DES MOINES, Iowa — President Donald Trump is set to visit Iowa on Tuesday as part of his administration’s renewed focus on economic issues. This initiative comes amid ongoing controversies related to another fatal shooting by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis this month.

During his Iowa visit, the President plans to tour a local business before delivering a speech on affordability, according to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. The event will take place at the Horizon Events Center in Clive, a suburb of Des Moines.

Energy policy will also be a key topic on this trip, as noted by White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles last week. The visit is part of a broader White House strategy to have Trump travel outside Washington weekly in the lead-up to the midterm elections, focusing on economic issues that impact average Americans. However, these efforts have been frequently overshadowed by various crises.

The trip occurs as the Trump administration deals with the aftermath of the recent shooting death of Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse, in Minnesota. Pretti had been involved in protests following the January 7 killing of Renee Good by an ICE officer. While some top officials quickly criticized Pretti, the White House announced on Monday that President Trump is withholding judgment until the investigation into the incident is concluded.

President Trump last visited Iowa before the July 4 holiday, a trip that marked the beginning of celebrations for the United States’ 250th anniversary. The visit also became a platform to highlight his administration’s significant spending and tax cut package, which Congress had just approved.

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

“I invited President Trump back to Iowa to highlight the real progress we’ve made: delivering tax relief for working families, securing the border, and growing our economy,” Rep. Zach Nunn, R-Iowa, said in a statement in advance of his trip. “Now we’ve got to keep that momentum going and pass my affordable housing bill, deliver for Iowa’s energy producers, and bring down 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.

But Trump’s penchant for going off-script has sometimes taken the focus off cost-of-living issues and his administration’s plans for how to combat it. 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 griped that immigrants arriving to the U.S. from “filthy” countries got more attention than his pledges to fight inflation.

Although it was a swing state just a little more than 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.

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

This election will be the first since 1968 with open seats for both governor and U.S. senator at the top of the ticket after Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds and Republican U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst opted out of reelection bids. The political shake-ups have rippled throughout the state, with Republican Reps. Randy Feenstra and Ashley Hinson seeking new offices for governor and for U.S. senator, respectively.

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