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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The attorney who helped persuade the Supreme Court to strike down Hawaii’s private-property concealed-carry restriction on Thursday criticized the state’s reliance on a Reconstruction-era Black Code to defend the law.
In a 6-3 decision in Wolford v. Lopez, the Court held that Hawaii cannot require licensed gun owners to obtain express permission before carrying firearms onto private property open to the public. Gun-rights challengers dubbed the policy the “vampire rule” because lawful gun owners had to be “invited in” before entering businesses while armed.
“It is disgraceful that any state would rely on a law specifically aimed at taking away the Second Amendment rights or any constitutional right of Black Americans as it was at that time,” attorney Kevin O’Grady, who represented the plaintiffs, told Fox News Digital.
“And it’s not surprising, however, that Hawaii would rely on it as they are diametrically opposed to the Second Amendment. We fully expected that the Supreme Court would identify that as the kind of law that one absolutely should not look to determine whether or not something is constitutional because this is the perfect example of something which is not constitutional.”
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Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson speaks on stage during the “Ketanji Brown Jackson on Lovely One: A Memoir” panel at The Atlantic Festival in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 20, 2024. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images for The Atlantic)
A major flashpoint was Hawaii’s effort to justify the law under the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. Since Bruen, courts evaluating firearm regulations have generally asked whether modern gun restrictions are consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.
Hawaii cited several historical laws, including an 1865 Louisiana statute enacted as part of the post-Civil War Black Codes. The law made it unlawful to carry firearms onto another person’s property without the owner’s consent.
Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, rejected that argument outright, calling the Louisiana statute a “tainted artifact” that was enacted to disarm newly freed Black Americans and leave them defenseless after the Civil War. He concluded the law “cannot be taken seriously” as evidence of the Second Amendment’s original public meaning.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, however, argued in her dissent the Court skipped an important constitutional question.
Jackson did not defend the Black Codes, which she acknowledged were racist and used to oppress newly freed Black Americans. But she argued the Court should have first decided whether the Louisiana law itself violated the Second Amendment, or whether the real constitutional problem was that it was enforced in a racially discriminatory way.
SUPREME COURT TAKES SECOND AMENDMENT CASE CHALLENGING HAWAII GUN LAW
Todd Settergren handles pistols inside his display case at Setterarms gun shop in Walnut Creek, Calif., on Jan. 13, 2017. (Michael Macor/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
“It might well be that the Black Codes are invalid inputs for Bruen’s test,” Jackson wrote, “but only if they violated the Second Amendment — which may or may not be the case.”
Instead, she argued that under the Supreme Court’s Bruen framework, the Court could not simply dismiss those laws without first explaining why they should not count as historical evidence.
She outlined two possibilities: either the firearm restrictions in the Black Codes were constitutional but enforced in a racially discriminatory manner — making the constitutional defect an equal-protection problem — or the restrictions independently violated the Second Amendment. The Court, she argued, never resolved that question before excluding the Louisiana law from consideration.
US APPEALS COURT STRIKES DOWN CALIFORNIA’S OPEN-CARRY BAN IN MAJOR SECOND AMENDMENT RULING
“Either history does matter, and if so, all potentially relevant historical experiences must be thoroughly examined,” she wrote. “Or, it does not, and the Court should just admit that the test it has created is boundless.”
Her reasoning immediately drew pushback from critics, who argued the Fourteenth Amendment was passed in response to laws like the Black Codes that denied newly freed Black Americans their constitutional rights, like the right to bear arms.
Rain clouds roll over the United States Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., on June 18, 2026. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
“I would simply point her to what Justice Alito pointed out in the majority ruling — it was in response to these types of laws that the Fourteenth Amendment was enacted in the first place,” Hannah Hill, vice president of the National Association of Gun Rights, told Fox News Digital.
US JUDGE TOSSES ILLINOIS’ BAN ON SEMIAUTOMATIC WEAPONS, GOVERNOR PLEDGES SWIFT APPEAL
“That right there is your answer,” Hill continued. “Yes, there was a historical tradition — they enacted a constitutional amendment to fix that deprivation of rights, and that is also in the Constitution now, so I think she should probably go back to law school.”
Tyler Yzaguirre, president of Second Amendment Institute, echoed O’Grady and Hill’s criticism.
“Those laws were not legitimate expressions of our Nation’s constitutional tradition; they were examples of government using its power to deprive Americans of a fundamental right,” Yzaguirre told Fox News Digital. “The Court was right to reject the notion that such laws could define the historical limits of the Second Amendment.”
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Businesses may still ban guns by posting or enforcing a “no firearms” policy. But what Hawaii can’t do, the Court said, is treat every business as off-limits to licensed gun owners unless the owner specifically says guns are allowed.
SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom reached an agreement Friday with legislative leaders on a $351.7-billion state budget in his final year as governor, a spending plan that uses a tax windfall to avoid major cuts and lessen California’s chronic deficit in the years ahead.
The deal provides nearly $2 billion in state revenue next year through tax hikes on corporations, new levies on software sales and a revamped tax on managed healthcare organizations. Lawmakers and the governor continue major investments in public schools, healthcare and agreed to increase spending on subsidized childcare and affordable housing.
“We want to leave the next governor not only a balanced budget, but a budget that is substantially structurally sound, and we’re going to accomplish that,” Newsom said in an interview Friday. “We were very cautious in terms of new spending,”
The agreement ends weeks of lobbying by outside interests and negotiations among lawmakers and the governor at the state Capitol about how to handle a surge of income tax collected on stock market gains related to artificial intelligence.
Early forecasts last June projected a $12.6-billion deficit in 2026-27, according to the California Department of Finance. Updated predictions now suggest the state will end the year with a surplus of $4.5 billion.
Democrats, following Newsom’s lead, are tucking away $6.4 billion for future years, which allows the governor to knock down a deficit previously projected through 2027-28 and assuage criticism about his spending habits.
But economists say the fix and revenue increase are likely only temporary.
Spending in California has generally exceeded revenue growth during Newsom’s tenure in the governor’s office, creating a chronic shortfall. Despite the extra funding, the budget continues a trend of relying on reserves, shifting funds, borrowing and suspending debt payments to balance state spending.
The Legislative Analyst’s Office, the nonpartisan fiscal advisor for lawmakers, has warned of a roughly $10-billion annual gap between the amount of money the state brings in and spends, which could grow dramatically worse if the stock market turns downward. The LAO has said the existence of any operating deficit during a revenue boom is a red flag and that the state is “ill-prepared” for even a modest decline.
Christopher Thornberg, an economist and founder of the consulting firm Beacon Economics, said it’s business as usual in Sacramento.
“They love increasing spending. But it seems politically impossible to go the other way,” Thornberg said. “We’ve seen this play out over and over again.”
Lawmakers and the governor offered a different take and asserted that their decision to put the $6.4 billion into a short-term reserve, called the Projected Surplus Temporary Holding Account, and ask voters to allow them to store more money in the rainy day fund are examples of prudent budgeting.
“You see us save more and you see us try to address the immediate needs of our community, but also the structural budget that potentially awaits us,” said Senate President Pro Tem Monique Limón (D-Goleta) in an interview. “We are forecasting a moment where we will need to address these issues and we want to start now to think about the future as well.”
Under a progressive tax structure, the state budget is dependent on income taxes paid by the ultra-rich on earnings largely from capital gains. The set up leaves California vulnerable to the unpredictable nature of the stock market, dramatic swings in revenue and, in recent years, reliant on poor projections.
Negotiations at the state Capitol included an agreement on a constitutional amendment that seeks to offset the revenue highs and lows.
If approved by voters on the statewide ballot in November, the amendment would raise a cap on mandatory deposits into the rainy day fund from 10% to 20% of general fund revenue. The measure would also allow lawmakers to exempt money they put into the rainy day fund and the temporary holding account from state spending limits.
Under an existing state appropriations restraint, also known as the Gann Limit, lawmakers cannot spend more than an amount determined by a formula that takes annual tax proceeds, changes to the population and cost of living into consideration. Tax revenue above the limit must be divided between schools and refunds to taxpayers.
With few exceptions, the limit applies to most appropriations of tax revenue, including when lawmakers put money away in the rainy day fund and other reserves.
Newsom said the change will leave the state in a much better position to weather the volatility. Though calls for tax reform remain in California, the governor said being able to place more money into the reserves could ultimately solve the state’s budget challenges.
“The one thing missing is the one thing that I think we finally landed, which is the change in the reserves,” Newsom said. “It changes the political dynamic, where now you’re not exchanging general fund priorities.”
Republicans criticized the proposed constitutional amendment, which passed in a budget trailer bill this week, for failing to require that excess revenue pays down the state’s $22 billion in unemployment insurance debt.
State Sen. Tony Strickland (R-Huntington Beach) called it a missed opportunity.
“It does not require debt payment to go to the UI debt,” Strickland said. “It facilitates more spending, exempting reserve deposits from the state spending limit.”
The proposed change to the state Constitution also jabs the president and asks voters to approve a 100% tax on payments any California taxpayers receive from the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” Trump established for allies who claim they were unjustly targeted by the federal government.
As part of the overall budget negotiations, lawmakers agreed to delay some healthcare cuts that would have required monthly premiums for immigrants and eliminated dental care. The deal adopts a Medi-Cal asset test of $21,000 on July 1, 2027, instead of $2,000.
The budget agreement includes a provision requiring California’s next governor to develop options to reduce taxpayer subsidies for corporations whose employees receive state-sponsored healthcare through Medi-Cal instead of the company’s health plan. The plan is aimed at raising revenue to offset federal cuts that are expected to leave millions of Californians without access to healthcare.
To generate $11.25 billion for affordable housing, Democrats approved a bond for the November ballot that would include down payment and mortgage assistance to veterans and low-income families. Democrats also approved $900 million in Homeless Housing, Assistance, and Prevention grants, marking a $400-million increase from Newsom’s budget proposal in May.
The California Department of Finance said state reserves are expected to total $28.8 billion under the 2026-27 budget.
Politics
Warren tells Trump to ‘sign the damn bill’ as bipartisan housing package remains stalled in Washington
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., lashed out at President Donald Trump during a recent local television interview, labeling him a “man-child” throwing a “tantrum” over his refusal to sign a sweeping bipartisan housing package.
Appearing on WCVB’s “On the Record,” the left-wing senator did not hold back her frustration over the stalled legislation, delivering a blunt message to the president: “Sign the damn bill.”
“If he cared about the American people, he’d have already signed the damn thing,” Warren said during the interview, arguing that Trump “does not care about the economic survival of America’s working families.”
FILE – The Senate previously advanced the massive housing package geared toward lowering the costs of homes and supercharging the housing supply. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., pitched it as legislation to prevent America from becoming a “nation of renters.” (Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Protect Borrowers ; Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
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The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act is an expansive bipartisan package that she said contains nearly 50 provisions designed to address the nationwide housing emergency.
Warren noted that decades of under-building have driven prices up, leaving the U.S. in need of millions of new units.
The primary focus of the bill is to lower the costs of construction and make it easier to build new homes.
FILE – President Donald Trump previously said lawmakers must first approve the SAVE America Act before he moves forward with the housing package. (Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg)
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The bill, which was co-sponsored by Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., also includes a secondary focus aimed at blocking corporate consolidation of the housing market.
Warren explained that the legislation is designed to keep private equity firms from buying up local neighborhoods and turning America “into a nation of renters.”
According to Warren, the legislation had widespread support from both sides of the aisle before it was stalled.
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She claimed the bill was “handed to the president on a silver platter” and that lawmakers from both parties were eagerly taking credit for the legislation.
“Republicans were all going online, saying, ‘well, I helped write that bill. This bill is terrific,’” Warren said. “So everybody’s out there saying, ‘my bill, I helped make this happen,’ right up until the man-child has a tantrum and announces he will not be signing it.”
FILE – Sen. Elizabeth Warren called President Donald Trump a “man-child” during the interview, describing his refusal to sign the bill as a “tantrum.” (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
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Critics of the legislation claim it does not allocate fresh federal funding, directly address rising costs of homeownership, or go far enough to address permitting issues.
The president previously canceled a scheduled signing event, insisting lawmakers must first approve the unrelated SAVE America Act, a voting-focused measure, before he moves forward.
The White House did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
Fox News Digital’s Alex Miller contributed to this report.
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