President Donald Trump arrives on Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Md., Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026, after returning from the World Economic Forum in Davos.(AP Photo/Luis M. Alvarez)
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)
President Donald Trump arrives on Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Md., Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026, after returning from the World Economic Forum in Davos.(AP Photo/Luis M. Alvarez)
LMA
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)
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 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’ , which morphed largely into a celebration of his major spending and tax cut package hours after 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.
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 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. and Republican U.S. Sen. 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 and , respectively.
Democrats hope , 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.
