Politics
Trump's victory in Iowa puts him on track for comeback bid, despite criminal charges
Former President Trump has passed the first milestone in what his allies hope will be a quick march to a third presidential nomination.
The voting by Iowa Republicans on Monday moved the country closer to a presidential contest unlike any other in U.S. history: A defeated former president facing four criminal cases and multiple felony allegations — including an effort to subvert the last election — taking another shot at the White House.
Trump’s win in the Iowa caucuses came thanks to the resolve of his die-hard supporters, who turned out on a bitterly cold night that state officials described as some of the worst weather for a caucus in half a century.
Even before voting had begun at some caucus locations, the Associated Press and television networks projected Trump’s victory based on polls of voters entering the caucus sites and results from key precincts.
The swift announcement drew an angry reaction from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who was projected to take second place, just a few percentage points ahead of former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.
In a statement from his campaign’s communications director, DeSantis accused the news media of “election interference.”
“The media is in the tank for Trump, and this is the most egregious example yet,” the statement said.
Speaking to his supporters, Trump said he was honored by the early call, congratulated his opponents and called for unity in the GOP.
“It would be so nice if we could come together and straighten out the world and straighten out the problems and straighten out all the death and destruction we’re witnessing,” Trump said. “It’s going to happen soon.”
He called President Biden “the worst president that we’ve had in the history of our country” and pledged to “seal up the border” and “rescue our economy.”
With nearly all the vote tallied, Trump was holding just over half the total, with DeSantis and Haley each pulling about one-fifth. Businessman Vivek Ramaswamy was far behind in fourth place and was expected to drop out of the race.
The weather and the lack of suspense about the outcome did lead to sharply lower turnout than in 2016, when more than 180,000 Iowans took part in the GOP caucus. This time around, Iowa Republican officials said about 100,000 voted.
The near-tie for second could mean that the Iowa result won’t have much effect on either the Haley or DeSantis campaigns’ ability to move forward to the next contest, in New Hampshire next week, where Haley has been gaining ground, but DeSantis has been largely absent.
Despite her projected third-place showing, Haley claimed to have the momentum needed to overtake Trump in future contests and told her supporters, “I can safely say tonight, Iowa made this Republican primary a two-person race.”
“Seventy percent of Americans don’t want another Trump-Biden rematch,” she said. A rerun of the 2020 contest would result in another close election, but Haley said she would beat Biden “in a landslide.”
Haley is well positioned to overtake Trump in New Hampshire, where moderate voters and independents are a much larger share of the electorate than in Iowa.
After that, however, her prospects dim. Trump continues to have a huge lead in Haley’s home state, which votes in February, as well as in many of the 15 states that vote on March 5, this year’s Super Tuesday.
In California, for example, Trump currently has the support of two-thirds of likely GOP voters for the March 5 primary, according to a UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll, co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times, which was released Monday morning. Trump is on track to win all of the state’s delegates to the GOP convention, which amount to 14% of the votes needed for the nomination.
Democrats did not hold a presidential caucus Monday. The party flubbed the 2020 caucuses so badly that no winner was ever formally named. Amid concerns that Iowa’s overwhelmingly white population did not represent the nation’s changing demographics, Democrats last year decided to begin their nominating contest with primaries in South Carolina and Nevada.
After the race was called for Trump, the Iowa Democratic Party issued a statement outlining the case that Democrats plan to make against the former president.
As he campaigned in Iowa, “Trump showed us exactly what he would do to America if he gets the chance: ban abortion nationwide, cut Social Security and Medicare, make our communities less safe, and give handouts to the wealthy while raising costs on middle-class families,” the statement said.
Monday’s results showed that Trump retains the fervent backing of his loyalists. His margin of victory was on track to break the record for a contested Iowa Republican caucus, set in 2000 by George W. Bush.
Unlike a primary, where voters can cast a ballot at any time during election day — and in many states for weeks before the election — caucuses require voters to attend at a specific time, typically starting at 7 p.m., and stand in front of their neighbors to announce whom they back.
At the 1,657 precinct-level caucus sites around the state, supporters of the candidates delivered speeches, often expressing the grievances and anger that have animated many Republican voters about the border, pandemic-era lockdowns and perceived bias against conservatives.
In preelection polls, Trump voters were far more enthusiastic about their candidate than were backers of the other candidates, and that enthusiasm carried over to caucus night.
“There is a great awakening happening across the country right now,” said Kathryn M. Heilesen, a certified public accountant in Denison, a small city in western Iowa, who was a caucus captain for Trump. She did not clarify her reference to the “Great Awakening,” a phrase that dates to 18th century evangelism in the U.S. but in recent years has been picked up by devotees of QAnon conspiracy theories.
Heilesen’s vote for the former president was a matter of faith but also of prophecy, she said. “And you just need to listen to the prophets — if you listened to them in 2016, they predicted this,” she said.
Although the population of Crawford County, where Denison is located, is almost 30% Latino, the caucus turnout was almost entirely non-Latino white voters.
Nearly half of Trump’s supporters described themselves as “extremely enthusiastic” about their candidate, according to a Des Moines Register-NBC-Mediacom poll of Iowa voters conducted last week. By contrast, only 9% of former United Nations Ambassador Haley’s backers were similarly excited, as were 23% of voters for DeSantis.
Trump led among all demographic groups tested in the poll but was especially strong among voters who identified themselves as evangelical Christians and the 4 in 10 likely caucus voters who labeled themselves as backers of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement. Among Trump backers, 60% called themselves either “ultra MAGA” or “regular MAGA,” the poll found.
About half of Haley’s supporters identified as “anti-MAGA,” while 1 in 10 said they were MAGA supporters.
DeSantis voters fell between those two poles, with more than half saying they were neutral toward the MAGA movement, the poll showed.
Kurt Moore, 54, a DeSantis supporter in Ames, home to Iowa State University, said he hadn’t caucused in past elections because “sometimes you know you’re not going to change anything.” This time, he said, he would have “driven through a blizzard” to take part.
“A lot of us think we’re coming to an end as a country if we don’t take a new direction,” he said. “We have a great country … only if we don’t destroy it. Now with all these people flooding across the border … people’s tax dollars [are] being used to house illegal aliens in schools. We don’t know what a man or a woman is. It’s a mess, and we have to fix it.”
Voters are “willing to go out in 2-degree weather to fix it,” he added, looking at the roughly 120 people gathered in a crowded elementary school cafeteria for their caucus.
Nearby, two more DeSantis supporters, Ami and Rolf Duvick, said that they supported the Florida governor because Trump had backed lockdowns during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“In a nutshell, we really liked Trump, but DeSantis led way better when it came to COVID,” Ami Duvick said. Trump should have fired Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former head of the federal government’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, she added.
In Iowa, as elsewhere, Haley appears to have consolidated the support of those who have rejected Trump, including disaffected Republicans, independents and some Democrats who crossed over and participated in the Republican caucus, which Iowa’s rules allow.
She appeared to be doing best in precincts with high percentages of college-educated voters, a result consistent with the preelection polls that showed her having her strongest support among two groups that have consistently resisted Trump: suburban voters and white women with college degrees.
The Des Moines Register poll found that about half of Haley’s supporters were independents or crossover Democrats, and only 23% said they would vote for Trump in a November rematch against President Biden. By contrast, 43% said they would vote for Biden, while the rest backed one of several third-party or independent candidates.
Trump’s criminal liability did not bother the vast majority of likely caucusgoers, the poll found: 6 in 10 said that if Trump were convicted, it would have no effect on their support for him in November, and 2 in 10 said a conviction would make them more likely to vote for him. Roughly three-quarters of likely caucus voters said they expected Trump, despite his legal problems, to beat Biden.
Only 2 in 10 likely caucus voters said a conviction would make them less likely to support Trump, but among Haley’s voters, 4 in 10 said a conviction would make them less likely to back him.
Mehta reported from Des Moines, Lauter from Washington and Pinho from Ames. Times staff writer Jack Herrera in Denison contributed to this report.
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An Arizona school board member is facing calls to resign after appearing to make a Nazi salute during a contentious public meeting before later comparing the board president to a dictator and saying, “All I could think of tonight was Hitler.”
Video from a May 26 Deer Valley Unified School District Governing Board meeting appears to show board member Kimberly Fisher raising her right arm and saying, “Heil, heil” during a dispute with board President Paul Carver Jr.
The exchange occurred near the end of the meeting during a disagreement over scheduling a community study session related to district boundary discussions.
According to video of the meeting, Fisher objected to holding the session during the afternoon, arguing that community members would have difficulty attending.
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A still image from a Deer Valley Unified School District board meeting shows board member Kimberly Fisher during a contentious exchange with board President Paul Carver Jr. over meeting procedures. (DVUSD)
“The whole point of having a study session with our community is that we can get their input and they can hear our discussions,” Fisher said during the meeting.
Carver later said he moved to adjourn the meeting because the discussion involved an item that was not on the posted agenda and could have raised concerns under Arizona’s Open Meeting Law.
“The reason for calling for the adjournment was simply that, as the question turned into discussion concerning an item that was not on the agenda, the board was moving into an area that could have been considered a violation of Arizona’s Open Meeting Law,” Carver said in a Facebook video posted after the meeting.
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Carver said Fisher made the gesture and comment after the motion to adjourn.
“The point behind this post is that there’s a lot of noise being made that she may have been justified in making that statement because she felt like I was being a dictator,” Carver said. “I was simply following the rules of the state of Arizona.”
He added that “it is never okay to make those gestures and make that statement with those gestures in any environment.”
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The incident prompted condemnation from district officials, who said Fisher was acting independently and did not represent the views of the district.
“The District does not condone, support, or endorse gestures or language associated with hate, discrimination, intimidation or violence in any form,” Deer Valley Unified School District said in a statement. “Such actions do not reflect the mission or vision of Deer Valley Unified School District.”
Kim Fisher took to Facebook hours after the board meeting to explain her side of the story. (Facebook/@kim.fisher.233417)
The district added that Fisher’s “views and actions do not reflect and should not be attributed to other board members, staff, other members of the school community or the District.”
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The Deer Valley Educators Association also condemned Fisher’s conduct and called for her resignation.
“DVEA was horrified and disgusted to see DVUSD Governing Board Member Kimberly Fisher deliver a Nazi salute during the Tuesday, May 26, 2026, board meeting,” association president Kelley Fisher said in a statement.
“Any leader who uses a Nazi salute during a School Board meeting is unfit for public service. There is no justification for this behavior. Kimberly Fisher should resign before she does more harm to our students and the community at large.”
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Hours after the meeting, Fisher posted a Facebook livestream in which she doubled down on her criticism of Carver, repeatedly describing his leadership as dictatorial.
“We have been living or operating under virtually a dictatorship for a long time,” Fisher said.
She also accused Carver of acting like “a dictator” and urged voters not to support him in future elections.
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Near the end of the livestream, Fisher appeared to connect her thinking during the meeting to historical dictators.
“What was it? Pol Pot, you know, was the most egregious dictator I’ve heard of,” Fisher said. “All I could think of tonight was Hitler.”
Fisher did not directly address the gesture or comment from the meeting during the livestream.
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In a separate video posted to social media, Carver said community members had asked why the board was not taking action against Fisher. He argued Arizona law limits the ability of school boards to discipline elected members.
Deer Valley Unified School District Governing Board President Paul Carver Jr. addresses community questions in a Facebook video after a May 26 board meeting during which board member Kimberly Fisher appeared to make a Nazi salute and say “heil, heil.” (Facebook/@paul.carver.264650)
“I need the community to understand that in the state of Arizona, the school district and the board do not have the ability to discipline board members,” Carver said.
Carver called Fisher’s behavior “rampant and repetitive” and said her actions were “totally unacceptable and unprofessional.”
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Deer Valley Unified School District serves more than 33,000 students across northern Maricopa County, including communities in north Phoenix, Glendale, Peoria, Cave Creek and New River, according to the district.
Fox News Digital reached out to Fisher for comment.
Politics
Commentary: In Washington, the knives are out for Xavier Becerra. Most anonymously, of course
Xavier Becerra has spent nearly four decades in elected office. To some that speaks of extensive experience and a deep grounding in policy. To others, it smacks of political careerism and a long-term investment in the failed status quo.
Wired or tired?
It all depends on your perspective.
Becerra, a California native, emerged from the hothouse of Latino politics on Los Angeles’ Eastside. He was elected to the state Assembly in 1990, served 12 terms in Congress, was California attorney general and then, for nearly four years, ran the Department of Health and Human Services under President Biden.
It’s that latter stint that’s become a particular focus in the final days of California’s long and winding gubernatorial primary.
As Becerra surged from inconsequence to front-runner, opponents — led by chief Democratic rival Tom Steyer — have hammered Becerra’s performance in the Biden administration, suggesting he was AWOL during the COVID-19 pandemic and inept in his handling of unaccompanied migrant children, 85,000 of whom were supposedly “lost” on Becerra’s watch.
Politics is about persuasion and emotion, not rocket telemetry, so it’s not hard to figure out what’s going on.
“You look at Xavier and he seems to be perceived as a thoughtful, credible, trustworthy choice. That’s what I hear when I talk to regular people who aren’t political insiders,” said Darry Sragow, a Democrat strategist who’s spent decades running California campaigns. “So you see the people who want to take him out going after one of the words I just used here, which is ‘trustworthy’ and, to some extent, ‘credible.’”
A recent Steyer mail piece — which, naturally, features a grim-faced portrait of Becerra — accuses him of “mismanagement,” “scandal” and “incompetence,” and cites a 2024 quote from Susan Rice, a former Biden domestic policy advisor, describing the ex-Cabinet member as an “idiot.” (Apparently “bitch-a—,” another Rice epithet from the same Axios news report, was deemed unsuitable.)
The mail piece also quotes Xochitl Hinojosa, a Justice Department spokesperson in the Biden administration, saying Becerra “was not effective in government,” though several people who worked in the White House could not think of any occasion, or any reason, Hinojosa would have meaningfully interacted with Becerra.
Pretty weak sauce. But at least Hinojosa, who delivered her gibe on one of CNN’s talking-head shows, was willing to publicly attach herself to the criticism.
Six former Biden administration officials were quoted by Politico “reacting with a mix of incredulity, mockery and resignation” to Becerra’s sudden ascendance in the governor’s race. Critics also unloaded to NBC News and other outlets. All of them spoke anonymously.
Therefore, it’s impossible to discern their motivations. Jealousy? Ego? An attempt to stay politically relevant?
Or maybe Becerra was, indeed, a feckless, flailing and thoroughly awful Cabinet member, deserving of scorn and shame.
Ron Klain, who was Biden’s chief of staff during the first two years of his presidency, doesn’t believe so.
“I think he did an excellent job as HHS secretary and I think the record shows that,” Klain said, citing, among other accomplishments, Becerra’s work helping negotiate a drop in the price of prescription drugs and expanding healthcare coverage under the Affordable Care Act.
On COVID-19, Becerra “wasn’t confirmed until several months into the Biden administration. Dr. [Anthony] Fauci had been on the job and was quite a well-known figure to Americans. So, of course, he became more the face of the COVID response.”
“On immigration,” Klain went on. “Xavier’s part was small and discreet. He wasn’t the secretary of Homeland Security. He didn’t run the border. He oversaw an office called the Office of Refugee Resettlement” responsible for processing children who crossed the border alone. “I was in meetings where he was a passionate and forceful advocate for these minors,” Klain said.
Still, there are legitimate questions, notwithstanding Becerra’s deflections — Trump! MAGA! Trump! — about his handling of the migrant children, some of whom died, suffered horrible abuse or were catastrophically injured, according to revelatory reporting by the New York Times. It’s worth noting, however, that Becerra inherited a plan to deal with unaccompanied minors that was drafted and phased in by Rice and her Domestic Policy Council.
There is an unhappy history between the two; apparently Becerra was not alone in drawing Rice’s ire. In 2022, an article in the American Prospect accused her of creating an “abusive and dehumanizing workplace,” in which Rice routinely berated others, including the Health and Human Services secretary.
On social media, Rice has made no secret of her continued contempt for Becerra, a display that carries no small whiff of ax-grinding and score-settling. She highlighted the refusal of Biden’s Homeland Security chief, Alejandro Mayorkas, to endorse Becerra in the governor’s race, though it would be surprising if Mayorkas, Biden, Kamala Harris or any high-level Democrat picked a favorite in such a fiercely contested primary.
Becerra “had big things to do and he got them done,” said Neera Tanden, who succeeded Rice as head of Biden’s Domestic Policy Council and has vigorously defended Becerra against attacks on social media.
“I am not on or coordinating with the Becerra campaign,” Tanden said. “I just know these attacks are ridiculous.”
If Becerra makes it past Tuesday’s primary to the November runoff, his career merits careful scrutiny — and not just those years spent in the Biden Cabinet. Many voters are still getting to know Becerra, who is the likeliest candidate to be California’s next governor. Anonymous quotes, drive-by commentary and incendiary mailers may be standard campaign fare. But voters deserve better.
Politics
Trump floats replacing 250th anniversary concert with massive MAGA rally after artists pull out
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President Donald Trump on Saturday floated the idea of hosting a massive MAGA rally to commemorate the nation’s 250th anniversary after numerous artists pulled out of a planned concert this summer.
In a lengthy Truth Social post, Trump suggested scrapping the Great American State Fair’s Freedom 250 concerts. He also took aim at a federal judge who on Friday ordered that his name be removed from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
“We should have a giant MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN RALLY, for 250, instead of having overpriced singers, who nobody wants to hear, whose music is boring, and yet who do nothing but complain,” Trump wrote.
“Cancel it, just like I canceled my involvement with the failing and unsafe to be in Kennedy Center, because a Highly Conflicted, Crooked Federal Judge, said that I should not be allowed to spend my time and money in order to MAKE THE CENTER GREAT AGAIN, actually, far greater than it ever was before!” he continued.
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President Donald Trump arrives to speak at a rally at the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines, Iowa, on July 3, 2025. (Alex Brandon/AP)
The comments came as several artists backed out of performing at the Great American State Fair, a large-scale national celebration planned on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., stretching from the U.S. Capitol to the Washington Monument.
The event is scheduled to run from June 25 through July 10, 2026, as part of the nation’s America 250 celebration.
Earlier this week, Freedom 250 organizers released a list of performers slated to appear at the event, but several artists later withdrew, including Martina McBride, Bret Michaels, Young MC, Morris Day and The Time, and C+C Music Factory.
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President Trump floats hosting a massive MAGA rally for the nation’s 250th anniversary after several artists pulled out of planned Freedom 250 concert events. (Doug Mills/Getty Images/Pool)
Other performers, including rapper Vanilla Ice, have said they are “honored” to participate.
In a separate social media post Saturday, Trump suggested he could replace the concert with a major speech after several artists got “the yips.”
“I understand Artists are getting ‘the yips’ having to do with their performance on Wednesday, so I am thinking about bringing the Number One Attraction anywhere in the World, the man who gets much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime, and he does so without a guitar, the man who loves our Country more than anyone else, and the man who some say is the Greatest President in History (THE GOAT!), DONALD J. TRUMP, to take the place of these highly paid, Third Rate ‘Artists,’ and give a major speech, rallying the Country forward like I have done ever since being President!” Trump wrote.
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Vanilla Ice is “honored” to get to play during the Great American State Fair in celebration of America’s 250th anniversary of independence. (Scott Dudelson/Getty Images)
Trump said he was considering delivering the speech and holding a rally June 24 to kick off the festivities.
“I don’t want so-called ‘Artists’ that get paid far too much money, who aren’t happy,” he wrote. “I only want to be surrounded by Happy People, Smart People, Successful People, and People that know how to WIN.”
Freedom 250 later announced that Trump would, in fact, deliver a speech ahead of the Great American State Fair.
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“As the visionary behind the Great American State Fair, we are excited to announce that President Trump will personally kick off this historic celebration on Wednesday, June 24 in an opening ceremony celebrating America’s 250th birthday,” Freedom 250 spokeswoman Danielle Alvarez wrote on X.
Fox News Digital’s Lori A Bashian and Louis Casiano contributed to this report.
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