Buttigieg returns to Iowa for veterans’ town hall amid talk of another White House bid

Pete Buttigieg returns to Iowa on Tuesday for an event focused on veterans, six years after he burst onto the national political stage with a strong run ahead of the state’s leadoff presidential caucuses.

Buttigieg, a former intelligence officer in the Navy Reserves who served in Afghanistan, will headline a town hall in Cedar Rapids sponsored by the Democratic political organization VoteVets, which is focusing on President Donald Trump’s cuts to federal agencies and how they affect veterans and military families.

While the 43-year-old former transportation secretary has not confirmed he will make a second White House run, he has tangled with Trump online and has spoken out about changes he wants to see in the Democratic Party.

Opposition to the Republican president “has to travel with a clearer picture of what we are actually for,” Buttigieg said during a recent interview with former Biden White House press secretary Jen Psaki on MSNBC.

“That needs to be as clear a picture as our response to the authoritarian tendencies of this administration,” he said. “We would not be in this situation if the government, the economy and the politics of our country were healthy. They’ve been unhealthy for a long time.”

Buttigieg finished atop the Iowa Democratic Party’s tallies in the glitch-plagued 2020 caucuses alongside Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, though The Associated Press did not call a winner given remaining concerns about whether the results as reported by the party are fully accurate.

Buttigieg, a former South Bend, Indiana, mayor who moved with his husband and twins to Michigan, turned down runs for his adoptive state’s open U.S. Senate and governor’s races. His aides insist his travel to Iowa is intended to meet people and hear their concerns, not just as an exercise to set up a presidential bid.

Still, a number of other potential 2028 contenders are traveling the country in the early days of the second Trump administration.

Sanders and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s recent joint rallies have drawn large crowds around the country, including in Republican-led Western states. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker recently called for mass mobilization of Democrats at a speech in New Hampshire, and Govs. Wes Moore of Maryland and Tim Walz of Minnesota plan stops in South Carolina at the end of May.