Friday, August 14th, 2026

Support for IPR comes from Hancher Auditorium. The 2025-20206 Broadway series has been announced and includes Kinky Boots, Clue, The Music Man, and more. Information at hansher.uIowa.edu slash Broadway. It's here first for my PR News. I'm Megan McKinney. The Satanic Temple of Iowa has filed a religious discrimination lawsuit against the state. And later in today's episode, we're going to take a look at an effort to promote American grown cotton. It's Friday, August 14th. The Satanic Temple is suing the state of Iowa, claiming officials violated the group's civil rights when they repeatedly denied the religious organizations permission to host holiday events at the Iowa Capitol Rotunda. IPRs Natalie Crabs reports. The ACLU of Iowa filed the lawsuit in a federal court. It claims the state has violated the group's constitutional rights to freedom of speech and religion and non-discrimination and is seeking an undetermined amount in damages. Rita Bettis Austin is a legal director of the ACLU of Iowa. She says the lawsuit follows a complaint to the Iowa Office of Civil Rights that determined there was probable cause of religious discrimination. We are now certainly at the point where the state has had ample and then some opportunity to change course. And we are, of course, prepared and willing to take this next step to protect these core and fundamental constitutional rights. The Iowa Department of Administrative Services did not immediately respond to IPR's request for comment. I'm Natalie Krebs. IPR News. Water is a top concern as Dubuque County works to regulate data centers. IPRs Gavin McGoff has more from a city council meeting this week. Dubuque County supervisors asked, how much water do data centers actually use? Michael Anderson works on water permitting at the DNR. He says many projects negotiate directly with cities, and those negotiations are kept secret. So prying some of this data out can take some detective work. But it's clear from DNR records, the data centers can cause water use to spike. He points to the city of Altoona, where Facebook first built one data center in 2013. Pretty soon it was six. Right now, it's between 12 and 14 with a plan for 20. You might see a disquieting trend there, at least I agree. One is great. Six is okay. Can we sustain 20? I don't know what. The meeting is the first in a series of information sessions for supervisors as the county works to draft data center regulations. I'm Gavin McGoff, IPR News. Annual federal money for people experiencing homelessness is tied up in the courts, leaving Iowa programs holding their breath.

The Trump administration has been trying to restructure the continuum of care program by shifting the money away from permanent housing programs and towards short-term housing and services like shelters and treatment programs. Courtney Gutley oversees distribution of the money for 96 Iowa counties. She says historically that money has gone to permanent housing programs. Our permanent housing programs are not just a, here is a key to an apartment. Good luck. It is certainly here is the key to an apartment. Here is the financial support to make sure that you can stay in that apartment. But it is also those supportive services to make sure that they can maintain that. Gutley says majority of permanent housing programs in Iowa rely on this federal funding and would be at risk of ending if the new restrictions are allowed. Federal officials failed to pass restrictions last year after an appeals court blocked them. Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, a Democrat who may run for president in 28, says President Trump and his Republican allies want to intimidate their way into winning congressional elections this November. You know, they understand how important these races are. And they're spending hundreds of millions of dollars right here, right now. They're flooding the state with everything they have. And they're going to fight for the system that is working for them. That's why we can't give up and we can't back down. Kelly was in Clear Lake last night. He was the keynote speaker at the Wing Ding fundraiser for the Democratic parties in six northern Iowa counties. Last year, Kelly was one of five other Democrats in Congress who recorded a video urging military personnel to refuse illegal orders. President Trump has called Kelly a traitor. Kelly told the crowd in Clear Lake that Trump is trying to silence his critics. You're listening to Here First from IPR. I'm Megan McKinney. Are you a fan of cotton synthetic? What's your favorite fabric? Well, demand for U.S. cotton has been stagnant for decades, but U.S. agriculture officials have a plan to change that. I'm going to hear how in just a moment. Stay with us. Every day, here first brings you the essential news out of Iowa. You're essential to making that possible. Gifts from listeners like you make up the majority of our funding. Make your gift today at IPR.org slash donate. Welcome back. It's here first from IPR. I'm Megan McKinney. American farmers grow a lot of cotton, but not as much as they used to. Cotton is more expensive to grow these days, and the rise of synthetic fabrics has also tamped down demand for it. But there is a plan to try to reverse that trend, as we hear from Harvest Public Media's Michael Marks. For most of cotton's history, people have only wanted more of it. The world's textile mills demanded more cotton every year until 2006. That was the peak. You know, you'd have to look at and say over the last 20 years, we haven't, we actually haven't had any growth. That's Hank Reichel, CEO of staple cotton, a marketing co-op that exports American cotton around the globe. He says the stagnation is because clothing makers replaced cotton with man-made materials like nylon or polyester. Those are easier to work with and often cheaper.

Certainly what we've seen over the last 20, 30 years is a big increase in synthetic textiles versus cotton. During that time, the whole U.S. cotton industry has downsized. In 1991, the U.S. Department of Agriculture counted more than 1,500 cotton processors. Now, there are just over 400. This trend has caught the attention of people in Washington like Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins. Now we are working to reverse course. Today, USDA is announcing our new great American cotton plan. The plan is a multi-part strategy by the department to increase demand for the fiber and profits for farmers. One piece is to support a bill called the Buying American Cotton Act, which would offer tax breaks to manufacturers for using U.S. grown cotton. What the act does basically is it says, okay, look, even if you're a Chinese mill. and you're sourcing and using U.S. cotton, to the extent you're using that in your product, you come back, you get a tax credit. That's Darren Hudson, Agricultural Economics Professor at Texas Tech University. I can bid more for those U.S. bales because I know I'm going to get a tax credit on the back end. It's an exciting prospect for folks in the cotton business like Seth Stevens, General Manager of United Agricultural Cooperative, a farm service company in El Campo, Texas. It has a whole trickling effect across the industry. I mean, prices, you know, have a good shot to rise. More acres are going to be put in the ground. And that's going to equate to more cotton to gin, right? So the effects of it will be large. The bill is still waiting for hearings in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, but has dozens of co-sponsors from both parties. But that's not the only effort to revitalize American cotton. Cotton boosters are trying to claw back sales they've lost to synthetic fibers by suggesting those fabrics aren't healthy for you. With every step, every breath, every heartbeat, microplastics escape from our clothes into the air. This is from an ad by the National Cotton Council. It's part of a new campaign called Plant Not Plastic, which portrays cotton as a safer alternative to man-made fabrics. It has the backing of the USDA. Choose cotton. What you wear matters. Plant, not plastic. Microplastic pollution is the cotton industry's counter argument to synthetic fibers. And the message is starting to gain some traction, according to garment makers like Marta Miller. We're finding a big demand currently. with people wanting to have, um, a cotton-based activewear brand. Miller said some of her clients have concerns over the health effects of synthetic, plastic-based fabrics, but it remains to be seen if cotton can serve the purpose of something like nylon or spandex. Miller's trying to make a cotton fabric that has the same kind of stretchiness. It fits when we first put it on, but after, you know, six hours of wearing it. it kind of loses the ability to stay tight on the waist or something like that. So we've been working on figuring out the exact way to mill the fabric. Cotton growers hope that those kinds of advances, along with some help from Congress, will help keep their industry healthy for a while longer. I'm Michael Mark's Harvest Public Media.

Harvest Public Media is a collab of public media newsrooms in the Midwest and Great Plains, including IPR News, covering ag, food systems, and rural issues. I'm Megan McKinney. Thanks for taking the time to listen to Hear First from IPR today. I've hope you had a great week. It's going to be a pretty rainy day and possibly weekend. Hopefully you can enjoy the moments of sunshine we have, and I'll talk to you on Monday.