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Advocate and Activist Zach Wahls Announces Bid for Iowa State Senate

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Ask not what your country can do for you; but rather, ask what you can do for your country!” -John F. Kennedy

After a glowing introduction, the very tall young man steps forward to the podium and announces his candidacy to replace a retiring State Senator in a style and physical appearance reminiscent of the sixteenth President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. Yet this 26 year old more accurately embodies President Kennedy’s request of Americans from nearly 58 years ago.

In his announcement earlier in the day on his Facebook page, Zach Wahls noted:

“This afternoon, I will launch a campaign for Iowa state Senate District 37, which is where I grew up and the place I call home. The incumbent, Democrat Senator and leader Bob Dvorsky, announced in August he would not be running for re-election. This is an all hands on deck moment for our state, and I am stepping up to do what I believe is the most good I can do. I am running to protect Senator Dvorsky’s legacy and to fight for every single Iowan who feels left behind or left out.”

For those who know Wahls or have followed his advocacy and activism since his bursting onto the Iowa political scene as a 19-year-old University of Iowa engineering student, this is a logical next step in his political journey which  launched with a speech he gave on February 1st, 2011.

Wahls stood before Iowa legislators that day, urging them not to pass a constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage and civil unions. His reasons were deeply personal, as the final decision by the lawmakers would impact his his two mothers, Dr. Terry Wahls and her wife Jacqueline Reger. His moms were married after the Iowa Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in 2009.

Introducing himself as a “sixth-generation Iowan,” Wahls said he had achieved the Boy Scouts’ highest rank of Eagle Scout and attained a 99th percentile on his college aptitude test.

“If I was your son, Mr. Chairman, I believe I would make you very proud,” he testified.

Then he addressed the core issue. “In my 19 years, not once have I ever been confronted by an individual who realized independently that I was raised by a gay couple,” said Wahls. “And you know why? Because the sexual orientation of my parents has had zero affect on the content of my character.”

“I’m not really so different from any of your children,” said Wahls. “My family really isn’t so different from yours. After all, your family doesn’t derive its sense of worth from being told by the state, ‘you’re married, congratulations!'”

The video of that speech on YouTube and Facebook went immediately viral propelling the young university student into national prominence that included an appearance later that month on television chat show host Ellen DeGeneres’ widely popular program and then followed with a nationally-televised speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2012, which saw Barack Obama re-nominated for a second term as President of the United States. Wahls thanked Obama for his support of marriage equality.

Wahls also became a moving force in advocacy and activism for the LGBTQI community. In particular, he—along with Jonathan Hillis and Justin Wilson—founded Scouts for Equality in June of 2012 to actively overturn the ban on gay scouts and leaders by the Boy Scouts of America.

Then, on July 27, 2015, nearly three years after reaffirming its ban on gay members, the Boy Scouts of America’s National Executive Board voted to end the organization’s decades-old national ban on gay adults, while affirming individual units’ ability to select leaders in line with its religious principles. For Wahls, Hillis, and Wilson, it was no small victory.

Wahls and Scouts for Equality went on to launch a vigorous advocacy on behalf of 8-year-old Joe Maldonado, who the Boy Scouts of America expelled from the Cub Scouts because he is transgender, on December 30, 2016. Although the Boy Scouts had never had a policy on transgender boys, after kicking out Maldonado, officials announced that they were relying on birth certificates to determine eligibility.

Nearly a month later, Chief Scout Executive Michael Surbaugh announced that the organization would allow transgender boys into the Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts. Surbaugh said “that moving forward, the BSA would accept the gender listed by parents/guardians on the youth’s application.”

After graduating from the University of Iowa, Wahls enrolled in a post graduate program in public policy from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. 

In addition to his advocacy work along with his younger sister, Zebby, he launched a KickStarter crowd-fundraising effort in 2016 to promote and sell playing cards that featured influential women such as Hillary Clinton, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Beyoncé, Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman and others. Two bonus cards were added in the initial run which featured Ellen DeGeneres and Betty White as jokers. The cards were wildly successful and sold out in their first run.

If his journey thus far is any indication, then there’s a very high probability that voters in his home district will send him to Des Moines to represent them in November of 2018.

To comment on this article and other NCRM content, visit our Facebook page.

Image courtesy Scouts for Equality, used with permission. 

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News

Liz Cheney Predicts Many Republicans Will Secretly Vote For Kamala Harris

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Former Republican Representative Liz Cheney predicted Sunday many Republicans will actually end up voting for Vice President Kamala Harris.

The former Wyoming representative appeared on ABC’s This Week to urge her fellow Republicans to dump former President Donald Trump and endorse Harris as she has.

“Given the closeness of this election, particularly if you’re going to find yourself voting in a swing state, you’ve got to take the extra step if you really do recognize the threat that Donald Trump poses. Then it’s not enough to simply say, ‘I’m not going to vote for him,’” she said.

READ MORE: Liz Cheney Stomps Mitch McConnell for ‘Political Calculation’ to Ignore Trump’s Election Crimes

But she also said that even if many Republicans don’t follow her lead and denounce the former president, they’ll take advantage of the privacy of the polls to secretly support the Democratic candidate.

“It’s a secret ballot,” Cheney said. “At the end of the day, you just have to wrestle with your own conscience when you’re there in the voting booth. And I would expect that you will see far more Republicans and independents, you know, when the time comes, and they’ve got to make that decision, make the right decision.”

This would be the opposite of what some believe happened in 2016. Polls at the time generally showed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the lead over Trump. But when the election happened, though Clinton won the popular vote, it wasn’t enough to tip the Electoral College in her favor.

Over 70% of Republican insiders felt the polls underestimated Trump’s support, according to a Politico article from October 2016.

“I personally know many Republicans that won’t admit that they are voting for Trump. I don’t like admitting it myself. It won’t matter if Hillary is up more than 5 points, but we might be in for a surprise if Hillary’s lead is less than 5 points on Election Day,” an unnamed Virginia Republican told the outlet at the time.

In a 2016 interview conducted before the election, Trump’s then-campaign manager Kellyanne Conway pointed out that Trump polled better in anonymous online polls than in more traditional polling, according to WJLA.

“It’s become socially desirable, especially if you’re a college-educated person in the United States of America, to say that you’re against Donald Trump,” she said.

A 2019 study found that this was indeed the case. The study found that 54% of those polled voted for Trump but kept their preference a secret publicly. When broken out by gender, 57% of men and 50% of women polled kept their Trump vote a secret.

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News

Trump Calls for Government Shutdown: ‘CLOSE IT DOWN!!!’

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Former President Donald Trump urged House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to cause a government shutdown unless the House passes the SAVE Act.

“If Republicans in the House, and Senate, don’t get absolute assurances on Election Security, THEY SHOULD, IN NO WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM, GO FORWARD WITH A CONTINUING RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET. THE DEMOCRATS ARE TRYING TO ‘STUFF’ VOTER REGISTRATIONS WITH ILLEGAL ALIENS. DON’T LET IT HAPPEN – CLOSE IT DOWN!!!” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social Tuesday.

Johnson has paired the continuing resolution, which would fund the government for another six months, with the SAVE Act, which would require proof of citizenship in order to become a registered voter. The SAVE Act was originally introduced by Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) and passed in the House on its own in July. Every Republican voted for the SAVE Act, along with five Democrats.

READ MORE: GOP Congressman Admits ‘Most of What We Do Is Bad’ as McCarthy’s Republicans Push for Federal Government Shutdown

The standalone version of the SAVE act is stalled in the Democrat-controlled Senate. It is unlikely to pass, and has yet to be brought to a vote in that chamber. President Joe Biden has promised to veto it should the bill make it out of the Senate.

Attaching the SAVE Act to the continuing resolution has not made it any more popular outside of the House. In fact, at least five House Republicans said they’re against the pairing, according to Roll Call. Republicans’ majority in the House is slim, meaning that providing no absences and a united front against it from Democrats, five Republicans are all that are needed to sink the resolution.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) said in the House Monday that even if the continuing resolution passes as-is, the Senate would remove the SAVE Act and send it back to the House. Even in the unlikely situation where the Senate lets the SAVE Act part stand, Biden’s reiterated that he would veto it, according to The Hill.

Critics of the SAVE Act point out that it’s irrelevant. Only American citizens are allowed to vote by law, and it’s very rare for noncitizens to try to vote illegally.

“This is a crime where not only are the consequences really high and the payoff really low — you’re not getting millions of dollars, it’s not robbing a bank, you get to cast one ballot,” said Sean Morales-Doyle, a lawyer at the Brennan Center for Justice, told MSNBC. “But what also makes this somewhat unique is that committing this crime actually entails the creation of a government record of your crime.

“It’s very easy to catch, and you will get caught.”

Morales-Doyle said that on the other hand, the SAVE Act would make it more difficult for actual citizens to vote because many do not have passports or access to their birth certificates. There is also a law against requiring proof of citizenship in federal elections, MSNBC reported.

Threatening government shutdowns has become a common ploy from the Republicans, and there have been 10 shutdowns since 1981, according to History.com. All but three of the 10 shutdowns were led by Republicans. One exception was in 1982, when both parties of Congress missed the deadline despite agreeing on terms. In confusion, some agencies sent employees home, but the shutdown only lasted three days, between September 30 and October 2.

The remaining two shutdowns were the result of Democrats protesting Trump’s policies. In January 2018, there was a four-day shutdown over Trump’s plans to phase out the DACA program allowing children of undocumented people to remain in the United States. The end of 2018 saw the longest shutdown in history. The issue was over funding Trump’s planned wall along the border of Mexico. The shutdown lasted over a month, until Republicans backed down.

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CORRUPTION

JD Vance Says in 2020 He Wouldn’t Certify Election: ‘Let the Country Have the Debate’

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Ohio Senator JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential candidate, said Monday that if he were in former Vice President Mike Pence’s place, he would not have certified the election on January 6, 2021.

Speaking as part of a panel on the All-In Podcast, Vance told cohost Jason Calacanis the issue wasn’t necessarily Pence deciding not to “overturn the election results,” but rather that “Mike Pence could have done more to sort of surface some problems.”‘

Calacanis replied by asking Vance directly if he would have certified the election.

READ MORE: ‘BadgerPundit’: Top Trump Attorney in Fake Electors Plot Hid Secret Twitter Account

“I happen to think that there were issues back in 2020, particularly in Pennsylvania. Even some of the courts that refused to throw out certified ballots did say that there were ballots that were cast in an illegal way. They just refused to actually decertify the election results in Pennsylvania,” Vance said. “Do I think that we could have had a much more rational conversation about how to ensure that only legal ballots are cast? Yes. And do I think that Mike Pence could have played a better role? Yes.”

Calacanis asked Vance again if he’d have certified the election, and Vance appears to back the plan to send fake electors to cause confusion in the certification process.

“I would have asked the states to submit alternative slates of electors and let the country have the debate about what actually matters and what kind of an election that we have. That’s what I would have done,” Vance said. “The important part is we would have had a big debate. And it doesn’t necessarily mean the results would have been any different, but we would, at least, have had the debate in Pennsylvania and Georgia about how to better have a rational election system where legal ballots are cast.”

Democrats heavily criticized Vance’s statement.

“Donald Trump picked JD Vance as his running mate because he knows that Vance will do what his last vice president wouldn’t—undermine our democracy and help him try to overturn election results. Now, Vance is making it clear: instead of certifying the 2020 election, Vance ‘would have asked the states’ to send slates of fake electors and throw our election into chaos to help Trump stay in power. Vance is clearly laying out the stakes of this election for our democracy and our basic freedoms, and showing voters that if given the chance, he’ll try to replace the rule of law with the rule of Trump,” Alex Floyd, the rapid response director for the DNC, said in a statement.

Vance’s claims of there being illegal ballots in Pennsylvania appears to be based on a claim from former President Donald Trump in 2022. Trump said that a then-recent Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that ballots sent in undated envelopes will not be counted in that year’s election meant that the 2020 election was “rigged, but they’ll let that result stand.”

The Associated Press debunked Trump’s claim, reporting that not only did Trump misrepresent the court’s ruling, but even if his claim was accurate, throwing out these ballots would not have mattered in the election.

 

 

 

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