. However, while walking the tight line of unconstitutionality, the only legal way for the office to persist is to hear the appeals of all religions in the nation … which may be a good thing.
It’s a fact that the U.S. population is overwhelmingly Christian, and with the unaffiliated share of the population consistently growing, having risen from 23 percent in 2014 to 29 percent in 2023-24, according to a Pew Research poll, there will always be respect for secularity in government. Christian representation grows into oppression with the imposition of values onto unassuming populations — primarily on religions that are explicitly not Christian. Separate from the unaffiliated population, non-Christians make up 7 percent of Americans. Although miniscule in comparison, forcing any group to comply with policies directly against their
when he graduates high school. Although he faced some backlash from friends and family, Fassbender decided college wasn’t the path he was meant to take.
“I saw that there was not a necessity to go to college to be successful,” Fassbender said.
When it comes to his decision, it may have been a harder one to make living in Madison. There is more pressure to go to college for those who live there; it’s a progressive and highly educated area, especially considering it’s home to UW-Madison. Higher education is seen there as a civic duty and a necessity.
However, in Iowa, there’s less pressure — Iowa is an incredibly rural area, and oftentimes, many people who graduate from high school don’t pursue higher education due to their abilities to get jobs in agriculture.
With Fassbender, another factor came into play: his return on investment, or ROI. The Education Data Initiative found that, in the first decade after graduating college, graduates have a negative ROI, meaning it takes roughly 11 years in the workforce to regain their investment for obtaining a bachelor’s degree.
Fassbender said his decision to forgo the conventional path is because what he wants to do — become a firefighter — doesn’t require a specific degree that costs thousands of dollars and might leave him unqualified in the end, anyway.
But aside from the debt that might be owed, many believe college is more than just tuition. It’s often something that is sold as being a transformative life experience. However, this isn’t a universal
beliefs constitutes oppression — which is exactly what the WHFO is designed to address.
“I read the executive order … and it specifically mentions anti-Christian and anti-Semetic discrimination. I think the fact that they specifically singled those two out is very telling as to what the administration’s priorities are,” the UI student said.
The modern argument of the separation of church and state can be boiled down to religious representation versus full secularity. In a generally secular government, an office that can act as a safeguard for all religious segments of the population opens the door to a full religious diaspora of the nation to find representation in government. It is highly debatable to what extent the new WHFO will protect non-Christian practices. However, its establishment only leaves greater room to try. Is religion in government inherently bad when the full diaspora of the nation is present, too?
perception, especially when you factor in the academic component.
Caroline Kruk, a nursing student at the UI College of Nursing, said she often feels like her academics restrict her ability to have the college experience she wanted.
“There are times when I have exams coming up, and I need to cancel plans with friends, so I can study. Other times, I choose not to hang out with friends due to stress from assignments building up,” Kruk said.
It’s also important to note the societal pressure many high schoolers face to go to college. As I previously suggested, the area someone grows up in has a great effect on what they choose to do when they graduate from high school.
Jake Kapel, a third-year student at the UI, said growing up in Wheaton, Illinois, he felt college was his only option.
“It was the direction my parents wanted me to take. You don’t really see kids from the area I grew up [in] not going to college,” Kapel said.
Like Kapel, many students think their only option is college; all they’ve ever known is academics, and high school counselors and courses work solely to prepare students for college life.
I’m not saying college is inherently bad or that you should avoid it at all costs. But it isn’t a one-size-fits-all experience — and for many people, it’s the last thing they see themselves wanting to do.
Society needs to stop pushing college as the only option, and we need to redefine what it means to be successful before more people lose time and money to something that may not be worth it.
Isabella Tisdale | The Daily Iowan
The U.S. Capitol Building is seen in Washington D.C. on April 7.
New board game lounge fills local gaming gap
Nolan Petersen and Sean Finn recently hosted the grand opening for their shop.
Madison
For years, Nolan Petersen and Sean Finn dreamed of opening their own store dedicated to creating an inclusive space for all board game lovers in Johnson County.
As longtime Iowa City residents and former University of Iowa students, both Petersen and Finn are heavily involved in the community by advocating for and celebrating LGBTQ+ individuals, while working with local nonprofits.
The pair also enjoyed spending time at a local downtown Iowa City staple: Fortuna Board Game Cafe.
However, in 2023, Fortuna Board Game Cafe announced it was closing its doors less than two years after opening.
Petersen and Finn quickly became inspired to begin their own board game cafe, especially since the two had been considering opening a business of their own during the same time.
“We really were asking ourselves, what kind of space did Fortuna fill — not only for our personal lives, but also in the community — and is that a space that we wanted to try and fill with a business of our own?” Petersen said.
After embarking on a board game cafe tour across the Midwest, the two worked on creating Diversions Tabletop Game Lounge.
Diversions started out hosting tabletop events throughout Iowa City in different spaces, such as Press Coffee and The Green House. It has also collaborated with others, such as Backpocket Brewing to host Puzzlepalooza and the Eastside Neighborhood Association for Eastside Gaming Day.
Alexis Kurth, a member of the Eastside Neighborhood Association, expressed her appreciation for past collaborations with Diversions along with her excitement for the grand opening.
“[Eastside Gaming Day] encouraged a lot of discussion with neighbors who maybe hadn’t really met before, which was really cool for me to see all of the different age groups and different people who didn’t know each other be able to sit and do something together,” Kurth said.
In addition, Kurth said she is looking forward to the growth of the new store with the local ownership and economic benefits it will bring to the local community.
“I think the grand opening is awesome, and I think it’s a great place for people to be able to come and just hang out together and do something wholesome together with people,” Kurth said. “I love that Diversions is a small, locally owned business and that any money that is being spent in Iowa City will stay in our city.”
To begin the journey of opening up a permanent location, the two began several fundraising campaigns that totaled around $27,500.
The money then went into initial renovations, preparing the space, purchasing additional games, setting up the retail area, and other general startup costs.
After renovating and designing the new space, Petersen and Finn
were ready to reveal the permanent location of Diversions Table Game Lounge with a grand opening on April 12.
The store, located at 119 Second St. in Coralville, features a game library with 400 games, such as Jenga, Taboo,
and the preparation so that folks can come in and have the easiest game night ever,” Finn said. As the store thrives after its opening, Petersen and Finn said their goal is to keep the space inclusive and welcoming to all communities while continuing
“We really were asking ourselves, what kind of space did Fortuna fill — not only for our personal lives, but also in the community — and is that a space that we wanted to try and fill with a business of our own.”
Nolan Petersen Co-owner
of Deversions Tabletop Game Lounge
and Catan. It also includes food, drinks, and a private game room, along with upcoming events to encourage in-person connections.
“We are curating this experience and doing all the cleanup
to foster connections and relationships. Petersen also said he believes that board games have been growing in popularity, with Diversions contributing to this trend in Iowa City.
The worldwide market of board games is estimated to produce almost $9 billion this year, according to Statista, with a growth of over 3 percent from 2025 to 2029.
“We not only anticipate the community really leaning into what we’re trying to do here, but we also expect that because board gaming in general, and our space specifically, really do bring people together in a way that helps them connect to make friends and build social networks in the real world,” Petersen said.
In the future, Diversions will continue to host gaming events and work with local artists to highlight art in the space and host gallery receptions.
“We are optimistic that [Diversions] is going to be a space where people are able to rebuild social connections, and in doing so, rebuild that sense of community that every community needs,” Finn said.
Coffalo Coffee basement roasts and bike rides
From his bike, Chris James offers
Jacob Calvin News Reporter news@dailyiowan.com
A lone rider has made his way to Iowa City. For nearly five years, Chris James has pedaled across the streets of West Des Moines, hand-delivering his homemade brew, Coffalo Coffee.
With his trusty companion Bugsy the pug, James has garnered a steady following of fans and customers alike. Coming up on their 5th anniversary in November, the orange-clad duo now partners with Iowa City retailers such as Hy-Vee and, as of April 8, New Pioneer Food Co-op in Iowa City.
“Iowa City has been on my radar for quite some time,” James said. “So, when the opportunity presented itself, I went for it. I’m currently in two Hy-Vees there [8th Street and Waterfront], and I don’t plan on stopping.”
It all started under the crushing weight of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. James’ 25-year career in the restaurant industry was cut short by nationwide industry layoffs.
“I’ve been privileged enough in my career that I have never experienced a layoff before, and it was an experience that I feel that opened my eyes to who I am and what my purpose was,” he said.
James decided to take matters into his own hands, taking a gamble on a small roaster that could roast a pound of beans per hour in his basement. He bought it from money he made selling items around his house. He would also need a brand theme that could be recognized on shelves dozens of miles from home.
He decided on the buffalo, combining the animal’s name with coffee to make “Coffalo.”
The name only seemed natural, considering James graduated from Tempe High in Arizona, which sports the buffalo as its mascot. When he moved to Iowa 15 years ago, he landed and lived on Buffalo Road in West Des Moines.
“The term Buffalo has kind of been following me around,” James said.
To James, it’s a symbol of perseverance and strength, something he could latch onto starting up his own business.
James’ Coffalo Coffee went live in November 2020, a mere four months after he was laid off.
As his bike-riding coffee business became more recognizable throughout the area, he was able to expand his operations exponentially. His small roaster was upgraded to one that roasts up to 60
pounds per hour, allowing him to sell to retailers like Hy-Vee.
The roaster uses hot air rather than natural gases, meaning customers don’t have to worry about hydrogen sulfides finding their way into their brew.
But clean coffee and a unique brand name aren’t the only ways Coffalo has gained traction. In the bicycle’s backseat during James’ local deliveries sits his furry companion, Bugsy the pug.
Bugsy fills in the paws of James’ previous pug, Sushi, who died a year and a half after the business started. When he started Coffalo, James was looking for a way to get Sushi out of the house, who was blind and deaf. His bicycle rides turned out to be the perfect solution while also being environmentally friendly. If the weather is right, customers can find Bugsy now riding in the backseat of the bike. And for the right amount of treats, she’ll pose for any selfie that comes her way.
“[Customers] absolutely love her. I
mean, it’s not something that you see every day, a pug in goggles and a helmet riding around on the back of a bicycle. And she gets lots of attention,” James said.
Dave Kurns, who acted as business advisor for Coffalo, believes there is plenty to set James’ business apart from other coffee sellers.
“It’s a fascinating story about somebody who’s trying to invent and build something from the ground up and was able to do it with the help of the community and the people around him,” he said.
“I was just really intrigued with that.”
James hasn’t forgotten about the community that supported him from the ground up. Since he started his business, James has given coffee donations to the nonprofit Unravel Iowa and various other local programs in the Des Moines area like the Valerius Elementary Book Fair, the Waukee Elementary Book Fair, Waukee APEX, and the Windsor Heights Steam Clean Earth Day Cleanup.
Most prominently, James supports the Buffalo Field Campaign, in which volunteers defend and herd the buffalo in the Yellowstone area.
James reached out to the organization in Coffalo’s youth and decided to donate a pound of the “Roam Free Roast” to the organization every month.
“I didn’t want to just use the image of the buffalo or the word buffalo just to sell coffee, right? It just didn’t sit right with me,” he said.
Beth Middleton, the Wine & Spirits manager at the Hy-Vee on 910 N. Jefferson Way in Indianola, felt James’ product would be a great addition to the location and ultimately made the connection for him. The two had worked together at Sodexo 15 years ago.
“I’ve worked for a local distillery, so I know how hard it can be to get outside of home base and how much more effort it takes out there,” she said. “So, seeing him expand into the Iowa City market is pretty exciting.”
Ethan McLaughlin | The Daily Iowan
UI program sees support after funding cut
The
International Writing Program recently lost nearly $1 million in federal funding.
Kate Perez Senior Reporter news@dailyiowan.com
For the past month, Christopher Merrill’s inbox has been flooded with messages from alumni, friends, colleagues, and writers, all voicing their support for the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program after its funding abruptly decreased.
Merrill, who has been the program direc tor for the past 25 years, had received over 2,000 emails alone by March 13 — a week after announcing the program was facing a nearly $1 million funding cut from the fed eral government. The emails signified what Merrill described as a “tremendous outpour ing of support” for the program from writers and alumni alike.
The support comes after a March 6 announcement from the International Writing Program, also known as the IWP, that the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs termi nated grants given to the program for the past 58 years because the financial awards “no longer effectuate agency priorities” nor align “with agency priorities and national interest.”
“I think for all these years, in one way, the IWP has been a sort of beacon of hope for writers from around the world,” Merrill said. “We’ve hosted any number of writers who were at risk in one form or another, usually from oppressive governments. And that notion of this being a place where writers could have three months of safe haven and to be in conversation with writers from 30 other countries, that’s just been dashed with one email.”
The loss in funding means a loss of services the program was previously able to provide. Consequently, the program announced it will have to have a smaller fall resident international writer cohort, cancel its summer youth program, dissolve its distance learning courses, and discontinue the Emerging Voices Mentorship Program.
The IWP’s goal is to bring international writers together to create mutual understanding between different cultures, Merrill said. While the funding cuts will not result in the IWP shutting down, the program’s ability to accomplish this goal has now been strained.
“I found that in the conversations we have here on an hourly basis with these really distinguished writers from around the world, it’s endlessly opening up my vision and my sense of possibility as a writer, as a thinker, and that’s what we have been bringing to the Iowa City community for these now 58 years that the State Department piece of it has just effectively ended, which is, for us, devastating news and and a little bizarre,” Merrill said.
Merrill said the program brings together writers from places that would not or could
not interact previously, such as Palestinian and Israeli writers being in residence simultaneously.
“We often have writers coming from countries at odds with one another. And here they find out, well, actually, we have much
from the U.S. Secretary of State connecting international writers with the IWP through embassies and consulates.
“We’ve lost that whole mechanism of being in contact with people who really know what’s happening in a given place.
“We’ve hosted 1,625 writers from 160 plus countries, and so that means we have a sense of what’s going on in really global terms, and they’ve just turned their back on that now, which is pretty dismaying.”
Christopher Merrill International Writing Program director
more in common than divides us, and political differences may never be resolved, but knowing that more unites us than divides us is a worthy thing to keep finding ways to cultivate,” Merrill said.
The loss of funding is also an indicator, he said, of the U.S. and State Department’s movement away from cultural diplomacy and trying to understand other cultures, which is what the IWP strives to achieve.
“We’ve hosted 1,625 writers from 160 plus countries, and so that means we have a sense of what’s going on in really global terms, and they’ve just turned their back on that now, which is pretty dismaying,” Merrill said.
Beyond the financially devastating loss of funding, Merrill said the cuts mean the program no longer has access to resources
So, as we try to reinvent the IWP with a different funding model, we also will have to reinvent that whole network of connections that every year would yield several writers we would never have known anything about who were incredibly interesting,” Merrill said.
The IWP’s longterm impact reaches more than just international writers. It extends in shaping Iowa City’s literary scene, including being a driving force behind Iowa City becoming a UNESCO City of Literature.
“We were the ones who spearheaded that campaign,” Merrill said. “We became the first UNESCO City of Literature in the New World, and now we were the first grants terminated by the Trump regime.”
IWP sees support from UI programs, departments
The messages of support Merrill has received go beyond just alumni emails. Other university programs and departments are also defending the importance of the IWP, including the Writers’ Workshop. Lan Samantha Chang, director of the Writers’ Workshop, wrote in an email to The Daily Iowan that the IWP has brought guests who have enriched the creative community on the UI campus.
“Inspiring students through an exchange of ideas and cultures, broadening writers’ sense of the literature that exists outside of U.S. borders, setting an example of how artists are able to exist and flourish in a variety of political and social circumstances,” Chang wrote. “It is because of the International Writing Program that many people around the world have heard about and learned to appreciate the University of Iowa.”
Loren Glass, the chair of the UI English Department, also said the IWP is essential in connecting Iowa to the world and vice versa.
“Obviously there’s lots of people who just come for a few months, but there’s been many people [who] come back, or who’ve even stayed here for various periods of time or stayed connected to Iowa,” Glass said. “It’s enormously enriched the literary and more broadly cultural environment of Iowa, and it’s enormously enhanced Iowa’s literary reputation around the world.”
The English Department, in which the IWP initially began, has provided continuous support to the international program as a whole since the funding cut was announced, whether it be orally or by attending readings and events Merrill is organizing.
“[Merrill] is not taking this lying down,” Glass said. “He’s really organizing. And so a lot of our faculty have been sort of galvanized, or at least uplifted, by the sort of energy and grit that he’s putting into this. He’s not accepting it as the end of the IWP. He’s determined to rebuild it and make sure it survives.”
The IWP has seen donations come in from different groups and has support from the university, Merrill said. He added that while the IWP will not have the levels of diversity it has had in the past and will have to be strategic for the next few years while creating a new funding model, the support indicates the program is a place of importance to people across the world.
“We’re going to fight to put something together that will honor the founders’ vision of the IWP as a place where writers from diverse countries and backgrounds and ideologies and economic status connect, do some good work, go home with a bigger vision of what’s possible as a writer,” Merrill said.
Ethan McLaughlin | The Daily Iowan
Smith Likongwe addresses the audience during an International Writer Program panel held in the Iowa City Public Library on Sept. 13, 2024. The panel focused on storytelling in the digital age.
What expanding Medicaid means for Iowa mothers
The expansion provides better services for qualifying mothers, leaving others without coverage
Shreya Reddy Audience Editor shreya.reddy@dailyiowan.com
When Lily Nichols, a mother of two and neonatal intensive care unit nurse, became pregnant, she felt comfortable going into the birthing process, feeling as if her experience as a nurse helped her advocate for herself and know when she would need intervention or certain services and care.
As a nurse and a mother, Nichols knew the postpartum period can take a toll on one’s mental health, with fears of financial and physical stress compounding those concerns.
“Postpartum wise, you don’t really feel like yourself for a couple of months,” Nichols said. “You don’t really realize that you are not feeling like yourself until you feel yourself again.”
Financially, Nichols said she didn’t realize how expensive birth was until she received the bill from her most recent hospital visit a couple of months ago. Though Nichols chose to opt out of an epidural and had minimal intervention, the bill was upward of $2,000 with insurance.
“I remember asking my husband, ‘What do women who get all these interventions do, because they need them but don’t have the money to pay for them,’” Nichols said.
The financial stress of pregnancy and postpartum care is felt by several mothers. The passage of Senate File 2251 works to combat these stressors, expanding postpartum Medicaid coverage for women across the state of Iowa.
Nichols called the hospital’s financial aid office and asked for an itemized list of the charges, wanting to ensure she was being charged for the services she chose to receive in the roughly 12 hours she spent with her husband in the hospital.
“It is a financial stress because we are two middle-class people, and we are not super wealthy or struggling, but it is something we need to budget for,” Nichols said.
Stephanie Amundson, a neonatal intensive care unit nurse and mother, had high blood pressure and gestational diabetes during her first pregnancy. A multitude of tests, insulin, and follow-ups with her medical team were required.
“I was able to get access to the extra monitor, nonstress tests, ultrasounds, and insulin because I had comprehensive health care,” Amundson said.
As a NICU nurse, Amundson has seen the postpartum experience faced by mothers who give birth to premature babies, where establishing a maternal child bond can be particularly difficult.
Amundson said when new mothers are trying to produce breast milk, smelling and touching their baby helps maternal hormones to create more milk. However, when mothers are unable to have that connection to their babies due to barriers such as incubators, it can disrupt the bonding process.
The bill was signed by Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds on May 8, 2024, and expanded existing postpartum Medicaid coverage from 60 days to 12 months. The bill went into effect on April 1.
The bill also reduced postpartum Medicaid eligibility from 375 percent of the federal poverty level to 215 percent of the federal poverty level or roughly $29,000 in annual income, according to the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency’s fiscal analysis of the legislation.
The fiscal analysis showed all women currently at the 215 percent poverty level are eligible for Medicaid as of Jan. 1.
Anne Discher, executive director of Common Good Iowa, said the previous 60-day coverage meant mothers could lose health insurance coverage, while postpartum health issues often extend longer than a two-month period after giving birth.
“Expanding pregnancy Medicaid allows folks who have coverage to be able to get mental and physical health care, to take care of themselves as new parents navigating caregiving and going back to the workplace,” Discher said.
According to the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services, to qualify for postpartum services, certain eligibility requirements must be met, including proof of citizenship, Iowa residency, pregnancy, and income under 215 percent of the federal poverty level.
Discher said the reduction of the federal poverty level will affect both women who are currently pregnant and those who are in the postpartum stage of their pregnancy.
“For folks who have coverage, this is a really great opportunity for them, allowing them to do what they need to do with their lives, but it also means that those who used to have access to coverage during their pregnancy no longer have access to coverage,” Discher said.
Discher emphasized the importance of understanding coverage will expand care, but there will be women who will not qualify for pregnancy coverage in the first place.
Iowa Sen. Janet Petersen, D-Des Moines, echoed a similar sentiment, stressing the need to maintain health care coverage for a year following the birth of one’s child.
“One of the most important things is having a healthy mom and a healthy baby,
future legislation.
Reynolds has impacted maternal health care, Petersen said, by privatizing the Medicaid system, or taking away the administration of these services from the public, governmental sector and giving it to private companies and organizations.
“We have lost multiple labor and delivery departments and mental health services,” Petersen said. “Several women in Iowa live in communities that are considered maternal health deserts, making it harder for them to access care.”
What is postpartum care?
Alaina McElmeel, a birth and postpartum doula and founder and director of Kind Roots Doula and Birth Services, which serves Iowa City, Cedar Rapids, and surrounding communities, said giving birth is not only a major endeavor on the body itself, but in the period after birth as well.
McElmeel gave birth to her first son 10 years ago and remembers the countless sleepless nights and doing everything for her baby.
McElmeel now provides daytime and overnight care for postpartum mothers as a doula, caring for mothers and their babies, providing support and help where it is most needed.
“A huge aspect of doing this work is creating really solid, compassionate bonds with people,” McElmeel said. “It can be a lot to accept a relative stranger into their most intimate places, where everyone needs different things.”
McElmeel said Kind Roots is a private LLC, providing birth doulas, postpartum
“Medicaid is comprehensive health insurance ... Health insurance is the key that unlocks the door to health care. It is a way of catching potential health care problems early, and when there are challenges postpartum, it means coverage to help address those. ”
Anne Discher Executive director of Common Good Iowa
and we shouldn’t be cutting off health care coverage for new moms 60 days after they have given birth,” Petersen said.
Petersen said such legislation can help reduce maternal and infant mortality rates in the state, with infant mortality numbers at 5.20 for every 1,000 live births as of 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There are roughly 40,000 babies born in Iowa annually, according to Iowa Health and Human Services.
Despite these benefits, Petersen also addressed the impacts this would have on those who will no longer be eligible for Medicaid, which is roughly 1,700 people, according to the nonpartisan fiscal note by the Legislative Services Agency on the bill.
Additionally, roughly 1,300 women will lose access to prenatal care, or before-birth care, under this new bill. In total, roughly 3,000 women will be affected under this bill.
Iowa House Rep. Devon Wood, R-New Market, said pregnant women currently on Medicaid coverage will not be removed or become ineligible from care under the grandfather clause during a House committee meeting in April 2024.
According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the grandfather clause allows individuals under a particular health care plan or service to maintain those services regardless of
doulas, and birth education services with doulas of various expertise and specialties in physical therapy, early education, and postpartum placenta.
Because Kind Roots is not certified by the international doula certification program, or DONA, McElmeel said they are unable to accept insurance.
For families interested in postpartum care, McElmeel recommends speaking to families and friends first and having them help offset the cost by pooling money toward doula services or other forms of postpartum care rather than traditional gifts for expecting mothers such as onesies or strollers.
“I recognize that this is a valuable service but also that families can’t always afford it,” McElmeel said. “So, I regularly talk to families about how they can help subsidize this care because we all deserve it.”
Nichols, as a NICU nurse, said it is common for mothers who fear that something can go wrong at any moment, worried about whether or not they are eating right and doing everything they can to protect their baby. This, Nichols said, can take a toll on mental health.
“It is not talked about or discussed enough,” Nichols said. “People usually don’t ask, ‘What are you anxious about?’ They just want to be excited for you.”
Once postpartum mothers leave the
home, Nichols said, there is a risk of hemorrhaging or losing blood because of a damaged blood vessel.
“You are super vulnerable, and then once you physically heal, there are the questions of ‘How are you feeling’, ‘What do you need’, ‘How are your other children,’” Nichols said. “I am blessed to have a community that will ask me those questions but am cognizant that a lot of women don’t have someone to do that for them.”
To have coverage for up to 12 months, Nichols said, is huge.
“It took me probably nine to 12 months to feel like myself again and actually feel like I could do this,” Nichols said.
NICU mothers are routinely screened for postpartum depression at different intervals, Amundson said, to try and identify moms who might need outside resources provided by Medicaid.
Postpartum or perinatal depression is a mood disorder affecting mothers during pregnancy or up to one year after childbirth, according to the National Institute of Health.
Postpartum services included under the Medicaid coverage include lactation services, labs and X-rays, dental services, mental and behavioral health care, and more.
Some mothers left behind Discher said for those who are no longer eligible for Medicaid because their income is too high, the process of qualifying becomes complicated.
“Medicaid is comprehensive health insurance,” Discher said. “Health insurance is the key that unlocks the door to health care. It is a way of catching potential health care problems early, and when there are challenges postpartum, it means coverage to help address those.”
Emergency Medicaid is offered to women who are uninsured during pregnancy, which can help cover the costs of labor and delivery. However, Discher expressed concerns with the program, as going through a pregnancy without health insurance means women have often gone without the recommended prenatal care.
Petersen said Democrats currently have legislation that would aid in the creation of birthing centers, or a health care facility specifically designed for labor and delivery, in Iowa, expanding Medicaid reimbursement for birth doulas, and more.
Similarly, Reynolds has introduced a House Study Bill on the expansion of rural health care in the state. HSB 191, introduced in February, aims to increase regional and rural specialty clinics in smaller regional hospitals, impacting maternal health care and access to postpartum services needed by mothers.
The bill will also increase reimbursements for health care services, including those for perinatal, pregnant, and postpartum women.
House File 887, a bill looking to reduce the cost of developing a birthing center in a state that has long been without such a facility, also works to combat the maternal health care crisis.
Increasing Medicaid reimbursement would help provide money for health care providers and birthing hospitals, Petersen said, eliminating the shuttering of labor and delivery services where it otherwise would not have been financially viable to keep open.
Similar feelings were expressed by Amundson and Nichols, with both emphasizing the importance of prenatal care and access to coverage.
“If you told me that I didn’t have insurance coverage, and I had the knowledge that I would have a massive bill after giving birth, I honestly would have given birth at home to help minimize that financial stress,” Nichols said.
Emma Calabro | The Daily Iowan
Stephanie Amundson plays with her son Sebastian Amundson at the Iowa City Pedestrian Mall Playground on April 11. She is a neonatal intensive care unit nurse and mother.
McElmeel
Discher
DRAWING ON TRADITION
JohnsonCounty is home to the Iowa Kyudo Kai, an affiliate of the American Kyudo Renmei. Formed in 2017, the Iowa Kyudo Kai is an offshoot of the Minnesota Renmei. The group practices every week to build strength, discipline, and knowledge of the sport. They participate in Taikai, or competition, with the greater Kyudo community. They also travel for international seminars to learn and get feedback from the highest level Kyudoka.
Kyudo, or “the Way of the Bow,” is the tradition of Japanese archery that began during feudal Japan. In recent years, the practice has expanded across the U.S. Modern Kyudo was formulated in the mid1900s by three instructors of the Koryu — translated to “the old schools” — and two instructors of modern Kyudo schools. This was done with the intention of practitioners of all schools being able to practice together in harmony with a unified Taihai — translated to “body arrangements.”
The Iowa Kyudo Kai practices at the Cedar Rapids Recreation Center and the Coralville Archery Range each week. They perform a handful of demonstrations per year around Iowa at cultural events such as Anime Iowa or AsianFest.
Clara Jarecke | The Daily Iowan (Top) Haruhi Abbas performs Tenouchi at the Cedar Rapids Recreation Center on Feb. 16. Tenouchi means to construct a grip around the bow. (Middle) Coach Hunter Gott clarifies Tori Yumi No Shisei to the class at the Cedar Rapids Recreation Center on March 9. Tori Yumi No Shisei is the proper stance when moving with the bow. (Beside) Christi Paguntalan Shauger completes Hanare at the Cedar Rapids Recreation Center on March 9. Hanare means “release.” (Below) Alexis Godeke (middle) performs Dai-san at the Cedar Rapids Recreation Center on March 9. Dai-san means to draw the bow to the one-third position.
See more online
The Daily Iowan attended several events and practices to capture Kyudo in its entirety. Watch the accompanying film and see more photos online at dailyiowan.com.
A never-ending effort of gratitude
Iowa continues to invest in gymnastics, unveiling a new $20 million facility.
The
the
Jack Birmingham Sports Reporter sports@dailyiowan.com
the
the
The University of Iowa has continued to invest heavily in women’s gymnastics, creating new opportunities for the Hawkeyes to improve and perform. A $20 million training center, unveiled to the public on April 10, is an example of
Iowa’s growing interest in the sport. The ceremony officially showcased the Nagle-Duda Gymnastics & Spirit Squads Training Center, named after former spirit squad member and donor Mary Lee Nagle-Duda, whose $5 million gift was critical to the success of the project. The building contains locker rooms, athletic training and meeting rooms, and office space, as well as 21,000 square feet
of training space, such as uneven bars and vault runways.
First-year head coach Jen Llewellyn expressed gratitude to all who made the facility possible during her remarks at the dedication ceremony, which saw a turnout that included spirit squad members, donors and benefactors, coaching staff, and UI President Barbara Wilson.
“From the moment that we moved
Iowa softball can still make the NCAA tournament
Jackson Miller
going
run
pretty
here, the last four Big Ten series,” Gollan said after a loss to Illinois State on April 8. “We’re probably going to have to try to put up seven to eight wins out of that run.” Iowa currently sits in 11th place in the Big Ten standings with a 4-6 conference record. Three of the final four conference series opponents sit below the Hawkeyes in the standings, including the season finale against last-placed Rutgers. With those standings in mind, Iowa should be in good shape to win or sweep at least three of the remaining four series. The toughest upcoming opponent for the Hawkeyes is Penn State on April 19-21.
from the Field House into this dream home at the end of January, as a coaching staff, we saw an immediate shift in trajectory of our program,” Llewellyn said. “Watching this group support one another, rise to the occasion, and surpass all expectations was nothing short of inspiring. Along the way, we matched
Wes Obermueller returns home to the Hawkeyes
After playing for Iowa baseball in the 1990s, Obermueller returns to his alma mater in a different role.
Jake Olson Sports Reporter sports@dailyiowan.com
Once a former Iowa baseball player who dazzled fans with both his pitching and hitting abilities in the 1990s, Wes Obermueller brings a life of baseball journeys back to his former program.
Obermueller finished his Hawkeye career in 1999 and was immediately drafted by the Kansas City Royals in the second round of the MLB Draft. He made his major league debut in September of 2002 and spent the next five years pitching for the Royals, Milwaukee Brewers, and Florida Marlins.
Now, over 20 years removed from the Iowa baseball program, Obermueller has returned to coach his alma mater as the new director of player development. Obermueller reached out to Iowa head coach Rick Heller multiple times over the past year in pursuit of dipping his toes in the coaching side of the game. While these conversations were nothing too serious, things picked up when a spot opened up on Heller’s staff heading into the 2025 season.
“He said he would really like to get back into it,” Heller said. “He’s always been into it. He’s always helped out in high schools, in lessons, and helped kids out, but he said he was really wanting to get back into it at a higher level.” In the role, Obermueller’s responsibilities fall in the bullpen. During games, he is in charge of warming up players and making sure they’re ready when needed. He uses this as an opportunity to connect with the pitching staff, give athletes advice, and keep stress levels low.
Heller thought the addition of Obermueller would be an easy fit due to his collegiate and professional experiences in the sport. Before the hiring, Heller made sure the chemistry between Obermueller and new pitching coach Sean Kenny was solid, considering the two would be working together in similar facets.
The two were able to sit down, enjoy a handful of conversations, and make the hiring complete.
Another person Obermueller had to get approval from was his son, starting pitcher Cade Obermueller. While never official, Wes has been a coach to Cade
John Charlson | The Daily Iowan
building front is seen after
grand opening ceremony of the Nagle-Duda Gymnastic & Spirit Squads Training Center in Iowa City on April 10. The facility was finished in 2024 and sits across
street from
women’s soccer facility on Prairie Meadow Drive.
Baseball
Friday, April 18
Michigan
Ann Arbor, Michigan
5 p.m.
Softball
Saturday, April 19
Penn State Iowa City, Iowa
5 p.m.
Men’s Golf
Saturday, April 19 through Sunday, April 20
Boilermaker Intercollegiate
West Lafayette, Indiana
Women’s
Friday,
Track and Field
Friday, April 18, through
Saturday, April 19
Tom Jones Invitational
Gainesville, Florida
Friday, April 18, through
Saturday, April 19
Beach Invitational
Long Beach, California
Tennis
Friday, April 18
Oregon Eugene, Oregon
1 p.m.
Sunday, April 20
Washington Seattle, Washington
5 p.m.
WHAT YOU’VE MISSED
New Iowa men’s basketball coach Ben McCollum has hired Luke Barnwell as an assistant coach, per a press release on April 9.
“I have known Luke for a number of years,” McCollum said in the release. “He is an elite recruiter, excellent coach, and has had a ton of success at the prep level. He also has a lot of experience at the Power 5 level with one of the top coaches in the country in Grant McCasland. We’re excited to have Luke join our program.” Barnwell previously spent two seasons as an assistant coach under Grant McCasland at Texas Tech, where he helped guide the Red Raiders to 51 wins and an Elite Eight appearance during his tenure. Barnwell was credited with the development of stars JT Toppin, Darrion Williams, and Chance McMillan. All three players earned postseason honors, highlighted by Toppin earning All-American and Big 12 Newcomer of the Year honors. Prior to arriving in Lubbock, Barnwell served as the head coach of Sunrise Christian Academy in Bel Air, Kansas, where he compiled an overall mark of 178-28 and five consecutive GEICO Nationals. He coached over 75 NCAA Division I players and six NBA players during his tenure. Now, Barnwell returns to the Midwest to join an Iowa program that looks to return to national prominence under McCollum.
“I am incredibly blessed to be a part of the University of Iowa and Coach McCollum’s staff,” Barnwell said. “My family and I look forward to being back in the Midwest to work for this university, community, and program.”
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
Hawks Nest promotes Iowa sports
Jake Olson Sports Reporter sports@dailyiowan.com
On April 12, with an hour remaining before game two between the Iowa and Nebraska baseball teams, fans and students gathered around the walkways of Duane Banks Field in Iowa City, anxiously waiting.
The event itself was created by a handful of University of Iowa students with the pursuit of an event management certificate.
“It is a student organization just for attending sports games . It is completely free to be in, and they want to build up a fanbase for all the games.”
Kaitlyn Hooker Member of Hawks Nest
The Hawks Nest Tailgate, in preparation for the afternoon’s contest, was about to start. Outside of free items and opportunities to engage in the game day experience, it was a chance to meet Iowa baseball head coach Rick Heller and newly appointed men’s basketball head coach Ben McCollum.
“I’m just glad they are bringing Ben over here to the ballpark,” Heller said. “I know all of us are really happy for Ben and excited for what he’s going to bring to our athletic department.”
Q&A | SEAN SMITH
One part of the certificate is taking the event management workshop class — an opportunity for students to work with clients in planning, scheduling, and executing different events. This particular group was in the works with the Iowa Athletic Department that wanted to plan a tailgate environment to bring more students in to participate.
Choosing baseball to play host, both parties saw this as a perfect opportunity to introduce McCollum to the fans while simultaneously encouraging fans to come watch Heller’s team in action.
Both coaches took time to take pictures, sign autographs, and talk with some of the Hawkeye faithful.
Overall, it was an event that promoted not just the respective programs but Iowa athletics as a whole.
Thrid-year thrower reflects on time at Iowa
Morgan Burhans Sports Reporter sports@dailyiowan.com
The Daily Iowan: What’s your favorite Iowa City activity? Sean Smith: I love to fish. So, in my free time, I go out to my friend’s pond, hop around the area, and go to Lake MacBride. But summertime, wintertime, whatever it is, I like to fish a lot.
When did you realize you wa nted to take throwing seriously? It was after my freshman year [of high school] when I broke my section’s weight throw record. I never really gave a thought to competing in college, going to college. But then I had a coach tell me, he said, ‘You got a real talent here. You’ve worked hard, and I
“Part of it is, to be quite honest, everybody is well aware the crowd wasn’t great last year and the last couple years.”
- Iowa men’s basketball head coach Ben McCollum on trying to retain Josh Dix and Pryce Sandfort.
STAT OF THE WEEK
1
Game Iowa baseball is behind for the top spot in the Big Ten conference as of April 10
Chris Meglio Sports Reporter
The transfer portal created a very interesting dynamic that’s taken some harsh turns since NIL was legalized in 2021. College athletes, whether former or current at the time, are very outspoken on how their sports leagues profit billions of dollars off their athletes but weren’t sharing any of that money with the athletes themselves. Now, they get to earn that money. Not only that, but the universities have been able to directly pay their athletes, leading to a shatter of transfers across all sports. It’s become free agency. An escape from the grind. Commitment is nonexistent. The only way to regulate this is to bring back the transfer redshirt rule — athletes having to sit out a year before playing with their new team.
think you can make it to the next level.’ That was the first time I kind of realized I could go to college for this.
“It just boosts them,” Daniel Rosengarten, a student at the UI, said. “I think more awareness is great.”
The game itself filled the stadium with 2,654 roaring fans — the most Duane Banks Field has seen since Heller joined the coaching staff in 2014.
The bigger picture in the pursuit to increase student participation was the increased promotion of the Hawks Nest, a student organization with the sole goal of producing energetic student crowds to all Iowa athletic events.
“It is a student organization that not many students know about,” Kaitlyn Hooker, member of the organizing group, said. “It is a student organization just for attending sports games. It is completely free to be in, and they want to build up a fanbase for all the games.” Hooker and the rest of her group hope events like this can inspire more projects promoting other sports at the university and highlight all the unique athletic talent found in Iowa City.
If the athletic department is willing to organize unique experiences like this, student turnout and participation will continue to rise. The Hawks Nest will fulfill its mission of having the most energetic and passionate students in the country.
“I think it can get students to attend baseball games and other sports not as common as football,” Hooker said.
Why did you choose to come to the University of Iowa? I wanted to go explore, get on my own, and Iowa was the perfect place to do it. The academic culture, the business school drew me here, as well as the coaching staff, the teammates, the team culture through the track team as well as that athletic excellence that the track team has is awesome.
What is your favorite memory at the University of Iowa?
Sean Smith Third-year Thrower Webster, New York Marketing major
What advice would you give to an aspiring student athlete?
I’d say get involved and take it slow. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been here four years already, unfortunately, but I have another year left. But get involved. I’m on the Student Athlete Advisory Committee. I’m in Athletes In Action. On a leadership team with that as well as working part time, just being on the track team enjoying every second of it. And then while being involved, just taking a step back and realizing this is where you dreamed of being in high school and what you’ve worked your whole life to be. Just not to take any of that for granted.
When I got second last year at the indoor Big Ten championships in the weighted throw, I threw a big PR, which broke the school record at and just the camaraderie. Everyone showed up for me and just celebrating with the team, and my parents were there. So, just a big moment across the board that they were able to share that moment with me.
Those transfer rules were exempt in 2021, and since then, each year has seen a record amount of transfers. The biggest number I’ve seen is in college bas ketball with over 2,000 transfers this year alone. There are players who are literally bouncing between two or three programs every off season. With players having to sit out a year, continuity will come back to the sport. It’ll force kids to work hard for playing time and stick with the plan rather than bailing because they’re upset they weren’t starting after one season with their respective program.
These new rules are like giving these athletes special privileges and handouts. The NCAA is allowing kids to take the easy way out instead of working hard for what they want. Bouncing between different colleges every year can have an affect on the quality of education the student athlete is truly getting because of that lack of continuity.
I strongly believe it’s not good for the sport, not good for the colleges, and not good for the character development of young adults.
No
Over the past years, NIL and the transfer portal have had major impacts on the world of college athletics, for better or worse.
In 2018, the NCAA introduced the new transfer rules that would make switching schools much easier and provide bigger opportunities for student athletes. Athletes can now have immediate eligibility. Before this rule was installed, transfers would have to sit out one year before playing. Many fans of the sport are blaming this rule change for the absurd number of athletes who leave their original schools. While it has a part to play in the overall issue, I believe there are other rules and regulations the NCAA can implement to limit the expanding transfer portal. The first rule that can be encted
is limiting the number of times an athlete can transfer.
In many cases, players who transfer typically have done so multiple times.
A prime example of this is AJ Storr, a basketball player who is now going on his fourth team in four years.
Players are treating schools like fast food restaurants and leaving immediately when they face some sort of adversity.
A new rule will limit athletes to two transfers max and keep the transfer portal pool to a minimum.
Secondly, the NCAA can install a cap limit for NIL funds. Another factor in the mass exodus of transfers every season is the chase for more money.
Larger schools with more resources are poaching players all around the country when offering athletes money they simply can’t turn down.
The addition of immediate eligibility is one of the reasons for the transfer portal getting more and more out of hand. But I believe there are other factors that, if changed, can completely fix the problem at hand.
Sports Reporter
April 12, 2025. Hawks Nest, a student organization, helped organize the tailgate to encourage attendance.
Golf
April 18, through Sunday, April 20
Big Ten Championships Havre de Grace, Maryland
a few program records and earned multiple personal bests.”
Despite being unranked and projected to finish 10th in conference, the Hawkeyes nabbed important victories over No. 25 Nebraska and No. 26 Illinois in February and placed fifth at the Big Ten championships on March 22.
Iowa’s season came to an end at NCAA Regionals at the University of Alabama, where the Hawkeyes placed behind No. 6 California, No. 11 Alabama, and North Carolina. Iowa finished the season 4-3 overall, including an even 3-3 in the Big Ten.
“What we accomplished this year wasn’t just about rankings or results,” Llewellyn said. “It was about heart, resilience, and a shared dream turned into a reality. This foundation that was laid out as a group will only impact the future in the best possible way.”
While Iowa is a school known for programs such as wrestling and women’s basketball, its gymnastics squad, often called the GymHawks, brings a lot of talent and dedication to the table.
Iowa boasts two Olympians, Cassie Lee and Aurélie Tran, both of whom represented Canada at the 2024 Paris Olympics. This year’s roster featured athletes from nine different states and three provinces, including Lee and Tran, natives of Ontario and Quebec, respectively. Additionally, Tran and fourth-year teammate Haley Tyson each earned all-championship honors during Iowa’s fifth-place showing in Ann Arbor.
“With these new resources, we are positioning ourselves to compete at the highest level,” Llewellyn said. “We are ready to build on the legacy that is Iowa gymnastics in ways that will continue to inspire the future generations of young women from all around the community, the country, and the world.”
For her part, athletics director Beth Goetz showed excitement upon the completion and unveiling of the project.
“This 32,000-square-foot facility that was completed just a few months ago is going to serve the needs of our outstanding gymnastics teams and incredible spirit squads, supporting almost 70 students a year and hundreds more for years to come,” Goetz said in her speech.
Goetz also celebrated the building as a major sign of progress for programs that have previously relied on shared facilities for practice and training.
NCAA from 1B
The Nittany Lions land in ninth place in the Big Ten as of April 9 with a 5-5 conference record. Iowa will certainly be tested, and the last thing they need to do is overlook any opponent. While the road ahead doesn’t look smooth, the Hawkeyes have the team to get the job done.
“It’s a long-awaited home for premier programs that haven’t had a place where they could showcase their hard work, their sweat and tears, that are going to lead to a lifetime of memories and friendships,” Goetz said. “This is a place where their commitment is going to be shared and showcased with so many others.”
From third-year Karina Muñoz claiming four event titles against Rutgers on Feb. 9 to third-year Emily Erb tying a program scoring record with a 9.975 on floor against Illinois just one week later, the GymHawks had cause for celebration at many points throughout the season.
“We continue to celebrate when we see our teams perform, when we see our spirit squads engaged almost daily in our community, but the real work, the many hours that they spend, are right here in this facility,” Goetz said. “This is going to be their home away from home, a place
where they’re going to build culture, train and perfect their craft, and study to earn their Iowa degrees. Championship teams need championship resources to prepare, and the hours they spend here will not only prepare them for success in competition and performances, but to be our leaders of tomorrow.”
Even for those moving on from the program, the facility, as well as Iowa’s increased attention to the sport, is a major step forward for the team’s progress. Fourth-year Alexa Ebeling echoed her coach’s opinions while also emphasizing the close-knit structure of the team.
“I didn’t really know what to expect coming into college,” the Iowa native said in an interview with The Daily Iowan . “Immediately coming into this family and having these sisters that I’ll be friends with for a lifetime is something that I’ll cherish.”
Ebeling, whose high school career saw her a national qualifier in 2019, also expressed how much of an impact the facility and this year’s coaching staff have made.
“I think that the facility has been a tremendous surprise to us,” Ebeling said. “It’s been an amazing addition to our success. I think that the new coaching staff has also been amazing.”
Ebeling noted the strength of the program and its supporters, acknowledging these qualities as what made the project and its longterm effects possible.
“It shows that the people that really care about this program are going to continue to come back, and we’re one big family,” Ebeling said. “It’s a never-ending effort of gratitude. We’re super grateful to be able to have been practicing in this facility for the last few months. It just goes to show the endless efforts of the Hawkeye community.”
Hawkeye ace pitcher Jalen Adams has been outstanding this season, posting a 2.26 earned run average through 26 appearances to rank 10th in the Big Ten. Her 130 innings pitched rank her second in the conference behind Ella Harrison
Perhaps the most consistent aspect of Iowa’s game is pitching and fielding. As a team, the Hawkeyes have committed just 36 errors in 999 total chances through 37 games this season. That statistic helps rank Iowa fifth in the Big Ten with a .964 fielding percentage.
OBERMUELLER from 1B
his entire baseball career. Cade said he sees his father as the guy who’s always “behind the scenes” to calm him down and share words of wisdom.
“[Cade] said, ‘You have been my coach my whole life. It’s not going to make any difference, and I would love it,’” Wes said.
The two keep a professional relationship on the field with Wes taking off his “dad hat” as soon as he steps into the facility. Previous years would have put stress on Wes while watching Cade perform. But the confidence and development Cade has shown this season have taken all of that away from Wes.
Beside the opportunity of being alongside his son, Obermueller has fallen in love with the rest of the players and coaches on the staff. He tried to keep a low profile early on, not wanting to wear out his welcome. But over time, he realized he could add onto the advice from Kenny to help the athletes in their respective careers.
Seeing what Heller has done with the program over the past decade inspired Obermueller to be a part of the process.
of Rutgers. Adams also has the second-most wins in the Big Ten with 16.
The combination of great pitching and defense has helped Iowa to land top-10 in ERA in the conference, and they’ll need to keep that trend going while mixing in more consistent offense.
The Hawkeyes’ offense has been up and down this season, and it seems to be the root of issues when they struggle.
As of April 9, Iowa has lost six of its last seven games. In that skid, the Hawkeyes scored over five runs just once — an 8-7 loss to Wisconsin on March 28. In the previous 10 games before the Maryland series, Iowa averaged just 3.9 runs per game in a stretch where they went 4-6.
Those numbers, simply put, won’t play in the Big Ten. The Hawkeyes rank 12th in the conference with 159 runs through 37 games. In comparison to UCLA’s 343 runs to lead the Big Ten, that statistic isn’t easy to look at.
Iowa, however, has the pieces to get the job done down the stretch. The middle infield duo of shortstop Soo-Jin Berry and second baseman Jena Young have been the bright spots for the Hawkeyes offensively.
Young and Berry sit in first and second on the team in average, both hitting over .340 through 37 games. The second-year duo has combined for 41 RBIs on the season, Berry with 23 and Young with 18.
Knowing his past baseball experiences can play a cog in the machine, Obermueller wants to see his former school grow to measures it has never seen.
“Coach Heller has a great track record here. He is just awesome wherever he goes,” Wes said. “When I played, we were hoping for 20 wins. Now, if we are under 30 wins, it’s kind of a disappointment.”
If Iowa’s best players play well, they will be in great shape heading into the Big Ten tournament by the end of the regular season. Given that, it will be important to take care of business in the midweek nonconference games, two of which are against in-state rival Iowa State. 64 teams make it to the regionals in NCAA softball, with 32 conference champions receiving automatic bids. While the Hawkeyes winning the Big Ten seems far-fetched at this point in the season, making some noise in the conference tournament will only help force the selection committee to consider Iowa.
If the Hawkeyes take care of business in the remaining winnable Big Ten series and midweek nonconference games, they’ll be very likely to receive a good draw in the conference tournament and go on a run. Despite its recent skid, Iowa can make the NCAA tournament. The team has rallied around coach Gollan ever since he took over in March, and he knows what it takes to get them to the tournament.
John Charlson | The Daily Iowan
A foam pit and balance beams are seen during the grand opening ceremony of the Nagle-Duda Gymnastic & Spirit Squads Training Center in Iowa City on April 10. The facility is named after former spirit squad member and donor Mary Lee Nagle-Duda.
Samantha DeFily | The Daily Iowan
Iowa catcher Allyssa Ramos is seen talking to Iowa acting head coach Karl Gollan during a women’s softball game between Iowa and Nebraska at Bob Pearl Softball Field in Iowa City on April 6. The Hawkeyes defeated the Cornhuskers, 5-2.
Hawkeyes’ three-day thriller
Following a three-game series between the Hawkeyes and the Cornhuskers, Iowa baseball took home two wins. In the final game, Iowa kept the lead until the last inning, losing 6-4. Saturday marked the highest fan attendance in coach Rick Heller’s tenure.
Samantha DeFily | The Daily Iowan
(Top) Iowa shortstop Kooper Schulte celebrates with the Iowa team during a baseball game between Iowa and Nebraska at Duane Banks Baseball Stadium in Iowa City on April 11. The Hawkeyes defeated the Cornhuskers, 1-0. Schulte earned one run and one hit. (Middle left) Iowa infielder Ben Swails opens his mitt to catch a ball during a baseball game between Iowa and Nebraska at Duane Banks Baseball Stadium in Iowa City on April 12. The Hawkeyes defeated the Cornhuskers, 11-6. Swails had one hit. (Middle right) Nebraska outfielder
Cael Frost swings through the ball during a baseball game between Iowa and Nebraska at Duane Banks Baseball Stadium in Iowa City on April 12. Frost earned one hit and two runs.
(Above) Nebraska utility player Will Jesske celebrates his home run with his teammates during a baseball game between Iowa and Nebraska at Duane Banks Baseball Stadium in Iowa City on April 12. Jesske earned one run and one hit.
The art of being an emerging artist in Iowa City
Emerging bands Worst Impressions, Dearborn, Bloomer, and cover band staple Dogs on Skis share their journeys breaking into the welcoming Iowa City music scene.
Cultures collide in Emily Culbreath’s thesis concert
The graduate fellow transformed Pubilc Space One into a New York dance club.
Haya Hussain Arts Reporter arts@dailyiowan.com
Storytelling is the art behind every medium. Whether through dance, music, writing, or painting, the human experience finds every way to expose itself.
For Emily Culbreath, a second-year MFA candidate at the University of Iowa, experiences and lessons from her life erupt in street dance. She goes by the stage name of Lady M and has been a professional street dance practitioner, educator, and performer for the past decade.
As her disciple, fourth-year undergraduate Niyati Deshpande has gotten a good grasp of the type of dancer and teacher Culbreath is.
“Working with Emily was so magical,” Deshpande reminisced. “She encouraged honesty and vulnerability in our work in a way that I haven’t gotten to experience many times before. Emily is also a very attuned teacher. She was good at picking up on what was and wasn’t working and then how to adjust accordingly. She is incredibly knowledgeable, and that shows, but she is also a great collaborator and made us feel like we all had a place in the work and the process.”
The tension Deshpande explored created a story rooted in sisterhood, exploring her role as an older sister within her family and Marathi culture.
“Realizing the significance of this role I had, and have had my entire life, created a sense of tension I’ve kept with me up until the present day and that I will undoubtedly carry into the future in some way,” Deshpande said.
This success is due in part to the numerous interactions and intersections she has had with other people's lives, bringing her deeper into the world of hip-hop. She has moved from place to place and gone on tour with remarkable dancers.
“I’m originally from Denver, and I lived in New York City for a while. I also lived in Philadelphia,” Culbreath said. “In a weird way, Iowa City chose us. My husband and I were on a tour with Rennie Harris: Puremovement. We were doing a show in Maine, and one of the original members of the company, named Duane Lee Holland, Jr., got his MFA from this program. He kind of approached us at the bar when we were out one night, and he was like, ‘Are you guys interested in getting your MFA degrees?’”
In May 2015, Holland, Jr. was the first
hip-hop artist to graduate from UI’s Master of Fine Arts in Dance program. Meetings with people like him shaped Culbreath’s life.
“When I was like 23, I would go to this club called Cielo on Wednesday nights, and all the best house dancers in the city would be there. It was life-changing for me because you would be immersed in creating an experience with other people in real time,” Culbreath said.
That feeling is what she hopes to recreate in her thesis, “The Space Between – Stories of Tension and Transformation.”
While Iowa City is barren of dance clubs like Cielo, it is full of artistic people who yearn to engage in such activities. Culbreath saw this potential in her students.
“I’ve been working with dance students, and we’ve been training in-house techniques and styles. It’s a whole other Black vernacular form of dance associated with hip-hop,” Culbreath said.
“Using that, we’re developing characters out of embodied experiments with tension, specifically cultural collision, especially in Iowa City, and what happens with cultural pluralism in a shared space. We can use vernacular dance to navigate those collisions.”
Margil Sanchez Carmona, a visiting student from Stanford, witnessed this collision. Upon arrival, it was evident this was more than just a dance performance, but an interactive experience.
“The bouncers at the door gave us wristbands and checked our names off lists. After we were allowed inside, there was a dance circle at the front, and anyone, including audience members, could join and show off. There was even a DJ posed at the back with a proper set,” Sanchez Carmona said.
In cooperation with Public Space One, Culbreath transformed the rooms into a club setting. From lights to house and hip-hop music, she brought every aspect of the New York club life to the humble Iowa City.
“I wanted to take away the proscenium stage setting and the relationship where we’re performing and you’re watching.
At PS1, I got a DJ, a theater student named Tony Nu, and a drummer who plays at the same time. Gabi Vanek, a musician, light designer, and producer, brought in a bunch of moving lights that she reworked into the space. I also brought a bunch of hanging lights and disco balls,” Culbreath said.
In dance, a stage is not just a stage. It needs to truly add to the stories being told, and Culbreath masterfully understands this.
Street artists bring Iowa City to life
Jonathan Sims and Thomas Agran discussed their mural work.
Isabelle Lubguban
Arts Reporter arts@dailyiowan.com
No matter where you are in downtown Iowa City, its vibrancy always shines through. This is due in part to the carefully crafted murals scattered around downtown.
The Public Art Advisory Committee’s Matching Fund Grant Program has gotten artists working in a variety of mediums and budgets, to be more active in the community. Through visual or performance-based local projects, the program was created in an effort to maintain Iowa City’s vibrant landscape.
“I hope it contributes to a lively and inviting atmosphere for people who live here and for those visiting,” street artist Jonathan Sims said.
Sims got the confidence to apply for mural projects after seeing local artists Ryan Bentzinger and Sayuri Sasaki Hemann’s creations. Previously, he had made large paintings on canvas and wood panels and illustrated digital art for semi-trailers and billboards.
Some of his inspirations include comic book artists like Wes Craig and Andrew MacLean, alongside the well-known franchise Star Wars and video games.
Sims is also the head artist for ReUnion Brewery. He was initially approached by about the position when he was working at clothing store Jonnie 5 Apparel. He had designed some characters for Big Grove Brewery’s Hopocalypse series that the staff at ReUnion took a liking to. Those designs took inspiration from cartoon characters like those from Adult Swim, Ren and Stimpy, and Rocko’s Modern Life.
After that, the ReUnion staff came to Sims and his coworkers and asked if they wanted to turn those designs into mascots and labels for their beers.
“Later on, I got to design a bunch of art-
work for their Coralville taproom and a semi truck. That’s when things really took off, leading to the huge amount of work I made for their downtown location when it opened in 2022,” Sims said. “They give me a ton of freedom and really appreciate the work I do for them.”
Former painting and drawing professor
Thomas Agran has worked as the director of public art for the Iowa City Downtown District. When he first arrived in Iowa City, he mentioned there were not that many murals.
“It has been a joy to watch the walls of [Iowa City] get a little more colorful, in every sense of the phrase,” Agran said.
Agran painted about a dozen murals specifically for Iowa City and had worked hard to make each one distinct in style and approach, with the help of the community.
“We focus on working with local artists, but also bring in new voices occasionally from outside of the state. Mural making is a very specific set of skills and experience, especially for municipal-scale work. We try to balance creating opportunities for artists new to public work with supportive management, while also bringing in experienced painters,” Agran said.
One of his earlier murals was the “Greetings from Downtown Iowa City” postcard on the alley wall off of S. Linn Street behind the Iowa City Public Library. Commissioned by the Iowa City Downtown District, it took about five days to make. The mural was made with a specific paint by the company Nova Color.
“It has a very tough paint film and lightfast rated colors, so you know your mural will last a long time,” Agran said. Even if they don’t last forever, murals can either be restored or repainted with new designs.
“This less permanent, more nimble, and lower stakes ecosystem of public art feels like a good fit for the resources available in our community,” Agran said.
Culbreath
for
at
MFA candidate in dance with a concentration
Mikey Rioux, Culbreath has been selected to represent the
Association at the National College Dance Festival.
Costuming, music, and makeup all come together to deliver a moving, incredibly enrapturing performance.
“When you’re sitting in an auditorium watching people perform from multiple feet away, you can’t communicate to them that you’re impressed or even that you hear the story and emotions they’re trying to convey. But I was seated so close to Culbreath and her dancers, and I not only saw their movements but felt them. When they slapped their hands down or fell to the ground, I physically experienced the reverberation and
ASK THE AUTHOR
impact,” Sanchez Carmona recalled. Watching, listening, and understanding are all different disciplines of human interaction. Culbreath brought this thesis concert to Iowa City because she believes street dance can serve as the crux for storytelling. “I believe these dance forms are the contemporary forms of popular culture right now,” Culbreath said. “They can infiltrate every aspect of concert dance and contemporary dance. In my opinion, you can't see any dance without seeing some element of African diasporic movement influencing what’s happening.”
Arylaan Evans wins Golden Corn Competition
The screenwriter talked about inspiration and process.
Grant Darnell Arts Reporter arts@dailyiowan.com
Arylaan Evans is a third-year Screenwriting and Theater Arts major at the University of Iowa. An excerpt from her screenplay “Murderer’s Row” took home the top prize at the Golden Corn Screenplay Competition, an annual event spearheaded by the Cinematic Arts Student Organization. Also known as CASO, the organization is one of many groups open to students in the screenwriting department. The judging process was initially supposed to be spearheaded by guest judge and producer Daniel Pipski, but due to a family emergency, Pipski had to drop out. A table reading of the Golden Corn finalists was held in Room 105 of the Adler Journalism Building on April 4, where students eagerly awaited the verdict as the honorable mentions were announced, followed by front and center readings of the first and second place scripts. It was here that Evans’ script was announced as the first-place winner.
The Daily Iowan: What is your screenplay about?
Arylaan Evans: My screenplay is called “Murderer’s Row,” and it’s about a warden coming into this prison, set in 1911, who makes a baseball team out of the inmates. The warden hopes it can earn enough money to reshape the prison and make it better. At the start of the story, it’s not in a very good place.
What inspired you to write this screenplay? It’s based on a true story, which I didn’t know about before researching. My friend randomly referenced it and was like, “This is like those prisoners
that played on a baseball team.” I was like, “I’m sorry, can you explain more about that?” So then I researched it, and I thought it was really interesting. The more I learned about it, the more I wanted to write it. I just started thinking about it a lot and was like, “I could write something about this,” because it’s a fascinating story. I read about the reallife baseball prison team and then took inspiration from it. Because it’s 1911, there’s not a lot of details about its origin. There’s stuff about the actual team but not really about how it came to be. That’s the part that I took and made my own. I kind of filled in the blanks with it. What inspired you to submit to Golden Corn?
I submitted it last year, but it was a first draft. I couldn’t attend last year, but I don’t think I was one of the finalists because I didn’t get an email or anything. I wanted to submit it again this year and actually attend it.
What is your relationship to CASO and the university’s screenwriting program? I’ve been a screenwriting major since my first year, and I know some of the people who are in CASO. I’ve heard about them enough, and they’ve had enough events that I’ve attended before. I like supporting the cinematic arts, and they’re a newer organization.
What do your future writing prospects look like?
I'm planning to move to the East Coast to be in an area with more writing opportunities than in Iowa. No offense, Iowa. I’m a screenwriting and theater arts major, so I want to dabble in playwriting too, which is why I’m going near the East Coast. I’m just gonna keep writing and hope for the best.
by Marilynne Robinson
Emma Calabro | The Daily Iowan
Emily
poses
a portrait
Halsey Hall on April 9. Culbreath is a second year
on choreography. Alongside MFA candidate
American College Dance
IOWA CITY ART
Iowa City bands share their start
Laurel Preston Arts Reporter arts@dailyiowan.com
“There are some times when it doesn’t matter what happened. You could be having a bad day, you could be having a good day, or whatever, but when we set up our stuff and we start the first song, you just feel this calmness. I don’t know what it is. It feels magical,” Dogs on Skis drummer Mike Roeder said.
Dogs on Skis has been a local cover band since the 1980s, performing a little bit of every genre, specializing in the 1960s to 1990s era. Their devout fans have been following the group around the state, from festivals to weddings, for 39 years.
“Music affects people emotionally. There’s nothing like it. It comes from the ether, and nobody knows how it comes into people’s minds and how it’s made up out of thin air, and it’s magical in that way,” Dogs on Skis member Nick Stika said.
For Dogs on Skis, music is about community, love, and keeping the joy of music alive. Throughout their whole time playing together, they said it never gets old, being on stage is like home, and they are surrounded by the people they love doing what they love.
For artists, feeling comfortable having a spotlight on you is a rare and treasured characteristic. Recently emerging local artist Jase Douglas, also known as Bloomer, doesn’t have stage fright but struggles with similar anxieties.
“I have a panic disorder and general anxiety disorder on top of that. I’m kind of dealing with anxiety all the time, every day, and so as a result of that, things that would give most people anxiety are my normal level,” Bloomer said. “As a performer, it’s great. I get on stage, and arguably, I get less anxiety because I’m focused on performing and singing and just doing my thing.”
Bloomer is best known for his TikTok account, which has garnered 1.8 million followers in the eight years he has been making music. The account didn’t have a name behind it, though, and no music for his fans to listen to.
When he made the move to Iowa City to be closer to his partner, he decided to take a chance and devote the side of his
life that he hadn’t fully invested to music.
“People had been waiting for original music for a long time. I came up with the style combination of influences I’ve liked since I was a little kid and started putting that out,” Bloomer said.
The specific genre Bloomer works in is shoegaze, a dreamy, spacey guitar style with a lot of reverb and delay. He puts his own spin on the format with very fuzzy noise and ghostly vocals.
“I call it sky gaze because it is heavily rooted in shoegaze, but I feel like what’s lacking in a lot of the underground stuff in shoegaze, and the reason why there hasn’t been a major shoegaze act, is because it is hard to hear what they’re saying,” Bloomer said. “My favorite thing
Edited by Will Shortz No. 0312
about it is the massive wall of noise you get with that type of music. But I wanted to combine that with more pop abilities.”
On March 29, Bloomer performed for the first time in his new “sky gaze” persona. The stage was nothing new to the artist, but the number of people that showed up was two to three times larger than the crowd at a festival he had played last year.
Bloomer was shocked there was support for him, an artist in a genre not well represented in Iowa, but welcomed it.
“Even in a separated place like Iowa City, with no big shoegaze scene, there is support. There’s an underground hardcore scene, a big bluegrass scene,
promise that no two songs are alike. They broke into the Iowa City scene through an accident and the unfortunate end of a previous band, Part Time Vegan.
“Even in a separated place like Iowa City, with no big shoegaze scene, there is support. There’s an underground hardcore scene, a big bluegrass scene, a country scene, but there’s not much else. I picked shoegaze artists to open for me because I want to see more of that out here .”
Bloomer
Iowa City artist
a country scene, but there’s not much else. I picked shoegaze artists open for me because I want to see more of that out here,” Bloomer said.
The annual Mission Creek Festival that recently took place April 3-5 reminded fans around Iowa City of the thriving music scene. This year, the festival featured 36 bands from metal to bluegrass and everything in between.
Another local band breaking through with the community is Worst Impressions. They are a self-proclaimed indie-rock-garage band, and they
“I had booked a show in February at ReUnion for Part Time Vegan and was looking forward to playing that show. The stage manager for ReUnion Brewery Pete Becker rolled the dice on Kiley [Peterson] and me and suggested we start a new project and still play the show,” founding member Garrett Hinson said. “A week before the show, we filled a last-minute spot for the Summer Camp Battle of the Bands at Gabe’s for our first show ever to a crowd of over 400 people. Thanks to popular bands like Dolliver and Fishbait, we were quickly introduced to the Iowa City scene.” Through this introduction and networking, Worst Impressions played show after show, but even with their success in the Iowa City grunge scene, they were lucky enough to break even.
“Our music isn’t necessarily geared towards being a viral TikTok sound or anything like that. The dream is definitely to one day break even with our music. But you won’t catch any of us quitting our day jobs anytime soon,”
Ava Neumaier | The Daily Iowan
The band Dearborn practices in drummer Aaron Knight’s basement in Iowa City on April 10. Dearborn, composed of Jonah Marcussen, Elijah Mickey, and Sanders, will be performing at a free outdoor event next weekend along with other local bands.
Cody Blissett| The Daily Iowan
Worst Impressions vocalist and keyboardist Kiley Peterson performs during the Gabe’s 50th Anniversary Show in Iowa City on Sept. 21, 2024. Worst Impressions formed in 2023 and have since released an EP.
Hinson said.
Another alt-rock group known as Dearborn is in a similar spot to Worst Impressions. Despite finding some traction when they debuted, the band hasn’t broken out of its Iowa City following.
Eli Smith and Elijah Mickey met in undergraduate school and started making music Mickey describes as “goofy and jazzcentered pieces” because of Smith’s training within the jazz genre. This began Mickey’s endeavors into songwriting. Eventually, they found their lead guitarist Jonah Marcussen and Aaron B. Knight, their drummer.
“Eli, Jonah, and Aaron are the best at what they do. I often say I am the worst musician in the band, and a lot of that is due to how talented they are. All of these songs would’ve stayed as voice
memos on my phone if not for them,” Mickey said.
Dearborn has also run into a similar situation to Worst Impressions, in which the community has helped elevate their art. A lack of funds makes it inaccessible to keep going solely on what they make from being in the band, yet they keep pursuing their dreams.
“None of us rely on the band for sole income yet, though that’s the goal. We’re working hard to make it a sustainable career. Balancing our time is tough … Iowa, especially Iowa City, has been a great place to start. I’ve found a lot of inspiration from the local artists here, and it’s been a big motivator for me to continue pursuing music throughout college,” Mickey said.
All these artists love the stage and sharing their art, and Iowa City has become their preferred destination
for performing. The different, thriving cultures within Iowa make the forgotten Midwest state a breeding ground for all types of music.
“This might sound simple, but I play music because I genuinely love it. Every part of the process — writing, producing, recording, practicing, performing — is something I’m passionate about. Nothing makes me lose track of time like working on music, and that feeling of being fully immersed is what I love. Everyone has their thing that makes them feel that way, and for me, it’s music,” Mickey said.
Even if the band makes a lot of money, or none at all, the community and the friends and family each of them has made along the way make creating music in Iowa so special, Mickey said, and that is a sentiment shared among
Eas terServ ic es
other bands.
“We all fill a really good role, and each of us has a niche that fills a need for the band. We kind of, after a while, became family at some point,” Stu Mullins, Dogs on Skis member, said. “We are in it for each other regardless of time and space. We are gonna be in it for the long haul, ‘till one of us is done.”
Good Friday Communion Service: April 18th, 7pm
Children’s Easter Egg Hunt: Wetherby Park | 2400 Taylor Drive Saturday, April 19th, 11:00am
Easter Sunday Worship: April 20th, 10:45am
