President Donald Trump has made it abundantly clear that he’s happy to use official government resources in ethically dubious ways to try to win the 2026 midterm elections.
He promised to pay every adult US citizen $5,000 if Republicans win. He’s sending $500 to some Obamacare recipients with a very political letter enclosed. And now he’s running government-funded ads that promote himself and are obviously geared towards the election.
But wait. There’s more.
Twice this week, Trump has held White House events announcing a major economic project that happens to benefit a state holding a key, competitive Senate race — first in Iowa, then in Alaska.
And both times, his promises have proven to be overzealous, at best.
The Iowa steel plant
Trump announced the Iowa project on Monday at an Oval Office event featuring Senate candidate Rep. Ashley Hinson and many others. It was for a new $15 billion Mesabi Metallics steel plant in Lee County in eastern Iowa — one that could create thousands of jobs and make Iowa the second-largest steel-producing state in the United States.
US Rep. Ashley Hinson, second from right, watches as Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds speaks during an announcement of a $15 billion steel mill in Iowa, in the White House in Washington, DC, with Donald Trump on September 28.Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
And when a reporter inquired about how definite the plans were, Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick assured they were effectively written in stone.
“I think this deal is done. This deal is done,” Lutnick said. “They’ve already worked it out. That’s why we’re all together with the president. The president doesn’t bring people together unless it’s a done deal. You guys know that already.”
Trump then jumped in, claiming: “They’ve already started building.”
That’s not true.
Indeed, just a day later, Republican Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds called an emergency special session of the state legislature focused on tax incentives for the project — exactly the issue that Lutnick was asked about when he declared the deal done .
The same day, local TV station KWQC reported that the project still hadn’t acquired land or applied for permits, and Lee County officials said they didn’t have details about the project.
There are also real doubts about whether any of this will ultimately prove to be real, as CNN’s Eric Bradner and Jeff Zeleny report. Big projects like these can prove quite difficult to get across the finish line. Some locally are comparing the project to Foxconn, a Taiwanese electronics company that never delivered a $10 billion Wisconsin plant — one that, like the Iowa steel plant, Trump announced at a White House event in 2017.
“It sounds too good to be true, and it just might be,” a top Iowa GOP official told CNN, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid inflaming the Trump administration.
Hinson dismissed the Foxconn comparisons.
“I don’t think so,” she told CNN. “I trust our governor, who has been working on this deal for months to make sure that we secure that investment here in Iowa.”
But even those comments implicitly acknowledge the deal isn’t nearly as done as Trump and Lutnick claimed it was.
And it’s downright bizarre that Trump said construction had begun. He was either lying or had no idea about the subject of the entire event he was hosting.
The Alaska natural gas pipeline
The story is quite similar with another Trump announcement on Wednesday: that South Korea would spend more than $50 billion on a struggling natural gas pipeline in Alaska.
As with the Iowa announcement, Trump made this one at the White House next to the vulnerable GOP senator, Dan Sullivan.
US President Donald Trump speaks to US Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska as he makes an announcement with US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on September 30.Kent Nishimura/AFP/Getty Images
And as with the Iowa announcement, Trump and Lutnick treated this as a done deal. Trump said South Korea had agreed to invest large sums in the US to lower its tariffs, and “part of that money is going into this project” — the pipeline.
“It’s the combination of your deal-making and your trade deal that allowed this to happen, and this is extraordinary,” Lutnick told Trump. “This will change Alaska, and it will change geopolitics.”
Trump said politicians had been talking about the project for five decades but failed to deliver. He said it would be “one of the largest energy projects in American history.” He said it would save Alaskans thousands in energy bills.
Sullivan’s office called it a “historic $54 billion investment by South Korea.”
But by Thursday, South Korea disputed Trump’s claims.
“Putting figures or using definitive language goes far beyond what was agreed,” Minister of Trade Industry and Resources Kim Jung-kwan said, according to South Korean news agency Yonhap.
Kim said South Korea was still reviewing whether to proceed with the pipeline.
When asked about the discrepancy, White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers didn’t explain it.
“Wednesday’s joint announcement was historic for the great state of Alaska, the United States, and the Republic of Korea,” Rogers said instead.
And then later Friday, Trump insisted his announcement hadn’t been premature – even while seeming to allow South Korea hadn’t signed anything.
“Well, I didn’t jump the gun. I mean, they were there and they were represented,” Trump told reporters at the White House just before departing for a rally in Alabama. “And let’s see. If they don’t want to do it, that’s OK with me. I’ll just charge you more.”
Why voters should be cautious
It would seem rather coincidental that two major projects in two states majorly important to the Senate battle would suddenly come together around the exact same time with about a month to go in the 2026 midterms.
And it would also seem rather curious that, in both cases, Trump’s and his team’s claims about how ironclad these projects are were quickly knocked down.
Of course, as Foxconn and plenty of other examples show, Trump often jumps the gun when it comes to touting such projects and his successes in facilitating them. He loves a big announcement; he rarely worries about how it might look later when the things he says fall apart.
That doesn’t mean these projects won’t ultimately happen. It’s just that, if they don’t, we’ll likely learn that long after Hinson’s and Sullivan’s electoral fates will be decided.
Kind of like how, if those $5,000 checks never materialize — as plenty doubt they will, given the more than $1 trillion price tag and the legal issues — it’d be too late for voters to get a mulligan on the 2026 election.
And voters in Iowa and Alaska would do well to view these announcements in the context of things like that. Because right now, Trump seems to have an anything-goes attitude towards trying to win the 2026 election.
This story has been updated with additional reporting.
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