Sunday Funday: The Quiz Is Back Edition

Posted on May 5, 2024 by Dave Bradley

Well, look who finally decided to come back to work. Went out to buy Christmas presents. Must have went to Mars to find bargains.

Just a reminder that there is a big election in 6 months from today. Get your plans in place.

A reminder of why this coming election is so important. Authoritarian governments are bad for your health. Kent State 54 years ago yesterday (3 minutes)

Another week of the corporate media trying to mislead us. 

A) Despite the media trying to ignore it, what politician’s deadly encounter with her puppy kept cropping up everywhere?

B) What first witness for the prosecution in the Trump election interference trial really did Donny no favors?

C) According to Iowa Starting Line, what Republican representative is ready to cash in on his vote to publicly fund private schools by doing what in Tama-Toledo?

D) A farmworker in Texas has had an infection in late March officially diagnosed as bird flu which means the disease has transmitted between what three species?

E) Back in the game – what country should be getting delivery of F-15 fighters from the US today?

F) The president of what university released a statement Tuesday stating that “Protests were being led by individuals who are not affiliated with the university”?

G) A long time a-coming. What formerly highly restricted substance will be rescheduled from Schedule I to Schedule III a much lesser controlled schedule?

H) Fox News pulled a fictional series on a mock trial of who after the subject threatened a lawsuit?

I) Wednesday was the 25th ‘birthday’ for what popular cartoon character?

J) What major US Christian denomination voted this week to lift its ban on LGBTQ clergy?

K) In Arizona, the legislature passed and the governor signed a bill that would end that state’s ban on abortion originally passed when?

L) Twang, twang twang twang twang twang! Perhaps the first real guitar hero, what early guitarist with hits such as ’Rebel Rouser’ died last week at a age 86?

M) A second whistleblower against what company died suddenly last week from a “a fast-spreading infection”?

N) The Biden Administration announced $3 billion Thursday to replace what ubiquitous health hazard that still exists in many cities infrastructures?

O) The day that Arizona rescinded its strict abortion ban what state imposed a near total abortion ban beginning at 6 weeks?

P) Philips Respironics announced a $1.1 billion settlement concerning what defective product of theirs?

Q) What major international tourist destination has imposed a 5 Euro/day to try to discourage day trippers?

R) What is the name of Taylor Swift’s newest album that is shattering sales and play records that was released last week?

S) What other national Republican leader was excoriated for how he treated his dog as he ran for president?

T) “Don Snoreleone” and “the Nodfather” are sarcastic names for what public figure who has a penchant for sleeping during his election interference trial?

You would think after Bill Clinton fixed the economy that George H.W. Bush broke & after Barack Obama fixed the economy that George W. Bush broke & after Joe Biden fixed the economy that Donald Trump broke that people would stop voting for Republicans. – Evan

Answers:

A) South Dakota governor and VP candidate Kristi Noem 

B) David Pecker

C) Dean Fisher

D) birds, cattle and humans

E) Ukraine

F) Columbia

G) marijuana

H) Hunter Biden

I) Sponge Bob Square Pants

J) Methodists. This denomination has really imploded over the LGBTQ issue

K) 1864

L) Duane Eddy

M) Boeing

N) lead pipes in municipal water systems

O) Florida

P) CPAP machines

Q) Venice, Italy

R) The Tortured Poets Department

S) Mitt Romney 

T) Trump – just in – apparently Michael Cohen has added “Donny Von Shitzinpantz” to the list of Trump names.

Trump thinks Israel has an actual dome over it that protects it from missiles, and wants one for the U.S.

He may have the Nuclear Codes again in 2024.

I’m terrified. – Brandon Unger

Posted in #nevertrump, Humor | 3 Comments

Kent State Redux

Posted on May 4, 2024 by Dave Bradley

As of today we are 54 years removed from the shootings at Kent State University in Ohio. Once again it becomes relevant as protests concerning the Israeli – Palestinian situation are being pushed hard by the corporate media. 

Protests have always been integral to America’s functioning and the right to protest is enshrined in the constitution. Protests must remain peaceful, however. Right wing groups are attempting to exploit these protests trying to make the President look inept. He is on top of the situation

President Biden addresses campus protests:

Right wingers who live in a dreamworld fully detached from reality are also trying to equate the insurrection of January 6th, 2021 as yet another protest within the American tradition of protests. It wasn’t. January 6th was a planned insurrection by the then president with a goal of ending our constitutional democracy.

Since then Republicans have attempted to rewrite history by simply lying about their insurrection. Here we see Senator JD Vance of Ohio lying to CNN’s Kaitlin Collins about the attempted overthrow of our government. Collins ain’t buying what he is selling:

Posted in #nevertrump, Biden-Harris | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Project 2025

Posted on May 4, 2024 by Dave Bradley

I do not know if this has been ballyhooed enough. Maybe some of you have heard of Project 2025. Maybe some of you have been sufficiently scared by this proposal to sound the alarms. But I do not think enough have been scared enough. This is a really frightening proposal and the extreme right is fully ready to put their proposals into practice almost immediately.

Here is a video explaining some of the plans. This video has a little age, but I was trying to find one that was sufficiently serious about this plan to get people’s attention. (10 minutes)

Hopefully this video will sufficiently awaken folks to the reality of how much danger our form of government is in. This fall we will have a clear choice to maintain our democracy even though it is from perfect or losing our democracy not for something better, but to an authoritarian government with a few wealthy elites in charge. 

Sadly our corporate media will do little or nothing to explain Project 2025 or the danger it represents.  No doubt the goals of Project 2025 line up well with corporate media’s policies. Thus we are on our own to understand and spread our concerns. 

A group name “Stop The Coup” released a ten page list of key proposals of Project 2025. You can find it here:

In addition to that warning we have a response to Project 2025 from the Democratic Party Rapid Response Team. This one page response ends with this warning from the New York Times:

New York Times: “Roberts told me that he views Heritage’s role today as ‘institutionalizing Trumpism.’ This includes leading Project 2025, a transition blueprint that outlines a plan to consolidate power in the executive branch, dismantle federal agencies and recruit and vet government employees to free the next Republican president from a system that Roberts views as stacked against conservative power. The lesson of Trump’s first year in office, Roberts told me, is that ‘the Trump administration … simply got a slow start. And Heritage and our allies in Project 2025 believe that must never be repeated.’”

Finally I will link to this rather long (36:35) video that goes into some depth on Project 2025. Lawyer Leeja Miller explains how badly Project 2025 will totally screw up our democracy:

(The video is a sponsored video and I will give a language warning even though I doubt people care):

Posted in #nevertrump, #trumpresistance | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Hillary Clinton’s Warning

Posted on May 3, 2024 by Trish Nelson

Nobody has the Republicans’ number quite like Hillary Clinton who was right about Trump early on and was ignored. Now look where we are.  We ignore her at our peril.  Looking ahead to November she said, “Expect them to shrink  the electorate, make it difficult to vote, confuse the electorate with flat-out disinformation and they will launch big surprises at the end.”

On SCOTUS:  “What the majority is doing is what they were put on the court to do. They are implementing a right wing agenda… we got the judges that had been groomed to put into the pipeline to do what they are now doing.”

“I went to law school with Clarence Thomas. It wasn’t like I was surprised.”

On Trump/Ukraine: “Russia is playing an old game and we’re not understanding the full implication of it but the Europeans are standing firm in large measure because they do see what a direct threat it is to them and I believe it is a direct threat to us. That’s not how Trump is talking… he’s easily bullied and easily flattered and he’s also only concerned about himself not the country so if you’re a smart enough dictator in Moscow or Beijing, bullying and flattering – those are pretty easy strategies to carry out.”

To Marc Elias: “You’ve been on the frontline of saving our democracy..we need you now as much as ever, so please keep going because we’ve gotta get through this next election because we’ll either continue our democracy or we’ll lose it.”

Let’s hope we continue it.

This is an informative, candid, and sometimes scary conversation between Clinton and Marc Elias of Democracy Docket.

Enjoy and happy Friday!

Follow Democracy Docket!
-⁠X/Twitter⁠:   / democracydocket 
-⁠Facebook⁠:   / democracydocket  
-⁠Instagram⁠:   / democracydocket  
-⁠TikTok⁠:   / democracydocket  

-Threads: https://www.threads.net/@democracydocket

-⁠Subscribe to our free newsletters⁠: https://www.democracydocket.com/youtu…

-Support our work and keep our content free: https://www.democracydocket.com/help-…

Posted in Blog for Iowa | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Reluctant Iowa Republicans Told To “Fake” Support For Trump

Posted on May 2, 2024 by Trish Nelson

Ladies and gentlemen, your Iowa Republican party. Click here for a related post at Bleeding Heartland.

Posted in Blog for Iowa | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Book Review: Minority Rule

Posted on May 1, 2024 by Paul Deaton

A decent history of American politics in the post-Obama era has yet to be written. One can’t rely upon any of the conservative principals to author one, because they have been drinking at the well of minority rule for too long. A Trump autobiography? He didn’t even write The Art of the Deal.

Enter Ari Berman’s new book, Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People–and the Fight to Resist It, published in April. It provides a well-researched and relatable history of an issue that has been at the heart of modern conservatism since Pat Buchanan worked in the Nixon White House.

In a 1995 National Press Club address, Buchanan, then a presidential candidate, said, “If present trends hold, white Americans will be a minority by 2050.” This underlying fear mongering became endemic to Republican politics and drove the ascendancy of the 45th president. Irrational fears the United States would transform from a First World Power to Third World status drove conservative voters to the ballot box.

In my reading of books about the rise of Donald Trump as president, Berman is the first author to tell a clear, coherent, and relatable story of that time. Minority rule is at the heart of current Republican policy and behavior and Berman lays it all out for the reader.

While the 1965 Voting Rights Act broadened access to the ballot, conservative white folks were aghast and feared they would become a racial and political minority. During the Johnson administration, an emphasis on immigration of whites was transformed to a broader band of global populations. Enter Trump to both fan the racist, anti-immigrant flames, and get elected as a supposed fire fighter for the fires he started.

Berman outlines the constitutional and legal structure that enables minority rule in the United States. The conduct of the U.S. Census, having two U.S. Senators per state regardless of population, the growth of the filibuster, the electoral college, and drawing political districts in a way that disenfranchises non-white voters, all play a part in enabling minority rule, according to Berman.

While it may sound easy to keep the U.S. Census above politics, it was politicized during the 2020 census by the administration. Having two U.S. Senators, combined with the filibuster enables senators representing a minority of the population to set policy and block majority-favored laws they don’t like. Political gerrymandering, especially in states like Wisconsin and Michigan entrenched minority rule and blocked attempts for political districts to represent the people in the state. There is no magic bullet to fix any of these issues. Entrenched, minority rule makes it more difficult.

In Minority Rule, Berman outlines the role of The Heritage Foundation’s sister organization, Heritage Action, in our politics. Heritage Action is a 501(c)4 nonprofit conservative policy advocacy organization founded in 2010. The Heritage Foundation was restricted from advocating policy, so they created this offshoot, which has become one of the most powerful political lobbying groups in the nation. Iowa is one of the states where these dark money groups have been active.

Ari Berman gets a thumbs up for this book, and I recommend you read it yourself. Minority rule is endemic to the problems of politics in 2024. Berman helps us get a grip on it. He also provides hope the electorate can address the problem and embolden democracy going forward. He presents evidence such a movement has already started.

I also recommend Berman’s previous book, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America.

Posted in book review | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Taking Up Oxygen

Posted on April 30, 2024 by Trish Nelson

“Absolutely take up oxygen everywhere you possibly can, including social media.”  – Heather Cox Richardson

I never regret taking the time to listen to Heather Cox Richardson, a political historian and one of the few who doesn’t get caught up in the daily internet drama, but offers a broader perspective of today’s events and how history has led us here.

“As well as being in a frustrating and frightening time we are also in a time of extraordinary privilege because we get to make a difference. Not only for ourselves and our towns and even our country but also for the world… and that’s honestly what keeps me going, and I think that is a good way to think about what we’re trying to do here.” – Heather Cox Richardson

Click on the link below to find and volunteer for a Democratic candidate in Iowa!

https://2024democraticcandidates

Posted in Blog for Iowa | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Groups Petition EPA to Take Action on Nitrate Pollution in Iowa’s Drinking Water

Posted on April 29, 2024 by Trish Nelson

Important announcement from Jefferson County Farmers & Neighbors, Inc. (JFAN)

Thirteen Environmental Organizations Petition EPA to Take Action on Nitrate Pollution in Iowa’s Drinking Water

After the state’s Environmental Protection Commission voted to adopt the revised and weakened Chapter 65 CAFO rules on April 16, the Iowa Environmental Council, along with 12 other groups, petitioned the EPA to take action to remediate nitrate pollution in drinking water.

The petition is similar to the one filed in Minnesota which pushed the EPA to take emergency action under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Northeast Iowa, the focus of this petition, draws from the same aquifer as Minnesota and has the same karst terrain. This has promise, and we’re keeping a close eye on how the EPA will respond.

Iowa Environmental Council is holding a webinar on Wednesday, May 1 at 12:00 noon CT to discuss the EPA petition and the Chapter 65 CAFO rules that were adopted leading to this action. Learn more and register here.

We’re forwarding IEC’s press release, below. Please share widely.

IEC and 12 Environmental Groups Petition EPA to Protect Drinking Water for Iowans

DES MOINES, IA — [On April 16], the Iowa Environmental Council and numerous environmental and public health partners petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to take action to protect Iowans from unsafe drinking water. The petition calls for immediate action under the Safe Drinking Water Act to remediate nitrate contamination in Northeast Iowa drinking water sources.

The petition highlights nitrate concentrations above 10 milligrams per liter in drinking water, which is the federal limit as established by the EPA, and documents that thousands of private well tests and some public water wells have regularly exceeded that concentration for years.

“People living in Northeast Iowa have been exposed to high nitrate in drinking water for decades. High nitrate is a danger to infants, but an increasing number of health studies connect long-term nitrate exposure, even at levels below the drinking water standard, to various cancers. It’s past time to take action to clean up our drinking water,” said Alicia Vasto, Water Program Director for the Iowa Environmental Council. “The state has shown once again that it will not take action to protect drinking water sources from pollution, so the EPA must intervene.”

12 groups joined IEC’s petition submitted today to the EPA:

Allamakee County Protectors – Education Campaign
Center for Food Safety
Environmental Law & Policy Center
Environmental Working Group
Food & Water Watch
Iowa Alliance for Responsible Agriculture
Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement
Izaak Walton League of America – Iowa Division
Sierra Club Iowa Chapter
Socially Responsible Agriculture Project
Iowa Coldwater Conservancy
Trout Unlimited – Iowa Driftless Chapter 717.

The groups filed the petition with the EPA following the state’s Environmental Protection Commission adoption of rules for animal feeding operations (AFOs) that rejected a request to increase drinking water protections. The Commission adopted the rules at their meeting on April 16 despite formal and public comments from Iowans criticizing the rules for not protecting water quality.

Food & Water Watch Staff Attorney Dani Replogle said, “The state’s failure to regulate industrial agriculture pollution has steadily eroded Iowans’ right to clean drinking water. For decades, Northeast Iowa residents have been exposed to dangerous levels of nitrate contaminated water. As the state reckons with high cancer levels and ongoing pollution regulation rollbacks, federal action is needed to safeguard the right to clean water. EPA must exercise emergency authority to hold polluters accountable and deliver safe drinking water in Iowa.”

IEC and the Environmental Law & Policy Center (ELPC) petitioned the state’s Environmental Protection Commission for stronger rules protecting karst terrain from AFO pollution in 2021. Karst terrain, which comprises Northeast Iowa’s Driftless Region, features porous, fractured limestone which allows surface water and pollutants to quickly and easily infiltrate groundwater. The Commission denied the petition in 2022 on a promise from DNR officials that it would undertake a comprehensive AFO rule update. The rule update reorganized karst provisions, but did not make the changes sought in the petition.

IEC, ELPC, and other partner organizations called again for those changes in follow-up comments throughout the rulemaking process in 2023. In initial drafts, Department of Natural Resources modestly increased protections for karst, but those changes were removed by the Governor’s staff late last year.

“The rules adopted by the Environmental Protection Commission show that the state doesn’t care about protecting drinking water if it means imposing any costs or requirements on agriculture. We need EPA intervention to protect Iowans from ongoing pollution,” said Josh Mandelbaum, Senior Attorney for ELPC. “No Iowan should have to worry that their drinking water is contaminated with agricultural pollution, but the state’s new rules do not even begin to fix the problem.”

“Refusing to regulate one of the state’s main sources of nitrate shows that state leaders care more about the agriculture industry’s bottom line than about the water Iowans drink,” said Dale Braun, President of the Iowa Division of the Izaak Walton League, which represents 7,000 Iowa members. “Instead of stepping up for the people of Iowa, they protected industrial agriculture and the status quo: polluted drinking water.”

In April of last year, Minnesota groups filed a petition to EPA seeking emergency action in Southeast Minnesota, which has the same geology and similar levels of nitrate pollution as Northeast Iowa. EPA responded in November 2023 that the state of Minnesota must take action and develop a plan to reduce nitrate pollution.

“It seems clear Iowans can’t depend on state regulators, this Governor, or the Legislature to protect our environment and ensure our right to safe drinking water,” said Tim Wagner with the Iowa Coldwater Conservancy. “We face the same pollution problems and have an even more lax regulatory structure for large feedlot operations than Minnesota. Hence, it appears that asking the EPA to step in is the only option left.”

There is no mandated timeline for EPA to respond to the petition, but the groups anticipate a response within three to six months. Read the petition in its entirety here.

IEC will host a free webinar about the AFO rules approved today and the EPA petition on Wednesday, May 1, at 12 p.m.The public is invited to attend to learn more about these topics. Registration details are available here.

—–

Jefferson County Farmers & Neighbors, Inc.
PO Box 811
Fairfield, IA 52556
www.jfaniowa.org
641-209-6600
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JFANIowa

JFAN is funded by grassroots support and gratefully welcomes your donations. https://www.jfaniowa.org/donate-today

JFAN is a member of the Iowa Alliance for Responsible Agriculture (IARA)

Posted in Blog for Iowa | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Nuclear Power Isn’t It

Posted on April 28, 2024 by Paul Deaton
Photo by Johannes Plenio on Pexels.com

Little has changed to make nuclear power a safe and affordable option to produce electricity. That didn’t stop Iowa Republican members of congress, all four of them, from voting for H.R. 6544, the Atomic Advancement Act of 2023. They were not alone, the bill passed on Feb. 29, 2024 (365-36-1). It awaits action in the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. What were they thinking? They were thinking they would take care of big business first.

In a sneaky, self-serving way, the bill revised the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s mission statement to emphasize the “public benefits” of nuclear energy instead of protecting human life and health through regulation. In other words, it promotes more nuclear power over safety.

Using questionable wisdom, the U.S. House of Representatives pushed more of the cost of recovery from a nuclear disaster upon tax payers. The bill calls for renewal of the Price-Anderson Act, a 1957 law which caps the industry’s liability for nuclear disasters at only $13 billion. H.R. 6544 extends it for 40 more years. The Price-Anderson Act makes US taxpayers liable for the full costs of nuclear disasters – which could run into the hundreds of billions of dollars – and exempts the insurance industry from covering homeowners and businesses for damages from those disasters. We regular folks never have it that good from our government.

Construction costs for new nuclear power are more than ten times those of comparable solar capacity. There are similar cost issues around fuel sourcing, waste disposal, safe operations, and escape of radioactive pollution from a power plant, none of which have been resolved. There can be agreement we’d like to use a method of electricity generation that minimizes pollution. Nuclear power isn’t it.

Entrepreneur Bill Gates is working to make nuclear power more cost effective and safe. When he decided to make nuclear power generation one of the projects in his post-Microsoft life, he said he wanted to solve its problems so it could replace more polluting methods. Gates believes nuclear power is an important part of solving the climate crisis. That may be, yet not until we solve the problems of cost and safety. Read about his effort in Kemmerer, Wyoming here.

The U.S. Congress is getting ahead of itself in advancing this bill. My House Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks was out with a statement shortly after voting for it, “The Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy held a hearing to discuss nuclear energy expansion. I believe nuclear energy plays a key role in the future of American energy and am proud to support it.” I have been writing about the representative’s affection for nuclear power since this post on Dec. 11, 2010. I wrote, “As a proponent of nuclear power to control toxic emissions from coal fired power plants and concentrated animal feeding operations in the state, she is expected to kick the ball down the road for the decades it would take to bring adequate megawatts of nuclear energy on line.” One decade down, how many to go?

It is obvious the nuclear industry has made little progress toward improving safety in operations and affordability as measured in unit cost of electricity produced. They hang their hat on the likes of Bill Gates, instead, and pray he solves the problems. I didn’t know those folks spent that much time in church.

Posted in Environment | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Abortion Heads Back To The Supreme Court

Posted on April 27, 2024 by Paul Deaton
U.S. Supreme Court Building, Washington, D.C. Photo Credit – U.S. Supreme Court Website.

When the U.S. Supreme Court decided Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization on June 22, 2022, it was a matter of time before abortion would have another hearing in the high court. On Wednesday this week justices heard oral arguments on whether the State of Idaho’s abortion ban is constitutional in Moyle vs. United States. Alice Miranda Ollstein and Josh Gerstein reported on Politico:

The Supreme Court on Wednesday will consider — for the first time since it overturned Roe v. Wade —whether an individual state’s abortion ban is constitutional.

The justices will hear arguments on whether federal law requires emergency room physicians in Idaho to perform abortions to stabilize pregnant patients experiencing a medical crisis despite the state’s near-total prohibition on the procedure, which only allows doctors to end a pregnancy when the mother’s life is in danger.

It’s the second major abortion case of the term, following last month’s arguments over the FDA’s regulation of the widely used abortion pill mifepristone, and the latest example of how overturning Roe and returning abortion rights to the states did not keep the courts out of the fray, as some justices had hoped. Decisions in both cases are expected in June.

The Idaho case homes in on the clash between red states’ desire to ban nearly all abortions and President Joe Biden administration’s efforts to preserve some access to the procedure, and the arguments come amid a roiling national debate on the issue. And it comes as doctors around the country plead for clarity on the parameters of the medical emergency exemptions to state bans, warning that vague definitions of “life-threatening” and the prospect of criminal charges are creating a chilling effect that deters them from providing needed care in patients’ most vulnerable moments.

5 questions about the Supreme Court’s next major abortion case by Alice Miranda Ollstein and Josh Gerstein, April 24, 2024.

Read the entire article here. I recommend following Alice Miranda Ollstein’s work at Politico.

The irony in 2024 is that Roe Vs. Wade was the compromise on what was then, and continues to be, the controversial issue of abortion. It is unlikely times have changed in that regard since Jan. 22, 1973, when Roe was decided (7-2). Despite talk about “letting the states decide” on abortion, given diversity of opinion among the states, combined with Republican efforts to have government control women’s bodies and health care, SCOTUS will inevitably have to re-decide Roe or something like it. When that will be is anyone’s guess, yet I submit, that day is coming.

Based on the boiling-over outrage I heard from three female justices during oral arguments on Wednesday, Idaho seems unlikely to prevail in this case. I mean, if one is arguing a case before the Supreme Court in support of your state’s extreme abortion ban, you might need Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett on your side. Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern explained on Slate:

Justice Amy Coney Barrett famously provided the crucial fifth vote to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022. So if you are arguing in favor of an abortion ban, you probably don’t want to alienate Barrett—by, say, condescendingly dismissing her concerns when she points out that your legal theory doesn’t make any sense. Yet that is what Joshua Turner did on Wednesday while defending Idaho’s draconian abortion restrictions, and much to Barrett’s evident irritation. Turner—who represented the Idaho solicitor general’s office in the second major abortion case to come before the high court after it promised us in its Dobbs opinion that the court was out of the abortion business in 2022—might just have lost his case by repeatedly mansplaining his self-contradictory position to Barrett and the other three women justices. In his toneless, dispassionate telling, his entirely incomprehensible position was just too complex for them to understand. And so he just kept repeating it, over and over. These justices, including Barrett, sounded increasingly fed up with his chin-stroking dissembling on an issue that’s literally life-or-death for pregnant women in red states.

The Lawyer Defending Idaho’s Abortion Ban Irritated the One Justice He Needed on His Side by Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern, Slate, April 24, 2024.

Read the rest of the article here. You can’t go wrong reading Dahlia Lithwick. How the case is decided is anyone’s guess after oral arguments.

Democratic Congressional Candidate Christina Bohannan held a round table discussion about abortion on March 26 in Iowa City. 10 people were in attendance to share their personal experiences and thoughts on the state of abortion rights in Iowa, according to the Daily Iowan. Citing a Des Moines Register poll, “61 percent of adults in Iowa believe abortion should be legal in all or most situations, and 35 percent believe abortions should be illegal in most or all situations.” A lot is at stake in the post-Dobbs era. It will take election of Democrats to turn the Republican tide that favors government intrusion into a woman’s health care.

Here is a link to the Iowa Democratic Party to get involved today.

Posted in Blog for Iowa | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment