In a visit to Iowa Tuesday, President Donald Trump urged Republican voters to turn out for the midterms to continue advancing GOP priorities.
In his speech, Trump turned his focus to the economy. Speaking to hundreds of supporters at the Horizon Events Center in Clive, he highlighted provisions in the massive tax and spending law passed last year and proclaimed his support for farmers and ethanol producers, both through tariffs and through promises to support ethanol production.
The president's visit comes as Iowa heads into eventful midterm elections later this fall. Iowa’s races for governor and a U.S Senate seat are open, and half of the U.S. House races in the state are currently ranked “toss-ups” by the Cook Political Report.
Trump made his speech in Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District, one of those toss-up races, where incumbent Republican Rep. Zach Nunn is running for his third term. Nunn is challenged by Democratic state Sen. Sarah Trone Garriott.
“If we lose the midterms, you'll lose so many of the things that we're talking about, so many of the assets that we're talking about, so many of the tax cuts that we're talking about, and it would lead to very bad things,” Trump said.
Trump pointed to “No Tax on Tips” and “No Tax on Overtime” provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act as examples of how his administration is improving the economy for workers. The president last visited the state on July 3, 2025, the day before he signed the bill into a law.
He also touted tariffs as a way to make new trade deals to benefit farmers and threw his support behind E15, an ethanol gasoline blend pushed by agricultural industry leaders and Midwestern congressional members to help increase prices for corn growers and ethanol producers.
Last week, E15 was left out of a funding package that passed out of the U.S. House. Instead, the House is setting up a task force to consider the change by the end February. Trump said he trusts leaders in Congress to approve year-round E15 nationwide.
“I am trusting Speaker Mike Johnson, who's great, and Leader John Thune, who’s great — that's House and Senate — to find a deal that works,” Trump said. “For farmers, consumers and refiners — including small and mid-sized refiners — in other words, to get E15 approved. And they're working on it. They're very close to getting it done.”
Payments from an assistance program to help farmers struggling due to tariffs, high production costs and low prices also begin next month. Agricultural economists have said the funds from the Farmer Bridge Assistance Program will be helpful but insufficient to cover shortfalls farmers are facing.
Trump said money for the assistance program came from tariffs, but they come from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Commodity Credit Corporation fund. Congress replenished the fund with nearly $14 billion through the continuing resolution passed in November.
Trump called the economy “booming” and praised the CEO of John Deere, who was at the rally, for building two more plants — including an excavator factory in North Carolina — in response to tariffs, according to Trump.
“This has been the most dramatic one year turnaround of any country in history, in terms of the speed,” he said. “I really thought it would take us two or three years to do what we're doing.”
Trump said he’s also working to bring back “law and order” to the country. He claimed he lowered crime rates in cities like Washington, D.C., Memphis and New Orleans by taking “thousands of criminals” out of the states.
Noticeably absent from Trump’s speech was mention of the deaths of Renee Macklin Good and Alex Pretti, who were killed by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis this month.
The president also didn’t address protests in Minnesota or his agreement to consider reducing the number of immigration enforcement agents in the state. Trump’s speech took place four hours from the Twin Cities and three days after Pretti’s death.
“So you read much about Minnesota, where, unbeknownst to the public, we have brought down crime very substantially,” Trump said. “In Minnesota, we've taken out thousands of hard criminals, hardened, vicious, horrible criminals “
Trump also targeted Minnesota's Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, calling the country of her birth, Somalia, “a disaster.”
“It barely has a government. I don't think it does,” Trump said. “They’re good at one thing: pirates, but they don't do that anymore. You know why? Because they get the same treatment from us as the drug dealers get, boom, boom, boom.”
Protesters clog street outside Trump rally
As people inside the event center waited for Trump to arrive, protesters lined a street outside the venue that had been blocked off for demonstrators.
The crowd took over the parking lot of a neighboring Casey’s gas station. People stood on the gas pump barriers and a stack of firewood for sale. They held signs demanding the removal of immigration officers from Minneapolis and chanted “Justice for Pretti, Justice for Good.”
When an official motorcade drove past they booed and blew whistles.
Shirley Keenan from Des Moines said she is upset with how the Department of Homeland Security is treating people who are detained as part of the president’s immigration crackdown.
“I think he needs to have a heart and follow and follow the Constitution, quite frankly, and Congress needs to act as they are supposed to, as a third, equal branch of government,” Keenan said. “I sure hope that they take their job seriously, do the right thing and drastically decrease the budget for Homeland Security and require that ICE agents do not wear masks.”
Dennis Silver of Ankeny held a sign that said “ANF [America needs farmers] not ICE.” The 65-year-old said the protest outside the Trump rally was the first of his life.
“Stop the tariffs, stop the ICE deportations and the aggressiveness of ICE,” Silver said. “Where are all the jobs that he said he would create in America? You know, I know a lot of friends that have lost their jobs because of tariffs.”
Silver added that he's concerned about Trump's tariffs causing consumer prices to go up while weakening agricultural exports from Iowa.
