Trump is on his way to losing Iowa

We’re nigh onto 100 days since Donald Trump swore on the Bible, and he already has done enough political damage to give an opening to the downtrodden opposition in Iowa.

Stocks and pension plans are sliding, on a good day sideways. Tariffs are knocking out pork and soy export markets. Anxiety grows over secret arrests and dark prison sites for immigrants. Bird flu workers get fired from the USDA while egg prices are a fright. Trump is going underwater and dragging the Republican brand with him.

He has a matter of weeks to turn things around before store shelves go empty. The big box retailers warned him in a meeting: This trade war business is bad business.

People are protesting across the country. Not in Storm Lake, but in Republican-leaning Davenport anyhow. And in Salt Lake City. Deep red Idaho. The protests give credence to the polls and to the hunch that Republicans are going to have huge problems in the 2026 midterms.

They’re lining up to run against Sen. Joni Ernst, who begs patience to see how these tariffs work out. Gov. Kim Reynolds will not seek re-election, steeped in unpopularity. State Auditor Rob Sand has a ton of money and apparently a firm intention to spend it on running for governor. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is targeting three of our four congressional races.

Iowa is a Republican state but …

Rep. Randy Feenstra doesn’t dare come around for a town hall meeting to defend Elon Musk scouring your Social Security account. Sen. Chuck Grassley got his ears boxed at town halls — Hampton, Northwood and Mount Pleasant are not exactly havens for the Woke, and the folks certainly were not paid to attend as Musk suggests. They are worried about Medicaid funding. They believe in due process, and that the Supreme Court is supreme. To his credit, Grassley showed up for the razzing.

It was not just Democrats in Salt Lake City or Boise, either, or the other red places where thousands spend Saturdays marching.

Supply chains will be permanently damaged within a couple weeks unless we find a way out off the escalator with China. We need rare earth minerals, among other crucial materials that China controls. We are fast losing soy markets to Brazil. China was prepared for a second Trump iteration. It just cancelled shipments of 12 million metric tons of US pork. Trade circuits have been rewired. It’s already weighing on commodity markets. Trump will send big welfare checks to farmers but it might not be enough. Meatpacking workers on shorter hours will get no relief and they know it.

Musk is finding out the hard way what using a chain saw on the social safety net will do. He has been called back to the corporate office in Texas after his DOGE antics took the buzz off Tesla’s sales and stock price.

What a freak show.

The public is having its say, and it doesn’t like what it sees 100 days in. The die is being cast for the election 18 months out. Soon there will be no opportunity for correction. The US House is probably already lost for Speaker Mike Johnson and Co. Trump’s coattails will not help if the Democrats are able to organize their Senate ambitions.

Odds are that Ernst prevails. Iowans prefer incumbents. Going in, you have to assume a Republican edge in an open race for governor given the strong GOP advantage in voter registration. You would think that Rep. Ashley Hinson, R-Marion, should be able to hold on in the Second District. Not if you can’t afford a cell phone built on materials mined in China. Not if your 401K disappears. Not if you miss a Social Security payment because Musk screwed it up.

Trump needs some big, beautiful deals fast to hope for MAGA survival. He is causing lots of pain with no gain to show. China won’t pull his fat from the fire.

We’ll never get back that soybean or pork trade where we had it. Trump blew it. He said farmers will learn to get happy after losing markets they cultivated for 50 years.

Normal people are starting to smell the BS. They know that whacking medical research funding at the University of Iowa is lunacy. They worry about more rural nursing homes closing for lack of Medicaid funding. Deep down, they know that civil liberties are burning in the dumpster. The governor of North Dakota, a Republican for sure, just vetoed a school book ban that Kim Reynolds embraced.

A lot of us are anxious about these things, and not just snowflakes. The meanness-craziness-foolishness is turning people off. Everything has gone way too far. With all this winning that MAGA is doing for Iowa, we just might end up with a Democrat for governor. Stranger things have happened.

Art Cullen is the editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in Northwest Iowa, where this column appeared. For more columns and editorials, please consider a subscription to the Times Pilot. Or, if you wish, you can make a tax-deductible gift to the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation to support independent community journalism in rural Iowa. Thanks.

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