The crowd cheered. And it was true. If these midterm<\/a> elections are to mark the first tolling of the bells on Donald Trump\u2019s fierce grip on US politics, then nobody told them in this western pocket of Iowa. It\u2019s an unpretentious city, tucked between the prairie grasslands of South Dakota and Nebraska, and although Lewis and Clarke passed through here on their immortal expedition in the early 19th century, in 2026 most visitors have a specific reason to come here. President Trump\u2019s reason was that few states have shown him as much love as Iowa. <\/p>\n \u201cI love our farmers \u2013 I know you\u2019re not all farmers, but I love Iowa,\u201d Trump told them after taking the stage to rapturous applause sometime after 7pm. The most loyal had turned up in the morning to wait in line.<\/p>\n \u201cI shouldn\u2019t brag but … I won [in Iowa] all three times by more than any candidate in political history.\u201d<\/p>\n [\u00a0What are the US midterms? A visual guideOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n A furious midterm election cycle, defined by reckless and bitter exchanges by the candidates in the key states, has reached the phase of inevitable repetition. Everyone has said everything a thousand times, the president included. If anything, Trump is doubling down on his promise to hold daily rallies to bolster the chances of Republican<\/a> candidates \u2013 whereas the commentariat and strategists argue those chances would be improved if he spent the month holed up in the movie room of the White House, watching Citizen Kane and other favourites. But Trump works to his own instinct and has made this election cycle a personal popularity contest.<\/p>\n So, what is to be extrapolated from this vivid scene of Trump devotion in a regional airport hangar? Everything and nothing. On the surface, these events are a reminder that once he cedes the stage, Trump-rally theatre will be remembered, in his strongholds, as a kind of folkloric mirage. Americans won\u2019t see anything like this again. Any Trump rally is a strange confection of pageantry and patriotism, speeches filled with nostalgia and dark premonition, of many hours of waiting. The mood at these events is one of wilful escapism from the mundanity of ordinary life. To be up close and personal with Trump is, for his supporters, to commune with the fantastical.<\/p>\n [\u00a0Trump is about to discover the political cost of inflationOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n The Iowa GOP had their homework done, selecting this small airport hangar and festooning it with the familiar backdrop so that the place was packed by midafternoon. Does the attendance of a couple of thousand people in a corrugated box on the edge of Sioux City have any real significance on the overall senate vote in a state of 3.2 million people? Trump, in defiance of the polling numbers, is banking that it does. <\/p>\n All day, a small, voluble group of protesters stood at the entrance to the parking fields. Joining them was Helen Doidge, who pulled a \u201cPutin Is Not Our Friend\u201d placard from the boot of her car. <\/p>\n \u201cThe numbers are very close. Which is unbelievable. After everything that has happened. And now this,\u201d she says pointing to her placard. We talk for a while about being an Independent voter in a deeply Republican patch of the land.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter a while, you can\u2019t change anyone\u2019s mind. We lost friends because of it. Relatives, we had our words and made up. But we don\u2019t discuss politics any more.\u201d <\/p>\n Nearby, Chris Klein was headed to the rally with his friends. The 19-year-old grew up in Sioux City but has just joined the US marines and leaves for San Diego, for boot camp, on Sunday. I ask him what it was like growing up here, and whether he will miss it.<\/p>\n \u201cI love it,\u201d he nods.<\/p>\n \u201cI love Sioux City. But I definitely saw with the open borders a lot happening. I went to Sioux City North. My freshman year we were a white-majority school. By the time I transferred the majority became Hispanic and Latinas and other migrants<\/a>. I saw that in my small town in the middle of Iowa. I can\u2019t imagine everything else that is going on in other places.\u201d <\/p>\n Klein is courteous and quick-speaking, and says he was fascinated by politics from an early age. He agrees his decision to join the marines has concerned his mother.<\/p>\n \u201cFor sure. Being worried about her young son going into the military \u2013 especially with the job I want to do. I\u2019m going to be in the infantry. It\u2019s definitely a risk and a risky job but I know I have a great God who is going to be protect me through all of that. How could I not serve such an amazing country that has provided so much for me?\u201d<\/p>\n In the hangar, the series of speeches reinforce the overall threat represented by the insurgent Democratic<\/a> candidates. Josh Turek, the Iowa state representative who is narrowly leading Ashley Hinson in the polls, is linked and aligned with Texas\u2019s James Talarico and Michigan\u2019s Abdul El Sayed by repeated anecdote.<\/p>\n [\u00a0Branded \u2018lazy\u2019 by Trump, Democrat Josh Turek is mounting an unexpected challenge in a Republican strongholdOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n \u201cThe 42 per cent of the time he actually showed up for work, he was voting like Bernie Sanders,\u201d Hinson tells them.<\/p>\n \u201cJosh Turek voted to allow illegal immigrants have welfare benefits here in Iowa. He also voted to make it harder for law enforcement to deport dangerous illegal criminals out of our communities. He voted to allow taxpayer dollars to go fund sex changes. Have their kids be able to change their gender pronouns and not tell their parents. He is too liberal for Iowa.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s the central contention of the Republican message. Although Trump\u2019s speech follows a familiar litany of accomplishments, his overarching theme in recent weeks has been to warn his supporters of a resumption of rampant border crossings, and crime, should the Republicans lose control of Congress. Turek, he told them, \u201ceven wrote a memo giving illegal aliens instructions on how to evade capture \u2013 murderers, drug dealers … how to evade capture. Why can\u2019t I have somebody like that to run against? Actually, I did.\u201d<\/p>\n He launched a fresh attack on Ilhan Omar, the Minnesota congresswoman whose Washington home was recently raided by the FBI<\/a>, citing a fraud probe. He announced that a federal court filing had identified the Somalian native by a different name, Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, and called on her to resign as she had been sworn in under another name. He waited as the crowd broke into a chant of \u201cLock Her Up\u201d, temporarily drowning out the background hum of the power generators. It was a return to the messaging of 2024: the threat of outsiders, of otherness, of danger threatening the pastoral \u2013 which he can ward off. <\/p>\n \u201cI think Trump and his whole administration have a lot of common sense compared to the other side,\u201d Lonnie, who preferred not to give a surname, said as we waited in line to buy water.<\/p>\n \u201cI love that he closed the border immediately. I feel safer with him. The gas prices are higher, I know, right now. I think they will come down but they were also super high under Biden.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s arrival in Sioux City coincided with another turbulent week. The surface depiction of the Republican midterm prospects is of a campaign putting out fires everywhere. His Wednesday-night rally in South Carolina was subject to some 30 protesters interrupting his presidential riff. They were, as usual, quickly booed and removed by security to loud chants of \u201cUSA USA\u201d. But the protests, becoming more numerous and brazen, would have been unimaginable two years ago. <\/p>\n Then, in Ohio, came outrage over an advert broadcast on behalf of the Republican gubernatorial candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy. It features Donna Arthur, the estranged mother of Democratic candidate Amy Acton, in which she urges people not to vote for her daughter, and calls her a \u201cliar\u201d. Acton had suffered physical and sexual abuse by her stepfather as a young child, and she and her brother were removed by social services following a court hearing. Arthur remained with the stepfather. Several Republicans have condemned the advert, including Mike DeWine, Ohio\u2019s governor, who described is as \u201cdeeply, deeply troubling\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was wrong to run this ad. I would just urge the Ramaswamy campaign to take it down,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Vice-president JD Vance<\/a> \u2013 a native Ohioan \u2013 was among those who doubled down in a stumps speech that will almost certainly be quoted back at him, ad nauseam, if he runs for president, scolding party members because Ramaswamy\u2019s campaign \u201chad the audacity to run a TV commercial that calls it out like it is and calls Amy Acton a liar\u201d. <\/p>\n Trump himself castigated DeWine as a \u201cRino [Republican in name only] governor\u201d who was \u201cdisloyal to the Republican Party\u201d on Thursday afternoon.<\/p>\n By Thursday, reports began to emerge of heightened Republican concerns \u2013 and an influx of money into the normally safe senate seats in Mississippi and South Carolina. As if all of this wasn\u2019t enough to contend with, along came the farcical news that the staff of embattled war secretary Pete Hegseth<\/a> had, in responding to the secretary\u2019s impatience to add to his office furnishings the unique globe reputedly used by Dwight Eisenhower in the planning of the D-Day landings, dropped it while transporting it, and partially broke it. <\/p>\n![\"Chris](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/WOUMIO24PNHKLO2G4KPW3ABJB4.JPG\")
Chris Klein has just joined the US Marine Corps. Photograph: by Keith Duggan <\/p>\n![\"Republican](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1792748892_428_XGTALSXZPVTTI7VWRSVAL4EMLI.jpg\")
Republican senate candidate Ashley Hinson speaks to a supporter during a campaign stop in Davenport, Iowa, earlier this month. Photograph: Kamil Krzacysnki\/AFP via Getty Images <\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/D3EM5SI62NEORDMWZDMWU2DOI4.jpg\")
A screengrab from the #deeply troubling’ ad produced by Vivek Ramaswamy\u2019s campaign team that includes the estranged mother of his Democratic opponent Amy Acton <\/p>\n