President Donald Trump heads to Iowa on Thursday, looking to energize his base as he touts a financial-support plan to reassure farmers, a key constituency that has been hit hard by rising prices.

It’s another campaign trip to a reliably red state that has become surprisingly competitive. Trump won Iowa three times — carrying it by 13 points in 2024 — but this year several Republicans are in tight races.

Returning to Iowa for the first time in nearly 10 months, Trump will campaign, in part, for Rep. Ashley Hinson, the GOP Senate hopeful who is running to fill retiring Republican Sen. Joni Ernst’s seat. Hinson and her Democratic rival, state Rep. Josh Turek, are almost neck and neck in polling averages from MS NOW/FiftyPlusOne.

“There are a number of Senate seats in play that we did not expect to be in play,” said Whit Ayres, a veteran Republican pollster. “[Trump’s] record and his approach are likely to appeal much more to members of his base than they are to independent or swing voters.”

Thursday’s rally at Sioux Gateway Airport is the first of at least two planned visits to Iowa by the president in the final stretch of the midterms. The president’s campaign blitz in typically Republican strongholds reflects shifts in the political landscape in a midterm that initially favored the GOP.

“The problem right now is that people perceive that the economy is not better, and inflation has not only not come down, but it’s higher,” Ayres said.

A GOP strategist familiar with Republicans’ thinking in the midterms, granted anonymity to speak freely about internal strategies, told MS NOW the president’s visits to some of the reddest districts in states like Iowa in the final days of the campaign are part of a deliberate strategy to maximize turnout by loyal Trump voters in key races.

“Specifically, the 4th District, where we’re deploying him, is the heart of the base, the heart of Republican support,” the strategist said. “If we can churn out our base voters in that area, Democrats’ path to winning the state just shrinks dramatically.”

Seeking to address the financial hardships hitting major agricultural states like Iowa, the Trump administration has announced an $8 billion relief package for farmers and construction plans for a $15 billion steel plant in the state. The president himself has also touted new foreign trade deals to export American farm products and other efforts to boost farmers and ranchers.

But some farmers MS NOW spoke to say Trump’s trade deals have made little impact on their businesses as their operating costs have increased from rising diesel and fertilizer prices. And the president’s announcement that he would lower tariffs on ground beef from Argentina earlier this year came as a blow to the state’s cattle industry, with both Hinson and Turek calling the policy a bad idea.

Craig Moss, a fifth-generation cattle and hog farmer from Hull, about 50 miles north of Sioux City, told MS NOW the volatile cattle market had been “rough” in the past year, in part because of the president’s lifting of tariffs on Argentine ground beef.

“Trump makes a trade deal with Argentina, and then when he’s questioned about it by reporters, he says, ‘You don’t know anything about what’s going on over there,’” Moss said. “Well, sir, you don’t know anything about the cattle market.”

Moss said the current diesel price “kind of stinks,” adding that the ongoing Iran war was to blame. Still, Moss, who voted for Trump in the past, said he agreed with the president on most issues and did not regret voting for him before.

Julius Schaaf, a corn-and-soybean farmer of more than 40 years based in Fremont County, voted against Trump in past elections and said the current volatility in the farming industry was because of Trump’s trade policies. Schaaf criticized the administration as a “rude and difficult” trading partner.

“A lot of the people that supported him were farmers that have a lot of equity in their property, and they can weather a storm for a while,” Schaaf said. “But you talk to the young guys that are just getting started and trying to buy inputs and inputs have gone through the roof — they’re the ones that are really struggling.”

Vice President JD Vance addressed some of those concerns last month at a rally in the state, telling supporters that the Trump administration’s trade and tax policies have directly benefited farmers and blue-collar workers. He has also sought to show understanding of economic realities, acknowledging the high cost of gas and telling voters “we’re working on it.” Trump, for his part, has at times downplayed those concerns, calling the focus on affordability a “hoax” and insisting that prices would plummet once the Iran war ends.

Many Iowans across the political spectrum whom MS NOW spoke with agreed that their No. 1 concern was the cost of living. And while Trump’s performance got mixed reviews, they still had not decided how they would vote in the Senate and House races.

Tiffany, an Iowa voter who backed Trump in 2024, plans to vote in the midterm races but said she is currently undecided. Her top issue: the cost of living, she said, because “prices keep going up.”

“If you can’t afford to put gas in your car, how can you go to work to make money to put a roof over your head to put food on your table?” said Tiffany, who asked to go by her first name only. “You can only stretch your penny and your dollars so far until you can’t stretch it anymore.”

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Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, has reclaimed his title as the single biggest known political donor at the federal level, dropping more than $280 million over the summer to boost Republican candidates in this year’s midterm elections.

And his biggest mission so far: to boost Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in what’s become one of the most expensive contests this year, the Texas Senate race.

In September, the billionaire tech executive transferred a whopping $158 million into the GOP leadership-linked super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, in two installments. The first one totaled $75 million on Sept. 9, and then $85 million on Sept. 23, according to the group’s latest filing to the Federal Election Commission.

And a day after each of those contributions, SLF transferred the exact same amount of money to a pro-Ken Paxton super PAC called Texas PAC, their latest disclosures show.

Democrat James Talarico currently has a 3-point lead over Paxton, according to MS NOW’s polling data partner FiftyPlusOne, meaning this race is still a toss-up.

Musk’s eye-popping donations to SLF reportedly came on the heels of conversations among SLF and Musk’s political advisers about matching contributions to boost pro-Paxton efforts in the final stretch of the election. Earlier in August, Musk’s trust and SLF had donated $10 million and $5 million, respectively, to Lone Star Liberty PAC, another pro-Paxton super PAC. That’s according to the super PAC’s latest disclosure. The infusion of cash from Musk and SLF has allowed both Texas PAC and Lone Star Liberty PAC to dominate the Texas airwaves in the past month. In particular, Texas PAC has quickly become the top spender in what was an already expensive race.

Texas PAC has since burned through at least $132 million of the newly raised money on ads, postage and other efforts in support of Paxton and against his Democratic opponent, Talarico, according to FEC filings, with ad-tracking data showing an additional tens of millions of dollars’ worth of reserved airtime in the coming weeks.

Notably, during the long and contentious Texas Senate GOP primary, SLF had publicly campaigned against Paxton in an effort to protect incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, only for the six-term senator to lose to Paxton after President Donald Trump’s last-minute endorsement of the state’s embattled attorney general.

But SLF quickly pivoted in support of Paxton once he was nominated. Now the $158 million from Musk makes up well over half of SLF’s total fundraising in the third quarter of this year, though the money was immediately rerouted to the pro-Paxton super PAC. Still, SLF boasted a $155 million war chest entering October.

In all, the Texas Senate race has already drawn in more than $500 million just in ad spending on both sides of the aisle, according to data firm AdImpact.

But Texas, of course, isn’t Musk’s only interest.

In the last three months, Musk has also dropped a series of massive donations totaling $89 million into his own super PAC, dubbed America PAC, which has been spending tens of millions of dollars in support of Republicans in other key states like Ohio, Michigan, Iowa and Maine.

Musk also gave $20 million in early September to the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC linked to House Republican leadership, according to the group’s latest filing.

America PAC quickly spent more than $50 million in the last quarter, mainly on canvassing, research, consulting and ad spending, and entered October with just $12 million cash on hand.

According to FEC data, since 2025, Musk has poured at least $366 million into federal elections.

Other top Republican donors so far this cycle include Richard Uihlein, who has given a total of $130 million to various federal campaigns and groups. Miriam Adelson, another top spender, has given at least $70 million to various Republican causes, including $25 million to MAGA Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC.

The 2026 midterm cycle is on track to become one of the most expensive midterm elections in history, with FEC data showing more than $13.5 billion raised across candidates, PACs and party committees, and more than $10 billion spent just on ads, according to AdImpact.

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