Trump Returns to Washington With Renewed Grip on the G.O.P.

Donald J. Trump flew into Washington last summer in a state of misery. He was there for his criminal arraignment, and he told associates afterward that the city was disgusting. He could feel Washington’s hostility, aides said.

Today, he returns to the nation’s capital under much different circumstances — to flex his dominance over a political and business establishment that has been forced to come to terms with him.

The former president is now the Republicans’ presumptive presidential nominee against President Biden, after vanquishing several primary rivals, raising hundreds of millions of dollars in recent months and rallying a wide range of Republicans behind him in denouncing his recent criminal conviction in Manhattan as evidence of a weaponized justice system.

Mr. Trump’s scheduled meetings with lawmakers — including Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader who denounced him on the Senate floor weeks after the violent attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6, 2021 — are the starkest examples of how an establishment that still hates him has accepted his potential return to office. After years of hoping that someone else could step up to lead their party, that establishment is gradually submitting to the reality of the 2024 campaign.

“There’s high anticipation here and great excitement,” Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters on Wednesday before Mr. Trump’s visit.

The former president’s morning will begin with an early meeting with a group of House members, followed by a visit with dozens of chief executives who belong to the prestigious Business Roundtable. In the afternoon, he will visit with senators at a meeting organized by Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, a close ally who, in January, became the highest-ranking senator to endorse Mr. Trump’s candidacy.