For one hour, participants marched around the block and yelled out chants as numerous vehicles drove by and honked in support. This was the first time Elly Mack participated in a protest. She felt a strong need to speak out about what she saw happening.

“I feel like the changes that are being made are made by a few people, and the big changes are going to be really detrimental to a lot of people who are not billionaires,” she said.

Mack finds the significant cuts to federal funding and the spread of disinformation particularly egregious.

“I really try to understand where people are coming from, but they are working with different information,” she said.

Shelley Backes speaks into the megaphone brought by Dylan Schumacher for the anti-Trump protest. People gathered and walked around the Marshall County Courthouse to express their displeasure.

Denise Determan said the “billionaires in charge” talk a big game without knowing the reality a regular American experiences.

“They can’t possibly know,” she said. “Even if they were poor to begin with, they have forgotten what it’s like.”

Determan’s primary disagreement with Trump is his approach to the war between Russia and Ukraine.

“Trump is what I believe to be a Russian asset,” she said. “I think that’s something very important that — I don’t know how we’re going to deal with that. You can change policies, but if you’re promoting communism and dictatorship and the slaughter of innocent people, that’s a bridge too far.”

After each lap around the courthouse block, marchers stopped to give people a chance to rest and to vocalize their opinions with a megaphone provided by Dylan Schumacher. The first person to speak was Maralyn Schulz, who also had a few words about the recent actions of state lawmakers in Iowa.

Anti-Trump protesters stand in front of the Marshall County Courthouse late Wednesday afternoon. Numerous vehicles on Main Street honked their support as drivers passed by the gathering.

“Between our federal government and state government, it’s not good news,” she told her fellow protesters. “Kim Reynolds is destroying our state, our water quality, our healthcare, our education, our libraries. She’s demonizing people . . . And Kim Reynolds just gave herself a $100,000 raise and minimum wage has been at $7.25 for 17 years.”

Schulz said that on the federal level, there has been a reduction in freedom of speech. She said Trump has said people should be arrested for expressing viewpoints he does not like. Plus, Schulz said the federal cuts impacted the scientific research at Iowa State University. After speaking, she said she was protesting for her grandchildren.

“He can throw me in the gulag. I’ll survive or I won’t, but I want them to have a long-term survival of democracy,” Schulz said.

Another speaker was Shelley Backes, who listed a variety of federal actions she did not agree with, including funding being cut to USAID and money no longer going to Sudan to help people.

“The second thing that really makes me mad is when Donald Trump belittled [Ukrainian] President [Volodymyr] Zelensky in the Oval Office,” Backes said, as protesters yelled in agreement. “That was horrendous, and we shouldn’t put up with it anymore. The third thing that really makes me mad is we no longer have three branches of government. All of a sudden, we’ve got a dictator who gets a free ride and he gets to say and do anything he wants.”

She ended her list by saying that some of her friends might be Make American Great Again (MAGA) supporters, and it makes her sad that they no longer have the same values.

Schumacher told the women at the protest that they grew up with more rights than what his daughters now have.

“That’s a scary thing to think about,” he said. “We’re not against abortion. We would never have one, but it’s not my choice for you to make. Just because I wouldn’t make that choice, doesn’t mean I have the right to decide you should make that choice. That’s not up to me. It’s a scary world we’re living in. I don’t want to live in a world of regression for my daughters. I want to live in a world of progression.”

America became the country it is, Schumacher said, because the people held up morals and principles, and he felt it would take a lot more people than those who attended in Marshalltown to hold them up again.

“It’s going to be a long fight, but if you guys are in for the fight, I think the rest of us are in for it, too,” he said. “We can do it.”

Schumacher asked attendees if they were okay with someone who had been convicted of 34 felonies running the country. They responded with a resounding “No.”

“Are you guys going to stand for that? What are we going to do about it?” he asked. “Let’s not forget the rape. . . . Are we going to ignore it or are we going to see it for what it is? Are we going to push it under the rug like everything else, or are we going to call it like what it is?”

Contact Lana Bradstream at 641-753-6611 ext. 210 or lbradstream@timesrepublican.com.