Hello and welcome to Iowa This Week, a public affairs program produced by the Cedar Basin Media radio stations operated in eastern Iowa.
Tim Harwood is away this week.
Hello, I'm Jeff Stein.
Each month, Iowa Third District Congressman Zach Nunn joins me on News Talk 1540 KXEL.
This conversation was recorded Thursday afternoon when the congressman called in from Washington, D.C.
Jeff, thanks so much.
We are getting ready to head on a plane back to Iowa.
We just had one of our winningest weeks yet in Washington by getting some major pieces of legislation through and helping folks in Iowa with ideas that Iowans send us to DC to get done.
Well let's talk first of all about something called the Guard Act because it seems every time you turn around there's a new way that fraudsters are trying to take advantage of unsuspecting folks of any age but certainly those in the more senior category and I'm falling right into that.
So what have you done with this piece of legislation to help me and others out?
Well, you know, Jeff, here's the reality.
This is impacting everybody, particularly our seniors, but fraud and scams coming after folks, 96 billion dollars loss from Iowa just last year.
And here's the reality.
You know, I'll tell you the story of somebody from our district.
He got involved with somebody he met online.
He was an older retired farmer and he met a Russian model on Instagram.
And over the course of a couple of months here, that person
earned his trust he truly believe they have a friendship uh... and he ended up giving over a million dollars which was an entire farm and life savings and as a result he informed the fb i the fb i said they look into it but during that time he got hit by a secondary scam because he had been poached uh... group out of southeast asia found out he had cash in his farmhouse they've been effectively three mercenaries from new york city who drove all the way to iowa overnight
uh... and try to steal the money from him he was smart he hit his barn they fired shots the barn dory called the police and uh... you know huge credit to share don philips down there in wopelow and his deputies they were able to get one out of the three but the larger scale perpetrators the real apparatus behind this got away scott free with uh... million plus dollars now this isn't just him this is american kind of across the board here seniors are particularly vulnerable to the targeting to the using everything from these
Romance schemes to AI enabled voice and video that makes you think that you know a relative a friend a loved one's calling or they're doing just old-fashioned scam calling and they're very very successful 200 billion dollars bled out of America last year and You know Jeff just to put that in perspective That's more than the entire budget for the US Army gone overseas Largely to Chinese backed Russian backed scam artists and so here's what we've done
We've led the charge in a bipartisan way on something called the Guard Act.
It actually came as a great idea from local law enforcement in Iowa when I went and talked to them at one of our, you know, 500 listening sessions and they said, we've got to have the tools here locally.
We can't just depend on calling FBI and hoping that maybe in a couple of years they'll get back to us and say we broke the case.
So what we did is we sat down with Iowa sheriffs, Iowa investigators and asked them, what did they actually need to be able to help fight against these international scammers?
And they told me, you know, they're up against 21st century criminals with tools built for something, you know, 50 years old.
So what the Guard Act does is it moves forward real tools to get local law enforcement into the same training as FBI agents.
It gives them the same tools as those who would be using things like
Blockchain and crypto tracing all things that seem pretty sci-fi cutting edge to us now if that's the way the You know thief is going to operate we got to make sure our law enforcement Locally has the same tools as what our federal agents are doing and so this will help our local law enforcement not just have to pass a case file off It's going to help them actually fight crime on the front end of this it also makes sure that our banks our credit unions our local businesses when they see these things happening to one member of our community
It's probably happening to a lot of members of our community.
And people should not be afraid of saying, like, I have been taken advantage of.
Go to law enforcement.
Go to your lending institution before you take out even $500 and put it into a crypto ATM.
Talk to somebody and say, hey, is this legitimate?
Should I be doing this?
If we could help this farmer before he made a $1 million wire transfer to Russia, we could have helped him save his entire life savings.
And FBI would not still be looking into the case.
It is easy for folks who hear you tell that story to say, well, he made a mistake, he wasn't vigilant, et cetera.
But the fact of the matter is, we're Iowa nice.
When people call us on the phone, we still think they must know us, right?
I mean, in the old days, you didn't have spoof calls.
And if the phone rang, the landline there in the kitchen at home,
people were nice because they assumed it was someone they knew.
And I don't think it matters what age you are.
You can be taken in by this stuff.
Obviously we can tell people to be careful, but come on, you're a guy.
You got pride in Iowa.
You're going to be hard pressed to admit you made a mistake.
And if law enforcement has the tools, that might help these folks come out of the shadows.
Jeff, you are so right.
And I think we all recognize
The sophistication for these criminals has advanced.
They've got artificial intelligence waste that sounds maybe like a family member who needs help.
If you could just give them $200 to help them get through the next month, or maybe it's a bank that you know and trust, calling from a number that looks like your bank saying, hey, we need to, you got a deposit here, we need a deposit, can you confirm your routing number?
Those are the kinds of things that we want to be able to help folks who are sophisticated and folks who are trusting, make sure they're not taken advantage of.
Helping local law enforcement have these tools is a great first step.
It seems simplistic to say, well, why didn't the locals have it all along?
But there's a jurisdictional disconnect sometimes between federal and state and local.
And this at least gives them the encouragement
the permission, if you will, to share these techniques and tools.
Somebody just has to push these folks together sometimes, not because that they didn't think of it, but they're following their own rules and regulations.
You're absolutely right.
And I think that there needs to be a strategic effort to be able to go after these fraudsters as well.
i am proud to say we're leading that bill is called the traps act and it just passed unanimously through financial services in congress there's a pathway to get us to the president's desk and says how do we use our intelligence collection apparatus the department of justice fb i and our foreign partners to shut these down because tragically there's a situation as we just saw this month
the shutting down of a, you know, fraud center in Southeast Asia that had several hundred people being used as slave labor.
They took their passports, they threatened their families, and they said, if you don't make your quota of getting this much money out of the United States, we'll beat your family on this stuff.
So there's victims on both ends of this, and largely these operations require not only federal partnership with our local law enforcement,
They're tied directly back to China.
This is a large counter-espionage operation.
We've been one of the hardest fighters against China here.
And we're going to hold these folks accountable.
This legislation, both the Guard Act and the Traps Act, have moved forward in an overwhelmingly bipartisan way.
We want to make sure folks at home are protected.
A lot of folks are talking about water quality in the state, certainly in your district and that Des Moines water basin.
And there was some action taken in Congress on that score as well.
Well I think we should all be concerned about not only the quality of our water but keeping our water clean and being able to address things like flood and drought to help both our livestock and our crops be successful.
You know clean water and a strong farm economy I think go hand in hand and all rivers at some point flow through not only our community but ultimately flow through the third district here that I get the privilege of representing
So we have been pushing really hard for something called WERDA or the Water Resource Development Act.
I'm proud to say we were able to get it done and we were able to pass it.
I included four key components in this.
The first is we are accelerating a 125 acre wetland project and this helps keep sediment and phosphorus out of nearly 80,000 Iowans drinking water as its source base, really driving down those pollutants that can be harmful to folks if we don't have a dedicated watershed.
The other areas where we're tackling sediment buildup and protecting Central Iowa's long-term water supply, we're advancing two watershed projects to reduce flood, as well as strengthen our waterways, and we're doing waterway improvements.
Those are four tangibles.
I think these are huge wins because Iowa's water challenge is
are not of one-size-fits-all solution.
And it really does take a whole nation approach to fix our drinking water quality to address flooding, nitrate levels, and long-term water supply, which is another reason we've been very aggressive throughout the entire year here on leading options to make that a reality.
In just the last few months, we invested half a million dollars and provided a water monitoring system for every county, all 21 in the third district, to help lower nitrates.
We passed a state-focused clean water pilot program to improve the quality, which really puts Iowans in the driver's seat here, not a federal government.
And we secured a provision in this year's Farm Bill, which I'm proud to say Nellie is now past the House, but is moving forward in the Senate.
to strengthen flood response and improve our water resilience on top of the three million dollars we put into the Des Moines River that runs right through Des Moines all the way down through Iowa in our icon water trails to improve not only water quality but runoff and erosion as well.
So these are real areas on how we've tackled water challenges community by community Iowa led solutions with real federal dollars to get results.
I was struck by the fact not that you voted
in favor of a war powers resolution in the House.
Not that Congresswoman Miller Meeks also voted in favor of it, and this is nothing about the other members of our delegation.
The fact that the two members of our delegation who wore the uniform cast this vote was of some interest to me, and I'm sure to the audience, if you wouldn't mind indicating your position on that topic.
You issued a very clear statement, but for those who did not see it.
I think it's very clear here that we address the threat of Iran and that Congress have a responsibility to provide both oversight and support to any president in an ongoing conflict like this, particularly now that peace negotiations have clearly failed.
Here's why it's so important to me, Jeff.
Look, Iowa has paid a disproportionately high price in this conflict.
Sergeant Declan Cody,
Major Jeffrey O'Brien, Chief Master or Chief Warren Sergeant Marsden, they were all from my district.
They lost their life in the opening days of this conflict.
And I still feel as strong on today as I did on day one that we can never allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.
That Iran cannot be the number one sponsor of terrorism.
As they took the lives of Sergeant Howard and Sergeant Torres Tovar, both Iowans who lost their life in December because of Iranian-backed proxies.
That's why I voted against
Tying the president's hands at the negotiating table while the Democratic Party has just attempted again and again to run away from the situation with no responsibility This week the situation is different than where we have been this summer We know this much is true if the president is going to be involved in ongoing kinetic operations I'm speaking from a guy who spent you know 20 years flying combat operations in the Middle East both in Iraq and Afghanistan I do not want to see us fall into
a forever war because we do not have a battle plan.
Here's what I know.
George Washington, even in the darkest days of the revolution, still took time to write letters to Congress in Philadelphia while he was battling the British in New York to say, these are the supplies I need.
This is my plan ahead.
These are my recruitment numbers.
I think the same should be asked of any president that they inform Congress of what they need, and Congress have skin in the game here in directing our national security.
So this is why we have passed a war powers resolution that allows the president the ability to strike back against Iran if there is an imminent threat, if there is a nuclear weapon, if there is terrorism, if they are taking a pot shot at U.S.
forces in the region.
But at the same time, it says that Congress has a responsibility to make sure we're involved in any action going forward.
It gives the president 60 days to come up with a battle plan.
It also allows Congress the responsibility to take care of the men and women in uniform on the front line, ensuring they've got the defensive weapons they need.
That's surface to air missiles.
That's making sure that we've got the evacuation equipment, that we've got enough bullets, that we've got enough body armor to make sure folks are not being hurt, and candidly,
We're also not taking our eyes off the real threat that is also coming from places like China and domestic terrorism here.
So, that said, I want to continue to work with the president, but I will hold a very high bar for any president putting American forces into conflict.
I will buck my own party if they don't believe the same, and I'll hold Democrats accountable who simply want to run away from this situation in the hopes that terrorism doesn't end up on our shores.
Congressman Zach Nunn, Republican 3rd District of Iowa.
A wide variety of topics in this monthly conversation as per custom.
Safe travel back to the state and we'll connect again sooner than later.
Brothers, thanks so much, Jeff.
We'll talk very soon.
Republican Zach Nunn represents Iowa's 3rd District in Congress.
That's Central and South Central Iowa, including the Des Moines metro area.
We spoke on Thursday afternoon.
Iowa This Week is a public affairs program produced by the Cedar Basin Media radio stations operated in eastern Iowa.
Tim Harwood will be back next week.
Have a good weekend.
I'm Jeff Stein.
