Joni Kay Ernst (née Culver; born July 1, 1970)[1] is an American politician and retired military officer serving since 2015 as the junior United States senator from Iowa.

[32][33][34] A Koch-backed group launched an "advertising blitz", including a $257,000 campaign against Ernst's biggest Republican rival, oil executive Mark Jacobs, who had supported a proposal to limit carbon emissions that Koch Industries opposed.

[32][33] Ernst received widespread attention for a campaign advertisement she released in March 2014, in which she made a tongue-in-cheek comparison between her experience castrating pigs and her ability to "cut pork" in Congress.

[49][50] In a May 2014 Des Moines Register interview, Ernst said she was "extremely offended" by comments Jacobs made characterizing her as AWOL due to missing over 100 votes in the legislative session.

[52][53] In July, Ernst delivered the Republican Party's weekly address, criticizing a health care scandal at the Department of Veterans Affairs and calling for a balanced budget and reform of Social Security and Medicare.

[54] In endorsing her for the Republican primary nomination, the Des Moines Register wrote: "Ernst is a smart, well-prepared candidate who can wrestle with the details of public policy from a conservative perspective without seeming inflexible.

[56] The editorial board ultimately endorsed Braley, citing Ernst's calls to abolish the EPA, the Department of Education, and the federal minimum wage, as well as her support for partially privatizing Social Security and overturning the Affordable Care Act.

[69][70][71] In May 2016, Chris Cilizza put Ernst on his short list of possible vice presidential running mates for Donald Trump to become the 45th President of the United States.

[81] In March, after photographs of nude female soldiers were posted on Facebook, Ernst said that this "type of activity creates a culture that leads to sexual assault.

"[82] At a press conference two weeks later, she asked Congress to pass a law requiring people to immediately report suspected sexual assault at government facilities.

[86] In August 2020, when Iowa had the most new COVID-19 infections per capita of any state in the preceding seven days, Ernst repeated a debunked conspiracy theory that the case numbers were greatly inflated and that health care providers might be falsifying them.

[89] Eight months before the 2016 presidential election, Ernst opposed Senate consideration of Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, saying "the American people deserve to have a say" on a decision that would "impact the course of our country for years to come".

[90][91] In 2018, Ernst reiterated that Supreme Court nominees should not be heard during presidential election years, telling the Des Moines Register, "It's precedent set.

[94] in a September 2021 Fox News interview, Ernst accused President Joe Biden of overstepping presidential powers and "leading by coercion"[96] with the newly announced "Path Out of the Pandemic"[97] initiative,[96] aimed at mitigating the rising threat of the COVID-19 Delta variant.

[96] The previous week, Biden had signed an executive order declassifying 9/11 documents that the victims' families had requested for many years; his agenda on September 11, 2021, included visits to three 9/11 crash sites in New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

[34][143] In her 2014 Senate campaign, Ernst won support from the Koch brothers and affiliated groups, who helped propel her ahead of a primary opponent who backed a proposal to limit carbon emissions.

[156] In July 2024, before Netanyahu gave a speech to Congress, Ernst led a Republican press conference "demanding action from this waffling White House" and called for U.S. sanctions and weapons to help Israel defeat Hamas.

[160] In 2017, Ernst called Russia's behavior, including its annexation of Crimea and interference in U.S. elections, "totally unacceptable" and said Trump should "show strength against Vladimir Putin".

Ernst said that Congress was "equipping America to push back against our adversaries' aggression" and that the bill was "critical to reversing President Biden's weakness on the world stage that has abandoned our partners, emboldened authoritarians, and put American lives at risk.

[166] After Trump announced the withdrawal of troops from Syria, Ernst was one of six senators to sign a letter expressing concern, calling the move a "premature and costly mistake" that would "embolden ISIS, Bashar al Assad, Iran, and Russia.

"[167] In 2019, Ernst was one of six senators to sign a bipartisan letter to Trump calling on him to "urge Turkey to end their offensive and find a way to a peaceful resolution while supporting our Kurdish partners to ensure regional stability" and arguing that leaving Syria without installing protections for American allies endangered both them and the US.

[168] In March 2018, Ernst voted to table a resolution spearheaded by Bernie Sanders, Chris Murphy, and Mike Lee that would have required Trump to withdraw American troops either in or influencing Yemen within the next 30 days unless they were combating Al-Qaeda.

[173] She later cosponsored a bill to require federal authorities to inform states within a day if a person failing a background check attempted to buy a firearm.

[51] The Campaign for Liberty reported that in 2012 Ernst had answered "Yes" to a survey question asking whether she would support legislation that would "nullify ObamaCare and authorize state and local law enforcement to arrest federal officials attempting to implement [it].

[190] Ernst opposes net neutrality, which prevents internet service providers from blocking or slowing down certain content, and voted against reinstating it after an FCC ruling in 2018.

As a state senator, Ernst co-sponsored a resolution urging the "nullification" of EPA rules on emissions standards and another expressing the Iowa General Assembly's "refusal to recognize" federal laws "which conflict with the Second Amendment".

[199] During her 2014 Senate campaign, Ernst's spokespeople argued that she did not support nullification, and that "her comments on it were about encouraging Iowans to send her to Washington to pass good laws.

"[215] In January 2018, Ernst was one of 36 Republican senators to sign a letter to Trump requesting he preserve and modernize the North American Free Trade Agreement.

[216] In August 2018, she warned that failure to finish trade deals would "reflect negatively upon our Republican candidates" and advocated completing NAFTA and continuing to work with the European Union.

[11] On June 13, 2018, federal judge Linda Reade sentenced Joseph Dierks, of Waterloo, Iowa, to six years in prison for threatening "to kill or otherwise harm" Ernst on Twitter.