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    DES MOINES — Iowa Republican lawmakers are turning their focus to property tax reductions in the coming weeks, an area leaders listed as a top priority when the legislative session began.

    The American Civil Liberties Union says that parents and children likely to be affected by a Nebraska bill to ban gender-affirming treatments for minors are preparing for a legal fight if it's enacted. That comes after the bill cleared its first and toughest hurdle this week when lawmakers advanced it on a largely party-line vote. The bill would outlaw gender-affirming therapies such as hormone treatments and gender reassignment surgery for those 18 and younger. It would also ban Nebraska doctors from referring minors to other providers for treatment. A nearly identical measure in Arkansas was temporarily shut down by a federal judge in 2021, and the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that injunction.

    Authorities say a suspect in an Iowa killing was arrested Friday outside a marijuana dispensary in South Dakota. Forty-one-year-old Nathanial Byron Kessel, of Rock Rapids, Iowa, is now awaiting extradition. KDLT-TV reports that he was taken into custody on the first-degree murder warrant after the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe police chief noticed a vehicle that Iowa officials were seeking at the Royal River Casino and Hotel. The police chief then alerted other agencies and Kessel was apprehended outside the Native Nations Cannabis Dispensary. The Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation said in a news release that Kessel also is accused in the arrest warrant of being a felon in possession of a firearm.

    Federal authorities expect to return a 13-year-old boy’s remains to his Native American tribe in South Dakota this fall. The Friday statement comes days after the tribe wrote to urge a faster return of the child. The boy died at a federal boarding school for Indigenous children in 1879. The Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate wrote to the head of the U.S. Army’s cemetery office this week to demand movement on their effort to have the remains of Amos LaFromboise returned from a graveyard in Pennsylvania. The letter describes him as the son of one of the tribe’s most celebrated leaders, Chief Joseph LaFromboise. The Army says it expects the child's remains to be returned later this year.

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