Trump to visit Iowa in an effort to focus on affordability amid fallout
from Minneapolis shooting
[January 27, 2026]
By SEUNG MIN KIM and HANNAH FINGERHUT
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — President Donald Trump is headed to Iowa on
Tuesday as part of the White House’s midterm-year pivot toward
affordability, even as his administration remains mired in the fallout
in Minneapolis over a second fatal shooting by federal immigration
officers this month.
While in Iowa, the president will make a stop at a local business and
then deliver a speech on affordability, White House press secretary
Karoline Leavitt said. The remarks will be at the Horizon Events Center
in Clive, a suburb of Des Moines.
The trip will also highlight energy policy, White House chief of staff
Susie Wiles said last week. It’s part of the White House’s strategy to
have Trump travel out of Washington once a week ahead of the midterm
elections to focus on affordability issues facing everyday Americans —
an effort that keeps getting diverted by crisis.
The latest comes as the Trump administration is grappling with the
weekend shooting death of Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse killed by federal
agents in the neighboring state of Minnesota. Even as some top
administration officials moved quickly to malign Pretti, the White House
said Monday that Trump was waiting until an investigation into the
shooting was complete.
Trump was last in Iowa ahead of the July 4 holiday to kick off the
United States’ upcoming 250th anniversary, which morphed largely into a
celebration of his major spending and tax cut package hours after
Congress had approved it.
Republicans are hoping that Trump’s visit to the state Tuesday draws
focus back to that tax bill, which will be a key part of the GOP’s pitch
as they ask voters to keep them in power in November.
“I invited President Trump back to Iowa to highlight the real progress
we’ve made: delivering tax relief for working families, securing the
border, and growing our economy,” Rep. Zach Nunn, R-Iowa, said in a
statement in advance of his trip. “Now we’ve got to keep that momentum
going and pass my affordable housing bill, deliver for Iowa’s energy
producers, and bring down costs for working families.”
Trump’s affordability tour has taken him to Michigan, Pennsylvania and
North Carolina as the White House tries to marshal the president’s
political power to appeal to voters in key swing states.
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President Donald Trump speaks with reporters aboard Air Force One
after leaving the World Economic Forum in Davos for Washington,
Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
But his penchant for going off-script has sometimes taken the focus
off cost-of-living issues and his administration’s plans for how to
combat it. In Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, Trump insisted that
inflation was no longer a problem and that Democrats were using the
term affordability as a “hoax” to hurt him. At that same event,
Trump also griped that immigrants arriving to the U.S. from “filthy”
countries got more attention than his pledges to fight inflation.
Although it was a swing state just a little more than a decade ago,
Iowa in recent years has been reliably Republican in national and
statewide elections. Trump won Iowa by 13 percentage points in 2024.
Still, two of Iowa’s four congressional districts have been among
the most competitive in the country and are expected to be again in
this year’s midterm elections. Trump already has endorsed Republican
Reps. Nunn and Mariannette Miller-Meeks. Democrats, who landed three
of Iowa's four House seats in the 2018 midterm elections during
Trump’s first term, see a prime opportunity to unseat Iowa
incumbents.
This election will be the first since 1968 with open seats for both
governor and U.S. senator at the top of the ticket after Republican
Gov. Kim Reynolds and Republican U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst opted out of
reelection bids. The political shakeups have rippled throughout the
state, with Republican Reps. Randy Feenstra and Ashley Hinson
seeking new offices for governor and U.S. senator, respectively.
Democrats hope Rob Sand, the lone Democrat in statewide office who
is running for governor, will make the entire state more competitive
with his appeal to moderate and conservative voters and his $13
million in cash on hand.
___
Kim reported from Washington.
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