NoKings 2 attendees gathering in front of Old Capitol in Iowa City Photo: Trish Nelson
No Kings 2 was the largest single day nationwide protest in U.S. history with 2,500 events nationwide. Saturday was a day of peaceful protest across the country, millions of Americans defending our first amendment rights and showing up in more than 40 Iowa communities, singing songs and carrying signs.
You will enjoy Steve Schmidt’s remarks from in front of old capitol in Iowa City, the heart of the people’s republic of Johnson county and the site that has seen much social justice activity over the decades.
After Steve’s righteous rant, I’ve shared a few of my pictures and video of the amazing event and at the end there are some photos from the Mt. Vernon event contributed by Paul Deaton. Many thanks to Indivisible Iowa, Johnson County Indivisible and everyone involved from campaigns to city officials to volunteers.
Here is Steve Schmidt giving one of his best rants ever wearing Hawkeye Black and Gold.
It was a beautiful, fun, peaceful day for democracy and not a bad day for the Iowa Hawkeyes either.
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Paul Deaton was able to snap a shot of Dave and Terry Loebsack at the Mt. Vernon NoKings event. Thank you for your years of service in Washington, Dave and Terry.
Mt. Vernon gets the last pic.
Carry on, everyone. There is more good trouble to come. See you in the streets.
But first a word of caution for our fans: (10 minutes)
Now that the huge national protest is done, what can we do as followup? Remember MAGAs will continue their relentless attack on democracy day by day and even second by second.They will be backed by billionaire bucks with one goal in mind: keep the billionaires in power.
One thought that keeps going through my mind is to be very, very choosy about where I spend my dollars. Considering that much of our society has been monopolized it may be hard to find alternatives to the companies of the far right to do business with, but I plan to try.
Do I have to go to Walmart or is there an alternative, maybe even a locally owned alternative. Do I need to go to Home Depot? Do some soul searching before you throw money at the multi-nationals. Using your money to make a political statement is about the only thing that gets the billionaires attention.
There are cracks in the authoritarian regime. Hang in there. BTW remember that FIWH is the ‘Felon In the White House.’
A) Many of us felt like we had lost a friend Thursday when we heard that what “Founding Mother” of NPR had died?
B) MAGAs always screw things up. In Iowa the Iowa Revenue Estimating Conference said Thursday that Iowa will miss its revenue estimates by how much in 2026?
C) Anybody keeping score out there? How many people has the FIWH had murdered in his attacks on boats in the Caribbean so far?
D) MAGA congress member Dave Taylor of Ohio when one of his staffers was shown on the phone with what flag in the background?
E) It is harvest time. One of the stars of harvest time is the apple. So how about some apple trivia. What biological family is the apple in?
F) Portland, now they know how to protest. What protest did extremist righty Mike Johnson call “the most threatening thing I have ever seen”?
G) Only one “news” network took War Secretary Hegseth’s deal to have the news dictated to them. Which “network” was that?
H) The FIWH said he will pay soldiers by doing what?
I) What group was exposed as exchanging over 2,900 pages of racist, misogynist and hateful chat messages last week?
J) What administration official excused the chats as “kids doing stupid things”?
K) What group was known to have planted the first apple trees in North America?
L) Approximately how much is the MAGA government shutdown costing the US?
M) Annie Hall was probably this late actress’s most recognizable role. What actress died last week at age 79?
N) Also ending last week was the era of what football coach at powerhouse school Penn State?
O) Damn near forgot – who won the WNBA title a week ago?
P) Real or legend – Johnny Appleseed?
Q) John Bolton is in the news again. Why?
R) The FIWH awarded a posthumous Medal of Freedom to who last week?
S) How many apples to a gallon of cider?
T) What extreme right wing MAGA personality had his appeal of a $1.4B settlement with the Sandy Hook parents denied by the SCOTUS?
Trump has announced covert CIA ops in Venezuela. Because someone forgot to explain the meaning of covert. – Tim Wise
The MAGA Republicans have total control of our national government. With the Felon in the WhiteHouse {FIWH} as president, they are leaving no stones unturned in their quest to end democracy in this country and leave us with an entrenched reactionary right wing entrenched majority in congress that will be nearly impossible to remove.
While most people look at the elective offices as the symbols of what a reactionary party can do to end democracy, the Supreme Court has been not too quietly making rulings that are geared to effectively put one party in power for the long foreseeable future.
Thus the party that wants to end democracy has been pushing its agenda on all fronts. As the FIWH illegally sends storm troopers into cities in a show of intimidation and the congress refuses to do even the simplest task (look MAGAs could end their shutdown in about an hour if they wanted to) the SCOTUS is in the midst of the perfunctory show as they go about making elections safe for MAGAs.
As most of you know, Wednesday the SCOTUS heard oral arguments in a case arising out of Louisiana that would pretty much kill any remaining powers that the 1965 Civil Rights Act had that would help ensure some power to minorities. You can almost bet that long before any arguments were heard that the vote next June will be 6 to 3 to kill the 1965 Act.
MAGAs have a group that looks, even creates, cases that challenge laws that have given minorities any extra help in achieving the American Dream. In recent years they have brought cases involving in particular Affirmative Action. Such cases have been decided almost 100% against minorities.
In this case, after the 2020 census Louisiana had 6 congressional districts. After much haggling, it was finally resolved that districts should be drawn such that minorities would have a great chance of winning 2 of the 6 districts or 1/3 since minorities in Louisiana were 1/3 of the population.
This decision was challenged and the SCOTUS decided to take the case. As the final arbiter the SCOTUS will often take a case where it wants to make a statement about the case that will guide any similar cases for a long time. In this case it was pretty obvious that the Court seemed itching to reverse any extra aid that minorities had gotten in any laws.
“The case reflects two major trends of the Roberts court: hostility to racial justice claims brought by minorities, and a willingness to invert civil rights law and the Reconstruction amendments alike to create interpretations in which these legal traditions function to entrench, rather than challenge, historical hierarchies of race and gender. Louisiana’s attorney general – who has switched sides in the case since it was initially argued last year, joining an opposition to the Voting Rights Act – claimed that to assume that Black voters would vote differently than white voters – which in Louisiana, they overwhelmingly do – would be to unconstitutionally impose a racial stereotype. This facile fiction elicited exasperation from Justice Kagan.
But the attorney general knew his audience. Roberts has long been an enemy of practices that attempt to remedy historical and ongoing racial discrimination, claiming that the law mandates that state and private actors alike take no interest in such projects and attempt facially race-blind policies in everything from voting rights enforcement to college admissions – no matter how racially discriminatory against Black Americans such practices prove to be in reality. “The way to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” he once memorably said, “is to stop discriminating on the basis of race” – that is, to stop trying to account for or combat racism with official policy. The result will be that if the court rules in Louisiana’s favor, it will no longer be illegal, in practice, to racially gerrymander congressional districts to minimize and dilute Black voter power. But it will be illegal to use race to redistrict in such a way that restores Black voter power.
It is apparently through this fanciful and motivated reasoning that Roberts and his colleagues have decided that any move to secure Black Americans’ voting rights and equality in fact violates the very constitutional amendments that were meant to secure their voting rights and equality. The Voting Rights Act does not violate the 15th amendment; it enforces it, and gave the United States, during the 60 years or so of its enactment, its only plausible claim to being a real democracy. To say that the VRA contradicts the 15th amendment is more than just bad reasoning. It is bad faith. But bad faith, increasingly, is what the supreme court operates under.
If the supreme court rules in favor of the “non-African-American” voters and vacates what is left of the Voting Rights Act, as they are expected to, then a decision will probably come down sometime in June, just a few months before the November 2026 midterms. The resulting racial gerrymanders are expected to net Republicans 19 House seats. “
Of course such a decision could lead to a flood of gerrymandering just before the 2026 election. Such redistricting would not only be at the federal level, but also at the state and even lower levels. Such gerrymandering could easily lead to MAGA control for a century or more.
While the FIWH is often and correctly cited for his anti-democratic positions he is only one of a machine of f a party hell-bent on seizing and retaining power long past their lifetimes. And as one of the rewards for his part in building such an authoritarian state is that he can commit crimes such as child rape or stealing state secrets and never be held responsible.
And let’s give a hand to Iowa’s own Chuck Grassley who had a major role in setting up the SCOTUS to be an apparatus of an authoritarian state. As head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Grassley refused to hold hearings for the very legal nomination of Merrick Garland in 2016. Then in a total about face he rushed through the nomination of the gawd-awful Amy Coney Barret in a very similar situation four years later.
Stand up and let the people see the man who undermined democracy, Chuck!
Make no doubt about it – today’s protest is big. It is big in terms of participants. It is also very big in determining the future of this country. Will our direction return to the path of democracy or will we continue on the path toward authoritarianism?
Many people wonder what they would have done had they been in some of the pivotal moments in history. Would they have stood up for their beliefs or would they have shrunk into the shadows and watched from the sidelines. Or would they have opposed the ideals of democracy and self determination.
While today is not a life and death situation, it is a pivotal moment. If enough people stand up We can show those who are abusing the power of the state that Americans will not stand for their unconstitutional crap. Do you think you would have stood up in the past? Well, today is the day to show it.
Just to give you a little push out the door, here is a voice from the past – The opening paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence. That writing was from a time when the government was out of control and Americans desired to be in charge of their own fate. We are now in a time when an authoritarian and his ilk once again desire to take away the freedom that was won back then:
In Congress, July 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
Protest în peace. Wear some yellow if you can to show solidarity.
Especially if you are attending a #NOKINGS event Saturday, it’s a good idea to drop in on Indivisible’s weekly planning call with co-founders Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg. RSVPs surged this week according to the organizers’ report, thanks to Republicans blasting lies and calling us terrorists all over the media. Find your local #nokings event here.
More Perfect Union:“Are restaurants starting to taste the same? Food distributor Sysco has been on a relentless acquisition spree, becoming one of the largest companies in food service. This consolidation means higher prices for mass-produced food made under grueling conditions. —– More Perfect Union is an Emmy-winning, nonprofit newsroom whose mission is to build power for working people. Here’s what that means: We report on the real struggles and challenges of the working class from a working-class perspective. We attempt to connect those problems to potential solutions. We report on the abuses and wrongdoing of corporate power. And we seek to hold accountable the ultra-rich who have too much power over America’s political and economic systems. To support our independent journalism, subscribe, donate, and follow our other pages through the links below.”
Here is a list of Iowa communities holding #NOKINGS events Saturday, October 18. You can sign up at mobilize.us. Or you can just show up Saturday. If you don’t see your town here, come to the closest event. Also, talk … Continue reading →
David Hogg, a survivor of the Parkland, Florida school shooting, has reason to be cynical and yet he’s not.
In the podcast today he explains some of the lesser known details of his time as a vice-chair at the DNC. But that’s just a small part of the conversation. The rest is much more interesting.
Al Franken took the time to open the interview with the actual, real and meaningful accomplishments and lives saved due to David Hogg’s organizing work to enact better gun safety laws in America. I appreciated that because it seems like everyone assumes it is impossible to do anything about America’s gun problem. But to David Hogg, saving some lives is better than doing nothing and saving no lives.
As you likely already know, he is currently working on helping progressive Democrats get elected by raising money for targeted campaigns.
Hogg’s group, Leaders We Deserve, donated $300,000 to a super PAC supporting New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani.
Some good quotes from the podcast: “We need to be a party of fighters not folders.”
NoKings protests are really important.
Health care is a top voting issue and also the issue on which Dems have the most trust among voters.
And yes, he praised Chuck Schumer for his recent video. I posted it below the podcast.
Interesting that the above video is from Voice of America, which as I understand it, no longer exists or has at least been defunded. Yet one of the many outrageous acts and statements that the FIWH {Felon In The White House} has done or made in order to shift any conversation from his part in the Jeffrey Epstein affair.
As the FIWH continues to do all he can to distract from the Epstein files being revealed, actions and statements get wilder and bolder. It seems as if the FIWH has given Stephen Miller a free hand in committing acts as long as they distract from Epstein. Could the US end up in another Civil War in order to distract from Epstein?
It is too bad Iowa has no member of congress who has the backbone to stand up and call for the release of the Epstein files. That right there is one overriding reason to vote Democratic in the next election. It is long past time that the principal that the law applies to all citizens becomes reality.
The move from Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day has been slow but heartening. Columbus discovered nothing. He was merely the first of what would be an onslaught that would steal the land from those humans that were already here. As many as 100,000,000 who were already here
A) In what had to be one of the biggest misspeaks in politics, FIWH aide Stephen Miller claimed the FIWH had what kind of power?
B) The FIWH campaigned openly for what prize, but in the end a freedom fighter from Venezuela won it?
C) MAGA representatives refuse to reopen congress thus stopping any moves toward reopening the government. Why do they refuse to reopen?
D) The FIWH will be traveling where next week?
E) In what year was Columbus Day first marked as an official holiday?
F) Last week there was to be a vote on bringing in a union at Unity Point Hospital in Des Moines. How did that turn out?
G) This week a video was discovered that had what US representative telling a party assembly that they would have a town hall “when hell freezes over”?
H) Thursday arrangements were completed for the US to spend $20 billion to bail out what country whose economy has been shredded by right wing policies?
I) One reason that China is able to avoid buying any US soybeans is that they are able to acquire them from what South American countries?
J) States began to slowly rename Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day in the 1990s. What state was the first to change that designation?
K) The Secretary of HHS, Junior Kennedy, made yet another outrageous statement connecting what name brand to autism?
L) Who is the new editor-in-chief for CBS News?
M) Who issued a “teaching document” that condemned societies that marginalize poor people in those societies last week?
N) Now that public TV has been defunded by MAGAs, public will be selling 30 of whose paintings as a fund-raiser?
O) Tomorrow is also a major holiday in our neighbors to the north in Canada. What major holiday is it?
P) $4,000 an ounce for what? And the FIWH covers his toilets with it!
Q) What has replaced coal as the primary source of energy around the world?
R) A crack in the MAGA wall, perhaps. What MAGA governor became the only MAGA to condemn the use of federal troops in American cities?
S) Well, now the Justice Department has indicted what second target of the FIWH’s retribution list?
T) Secretary of War(?) Pete Hegseth tried to get the FIWH to send what elite fighting force into Portland last weekend?
Bonus) Who is America’s newest ambassador to the Bahamas?
Y’all need to realize that trump and Republicans’ health care plan is simply to get rid of Obamacare.
A) Plenary as in all powerful. Whoopsie! Pee-Wee German let the cat out of the bag
B) the Nobel Peace prize
C) Because the newest member of congress will sign the petition to force the release of the Epstein files
D) the Middle East
E) 1934
F) Due to the government shutdown the department of Labor which holds the vote was shut so the vote is suspended until the government reopens
G) Mariannette Miller-Meeks.
H) Argentina
I) Brazil and Argentina
J) South Dakota. The name was changed in 1989 and observed in 1990
K) Tylenol. He claimed There are two studies that show children who are circumcised early have double the rate of autism. It’s highly likely because they were given Tylenol
L) Bari Weiss known to be extreme right wing
M) Pope Leo XIV
N) Bob Ross who was known for his PBS show teaching painting
O) Thanksgiving Day
P) Gold
Q) renewable energy in its various forms
R) Oklahoma’s Kevin Stitt
S) New York AG Letitia James
T) the Army’s 82nd Airborne division – that is some serious shit
Bonus) Remember Herschel Walker who can barely make a sentence? Yep, him
Two biggest mistakes in US history:
1. Not appropriately punishing Confederates and erasing them&their symbols after the Civil War
2. Not appropriately punishing trump & his MAGAt accomplices for inciting&implementing January 6th. – KwikWarren
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)
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