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

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 news

• Mr. 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 Maggie Astor, Anjali Huynh and Neil Vigdor.