The woman who prompted Ernst’s ‘We’re all going to die’ remark is running for Iowa House

The woman who told Sen. Joni Ernst that “people will die” if she votes to cut Medicaid said the senator’s mock apology a day later was “deeply insensitive” toward people who could lose health care.

India May of Charles City is a registered nurse, a county death investigator, and a library director in Northeast Iowa.

She’s been advocating for progressive causes like disability rights, rural health care, and education since she was a child. So she didn’t expect Ernst to agree with her at the May 30 town hall at Aplington-Parkersburg High School in Parkersburg.

But as Ernst tried telling the crowd that “no one” except undocumented immigrants would lose Medicaid, May and others in the crowd pushed back. (Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for Medicaid except in emergency situations.)

“We were all saying, ‘That’s a lie, that’s a lie,'” May recalled. “And she started to respond back and forth, and I said, ‘People will die,’ and she responded directly to me.”

May said Ernst’s response—”Well, we are all going to die”—disappointed her, but didn’t surprise her, “considering the number of egregious things that she said during that town hall.”

She was surprised, she said, by Ernst’s follow-up “apology” the day after, where Ernst tried to claim she was clarifying that everyone will eventually die, that she was glad she didn’t mention the Tooth Fairy, and tried to recruit people into Christianity.

“I had no idea that she would be capable of being so deeply insensitive and almost tone deaf towards the number of people who will be impacted by this,” May said. “It will have direct harm leading to illness and death for people, and I couldn’t believe that she would dismiss it as fantasy. And then to make some strange ploy about Jesus, when we know that Christians do not follow any sort of doctrine that would say ‘take away health care from the needy’—it was  very disrespectful.”

Inspired to run

It wasn’t Ernst’s comments that inspired May to run for office, however. It was a combination of budget cuts in her county, and her Republican Rep. Charley Thomson’s comments and actions, that solidified her decision a few weeks ago to run for Thomson’s seat.

“I started to see these resources dwindling in my county where I work—it was 25% of the public health budget that had to be cut,” she said. “It seemed that the county supervisors’ hands were tied by state policy, and I wanted to do more to help.”

Beyond that, May said Thomson had spread rumors about libraries turning children gay during debate on a bill that would have banned “obscene” books in public libraries like hers—”I was so thrown for a loop,” she said—as well as his demands that an immigrant rights nonprofit turn over information to him.

May said, if she’s elected in his place, she would protect existing programs like Area Education Agencies, Medicaid, Medicare, and the Veterans Administration.

“We here in Iowa are facing a bit of a crisis when it comes to health care, and it doesn’t get a lot of attention,” May said. “Only one third of our counties have labor and delivery units for our mothers and babies, and we have some of the worst mental health care in the United States … I’ve seen firsthand the danger that it can cause.”

She said she would also support advocacy groups that have been “rocking and rolling to take care of the people who need it the most,” especially amid state and federal cuts to those programs.

“We’re strong, we’re tough and we care about each other,” she said. “I hope we can take care of each other if policy fails us. But I would like to help make sure that policy doesn’t continue to fail us.”

May’s campaign website is up at mayforiowa.com, and she also runs the TikTok account for the Iowa chapter of Progressive Democrats of America. That group is working to coordinate the Charles City No Kings protest at 6 p.m. on June 14 at the Charles City Arts Center.

“And I’d love to give a shout out to the person who alerted me to Joni’s apology video, and that would be Leila Staton; she is running for House as well, and she’s a dear friend,” May said.

Watch the full interview with May on the Cornhole Champions podcast, which you can find on Substack, Iowa Starting Line’s YouTube page, or wherever you get your podcasts.