Sponsors (4)
The bill honors local service and standardizes clinic names—helping veterans find and receive recognition—while imposing only small administrative costs and risks of short-term confusion, though it could distract from more substantive improvements to veterans' services.
Local veterans and clinic patients will have standardized facility names in federal records and on signage, making it easier to identify and locate the Des Moines and Marshalltown VA clinics.
Veterans, their families, and local communities gain a formal honor and focal point for remembrance and outreach, which can strengthen community recognition and support for service members.
Veterans could have attention and advocacy diverted from substantive service or funding improvements if symbolic renaming is treated as a substitute for addressing service-delivery issues.
Taxpayers and federal/local agencies will face minor administrative costs to update signs, records, and websites to reflect the new names.
Local veterans and clinic patients may experience short-term confusion if older directions or materials still use the previous clinic names until updates are completed.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Designates two VA outpatient clinics in Iowa with new honorific names for two fallen Iowa National Guard staff sergeants and directs that federal references use those names.
Renames two Department of Veterans Affairs outpatient clinics in Iowa to honor two Iowa National Guard staff sergeants killed in action. The Des Moines clinic at 1211 East Army Post Road will be designated the "Staff Sergeant Edgar Torres-Tovar VA Clinic," and the Marshalltown clinic at 201 East Merle Hibbs Boulevard will be designated the "Staff Sergeant William Nathaniel Howard VA Clinic." The bill includes findings summarizing each service member’s biography, deployments, awards, and date of death. Any federal reference to those clinics will be treated as references to the new names.
Official title: To designate the clinic of the Department of Veterans Affairs in Des Moines, Iowa, as the "Staff Sergeant Edgar Torres-Tovar VA Clinic" and to designate the community-based outpatient clinic of the Department in Marshalltown, Iowa, as the "Staff Sergeant William Nathaniel Howard VA Clinic".
Introduced February 11, 2026 by Zach Nunn · Last progress February 11, 2026