(Radio Iowa) – Former Secretary of State and potential 2024 presidential candidate Mike Pompeo says Christian conservatives should “never give an inch” as they pursue their political goals. “We are a not a defeated nation. We are not a nation in decline. We are not a racist nation. We are a God-blessed Christian nation,” Pompeo said. “Don’t let the woke socialists get you down. Keep working.”

Pompeo addressed a crowd of 1200 today at The Family Leader’s summit in Des Moines. Pompeo began by joking he’s an unemployed diplomat. “I’ll be honest with you, it has been tough to watch what is going on and what has gone on in these six months,” Pompeo said. “I wish that I was still there.” While Pompeo touted the “America First” approach to foreign policy he pursed as President Trump’s chief foreign diplomat, Pompeo spent the vast majority of his speech discussing his faith and domestic issues.

Mike Pompeo. (Family Leader photo)

“You all see the garbage they’re trying to teach in our schools today. It comes under various guises, often called critical race theory, but suffice it to say that it is a suggestion that somehow our nation is inherently and systemically racist,” Pompeo said. “This is a nation that has borne the costs and benefits associated with equality like no other nation in the world. We should be proud of it. We should not challenge our founding. It was noble.”

Pompeo, who spoke for about 22 minutes, said Christians are right to feel threatened and concerned about what they’re seeing in the culture and the government. “I will tell you as we stare at the problem sets that we all are aware of teoday, we see in our homes, on television, that the breakdown of the American family is at the core of most of them,” Pompeo said. “It’s why the left wants to undermine the family unit upon which this nation was built.”

Pompeo is the first of three potential candidates for the Republican party’s next presidential nomination to speak at today’s event in Des Moines. South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem and former Vice President Mike Pence are speaking later this afternoon.

(Radio Iowa) – Former Vice President Mike Pence says the time has come for Republicans to push back against Democrats in control of congress and the White House. Pence was the keynote speaker at Congressman Randy Feenstra’s midday fundraiser in Sioux Center. “I came here to say ‘Enough is enough!'” Pence said, to applause and cheers. Pence suggests the G-O-P formula for 2022 and 2024 is to cite the record of the Trump-Pence Administration.

“I think what we demonstrated under the leadership of President Donald Trump was what you can accomplish if you stand firm and don’t back down for conservative principles,” Pence said, to applause. “It’s incredible.” Pence, asked by Trump to lead the administration’s pandemic response, touted the outcome of Operation Warp Speed. “On the day we left office, we were vaccinating one million Americans a day,” Pence said. “I’ll always be proud of the way the American people responded over the course of the last year and a half with courage and compassion…I will always be grateful for the doctors and nurses and health care workers and first responders that saw our nation through this trial.”

The event was a fundraiser for Feenstra’s bid for a second term in the U.S. House and Feenstra introduced Pence to the crowd as a great friend. “And he stood by President Trump, secured the border, grew our economy and did so many great things for our country,” Feenstra said.

Pence is scheduled to be today’s (Friday’s) closing speaker at The Family Leader’s day-long summit in Des Moines

(Radio Iowa) – Republican Governor Kim Reynolds is urging conservative Christians to fight back against Democrats in power in Washington. Reynolds says President Biden’s Administration is pursuing a radical social agenda backed by liberal activists and corporations. “The elevation of angry, ever-shifting moral code of wokesness, bailouts, tax hikes, lock downs, open borders, closed schools,” Reynolds said. “Believe me. This is not an agenda for Iowa and it is not an agenda for our country.”

Reynolds was cheered repeatedly as she spoke at a summit in Des Moines organized by The Family Leader.

(Radio Iowa) – Officials in a southwest Iowa city are asking residents to obey a local ordinance regarding signs in non-commercial areas. Councilman Craig Hill raised the issue during this week’s Clarinda City Council meeting, as a growing number of signs are popping up in residential areas, advertising job openings in Clarinda.  “I sympathize with the problem that they’re having, trying to find employees, but there are ordinances that people need to follow,” he says, “so I encourage the businesses or industries to come to City Hall, make sure that they know the rules, get a permit and then follow those before they just start putting things out.”

Clarinda Mayor Lisa Hull says residents must pay a fee and get a permit to placing any sort of sign on a property zoned as residential. “It looks kind of trashy if you have these signs all over everyone’s yard,” she says. Hull, who runs a manufacturing business in Clarinda, has paid fees to the city to put a flag in her yard when she’s hiring. Hull says if a sign is in the city right-of-way along the street, the city is technically liable for the sign. “We need to regulate, really, what those signs ’cause somebody could put a sign talking about their neighbor, you know, and say anything they want to say,” Hull says, “so that’s why when you put signs in your yard, especially if it’s residential, you need to get a permit so the city can regulate what those signs say.”

Officials in the city of Johnston have fielded complaints about a sign painted on a bar that, among other things, declares it the site of Trump 2024 National Headquarters and includes a slur against Vice President Harris. The Johnston City Council discussed the matter earlier this month and are considering their legal options, but say the sign is likely considered speech protected by the First Amendment.