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Opinion: Protecting Social Security is key for candidates in Iowa – Des Moines Register

Garrett Gobble| Guest columnist

The Iowa Republican presidential caucuses might be nearly a year away, but the fight for the Hawkeye States 40 delegates is already heating up.

Politicians with presidential aspirations, both declared and undeclared, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, former Vice President Mike Pence, and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson have all visited the home of the first-in-the-nation Republican presidential primary caucus to pitch their policy platforms to voters. And already, rifts in candidates' positions on critical issues, most notably Social Security, have begun to bubble up, and debate around essential retirement benefits has taken center stage.

And for good reason.

Social Security provides critical benefits to millions of Americans across the country, folks who have paid into the program for decades to provide a foundation of income during retirement. In Iowa alone, nearly 700,000 people receive monthly Social Security benefits, and most of these people depend on the fixed income that the program provides to make ends meet.

Social Security provides essential benefits to Iowans and the program is incredibly popular. One AARP poll found that 85% of Americans over the age of 50, a demographic that makes up two-thirds of the electorate and often decides the outcome of critical elections, oppose making cuts to Social Security. In Iowa, 96% of people support the idea of maintaining Social Security and Medicare, according to Public Policy Polling, and one survey also by the company found that 63% of Hawkeye State residents would be less likely to vote for a candidate who supports making cuts to entitlement programs.

Despite those facts, not every Republican presidential candidate or potential candidate visiting the state has expressed their steadfast support for programs that hundreds of thousands of Iowans depend on to make ends meet in retirement. Haley has proposed raising the retirement age, and Pence has stated that cuts to Social Security should be on the table for the long term.

Hutchinson has supported short-changing retirement benefits in the past. However, theres still time for these candidates to reverse course and commit to Social Security.

They could, for example, follow the lead of DeSantis, who as a member of Congress voted to support cuts to Medicare and Social Security. However, since taking office as governor of Florida, where over 20% of people are over the age of 65, DeSantis has listened to voters and promised to protect Social Security, telling reporters that hes not going to mess with Americans retirement benefits. Now, we look to the governor to make sure he sticks to that promise.

There simply isnt a road to the White House for a candidate pushing for cuts to critical retirement programs Americans depend on, and voters here in Iowa have made it clear that they wont support a candidate who is willing to jeopardize the benefits they rely on to make ends meet. Right now, every Republican presidential candidate should make their commitment to Social Security loud and clear.

Garrett Gobble represented Ankeny in the Iowa Legislature from 2021 to 2023.

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Opinion: Protecting Social Security is key for candidates in Iowa - Des Moines Register

DeSantis takes anti-woke show to Illinois – POLITICO

A large portion of his speech zeroed in on business policies: Along with attacking DEI language, he criticized the investment strategy that addresses environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG), calling it an effort to weaponize corporate power. And he poked at Walt Disney Co., which opposed the so-called Dont Say Gay law last year. They dont run the state of Florida. We run the state of Florida.

DeSantis seemed to relish needling Illinois and its Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker. The Florida governor jabbed Illinois for losing residents to the Sunshine State. He criticized Pritzker for allowing some members of his family to stay in their Florida home during the pandemic, and said former President Barack Obama, a former Illinois senator, was too left though not as left as Democrats are today.

DeSantis attacked President Joe Biden for causing more damage in a short period of time than any president in our lifetime.

And though he listed numerous pieces of legislation hes signed in Florida, DeSantis didnt mention the bill he just signed into law that would ban most abortions in the state after six weeks.

He also didnt mention his likely run for president, though he hinted at one, saying, I have only begun to fight.

DeSantis stop in Illinois drew harsh criticism from Illinois Democrats, including Pritzker, who hours before the Florida governors speech issued a statement calling DeSantis an authoritarian career politician who has no business being in public office. From passing a harsh abortion ban in the dead of night to erasing Black history from textbooks.

And Democratic Party of Illinois chair Lisa Hernandez issued a statement saying DeSantis vision for the country contradicts everything that we stand for in Illinois.

Outside of the convention center where DeSantis spoke, a crowd of more than a hundred protesters gathered. Many were members of Peoria Proud, a group that rejects DeSantis Dont Say Gay bill in Florida. Others held signs calling out his views on abortion.

Most Republicans inside the convention center voted for former President Donald Trump in 2020s general election, though many are open to seeing a new face at the top of the GOP ticket in 2024.

I think people are ready for the drama to be done, Illinois Republican state Sen. Sue Rezin told POLITICO. She was among some 30 elected officials and other Republicans at a private roundtable policy discussion with DeSantis held before Fridays dinner. People want leaders who can govern and who are not polarizing, and he has shown that, Rezin said after the meeting.

Dan Brady, a Republican who served more than 20 years in the Illinois General Assembly, said voters are eager to hear from a candidate with conservative values and good conduct and character.

Neither of the Illinois Republicans wanted to attack Trump, and DeSantis didnt mention the former presidents controversial appearance on CNN earlier in the week.

Fridays event took part in central Illinois, mostly Republican territory. Its home to GOP Congressman Darin LaHood, who helped organize the event, though Peoria and Tazewell counties split on Trump in 2020.

LaHood drew his own applause line in introducing DeSantis, saying, We need a winner.

Peoria County voted for President Joe Biden 51.9 percent to Trumps 45.6 percent. Tazewell County, meanwhile, voted for Trump 61.6 percent, compared to 35.9 percent for Biden.

DeSantis, whos already made stops in the early primary states of Iowa, Nevada and South Carolina, isnt likely looking at Illinois to get him over the delegate hump, presuming he jumps into the presidential race. The Land of Lincolns 2024 primary election is in late March, weeks after the early states.

But Illinois has Republican donors, which DeSantis is hoping to gather up along with those delegates.

Fridays crowd for DeSantis speech was so large that organizers had to expand the room at the Civic Center.

Event organizers made note that last years headliner was former Vice President Mike Pence, and he only drew about 700 people to the annual dinner. Pence, like DeSantis, is expected to announce a run for president.

DeSantis is scheduled to be in Sioux City, Iowa, on Saturday for a Republican picnic.

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DeSantis takes anti-woke show to Illinois - POLITICO

Trump rages after sexual abuse verdict but legal woes have only just begun – The Guardian US

Donald Trump

Investigations are mounting, making it harder for the former president to spin his troubles as persecution by liberal elites

Sun 14 May 2023 02.00 EDT

If the outcome of Donald Trumps sexual assault trial wasnt a foregone conclusion, his response to a jury finding he attacked the writer E Jean Carroll was all too predictable.

The former president lashed out at the judge as biased and the jurors as from an anti-Trump area, meaning liberal New York, after they believed Carrolls account of the millionaire businessman attacking her in a department store changing room in the mid-1990s. The jury ordered him to pay $5m in damages for sexual abuse and for defaming Carroll by accusing her of a made-up SCAM for political ends.

Trump has taken a similar tack against the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, after pleading not guilty last month to 34 criminal charges over the payment of hush money to the porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election. Trump called Bragg, who is Black, an animal and a psychopath, and characterised the prosecution as purely political.

All of this goes down well in sections of America.

An audience of Republican voters at a CNN town hall with Trump on Wednesday laughed when he described his assault of Carroll as playing hanky-panky in a dressing room and called her a whack job.

But in the coming months its going to get a lot harder for the former, and possibly future, American president to spin his legal problems as political persecution by Democratic elitists. Investigations against him are mounting, and even more troubled legal waters lie ahead for Trump and some of his acolytes.

Indictments in conservative Georgia are coming down the line and many of the key witnesses against Trump will be his fellow Republicans, including some who helped him try to rig the 2020 election.

Similarly, investigations by a justice department special counsel into Trumps actions leading up to the 6 January 2021 storming of the Capitol, and the stashing of classified documents at his Florida mansion, are being built on the accounts of aides and political associates who are potential witnesses against him.

Norman Eisen, a former White House special counsel for ethics and government reform, said that as a result Trumps legal troubles have only just begun.

Hes running into a buzzsaw and its called the rule of law. So he can go on and rant and rave up to a point but the legal authorities are in the process of holding him accountable, he said.

Leading the way is a prosecutor in Atlanta who is stacking up witnesses against the former president, almost all of them Republicans, over his attempt to rig the 2020 presidential election result in Georgia. They include some who tried to help Trump steal the vote but who have been persuaded to give evidence against him to save their own necks.

The Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, has spent more than two years investigating the multi-state, coordinated plan by the Trump campaign to influence the results.

Willis convened a special grand jury that sat for eight months and heard evidence from 75 witnesses before it recommended charges against more than a dozen people. The grand jury forewoman, Emily Kohrs, strongly hinted to the New York Times in February that Trump was on the list.

Asked if the jurors recommended prosecuting the former president, Kohrs said: Youre not going to be shocked. Its not rocket science.

It is not going to be some giant plot twist, she added. You probably have a fair idea of what may be in there. Im trying very hard to say that delicately.

Willis had been expected to charge Trump and others this month, but indictments are not now likely before mid-July as prosecutors put together immunity deals to lure the former presidents Republican co-conspirators to testify against him and his top aides. Kohrs said prosecutors offered one witness immunity from prosecution in return for cooperation right in front of the grand jury.

Then there are the Republicans who do not have to be coerced to tell the truth in court.

Williss investigation initially focused on a tape recording of Trump pressuring Georgias Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to find nearly 12,000 votes to cancel out Bidens win in a state that, at the time, looked as if it might decide the outcome of the entire presidential election.

Trump has called the Georgia official an enemy of the people because he wouldnt commit electoral fraud. But a jury might find Raffensperger all the more credible because not only is he a Republican, but he voted for Trump.

The Georgia secretary of state spoke to the special grand jury for several hours, including about a call he recorded from Trump at the beginning of January 2021 pressuring him to manipulate the vote. While he has not commented publicly on his testimony, Raffensperger wrote a book, Integrity Counts, in which he details Trump threatening him.

Other witnesses are more reluctant but may be all the more credible for that reason, including Georgias governor, Brian Kemp, who also came under pressure from Trump and his allies to overturn the election result. One of those on the phone to Kemp was Mark Meadows, Trumps former chief of staff, who was also summoned to answer the grand jurys questions.

Willis expanded the investigation as more evidence emerged of Trump and his allies attempting to manipulate the results, including the appointment of a sham slate of 16 electors to replace the states legitimate members of the electoral college who do the formal business of selecting the president. The fake electors included the chair of the Georgia Republican party, David Shafer, and Republican members of the state legislature who have been warned that they are at risk of prosecution.

Earlier this month it was revealed that at least eight of the fake electors have done a deal to give evidence in return from immunity from prosecution, although Shafer is not included.

Eisen said the immunity deals are a sign that charges are in the offing.

We know that multiple fake electors have received immunity. That is another indication of trouble for Donald Trump because those deals are extended by prosecutors typically when they are preparing to bring a case, and they believe they have a case to bring, he said.

So its a sign of prosecutorial seriousness. And its a sign that the district attorney can mount an effective case because these immunised fake electors can serve as tour guides for the jury into the plot, which we know ran all the way up to the Oval Office.

Ronald Carlson, a leading Georgia trial lawyer and professor at the University of Georgias law school, said prosecutors do not offer immunity lightly and any deal signals that witnesses will provide significant testimony against Trump and his team.

This is very, very much a straw in the wind. Immunity almost always comes with a requirement that the immunised witness provide testimony in a future criminal trial, he said.

I think the electors will be very descriptive on how they were called together, what they did during their meeting, and then the end result, which was certifying a result for Trump.

Williss investigation also probed a seven-hour hearing at the Georgia state senate a month after the election orchestrated by Rudolph Giuliani, the former New York mayor and Trumps personal lawyer and adviser.

In what Georgia Public Broadcasting called a series of fantastical claims and statements from various and sundry people touted as experts, Giuliani led the way in falsely claiming that the states voting machines were rigged, thousands of votes were illegally cast, and suitcases of fake ballots were used to tilt the count in favour of Biden.

Giuliani also urged the Georgia legislature to create the slate of fake electors, providing a direct link between what prosecutors are expected to portray as a criminal attempt to steal the election and Trump. At the same time, Giuliani led a blitz of legal challenges to the election result in courts across the country, all of which failed.

Kohrs said that when Giuliani appeared before the grand jury he invoked attorney-client privilege to avoid answering many questions.

Another Trump lawyer, John Eastman, was called as a witness to a plan to pressure the then vice-president, Mike Pence, to block the declaration of Bidens win by Congress. The grand jury also called Sidney Powell, a Trump lawyer and conspiracy theorist who pushed false allegations that voting machines were rigged for which Fox News paid nearly $800m to settle a defamation suit.

Several witnesses tried to avoid testifying. Senator Lindsey Graham went all the way to the US supreme court in a failed attempt to avoid appearing. Trumps former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who attended meetings about invoking martial law and seizing voting machines, had to be ordered by a Florida judge to answer the grand jurys questions.

Carlson said that a parade of Republican witnesses, reluctant or willing, could prove very damaging to Trump.

As a prosecutor, if you can call witnesses who were close to the crown, so to speak, that impresses the jury, he said.

What happens very, very frequently, especially in a mob case, is theyll give immunity to one of the lower-echelon people to testify against the big boss. He doesnt want to do it, but hes got immunity and if he continues to resist, he can be held in contempt of court. Whether they want to do it willingly, or whether they are forced to do it under a grant of immunity, Willis is building a case that has a host of witnesses.

Eisen said the Georgia case is likely to be all the stronger for being largely built around the evidence of other Republicans.

The fact that his overtures were rejected by staunch Republican officials, Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state, Brian Kemp, the governor, makes a difference. Just the sheer weight of the evidence of election interference in Georgia is material. The Georgia case is a very powerful one, the most powerful weve seen to date, he said.

Meanwhile, the special counsel appointed by the US justice department, Jack Smith, is conducting two criminal investigations involving Trump that again draw in Republicans whose testimony could be condemn the former president.

The New York Times reported earlier this month that investigators probing Trumps mishandling of classified documents have won the cooperation of someone who worked for him at his Mar-a-Lago mansion in Florida.

Like Willis, the justice department is using subpoenas to force grand jury testimony from those who witnessed Trumps actions including whether he had classified documents moved in order to hide them once it because known they were illegally stored in Florida.

Again, Trumps team has dismissed the investigation as a politically motivated witch-hunt aimed at keeping him from returning to the White House. But the former president didnt help himself at the CNN town hall when he undercut his own lawyers by claiming that he had every right to take the documents from the White House.

I didnt make a secret of it, he said.

So will Trump be a convicted criminal by the time of the presidential election in November 2024?

That is entirely possible, said Eisen. Its also possible that with court delays and appeals, he may not face incarceration until after the next election. But what matters is that the charges are being brought. And that cues the issue up for the jury of the American people in the primaries and then in the general election.

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Trump rages after sexual abuse verdict but legal woes have only just begun - The Guardian US

Mike Pence doesnt think voters will care about Trump sex abuse verdict – NBC News

CINCINNATI Former Vice President Mike Pence subtly defended former President Donald Trump in an interview Tuesday, hours after a jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation.

I would tell you, in my 4 years serving alongside the president, I never heard or witnessed behavior of that nature, he said.

Pence was in Cincinnati to speak at a gala for the Center for Christian Virtue.

The decision to avoid criticizing Trump was stark at a moment when Pence is weighing whether to challenge his former boss for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

But Pence sidestepped the question of whether the jurys verdict affects his view of Trumps fitness for the presidency.

I think thats a question for the American people, Pence said. Im sure the president will defend himself in that matter.

He added his prediction that those very voters would pay little attention to what he cast as a distraction from their daily lives.

Its just one more instance where at a time when American families are struggling, when our economy is hurting, when the world seems to become a more dangerous place almost every day [there's] just one more story focusing on my former running mate that I know is a great fascination to members of the national media, but I just dont think is where the American people are focused.

Trump is the front-runner for the nomination, far outpacing other Republican hopefuls both announced and unannounced in national polling. Pence said Tuesday that he will announce whether he is running in the coming weeks.

Dasha Burns is an NBC News NOW correspondent who covers politics and social issues.

Jonathan Allen is asenior national politics reporter for NBC News, based in Washington.

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Mike Pence doesnt think voters will care about Trump sex abuse verdict - NBC News

Pence blasts Bidens as probe intensifies: When I was VP, my son was in an F-35 not a foreign boardroom – Fox News

Former Vice President Mike Pence ripped his predecessor, Joe Biden, saying that while he was in office during the Trump administration, his son Michael was serving abroad in the Marine Corps, not working for foreign corporations like Hunter Biden.

The elder Pence praised House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., for his intensive probe into alleged Biden family bribery and corruption which he noted now allegedly has made the family party to 20 different potential shell companies and $10 million from foreign nationals.

"Kudos to Congressman James Comer and Senator Chuck Grassley for shining daylight into what Joe Biden has been denying literally for years. And it just seems to me that the posture of the administration today on this issue is the same as it was in the 2020 campaign I'll never forget Joe Biden in that debate saying the laptop appears to have all the indications of disinformation; 51 intelligence officials," he said.

BIDEN FAMILY RECEIVED MILLIONS FROM FOREIGN NATIONALS, TRIED TO CONCEAL SOURCE OF FUNDS: HOUSE OVERSIGHT

Former Vice President Mike Pence delivers a speech at The Heritage Foundation titled The Freedom Agenda and Americas Future, in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, October 19, 2022. ((Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images))

"Now we find out that his campaign ginned up the letter. The media was culpable in that suppressed the laptop story. And when you look at the coverage today, with Fox as a good exception and maybe one or two others, I mean, it's extraordinary to see this two-tiered system of justice that is unfolding in America," Pence continued.

The House Republicans investigating the Bidens announced earlier Wednesday they found evidence suggesting family members received monies from Romania and China.

Pence said that while Hunter Biden was sitting on boards of foreign corporations like Ukrainian energy firm Burisma, allegedly as part of influence peddling, 1st Lt. Michael Pence was sitting in a warplane.

PENCE TORCHES AWOL BIDEN: HE DERAILED OHIO LONG BEFORE HIS FAILURE TO ADDRESS TRAIN SPILL CRISIS

President Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, step off Air Force One, Saturday, Feb. 4, 2023, at Hancock Field Air National Guard Base in Syracuse, New York. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

"I can't comprehend any of this. When I was Vice President of the United States, my son wasn't sitting on the board of a foreign corporation. He was sitting in the cockpit of an F-35 in the United States Marine Corps defending our country," he said.

He called the media ignoring the Biden scandals proof an "unholy alliance" between them and left-wing Democrats.

"[They] essentially collude to suppress these stories," he said.

When asked by host Sean Hannity about his prospects for jumping into the growing 2024 Republican primary field, Pence said he has received a lot of encouragement and will continue to travel the country to speak to people about important issues.

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"I promise as soon as we have anything to announce, I'll be right back here on "Hannity" to do it," he said.

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Pence blasts Bidens as probe intensifies: When I was VP, my son was in an F-35 not a foreign boardroom - Fox News