After saying she had reflected and prayed over the decision, Ernst announced she will not seek reelection in 2026, explaining she wants to focus on giving back to her aging family after years of public service. She said her love for Iowa and the country motivated her military career and Senate run, noting pride in becoming the first female combat veteran elected to the U.S. Senate. Ernst framed her tenure as a mission to challenge Washington, highlighting efforts she says reduced government waste and regulation, and described stepping away as a difficult but personal choice.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After saying she had reflected and prayed over the decision, Ernst announced she will not seek reelection in 2026, explaining she wants to focus on giving back to her aging family after years of public service. She said her love for Iowa and the country motivated her military career and Senate run, noting pride in …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":12250,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnews55.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnews55.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnews55.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnews55.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnews55.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fnews55.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12249\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnews55.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnews55.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnews55.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnews55.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}