(Radio Iowa) – The six-hundred people who gathered for Iowa Senator Joni Ernst’s final “Roast and Ride” event Saturday applauded her career as well as recent Trump Administration moves. U-S Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem– the afternoon’s keynote speaker — got a standing ovation when she mentioned the immigration arrest of now-former Des Moines superintendent Ian Roberts.

Congressman Randy Feenstra, expected to announce soon that he’s running for governor, says the Des Moines School Board hired Roberts because he fit a liberal, progressive agenda.

And Senator Chuck Grassley also drew the crowd to its feet by praising Noem.

The federal government shutdown was another theme of the day. First district Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks says she grew up in a family that knew what it was like to wait for that monthly paycheck and and worry it wouldn’t cover all the bills.

Second district Congresswoman Ashley Hinson told the crowd President Trump had announced U-S soldiers will be paid on October 15th.

Ernst announced early last month she wouldn’t seek reelection in 2026 and Hinson, who’s now running for the U.S. Senate, thanked Ernst for being a mentor. Others called Saturday’s gathering bittersweet.

Governor Kim Reynolds told the crowd Ernst became a sister as they both advanced from county-level politics to become Iowa’s first female U.S. Senator and first female governor.

Reynolds said also…

Ernst spent some time reminiscing about her 2014 campaign.

Ernst got emotional near the end of the event as she thanked her mother and then recognized the mother and brother of Sarah Root of Council Bluffs in the crowd. A man from Honduras accused of killing the 21-year-old Root in early 2016 while he was driving drunk in Omaha vanished after posting bail.

Six months after Root’s death, Root’s family attended the senator’s 2016 Roast and Ride and became advocates for a law that Trump signed this past January. It requires authorities to detain any non-citizen who is accused of killing or seriously injuring someone.