For the second time this month, Iowa Avenue between Clinton and Dubuque streets was blocked off as people rallied in downtown Iowa City on Saturday to protest the actions of the Trump administration.
“We’re not protesters at all,” Sue Thompson of Indivisible Johnson County said at the beginning of the rally. “We are the protectors.”
“We’re the protectors of our Constitution, protectors of free speech, the protectors of our Earth, the protectors of human dignity, the protectors of health care, the protectors of veterans, the protectors of labor unions, the protectors against racism, the protectors of education, the protectors of science, the protectors of our food and water, protectors of immigrants, protectors of women’s rights, protectors of LGBTQ rights, protectors of the rights and the freedoms of every single human being.”
Thompson was the lead organizer of the rally, which was one of hundreds that happened nationwide on Saturday, as part of a National Day of Action by the 50501 movement. The name stands for 50 protests in 50 states as part of one movement.
The crowd of several hundred that gathered in Iowa City on the Easter holiday weekend was smaller than the one that attended the “Hands Off!” protest in the same location on April 5, but the level of enthusiasm was the same — as at the earlier rally, the crowd sang along with music (played live and over speakers), chanted, marched, applauded and booed loudly.
Before they marched along the downtown sidewalks behind a banner that replicated the “We the people’ of the opening of the Constitution, Thompson pointed out to the crowd that Saturday was the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, which is traditionally considered the first battle of the American Revolution.
Thompson told the crowd they were marching in the same spirit as those who confronted the British 250 years ago, but this time they were marching “to protect the Constitution and the rule of law.”
The marchers carried plenty of homemade signs, including one that said, “‘I’m Pissed!’ –Iowans,” referencing a recent Chuck Grassley town hall meeting in Fort Madison, where angry Iowans demanded answers from the state’s senior senator about why he isn’t protecting essential services from arbitrary cuts by Elon Musk’s DOGE team.
“I just want to know if you’re proud of voting for Trump and what he’s doing in office?” one person asked Grassley. “Are you proud of everything he’s doing?”
“There’s no president I’ve agreed with 100 percent of the time,” Grassley replied, as the crowd of mostly seniors in a reliably Republican county jeered.
Grassley, to his credit, has been holding in-person town hall meetings, even though Fort Madison is the first one at which constituents have sharply complained about Grassley’s passivity in the face of Trump and Musk’s actions. The other members of Iowa’s Washington delegation, all of whom boast about their support for Trump, have mostly avoided in-person town halls this year, preferring conference-call meetings with selected constituents on the occasions they hold meetings.
Speaking at Saturday’s rally, Eric Kusiak, a nurse leader, highlighted Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks’ support for DOGE and the arbitrary cuts it is making. Kusiak spoke about the damage being done to the Iowa City VA Hospital, since the Office of Personal Management sent out the Elon Musk-inspired “Fork in the Road” email on Jan. 28, pushing for federal employees to quit. Kusiak pointed out that as a doctor, Miller-Meeks has an ethical obligation that goes beyond the other Iowa members of Congress when it comes to Medicaid, Medicare and VA health services.
“She can either honor her Hippocratic Oath to do no harm to any patient, or honor her allegiance to billionaires on severing the literal lifeline of thousands of people,” Kusiak said.
After the march through downtown Iowa City, a series of speakers addressed the ongoing attacks on the Trump administration on federal workers, union members, immigrants, the right to due process, science and the independence of universities. But it was the ongoing detention of people shipped by the Trump administration — in apparent violation of the court orders and without providing the due process the Constitution guarantees — to a notorious prison in El Salvador that cast the largest shadow over the rally.
Senate Minority Leader Janice Weiner, an Iowa City Democrat, reminded of the crowd of the guarantee in the 14th Amendment that “no state shall ‘deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law.’”
“We are all Kilmar Abrego Garcia,” she said. “For without due process, it won’t matter who we are. And we are every student whose visa is now being used as a tool to suppress free speech.”
Kilmar Abrego Garcia is the foreign-born Maryland resident who was grabbed by ICE, despite having legal status to be in the country, and then shipped to the prison in El Salvador. The Trump administration alleges the native of El Salvador is a member of Mexican gang (and therefore a terrorist) on the basis of an anonymous allegation in a defunct gang registry that claimed Abrego Garcia belonged to an MS-13 clique in a state he never lived in. (The police officer who entered that report was subsequently fired for misconduct in other cases.) Abrego Garcia and his family deny the allegation. In October, an immigration judge granted Abrego Garcia withholding of removal, a protected status, because the judge found there was good cause to believe that Abrego Garcia’s life would be in jeopardy from actual gang members who had been extorting his family’s business if he was returned to El Salvador.
Abrego Garcia’s American wife and the ACLU sued on his behalf, and in the first hearing in federal court, an attorney from the Justice Department conceded that Abrego Garcia had legal status to be in the United States, and said the deportation was the result of an administrative error. Nevertheless, it was the position of the Justice Department that since Abrego Garcia was imprisoned in El Salvador (as part of a multi-million dollar contract in which El Salvador agrees to imprison people deported by the Trump administration) it could do nothing to correct the error.
The judge in the case rejected the Justice Department’s argument, and ordered the federal government to effectuate and facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return. The DOJ appealed the Supreme Court, which agreed with the lower court but modified the order, removing “effectuate” and leaving “facilitate.” So far, the Trump administration has interpreted the Supreme Court’s order to mean it doesn’t need to take any action beyond allowing Abergo Garcia into the country if he ever reaches a port of entry.
The Trump administration deportation also cast its shadow over the Supreme Court on Saturday. Shortly before 1 a.m. (eastern time) the court took the extraordinary step of issuing an order stopping the Trump administration from deporting a group of Venezuelan migrants using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 (AEA). The high court had previously ruled that officials must allow the migrants access to due process, before deporting them under the AEA. An ICE bus containing 28 Venezuelan detainees was on its way to an airport in Texas, before it had to turn around after the Supreme Court issued its order.
Dr. Ali Hanson, a physician and neuroscientist, warned rally attendees against relying on courts to stop the authoritarian powergrab by Trump and his allies, because they are already ignoring the courts.
“So, who’s going to fucking save us?” Hanson asked. Members of the crowd shouted back, “We are.”
“Right,” Hanson replied. “We’re going to save us.”
Experts on defeating authoritarian governments say it takes only 3.5 percent of the population demonstrating concerted opposition to a regime before it starts to crack, Hanson told the crowd. But not everyone is in a position where they engage in that sort of opposition.
“People with privilege,” she said, “it is our duty and our obligation to stand the fuck up and speak out.”
