One week after a California investment firm bought ACT Inc. — morphing the longtime Iowa City-based nonprofit college testing company into a for-profit enterprise — most of its campus is being sold, but ACT will remain as a tenant.



As part of the restructuring, a related nonprofit was created and maintained ownership of the east side Iowa City campus that has housed ACT Inc. since the 1980s. Now the nonprofit has entered into an agreement to sell the land to Iceberg Development Group of West Des Moines, a 10-year-old firm led by Jim Bergman that in the past has received state incentives for housing projects.


A Flourish map

Officials didn’t share details of how much the campus is selling for, but said Iceberg Development plans to “create a community that offers a variety of housing options while prioritizing partnerships with nonprofit organizations that align with ACT’s historic mission and ensure the betterment of the community.”


“The high-level vision for the development of the property includes a variety of uses, primarily focused on education and housing, in line with these community priorities,” according to a news release.

IntermediaryEd​

The for-profit ACT Inc. will continue leasing space for its operations on the campus, as will its new separate nonprofit named “IntermediaryEd.”


“ACT will continue to maintain an ongoing presence in the community and continue operations from the ACT campus in Iowa City as a tenant,” according to a news release.

The entrance to the ACT Inc. campus in Iowa City is seen in 2017. (Gazette photo)
In April, when ACT announced a partnership with private equity firm Nexus Capital Management LP of Los Angeles that would move it forward as a for-profit company using ACT’s name and brand, it indicated proceeds from the partnership would fund the “continuation of an Iowa nonprofit organization that will be headquartered in Iowa City.”


“The nonprofit organization will conduct programs, services, and research focused on education and workplace success,” according to ACT’s partnership announcement in April, adding the new nonprofit “will also retain an investment in the new public benefit corporation and have direct representation on ACT’s board of directors.”


ACT Inc. — first incorporated as an Iowa-based nonprofit in 1960 — officially changed its name with the Secretary of State’s Office earlier this month to IntermediaryEd.

Unaffected by the sale​

Precipitating the ACT changes have been massive shifts in the standardized testing industry — aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic, when many colleges and universities went test-optional, meaning they stopped requiring ACT or SAT scores for admission.


Assessments show 300,000 fewer students took the SAT in 2023 than in 2019, and 400,000 fewer took the ACT over the same span, according to Inside Higher Education.


Financially, public records show ACT lost nearly $61 million in 2020; $6 million in 2021; and $12 million in 2022. The last year ACT reported a surplus was in 2018, of $21.3 million.


Last year, it laid off more than 100 employees and began selling buildings on its campus. The Iowa City Community School District in 2022 bought a building for $8.7 million to provide space for professional development, online learning programming and career and technical education.






Earlier this year, University of Iowa Health Care received Board of Regents approval to lease 65,760 square feet of warehouse, office and support space on the ACT campus for its pharmacy services group. The 20-year agreements for two adjoining facilities have the university paying $31,442 a month for the warehouse space and $18,750 a month for the office space — or a combined $602,304 a year, amounting to $12 million over 20 years.


Those UIHC leases and the school district building are unaffected by this recent sale — which includes the rest of the campus’ 385 acres and main buildings, according to Josh Seamans, senior vice president for the Cushman & Wakefield commercial advisers group involved in the transaction.


Although officials didn’t share sale specifics, the Johnson County Assessor’s Office reports the largest ACT parcel is valued at $19.7 million — down from $22.4 million in 2022.

North Carolina and Iowa drinking water is worst for 'forever chemicals' after industrial waste was dumped into rivers for DECADES: Toxins are up to 46,000 times higher than EPA limit​

No wonder @torbee is a little off

It is great to be an Iowa Wrestling fan.

Go Hawks!

Ash Panakam is about to graduate from Harvard Medical School. She’s from Georgia and always assumed she would return to the South for her residency. But the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning the nationwide right to abortion changed everything.



“Ultimately I shifted my selection pretty drastically,” she said. “I was struggling to find a residency program in the South where I could still get the training I consider fundamental to the skill set needed to be an OB/GYN.” Instead of going home to Georgia, she’s headed to Pittsburgh to start her medical residency this summer. Panakam has plenty of company.
For the second year running, fewer graduating U.S. medical students applied for residency training in states with abortion bans or restrictions than in the previous year, according to data from the Association of American Medical Colleges. (Overall applications were down slightly, because students are being urged to apply to fewer programs, but the decrease was markedly larger in states where abortion is illegal or significantly restricted.)
It’s not just obstetrician-gynecologists; the decline crosses specialties, including those that don’t serve primarily pregnant patients. That could threaten the future of the overall medical workforce in states with bans, because doctors tend to locate permanently where they do residencies.



“The geographic misalignment between where the needs are and where people are choosing to go is really problematic,” said Debra Stulberg, who chairs the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Chicago. “We don’t need people further concentrating in urban areas where there’s already good access.”
The concerns of graduating medical students extend beyond their ability to practice medicine; they’re also worried about their own health, or that of their partners. “People don’t feel safe potentially having their own pregnancies living in those states,” Stulberg said.


“I feel some guilt and sadness leaving a situation where I feel like I could be of some help,” said new medical school graduate Hannah Light-Olson, who will leave Nashville for OB/GYN training at the University of California at San Francisco this summer. “I feel deeply indebted to the program that trained me, and to the patients of Tennessee.”



It's not that residency programs are going unfilled. There are still more graduating students from medical schools both in the United States and abroad than there are residency slots. But Beverly Gray, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Duke University School of Medicine, worries that abortion restrictions impact “whether we have the best and brightest coming to North Carolina.”
Residents in states where abortion is banned will still get training in abortion techniques, which are also used for miscarriages and other conditions. But to train on the procedures they’ll have to leave the state. And some students worry the training won’t be sufficient.
“I would rather have not become an OB/GYN than not be trained as a good one,” said Laura Potter, who is moving from medical school at the University of California at Davis to residency at Mass General Brigham in Boston.



But there are students choosing to train in states with abortion restrictions to make sure patients there get the care they need. And others hope to relocate to those parts of the country after their training — including Panakam.
“Long term, I still hope to practice in the South,” she said. “But at this point in my professional journey, it’s a little too early for me to restrict my training in any meaningful way.”

We’ll be podding tonight on the recent news.

Any questions or thoughts on the news? Of course, we’ll take any questions you’ve got otherwise, too. Thanks y’all.

Not so subtle parallel to Trump ala Homelander. Kinda funny.

How do I watch 'Full Court Press'?​

Episodes 1 and 2 of Full Court Press will air on ABC on Saturday, May 11th at 12 pm CT (1 p.m. ET).

Episodes 3 and 4 will air on Sunday, May 12th at 11:30 am CT (12:30 p.m. ET).

After airing on ABC, all episodes will be immediately available to stream on ESPN+. ESPN+ is available to purchase as part of the Disney Bundle, which includes Hulu, Disney+, and ESPN+ for $14.99 per month.



Check this out & watch:

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Get your investment in now before the line moves.

“They’re not looking for salvation, they’re abiding by social mores for PR purposes.”

Per the Reddit link:

Ouch

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Going to a friend's 50th birthday party tomorrow. He's a big bourbon fan. I know nothing on the subject........I don't drink brown liquor. My budget is $150 max. What bourbon should I get him?

Following up from the offense post earlier, here's one with some defensive options (courtesy @IowaBoP on Twitter):

Crew has not been let off the ship.

Pretty cool video. Keep in mind that D1 women's basketball did not exist until the 1981-1982 season.


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About time to give Minidishu the Gaza treatment??

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The sight of masked, encamped protesters breaking into buildings, barring Jewish students from classes and spewing Jew-hatred has drawn condemnation from President Biden, revealed too many college administrators’ fecklessness and confirmed that a strain of virulent antisemitism courses through pro-Palestinian protests (which too many pundits chose to ignore or rationalize).


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But according to a new lawsuit, the protests might have also revealed a disturbing relationship between Hamas and two U.S.-based groups, American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) and National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP).
International law firm Greenberg Traurig, in a news release last week, announced a lawsuit seeking “compensatory damages for nine American and Israeli victims of the attack in which Hamas killed 1,200 people and took 240 people hostage, alleg[ing] that AMP and NSJP work in the United States as collaborators and propagandists for Hamas. Hamas is a United States designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.” The suit further argues that defendants “are merely the current version of several prior entities that were already determined by the U.S. government to be supporters of Hamas.” According to the complaint, AMP is the “rebranded” group designed to fill the loss of the previously shut down Islamic Association for Palestine. The complaint alleges overlap in leadership and staffing. (Furthermore, according to the suit, AMP announced in 2010 the “creation of NSJP — AMP’s new on-campus sub-brand — designed to control the management, financing, and messaging of SJP chapters across the country.”)



The defendants have vigorously denied the charges. However, if proved, the allegation could end up as shocking as the bans on the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development and certain other Palestinian charities for supporting international terrorist organizations.
The suit raises obvious First Amendment concerns. The law firm points out that “free speech has never included the active support of terrorism, and it has never protected the destruction of private property or the brutalization of innocent men, women, and children of many faiths, not just Jews.” The lawsuit claims AMP and NSJP are not independent activist groups but instead “support and further the goals and directives of Hamas” and have been “intentionally extending their aid to fomenting chaos, violence, and terror in the United States.”
“There is a legal chasm between independent advocacy and knowingly serving as the propaganda and recruiting wing of a Foreign Terrorist Organization in the United States. AMP and NSJP are the latter,” the plaintiffs allege. “They are not innocent advocacy groups, but rather the propaganda arm of a terrorist organization operating in plain sight.”



Certainly, private actors are constitutionally protected to act as cheerleaders for Hamas, provided they do not directly incite violence. American students and student groups are entitled to protection from governmental action for core political speech — even outrageous, heinous speech reeking of Jew-hatred.
However, “material support” for a foreign terrorist organization even in the form of speech is outlawed under U.S. Code. (“The term ‘material support or resources’ means any property, tangible or intangible, or service, including currency or monetary instruments or financial securities, financial services, lodging, training, expert advice or assistance, safehouses, false documentation or identification, communications equipment, facilities, weapons, lethal substances, explosives, personnel ... and transportation.”)


A 2010 Supreme Court opinion written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. is on point. “Congress has prohibited the provision of ‘material support or resources’ to certain foreign organizations that engage in terrorist activity,” Roberts wrote. “That prohibition is based on a finding that the specified organizations ‘are so tainted by their criminal conduct that any contribution to such an organization facilitates that conduct.’”



In short, both conduct and speech may be prosecuted if material support is “coordinated with or under the direction of a designated foreign terrorist organization.” However, “independent advocacy that might be viewed as promoting the group’s legitimacy is not covered.” Roberts’s opinion held that the statute is not on its face unconstitutional, while leaving open that it might run afoul of constitutional protection in some contexts.
The lawsuit against AMP and NSJP, therefore, will turn on a detailed factual investigation. Constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe tells me, “Unless there are credible allegations of direct assistance, as in training and the like, to Hamas and affiliates terrorist groups, the 1st Amendment seems likely to pose a huge obstacle.” To sidestep First Amendment concerns, the plaintiffs must prove that AMP and its college brand, NSJP, are intertwined with Hamas (i.e., acting at the behest of or in coordination with Hamas), not simply an echo chamber regurgitating Hamas’s public declarations. (To that end, the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy released a report that might help trace funding, as well as connections to other groups parroting Hamas rhetoric, and thereby substantiate the suit’s allegations.)
Seasoned litigators stress to me that finding a “direct connection” between Hamas and the defendant groups will be key. The lawsuit alleges, for example, that “the language of the Hamas-authored disinformation campaign appeared in NSJP propaganda across social media and on college campuses” within hours of the Oct. 7 attack. The very next day, according to the complaint, NSJP released a “toolkit” guiding the groups’ activities and declaring the commencement of a “Unity Intifada” wherein “NSJP confirmed it was ‘PART of this movement, not in solidarity with this movement.’” Still, it is one thing for protesters to feel that they are “part of” a terrorist movement; it is quite another to prove coordination or direction.



Without commenting on the merits of the suit, Mimi Rocah, district attorney of Westchester County, N.Y., and former federal prosecutor, tells me, “One of the important functions of lawsuits like this is that, in addition to possible compensation for victims, a lot of information will come to light through the discovery process about who is behind some of these more violent protests, which are not protected by the First Amendment.”
Recent violent actions on college campus, including occupation and destruction of university property, provide grist for the suit:

Defendants’ members and allies responded to [Hamas’s] command by engaging in illegal acts of domestic terrorism — including trespass, assault, vandalism, robbery, destruction of property, harassment, and intimidation — to further the “resistance” efforts.

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The complaint’s allegations are just that — allegations — at this point. While Roberts’s ruling and the specific allegations likely will help the suit survive a motion to dismiss, the burden will be on the plaintiffs to prove the connections, if any, between the defendants and Hamas. No one should prejudge the results — nor minimize the suit’s potential impact.

For those in the homemade pizza game, several of you have mentioned that pre-made store-bought dough is a time saver with almost as good as, or better, results than trying your hand at making your own dough. Any recommendations on brands and where to buy them? Are they in the chilled section or frozen section?

Holy hell.

Dumb and borderline psychotic is no way to go through life, man. I have to admit, his unhinged lunacy and absolutely non-intellectual approach is a good fit for this state's Republican Party in 2024.

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Report say he was involved in an accident. Praying he makes it through and recovers fully. Buckeye Forum says it was a major accident.

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