The Iowa caucus is still six months away and Democrats are already working hard to get the state to return to their side of the aisle.
"Iowa is the quintessential purple state," Troy Price, the chair of the state's Democratic party, told Cheddar. "There are a lot of swing voters in this state and that is who we are talking to."
The party has already begun employing organizers this year — the earliest it has started hiring for any election cycle in a decade, according to Price.
Democratic primary contenders also have their eyes set on re-taking the state, with several showing up to woo voters, and taste an array of carnival snacks, at the closely-watched Iowa State Fair.
Iowa voters helped elect President Obama in 2008 and 2012, but flipped in 2016 with President Trump getting just over 50 percent of votes. However, Price said he is confident the state will be blue again in 2020.
"As we go through this process, we are going to see more and more people coming to our side," he said. "And not just Democrats coming out to the caucuses but Independent and even Republicans."
Yet the confidence is equally strong within the Republican Party.
Jeff Kaufmann, the GOP's Iowa chairman, said that while the "climate was good for Democrats" in 2008 and 2012, Iowans remain steadfast Republicans and Trump supporters.
"People were fed up with Democrats and Republicans for not keeping their promises," Kaufmann told Cheddar regarding the state's embrace of Trump in the general election. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, however, won the state's primary caucus in 2016.
Aside from being the first state in the nation to select a presidential nominee, Iowa has also been at the center of recent political discourse over the U.S.-China trade war. Farmers in the agriculture-heavy state have taken a big hit as China announced it was cutting off produce imports.
Late last month, the Department of Agriculture announced a $16 billion aid package for farmers nationwide to help offset the losses.
The relief plan will "ensure farmers will not stand alone in facing unjustified retaliatory tariffs while President Trump continues working to solidify better and stronger trade deals around the globe," Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said in a statement. The announcement follows another $12 billion assistance program implemented last year.
Iowa farmers "don't want bailouts, they want to trade," Price told Cheddar. "They want to have the ability to sell their products."
Yet Kaufmann — a self described "seventh generation Iowa farm boy" — claimed that farmers are not abandoning the president and are willing to endure the hardships in the near future.
"For the short-term pain that the tariffs are causing ... that is a firecracker compared to the atomic bomb of the Green New Deal," Kaufmann said, invoking a lesser-of-two-evils argument in reference to the Demcoratic proposal to overhaul the U.S. economy in order to combat climate change.
Price, meanwhile, stressed that Democrats will secure "a trade deal that's going to be able to protect our country, protect our workers, and protect our farmers."
President Donald Trump says a deal struck by Netflix last week to buy Warner Bros. Discovery “could be a problem” because of the size of the combined market share. The Republican president says he will be involved in the decision about whether federal regulators should approve the deal. Trump commented Sunday when he was asked about the deal as he walked the red carpet at the Kennedy Center Honors. The $72 billion deal would bring together two of the biggest players in television and film and potentially reshape the entertainment industry.
Real estate software company RealPage has agreed to stop sharing nonpublic information between landlords as part of a settlement with the Department of Justice.
A legislative package to end the government shutdown appears on track. A handful of Senate Democrats joined with Republicans to advance the bill after what's become a deepening disruption of federal programs and services. But hurdles remain. Senators are hopeful they can pass the package as soon as Monday and send it to the House. What’s in and out of the bipartisan deal has drawn criticism and leaves few senators fully satisfied. The legislation includes funding for SNAP food aid and other programs while ensuring backpay for furloughed federal workers. But it fails to fund expiring health care subsidies Democrats have been fighting for, pushing that debate off for a vote next month.
Sabrina Siddiqui, National Politics Reporter at The Wall Street Journal, joins to break down the SNAP funding delays and the human cost of the ongoing shutdown.
Arguments at the Supreme Court have concluded for the day as the justices consider President Donald Trump's sweeping unilateral tariffs in a trillion-dollar test of executive power.
President Donald Trump said he has decided to lower his combined tariff rates on imports of Chinese goods to 47% after talks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on curbing fentanyl trafficking.
The Federal Reserve cut its key interest rate Wednesday for a second time this year as it seeks to shore up economic growth and hiring even as inflation stays elevated. The move comes amid a fraught time for the central bank, with hiring sluggish and yet inflation stuck above the Fed’s 2% target. Compounding its challenges, the central bank is navigating without much of the economic data it typically relies on from the government. The Fed has signaled it may reduce its key rate again in December but the data drought raises the uncertainty around its next moves. Fed Chair Jerome Powell told reporters that there were “strongly differing views” at the central bank's policy meeting about to proceed going forward.
U.S. and Chinese officials say a trade deal between the world’s two largest economies is drawing closer. The sides have reached an initial consensus for President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping to aim to finalize during their high-stakes meeting Thursday in South Korea. Any agreement would be a relief to international markets. Trump's treasury secretary says discussions with China yielded preliminary agreements to stop the precursor chemicals for fentanyl from coming into the United States. Scott Bessent also says Beijing would make “substantial” purchases of soybean and other agricultural products while putting off export controls on rare earth elements needed for advanced technologies.
