Trump takes Iowa and a big first step toward a rematch with Biden.

Donald J. Trump won the Iowa caucuses on Monday, a crucial first step in his bid to regain the Republican nomination for a third consecutive election as voters braved the bitter cold, looked past his mounting legal peril and embraced his vision of vengeful disruption.

The victory, declared by The Associated Press on Monday evening just 31 minutes after the caucuses began, accelerated Trump's momentum toward a historic potential November rematch with President Biden that could play out on the campaign trail as well as in the courtroom .

In a state that had rejected him in the caucuses eight years ago, Trump finished ahead of two of his main rivals, Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, both of whom were locked in a race for second place. It was unclear who won second and third.

The result was a setback for both Republicans, who had spent as much time and money battling each other in Iowa as the front-runner. Mr. DeSantis, the Florida governor, had previously predicted victory in Iowa, and both he and Ms. Haley, the former United Nations ambassador, have argued that a strong second-place finish would better position them as Trump's main rival in the future .

Mr. Trump is the first former president in modern times to attempt a return to the White House. On Monday, he hoped to break the Republican record for the largest victory ever in a contested caucus, which stood at just under 13 percentage points. Despite Mr. Trump's swift announcement as the winner, it was not yet clear whether he would win an outright majority of more than 50 percent, a critical psychological barrier for those in the party still hoping to stop him.

A spokesman for Mr. DeSantis, Andrew Romeo, said in a statement that the early announcement of Mr. Trump's victory was “absolutely outrageous.” He borrowed a phrase from Mr. Trump to accuse the media of participating “in election interference by calling the race before tens of thousands of Iowans even had a chance to vote.”

Regardless of what comes next, Trump's victory in Iowa amounts to a remarkable resurrection of a political career that once seemed in tatters. He was impeached in the final days of his first term in the White House for his role in inciting the January 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol. His subsequent acquittal by the Senate left open the possibility of this return campaign.

Trump has methodically consolidated power over the past three years to prepare for his own recovery. Even his four felony charges, and his status as the only former U.S. president ever to face criminal charges, have united many Republicans behind his claims of “election interference” and victimization by Democrats and the “deep state.”

Now the Republican calendar will turn to New Hampshire, where polls show Mr. Trump is expected to face a strong challenge from Ms. Haley in a state where independent voters can also cast ballots. Trump's campaign and the allied super PAC have already blanketed that state with anti-Haley advertising, a sign of its competitiveness ahead of the Jan. 23 primary.

Mr. DeSantis had entered 2023 as the party's clear alternative to Mr. Trump. But early struggles, both financial and electoral, forced him to make cuts and take a stand in Iowa, where he won the support of the state's popular Republican governor and a major evangelical network. His super PAC knocked on more than 935,000 doors statewide.

Even with Mr. Trump far ahead, Ms. Haley's Allied super PAC spent more than $22 million attacking Mr. DeSantis in Iowa alone, hoping to destroy his candidacy in the very first state (the group had nothing issued to oppose Mr. Trump). Iowa, according to federal data). On the way to the caucuses, Mr. DeSantis had promised to run a “long” and “messy” campaign regardless of the outcome, symbolically deciding to fly straight to South Carolina after Iowa instead of New Hampshire, a state where he has voted. the single digits.

Trump's team believes a string of early wins — first in Iowa, then in New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina — will position him for a big blow on Super Tuesday, all but locking up the nomination in March, when many of the delegates are already ready. up for grabs. But they fear an early defeat could lead to a longer battle.

In Iowa, severe winter conditions had disrupted turnout expectations and preparations for all campaigns in recent days. First, a snowstorm forced a slew of event cancellations. Then freezing temperatures and a numbing wind chill led to warnings on Monday “life-threatening cold” from the National Weather Service.

But supporters of Mr. Trump, who describes his followers as part of a broader “MAGA movement,” proved inspired nonetheless, animated by his dark portrait of a nation in decline and apocalyptic rhetoric about wresting a left-controlled country from the abyss. . Trump's vows to retaliate against his political enemies have drawn warnings from academics and Democrats about a tendency toward authoritarianism, but have also drawn cheers from his rapturous crowd.

In many ways, Trump's victory represented a repudiation of campaign rituals in Iowa, a state that previously rewarded candidates who expose themselves to scrutiny, submit to hard questions or visit each of the state's 99 counties. as Mr. DeSantis did.

Mr. Trump did little of that, visiting only a fraction of the state's counties and appearing at just a single in-person rally in the final week of the campaign, citing icy conditions for some cancellations. He did keep some traditions: He stopped by a Casey's gas station to pick up pizza, which he then delivered to the fire department this weekend. But more often, he took advantage of his unique status as a former president to travel in a Secret Service motorcade and attract national attention wherever he went, including a court appearance and a news conference in New York last week.

His approach reflected the increasing nationalization of American politics, where television news appearances are often as persuasive as small-town meet-and-greets. Yet Mr. Trump, bitterly remembering how his lack of political organization had hurt him during the 2016 caucuses, invested early and heavily in the state, building a robust staff and recruiting more than 1,800 people as “caucus captains” for the more than 1,600 districts in the state.

One of Trump's most meaningful decisions was his refusal to even debate his rivals.

His absence from the most watched moments of the primaries forced his rivals to fight each other and robbed them of any chance to close his lead. And while Iowa has historically played a key role in winnowing the field, this cycle that happened before voting even started. Former Vice President Mike Pence, Senator Tim Scott and former Governor Chris Christie all bowed out after failing to gain any significant traction. Another former Republican rival, Governor Doug Burgum of North Dakota, endorsed Mr Trump on Sunday.

Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur who has heavily funded his own run and who has spoken mostly positively about Mr. Trump during his extensive tour of Iowa, has struggled to build momentum. After a truce for most of the campaign, Trump and his advisers spoke with Ramaswamy over the past two days before the caucuses, with the former president's team seeing him siphon potential votes.

Long before the caucuses, Mr. Biden had begun to focus his re-election bid on portraying Mr. Trump as an existential threat to American democracy, citing his predecessor's refusal to accept the results of the last election and his obstruction of the peaceful transfer of American democracy. power in 2020.

A Justice Department-appointed special counsel, Jack Smith, has sued Mr. Trump for his post-election role in subverting the will of the people. The case could go to trial in 2024 – before the general election.

The election subversion case is just one of four charges Trump faced in 2023, along with charges related to his handling of classified documents, his hush money payments to an adult film actress in his 2016 campaign and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election to make. election results in Georgia.

If Mr. Trump becomes the nominee, the 2024 campaign will have few modern parallels.

He is about to split his time between the campaign trail and his criminal and other civil cases. And the Supreme Court is soon expected to consider the fundamental question of whether states can outright exclude Mr. Trump from voting on his role in the Jan. 6 riot. Another case coming to federal courts will test Trump's claim that he should be immune from prosecution.

Ms. Haley has made the uncertainty and turbulence that nominating Mr. Trump for the contest would bring a central part of her pitch. “Chaos,” she has said, “follows him.”