By Nicholas Riccardi, Associated Press

As frigid temperatures scour the Midwest, the Republican presidential nominating process will officially start Monday with Iowa’s caucuses.

The quadrennial contest has been unusually quiet this year, a mark of former President Donald Trump’s commanding lead in the race. An arctic blast dropping the state into subzero temperatures and dumping snow during the final days of the runup didn’t help, either.

But there’s plenty to consider heading into the caucuses, and after years of speculation and maneuvering over who will face President Joe Biden this November, we’ll finally have the first votes tallied.

Here are some things to watch:

WHO WINS SECOND

Iowa appears to be a battle for second place given Trump’s dominance. The real question is whether either of the two Republicans who lead the pack of very distant also-rans can make it a two-person race in the long run.

To do that, they probably need to at least come out of Iowa with a silver medal.

A man walks past a sign that reads “Iowa Caucuses 2024” in downtown Des Moines, Iowa, Saturday, Jan. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis once talked of winning the state, but he’s lowered expectations to simply having a good showing. With his campaign apparatus in turmoil and funds drying up, he needs a strong finish in a state where its movement conservatives would normally be his natural audience.

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s technocratic and consensus-building pitch doesn’t seem tailor-made for Iowa, but the caucuses come just as she gained increased attention and financial support. Her strongest state may be the next one up, New Hampshire, and a second-place finish in Iowa could put her in a strong position as attention shifts to New England.

Rarely has so much ridden on a second-place finish in the first nominating state.

WHO BRAVES THE COLD?

Heading into the caucuses, much of the focus has been on Trump’s strong standing. The surprise may ultimately be more about the turnout and who would benefit from the brutal winter storm limiting participation.

After all, the caucus isn’t built for convenience. Those who participate must venture out after dark to one of 1,567 locations, almost always requiring a drive. The roads will be icy, the wind chill will be dozens of degrees below zero. Iowans are a famously hardy stock, but even they may flinch at venturing out in those conditions. The National Weather Service last week warned people not to leave their homes if possible.

A man walks across the street below a sign for the Iowa Caucuses in downtown Des Moines, Iowa, Saturday, Jan. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

On top of all that, people can be less motivated to vote in contests where winners are seen as inevitable.

On the flip side, Trump’s voters are very motivated to support him. DeSantis may benefit from having a deep organization to ferry nervous participants to caucus sites. Overall, conservative voters are excited to get 2024 underway — they’re angry at the state of things, like their candidates and see Biden as easily beaten in November.

The comparison will be 2016 when 186,000 Republicans turned out in the last competitive caucus. That’s a small number to have such a huge role in determining the nominee to lead a country of 330 million. Will we see fewer people this time?

WHAT’S TRUMP’S MARGIN?

The polls have been impressive but you don’t know how a candidate will fare until the votes are counted. Will Trump’s polling dominance translate to a big win on Monday? Or will there be a surprise?

Campaign signs for Republican presidential candidates, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron Desantis line the road in front of Drake University, where CNN hosted a presidential debate on January 10, 2024 in Des Moines, Iowa. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Trump has popped into the state in the final days of the contest, but he’s also diverted his attention elsewhere in ways that are unusual for a candidate seeking to lock down an Iowa win. He, for instance, spent time last week at an appeals hearing in one of his criminal cases and the end of his fraud trial, hoping that would put him in better stead with Republican voters than crisscrossing Iowa. His rivals have dinged him for being gone, but it’s unclear whether it’ll hurt him in the state.

The odds of a surprise are always low — that’s why they’re surprises — but anything can happen in politics, especially with this weather. If Trump underperforms it could shake up a nominating contest that, to date, has been the sleepiest in modern memory.

RAMASWAMY’S MARK

One of the more unexpected side plots in the 2024 Republican primary has been Vivek Ramaswamy, a 38-year-old pharmaceutical entrepreneur who wrote a book called “Woke, Inc.” and then decided to run for president. His aggressive, social media-driven approach initially attracted some curiosity from Republican voters but seemed to turn many off after he attacked rivals during the debates.

Ramaswamy’s hard-charging style may not exactly be “Iowa nice,” but neither is Trump’s and he’s far ahead. Ramaswamy has been all over Iowa, hitting the campaign milestone of visiting all 99 counties in the state not once, but twice.

It’s not clear what Ramaswamy is competing for — he goes out of his way not to criticize Trump, but flames all other candidates in a potential audition for the frontrunner’s administration. Iowa will help determine whether he has a reason to keep running his quixotic campaign.

ATLANTA — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Sunday defended his family’s role in authorizing government surveillance of Martin Luther King, Jr., calling it a necessary step amid the political tensions of the Civil Rights era.

Kennedy’s provocative comments came as the independent presidential candidate was on a campaign trip to Atlanta on the eve of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

In an exclusive interview with POLITICO, Kennedy said that his father, Robert F. Kennedy — who authorized the wiretapping of King as attorney general — and President John F. Kennedy permitted the eavesdropping because they were “making big bets on King, particularly in organizing the March on Washington.”

“They were betting not only the civil rights movement but their own careers. And they knew that Hoover was out to ruin King,” said Robert Kennedy Jr., referring to J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI director at the time.

He argued that the Kennedy administration had a legitimate reason to go along with Hoover’s determination to surveil King. The FBI director saw King as a dangerous radical with Communists in his inner circle.

“There was good reason for them doing that at the time,” Kennedy said, “because J. Edgar Hoover was out to destroy Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement and Hoover said to them that Martin Luther King’s chief was a communist.

“My father gave permission to Hoover to wiretap them so he could prove that his suspicions about King were either right or wrong,” he continued. “I think, politically, they had to do it.”

By defending his family’s participation in what is widely considered a shameful episode in presidential history, Kennedy may complicate his efforts to present himself to the electorate as a political truth teller who stands up for marginalized constituencies.

The attorney and anti-vaccine activist has attempted in his campaign to reach out to Black voters and other racial minorities that typically lean toward the Democratic Party. His renowned lineage has so far seemed to be an asset in that effort.

But Kennedy’s relationship with his family is complicated and strained, with some of his relatives speaking out against his candidacy and his fringe views that in many cases appeal to the right.

On Sunday, Kennedy was on the campaign trail in Atlanta with Angela Stanton-King, a former Republican congressional candidate and Donald Trump supporter who now works for Kennedy’s campaign.

Declassified government records revealed that the FBI engaged in a sustained campaign of surveillance and harassment targeting the Civil Rights movement, to a far greater extent even than was publicly known at the time. Most notoriously, the FBI sent King a letter suggesting that the Civil Rights leader should kill himself.

Betty Medsger’s 2014 book “The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI” characterized the FBI’s campaign against King as a “yearslong multifaceted operation designed to destroy King.”

Medsger added: “The plot involved office break-ins, use of informers, mail opening, wiretapping, and bugging of King’s office, home and hotel rooms.”

Robert Kennedy Jr. said on Sunday that his father and uncle would have been fully aware of Hoover’s hostility to civil rights organizations: The FBI director was “a racist,” Kennedy said, and “left no doubt where he stood on those issues.”

He claimed, however, that his uncle as president would have fired Hoover in a second term, had he not been assassinated in the fall of 1963.

Kennedy also said he believed that President Kennedy had alerted King to the eavesdropping in a private conversation.

David Cohen contributed to this report.