Iowa’s 2026 U.S. Senate race had its first viral moment on May 30, when an unscripted comment from Senator Joni Ernst generated massive coverage across Iowa and national news outlets.
The words Ernst blurted out in frustration at that town hall meeting may or may not have staying power in the next Senate campaign.
But we’ll definitely keep hearing what the senator said before and after making that gaffe. Republicans around the country, including Iowa’s U.S. House members, have used the same false claims in defense of the budget reconciliation bill now pending in the Senate.
Those statements were among more than a dozen messages about Medicaid and the federal food assistance program known as SNAP that Republicans tested this spring in telephone polls. I was a respondent for one of the surveys in early May and have transcribed the questionnaire at the end of this post.
I don’t know which GOP-aligned entity paid for the robo-poll I received, but it’s clear the memo on how to spin deep Medicaid and SNAP cuts has gone out to all Republicans in Congress.
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