Emerging from 2024 loss, Tim Walz holds a town hall in an Iowa Republican's district

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Emerging from 2024 loss, Tim Walz holds a town hall in an Iowa Republican's district

2025-03-15 07:57 Last Updated At：08:01

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz stood before hundreds of Iowans on Friday and admitted he doesn't have all the answers about issues facing the country.

“If I did, we wouldn't be in this goddamn mess,” Walz said.

Walz is back on the road to talk to voters, but he’s no longer a vice presidential candidate. He isn’t any kind of candidate, at least not for now.

Walz is reemerging after last year’s election loss, granting interviews to national media and speaking to hundreds attending the Montana Democratic Party’s annual dinner earlier this month.

Now, he’s kicking off a tour of town halls in competitive congressional districts represented by Republicans, launched by a post on social media in response to guidance from House Speaker Mike Johnson that GOP representatives skip out on town halls, saying demonstrations outside of them were the work of “professional protesters.”

“There’s a responsibility in this time of chaos where elected officials need to hear what people are irritated about,” Walz said. “And I would argue that Democratic officials should hear the primal scream that’s coming from America and do something.”

Walz said he wasn't there to personally attack U.S. Rep. Zach Nunn, whose district includes the high school auditorium that nearly 1,000 people filled on Friday. But Walz called on Nunn to answer questions in public. Nunn won reelection in Iowa’s 3rd congressional district by about 4 percentage points in 2024, a margin of just under 16,000 voters.

The Iowa Democratic Party got Walz's call Monday evening and got to work planning the event Tuesday, said Paige Godden, the state party's communications director.

The crowd gave Walz a standing ovation. Many were wearing shirts with messages of political activism. A schoolteacher, a high school senior and a VA medical center worker asked Walz questions about health care, financial aid and funding for veterans.

Mike Suggett of Pleasant Hill, just east of Des Moines, is a retired schoolteacher who said he taught Nunn in junior high school. He’s written to the lawmaker but said he gets “canned form letters” in return. Suggett said Nunn is “too much of a coward” to show up.

“We’d much prefer to hear from the people who represent us,” Suggett said.

In an emailed statement to The Associated Press, Nunn said he’s held “hundreds of listening sessions” to hear directly from Iowans and is delivering on the change “Iowans voted for in November.”

“While out-of-state Democrats hold fundraisers disguised as forums, we’re focused on real results,” he said.

Other Republican leaders in Iowa and Minnesota, including Gov. Kim Reynolds, criticized the visit and said Walz should focus on his own state. Emily Tuttle, spokesperson for the National Republican Campaign Committee, called it a “manufactured production.”

Walz stopped in Iowa several times in 2023 as a surrogate for then-President Joe Biden, floating around the state fair, fundraising for local Democrats and holding media availabilities to contrast Biden with the Republican candidates campaigning in the run-up to Iowa’s GOP caucuses.

He goes Saturday to Nebraska, where he grew up, with tentative stops to follow in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Ohio. The focus on Midwest neighbors and states in the Rust Belt isn’t a coincidence — many of them are places Walz didn’t visit during last year’s shortened campaign after Biden dropped out and made way for Vice President Kamala Harris atop the Democratic ticket.

Walz passed on running for Senate next year but could be a contender for the 2028 presidential nomination.

On 2024’s outcome, Walz said Democrats “need to acknowledge” that some voters didn’t see a difference between the Republican and Democratic presidential tickets and that the Democrats' message on issues like immigration and Social Security didn't resonate. He said he's listening to learn why.

Andrea Smith, a veteran, and her 19-year-old daughter, Liberty, said they were already going to be in Des Moines — about 120 miles from home in West Branch — to rally for veteran’s rights, and they decided to stay to see Walz.

“We related a lot to him,” Liberty Smith said. “He felt real during the election season.”

Showing up to the Walz event was May Dehaan's way of trying to get Nunn to notice that his constituents are frustrated. She wore a shirt that read: “This is not normal."

“Obviously, he’s not listening to his constituents. He’s following the GOP talking points.” said Dehaan, a retired interior designer from suburban Clive, who has herself written to Nunn. “We’re getting tired of being ignored.”

Large crowds converge in Belgrade for protest rally against Serbia's president and government

2025-03-16 01:18 Last Updated At：01:21

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Tens of thousands of people descended on Belgrade on Saturday for a mass rally seen as a culmination of months-long protests against Serbia's populist President Aleksandar Vucic and his government.

Large crowds of flag-waving protesters clogged the downtown area of the capital despite occasional rain, with people hardly able to move and many stuck hundreds of meters away from the planned protest venue.

Protesters converged after meeting up at several agreed-on protest venues in various parts of the city, which was placed on high alert. All public transport was cancelled.

Ahead of the demonstration, Vucic repeatedly warned of alleged plans for unrest while threatening arrests and harsh sentences for any incidents.

A deafening sound of whistles, drums and vuvuzelas filled the air on Saturday. Some protesters carried banners that read, “He’s Finished!” Crowds chanted “Pump it Up,” a slogan adopted during past four months of student-led protests.

”I expect that this will shake his authority and that Vucic will realize that people are no longer for him,” Milenko Kovacevic, a protester, said.

The rally — which is probably the biggest anti-government protest ever held in the Balkan country — comes after more than four months of anti-corruption demonstrations that have posed the biggest challenge to Vucic's grip on power after 13 years in charge.

The massive rally is not the endgame in a struggle for a more democratic Serbia, Dejan Simic, a protester, said. "This is just the beginning of the end, a process which I hope will end soon,” he said.

Protesting university students have led the nationwide anti-graft movement, which started after a concrete canopy collapsed at a train station and killed 15 people in Serbia’s north on Nov. 1. Many in Serbia blamed the crash on rampant government corruption, negligence and disrespect of construction safety regulations.

With their call for justice for the victims, students have struck a chord among the citizens who are disillusioned with politicians and have lost faith in the state institutions.

On Friday evening, tens of thousands of people staged a joyous welcome for the students who have been marching or cycling for days from across Serbia toward Belgrade.

Interior Minister Ivica Dacic told state RTS broadcaster that 13 people were detained overnight. He said police detained six opposition activists for allegedly plotting to stage a coup and stir unrest.

By Saturday morning people were assembling in various parts of the city as they marched toward the center. The entire downtown zone was flooded with people hours before the scheduled start of the gathering.

Reflecting the tensions, police said they arrested a man who rammed his car into protesters in a Belgrade suburb, injuring three people. Hundreds of police officers were deployed inside and around government buildings and in front of the presidential palace.

The Belgrade authorities canceled all public transport, including intercity railway and bus links, in an apparent effort to prevent people from attending the rally. The transport company said the cancellation was made “for security reasons.”

Several reporters from neighboring Croatia as well as Slovenia have been turned back from Serbia's border under explanation that their presence at the rally “represents a security risk.”

Vucic has rejected earlier proposals for a transitional government that would prepare an early election. Fueling fears of clashes, Vucic's supporters have been camping in central Belgrade in front of his headquarters. They include ex-members of a dreaded paramilitary unit involved in the assassination in 2003 of Serbia's first democratic Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, as well as soccer hooligans who are known for causing violence.

Private N1 television on Saturday broadcast footage of dozens of young men with baseball caps going into the pro-Vucic camp.

Vucic has been claiming that Western intelligence services were behind almost daily student-led protests with an aim to oust him from power. He has presented no evidence for the claims.

Previous student-led rallies in other Serbian cities have been peaceful while drawing huge crowds.