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      How to Watch the Republican Debate Taking Place in Iowa

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      Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis will meet on Wednesday night in Des Moines for the last Republican presidential debate before the Iowa caucuses on Monday.CNN will host the debate starting at 9 p.m. Eastern time.Where can I watch?CNN is broadcasting the debate on cable and will stream it free on CNN.com. Subscribers to the streaming service Max can watch via CNN Max.Which candidates will be there?Only three candidates — Mr. DeSantis, Ms. Haley and Donald J. Trump — met CNN’s qualification requirements. To make it onto the debate stage, candidates had to have at least 10 percent support in a minimum of three distinct polls of national Republican primary voters or Iowa Republican caucusgoers.Mr. Trump, the front-runner, has not attended any of the four previous Republican primary debates. He won’t attend this one either, leaving Mr. DeSantis, Florida’s governor, and Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, to face off one on one. Instead, Mr. Trump will join the Fox News anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum for a live town hall at the same time as the debate.In a departure from the four previous debates, the Republican National Committee is not a sponsor of the one on Wednesday. In December, the party decided it would stop participating in future debates, giving the hosting TV networks freedom to set their own qualification rules.Who are the moderators?Dana Bash and Jack Tapper, co-hosts of CNN’s Sunday show “State of the Union,” will moderate the debate.Is this the last primary debate?No. ABC News and WMUR, a Hearst television station in New Hampshire, will host a debate in that state on Jan. 18. And CNN plans to host another debate, also in New Hampshire, on Jan. 21. More

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      How Iowa and New Hampshire Democrats Have Reacted to Getting Pushed Back

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      In Iowa, Democrats politely accepted President Biden’s decision to push them back on the presidential nominating calendar. In New Hampshire, they’re fighting it with live-free-or-die stubbornness.A caucus location at Drake Fieldhouse in Des Moines in February 2020.Todd Heisler/The New York TimesVoters casting their ballots in a primary election in Hancock, N.H., in February 2020.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesWhen President Biden shook up his party’s presidential nominating calendar, Democrats in the two states that were bounced from the front of the line reacted in far different ways.New Hampshire Democrats are going down kicking and screaming, insisting on holding a primary as if they hadn’t just lost their opening spot.Iowa Democrats, ashamed by a 2020 fiasco that included a dayslong wait for results that were nonetheless riddled with errors, have meekly accepted their fate as primary season also-rans.In what is perhaps a case study in Iowa nice versus live-free-or-die New Hampshire stubbornness, one state is showing that it views its quadrennial parade of visiting presidential candidates as a political birthright, while the other appears to see that spectacle more as a lost perk.“The Iowa Democrats have made a mistake,” said David Scanlan, the New Hampshire secretary of state, a position that has long been the ex officio guardian of the state’s first-in-the-nation primary status. “They’ve lost it for this year, and now the chain is broken.”Mr. Scanlan’s flinty resistance to changing New Hampshire’s primary date to suit party bosses in Washington has bipartisan appeal in the Granite State. Anyone involved in politics there can cite the 1975 state law requiring the state to hold the nation’s first presidential primary contest, codifying what is now a century-old tradition.New Hampshire and the Democratic National Committee are still quarreling over the state’s refusal to move its primary back. On Friday, the national party wrote to New Hampshire Democrats saying that the state’s “meaningless” primary could “disenfranchise and confuse voters.” The New Hampshire attorney general replied on Monday with a cease-and-desist letter saying the D.N.C.’s “meaningless” categorization violated the state’s voter suppression laws.Iowa has a much shorter history of going first, starting in the 1970s: The first president to owe his victory to the state was Jimmy Carter in 1976.Mr. Biden has little political loyalty to either state. In 2020, he placed fourth in Iowa’s caucuses and fifth in the New Hampshire primary. It was a victory in South Carolina, which he has now moved to the front of the Democratic calendar, that propelled him to the party’s nomination and ultimately to the White House.This year, New Hampshire is holding an early primary anyway, with 21 Democrats on its presidential ballot on Jan. 23 — but not Mr. Biden, who skipped the state. Rule-following Iowa Democrats, by contrast, will hold a mail-in primary and have until March to return their ballots.“As soon as Biden became the nominee, the writing was on the wall,” said Pete D’Alessandro, who was a senior Iowa aide for Senator Bernie Sanders’s two presidential campaigns. “The grieving process had a little longer to go through, so we’re probably at a later stage than New Hampshire.”Pete D’Alessandro, who was a senior Iowa aide for Senator Bernie Sanders’s two presidential campaigns, said he had long expected President Biden to push back the state in the primary calendar.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesIowa Democrats have long suspected that their time as a presidential proving ground was up. Even before the 2020 caucus-night meltdown, there were grumblings from inside and outside Iowa about how a nearly all-white state had such influence over how a racially diverse party picked its presidential nominees.While some old-timers cling to a hope that Iowa can regain the first spot in the 2028 cycle, a belief is growing among younger Democrats that the caucuses are a distraction from local organizing work, and that the party’s 2020 presidential candidates presented a left-wing vision of Democrats that helped lead to wipeout Republican victories in the state that year and again in 2022.“Iowa Democrats are really disappointed,” said Tom Miller, a former Iowa attorney general who was one of the first elected officials in the state to endorse Barack Obama in 2008, and then backed Gov. Steve Bullock of Montana in the 2020 caucuses. “The future is certainly not good.”New Hampshire’s opposition has paid off with a series of visits from ambitious Democrats. Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Representative Ro Khanna of California, Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York and others have trekked to New Hampshire in recent months to address voters — just in case it might be useful down the road.The path to Iowa has been less traveled, with Gov. Tim Walz of neighboring Minnesota making a couple of trips, including for last summer’s Iowa State Fair.New Hampshire Democrats argue that it is obvious to future presidential candidates that the road to the White House still runs through the state’s town halls and diners. Mr. Scanlan on Monday pronounced himself unimpressed with South Carolina’s anointed spot at the front of the Democratic primary calendar.“I did a Google search for what kind of activity is occurring in South Carolina, and there really isn’t a lot of news there,” he said in an interview on Monday that took place at the exact moment Mr. Biden was delivering a campaign speech in South Carolina. “The only real action is in New Hampshire.”David Scanlan, left, New Hampshire’s secretary of state, with Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota, as the congressman presented his candidacy form for the Democratic presidential primary race in Concord, N.H., in October. Mr. Phillips, unlike Mr. Biden, will be on the state’s primary ballot.Gaelen Morse/Getty ImagesDemocrats in both Iowa and New Hampshire harbor dreams — most likely to be unrequited with Mr. Biden in the White House — that when the rules for the next presidential primary process are set, they will regain their spots.Ray Buckley, the chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, predicted that the state’s fight for its place on the 2028 calendar would be much more intense than it was for 2024, with Mr. Biden’s renomination viewed by most of the party as an academic exercise.New Hampshire’s plan to win over D.N.C. members in the next cycle, Mr. Buckley said, would involve rallying the party’s progressive members, who remember that Senator Sanders won the state’s primary twice — even though he did not go on to win the nomination either time.“It’s not a secret that the establishment was very angry with New Hampshire for Bernie Sanders winning in 2016 and 2020,” Mr. Buckley said. “I think you’ll see a response from the progressive community across the country.”Iowa’s comeback plan is, as one might expect, a bit more polite.The Iowa Democratic chairwoman, Rita Hart, said she believed there would be “a level playing field” when it came to bidding for the early primaries in 2028. She said she did not expect Mr. Biden to put his thumb on the scale for South Carolina at Iowa’s expense.“We’ve had some really tough conversations with the D.N.C.,” she said. “We would not be where we are right now if we had not gotten reassurance that in 2028 we’ll have every opportunity to get back into the first tier.”Scott Brennan, a former Iowa Democratic Party chairman who was involved in the party’s losing bid to retain its early slot in 2024, said that unlike New Hampshire Democrats, if Iowa Democrats did not get their first-in-the-nation slot back, they would accept that decision.“I think we’ve earned the right to be there,” Mr. Brennan said. “If for nothing else, because the process gave us Barack Obama as president twice.” More

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      How to Watch Donald Trump’s Fox News Town Hall

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      Former President Donald J. Trump will join the Fox anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum at 9 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday for a live town-hall event. It will be broadcast on Fox News and can be streamed at Foxnews.com with a cable login.Mr. Trump will take the stage in Des Moines at the same time that the fifth Republican presidential primary debate is set to begin just two miles away. He has snubbed all of the presidential debates so far, often scheduling his own counterprogramming.That hasn’t hurt him much in Iowa, where recent polls show him leading his competitors by more than 30 points ahead of the caucuses on Monday.This will be Mr. Trump’s first live appearance on Fox News in nearly two years. The network hosted similar town halls this week with Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis. More

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      Split Screen in Iowa: Haley-DeSantis Debate vs. Trump Town Hall

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      The 2024 campaigns took a snow day on Tuesday in Iowa, with time ticking down on the chance to make a final impression with voters before the Republicans’ caucuses on Monday night.With most events called off for snowstorms, attention turned to former President Donald J. Trump, who appeared in court in Washington to argue that he had total immunity from criminal prosecution for actions he took as president. Three judges at a federal appeals court expressed deep skepticism toward that argument.As Iowans dig out from the snow on Wednesday, the campaigns will head back out on the trail.Former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, after appearing at town-hall events on separate days earlier in the week, will face off directly on Wednesday night in a debate to be broadcast by CNN. The front-runner, Mr. Trump, has declined to participate, as he has for debates throughout the nomination contest.But Mr. Trump is hoping to derail his rivals’ appearance — a tactic he has also repeatedly employed. He will appear at a Fox News town-hall event that will play out simultaneously with the CNN debate — seeking to disrupt one of the last opportunities Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley have to win over voters with just five days until Caucus Day.Mr. Trump’s absences from the campaign trail — he is also scheduled to return to court on Thursday, this time for a civil fraud trial in New York — could give his rivals a window to chip away at his huge polling lead in Iowa.Little has worked so far, and he is 30 points ahead of the competition in polls in Iowa, with Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley virtually tied for a distant second place. The entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who did not qualify for the CNN debate, has been campaigning furiously but remains stuck in a distant fourth place. In New Hampshire, where the campaign will move after Monday, new polls show a narrowing race, with Ms. Haley gaining support.In other newsMr. Ramaswamy has recently tried to position himself as more electable than Mr. Trump while still impassionately defending the former president in the face of his criminal prosecutions.Mr. Trump said in an interview on Monday that he believed that the economy would crash soon, adding that he hoped it would happen in the next year so President Biden would be blamed for it.Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who is not campaigning in Iowa and instead is staking his candidacy on New Hampshire, said at a town-hall event in the state that he would not endorse Ms. Haley unless she removed herself from potential consideration as Mr. Trump’s running mate. Mr. Christie is facing pressure to drop out of the race to shore up support for Ms. Haley as a stronger anti-Trump candidate.Reporting was contributed by More

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      Setting the Stage for Iowa: ‘Trump Will Probably be Over 50 Percent’

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      Patrick Healy and The Republican caucuses in Iowa are just five days away, marking the official start of the 2024 presidential election season. To kick-start Opinion Audio’s coverage, Patrick Healy, the deputy editor of Times Opinion, and the Opinion editor Katherine Miller get together to discuss their expectations for Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, where they think the G.O.P. is headed and Donald Trump’s continued dominance. Stay tuned for more on-the-ground analysis from “The Opinions” in the coming weeks.Illustration by Akshita Chandra/The New York Times; Photograph by Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesThe Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, X (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram.This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Vishakha Darbha. It was edited by Kaari Pitkin, Alison Bruzek and Annie-Rose Strasser. Engineering by Issac Jones with mixing by Carole Sabouraud. Original music by Carole Sabouraud. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. More

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      What Will Happen at the Iowa Caucuses? Here’s What to Expect

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      A win isn’t always win in the Iowa caucuses. In the final days, the candidates are scrambling to beat each other — and expectations.It may feel as if there is little suspense over who is likely to win the Republican presidential caucuses in Iowa on Monday.But in Iowa, the unexpected can be the expected and a win is not always a win. The result could shape the future of the Republican Party at a time of transition, and the future of the Iowa caucuses after a difficult decade. It could help determine whether Nikki Haley, the former U.S. ambassador, presents a serious obstacle to Donald J. Trump’s return to power — or whether Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, will be forced out of the race.Here’s a guide to some possible outcomes and what they mean for the contenders:A Trump victoryAll the assumptions about a big Trump night mean that the former president’s biggest opponent may turn out to be expectations — and not his two main rivals on the ballot, Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis. Mr. Trump and his campaign have set the bar high. Mr. Trump has run as an incumbent, not even debating his opponents. His aides say they think he can set a record for an open race by finishing at least 12 points ahead of his nearest rival.And for Mr. Trump, that could be a problem.“Trump has been polling around 50 percent plus or minus,” said Dennis J. Goldford, a political science professor at Drake University in Des Moines. “If he were to come in at 40, that’s a flashing yellow light. That suggests weaknesses and uncertainty.”Two forces could complicate Mr. Trump’s hopes for the night. Those same polls that show him heading for victory, the polls he boasts about at almost every rally he does in Iowa, could feed complacency among his supporters. Why come out and caucus — Caucus Day temperatures are projected to reach a high of zero degrees in places — if Mr. Trump is going to win anyway?And unlike Democrats’ caucuses, this is a secret ballot; Republicans do not have to stand and divulge their vote to their neighbors. That could matter if there really is a hidden anti-Trump sentiment out there that Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley have been banking on.Of course, these are just what-ifs. Mr. Trump has appeared to take a lesson from 2016, when, after leading in the polls, he lost the caucus to Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. This time, he has deployed an immense field organization and traveled across Iowa, urging his supporters to vote. “He’s coming back to the state again and again,” said Jeff Angelo, a former Republican state senator who now hosts a conservative talk show on WHO-AM. “They are not going to take it for granted this time.”A weak showing by Mr. DeSantisGov. Ron DeSantis is hoping for a strong second-place finish in Iowa, though he trails the field in most public and private polls in New Hampshire.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesThe governor of Florida was once seen as Mr. Trump’s biggest threat and Iowa was the state where he could seize the mantle of being the Trump alternative. But Mr. DeSantis has not lived up to his billing, and the rise of Ms. Haley has forced him to the edge of the stage.The test for Mr. DeSantis, earlier this campaign season, was whether he could use Iowa to create a two-way race with Mr. Trump. Now, he is struggling to make certain that he at least scores what he was always expected to score: a strong second-place finish.Mr. DeSantis’s supporters say they remain confident he will come in second — and perhaps even upset Mr. Trump. “If you believe in polls, hopefully he comes in a solid second,” said Bob Vander Plaats, an influential evangelical leader in Iowa who has endorsed Mr. DeSantis. “If you believe the ground game, there’s a potential he could upend the former president in Iowa. He has by far the best on-the-ground operation I’ve seen.”“A lot of people are waiting to write DeSantis’s obituary,” he said. “I just see DeSantis having a good night on caucus night.”Coming in second place could propel the DeSantis campaign on to New Hampshire. But a weak second-place showing — if he just barely edges out Ms. Haley, or the results are still in dispute as he leaves Iowa — could confirm Republican concerns about his political appeal, and force him to drop out. And coming in third?“Look, he told all of us that he’s all in for Iowa,” said Mr. Angelo. “You finish third in Iowa, I don’t see how you continue.”But even with a second-place showing — which his campaign would call a win — it’s hard to see how Mr. DeSantis builds on that. He trails the field in most public and private polls in New Hampshire. In fact, Mr. DeSantis is not competitive in any of the upcoming states. In a recent interview on NBC News, he declined to list any other states where he could win. He is not putting much effort, in terms of spending or ground game, in any other state. His best hope, it would seem, is that Mr. Vander Plaats is correct and he somehow pulls off an upset victory over Mr. Trump.A strong showing by Ms. HaleyNikki Haley could present herself as a real alternative for Republicans looking for another candidate besides Mr. Trump to lead the party this November if she comes in a solid second in Iowa.Hilary Swift for The New York TimesIf Ms. Haley does come in a solid second, this becomes a different race. She would head into New Hampshire, a state where she has strong institutional support, with the wind at her back, even after a few weeks that have been marked by stumbles on the campaign trail. She could present herself as a real alternative for Republicans looking for another candidate besides Mr. Trump to lead the party this November.And her supporters would almost certainly turn up the pressure on Mr. DeSantis to step aside to allow the party to unify around her. “That becomes the story of the caucus,” said Jimmy Centers, a longtime Iowa Republican consultant. “She becomes the alternative to former President Trump. And then I think the chorus is going to say, it’s time for the field to winnow so they can go head-to-head.”If Ms. Haley finishes in third place, Mr. DeSantis will presumably try to push her out of the race. But why should she leave? She will only be moving on to politically friendlier territory, as the campaign moves first to New Hampshire then to her home state, South Carolina.If Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley continue their brawling into New Hampshire, Mr. Trump will be the beneficiary. “If you don’t have a clear second-place person who can claim the mantle of where the ‘not-Trump’ vote goes in subsequent states, I don’t see where Trump is facing any challenges going forward,” said Gentry Collins, a longtime Iowa Republican leader.Another rough night for Iowa?This has been a tough decade for the Iowa caucuses. In 2012, Mitt Romney, the governor of Massachusetts, was declared the winner of the Republican caucus, but 16 days later, the state Republican Party, struggling to count missing votes, said that Rick Santorum, the former senator from Pennsylvania, had actually finished first.The 2020 Democratic caucus turned into a debacle, riddled with miscounts and glitches, and the brigade of reporters who had descended on Iowa left before the final results were known. (Quick quiz: Who won the 2020 Iowa Democratic caucus?)When there is already so much distrust of the voting system, fanned by Mr. Trump, the last thing Iowa needs is another messy caucus count. That would arguably be bad for Iowa, but also for the nation.“What I’m concerned about is that you could have a repeat of 2012,” said David Yepsen, the former chief political correspondent for The Des Moines Register who in 2020 predicted that the meltdown — which robbed Pete Buttigieg of momentum from his narrow victory — would spell the end for Iowa’s Democratic caucus.“You have 180,000 people voting in a couple of thousand precincts on little slips of paper that are hand-tabulated,” he said. “The doomsday scenario is that they have problems with their tabulations. With all this talk about voting being rigged, I just think the country is going to feel jerked around if Iowa Republicans don’t get this right.” More

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      For Anti-Trump Republicans, It All Might Come Down to New Hampshire

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      With the Iowa caucuses likely to be a battle for second place, the next nominating state appears to offer the best chance of an upset defeat of Donald Trump.With his usual bluntness, Chris Christie used a recent event in New Hampshire to lay out why he thought the state’s primary election was more important than the Iowa caucuses — and what he saw as its tremendous stakes.“It’s pretty clear that the caucus system is going to renominate the former president, but that’s not what happens here in New Hampshire,” Mr. Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, said at a diner in Amherst, N.H. “It seems to me that the people from the Live Free or Die State would be the last people who would want to nominate someone who’s going to be a dictator.”As former President Donald J. Trump’s stranglehold on Iowa Republicans shows no sign of lessening, New Hampshire has become the most critical state for Nikki Haley, Mr. Christie and the small, increasingly desperate contingent of the Republican Party that wants to cast aside Mr. Trump.It is the only state where polling shows Ms. Haley within striking distance of the former president, and the only place where Mr. Christie has gained any sort of foothold. While Iowa’s caucuses on Monday are likely to be a slugfest for second place, New Hampshire’s primary on Jan. 23 has an outside chance of serving up an upset victory for Ms. Haley.Such an outcome would be the first sign of vulnerability for Mr. Trump and could serve as electoral rocket fuel for Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina. But a drubbing for her in New Hampshire would probably end her pitch as a viable alternative to Mr. Trump. Mr. Christie, for his part, has already said he will drop out if he does not have a strong showing there.The state has large numbers of independent-minded voters and a penchant for delivering surprises, reinvigorating the flagging bids of presidential candidates including Bill Clinton in 1992 and John McCain in 2008. Not since 1976 has a Republican contender in an open, competitive primary race won Iowa and gone on to carry New Hampshire as well.“The race will tighten in the last few weeks,” said Chris Ager, the chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party. “We’re one week after Iowa, so a lot of people just wait until Iowa happens. And you don’t have to decide early here,” he added, “because the candidates are going to be here.”He noted that Mr. Trump was “essentially the incumbent” in the race, but that Ms. Haley and others had strong support in the state. “You just never know what’s going to happen,” Mr. Ager said.As she tries to make the race a two-person contest, Ms. Haley has started to criticize Mr. Trump more.Joseph Prezioso/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesPolls in New Hampshire have offered little clarity about just how competitive the race might be. A CNN/University of New Hampshire poll released Tuesday found Mr. Trump leading Ms. Haley, 39 percent to 32 percent — but a USA Today/Boston Globe/Suffolk University poll released the same day showed him up 46 percent to 26 percent. Mr. Christie drew 12 percent support in both polls.New Hampshire’s pivotal position has resulted in a windfall of advertising dollars and a blizzard of campaigning. Nearly $55 million worth of ads has blanketed the airwaves in the past six months, according to AdImpact, a media tracking firm. Roughly 40 percent of that has come from Ms. Haley and the super PAC backing her, SFA Fund Inc.Indeed, while Ms. Haley has recently spent most of her time in Iowa, her campaign has poured resources into New Hampshire, successfully courting two powerful new allies in the state: the popular governor, Chris Sununu, and the vast political network run by Americans for Prosperity Action, the conservative group backed by the megadonor Koch family.As she tries to make the race a two-person contest, Ms. Haley has started to criticize Mr. Trump more.“Chaos follows him,” she said last week in the coastal town of Rye. “And we can’t be a country in disarray and a world on fire and go through four more years of chaos, because we won’t survive it. You don’t fix Democrat chaos with Republican chaos.”Americans for Prosperity Action, which says it has never before endorsed a candidate in a presidential primary race, has dispatched dozens of canvassers and spent millions on ads and mailers for Ms. Haley in the state. Greg Moore, the group’s New Hampshire state director, said he expected more than 100 staff members to fly into New Hampshire after the Iowa caucuses for an all-out blitz.Mr. Moore said that Ms. Haley’s argument about being the most electable Republican — several polls show her beating President Biden in a general election — resonated particularly in New Hampshire, which Mr. Trump lost in both the 2016 and 2020 general elections.That pitch was evident as the group fanned out across the state this week. On Monday morning, Justin Wilson, one of the organization’s grass-roots engagement directors, plodded through more than a foot of fresh snow in the upscale neighborhoods of north Manchester to knock on doors in support of Ms. Haley.One voter, who would give his name only as Kevin, paused while shoveling his driveway and explained why he was torn between Ms. Haley and Mr. Trump.“It’s about electability when it comes to the general election,” Kevin said, saying he wanted a candidate who could beat Mr. Biden. Mr. Wilson agreed, trying to nudge him toward Ms. Haley by noting that she was “less controversial” than Mr. Trump.Mr. Moore said his group’s internal polling had found that a little more than a third of the people who say they are supporting Mr. Trump are open to considering another candidate.“Particularly as we’re talking about people who are less and less engaged, in some cases they’re supporting President Trump because that’s the guy they know,” Mr. Moore said. “And it’s up to these other campaigns to build that momentum and that name ID that really helps them change voters’ minds.”Internal polling from Americans for Prosperity Action, conducted last month, found Mr. Trump with a lead of 12 percentage points over Ms. Haley and the rest of the field. But in a two-person, head-to-head matchup, the poll showed them statistically tied.Calls for Mr. Christie to drop out of the race began to intensify in December, mostly from Republicans hoping to stop Mr. Trump. On New Year’s Eve, Mr. Sununu said the Christie campaign was “at an absolute dead end” and suggested that he should drop out.Mr. Christie has defiantly rejected that idea, and has begun drawing starker contrasts with Ms. Haley. In Amherst, he criticized her for saying that she would pardon Mr. Trump if he were convicted of a crime and that she would still vote for him if he were the nominee. In Keene, he accused her of changing her stance on issues like abortion to keep her future options open.“She doesn’t want to offend people who are willing to vote for Trump, and not even that she thinks those people will vote for her this time,” Mr. Christie said. “She’s worried about next time.”Mr. Christie has held more than 60 events so far in New Hampshire, with 150 volunteers working on his long-shot effort.Mr. Christie has rejected calls to drop out of the race, and has stepped up his criticisms of Ms. Haley.Sophie Park for The New York TimesThe Trump campaign, believing that landslide victories in both Iowa and New Hampshire would essentially wrap up the nomination, has shifted to almost exclusively attacking Ms. Haley in New Hampshire.This month, the Trump campaign released an ad attacking Ms. Haley for criticizing his 2015 plan to ban immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries. (As a member of the Trump administration, she defended the policy when it was enacted.)MAGA Inc., a super PAC supporting Mr. Trump, has attacked Ms. Haley over her support for raising the gas tax when she was governor of South Carolina in 2015, though she also called for a corresponding income tax cut. The group has spent more than $2.5 million on the ad, running it exclusively in New Hampshire. Another ad from the group focuses on immigration. An official from the super PAC said that, in total, it would spend $1.3 million weekly through Primary Day.The negative advertising appears to be reaching some voters. Pete McGuire, 54, drove about 30 minutes to see Mr. Christie at the diner in Amherst. He said he was actively looking for a Trump alternative and was considering Mr. Christie over Ms. Haley.“You see all these commercials about her vote for the gas tax, saying, We’re never doing the gas tax, never! And then the next one she’s saying, Let’s do the gas tax,” Mr. McGuire said. “So she kind of shot herself in the foot.”From a headquarters in downtown Manchester far larger than the Trump campaign’s 2016 operation, the former president’s team has recruited more than 200 city or town captains and gathered more than 60 endorsements in the state. On Sunday, volunteers traipsed through the snowstorm to knock on doors.At his event in Amherst, Mr. Christie nodded to what seem to be the feelings of many American voters in 2024.“If you’re looking for the perfect candidate, believe me,” he said, “you’re going to be looking forever.”Jonathan Swan More

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      To Win Iowa, Trump Turns to Allies Like Marjorie Taylor Greene

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      With the former president busy defending himself in court from 91 felony charges, his campaign has deployed high-profile conservatives to help fill the gaps in Iowa.Less than a week before Iowans decide whether to slingshot Donald J. Trump toward another presidential nomination, his schedule looks like this: Go to Washington for an appeals court hearing on Tuesday. Pop into Iowa for a Fox News town-hall event on Wednesday — and then make an expected return to court on Thursday, this time in New York.He is not scheduled to hold another rally in Iowa until Saturday, two days before the caucuses.As Mr. Trump flits between the presidential trail and the courtroom, his campaign has deployed a web of high-profile conservative allies to help fill the gaps and make his case across the state, a strategy that the former president may be more likely to turn to this year as his legal issues keep him occupied.Over the last months, Mr. Trump’s campaign has set up smaller rallies with Republican luminaries who, among the president’s right-wing base, have achieved a kind of political celebrity.To start its efforts in January, the campaign last week held events with Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Eric Trump, one of Mr. Trump’s sons. This week, Ben Carson, Mr. Trump’s former secretary of housing and urban development, is scheduled for two appearances in eastern Iowa.Before a winter storm hit Iowa and disrupted travel, the campaign had also planned to hold events on Monday and Tuesday with Roseanne Barr, the actress and outspoken Trump supporter; Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas, Mr. Trump’s former press secretary; and Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor who won the Iowa caucuses in 2008.Mr. Trump’s use of campaign surrogates is a notable example of an old campaign tactic. Political candidates have long leaned on prominent allies to help them, given the logistical challenges of making pitches to voters in early-voting states that hold closely scheduled contests.“It’s a way to draw interest from caucusgoers and give them the opportunity to hear from other people,” said Jimmy Centers, a Republican strategist in Iowa who is unaligned in the race. “And it can be a draw in some cases to maybe get people out.”On Monday, while Gov. Ron DeSantis was in Florida attending to his day job, his wife, Casey, and Representative Chip Roy of Texas, a hard-right lawmaker, were traveling through southeastern Iowa at events held by Never Back Down, the super PAC supporting the DeSantis campaign.Other candidates were bringing well-known figures who have endorsed them to stump at their events. Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, appeared over the weekend with Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire. The biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy is expected to campaign later in the week with the right-wing commentator Candace Owens and the YouTube star and boxer Jake Paul.But as a former president who enjoys broad support, Mr. Trump is able to draw on a far deeper roster of conservative stars. Mr. Centers said Mr. Trump’s slate of surrogates tended to be people who were “more top of mind” for likely Republican caucusgoers.Many of Mr. Trump’s surrogates are eager to align themselves with his supporters or to display their loyalty to Mr. Trump. In some cases, they may be positioning themselves for potential positions in a future Trump cabinet. (Ms. Noem has said she would consider being Mr. Trump’s running mate.)And surrogates like Ms. Noem, Ms. Greene and Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, who held an event in Cedar Rapids last month, are themselves big draws for audiences.Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, whose state borders Iowa, has also been promoting Mr. Trump’s candidacy before the caucuses.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesBrian Duckett, 59, who attended Mr. Gaetz’s event, said he had been moved by the push from the campaign and the Florida congressman for Mr. Trump’s supporters to play a more active role in the caucuses.“I’ve never done that before, and I want to do it this time,” Mr. Duckett said.Last Wednesday, Ms. Noem drew hundreds of people to a 30-minute speech in Sioux City, just across the border from her home state. The same day, Mr. DeSantis himself held events nearby that were attended by just dozens.Mr. Trump’s surrogates are often able to help him appeal to specific segments of voters, speaking more directly to their concerns in a different way from Mr. Trump. The campaign hopes that this can help drive turnout and deliver Mr. Trump a decisive victory in the caucuses.Ms. Noem drew on being a wife, mother and grandmother as she shared personal stories to encourage the audience to caucus for Mr. Trump. And she mentioned her state’s proximity to Iowa to portray herself as someone who understood residents’ concerns about the prices of groceries and gasoline.“It’s dramatic for a state like Iowa,” Ms. Noem said of gas prices. “It’s dramatic for a state like my state of South Dakota, where it’s a long ways to drive anywhere.”Ms. Greene, an ultraconservative congresswoman who rose to power as a firebrand in Mr. Trump’s mold, was well positioned to address their party’s far-right flank.Speaking in Keokuk, a city at Iowa’s southeastern tip, Ms. Greene on Thursday proudly called herself a “MAGA extremist,” then railed against establishment Republicans, saying she had been “pretty let down” by them during Mr. Trump’s first term.“We were, too,” a man called out in response.“A common thing,” she agreed.The same day, Eric Trump worked a crowd of more than 150 people in Ankeny, in suburban Des Moines. He rattled off his father’s accomplishments. Then he, too, drew on his own particular advantages.“Should we call Donald Trump and see if he picks up the phone?” the younger Mr. Trump asked the audience. Moments later, the former president’s voice filled the room as his son held his phone up to the microphone.“I just want to say, I look forward to seeing you on Friday, we love you all, and I hope my son is doing a great job,” the elder Mr. Trump said.Max Anderson, 23, said at the Ankeny event that Mr. Trump’s steady stream of surrogates gave the former president’s pitch more credibility. He added that he thought the phone call reflected well on Mr. Trump’s character.“It shows that he takes care and loves his people — especially his kids,” Mr. Anderson said.Leah McBride Mensching More