Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism (https://www.iowawatch.org/tag/donald-trump/)
I was a kid from small-town Iowa when I first laid eyes on the United States Capitol. It was 1962. My family squeezed into our Dodge and drove to our nation’s capital for the vacation of a lifetime. It was all about history. We walked through the White House.
I have been sputtering like an old pickup truck for the past three years over the sometimes outrageous, sometimes ill-informed, and often infuriating comments our president makes each day on his Twitter account. But before readers rush to judge me too harshly for that statement, allow me to add:
It would be utterly foolish, absolutely wrong and a perversion of what the United States is all about if the officials who operate Twitter bow to efforts by Kamala Harris, the California senator and Democratic presidential candidate, to pressure the company to shut down Donald Trump’s account. Randy Evans
STRAY THOUGHTS
Randy Evans is the executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council. He is a former editorial page editor and assistant managing editor of The Des Moines Register. Opinions are his own.
Former Vice President Joe Biden drew more people but Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, a presumptive long-shot in a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, still was able to rouse Democrats and generally curious Iowans who heard both men speak at the Iowa State Fair Thursday. Such is the landscape in Iowa, the state with the nation’s first precinct caucuses that start gauging real delegate support for selecting a party’s 2020 presidential nominee: first-time national candidates, in this case seeing an opportunity to defeat a controversial Republican president in Donald Trump, vie with national figures more familiar to voters to gain support for higher office. Iowa gets them all before the winnowing process begins. Bullock told fairgoers the election must be about more than defeating Trump. “Look, I’m a pro-choice, pro-union, populist Democrat that won three eletions in a red state, not by compromising our values but by getting stuff done,” he said.
What in the world has gotten into us? Through the years, we poured ourselves into political campaigns, put out yard signs for our favorite office-seekers, and held “coffees” to encourage our friends to back our candidates. It wasn’t unusual for our views to be at odds with those of our friends. But that was the beauty of the American way of government. Our political differences did not rise to the level of personal animosity.
I’m not sure you can get Republicans and Democrats to agree on many things these days — not even on motherhood and apple pie. Some people believe a wall along the border with Mexico is a national security priority and is necessary to stop the movement of migrants into the United States. Others think the $5 billion at the center of the border wall dispute could be better spent on additional border agents, more drones and sophisticated new security technology. Randy Evans
STRAY THOUGHTS
Randy Evans is the executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council. He is a former editorial page editor and assistant managing editor of The Des Moines Register.
In those early years, my attitude toward money was pretty simple, mostly falling along the lines of “more is better.” However, in the years since that sweaty introduction to free enterprise, I have come to realize that money is not the most important thing around.
Let’s skip the debate over whether our president bears even a smidgen of blame for contributing to the domestic terrorist incidents last week in the United States. Let’s agree we are never going to agree, so there’s no use driving each other’s blood pressure higher by talking more about that.
Leading Iowa Democrats say changes in how their precinct caucuses are run will make participation in the nation’s first presidential nominating caucuses more open in 2020 than it was in 2016, when confusion existed over how caucus night delegates supporting Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were selected.
Today, the Institute for Nonprofit News joins journalists across the country in asking you, the public, to stand up for your rights to free speech and an open government. This started as a campaign by the Boston Globe to ask the President of the United States to knock off attacking the news media.
As President Donald Trump continues to wage a multi-front trade war with some of the United States’ biggest economic partners, farmers have borne some of the heaviest financial burden. More than a third of the country’s trade disputes relate to agriculture, an analysis of disputes submitted to the World Trade Organization showed.