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      The Weather in Iowa Is Not the Only Thing That Is Bitterly Cold

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      Bret Stephens: Gail, we are conversing on the eve of the Iowa caucuses — not yet knowing who came in second, but not in much doubt about who’ll come in first. I’m trying to remember the last time the Republican winner went on to win the nomination: Ted Cruz in 2016? Rick Santorum in 2012? Mike Huckabee in 2008?Losers all. Assuming Donald Trump wins, that might even be a good omen.Gail Collins: And remember, Trump won Iowa in 2020, when he was an incumbent president looking for a second term; that didn’t turn out all that well for him, either.Bret: Not that I’m rooting for him to win in Iowa. Or anywhere else for that matter.Gail: I like the way we’re starting out! Now tell me how you think the other Republicans are doing. Especially your fave, Nikki Haley.Bret: Her zinger in the debate with Ron DeSantis — “You’re so desperate, you’re just so desperate” — could be turned into a country music hit by Miranda Lambert. Or maybe Carly Simon: You’re so desperate, you probably think this race is about you. Don’t you? Don’t you?Gail: Hehehehehe.Bret: I just fear that, in the battle between Haley and DeSantis, they’re canceling each other out, like matter and antimatter. As our colleague Frank Bruni pointed out in his terrific column last week, that just clears the path for The Donald.Gail: Whenever a candidate boasts, like DeSantis, that he’s visited all 99 counties in Iowa, you hear a shriek of desperation mixed in with the bragging. But I’m not gonna totally give up hope for Haley until we see what happens in New Hampshire.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      A Big Reason to Pay Attention to Iowa? New Hampshire.

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      Second place could mean a lot to Nikki Haley tonight as a showdown with Donald Trump looms in the next primary contest.Finishing second in Iowa could propel Nikki Haley in New Hampshire.John Tully for The New York TimesThe long road to the Republican presidential nomination begins tonight in Iowa, where voters will gather at their neighborhood precinct caucuses to cast the first votes of the 2024 election campaign.Iowa may not have many voters or delegates, but the first-in-the-nation caucuses always attract a media frenzy. With the help of the national spotlight, Iowa voters have been surprisingly influential over the decades: A caucus win has sometimes been enough to propel candidates — think Barack Obama or Jimmy Carter — from a deep deficit or even obscurity to the nomination.But tonight, Iowa voters seem likely to choose Donald J. Trump — someone they didn’t pick eight years ago, but who now appears poised for the largest victory in a contested Iowa Republican caucus.Absent a polling meltdown, Mr. Trump’s victory would be one of the more impressive illustration of his dominance over the Republican Party. In 2016, Iowa voters rejected Mr. Trump in favor of Ted Cruz. And unlike most of the country, the Republican establishment in Iowa has not gone along with Mr. Trump. Yet he’s poised for an overwhelming victory anyway.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Campaigns Battle Cold and Complacency in Final Turnout Push in Iowa

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      Republicans once had high hopes for turnout in Monday’s caucuses. But the brutal weather and Donald Trump’s dominance have cooled predictions.Nikki Haley’s team predicts Iowans will brave brutal weather to caucus for her. Aides to Ron DeSantis say the subzero temperatures give their candidate an edge because he has the biggest team knocking on doors. And the Trump team says they don’t worry about the cold — former President Donald J. Trump’s supporters will “walk through glass” to caucus for him.The truth: No one really knows what to expect on Monday night when Iowans become the first to weigh in on the 2024 presidential election. An already unpredictable and quirky process is even more so this year, thanks to dangerously cold weather and an unusually uncompetitive contest.Until recently, both the Trump and DeSantis teams had been privately preparing for an enormous turnout of more than 200,000 caucusgoers, a figure that would eclipse the party’s previous record of 187,000 in 2016. But as the winter storm blew in last week, nobody from any of the leading campaigns wanted to attach their names to a firm prediction.The National Weather Service forecast subzero temperatures in Des Moines, with wind chills dropping to as low as minus 30 degrees on Monday.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      The Guide to Iowa via ‘The Run-Up’

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      Listen to and follow ‘The Run-Up’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | AmazonFinally. More than a year after Donald Trump first announced his 2024 presidential run, six months after Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida refocused his campaign strategy to be all-in on Iowa, and right in the midst of debilitating winter weather, the Iowa caucuses are upon us.And “The Run-Up” has everything you need to know to understand what might happen today — and what it will mean for the race going forward.What’s at stake is clear: Anyone who is going to slow down Mr. Trump on his path to clinching the nomination has to get started in Iowa, with at least a close second-place finish. Going into the caucus, Mr. Trump has a dominant polling lead. But now it’s up to the voters.Iowa voters tend to care more about candidates who can speak more to small-town and religious values. The state’s evangelical leaders have largely backed Mr. DeSantis, but evangelical voters themselves — including people coming out to Trump events in freezing temperatures in the last week — have largely backed Mr. Trump.There are three big questions going into caucus day. One, will people come out and participate despite the weather? Two, are the campaigns organized enough to have made a successful last-minute push, to turn interest into actual votes? And three, will any of it matter, or will the freezing temperatures and snowdrifts mean that no matter the result, campaigns will excuse it away?We’ll know the answers later this week.In the meantime, here’s more from “The Run-Up” on Iowa and the state of the Republican primary:In a Song of the Summer, Clues for Iowa in JanuaryHow Iowa Learned to Love Trump‘Right Where We Want Him, 30 Points Up’: Chasing Trump in IowaJordan Gale for The New York TimesAbout ‘The Run-Up’“The Run-Up” is your guide to understanding the 2024 election. Through on-the-ground reporting and conversations with colleagues from The New York Times, newsmakers and voters across the country, our host, Astead W. Herndon, takes us beyond the horse race to explore how we came to this unprecedented moment in U.S. politics. New episodes on Thursdays.Credits“The Run-Up” is hosted by More

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      How, Where and When to Caucus in Iowa on Monday

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      The Iowans who will brave frigid temperatures Monday for the first test of support for Republican presidential hopefuls will be caucusing — a process that’s distinct from other ballot-box affairs.Unlike in other elections, Iowa’s Democratic and Republican parties, not the state’s government, organize and run the caucuses. And members of the two parties will conduct business a little differently.What happens during a caucus?Once participating Republican voters arrive at the caucus precinct, they must check in with precinct workers, who will verify that they are eligible to participate. (Only registered Republicans may participate in G.O.P. caucuses, but party rules allow unregistered voters, Democrats and independents to register or switch their party affiliation at the caucus site.)Then, the caucusgoers will elect a chair and secretary to preside over the event. Supporters of each candidate will speak to the caucus, pitching their peers on why they should support their preferred candidates.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      ‘Ready to rumble’: Trump holds Iowa campaign rally more akin to victory lap

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      It was a melancholy farewell. Three years ago this week, Donald Trump departed on Air Force One for the last time as Frank Sinatra’s My Way blared from loudspeakers. The outgoing US president was defeated, disgraced and seemingly down and out.Amid the snowy plains of Iowa, however, Trump is set to pull off one of the most improbable of all political comebacks. On Sunday, he held a campaign rally more akin to a victory lap in a state where Republican caucus-goers look certain to back him for a swift return to the White House.Despite freezing temperatures and icy roads, the event at a college campus in Indianola drew more than 500 supporters in heavy winter coats and hats, filling the room to capacity and forcing some to watch on a big screen in an overspill auditorium. Some had driven from more than a hundred miles away.“You didn’t need a plug-in to get energised in there,” said Gary Leffler, 62, wearing a white cap with “Trump caucus captain” sewn in gold lettering. “I mean, it was electric. It was powerful. People were ramped up. We’re ready to rumble.“Everyone is asking, hey, are Iowans going to get out and caucus tomorrow night? Well, I’m telling you what, it was -48 windchill factor and look at the crowd. The room was full. People couldn’t get in. They had overflow. I’m telling you, that is the energy, that is the magnetism that Trump has.”The rally dwarfed those of Trump’s Republican rivals. He looks set to win Iowa’s first-in-nation vote in the Republican presidential nomination race by a record margin on Monday night. A final poll by renowned Iowa pollster Ann Selzer shows Trump with the support of 48% of likely caucus-goers, followed by Nikki Haley at 20%, Ron DeSantis at 16% and Vivek Ramaswamy at 8%.Such figures suggest that commentators were too quick to write Trump’s political obituary in 2021, underestimating the deep reservoirs of support he enjoys in socially conservative states such as Iowa. Not even the deadly January 6 insurrection, four sprawling criminal investigations and mediocre results for Republicans in midterm elections have been able to loosen his grip on the party.Some speak wistfully of Trump’s first term and regard him an antidote to a perceived malaise under Joe Biden on issues such as rising prices and border security. They reject the notion that Trump is an aspiring dictator and threat to democracy.Robyn Copeland, 68, a librarian wearing a red Trump sweater, said: “He was so successful in his first term that we need him back again. He knows how to govern and lead. Biden does not. Biden is failing and ailing. so we need strength and we need integrity. I think Trump’s all that, even though people keep throwing him under the bus with all these fraudulent lawsuits and charges.”Like many here, Copeland is untroubled by Trump’s status as the first former US president to face criminal charges. “They’ve been smearing him, trying to ruin him for the last four, six years now but I’ve always liked him and that’s not going to change.“I don’t care about his personality. I like his credentials. He’s a businessman. We need to run the country like a business and we need to know our, deficits and credits and all those good things. He knows how to negotiate with the world, by the way, which is really important because we’ve got a lot of enemies out there.”Trump, 77, delivered a typically meandering, disjointed and falsehood-laced speech for an hour and a half, ranging from the proximity of a third world war to lambasting Washington as “a rat-infested, graffiti-infested shithole”. He welcomed the presence of rightwing extremists Laura Loomer and Nigel Farage and lavished praise on both.At a crucial moment in a White House campaign fuelled by retribution and vengeance, he told the crowd in Iowa: “These caucuses are your personal chance to score the ultimate victory over all of the liars, cheaters, thugs, perverts, frauds, crooks, freaks, creeps and other quite nice people.”Trump took swipes at “crooked” Joe Biden and Barack “Hussein” Obama as well as his Republican primary rivals. “Unlike Ron and Nikki, we will always protect Medicare and social security for our great seniors. We are not going to hurt our seniors,” he said.He accused DeSantis of disloyalty for challenging him after Trump had endorsed DeSantis for governor of Florida. He claimed that Haley is working for “people that don’t necessarily love our country”, adding: “She’s got some really bad money behind her.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump also unveiled two endorsements: Wisconsin congressman Derrick Van Orden and North Dakota governor Doug Burgum, who dropped out of the Republican primary race last month. Burgum told the crowd: “Under President Trump, America was safe and prosperous.” For some there were echoes of 2016, when Republican rivals toppled like dominoes in backing Trump.The rally was briefly disrupted by young protesters shouting “You’ve taken millions! and “Trump, climate criminal”. One held a black-and-yellow banner before being quickly hustled from the room by guards. Trump supporters responded with loud shouts of “Trump! Trump!” and “USA, USA!”The former president, who has long questioned the scientific consensus on climate change, told one of the protesters to “go home to mommy” as she was being escorted out and describing her as “young and immature”. He told the crowd: “They’re fighting oil. They’re basically saying let’s close up on our country.”Trump, who claimed that the stock market is only performing well because he is leading in opinion polls, urged his supporters to turn out despite what is expected to be the coldest night in the history of the Iowa caucuses. “You can’t sit at home,” he said. “If you’re sick as a dog … Even if you vote and then pass away.”People at the rally expressed determination to beat the weather and send Trump on his way to the Republican nomination. Cathy Kurtinitis, 69, wearing a caucus captain cap, said: “I believe that he has done great things for America. I believe he deserves a second chance and that he will be the biggest fighter for America and give us strong foreign policy and make America great again.”Asked for her views on Biden, Kurtinitis replied: “Corrupt, corrupt, corrupt, making money from China and his son making money from Burisma, and that’s not a problem but Donald Trump said something wrong, supposedly a quid pro quo on a telephone call, and the whole world goes crazy. No, there’s such a double standard. Joe Biden’s family is very corrupt.” (Republican congressional members so far have no evidence on the Burisma issue.)Mike Schultz, 74, retired from agricultural business, dismissed the 91 criminal charges that hang over Trump’s head and threaten to disrupt his campaign schedule. “They’re bogus. Everything they’ve tried to accuse him of the entire time he was president turned out to be false. They’re bogus because the radical opposition is so afraid of him getting back into power, they’ll do anything they can to stop him.”A common view among the base is that Biden’s America is not working for them and only Trump can fix it. David Burnell, 32, a millwright in the construction trade, said: “I liked the first go round we had with him so I’d like to see the second go round with him.“Have you seen our border? Have you seen inflation? We’ve got 3 million people a year coming across the border illegally. Inflation is outrageous. Interest rates are through the roof. The stock market might be decent right now, but what’s it matter when inflation is so high? I’m making more money I’ve ever made my life, I’m broker than I’ve ever been. It’s just the way it is.” More

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      Ron DeSantis makes his pitch before Iowa caucuses amid faltering campaign

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      Amid a campaign that has, from its very first minutes, not gone quite as planned, Ron DeSantis took the stage on Saturday before a crowd of supporters in an Iowa office complex to inform them that the latest obstacle – a historically frigid winter storm – would not stop him from winning the first state to vote in the Republican presidential nomination process.“Are you ready to make some history on Monday night?” the Florida governor asked during a visit to the West Des Moines offices of Never Back Down, the Super Pac supporting his bid for president.“They can throw a blizzard at us, and we are gonna fight. They can throw wind chill at us, and we are gonna fight. They can throw media narratives at us, and we are gonna fight. They can throw fake polls at us, and we are gonna fight. We are gonna fight because we are going to turn this country around.”It was as good of a summation as any of the challenge he faces in Iowa’s Republican caucuses on Monday, where all signs point to Donald Trump clinching victory and throwing the viability of DeSantis’s campaign into jeopardy. Launched last May with a glitchy Twitter live event, the governor’s pitch to voters that he would replicate his conservative remaking of Florida on the national stage have not caught on the way he hoped.With an unapologetically rightwing pitch, DeSantis tried to turn Republicans away from the former president’s Maga agenda by recounting how he rejected the Trump administration’s efforts to stop the spread of Covid-19, and deploying his own draconian turns of phrase, such as his vow to have drug traffickers shot “stone-cold dead” at the border with Mexico.But in the days before the Iowa caucus, that message did not seem to resonate.“He’s perceived as trying to be a Trump wannabe, of bringing in bombastic rhetoric, copying some of Trump’s policies,” said Patrick McDonald, 19, a student at Hillsdale College, a private conservative Christian school in Michigan, who traveled to observe Iowa’s caucuses and says he is undecided on who to support when his state’s primaries occur.Other Republicans worry DeSantis does not have what it takes to beat Joe Biden in November’s general election.After hearing both DeSantis and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley speak at recent rallies, Nancy Wildanger, 70, came away with the impression that the latter would represent the best shot at getting a Republican back in the White House.“She said nothing wrong. DeSantis said nothing wrong. But, statistically, I think she has a better chance, and we need someone with a better chance,” Wildanger said at a rally for Haley in Iowa City on Saturday.Rather than a campaign for victory, DeSantis’s best-case scenario on Monday is a second-place finish that would improve his standing as the best Republican alternative to Trump.“It’s good to be an underdog,” DeSantis said in a Sunday morning interview with ABC News, where he cast doubt on the accuracy of polling in the race. “We’re going to do well, but I’d rather have people count us out. I’d rather have people lower expectations for us. I tend to perform better like that.”The governor may have been referring to an authoritative NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa survey released Saturday that showed DeSantis was the first choice of only 16% of voters, compared to 20% for Haley and 48% for Trump.It served as a testament to how effective Trump had been at consolidating support over the past year even as state and federal prosecutors issued a wave of criminal indictments against him. Beyond Iowa, polls show Trump in the lead among Republicans in other early voting states, and nationally.It also underscored how Trump’s rivals have failed to wrest the power of incumbency away from him, despite his re-election defeat to Biden in 2020, said Dave Peterson, a political science professor at Iowa State University, which has conducted its own polling of the state that shows an overwhelming Trump lead and a tie between Haley and DeSantis.“This race is a referendum in the Republican party on Donald Trump,” Peterson said. “And it is because nobody else has made the argument for why it should be a choice. Haley and DeSantis did not do an effective job, so far, of saying: ‘No, no, no, think about it this way, think about it as a choice between Donald Trump or me.’”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionShould DeSantis finish lower than second place, it could prove fatal to his ability to continue competing in New Hampshire, the next state to vote, and later in the primaries.“If he doesn’t get second, I think it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy at that point, that the narrative out of the election, which is what tends to matter more than the actual outcome, is going to be, what the heck happened? Why did he fail? And that’s not the story that’s going to generate new momentum,” Peterson said.For all the hoopla they generate, the winner of the Iowa caucuses does not always go on to win the party’s nomination – Hawkeye state voters did not nominate Biden in 2020, or Trump in 2016.Meanwhile, turnout for this year’s vote could be upended by the aftermath of a colossal winter storm that dropped up to two feet of snow on parts of the state Friday and left behind bitter winds and temperatures that are expected to be in the negatives on Monday evening.“It’s not going to be pleasant,” DeSantis told the room cramped with supporters and press at the Super Pac’s offices. “But if you’re willing to go out there, and you’re willing to fight for me, if you’re willing to bring people to the caucus, if you’re willing to brave the elements and be there for the couple hours that you have to be there, if you’re willing to do that, and you’re willing to fight for me on Monday night, then as president, I’ll be fighting for you for the next eight years.”That would be four more years than Trump, who already served one term, could stay if voters send him back to the White House, and his potential longevity is a key plank of DeSantis’s appeal.Besides that, Trump’s long list of enemies and scandals is one reason why Connie Lendt, 69, has no plans to vote for Trump a third time, and will instead serve as a precinct captain for DeSantis in the town of Woodward on Monday.“Democrats have tried to … impeach him while he was in office. Out of the office, they’re taking him to court for hundreds of different things. If he gets in office again, are they not going to try to impeach him the entire time? So, that’s where all of his energy goes instead of running the country,” Lendt said. “Legally, he’s a mess right now.”Sam Levine contributed to reporting More

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      Democrats Fret That Biden’s Power Players Are Not at His Campaign Base

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      President Biden has a re-election campaign with two distinct centers of gravity — the White House and his Delaware headquarters — and advisers who are juggling two jobs at once.With less than 10 months to go until the 2024 election, the nerve center of President Biden’s bid for a second term is stationed not at his campaign’s headquarters in Delaware but within feet of the Oval Office.The president and his chief strategist, Mike Donilon, have repeatedly discussed when to move him over to the campaign — perhaps after the 2022 midterm elections, then after the 2023 off-year elections and again at the end of 2023. Each time, no move happened after the president told aides he wanted to keep Mr. Donilon within walking distance.Anita Dunn, the longtime Democratic operative who stepped in to help revive Mr. Biden’s fledging operation four years ago, is devising the re-election message again, even as she oversees communications at the White House. Jen O’Malley Dillon, Mr. Biden’s deputy White House chief of staff and former campaign manager, is also splitting her day job with her role as one of the most powerful voices in the campaign.So far, almost none of the people in the president’s inner circle have left for campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Del., prompting some donors and strategists to worry that too much of Mr. Biden’s team remains cloistered inside the White House. Less than a year before Election Day, the president has a campaign with two distinct centers of gravity, advisers juggling two jobs at once, and months of internal debate about when to consolidate everyone in one place.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More