The Nevada GOP says former President Trump will participate in the First in The West Caucus scheduled for next February.

The Nevada GOP will hold the caucus on February 8th, while the Secretary of State's Office will hold a presidential primary for Republican voters two days earlier. 

The Nevada GOP has said it will only honor the results of their party-run caucus to choose the Republican presidential nominee, despite a 2021 state law that requires the Nevada secretary of state’s office to hold a presidential primary for the party.

Trump won the 2016 caucus; the 2020 caucus was canceled.

In a statement, the Nevada GOP says Trump commented, “I am honored to officially file to run in the First in the West Nevada Caucus. Taking back the White House and defeating Crooked Joe Biden in the Silver State will send a strong signal that the America First movement grows more powerful every day. I look forward to working with the Nevada Republican Party and Chairman McDonald to ensure Nevada votes Republican in the general election.”

You can sign up here to participate in the caucus. 

Five candidates have already filed their names on the presidential primary ballot.

“I don’t have the ability or the opportunity to determine which law or regulation I’m going to follow,” Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar said. “That’s not my job as a regulator.”

The Nevada Republican Party’s decision to hold a caucus in spite of the state law has elicited criticism — even from within its own ranks — stemming from potential voter confusion and concerns the state party is attempting to tilt the scale for former President Trump over other candidates.

Still, the caucus rules were approved in a vote by the state party’s central committee members late last month.

One of the rules approved by the Nevada GOP bars any candidate from the Feb. 8 caucus if they participate in the Feb. 6 state-run primary, setting up an ultimatum of sorts for Republican candidates trying to decide between a primary that is purely symbolic or a caucus that many say is tilted toward Trump

Nevada GOP Chairman Michael McDonald, a fake elector in 2020 who tried to keep Trump in power after his election loss, has repeatedly defended the decision to run a caucus and maintained the rules were not set to benefit the former president. He also criticized lawmakers in Nevada's Democratic-controlled Legislature for rejecting Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo's proposed election laws, particularly one that requires proof of identification at the ballot box, instead of just when registering to vote.

“It gives each candidate the opportunity to perform. It’s about getting their people out,” McDonald said of the caucus in an interview after the state party approved the rules last month. "... And my job, as well as my goal, is to have the candidates get to know all our counties.”

After Trump's caucus announcement, McDonald stated, "We are thrilled to welcome President Donald J. Trump to the First in the West Nevada Caucus. His strong America First policies resonate with voters in the Silver State and across the nation. This is a tremendous opportunity for Nevadans to connect with a candidate who has a proven track record of delivering results."

So far, Trump and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy are the only two debate-eligible candidates to commit to the caucus.

The Supreme Court said it will not take up the lawsuit at the federal level.

The caucus also calls for voter ID, paper ballots and only same-day voting. Nevada’s election laws, used in the state-run primary, require universal mail-in ballots, early voting, same-day registration, and require an ID to register to vote, but not at the polls.

Aguilar’s office is launching a voter education project to inform voters interested in the presidential election. Still, he maintained that their outreach will strictly be about the presidential primary process his office is running, not the party-run caucus. He said caucus outreach is the job of the state party and the candidates opt for the caucus.

“If they determined this is the best interest of their party, that’s up to them,” Aguilar said. “It’s not up to me to have an opinion about it.”

(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)