Advocate and Activist Zach Wahls Announces Bid for Iowa State Senate
“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.â€
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.â€
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.Â
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.
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Image courtesy Scouts for Equality, used with permission.Â
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
