Just got this from Progress Iowa. Thought I would pass it along as it has some great suggestions / ideas
It’s State Fair time!
Today, we’re out holding our lawmakers accountable as they put on a show at the fair! So, we won’t have a Progress Iowa briefing today, but we’ve got great guidance for you instead! We’ll be back on August 28 ready to keep up the fight.
As politicians and elected officials take to the State Fair Soapbox to plead their case, too many of them are skipping the harder conversation: the public town halls where constituents show up to ask tough questions about rising costs, disappearing services, and the policies putting Iowa families underwater.
Below, we’ve put together messaging, social posts, and questions you can bring to the fair to make sure they hear from Iowans, not just the cameras.
Can You Afford the State Fair? Message Guidance
The State Fair should be a place for Iowa families to make memories, not calculate whether they can afford another lemonade, meal or tank of gas. Iowans need representatives who fight to lower their costs rather than those who make life more expensive.
Values & Storytelling:
Lead with values like affordability, tradition, family & community
Name the representative and their votes (define the problem)
Use personal anecdotes or relatable examples people can easily understand
End with a simple call to action, for the Rep to vote differently, or for others to call them out
Talking Points
The Iowa State Fair is an Iowa tradition, but it’s getting harder for families to afford it.
Gas, groceries, health care, utilities and other costs are eating into household budgets.
By the time families pay to drive to Des Moines, park, eat and enjoy the fair, a day out can become a significant expense.
Rising costs are hitting fair vendors and participants, too.
Vendors and exhibitors are paying more to transport food, equipment and trailers.
Those higher costs can ultimately mean higher prices for families.
These costs are the result of policy choices.
Our Reps backed Trump’s tariffs, raising costs on businesses and consumers.
High fuel costs from the war they support make it more expensive to travel
Reps funded tax breaks for billionaires with cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, cutting into our budgets, hurting health clinics and taking consumers from local farmers
Representatives like (Miller-Meeks/Nunn/Hinson) support policies that make it more expensive to preserve our traditions and bring our communities together
Questions to ask your representative at the Iowa State Fair:
When are you going to hold a public in-person town hall?
Iowa has one of the highest cancer rates in the country and it is rising. The new Medicaid rule you voted for could kick cancer patients off treatment. Knowing this, would you vote differently, yes or no?Why are you continuing to support the war in Iran that’s raising prices on Iowa farmers and families?
You keep showing up for closed-door fundraisers and staged events. Why are you afraid of a real town hall where Iowans can ask about your health care and cost votes?
You voted for tariffs that squeezed Iowa farmers and triggered manufacturing layoffs. How many of your constituents have to lose their jobs before you change your vote?
Families are being squeezed from all directions and you voted for cuts to SNAP and other food programs that could lead to kids losing access to food both at home and in school. What are you doing to ensure all Iowa families can feed their children?
Are you going to give back all your campaign donations from big insurance companies? (Miller-Meeks)
Questions to ask Zach Lahn at the Iowa State Fair:
You tried to take health care away from Montanans and recently said that 100,000 Iowans losing Medicaid was just a talking point. If you become governor, will you continue trying to take Medicaid and health care away from us?
Why are you defending a privatized Medicaid system that doesn’t work for Iowans?
If you lose the Iowa election, will you run for governor in Kansas or Montana?
With Iowa’s economy and growth at the bottom nationally, why are you supporting the Reynolds policies that got us here?
State Fair Questions may be updated Monday. You can find them here.
Content to share on social media:
Click to Share Content via Megaphone: Between gas, groceries, and everyday bills, plenty of Iowans are wondering if they can even afford to enjoy the fair this year. If you see your representative there, ask them why they’re making our lives harder.
Click to Share Content via Megaphone: Why is Miller-Meeks ducking Iowans? By skipping the State Fair Soapbox, she avoids explaining her votes to gut Medicaid and support the Trump tariffs costing Iowans.
Speculation is that Leavitt is leaving because Trump left her among the rabble to die in the decoy plane if there was an actual attack. If Leavitt is saying anything there is a good chance it is a lie so we will probably never know. Meanwhile crazy continues to flow from the White House like a fire hose. Remember – you can help put a stop to this in November.
Here we go:
A) In yet aother great idea from the genius at the wheel, Trump is telling the US Navy to change their method of doing what to a previous out-of-date method?
B) Speaking of out-of-date, Trump signed an executive order changing the method of delivering what to the nation’s children?
C) Speaking of EOs, another Trump EO will handcuff the Treasury Department when investigating what “white collar” crime that Trump himself supposedly engaged in??
D) Friday was the 81st anniversary of VJ Day. Who announced the surrender to the Japanese?
E) So much happened last week. South America experienced another earthquake, this time in what country?
F) More primaries were held last week. Who refuses to concede in the Minnesota Republican Governor primary claiming voting irregularities?
G) One late in the race cultural issue – democratic socialism -may have led to the loss of what gubernatorial candidate in Wisconsin?
H) AOC got the MAGAs all riled up when she revealed that she was planning to do what?
I) In a first a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe won a primary for US Senate in Minnesota Tuesday. Who is that person?
J) One of the most unusual aspects of VJ day is that this was the first time whose voice was ever broadcast to the Japanese people?
K) Uh-oh. Another unexpected downturn of what leading economic indicator in July. What indicator released Friday showed a decline for the first time in nine months?
L) The U of Michigan is trying to relieve grade stress by doing what?
M) Europe and Great Britain are going through yet another hotspell this week. But where are potatoes boiling in the ground before they are harvested?
N) The USS George Washington is finally coming to relieve what other Navy ship that has been at sea for nearly 9 consecutive months?
O) ICE introduced its new on-the-scene torture utility last week. What is it?
P) Japan’s official surrender took place on what ship on September 2, 1945?
Q) Canadians have garnered over 100,000 signatures on a petition to have what ambassador expelled from their country?
R) In the continuing “we can’t afford health” saga in the US, Hospitals are demanding what before letting patients in their doors?
S) The Trump admin is bulldozing and blasting in what national park as they build their wall between us and Mexico in Texas?
T) What ghost of a senator was supposedly sent home last week to continue his rehabilitation?
If you’re hiding in a catering truck when you control the most powerful military in the world, you aren’t winning. – Ron Filipkowski
Answers:
A) launching airplanes from the decks of aircraft carriers
B) childhood vaccines – by breakin the sinle MMR shot into 3 separate shots
C) money laundering
D) Emperor Hirohito
E) Columbia
F) Pillow man Mike Liddell
G) Francesca Hong
H) Freeze her eggs
I) Lt. governor Peggy Flanagan
J) Emperor Hirohito
K) retail sales
L) grading first semester freshmen on pass/fail system
M) South Korea
N) the USS Abraham Lincoln
O) electric shock glove
P) the USS Missouri
Q) US Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra
R) pre-pay of deductibles etc before any work is done
S) Big Bend in southwest Texas
T) Mitch McConnell – but no one saw him or spoke to him.
Gavin Newsom: “That $400 million Qatari plane? That’s not a $400 million gift. It cost you $936 million. That was what was appropriated as he’s cutting food stamps and cutting your Medicaid. He put a billion dollars in the Pentagon budget to retrofit his private plane because that’s going with him after the presidency. That has happened on our watch … this Board of Peace in the Middle East? That’s so he can get a piece of the Middle East.”
I sure didn’t until I accidentally saw this video the other day. I had heard of flock cameras for the first time only a week or two ago. With all the crimes that Trump and his minions have been committing in broad daylight my attention has been diverted from what should be local issues. But things such as flock cameras are no longer local. A system with this much data would never stay local for long anyway.
(7:30) Very interesting short video. A man is harassed locally for his speaking out in town meetings:
Do you remember the Texas woman whose license plate data was used to track her after she had an abortion in Ohio? While the actual incident happened about a year ago, the story just gained traction in the last few weeks. According to the AI response to a Google search:
In 2025, a Texas sheriff’s office used Flock Safety automated license plate reader cameras to track a woman who had a self-managed abortion. Law enforcement queried over 83,000 nationwide cameras—including in states where abortion is legal—using a search log that explicitly referenced the abortion. This event sparked intense national backlash and privacy concerns.
Texas officials used data from thousands of Flock cameras nationwide to track a woman in 2025, according to a report from 404 Media. Almost all abortions are banned in Texas. A sheriff said the woman’s family was concerned for her health and safety after a self-administered abortion. But pro-choice activists are worried.
“The concern is a person who is leaving a state where abortion is illegal and coming to Columbus to get the abortion care they deserve should not be followed into our city by this dragnet surveillance system that we have,” said Jaime Miracle, deputy director of Abortion Forward.
I don’t think I need to illustrate this much more. The flock cameras are indeed an extremely powerful tool that in the wrong hands could greatly invade a citizens life. Such tracking devices could easily be turned into weapons of surveillance against individuals or groups who are seen by those in power as people who must be tracked.
With ICE currently out of control who would want them with such a tool? What groups would they surveil? Blacks? Brown? Muslim for sure? Anyone seen with a “suspect?” The depths they could go to with such a weapon is scary. The threats to our (and I mean everyone’s) civil rights are pretty blatant.
Maybe a local police chief wants to track all his teenage daughter’s travels? Watch her boyfriends? Oh the damage some folks could do with such a tool is mind bending.
According to a quick Google AI search Iowa has some 39 municipalities with flock cameras. It did not give the number of total cameras. Here is a map from IPR:
No matter what the proposal on health care coming from the Trump administration you can bet it will have certain characteristics. First it will make health care less accessible for the patient. Second it will increase the out-of-pocket for the patient to the point where even one incident will break the patient.
And on the other side of the ledger, there will be an insurance company whose payouts will decrease, their exposure will be lessened and their ways to use the system to deny claims will be greatly enhanced. The Trump administration has been proposing in very misleading messages that make such plans seem viable when they are really not. They are generally referred to as “junk plans” throughout the industry.
As the subsidies for Obamacare are set to go away after the election and Medicaid is being taken from millions across the country, the Trump administration has no replacement but junk. With the midterm elections just around the corner, the fact that the USA has one of the worst healthcare systems in the world should be a front burner issue. It is something that in former days people would be raging about.
Here is Politics Girl explaining how a situation that may have bankrupted her in the US caused barely a ripple in the country she was visiting: (1:30)
While the extreme right has spent the campaign deflecting from the real issues with name calling and outrageous racism voters are looking at their pocketbooks and seeing them drained as never before. And the only solutions the extreme right offers is more money for more oligarchs. Voters know that a real threat of turning out officeholders who ignore their needs is the power they need to exercise.
In Iowa, our congressional delegation has been down the line with Trump and his extremist agenda. They talk about the one bill they passed in this congress that gave a few crumbs to the likes of you and me while giving huge tax cuts to the rich and taking away programs for the poor that in many cases are their lifeline. SNAP, Medicaid and subsidies for Obamacare.
Democrats will stand up for the likes of you and me. Their first concern will not be how to monetize our suffering for themselves or their buddies. No, Democrats first concern is to fix the problem. Republicans have acted almost as an enemy combatant in the past 40 years.
Our constitution says we are the power in this government. Now is the time to step up and use that power for our good, not the good of the wealthy.
Here is a short video with candidate for US Senate Josh Turek discussing his health care proposals. Remember the earlier video where Politics Girl had an emergency in a foreign country and it was fixed? With leaders like Josh Turek, America could do that also!
(2:33)
You gotta love this guy and you gotta love his health care stand. One thing is sure, Hinson cares more about some oligarchs pocketbook than your health.
“We need someone who will speak up and use that privilege for the greater good.” – Rachel Burns
Interview with Rachel Burns, Democratic candidate for Iowa House of Representatives District 7, northwest Iowa. Counties in HD 07 – Calhoun, Pocahontas, Sac, Webster (western part). facebook.com/RachelBurnsForIowa/
Props to Laura Belin at Bleeding Heartland for providing the public service of recording full videos of Rob Sand’s town halls. Follow her YouTube channel here. Please share it on social media to help reach more voters.
What’s Next: Build the Barn PAC, supporting next-gen leaders in Iowa and across the country. There’s a lot of work to do — join us at www.buildthebarnpac.com
Introducing: Build the Barn PAC
Today, I am launching Build the Barn PAC, which will continue the work we began together in my Senate campaign.
“Build the Barn” was the unofficial motto of my U.S. Senate campaign, a tribute to the classic line often attributed to Sam Rayburn: “Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a good carpenter to build one.”
Like the campaign, our PAC will not accept or solicit a single dollar from corporate PACs, and every dollar we raise will be fully and transparently disclosed. I’m not interested in building the thing I spent a year running against.
We will formally launch this new endeavor at my eighth annual birthday brunch fundraiser on Sunday, August 16 at 11:00 AM in Coralville — you are invited to join us if you can be there in person — and if you cannot be there in person, you can support the effort online by donating securely online via ActBlue by clicking on this link or via the button below:
Our first endorsement: Rep. Josh Turek
Josh won our primary, he can win this seat, and I was proud to give him my full support on the night of our primary election — and today, he is the first candidate we are endorsing and whose campaign we are supporting.
As I said on the night of our primary election, Josh and I competed hard against each other, as we should. We had real disagreements. Scripture tells us that iron sharpens iron — and while our primary made us both sharper, it didn’t make us colder. We got to know each other, even as we competed with each other. Josh is a good man. And he will be an infinitely better U.S. Senator than Ashley Hinson.
Between now and November 3, he needs doors knocked in places that are a long drive from wherever you live, and he needs money. So does Rob Sand, and so do the U.S. House candidates who can flip that chamber and put a check on the corruption and chaos in Washington.
That’s the work of the next eighty-five days, and if you’ve been looking for the right time to get involved, today is the day.
“Roughly 90% of new electric generation around the world last year came from the sun and the wind. And that in turn is because earlier this decade we crossed some invisible line where it became cheaper to produce power from the sun than from burning coal and gas and oil. Let me repeat, we live on a planet where the cheapest way to make power is to point a sheet of glass at the sun.
We have quite suddenly the opportunity to build a clean abundant future if we simply seize it.. This gift has come at the last possible moment. It would be an extraordinary sin to waste it and it would be a beautiful, beautiful project for humans to build it out across our hot and tired earth in the next few years.” – Bill McKibben
Iowa HD 26- Davis, Monroe, Appanoose, Wapello counties
Insufferable Wenches of Iowa have done a ton of these statehouse candidate interviews. Please share on your social media platforms to get the word out about our great Democratic candidates. And be sure and visit the Wenches’ YouTube channel for more candidate interviews. Follow the Wenches on Facebook
Brett Mohler is an engineer running against a Republican in HD26, a district that voted 72% for Trump last election.
Governor Kim Keynolds: (515) 281-5211 U.S. Capitol Switchboard: (202) 224-3121 Iowa Members of Congress - Rep. Randy Feenstra (R) - Rep. Ashley Hinson (R) - Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R) - Rep. Zach Nunn (R) Iowa US Senators - Senator Joni Ernst (R) - Senator Charles Grassley (R)
Blog For Iowa 