WATCH LIVE: Trump delivers speech on energy and economy as fallout from Minnesota shooting continues

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — President Donald Trump heads to Iowa on Tuesday as part of the White House’s midyear pivot toward affordability, even as his administration remains mired in fallout in Minneapolis over the second fatal shooting by federal immigration officers this month.

While in Iowa, the Republican president will stop by a local business and then give a speech about affordability, White House press secretary Carolyn Leavitt said. These remarks will be held at the Horizon Events Center in Clive, a suburb of Des Moines.

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The trip will also highlight energy policy, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles said last week. It’s part of a White House strategy for Trump to travel outside of Washington once a week before the midterm elections to focus on affordability issues facing ordinary Americans — an effort that continues to be diverted by crises.

The latest comes as the Trump administration grapples with the shooting death of Alex Peretti, an intensive care unit nurse, over the weekend by federal agents in neighboring Minnesota. Pretty participated in the protests following the Jan. 7 killing of Renee Judd by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer. Even as some senior administration officials moved quickly to insult Pretty, the White House said Monday that Trump was waiting until the investigation into the shooting was complete.

Trump’s last visit to Iowa was before the Fourth of July holiday marking the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, which turned largely into a celebration of his big spending and tax cut package hours after Congress approved it.

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Republicans are hoping Trump’s visit to the state on Tuesday will put the focus back on this tax bill, which will be a key part of their rhetoric as they ask voters to keep them in power in November.

“I invited President Trump to return to Iowa to highlight the real progress we have made: providing tax relief for working families, securing the border, and growing our economy,” Rep. Zach Nunn, R-Iowa, said in a statement before his trip. “Now we must keep this momentum going and pass an affordable housing bill, provide support to Iowa’s energy producers, and reduce 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.

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But Trump’s tendency to go off script has sometimes taken the focus away from cost-of-living issues and his administration’s plans for how to combat them. 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 event, Trump also expressed dismay that immigrants arriving in the United States from “shithole” countries were getting more attention than his pledges to fight inflation.

Although it was a swing state just over 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 against Democrat Kamala Harris.

However, two of Iowa’s four congressional districts were among the most competitive in the country, and are expected to be so again in this year’s midterm elections. Trump has already endorsed Republican Reps. Nunn and Mariannette Miller-Meeks. Democrats, who picked up three of Iowa’s four House seats in the 2018 midterm elections during Trump’s first term, see a great opportunity to unseat Iowa’s incumbents.

This election will be the first since 1968 with both governor and U.S. Senator at the top of the ticket open seats after Republican Governor Kim Reynolds and Republican U.S. Senator Joni Ernst chose not to participate in their re-election bids. Political tremors have spread across the state, as Republican Reps. Randy Feenstra and Ashley Hinson seek the new offices of governor and U.S. senator, respectively.

Democrats hope Rob Sand, the only statewide Democrat running for governor, will make the entire state more competitive with his appeal to moderate and conservative voters and his $13 million in cash.

Kim reported from Washington.