Ramaswamy Protests Farmland Seizures for CO2 Pipelines at Iowa Capitol

DES MOINES, Iowa Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy stood beside former Iowa representative Steve King, who was taken down in the GOP primary by Rep. Randy Feenstra (R-Iowa) after a New York Times article alleged Mr. King had defended white nationalism. Both men were holding their hands over their hearts as they listened to the U.S. national anthem.

Last May, Mr. King in comments to The Epoch Times praised Mr. Ramaswamy, saying that he was “blazing a clear and bold trail for conservatism.” At the time, he had not thrown his support behind any candidate.

Now, though, he has endorsed the anti-woke entrepreneur. Mr. Ramaswamy has made a point of standing by him despite criticism from the legacy press.

“The fact that The New York Times says that Steve King said something a few years ago doesn’t make it true. I’ve gotten to know Steve well and trust him far more than the MSM [mainstream media],” Mr. Ramaswamy, who is of Indian descent, wrote on X on Jan. 2.

“I made a pledge to Steve, and I kept it at the fourth Republican presidential debate, talking about this issue,” Mr. Ramaswamy said at the Capitol.

he former congressman was among those who spoke at a Jan. 10 rally at the Capitol against the use of eminent domain for Summit Carbon Solutions’ proposed carbon dioxide pipeline. Legal battles over the approval of its network of carbon capture pipelines are playing out throughout the Midwest, including in North Dakota.

Mr. King, still an influential political figure despite his exile from public office, has been a vocal local critic of the plans.

“It’s all driven by tax dollars and carbon credits,” he told The Epoch Times in May.

What’s the pipeline project about?

Summit has proposed building a pipeline across Iowa and four other states that would transport liquefied carbon dioxide emissions from about 30 ethanol plants to North Dakota for sequestration deep underground. The roughly 2,000-mile pipeline also would run through South Dakota and into Minnesota and Nebraska.

Summit, a spinoff from Iowa entrepreneur Bruce Rastetter’s Summit Agricultural Group, has said the carbon capture pipeline is critical to helping ethanol remain marketable as the nation seeks to reduce the greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. Iowa is the largest U.S. producer of ethanol, which absorbs half the state’s also-U.S.-leading corn crop. Summit would be in line for billions of dollars in federal tax incentives for carbon dioxide sequestration.

Wolf Carbon Solutions also proposes to build a carbon capture pipeline in Iowa, but a third company, Navigator CO2 Ventures, dropped its bid to build a pipeline last month after hitting several regulatory hurdles.