Trump restores Kansas and Iowa rallies for Sunday in last-minute midterm reversal
President Donald Trump will hold back-to-back rallies in Kansas and Iowa on Sunday, a day after cancelling them for telephone rallies, after Republican leaders asked him to reconsider.
United States President Donald Trump has restored two campaign rallies in Kansas and Iowa for Sunday, reversing a cancellation announced only a day earlier and returning in person to the midterm trail days before voters go to the polls.
A White House official said on Friday that the rallies were back on, telling reporters that Trump would hold back-to-back events in Kansas and Iowa on Sunday, 1 November, in addition to nearly 20 telephone rallies planned before Election Day.
The reversal came after Trump himself explained the change in the Oval Office on Friday, saying Republican leaders had asked him to reconsider. He said they had told him that an in-person visit would be better than a telephone rally, and that although he had tried to talk them out of it, he had agreed to hold two events on Sunday.
The original rallies had been scheduled for Salina in Kansas on Saturday and Dubuque in Iowa on Sunday. Both were cancelled on Thursday, when the Republican National Committee said Trump would instead take part in a 72-hour telephone-rally sprint, described as a way to reach voters in more states in the final days of the campaign.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Trump had said he did not feel he had to go to Kansas, where Republican Senator Roger Marshall faces an unexpectedly competitive re-election race against Democrat Adam Hamilton. He said Marshall was doing very well and predicted a strong result on Tuesday night.
That reasoning drew immediate attention because Kansas is one of a handful of Senate contests that could help decide control of the chamber. Hamilton, a former prosecutor, has run a competitive campaign in a state Republicans usually win comfortably, and the race is now seen as a genuine test of the party's strength.
In Iowa, the restored rally is expected to support Republican Senate candidate Ashley Hinson. Iowa has also become a focus of late campaigning, with Democrats hoping to make gains in House and Senate races in a state Trump carried in 2024.
Some details remained unclear in Friday's reporting. One wire account said it was not yet certain whether Dubuque would remain the Iowa venue or whether a new Kansas location and timing had been finalised, even as other reports named Salina and Dubuque as the Sunday stops. The White House official said the rallies had been rearranged to fit around telephone rallies added to the schedule in recent days.
The weekend change does not alter Trump's Friday plans. He was due to campaign in Daytona Beach, Florida, on Friday evening, supporting Republican gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds and Senator Ashley Moody in a state he won handily in 2024, even though early voting there has tilted towards Democrats.
The final sprint comes after a month of near-daily campaigning. Trump has held 25 rallies since 1 October, short of a goal of more than 30, and more than 44 million Americans had already voted by Thursday evening, according to the University of Florida's Election Lab. The midterms on 3 November will decide control of Congress for the final two years of his presidency, and the restored Kansas and Iowa stops signal that, for all the telephone rallies, the campaign still believes in-person appearances matter in the closest races.
