Iowa

Iowa Cubs outfielder Kevin Alcantara playing best baseball of his Triple-A career

Published

4 months ago

July 4, 2025

Iowa Cubs outfielder Kevin Alcantara playing best baseball of his Triple-A career

The Iowa Cubs were trailing 4-1 in the bottom of the ninth inning of their June 28 game against the Columbus Clippers when outfielder Kevin Alcantara stepped to the plate to face pitcher Parker Musinski.

Musinski, a relief pitcher for the Clippers, dropped a curveball that hovered over the heart of the plate.

Alcantara jumped on the 82.4 mile per hour offering from Mushinski and pulverized the pitch 408 feet to left centerfield. The homer, his ninth of the season, came off the bat at a whopping 108.5 mph. It turned into one of the highlights of a remarkable run for Alcantara.

“Over the last two and a half weeks, he’s really started to turn it on,” said Iowa manager Marty Pevey. “It’s really good to see. That’s what we’ve been waiting for. We know he’s probably the most talented guy on the field at any point during any game, no matter who we’re playing.”

Alcantara has turned into one of the hottest hitters in the entire Chicago Cubs organization over the past two weeks. The 22-year-old entered Iowa’s July 3 game against the Omaha Storm Chasers having hit safely in his last five contests and 10 of his last 11. He became the first Iowa player to tally five-straight multi-hit games since Pete Crow-Armstrong accomplished the feat in 2024.

“He’s done really good,” Pevey said.

Alcantara has played so well lately that Pevey called it the best stretch he’s seen out of the young outfielder “since he’s come up” to Triple-A late in 2024. The young outfielder was acquired by the Cubs as part of a trade that sent fan-favorite superstar first baseman Anthony Rizzo to the New York Yankees. Alcantara was seen as an up-and-coming prospect.

Ever since he came to the Cubs, Alcantara has only shown flashes of his potential. He hit .279 with 15 homers in 112 games with Myrtle Beach in 2022. Alcantara then hit .284 with 13 homers across three different levels in 2023. He followed that up with a .278 season that led to a brief promotion to the big leagues in 2024.

But Alcantara struggled out of the gates this season, hitting just .222 in March, .264 in April and .233 in May. The slow start led to questions about Alcantara’s future. Would he ever live up to the high hopes that made him a Top 100 prospect, according to MLB Pipeline? If he was going to, an adjustment had to be made at the plate.

The adjustment was simple. Pevey said Iowa’s hitting staff has been working with Alcantara on making sure he gets his foot down on time. The hope is that it would put him in a good position to hit, so he doesn’t miss fastballs and can better recognize off-speed stuff. Pevey said it’s been a point of emphasis this season.

“It’s always been that way,” Pevey said. “It’s a matter of buying in.”

Now that Alcantara has bought in, he’s playing better than ever. He entered Iowa’s July 3 game hitting .270 with 10 homers and 45 runs driven in. The turnaround comes after a huge June that saw him hit .306 with seven doubles and two home runs in 21 games.

The recent run of success has brought around a new wave of questions about Alcantara’s future. Does he have a spot in Chicago? Or will the Cubs deal him to another team at the trade deadline? But the important thing is for Alcantara to keep hitting.

“It’s just a matter of him just putting it all together and when the light goes on and stay on, it’s going to be really special,” Pevey said.

Tommy Birch, the Register’s sports enterprise and features reporter, has been working at the newspaper since 2008. He’s the 2018, 2020 and 2023 Iowa Sportswriter of the Year. Reach him at tbirch@dmreg.com or 515-284-8468

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Iowa

Iowa ‘illegal reentry’ law remains blocked, but 8th Circuit questions injunction’s breadth

Published

4 hours ago

October 23, 2025

Press Room

Iowa ‘illegal reentry’ law remains blocked, but 8th Circuit questions injunction’s breadth

A federal judge did not err when finding an Iowa immigration enforcement law likely unconstitutional, a federal appellate court ruled.

But it is sending the case back to determine whether the state should nonetheless be allowed to enforce the law in some cases.

The Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ Oct. 23 decision upholds an injunction blocking Iowa from enforcing Senate File 2340, which Gov. Kim Reynolds signed in April 2024 to make “illegal reentry” a crime under state law.

In a lawsuit bought by the Iowa Migrant Movement for Justice, Judge Stephen Locher ruled last year that immigration enforcement is explicitly a federal responsibility and Iowa’s law is invalid under the U.S. Constitution.

“As a matter of politics, the new legislation might be defensible,” Locher wrote in June 2024. “As a matter of constitutional law, it is not.”

Thursday’s decision is technically the second time the 8th Circuit has ruled against the law.

Originally, Iowa was sued twice: by Migrant Movement for Justice and the Biden Administration. Locher granted injunctions in both cases, and in January, the 8th Circuit affirmed his ruling in the DOJ lawsuit and dismissed the second injunction as duplicative.

Shortly after, though, the Trump administration dismissed the federal government’s challenge, and the court agreed to rehear and rule on the injunction in the Migrant Movement for Justice case.

What did Iowa’s immigration law do?

Under the 2024 law, entering or residing in Iowa after being deported from or denied entry to the U.S. or failing to depart when ordered became a state offense. It followed a similar law Texas adopted, both of which have since been blocked by courts.

The Iowa law also required judges to order anyone convicted under the law to return to their country of origin.

In his order blocking the law, Locher identified several problems: Most glaringly, a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court decision found that state-level immigration laws interfere with and are preempted by federal immigration enforcement.

In the case of Iowa, Locher noted, having state judges order people to leave the country bypasses the extensive and often case- and country-specific federal system to decide when, how, and to where a person can be deported.

“This creates an untenable dichotomy between federal and state law in an area where the Supreme Court has recognized that the United States must speak with a single, harmonious voice,” Locher wrote.

The law also does not make any exceptions for people with current legal resident status. That’s a problem for several of the plaintiffs in the Migrant Movement case, who at one time were deported or denied entry but later were able to obtain legal residency.

While Attorney General Brenna Bird said she did not intend to enforce the law against legal residents, Locher noted county prosecutors would not be bound by her statement.

8th Circuit finds law likely unconstitutional

In it’s ruling Thursday, the 8th Circuit once again upheld Locher’s reasoning.

Judge Duane Benton wrote for the court that Iowa’s law intrudes into federal immigration authority even further than the Arizona law struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2012.

Allowing state officials not only to detain people for suspected immigration violations, but to order them removed from the country, with a potential prison sentence of 10 years, greatly exceeds the state’s powers under the U.S. Constitution, the court found.

The court rejected Iowa’s arguments in defense of the law, finding that many ran contrary to the plain text of the statute.

For example, where Bird argued the law only required the state to deliver aliens to a “port of entry” — namely, the Des Moines airport — and would have no effect outside the state’s borders, the appeals court noted the law requires migrants to leave the entire country, not just the state, under penalty of prison.

“Any enforcement of the act would likely conflict with federal law by interfering with the enforcement discretion that federal law gives to federal officers,” Benton wrote. “(Plaintiffs) have clearly shown that their facial challenge is likely to succeed on the merits because every application of the Act stands as an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of the full purposes and objectives of Congress.”

Yes, but: to whom does the injunction apply?

Locher’s injunction blocked any state agent, including county prosecutors, from enforcing the law against anyone. That may be too broad, the appellate court says.

In a June 2025 case against Donald Trump, the U.S. Supreme Court significantly limited the use of “universal injunctions” that apply beyond the parties in a particular case.

In light of that ruling, the 8th Circuit is directing Locher to consider whether he has authority to block enforcement by all state officers, as opposed to just those named in the lawsuit, and whether the law can be enforced against individuals who are not members of Iowa Migrant Movement for Justice.

Regardless of how the injunction may be modified, the lawsuit is likely to continue.

Locher’s June 2024 order put in place a preliminary injunction, blocking the state from enforcing the law while the case progressed. Barring further appeals, Thursday’s appellate decision means the case will continue before Locher for further proceedings before the court could potentially make its injunction permanent.

William Morris covers courts for the Des Moines Register. He can be contacted at wrmorris2@registermedia.com or 715-573-8166.

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Iowa

Iowa State Cyclones Defensive Coach Still Searching for Answers at Key Position

Published

22 hours ago

October 22, 2025

Press Room

Iowa State Cyclones Defensive Coach Still Searching for Answers at Key Position

Jeremiah Coope — Raymond Carlin III-Imagn Images

Jon Heacoc — Raymond Carlin III-Imagn Images

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Iowa

Here’s how D.O.G.E. Task Force would change Iowa

Published

2 days ago

October 22, 2025

Press Room

Here’s how D.O.G.E. Task Force would change Iowa

DES MOINES, Iowa (Gray Media Iowa State Capitol Bureau) — It is 136 pages long, took seven months to put together, and looks to modernize, streamline, and reshape state and local governments in Iowa. It also already has opposition before any of the new ideas have been put into implementation.

On Tuesday, Governor Kim Reynolds, a Republican, released the Iowa D.O.G.E. (Department of Government Efficiency) Task Force’s report that the 15-member volunteer group submitted to her last month.

Reynolds said while discussing the task force’s 45 recommendations, “It is important that we never settle, that we continue to look for ways to be more effective, efficient and accountable to the taxpayers of Iowa.”.

Read the task force recommendations here.

Task force members called for changing Iowa Public Employees’ Retirement System (IPERS) but not eliminating it. The report suggested keeping IPERS available for current state employeees but giving new employees the option of using IPERS or joining a defined contribution plan.

Members also suggested studying benefits that state workers receive and whether they contribute enough to their health care costs.

The task force called for incentives for teachers based on performance, a focus on expanding the number of instructors in high demand fields, and introducing work-based learning experiences to freshmen and sophomore high school students.

Utilizing technology so that artificial intelligence could take over some tasks in state government and freeing up workers to concentrate on other areas was also a suggestion. So was digitizing government forms.

The task force recommended sharing services whenever possible in local government, which could be part of an overall strategy of lessening expenses in local government to reduce property taxes.

House Minority Leader Brian Meyer, a Des Moines Democrat, criticized the overall set of proposals.

“This Governor’s DOGE task force report is deeply disturbing, coming from individuals who’ve never worked a day in their lives. They’re attacking the very people who keep our communities strong, teachers, public safety officers, and other dedicated public servants,” Meyer said in a statement.

Other than stressing that she would preserve IPERS, Reynolds did not take positions on the list of recommendations. She could announce some of them as part of her 2026 legislative priorities when she delivers the annual Condition of the State Address in January.

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