Defending democracy with Iowa women in a league of their own

For all that Trump and other MAGA leaders throw at us, The Iowa League of Women Voters' cadre of principled, effective women is standing up to it, in court and elsewhere

Photo credit: Hal DeLaria While I was making remarks about its lawsuit against Trump’s voting restrictions, the Iowa League of Women Voters president shared a news update on the case.

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On Thursday, I had the honor of accepting the Defending Democracy Award from the Iowa League of Women Voters, at Des Moines’ Jasper Winery. Collectively, we lamented the erosion of democracy under the current administration, and found hope in the opposition. Here’s an edited version of my remarks.

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The title of this event couldn’t be more timely. In our lifetimes, American democracy has never been more in need of defending — and defending not from external forces but internal ones, the ones in charge, at the very top.

Since Donald Trump assumed the White House, the daily assaults from his administration, on everything from global trade relations to higher education to medical research have upended the stock market, destroyed lives and families through wanton arrests and deportations. Funding cuts to government agencies have endangered the future of libraries, museums public parks and nonprofit organizations in our state.

Now federal funding to combat violence against women is also on the cutting block.

The Administration’s attacks on the press make it harder for the public to stay informed and engaged — and thereby less likely to push back. Under Trump’s rule, America’s longstanding alliances with other countries have, in most cases, been reduced to demands for minerals as a condition for helping broker a peace treaty, or unilateral claims on independent nations’ territories.

The President has done these things in many cases with a stroke of the pen, via executive order, in ways a president has no right to under the Constitution. Later he’s simply reversed himself on some orders without explanation, as if it were all a game.

But what is the endgame? What’s the motive? A thirst for personal power can’t explain it all. Bernie Sanders in an Iowa City interview explained it as a movement toward global oligarchy, in which extreme cuts to government lead to extreme wealth amassed by heads of state.

Of course to accomplish that in a participatory democracy, you have to have a compliant voting population. That can be helped along by defunding and tampering with education, censoring media and making it harder to vote.

So the administration is audaciously trying to gain control of what’s taught. It has threatened to investigate dozens of universities, and moved to withhold billions in federal funding from several of,including Harvard. It announced more than $2.2 billion in grants and contracts to Harvard for refusing to eliminate its diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

Trump claims Harvard hasn’t pushed back enough against antisemitism, which he seem to see as synonymous with protesting the Israeli government’s actions.

But to its credit, Harvard this week announced it’s suing the Trump administration over those threats, which include a requirement the university install an outsider to monitor whether academic departments were “viewpoint diverse” and report back to the government. Trump’s team also demanded the university report to it any international students accused of misconduct.

Also at stake is about $1 billion in National Institutes of Health funding for Harvard’s public health research. The agency has introduced new rules blocking medical grants to recipients who took part in boycotts against Israel, or who limited commercial trade with Israeli companies.

Other unilateral Trump administration actions are defended as necessary to prevent voter fraud – even without evidence such fraud exists. This month, to its immense credit, the national League of Women Voters, joined by five other organizations, sued Trump over an executive order that would change voting rules. As the suit pointed out, he lacks the power to do that under the Constitution.

It says: “The scope and impact of this attempted power grab is staggering. With a stroke of the pen, the President claims unilateral authority to change the rules for voter registration and election administration across the country in a manner that would threaten the ability of millions of eligible Americans to register and vote, and upend the administration of federal elections.”

Even before such measures were taken at the federal level, Iowa under Gov. Kim Reynolds and the MAGA-dominated Legislature has taken its own steps to the same end. It reduced early voting days, polling-place hours, and mail-in ballot procedures.

It’s worth noting that out of more than 2 million votes cast in the prior election years 2020 and 2021, Iowa had only 12 election misconduct cases.

On a similar note, Iowa’s Legislature this week passed a bill requiring the University of Iowa to establish an independent Center for Intellectual Freedom operating under the state Board of Regents. It would teach U.S. history, civics and government separately from what the university teaches. One Regent, calling it freedom of speech, said it would bring balance to left leaning schools. But as a Democratic lawmaker pointed out, the Iowa Constitution already mandate freedom of speech, thought and discussion at colleges and universities.

Ironically, even as the Trump administration demands so-called freedom of speech in education, it’s deporting students for exercising their free speech rights to protest Israel’s deadly military campaign against Gaza last year.

In announcing last month that foreign-born students who protested could have their student visas seized, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said,"If you are in this country on a student visa and are a participant in (protest) movements, we have a right to deny your visa”

Doesn’t that fly in the face of the very freedoms that have drawn students and long-term immigrants to America? It was a major part of why I chose to become a U.S. citizen, having taken part in campus protests for civil rights and against the Vietnam War during my teen years.

Now foreign students already granted visas are being notified those have been revoked. Some who took part in protests are being arrested and deported, including those with permanent residence visas and married to American spouses.

Some of those detentions are depicted as apprehensions of terrorist sympathizers or anti-Semites. An official at the Department of Homeland Security told the press that people who “advocate for violence, glorify and support terrorists that relish the killings of Americans, and harass Jews ... should not be in this country.”

But Mohsen Mahdawi, a U.S. legal permanent resident of Palestinian origin, who was picked up by ICE at what should have been his citizenship interview did none of those things. His sole offense appears to have been organizing protests last year while a Columbia University student. He remains in detention though accused of no crime. In fact, more than 200 Israelis living in the U.S. signed an open letter condemning his arrest.

Fortunately for Mahdawi, a federal judge ruled he couldn’t be sent out of his home state of Vermont or the U.S.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia of Maryland, a day laborer originally from El Salvador, had specifically been granted protection against being sent back because of threats from gangs. Yet he was picked up and was deported to a mega-prison in El Salvador along with hundreds of other Latinos not convicted of anything. Now the Trump administration is ignoring federal court orders to return him.

Madhawi, Garcia and Jiarong Ouyang would seem to have nothing in common. Nothing, that is, except for being foreign-born, nonwhite and not convicted of anything. Ouyang is a doctoral candidate from China studying at the University of Cincinnati whose student visa was suddenly revoked. He and three other students from China are suing the Department of Homeland Security over their cancelled visas.

Hundreds, if not a thousand or more, foreign students around the country have had their status revoked, according to The National Immigration Project. It says they’re primarily from African, Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and Asian backgrounds.

Combine these unwarranted detentions, deportations and visa revocations, attacks on DEI, and efforts to end birthright citizenship and it hints at what Trump might be aiming for: Making America whiter.

Such almost daily assaults on democracy come at a challenging time for journalists, whose jobs include holding those in power accountable. Legacy newspapers are cutting back or shutting down, leaving news deserts around the state and nation. At a time when dissenting voices most need to be heard, some of the most respected newspapers have done away with their opinion sections, or just refused to endorse in the last presidential election.

And they have reason to be afraid. Trump has called journalists the “enemy of the people.” He sued CBS for $10 billion, claiming a pre-election “60 Minutes” interview it did with Kamala Harris was edited deceptively. This week, the longstanding executive producer of “60 Minutes,” Bill Owens, announced he was resigning because of the loss of journalistic independence.

After the Associated Press refused to accept Trump’s unilateral renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, the AP was barred from covering the Oval Office. He took away CNN’s and The Washington Post’s offices in the Pentagon and gave them to conservative news organizations.

He even sued my former long-time employer, The Des Moines Register, over a political poll that wrongly predicted Harris would win Iowa.

But amidst all these setbacks, there is cause for hope.

You can find it locally, in nonprofits like the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation and the Iowa Writers Collaborative, which strive to keep Iowans informed, and people in office accountable, in every part of the state.

I find hope in Winnieshiek County Sheriff Dan Marx standing up and saying no to doing ICE’s bidding by detaining people without due cause. His may have been a lone voice in the wilderness, but who knows when another law enforcement is faced with doing the same objectionable act, and recalls Marx’s courage.

Though the Administration has yet to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador, the fact that an independent minded judge said he was improperly deported and must be returned might help more federal judges follow that path.

You can feel empowered when Harvard University refuses a bribe that would cost it its independence as an academic institution. And before that, when Drake University and Grinnell College refused to cut back on their DEI initiatives in response to pressure from federal and state governments. Drake even expanded its DEI efforts and this year had the most diverse undergraduate class in its 143 years.

And when the National Immigration Project sues ICE on behalf of foreign students facing hundreds of visa cancellations in multiple states, calling them unlawful.

It’s not an exaggeration to say we’re in a fight for the very soul of America – a country I chose as an adult to become a citizen of for the democratic values it espoused and the diplomatic relations it engaged in with other nations for our mutual benefit.

But we still have our courts and elections and courageous, proactive organizations like the League of Women Voters to keep us motivated. History is cyclical and the arc bends toward justice -- if we stay actively engaged and hopeful.

Thank you to all of you who show up at protests, who showed up here tonight, who write letters to the editor and to government officials to speak your minds on undemocratic policies and practices. Thanks to courageous members of the press who continue to ferret out and report the truth.

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I’m a proud member of the Iowa Writer’s Collaborative. Click below for the full roster.

Iowa Writers' Collaborative