Iowa

DAVENPORT, Iowa (AP) — During a campaign swing through Iowa this week, Joe Biden mentioned that his family recently dined with former President Barack Obama’s family. At a Houston fundraiser, Biden joked about the infamous expletive he deployed in congratulating Obama’s health care victory. And Biden recently tweeted an image of Joe and Barack friendship bracelets.

The message is clear: Biden really wants you to know he’s still friends with Obama.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The Latest on Donald Trump and Joe Biden visiting Iowa(all times local):

8:15 p.m.

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden says President Donald Trump is trying to dismantle the limits on the presidency.

The former vice president said Tuesday that in the 2020 election, voters must not only reject Trump’s policy agenda and values, but they also must stop Trump’s attempt to elevate the presidency above its coequal branches of government.

MOUNT PLEASANT, Iowa (AP) — President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden spent Tuesday trading insults — sometimes almost simultaneously— as they stumped across Iowa in split-screen moments that could preview a ferocious fight ahead if the two face off for the presidency next year.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — After months of jabbing each other from afar, President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden will overlap Tuesday in Iowa, a state that’s critical to both their political futures.

For Biden, a convincing win in next year’s caucuses would cement him as the Democratic front-runner and reinforce his chief argument that he is the party’s best-positioned candidate to beat Trump. The president, meanwhile, is seeking to shore up his Iowa support as part of a broader effort to ensure the Midwestern states he snagged in 2016 remain in his column next year.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A seed developer from the Netherlands credited with introducing high quality disease-resistant vegetable seeds to more than 60 countries including the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia was awarded the 2019 World Food Prize on Monday.

Simon Groot, a sixth generation seedsman, began his search to create better vegetable seeds to help farmers in Southeast Asia in 1981 at age 47 after his family’s company was taken over by a larger corporation.

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) — Joe Biden was not in the banquet hall for the Iowa Democratic Party’s blockbuster fundraiser on Sunday where 19 of his party’s presidential candidates spoke. But he was present in the veiled criticism from several of his rivals.

In five-minute chunks of speaking time, the candidates got the chance to make their case before 1,400 of the most influential Democrats in the leadoff caucus state. Some chose to nudge the national front-runner, and leader in a new Iowa poll, without naming him.

MADRID, Iowa (AP) — Iowa farmer Tim Bardole survived years of low crop prices and rising costs by cutting back on fertilizer and herbicides and fixing broken-down equipment rather than buying new. When President Donald Trump’s trade war with China made a miserable situation worse, Bardole used up any equity his operation had and started investing in hogs in hopes they’ll do better than crops.

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — A teen searching for arrowheads in southern Iowa found something much bigger: the prehistoric jawbone of a mastodon.

The Iowa City Press-Citizen reports that the 30-inch bone belonged to a juvenile mastodon, an elephant-like animal believed to have roamed Iowa some 34,000 years ago.

Officials with the University of Iowa Paleontology Repository, which now has possession of the bone found last week, say the mastodon might have stood around 7-feet tall.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — China’s announcement Monday of higher tariffs on $60 billion of American exports — retaliation for President Donald Trump’s latest penalties on Chinese goods — hit particularly hard in the farm belt. China’s vast consumer market has been a vital source of revenue for American farmers.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — American farmers still working to get out their remaining soybeans after a weather-plagued harvest season are struggling to figure out what to do with a record crop now their traditionally dominant export market is largely closed.