A flyover from this week's top heartland stories including:Missouri GOP in-fighting in full swing | In Iowa there’s something in the water… poop | Missouri Medicaid enrollees trapped in a nightmare | Kari Lake leaks a tape | CO House ditches Minority Leader Mike Lynch | Iowa anthem antics | Ted Cruz’s Democratic challenger in Texas | Missouri Senator Nick Schroer is a joke SOURCES: The Heartland Collective, Colorado News Line, Missouri Independent, New York Times, Iowa Capitol DispatchThrow The Bums Out! https://missouriindependent.com/2024/01/25/missouri-senate-gop-warfare-escalates-with-suggestion-of-expelling-freedom-caucus-leader/The factional fights making the Missouri Senate a public spectacle are bad enough that Senate Majority Leader Cindy O’Laughlin told reporters Thursday that she’d vote to expel the leader of the Freedom Caucus from the chamber.Speaking to the assembled editors and publishers from the Missouri Press Association during their annual visit to the Capitol, O’Laughlin noted that expelling a senator takes 23 votes of the 34-member chamber.“Two years ago, I said with 23 votes, you can throw somebody out of here,” she said. “And I would do it today.”Asked who she meant, O’Laughlin named Sen. Bill Eigel.“I would have to have 23 votes and get 23 votes, I’ll have to get some Democrats to vote for it and then I’ll have to give up something big,” O’Laughlin said. “So….everything here is a trade off you know.”Soon after the remarks were reported on social media by The Independent, the door to the Senate Lounge, where O’Laughlin was speaking, opened and a Senate doorman said Eigel wanted to talk to her on the floor. Must be something in the water… sadly, in Iowa it might be poophttps://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2024/01/25/state-issues-several-fines-for-manure-violations/From article: The Iowa Department of Natural Resources recently fined several livestock operations and a manure hauler for infractions that ranged from failing to submit animal waste management plans to a manure spill that resulted from a train collision.The crash happened in June 2023, when an employee of Magnum Custom Hauling, of South English, was transporting up to 6,000 gallons of manure in Marion County.Employee Deal Keasling was operating a tractor that pulled a manure spreader on a gravel road south of Pleasantville when he approached a railway and noticed a train, according to a DNR order.“When he saw the train, he realized he wasn’t going to be able to stop, so he basically floored it,” said Janet Gastineau, a senior environmental specialist for the DNR.There is a bend in the road at the railway intersection and wooded areas nearby that might have obscured Keasling’s view of the train, which struck the manure spreader. Keasling’s certification to handle the manure had expired, the order said.No one was injured, Gastineau said, but an unspecified amount of manure went into nearby Coon Creek. Magnum and Keasling were ordered to pay a $4,975 fine.The DNR also recently fined five livestock operations for failing to submit required plans to manage their manure, which helps ensure the manure is not excessively applied to fields: Missouri medicaid system seems to have been broken from the insidehttps://missouriindependent.com/2024/01/23/perfect-storm-missouri-advocates-decry-medicaid-application-delays-coverage-losses/Hannah Kaplanis applied to Missouri’s Medicaid program nearly two months ago, but hasn’t received any response from the state.Just shy of 18 weeks pregnant, she’s in need of prenatal care and growing increasingly hopeless. Aside from a free ultrasound in November, she hasn’t been able to access any care. She called Missouri’s Medicaid helpline earlier this month but had to hang up after waiting on hold for 45 minutes, and she is unable to apply for other insurance until she is out of Medicaid limbo. “It feels like I’m doing motherhood wrong already, but it’s out of my hands,” she said. “I’m at a loss. It’s just a waiting game and tha