Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa, will not seek re-election next year, according to two people familiar with her plans, creating an opening that could lead to a competitive race in a key state next year as the two parties battle for control of the Senate.
Ms. Ernst plans to make a formal announcement next week, one of the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations. A spokeswoman for Ms. Ernst did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Her departure could give Democrats a prime opportunity to flip a seat in the closely divided Senate, though they face headwinds in the Republican-dominated state and the party’s path to winning back the majority remains difficult.
Ms. Ernst’s decision not to run for a third term, which was reported earlier by CBS News, had been rumored for months, as she has had to fend off threats of a more conservative primary challenger and a falling approval rating that showed less than 40 percent of Iowans approved of her job performance.
Ms. Ernst, who was first elected in 2014 and rose to become one of the highest-ranking Republican women in politics, joins a growing list of senators in her party who have opted not to seek re-election next year after being targeted by President Trump or his supporters. Senators Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky both are retiring. Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, a close ally of Mr. Trump, is running for governor.
Ms. Ernst appeared to have a potential re-election campaign in mind at the beginning of the year when she caved to political pressure from the right and voted to confirm Pete Hegseth as defense secretary.
A survivor of sexual assault and the Senate’s first female combat veteran, Ms. Ernst had expressed reservations about Mr. Hegseth, who had said he opposed allowing women to serve in combat roles and whose nomination was dogged by allegations of sexual assault, public drunkenness and corporate mismanagement.
But after Mr. Trump’s hard-right supporters threatened political retribution if she stood in Mr. Hegseth’s way, Ms. Ernst fell in line and voted to confirm him.
At home, she has struggled to sell Mr. Trump’s domestic policy agenda. At a town hall in Butler County in May, Ms. Ernst struggled to defend cuts to Medicaid that were included in the sweeping domestic policy bill that was working its way through Congress at the time. When someone in the audience yelled out that “people are going to die,” Mr. Ernst responded, “Well, we all are going to die,” drawing jeers from the crowd.
Democrats moved quickly to call attention to the comment, which circulated widely online, hoping to use the seemingly callous response to harm her re-election chances.
A number of Democrats have announced plans to challenge her, including Zach Wahls, a state senator; Josh Turek, a state representative; Jackie Norris, the Des Moines school board chair who served as chief of staff to Michelle Obama, the former first lady, during her time in the White House; and Nathan Sage, a veteran and former president of a local chamber of commerce.
One Republican candidate widely expected to run for her seat is Representative Ashley Hinson, a third-term lawmaker whose district covers most of the northeastern part of the state.
Even with Ms. Ernst out of the race, Democrats face an uphill climb in Iowa, where Republicans have dominated recent national and statewide elections. The party holds both Senate seats and all four Congressional seats, and Mr. Trump won the state by wide margins in the last three elections.
But Democrats say they are more optimistic about their chances because both Ms. Ernst and Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, are not running for re-election. The party also got a boost this week when a Democrat won a special election for an Iowa State Senate seat in a district that Mr. Trump won handily in November.
“Republicans begged Joni Ernst to run for re-election because they know that her retirement deals another blow to their chances,” Maeve Coyle, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said in a statement. “This is just the latest in a string of retirements and embarrassing recruitment failures driven by the G.O.P.’s toxic agenda that have put their majority at risk.”
Still, even if Democrats managed to win Ms. Ernst’s seat, they face long odds for taking back the Senate majority in 2026, when all but two of the 22 Republican seats up for election are in states that Mr. Trump carried by at least 10 percentage points in 2024.
The party’s top two opportunities are widely seen as Maine, where Senator Susan Collins is the lone Republican incumbent running in a state that former Vice President Kamala Harris won in 2024, and North Carolina, a battleground where former Gov. Roy Cooper, a popular Democrat, is running in an open seat.
But even if Democrats were to win in both of those states and in Iowa, it would not be enough to give them the majority, because Vice President JD Vance would still hold the tiebreaking vote.
Shane Goldmacher contributed reporting from New York.
Tyler Pager is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.
Annie Karni is a congressional correspondent for The Times. She writes features and profiles, with a recent focus on House Republican leadership.
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