Stop Medicaid Cuts Urgent Action Alert

Posted on May 14, 2025 by Trish Nelson

Action Alert from CCI and People’s Action:

May 15: stop the billionaire budget boondoggle

Lawmakers are back in Washington, D.C. hammering out details of their proposed federal budget. When the budget framework was first unveiled, it certainly wasn’t good for our people and planet.

But cracks are beginning to show in Washington, D.C. because of overwhelming opposition from everyday people. Now is the time to keep that pressure up.

Our allies at People’s Action are hosting a virtual phone bank this Thursday, May 15 from 5-8pm CDT. Folks from across the country will be calling Iowans in the first Congressional district asking them to contact Rep. Miller-Meeks and urge her to vote NO to harmful cuts to Medicaid.

Please consider joining this effort by clicking here to sign up and for more information. There will be a short training before calls so folks are comfortable with the system and script.

 

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No Kings Then Or Now Webinar

Posted on May 13, 2025 by Trish Nelson


What a line up with Heather Cox-Richardson, Jamie Raskin, and AG Andrea Campbell together in one amazing, inspiring, and informative session.  Subscribe to
Commit To Democracy YouTube channel.

“What often gets lost in the media narrative – every time they go into court they actually do not challenge the fact that we are saying their actions are unlawful and in violation of the laws or the constitution. Instead what they’re telling the court is we shouldn’t be in court or in the wrong court or the issue is not right for discussion. Playing games in many ways because they know their actions are unlawful and what we’re seeing now is a juducial system and judges that are stepping up, including those at the Supreme Court to protect the rule of law and our constitution and also due process which they know should be afforded to everyone.” – AG Andrea Campbell

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We Need Everybody

Posted on May 11, 2025 by Trish Nelson

From the May 2025 edition of The Prairie Progressive, Iowa’s oldest progressive newsletter. The PP is  funded entirely by reader subscription, available in hard copy for $15/yr.  Send check to PP, Box 1945, Iowa City 52244. Click here for archived issues

This speech, transcribed and edited, was delivered to several hundred people rallying
in downtown Iowa City on April 19 to protest the actions of the Trump administration.

“Autocrats are much weaker than they appear, and the people are much stronger than they know.”

by Ali Hanson

I’m a physician-scientist affiliated with the university, but I’m speaking in my own personal capacity today. I’m supposed to speak about science, but I’m going a little rogue because this is so much bigger than science. They are coming for all of us in every sector
of this country.

They have been trying to distract us by getting us riled up every Friday at five with their newest cuts to this program or that program or this scientific word or that one. But they’re not after a specific scientific subject or word. They’re after knowledge itself. They’re after free speech and they’re after our minds.

Dictators and autocrats don’t an educated, free-thinking citizenry that can be critical of what they’re doing. They are after absolute power and absolute control. Do not be fooled. These are not normal times. It might be nice out here, we might be having some music, but
this is some scary shit.

Remember this moment. Here, in this country, in Iowa City. At the moment the revolution really begins. As Ezra Klein said in The New York Times, the emergency is now. The emergency isn’t tomorrow. The emergency isn’t in one week, or a month, or six
months. It is now.

We’ve all heard about a man driving his car in Maryland with his 5-year old son. Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia. He’s lived in this country for ten years. He gets pulled over and suddenly told: your immigration status has changed.

No phone call, no lawyer, gone. To a foreign country, and not to any old foreign country. He got put into one of the world’s worst prisons, a mega-prison. A concentration camp for suspected terrorists with no evidence whatsoever of him being any such thing. The
administration tried to say this was an administrative error. What kind of error is it to take somebody and put them in a prison where you get no exercise, no education, you eat some slop with your hands. It’s a cage for human beings sitting on a metal plate, naked. A reporter got in there and it was silent. You ever been to a prison that was silent? What kind of shit has to go on in there for you to be silent?

They whisk this guy away and try to say it was an accident. The Supreme Court said no, you need to bring him back. You gotta facilitate his return. Are they doing that? No, he’s still there. In any other time, our government would have had this guy back in 24 hours. He’s still there. Not only is he still there, but the government is using your tax dollars,
15 billion dollars, to pay for him to stay there. We don’t know even where this money is coming from. 15 billion to pay El Salvador to cage our people with no due process.

If that doesn’t hit home, doesn’t resonate with you, just know that if it can happen to this person, it can happen to you. It can happen to me for saying these words right now because Trump has made himself the judge, jury, and executioner. He gets to decide if he doesn’t like what I’m saying, which he probably doesn’t. Tomorrow morning I might
wake up and there might be masked men outside with an unmarked car and away I go. I can be disappeared. That’s the world we live in today.

What does this tell us? It tells us a couple of very important things. One, the courts are not going to save us. I keep hearing this from everybody everywhere. Just wait, it’ll all work itself out in the courts. It’s not gonna work itself out in the courts. They found a loophole in our government. The founding fathers thought we were smart enough to not put a
lunatic in the highest office in the land, but somehow we did and he’s gonna disobey the court’s orders. There’s nothing we’re going to be able to do about that.

I’ve also heard: let’s just wait till the elections come. We’ll vote ‘em out! I don’t know that we’re gonna have elections. I’m not here to fearmonger, but someone’s gotta say this.

I don’t know that we’re gonna have elections. The courts aren’t gonna save us. The elections are probably not gonna save us, because even if we have them, they’re probably gonna mess around with them, I have a feeling. So who’s gonna fucking save us? (Crowd: “We are!”) Right! We’re going to save us. They want us to be afraid. And it works. There
are a lot of people not here today because they can’t be here, which is why people with privilege, it is our duty and our obligation to stand up and speak out.

We ain’t gonna be afraid, right? This isn’t the time to get scared, this is the time to get smart. I come from a sports background where it was: you gotta know your opponent’s playbook. You gotta go scout these people. Guess what? They gave us their playbook. Project 2025. We know what they’re doing. They’re doing exactly what they said. We
shouldn’t be surprised. We know exactly what they plan to do. It’s only gonna get worse from here.

We have our own playbook, however. Y’all are probably already familiar with Timothy Snyder, but there’s a couple other people you might not be as familiar with: Maria Stephan and Erica Chenoweth, who wrote the book “Why Civil Resistance Works.” We have some
lessons from this book. They studied different governments from1900 to 2006, and they said, what works? Nonviolent resistance or violent resistance? Over twice as effective was nonviolent resistance. Why?

One answer is the moral argument— not everyone is willing to take up arms and go kill people. Probably good, right? Two, it takes a lot of strength and effort to go fight a fuckin’ war. If we can get many more people to join a nonviolent movement, we can get much more creative with our strategies.

Read this book while you still can and teach it to others while we still can. We can’t keep having the same people that think like we do show up here. We need different pillars of society to get involved. We need religious leaders, business leaders, professionals, labor unions, universities, you name it. We need everybody to get involved with this.

What is Donald Trump other than a child throwing a tantrum in one of the most expensive bedrooms in the country? The only way he has power is if we do what he says. He loses all his power if when he says, “go dig the ditches and put the bodies in,” we don’t go. Or if he says, “pick him up and take him to El Salvador,” no one’s gonna fly the plane. This is the
level of involvement we’re going to need.

There’s two ways to do this. We’re doing the first one right now, which is sort of centralized organization: protest publicly. But mark my words, they’re coming for this kind of thing, and soon. If you remember the George Floyd protests, they turned the United States military on its citizens. That’s coming. But when that happens, there are dispersion
tactics. You go home, and we do boycotts, and we do sit-ins, and we do walk-outs, and we just get in the fuckin’ way. We call this collective stubbornness. We know how to do this, Iowa. We’ve been kids before. Your mom tells you to go to bed. No! I’m not going!

We have examples from history how to do this. You’ve heard that today is the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, but what we don’t know or hear about often is that there was about a decade of nonviolent resistance before the Revolutionary War. We were actually independent from Britain before that war really even started. We had the
most effective boycotts in the history of the world. 90 to 98 percent of people participated. We said we’re not buying anything more from Britain. We’re not paying any more taxes. We’re making our own rules.

They couldn’t govern us anymore. Autocrats are much weaker than they appear, and the people are much stronger than they know.

Of course, you have the civil rights movement with sit-ins, freedom rides, and bus boycotts. And you’ve got the Gandhi example in India, where they also stopped buying British goods. They walked 240 miles to the sea and made their own salt, and they didn’t quit until the jails were so full they couldn’t arrest any more people. Can you imagine if
we get enough people to get involved with a nonviolent, non-cooperation act in this United States, we fill the prisons with people like this, and we have a party in the prison? I don’t suggest we all go to prison, but we gotta get creative and radical here.

We just gotta put our heads together. We gotta get creative. We can boycott Tesla. We can boycott Amazon. We can do all kinds of shit—that’s why we’re all here. We need to talk to each other. And this is a day of action. Do what you can where you are right now. Don’t think about it, just do something.

The rest of the world is watching, and they are terrified. They are depending on us to show up and stand up right now. This doesn’t just affect us; it affects the entire world. We need to let them know that fear will not live here.

—Ali Hanson is a psychiatrist and
neuroscientist who lives in Iowa City.

Protest sign at Iowa City #handsoff rally

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Happy Mother’s Day

Posted on May 11, 2025 by Dave Bradley

(4 minutes)

In any world being a mother is simply one of the toughest jobs that there is. It is also a job that never ends, from conception to the dying breath.

So we will just simply say a Happy Mother’s Day to all mothers. May your burdens be no more than you can handle.

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Sunday Funday: Space Junk Dropping Edition

Posted on May 11, 2025 by Dave Bradley

How to hire (2 minutes)

Well sure, it is Mother’s Day also. But that is mundane – it happens every year. However, it is only a few times in your lifetime that a piece of space junk could drop out of the sky and into your backyard. How lucky is that? A real, genuine piece of Soviet era space junk that might be worth millions to collectors!

A failed Soviet spacecraft that was mistakenly trapped in Earth orbit more than 50 years ago is expected to finally crash back to our planet this week.

Experts predict that the spacecraft, called the Kosmos 482 Descent Craft, will make its final, fiery plunge through the atmosphere sometime between May 8 and May 12, traveling at an estimated speed of 150 mph (242 km/h) as it careens through the sky like a meteor. Built to withstand a trip through the dense atmosphere of Venus, the 3-foot-wide (1 meter), 1,091 pound (495 kilograms) lander is likely to stay in one piece as it falls to Earth like a cosmic cannonball.

Good Luck! 

Update: It appears that the object has fallen back to earth, but has not yet been found. Speculation is that it may have burned up. As you were.

Trumpco shat out so much last week that it is near impossible to sort it out. Here goes:

A) Fox Employment Agency? With the appointment of Jeanine Piro as Interim US Attorney in DC, how many current of former Fox News(?) employees are in the administration?

B) Because they have nothing else to do (including Iowa’s reps) the US House passed a bill Thursday to rename what body of water?

C) Canadian PM Mark Carney visited Washington DC Tuesday. Why did Stinky Pants not go to Ottawa?

D) When we take over Canada will Canadians have to change their date for Mother’s Day?

E) What two nuclear powers are skirmishing over a disputed province right now?

F) A lot of noise about the new pope. What country was Pope Leo XIV a bishop in?

G) True or false? The new Pope’s ancestry includes black ancestry from Louisiana?

H) John Lennon wrote a song about his mother. What was the name (or her name)?

I) Why did Kristi Noem fire the acting head of FEMA?

J) The day after watching a movie, Stinky Pants pitched re-opening what supposedly escape proof prison?

K) And now they come for the kids teeth. What state ended fluoridated water last week?

L) Iowa’s third district congress member Zach Nunn has picked up what two heavyweight opponents for his seat in 2026?

M) Over in Rome an American tourist tried to sneak into the Roman Coliseum. What happened to him?

N) The new trade “deal” signed by the US and UK was blasted by what negatively affected industry Thursday?

O) Stinky Pants also announced a 100% tariff on movies made outside the US last week. Where did he get this idea?

Q) In a major surprise after two months, who failed to win a majority in the Bundestag to form a government on the first vote?

R) Whoopsie! The US military lost two $67 million what’s last week?

S) Here in Iowa, instead of participating in a federal summer nutrition program Iowa will give families a box of food worth how much each month?

T) In what year was Mother’s Day established as a holiday?

With Trump’s tariffs in effect, we are now making popes in America. – Christian Schneider

Answers:

A) 23. why not just move the government to their corporate HQs?

B) The Gulf of Mexico

C) Because Canada does not let felons into their country (sorry if this is a repeat)

D) No, their Mother’s Day is the second Sunday of May also

E) India and Pakistan

F) Peru

G) true

H) “Julia” on the White Album

I) Because he disagreed that FEMA should be abolished

J) Alcatraz

K) Utah

L) Jennifer Konfrst of Windsor Heights and Sarah Trone Garriot of Des Moines

M) He fell and got impaled on a spike security fence

N) the US car industry

O) from Jon Voight

Q) Fredrich Merz in Germany – he was successful on the next vote

R) Jets. One fell off the deck of the USS Harry Truman, the other was missed by the rope on landing on the Truman

S) $40. No one can starve with a box of food (picked by someone else) worth $40

T) 1914

JD Vance is so loathsome that not one, but TWO Popes have openly spoken out against him and his vile and inhumane views. – Sarah Ironside

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“No Kings” Parade June 14th

Posted on May 10, 2025 by Dave Bradley

For the past 106 days, we’ve been locked in a race we can’t lose. Trump is sprinting to seize and centralize power before a strong enough resistance rises up. We’re working to unite massive opposition before his power becomes unassailable.

And the truth is that the other side is moving fast — faster than many outside Indivisible ever imagined — to sidestep and stomp out those opposing them:

Defying the courts.
Sidelining Congress.
Threatening allies.
Disappearing adversaries.
Stifling free speech and dissent.

That’s what tyrants do. They try to seize total control before the public can realize what’s happening or mass resistance can organize. And as our institutions dither about if and how they can resist the sway of a president, Trump is trying to grab the powers of a king.

But this is the United States of America, and we don’t do kings here.

That’s why on June 14 — Flag Day, and Trump’s birthday — we’re not going to stand quietly by as he wraps himself in our flag and glorifies himself with a military parade. That flag was first raised nearly 250 years ago in defiance of a king, and we won’t let him disgrace it as he tries to become one.

As Trump hosts a military parade in DC on June 14, we’re rising up everywhere else to show him, his fascist allies, and our fellow Americans we still have the power to defy and defeat tyranny. Use this link to learn more and make a plan to join us for a national day of defiance.

As I said, we’re racing to determine our future right now: tyranny vs. democracy.

Trump got out to a fast start. He thought he could cement his power before we could organize a response.

But that response came quickly from the ground up. Millions showed up for the Hands Off! protests on April 5. And we came together again, in thousands of places, on May Day to remind folks of the power of working-class solidarity.

And once civic leaders saw the rest of us fighting back hard, momentum began to shift. Suddenly, public institutions — just a few, but it’s a start — found their spine. Trump started backpedaling. Republicans who’d stood lockstep behind their wannabe autocrat began showing signs their fealty has limits.

Trump’s power-grab isn’t slowing down, though, so we need to inject another dose of courage into the business leaders, judges, academics, media figures, and others in positions to stand up to him. We do that by showing up in massive numbers and showing them they aren’t alone in this fight.

June 14, No Kings Day, needs to be our biggest day of protest yet — with more people, in more places, making even more pro-democracy noise than ever before. Here’s how you can step up:

📍

Find and sign up for a No Kings Day event near you. We already have dozens of events forming all over the country, and we’re working with partner organizations (and folks like you) to add even more every day.

🪧

If you don’t see a protest planned in your community, consider organizing your own. Our No Kings Day toolkit offers guidance, tools, and resources to organize and promote a June 14 protest wherever you’re reading from right now.

📢

Spread the word on Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, or wherever you connect with friends. Grow Trump’s opposition and multiply your impact by recruiting 2-3 friends to join your local No Kings Day event.

The wannabe king in the White House wants tanks in the street and a made-for-TV display of power for his birthday. But we’re going to show him what real power looks like.

See you on June 14.

In solidarity,
Sarah Dohl
Co-Founder & Chief Campaigns Officer
Indivisible
📍 Find and sign up for a No Kings Day event near you. We already have dozens of events forming all over the country, and we’re working with partner organizations (and folks like you) to add even more every day.
🪧 If you don’t see a protest planned in your community, consider organizing your own. Our No Kings Day toolkit offers guidance, tools, and resources to organize and promote a June 14 protest wherever you’re reading from right now.
📢 Spread the word on Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, or wherever you connect with friends. Grow Trump’s opposition and multiply your impact by recruiting 2-3 friends to join your local No Kings Day event.
Posted in Blog for Iowa | 6 Comments

Crypto Corruption Coming?

Posted on May 10, 2025 by Dave Bradley

Stinky Pants ran for president for two reasons I maintain. They have little to do with anything political. The true believers like to think The Stinker is the second coming and that he will smite their enemies and all that biblical type stuff. All that is theater to throw everybody off his real goals.

His first goal was to keep his ass out of prison. Remember he was convicted of 34 felonies. Thirty-four a truly astronomical number. And that was from one set of trials. He still had other trials coming including stealing government documents. The man was a crime machine.

Remember all those sayings the right loved to toss around about crime like “You do the crime, you do the time” and things like that. Remember how one of the basic tenets this country was founded on was that no man was above the law? Stinky Pants made a mockery of all that as he got away with very serious crimes without ever being sentenced and with his other crimes ever being prosecuted. It is like the ultimate Mafia story.

The second was to score as much money as he could by pimping out the highest office in this land and probably the most powerful office on earth. We are now entering that phase. It looks like he and his team have scouting what the best vehicles to score as much lucre as he can. Our government has lots of money. Many years ago when asked why he robbed banks, bank robber Willie Sutton supposedly said “Because that is where the money is.”

Stinky Pants has come to the same conclusion. The government is where the money is. He just has to figure a way that he and his compadres like Elon Musk can get at it.  Bribes? Contracts? Tax cuts? Emoluments from Arab oil emirates? How about making something valuable that has little value now such as cyber money? It is all on the table. 

However, there must be distractions to keep a nosey press from digging in too far. Keep them distracted with threats of tariffs. Keep them distracted with threats of war. Keep them distracted with turmoil in what was a very stable government apparatus. Keep them distracted with lies and disinformation While the press chases those stories they are not digging behind the scenes.

Stephanie Ruhle lays it out very well in this short video (2:10)

That not clear enough? Thank goodness some senators are paying attention. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Jeff Merkley are planning hearings on Stinky Pants very questionable crypto moves. Amy Goodman at Democracy Now goes in depth with Molly White to explain the how and why Stinky Pants is willing to upend the world economic system for his own gain. And you and I will be getting royally screwed by this: (15:28)

Now for your part. As you heard in the video MAGAs in the Senate are currently moving a bill called the GENIUS Act. This bill will regulate stable coins to some degree, but not enough to satisfy serious economic watch dogs like Senator Elizabeth Warren. There is enough wiggle room for a criminal like Trump to slide through.

From Heather Cox Richardson on Tuesday concerning Stinky and crypto:

In a follow-up story to last night’s information about the Trump family’s cryptocurrency corruption, MacKenzie Sigalos of CNBC reported today that 58 crypto wallets have made more than $10 million each on Trump’s meme coin, gathering a total of $1.1 billion in profits. But 764,000 wallets, mostly owned by small holders, have lost money. Meanwhile, since January the meme’s creators have pocketed more than $324 million in trading fees.

While Stinky is creating distractions all over the place it looks like making the big score using crypto is one of his main objectives. He is openly taking bribes through his stable coin business as it is. This must be stopped.

The GENIUS Act vote awoke a large segment of the populace as to what the Trump crime family is up to. Here Paul Krugman weighs in on his substack after the GENIUS Act failed its initial vote:

Meanwhile, however, something potentially important happened in Congress. A bill that would have helped expand the use of stablecoins — cryptocurrencies that, unlike Bitcoin and other early entrants, are supposed to have a fixed value in dollars — stalledin the Senate. To advance, the GENIUS Act (gag) needed 60 votes on a procedural measure. With every Democrat and 3 Republicans voting no, it only got 48 votes.

What happened? Republicans tried to ram through a bill that literally had no text. That was too much even for crypto-friendly Democrats.

The setback for Republicans also reflected the stench of Trumpist corruption that increasingly hangs over all things crypto. The $Trump and $Melania memecoins have been used for what amounts to brazen bribery. So has USD1, the stablecoin recently introduced by World Liberty Financial, the Trump family crypto firm. It’s hard to overstate how big a deal this is. Thanks to crypto, the president of the United States is now effectively for sale, and the buyers appear to include not just wealthy foreigners but foreign governments.

We’re talking billions of dollars in direct payments to the president and his relatives. If we were still a serious country, Trump’s crypto corruption would lead to his immediate impeachment and removal from office.

But one vote does not mean the GENIUS Act is dead, just wounded. Expect it back next week. So if you do not want crypto to get its toe in the door, be prepared to make some calls.

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Get Ready

Posted on May 9, 2025 by Trish Nelson

by Molly Regan

Frank Bisignano was confirmed as the Social Security Administrator Tuesday 6 May 2025 by the US Senate. The vote was 53-47. Not one local newscast station or 5:30 evening news channel or even PBS News Hour reported this yesterday. Today 7 May, there was nothing in the Des Moines Register, The QuadCity Times, The North Scott Press, or The Wall Street Journal. This is devastating news. It should be reported by responsible sources. Bisignano will lower or attempt to completely stop Social Security payments. So make a plan now if you haven’t. Make a list of what you can live without, and what you absolutely need.

Determine if you can continue to live where you are, or who you are willing to take into your home to help each other out. This may be one of the most difficult aspects of restructuring your life. Re-evaluate the money you spend on rent or mortgage, insurance on home, vehicle, medical, dental, vision, life. Food, gas, entertainment, tv service, vacations, you know, everything. Living without the possibility of a Social Security check being sent or deposited is a scary thing. Preparing for it gives you control, of a sort.

Decades ago I began using spiral bound notebooks to do important documentation. My Grandma Agnes carried a small notebook. I asked her one day why she had it, she explained, “Why should I remember things when I can write them down?”. I liked that.

While we may be temporarily powerless to stop the insanity that is surely going to affect many of the more than 72,000,000 of us on Social Security, we can prepare. Talk with your family and friends. Even the ones who don’t feel that anything will happen to themselves, or to you. Let them know you’re concerned and you’re making a plan. The day after you make the first draft of your survival plan, pare it down. Cut more things. Revise on a daily basis. Maybe sell some things. This is serious stuff folks.

Pay attention to past world history. These monsters in charge are self proclaimed nazis. They will come after our airwaves, which by the way we own. They’ll mess with our internet and cell phones. Why? Because these things will be huge disruptions to our lives, and because they feel they can. Write down the phone numbers of important people in your phone. You know, make an old fashioned address book in that spiral bound. I am not crying wolf. Prepare now. The storm’s on its way.

npr.org/2025/05/06/social-security-administration-frank-bisignano-confirmed

 

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Nate Willems For Iowa Attorney General

Posted on May 8, 2025 by Paul Deaton
Nate Willems. Photo Credit – Willems for Iowa.

Nate Willems announces campaign for Iowa attorney general

Willems, who has spent his career fighting for working families, pledges to protect community safety and hold corporations that rip off working families accountable

MOUNT VERNON, Iowa – Nate Willems, a lifelong Iowan and attorney who has delivered wins for tens of thousands of Iowa workers, released the following statement announcing his campaign for Iowa attorney general: 

“Iowans deserve an attorney general focused on protecting Iowans and standing up for our fundamental rights and freedoms. As attorney general, I’ll work to keep communities safe by holding violent criminals accountable and I’ll take on corporations who try to rip off Iowans by price gouging or stealing their hard-earned wages. 

“I’ve spent my career representing tens of thousands of Iowans who have had crimes committed against them. I’ve successfully taken on corporations who think they’re above the law and steal wages, require off-the-clock-work, hurt their employees, or violate the rights of working men and women in our state. As attorney general, I’ll fight to make sure every Iowan gets the justice they deserve. I’ll work with law enforcement and local prosecutors to secure convictions for violent criminals, restore consumer protections, and give working families the voice they deserve.”

Representing working families, Nate has witnessed firsthand how some corporations steal Iowans’ wages, force overtime work without pay, misclassify their work to cheat them out of benefits, and make it tougher for Iowa families to succeed. With prices soaring, Iowans can’t afford to have their hard-earned money stolen by big corporations. That’s why he has taken on greedy corporations for those Iowans and won. He has secured historic victories, including recovering $15 million for 11,000 current and former hospital and clinic workers in Iowa, $1.7 million in backpay for custodians, and won the largest collective bargaining wage increase in Iowa history on behalf of local police officers in Carter Lake, among countless other victories across the state.

Nate was born and raised in Iowa, growing up in Anamosa where his father worked as a Main Street attorney and his mother was a public school teacher. Today, he’s proud to call Mount Vernon home where he lives with his wife Maggie, a local public school teacher and state champion-winning volleyball coach, and their three daughters.

Nate has always been driven toward public service and determined to make our state and community stronger. As the state’s largest law firm dedicated to serving the people, the Attorney General’s office has an opportunity to take on and solve serious challenges. As Attorney General, he will work with prosecutors and local law enforcement to secure convictions for violent crimes, improve consumer protections, and hold corporations accountable when they break the law.

Previously serving two terms in the Iowa House of Representatives from 2009 to 2013, Nate fought to ensure every Iowan could access a quality public education, find a good paying job, and passed key legislation to strengthen the rights of Iowa workers. Since 2010, he has been a full-time labor lawyer and partner at Rush & Nicholson, P.L.C., in Cedar Rapids, the state’s largest workers’ compensation firm. (Willems for Iowa press release, May 7, 2025).

Brief CV from Rush & Nicholson website:

“I put on my law school application that I wanted to represent Iowa labor unions and their members. I feel as strongly about that today as I did 14 years ago but have added representing injured Iowans, victims of wage theft and wrongful termination to my practice. I am only a lawyer because it allows me to go to work every day to represent people who genuinely need help.” (Rush & Nicholson Lawyers website).

Career Highlights:

  • Practicing law since 2007.
  • Member of the Iowa House of Representatives (2009-2013).
  • Legal specialties: employment law, labor law, wage and hour, and workers compensation.

Community Involvement:

  • First Presbyterian Church of Mount Vernon Church (Session Member)
  • Hawkeye Labor Council Executive Board
  • Linn County Democrats Central Committee

Professional Associations:

  • Iowa State Bar Association
  • Linn County Bar Association

Education:

  • J.D., University of Iowa College of Law, 2007
  • B.S.F.S., Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, 2001
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Protests And Rallies Around Iowa This Week

Posted on May 7, 2025 by Trish Nelson

From Iowa Starting line here is a list of protests and events around Iowa this week.  Sign up for the ISL newsletter here. ISL is free so consider a donation. Below that an update from the DNC and Howard Dean! on what Dems are doing and and an announcement.

Upcoming rallies and protests:

Thanks to ISL for providing this info.

DNC News

Have you signed up yet for the DNC’s weekly newsletter, The Blue Print? We were excited to learn Howard Dean! has been involved in helping the DNC get their act together, and was on the press call announcing a huge increase in money to state parties.

Also good news for Iowa, red states will get $5,000 a month more money than the blue states. We can sure use it. Read on, then be sure and subscribe.

DNC (Democratic National Committee) and ASDC (Association of  State Democratic Chairs) Announce Largest-Ever Monthly Investment into Democratic State and Territory Parties

Last Thursday, DNC Chair Ken Martin, ASDC President Jane Kleeb, and former Vermont Governor and DNC Chair Howard Dean held a press call to unveil a historic four-year agreement to deliver more resources to Democratic state and territory parties than ever before.

Under the new State Partnership Program (SPP) agreement, each state party will receive a baseline of $17,500 a month, a $5,000 per month increase over the last agreement, and Republican-controlled states will receive an additional investment of $5,000 a month through the DNC’s Red State Fund, putting their total at $22,500 every month.

The combined investments total a monthly transfer of more than $1 million from the DNC to state parties — the committee’s largest investment into Democratic state parties in history.

These resources will allow state parties to invest in critical infrastructure and staffing, strengthen their data and tech operations, build on-the-ground organizing programs, and better prepare for upcoming election cycles — not just in the months ahead but in the years to come. Additionally, the new agreement includes the DNC’s commitment to hosting six regional training “bootcamps” for state parties per two-year cycle and the hiring of new ASDC staff, including five regional directors.

The new State Partnership Program is just another example of Chair Ken Martin’s commitment to turbocharging investments in on-the-ground organizing and party building.

Get involved with the Democrats by texting ‘FIGHT’ to 43367 or going to democrats.org

This week’s newsletter had other cool stuff Dems are doing. Sign up to receive the Blue Print newsletter here.

 

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