Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez to hold climate summit in Iowa

Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) are slated to hold rallies and a summit in Iowa next week focused on climate change. 

The two progressives will hold climate change rallies in Council Bluffs and Coralville next Friday and Saturday nights and a summit in Des Moines on Saturday afternoon, Sanders’s campaign announced.

{mosads}This will be Ocasio-Cortez’s first trip to Iowa with Sanders since she endorsed him last month.

Both lawmakers have been vocal proponents of the Green New Deal, an expansive legislative package to tackle climate change. The issue has emerged as a chief policy focus for several of the 2020 Democratic contenders.

The lawmakers have forged an alliance as Sanders seeks to shore up support in the Democratic race, with the pair sharing similar views on a litany of policies from health care to education to workers’ rights.

“It wasn’t until I heard of a man by the name of Bernie Sanders that I began to question and assert and recognize my inherent value as a human being that deserves health care, housing, education and a living wage,” Ocasio-Cortez said during a rally with Sanders in the New York last month that was attended by more than 25,000 people.

The rising Democratic star’s endorsement offered Sanders’s campaign a jolt at a much-needed moment in the race after the Vermont senator suffered a heart attack earlier in the month that temporarily forced him off the campaign trail.