Democratic presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke took questions from Iowa voters at a CNN town hall at Drake University this evening.
We’re wrapping up our live coverage, but you can scroll through the posts below to see how it unfolded.
In case you missed it, here are the key things we learned:
Democratic presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke announced tonight that he’s launching a “Town Hall for America” campaign for voters with questions for him.
O’Rourke, who has held 154 town halls, said he’s giving everyone who hasn’t been able to attend them an opportunity to ask him questions.
Voters can go to his website (betoorourke.com) to ask him questions.
Watch:
Beto O’Rourke, asked why he doesn’t favor Medicare for All, said patients who need medical assistance “don’t have time for us to get to the perfect solution.”
He went on to say that lawmakers must work to fix the system that is currently in place. O’Rourke said he supports the “Medicare for America” plan.
Here’s why:
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An audience member, alluding to instances when President Trump has not outright condemned acts of violence, just asked Beto O’Rourke how he would stand up to hate in America.
“The current administration has demonstrated to me an uncomfortable tolerance towards hate and bigotry in the country. There have been situations where the President could have categorically denounced hateful acts but did nothing,” James Stevens said.
Here’s part of O’Rourke’s answer:
Watch below:
Beto O’Rourke defended voting in the House in 2015 to lift the United States’ ban on crude oil exports Tuesday night, saying he is “happy with that vote” to reverse a 40-year-old restriction.
“Look, I drove here tonight in a Dodge Grand Caravan that is burning gasoline,” the former Texas congressman said in a CNN town hall, while noting he’d been endorsed by the League of Conservation Voters in his Senate run last year and had a near-perfect voting record with the environmental group.
He continued:
He touted his climate change plan and said he wants the United States to “transition totally off fossil fuel to renewable energy.”
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Beto O’Rouke suggested taking legal action against large drug companies as a part of tackling the opioid crisis in the US.
He said that while it’s crucial to help Americans with opioid addictions find treatment, it’s also important to hold some companies, such as Oxycotin maker Purdue Pharma, accountable.
O’Rourke began by saying this, before he was cut off by audience applause: “Let’s also acknowledge this: That without consequences or justice for how this happened, for corporations like Purdue Pharma that marketed these opioids – ”
Then, he continued:
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Beto O’Rourke briefly worked as a live-in nanny for a family in New York City.
The former Texas congressman said he took on the job after graduating college.
“So I, after college I was trying to live in the city, trying to live in New York, and I was working full time but I still didn’t have enough money to pay the rent,” O’Rourke said.
The family, he said, made an offer he couldn’t refuse.
O’Rourke agreed to watch their children after school and on weekends, walk them to school and make them breakfast in exchange for an apartment above theirs.
“Great deal. And so I took them up on that, and a great experience early on,” he said.
Watch more:
Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke called for an immigration overhaul that would include giving “DREAMers” citizenship creating a path to citizenship for other undocumented immigrants currently in the United States.
“Let’s do this together, and let’s not do it as Democrats or independents or Republicans, but let’s do it as Americans: Let’s rewrite our immigration laws in our own image,” O’Rourke said in a CNN town hall Tuesday night.
He criticized President Donald Trump’s family separation policy, saying he would “never again separate another family when they come here at their most vulnerable and desperate moment.”
O’Rourke sharply criticized Trump for seeking to cut off $500 million in U.S. aid to the Northern Triangle – a region that encompasses El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, where many asylum seekers have fled violence.
“He wants to cut that. I would double it, and I would focus it on violence prevention so that no mother has to make that god-awful decision of sending her child on that 2,000-mile trek,” O’Rourke said. “That’s the wisest, best use of our resources in this hemisphere.”
O’Rourke said that as an El Paso resident, he’s “lived this experience” and has “a powerful story to tell” about the positive contributions of immigrants.
Watch below:
Beto O’Rourke, asked about what he’d do to stop gun violence and school shootings, said his 8-year-old son recently went through an active shooter drill.
“He talked about his teacher huddling Henry and his classmates into a closet and resisting the temptation to open the door when someone impersonating an active shooter — to get them ready — begins to knock on it,” he said.
O’Rourke then laid out some of the actions he’d take to curb gun violence:
Hear his answer:
Former congressman Beto O’Rourke vowed to join women in fighting for their reproductive rights.
“For so long, women have been leading this fight, shouldering the burden of making sure that their reproductive rights are protected. It is time all of us join them in this fight,” he said.
O’Rourke then laid out his plan to ensure women’s reproductive rights are protected if he’s elected president.
This is his plan:
Why this matters: Last week, Alabama enacted the strictest abortion law in the country. It would make abortion illegal in virtually all cases, including cases of rape and incest. And Georgia is one of the latest states to enact a so-called “heartbeat law,” meaning virtually all abortions are illegal once a heartbeat is detected.
More than 50 organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, participated today in #StopTheBans protests nationwide aimed at stopping a wave of other proposed anti-abortion legislation.
Watch more:
Cris Wildermuth, an associate professor at Drake University, asked Democratic presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke what his stance is on beginning impeachment proceedings against President Trump.
O’Rourke added that it’s “not something that I take lightly.”
“It is an incredibly serious, sober decision to make as a country,” he said.
O’Rourke cited the White Houses’s refusal to comply with congressional subpoenas and Attorney General William Barr’s failure to show up at a House hearing in his rationale for calling for impeachment proceedings.
O’Rourke has previously called for Trump’s impeachment. He said Tuesday that Democrats should not worry – as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said – that doing so could energize Trump’s base ahead of the 2020 election.
He said Democrats should “look past those short-term consequences” and focus on obtaining documents and evidence. The only way to do so, he said is, to “compel the testimony, the furnishing of those documents, through impeachment proceedings.”
At stake, O’Rourke said, are “very sanctity of the ballot box and the very future of the world’s greatest democracy.”
“If we do nothing because we are afraid of the polls or the politics, or the repercussions in the next election, we will set a precedent that, in fact, some people, because of the position of power and public trust that they hold are above the law,” he said.
Watch more:
Democratic presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke recently livestreamed his haircut. The move drew some criticism.
Tonight he explained why he did that.
Here’s what he said:
Watch below:
Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke will soon take the stage at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.
Troy Price, chair of the Iowa Democratic Party, spoke directly to voters moments before the town hall about the importance of the 2020 presidential election.
The audience members are likely caucus voters, meaning they identify as Independents or Democrats.
Beto O’Rourke met with voters and toured areas damaged by flood ahead of tonight’s town hall in Des Moines.
On Monday, he began his trip by touring flood damage in Davenport, then hosted a town hall there later that night.
O’Rourke met with Iowans again today at a town hall in Tipton.
The former Texas congressman has held 154 town halls in venues like coffee shops, diners and houses since launching his presidential bid in March. He’ll hold his first one staged for national television today.
Democratic presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke will appear tonight at Sheslow Auditorium in Des Moines, Iowa.
Located on the campus of Drake University, the auditorium, which was renovated in 1992, holds 775 seats, according the school’s website. It’s also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
During renovations, workers restored the auditorium’s more than 50 stained glass windows and applied 35 tons of plaster to the ceiling by hand, according to the website.
What happened here today: Drake University’s mascot, Griff the bulldog, stopped by the auditorium earlier today to meet with O’Rourke and CNN’s Dana Bash, who is moderating the town hall.
Here’s a look:
Former congressman Beto O’Rourke, after an early burst of momentum, is dealing with middling polling numbers in a crowded field of Democratic candidates seeking to take on President Trump next year.
The Texas Democrat — whose national profile raised during his failed 2018 Senate bid against Republican Ted Cruz — has now been officially campaigning on the 2020 trail for two months.
Here’s what else you should know about O’Rourke:
Beto O’Rourke released his plan earlier this month to tackle climate change in his first major policy proposal as a 2020 candidate.
Here’s what he wants to do:
Why this matters: Climate change has become a major issue for 2020 Democrats in the wake of a stark 2018 report from the global scientific authority that says governments around the world must take “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society” to avoid disastrous levels of global warming. The planet has only until 2030 to stem catastrophic climate change, the report, issued by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, warns.
Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke will address a host of issues at a CNN town hall tonight.
CNN’s Dana Bash will moderate the town hall from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.
O’Rourke, a former Texas congressman who lost a high-profile Senate race to incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz last year, announced his long-anticipated presidential campaign in March.
He enjoyed a strong launch, raising $6.1 million on his first day in the race and calling for the national hierarchy “to be broken apart” at his first rally in his hometown of El Paso.
But a CNN poll last month of Democratic or Democratic-leaning independent voters shows O’Rourke in fifth place with 6% — a drop from 13% in the previous poll.
After facing criticism for having been found to accept the second highest number of campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry, O’Rourke signed a pledge earlier this month to reject oil and gas executives’ donations on top of continuing his Senate race policy of not accepting donations from outside groups and super PACs. He also unveiled a plan to combat climate change that same week that would invest $5 trillion in infrastructure and innovation projects over 10 years with the goal of net-zero emissions by 2050.
O’Rourke has also strategically endorsed some more progressive initiatives, such as a Medicare expansion plan that would provide universal coverage without the elimination of private insurance central to the far-left Medicare-for-all plan.
