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Helen Sullivan (now) with Chris Stein in Chicago, Sam Levin, Maanvi Singh, Léonie Chao-Fong, Maya Yang and Vicky Graham (earlier)

Tim Walz rallies Democrats in biggest speech of his life – as it happened

Bill Clinton Barack Obama Tim Walz United States Kamala Harris Donald Trump

This blog is closing now, thanks for following along. If you’re here for Oprah, our story is at the link below:

More on Pelosi’s appearances on Wednesday:

At an event before the DNC, Pelosi was reluctant to divulge details of her conversation with Biden just over a month ago, during the deeply agonizing period before he decided to abandon his re-election bid and endorse Harris.

Speaking at the University Club of Chicago, in a room paneled with stained glass, Pelosi insisted that the monumental decision was Biden’s alone to make. But pressed by Democratic strategist David Axelrod, she conceded that she believed it “essential” Democrats deny Donald Trump a second term. The cost was denying Biden one, too.

“I wanted very much to protect his legacy,” she said. But her highest priority was to win the election – and not just the White House, but the House and the Senate. “A great sacrifice was made here,” she said.

Pelosi appeared uncomfortable with the suggestion that she played the central role in pushing Biden to end his re-election campaign, a decision that transformed the presidential race. Harris has unified the party behind her and her running mate, Tim Walz, a former Minnesota congressman who Pelosi had also advocated for.

“You have to make the decision to win, and you have to make every decision in favor of winning,” she said.

Biden denied that any one person had pushed him out of the race. Speaking to reporters on Monday, after delivering what amounted to a farewell speech at the Democratic convention, he said: “No one influenced my decision. No one knew it was coming.”

Pelosi and Biden, devout Catholics who have known each other for decades, have not spoken since he ended his campaign. The rupture has weighed on Pelosi, she said. “I’ve cried over this. I’m sad about this,” she said.

During his remarks in Chicago, Biden said: “All this talk about how I’m angry at all those people who said I should step down, it’s not true.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tells Uncommitted sit in request for speaker is reasonable

Elected officials have thrown support at the ceasefire delegates doing a sit-in at the United Center in protest over the refusal of the party to allow a Palestinian American to speak on stage.

Congresswoman Summer Lee stopped by to say she supported the activism. And congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called in on FaceTime to say their request was reasonable.

The group said it intends to remain seated there until the DNC grants its request.

Here is our full write up of Tim Walz’s speech, by my colleague Rachel Leingang:

Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg gave emotional remarks on Wednesday night about their son, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who is held hostage by Hamas. Polin praised the White House and said they had met with Harris and Biden: “They’re both working tirelessly for a hostage and ceasefire deal that will bring our precious children, mothers, fathers, spouses, grandparents and grandchildren home, and will stop the despair in Gaza.”

Members of the uncommitted movement, who have been advocating for a ceasefire and arms embargo on Israel, said they welcomed the speech, but continued to advocate that a Palestinian leader get an opportunity to address the crowd. Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan, a doctor who has treated patients in Gaza, spoke on a Democratic convention panel centered on Palestinian human rights, but there hasn’t been a Palestinian American on the main stage. Gaza solidarity protesters staged a sit-in outside the convention, and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called on the convention to “center the humanity of the 40,000 Palestinians killed under Israeli bombardment”, posting: “To deny that story is to participate in the dehumanization of Palestinians. The @DNC must change course and affirm our shared humanity.”

Bill Clinton: ‘We need Kamala Harris, the president of joy’

Bill Clinton, the 42nd president, addressed his 12th Democratic convention, reading off written notes, not the teleprompter, suggesting the speech was edited last-minute. He warned Democrats against complacency: “We’ve seen more than one election slip away from us when we thought it couldn’t happen, when people got distracted by phoney issues. This is a brutal business.” He mocked Trump for his narcissism and obsession with crowd sizes, following Barack Obama’s widely cited joke on Tuesday: “[Trump] mostly talks about himself … his vendettas, vengeance, his complaints, his conspiracies.”

Clinton preached a message of unity, echoing Obama’s comments, encouraging supporters not to demean or disrespect neighbors they disagree with. He praised Joe Biden for “voluntarily” giving up power and celebrated the hope Harris has injected into the race: “If you vote for this team … you will be proud of it for the rest of your life.”

Tim Walz’s pitch to voters: ‘We’ll turn the page on Donald Trump’

Kamala Harris’s running mate gave his keynote pitch to supporters at the end of the third night of the convention, talking about his military service, coaching and teaching days, and his family’s fertility journey. He leaned into his humble roots and deployed repeated football metaphors: “I haven’t given a lot of big speeches like this, but I have given a lot of pep talks … It’s the fourth quarter. We’re down a field goal, but we’re on offense and we’ve got the ball. We’re driving down the field, and boy do we have the right team.”

He called on his supporters to step up with urgency: “We got 76 days. That’s nothing. There’ll be time to sleep when you’re dead. We’re going to leave it on the field. That’s how we’ll keep moving forward. That’s how we’ll turn the page on Donald Trump. That’s how we’ll build a country where workers come first, healthcare and housing are human rights, and the government stays the hell out of your bedroom. That’s how we make America a place where no child is left hungry, where no community is left behind, where nobody gets told they don’t belong.”

Democrats rose to their feet when Nancy Pelosi walked on stage at the United Center in Chicago for the Democratic national convention. They applauded, and then applauded louder. Pelosi waved before quieting the room.

The former House speaker began by expressing her gratitude to Joe Biden, calling his term “one of the most successful presidencies of modern times”. even though she had pushed subtly but forcefully for the president to step aside.

“Thank you, Joe,” she said, before turning to Kamala Harris, a fellow Californian who Pelosi said was “ready to take us to new heights”.

Pelosi may have retired from her speakership, but the convention has proven – if proof were needed – that the veteran congresswoman remains one of the most important power brokers in the party who can make – or break – a US president.

Here is Oprah on her decision to make a speech at the DNC tonight:

As I walked out of United Center among delegates still cheering after Gov Tim Walz’s speech, I saw the sit-in led by Uncommitted delegates had grown in the past couple hours.

Some in the movement held banners saying “not another bomb” and “arms embargo now” facing the arena exits.

About a dozen people are sitting on the pavement beside the arena, talking about their experiences as Palestinian Americans and what they want from the DNC – a spot for a speaker on the main stage.

Some elected officials have spoken in support of their demand, tweeting that after the family of Israeli hostages got time to share their story, so too should a Palestinian.

Trump has posted his assessment of Wednesday night at the DNC on Truth Social, calling Josh Shapiro’s speech “really bad and poorly delivered”. Trump also claimed that he is the “best friend that Israel, and the Jewish people, ever had” and that he has “done more for Israel than any person, and it’s not even close”.

He claimed, erroneously, that Harris “hates Israel”.

When Walz was speaking, his son Gus, sitting in the audience was visibly moved. Here is that moment:

In her Wednesday night appearance, Winfrey also spoke about Tessie Prevost Williams, who, at age six, was part of the first two desegregated classrooms in New Orleans. Williams died in July this year.

The New Orleans Four – as Williams and another three students became known – paved the way for a “girl, nine years later, to become part of the second integrated class” at her school in California, Winfrey said in reference to Harris, who was part of a bussing programme in Berkley.

“Soon, and very soon, we’re going to be teaching our daughters and sons about how this child of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father, two idealistic, energetic immigrants … grew up to become the 47th president of the United States,” Winfrey told the crowd.

Winfrey endorsed Barack Obama in 2008, Hillary Clinton in 2016, and Joe Biden in 2020, but Wednesday was her first appearance at a Democratic convention. Her appearance was kept secret and, according to her friend Gayle King, when Winfrey entered the convention centre for a rehearsal she wore a hat, sunglasses and face mask to hide her identity.

In 2012, researchers at Northwestern University and the University of Maryland tried to establish the correlation, if any, between celebrity endorsements and votes.

They used Winfrey’s endorsement of Barack Obama ahead of the 2008 Democrat primary to examine whether it had any effect on the polls.

The researchers concluded that Winfrey’s endorsement was worth about a million votes for Obama, who beat his main primary challenger, Hillary Clinton, by about 270,000 votes in the states used in the sample.

Updated

Oprah Winfrey spoke at a Democratic convention for the first time on Wednesday night, giving an enthusiastic endorsement to Kamala Harris while encouraging independents and undecided voters to turn out for the Democrats.

In a forceful, vigorous speech that ranged from school integration to childless cat ladies, Winfrey sought to encourage voters to cast their ballot for “the best of America”.

Winfrey said she was a registered independent and called on other independents and undecideds to vote.

“Values and character matter most of all. In leadership and in life. And more than anything, you know this is true, decency and respect are on the ballot in 2024.

“I’ve actually travelled from the red wood forests … to the Gulf Stream waters,” Winfrey said, referring to the Woody Guthrie song This Land Is Your Land. She said she had seen sexism, inequality and division, and been on the receiving end of it, but she had also seen that more often than not, people will help you when you are in trouble.

“They are the best of America, and despite what some would have you think, we are not so different from our neighbours.

“When a house is on fire, we don’t ask whose house it is,” Winfrey said, adding that “if the place happens to belong to a childless cat lady, well, we try to get that cat out too”.

Winfrey’s comments were a reference to the Republican vice-presidential nominee, JD Vance, who has faced criticism for saying that the US is run by “childless cat ladies”.

“Civilised debate is vital to democracy, and it is the best of America,” Winfrey said.

Updated

Everything that happened on the third night of the Democratic national convention

The Democratic national convention has just concluded its third evening at the United Center in Chicago. The fourth and final night of programming will start tomorrow at 6pm CT, with Kamala Harris scheduled to that evening give a speech accepting the party’s presidential nomination.

Here’s a look back at everything that happened tonight:

  • Tim Walz mixed Minnesota nice with Democratic outrage in his keynote speech, where he accepted the party’s vice-presidential nomination. He told Republicans to “mind your own damn business” rather than try to ban IVF care, and said Democrats should get ready to “leave it all on the field” to elect Harris.

  • Bill Clinton delivered a somewhat unfocused speech, in which he cracked wise about Donald Trump’s age and said the former president “causes chaos”.

  • The biggest celebrity surprise of the convention so far came when Oprah Winfrey strode onstage, and delivered a speech where she encouraged political independents to vote for Harris.

  • Uncommitted delegates began a sit-in at the convention, with the goal of pressuring Democratic leaders to allow a Palestinian-American to speak. Gaza solidarity protests also continued outside the venue, while inside, the parents of an American abducted by Hamas on October 7 called for his release.

  • Wes Moore, the Maryland governor and rising star in the party, bashed Trump and inferred that he avoided military service.

  • Pete Buttigieg had particularly strong feelings about Trump’s running mate, JD Vance.

  • Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, who didn’t make the cut to be Harris’s running mate, accused Republicans of being inauthentic when they talk about defending freedom.

  • Saturday Night Live’s Kenan Thompson made light of Project 2025, while actor Mindy Kaling told the convention she’d like to be ambassador to Italy.

Walz was then joined on stage by his wife, Gwen Walz, and his children.

They spent a few minutes waving to the crowd before exiting.

Most of the delegates have filtered out of the United Center, but the Minnesota delegation remains on the floor, chanting and bobbing the cardboard cutouts of Walz’s head they are carrying up and down.

Updated

Walz rallies Democrats, saying: 'We’re gonna leave it [all] on the field'

In addition to introducing himself to a country in which he is not particularly well known outside his home state Minnesota, a goal of Tim Walz’s speech was to energize the Democratic base before the 5 November election.

To do that, he again relied on football metaphors.

“Our job for everyone watching is to get in the trenches and do the blocking and tackling, one inch at a time, one yard at a time, one phone call at a time, one door knock at a time,” Walz said. “We got 76 days. That’s nothing, there’ll be time to sleep when you’re dead. We’re gonna leave it [all] on the field.”

He wrapped up his speech by saying: “As the next president of the United States always says, when we fight,” and the crowd went, “we win!”

Updated

Walz is a former high school football coach, and it shows.

“I haven’t given a lot of big speeches like this, but I have given a lot of pep talks. So let me finish with this, team,” he said, then launching into a metaphor:

It’s the fourth quarter. We’re down a field goal, but we’re on offense and we’ve got the ball. We’re driving down the field, and boy do we have the right team. Kamala Harris is tough, Kamala Harris is experienced, and Kamala Harris is ready.

Walz says Trump and Vance 'don't understand what it takes to be a good neighbor'

Tim Walz kept the attacks on Donald Trump and JD Vance going, bringing up Project 2025, the rightwing blueprint to remake the US government that Democrats have made a centerpiece of their counterattack to the GOP.

Returning to the theme of freedom – which is the focus of the night’s convention programming – Walz said: “That’s what this is all about, the responsibility we have to our kids, to each other and to the future that we’re building together, in which everyone is free to build the kind of life they want. But not everyone has that same sense of responsibility. Some folks just don’t understand what it takes to be a good neighbor. Take Donald Trump and JD Vance.”

“Their Project 2025 will make things much, much harder for people who are just trying to live their lives. They spent a lot of time pretending they know nothing about this. But look, I coached high school football long enough to know and trust me on this. When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re going to use it,” he said.

This is a well-received speech, with lots of applause in the room.

Updated

Walz tells Republicans to 'mind your own damn business' on IVF care

As he recounted his career in Congress and as Minnesota governor, Tim Walz cast himself as a fighter for freedom, and decried Republican overreach on issues such as IVF care.

Walz recounted working “across the aisle on issues like growing the rural economies and taking care of veterans” in Congress, and said: “Then I came back to serve as governor, and we got right to work making a difference in our neighbors’ lives,” mentioning his efforts to cut taxes for the middle class, and establishing paid family and medical leave.

“So, while other states were banning books from their schools, we were banishing hunger from ours,” he said.

“We also protected reproductive freedom, because in Minnesota, we respect our neighbors and the personal choices they make, and even if we wouldn’t make those same choices for ourselves, we’ve got a golden rule: mind your own damn business, and that includes IVF and fertility treatments.”

Updated

And then Walz took a swipe at JD Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate.

“I grew up in Butte, Nebraska, a town of 400 people. I had 24 kids in my high school class, and none of them went to Yale,” Walz said. Vance went to Yale.

Walz says accepting vice-presidential nomination is 'the honor of my life'

Tim Walz began his remarks on a note of gratitude, thanking the convention for backing him as Kamala Harris’s running mate.

“It’s the honor of my life to accept your nomination for vice-president of the United States,” Walz said.

Earlier, he had thanked Joe Biden “for four years of strong, historic leadership” and Harris “for putting your trust in me and for inviting me to be part of this incredible campaign”.

Updated

Tim Walz has just walked on stage.

He did a little bow to stage right as he came out, and waved to the crowd.

Updated

The convention big screen is now playing a video where Gwen Walz recounts her husband’s career.

She talks about his love for hunting and support of gun control, as well as causes important to Democrats, such as advising his high school’s gay-straight alliance.

Signs reading “Coach Walz” have been handed out to convention-goers in the United Center.

Updated

Ben Ingman, a former student of Walz, came on stage next to talk about his former teacher.

“Tim Walz is the kind of guy you can count on to push you out of a snow bank. I know this because Tim Walz has pushed me out of a snow bank,” he said.

Ingman was also joined on stage by members of the Mankato West high school football team, which Walz once coached.

Updated

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calls on convention to 'center humanity of Palestinians'

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has called on the Democratic national convention to “center the humanity of the 40,000 Palestinians killed under Israeli bombardment”.

The uncommitted movement has been demanding that the convention bring a Palestinian American onto the main stage, and earlier this evening staged a sit-in outside the convention center. Ocasio-Cortez uplifted calls for a ceasefire in her convention remarks earlier in the week. Ocasio-Cortez’s message to the convention came the same night that parents of a Hamas hostage spoke on the main stage.

Updated

Walz, who is not onstage quite yet, was introduced by Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar, who said:

Who better to take on the price of gas than a guy who could pull over to help change your tire? Who better to serve our nation than a guy who has served in uniform? Who better to find common ground than a guy with midwestern common sense?

A former football coach knows how to level the playing field and a former public school teacher knows how to school the likes of JD Vance.

Updated

Tim Walz to take the stage at Democratic convention

Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s pick for running mate, is about to speak to the Democratic national convention.

This will be the Minnesota governor’s most high-profile speech since Harris made him her pick for vice-president.

The contrast Democrats are trying to draw with Republicans is one where they’re the party of optimism, and the GOP of “darkness”.

“Choosing a guy like JD Vance to be America’s next vice-president sends a message, and the message is that they are doubling down on negativity and grievance, committing to a concept of campaigning best summed up in one word: darkness,” Buttigieg said.

“Darkness is what they are selling. The thing is, I just don’t believe that America, today, is in the market for darkness.”

Updated

Pete Buttigieg speaks at Democratic convention

Up next was Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary under Joe Biden who is widely seen as having presidential ambitions.

“Here is a sentence I never thought I’d hear myself saying: I’m Pete Buttigieg, and you might recognize me from Fox News,” he began, in a reference to his habit of making appearances on the conservative news network.

He then tore into Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance, who has been something of a secondary target for Democrats this evening:

Don’t even get me started on his new running mate. At least Mike Pence was polite. JD Vance is one of those guys who thinks if you don’t live the life that he has in mind for you, then you don’t count. Someone who said that if you don’t have kids, you have ‘no physical commitment to the future of this country’. You know, senator, when I deployed to Afghanistan, I didn’t have kids. Then, many of the men and women who tied the wire with me didn’t have kids either, but let me tell you, our commitment to the future of this country was pretty damn physical.

Updated

Maryland governor Moore recounts reopening Baltimore port after bridge collapse, bashes Trump over bone spurs

Wes Moore, the Maryland governor who is another rising star in the party, recounted how he was able to get the economically important port of Baltimore reopened ahead of schedule, after it was blocked when the Francis Scott Key bridge was destroyed by a cargo ship.

“I joined the army when I was 17. In fact, I was too young to sign the paperwork. I had to ask my mom to sign the paperwork for me, because I don’t have bone spurs,” Moore said, referring to accusations from Democrats that Donald Trump faked a disability to avoid the Vietnam war.

Moore continued:

I led soldiers in combat in Afghanistan, and my training, my training, taught me that you never learn anything about anybody when times are easy. You learn everything you need to know about somebody, when times are hard, and when the temperature gets turned up. And, America, I saw that Kamala Harris is the right one to lead in this moment, firsthand.

And united with the Almighty God’s grace, we brought closure to the families of the six victims, and while many said it could take 11 months to reopen the Port of Baltimore, we got it done in 11 weeks.

Updated

Oprah calls on independents to vote for Harris, saying: 'Decency and respect are on the ballot'

Fun fact about Oprah Winfrey: she’s a registered independent, as she just told the Democratic convention, and is calling on like-minded people to vote for Kamala Harris.

“Let me tell you this, this election isn’t about us and them, it’s about you and me and what we want our futures to look like. There are choices to be made when we cast our ballot. Now, there’s a certain candidate that says, if we just go to the polls this one time, then we’ll never have to do it again. Well, you know what, you’re looking at a registered independent who’s proud to vote again and again and again, because I’m an American, and that’s what Americans do,” she said.

“Since I was eligible to vote, I’ve always voted my values, and that is what is needed in this election, now more than ever. So, I’m calling on all you independents and all you undecideds – you know this is true. You know I’m telling you the truth that values and character matter most of all, in leadership, in life, and more than anything, you know this is true, that decency and respect are on the ballot, and just plain common sense.”

Here is a clip from Winfrey’s speech at the DNC:

Updated

Oprah takes swipe at JD Vance 'childless cat lady' comments

Winfrey continued her message of inclusion, with a swipe at JD Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate.

“Despite what some would have you think, we are not so different from our neighbors. When a house is on fire, we don’t ask about the homeowner’s race or religion. We don’t wonder who their partner is, or how they voted – no, we just try to do the best we can to save them,” she said. “And if the place happens to belong to a childless cat lady, well, we try to get that cat out, too.”

That is a reference to a remark from Vance that he’s been trying to walk back ever since Trump selected him as his vice-presidential pick last month:

Updated

Oprah calls Obamas' speech 'epic fire'

Chicago is Oprah Winfrey’s hometown, and she began by praising the speeches yesterday from fellow Chicagoans Barack and Michelle Obama.

“After watching the Obamas last night, that was some epic fire, wasn’t it? Some epic fire,” she said. “We’re now so fired up we can’t wait to leave here and do something. And what we’re going to do is elect Kamala Harris as the next president of the United States.”

This is what she had to say about Republicans:

There are people who want you to see our country as a nation of us against them. People who want to scare you, who want to rule you, people who have you believe that books are dangerous and assault rifles are safe, that there’s a right way to worship and a wrong way to love, people who seek first to divide and then to conquer.

But here’s the thing: when we stand together, it is impossible to conquer us.

Updated

Oprah Winfrey makes unscheduled appearance at Democratic convention

This is a surprise: Oprah Winfrey just strolled onstage at the Democratic convention.

The cheers were deafening.

We just heard from youth poet laureate Amanda Gorman, who gave a stirring poetry reading – much as she did at Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021:

Gorman’s recital to the Democratic convention is probably better heard than read, and you can find a clip of it here:

Updated

Pennsylvania governor Shapiro says what Trump is 'offering isn't freedom at all'

Josh Shapiro, the Pennsylvania governor who was a contender to be Kamala Harris’s running mate, took Donald Trump and the GOP to task over their tendency to say that they’re fighting for Americans’ freedom.

“Donald Trump, a man with no guardrails, wants to take away our rights and our freedoms. And, listen, while he cloaks himself in the blanket of freedom, what he’s offering isn’t freedom at all, because hear me on this,” said Shapiro.

He then launched into a strident denunciation of the former president that drew energetic cheers from the crowd:

It’s not freedom to tell our children what books they’re allowed to read. And it’s not freedom to tell women what they can do with their bodies. And, hear me on this, it sure as hell isn’t freedom to say you can go vote, but he gets to pick the winner. That’s not freedom.

You know what? You know what, Democrats, we, we are the party of real freedom. That’s right, the kind of real freedom that comes when that child has a great public school with an awesome teacher because we believe in her future, real freedom. Real freedom that comes when we invest in the police and in the community so that child can walk to and from school and get home safely to her mama.

Real freedom, real freedom that comes when she can join a union, marry who she loves, start a family on her own terms, breathe clean air, drink pure water, worship how she wants, and live a life of purpose where she is respected for who she is. Real freedom comes when she can look at Madame President, and know that this is a nation where anything and everything is possible.

That is real freedom, and that is what we are fighting for.

Updated

Uncommitted delegates start a sit-in outside the convention

Uncommitted delegates who have been pushing for a Palestinian American to get a speaking slot on the main stage of the convention have staged a sit-in outside the United Center, the Guardian’s Rachel Leingang reports:

Protesters with the uncommitted movement have been calling for an arms embargo on Israel along with a ceasefire.

The convention agreed to a panel that featured a pediatrician who treated patients in Gaza, but a Palestinian leader has not spoken on the main stage:

Updated

We just heard from Kamala Harris’s brother-in-law Tony West, whose speech seemed intended to counter criticism of the vice-president’s record as a prosecutor in California.

“One of Kamala’s very first cases in the district attorney’s office, it involved a woman, an innocent woman, wrongfully arrested in a police raid. It was a Friday afternoon, and the courthouse was shutting down for the weekend,” recounted West, who served as an associate attorney general in the Obama administration.

“And look, most prosecutors, they would have gone home and dealt with the matter the following Monday, but not Kamala. You see, my sister-in-law knew that if the judge didn’t see this woman that afternoon, she’d spend the entire weekend in jail. And Kamala, she wondered, does this woman work weekends? … Does she have young kids at home, who’d feed those kids? So Kamala pleaded for the judge to return to the bench and to hear the matter, and the judge agreed, and within minutes, that woman was released back to her family that night.”

“It may seem small, but that’s what it means to stand up for justice. That’s what it means to stand for the people. And as Kamala says, when you know what you stand for, you know what to fight for,” he concluded.

Updated

As the clock strikes 9pm CT here in Chicago, only a handful of speakers are expected to come before Tim Walz takes the stage.

According to the official schedule, we will soon hear from Nevada senator Catherine Cortez Masto, youth poet laureate Amanda Gorman, Maryland governor Wes Moore, and transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg.

Musician John Legend and Sheila E will then perform, after which Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar and Benjamin C Ingman, a former student of his, will introduce Walz.

Updated

Lateefah Simon, Congress candidate who worked for Harris: 'She truly sees you'

Lateefah Simon, a candidate for Congress who worked for Kamala Harris in the San Francisco district attorney’s office, is now up:

I saw Kamala Harris holding the hands of sexual assault survivors. I saw scores of mothers who lost their babies to gun violence, lining up day after day at the courthouse, waiting only to speak to Kamala because they knew that she would hear them, that she would truly see them. Because there’s something about Kamala Harris, for those who know her, you know when she hears your story, she carries it with her. When she sees you, she truly sees you, she truly sees you. She is the best among us. … She wanted to get to the root cause of a broken criminal justice system.

Simon describes Harris as a “fierce woman for the people”.

Protests continue outside Democratic convention

Meanwhile, Gaza solidarity protests and marches have continued outside the convention during the third night of programming, according to reporters on the scene:

Updated

Pelosi didn’t continue for much longer, encouraging Americans to vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, before wrapping up.

“I’ve known Kamala Harris for decades. Personally. I know her, a person of deep faith, which is reflected in her community care and service. Officially, she is a leader of strength and wisdom and eloquence on policy, most recently demonstrated fighting for one’s right to choose. How, politically, she is astute at winning difficult elections, quickly securing the nomination with dignity and grace and choosing Tim Walz as our vice-president,” the former speaker said.

She closed with these lines:

The parable of January 6 reminds us that our democracy is only as strong as the courage and commitment of those entrusted with its care, and we must choose leaders who believe in free and fair elections, who respect the peaceful transfer of power. The choice couldn’t be clearer.

Updated

Pelosi, a key figure in Biden bowing out, calls his administration 'one of the most successful' in recent history

Nancy Pelosi began her speech by thanking Joe Biden for his service.

There was no mention at all of her reported role in orchestrating the pressure campaign that preceded his decision to end his bid for a second term:

On January 20, 2021 with the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, we established one of the most successful presidencies of modern times, and we quickly proved that Democrats deliver millions of jobs, stronger infrastructure and rural broadband, a Biden Child Tax Credit, rescuing human pensions, honoring our veterans, old climate action, lowering the cost of prescription drugs. All thanks to President Biden’s patriotic vision of a fairer America. Doing so, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, Joe!

The crowd applauded, and she then moved on.

Nancy Pelosi addresses Democratic national convention

Former speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is now at the podium, waving at the convention hall as she enjoys a hearty applause.

Will she comment on her reported role in getting Joe Biden to end his bid for a second term? We’ll see.

After meandering for a while, Clinton finally got to the point he’d been trying to make:

If you vote for this team, if you can get them elected and bring in this breath of fresh air, you’ll be proud of it for the rest of your life. Your children will be proud of it, your grandchildren will be proud of it.

Not long after, he finished speaking, never returning to the speech awaiting him on the teleprompter. Fleetwood Mac’s Don’t Stop” started playing as he exited – a song that was a theme of his 1992 presidential campaign.

Updated

Clinton, still not following the teleprompter, warned Democrats against complacency:

We’ve seen more than one election slip away from us when we thought it couldn’t happen, when people got distracted by phoney issues. This is a brutal business.

Unlike most speakers, Clinton seems to be looking down at notes on the podium as he talks, rather than following the teleprompter.

There is a speech displayed on the teleprompter, but it’s paused right now, a sign the former president has strayed from his prepared remarks.

Clinton then brought up something of a sore subject for Democrats: the June debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, during which the president performed so poorly that he ended his bid for a second term weeks later.

But Clinton found something to rib Trump for.

“I almost croaked in the first debate of this election seasons when Donald Trump said no one respects American anymore,” he said, calling the former president “a good actor” for saying that with a “straight face”.

Clinton echoes Barack Obama with comment on crowd sizes

Next up from Clinton was a quip about Donald Trump’s repeated harping on the size of the crowds he attracts.

“Do you want to spend the next four years building the economy from the bottom out and the middle up, or do you want to spend the next four years talking about crowd size?” he asked.

Barack Obama had a similar line last night:

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Bill Clinton is mocking Trump’s arrogance:

What does Donald Trump do with his voice? He mostly talks about himself … his vengeance, vendettas, complaints, his conspiracies. The next time you hear him, don’t count the lies – count the I’s. He’s like one of those tenors … singing ‘me, me, me, me.’ When Kamala Harris is president, every day will begin with you, you, you, you.”

Bill Clinton: 'Trump creates chaos'

Bill Clinton is laying out the case for Kamala Harris, saying: “Will this president take us backwards or forward? Will this president give our kids a brighter future? Will this president bring us together or tear us apart? … Donald Trump has been a paragon of consistency. He’s still dividing. He’s still blaming. He’s still belittling other people. He creates chaos and then he sort of curates it, as if it were precious art.”

Clinton praised Harris’s background working at McDonald’s as a student, joking, “I’ll be so happy when she actually enters the White House because, at last, she’ll break my record as the president who has spent the most time at McDonald’s.”

Earlier in the speech, Clinton also made a joke about Trump’s age. Since Biden stepped aside, the former president is now the older candidate. Clinton said:

Two days ago, I turned 78. The oldest man in my family who is still living. And the only personal vanity I want to assert is that it’s still younger than Donald Trump.

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Bill Clinton praises Joe Biden

The former president has offered words of praise for Joe Biden:

He had an improbable turn that made him president. When we were in the middle of a pandemic and an economic crash, he healed our sick and put the rest of us back to work. He strengthened our alliances for peace and security, stood up for Ukraine, tried desperately to get a ceasefire in the Middle East. And then he did something really hard for a politician to do – he voluntarily gave up political power.

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Bill Clinton addresses Democratic national convention

Former president Bill Clinton is now onstage, drawing a big applause in the convention hall.

This will be his first major speech of this election cycle. We heard from his wife, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, on Monday.

Near the end of his speech, Jeffries turned biblical and then lyrical.

“In the Old Testament, Book of Psalms, the Scripture tells us that weeping may endure during the long night, but joy will come in the morning,” said Jeffries.

He practically rapped the next line:

Here’s how we do it. Strategize on Sunday. Meet the moment on Monday. Take it to him on Tuesday. Work it out on Wednesday. Thank the Lord on Thursday. Fight the power on Friday. Set it off on Saturday. Get a few hours of sleep, wake up the next day and do it all over again until joy, joy, joy comes in the morning.

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After praising Kamala Harris, Jeffries turned his ire on the GOP.

“Extreme Maga Republicans don’t care about everyday Americans, they only care about themselves,” he said. Democrats, by contrast, “care about you, the American people, and we will fight hard to make sure the American dream is alive and well in every single community”.

Then he turned to “you know who”:

Donald Trump is like an old boyfriend who you broke up with, but he won’t just go away.

He spent the last four years spinning the block, trying to get into a relationship with the American people. Bro, we broke up with you for a reason.

That drew a big laugh from the crowd.

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Top House Democrat Hakeem Jeffries is now addressing convention

Onstage now is Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic House minority leader, who began his remarks, as many at this convention have done, by praising Joe Biden:

We could not have asked for a better president to partner with than Joseph Robinette Biden, who will go down as one of the most consequential presidents of all time.

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Actor Mindy Kaling: 'It's important I be appointed ambassador to Italy'

Actor Mindy Kaling has taken the stage, joking:

I am so proud to be here supporting my friend. But the real reason I am here is that, deep down, I truly believe that as a woman of color and as a single mother of three, it is incredibly important that I be appointed ambassador to Italy.”

Kaling recounts a time that she and Kamala Harris cooked together: “It is that warmth, that generosity of spirit that I know she will bring to the White House as our next president … She will fight to protect our freedoms because those are the values that her mother passed down to her. But in order to protect those freedoms, Democrats also need to win the House.”

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Kenan Thompson is now chatting with an employee of the US Department of Education, which would be gutted under Project 2025:

She works for the Department of Education and she’s a proud civil servant … Unfortunately for you, Project 2025 calls for President Trump to purge the civil servants of everyone who isn’t a Maga loyalist. Are you a Maga loyalist?

“Just remember, everything that we just talked about is very real. It is in this book … You can stop it from ever happening by electing Kamala Harris as the next president,” he concluded.

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The Republicans supporting Kamala Harris

The Democratic convention has featured a number of prominent Republicans and former Donald Trump supporters over the course of three nights so far. That includes:

  • Olivia Troye, a former Mike Pence advisor, said: “What keeps me up at night is what will happen if [Trump] gets back there.”

  • Stephanie Grisham, Trump’s former press secretary, said the former president “has no empathy, no morals, and no fidelity to the truth”.

  • John Giles, the Republican mayor of Mesa, Arizona, said: “John McCain’s party is gone, and we don’t owe a damn thing to what’s been left behind.”

  • Geoff Duncan, the GOP former lieutenant governor of Georgia, said: “These days, our party acts more like a cult, a cult worshiping a felonious thug”.

  • Rich Logis, a former Maga activist, said in a video: “I believed Trump. I was a Maga pundit … I finally stepped outside the Maga echo chamber. I realized he had been lying about pretty much everything.”

  • Kyle Sweetser, an Alabama voter who voted for and donated to Trump, said: “I’m not leftwing, period. But I believe our leaders should bring out the best in us, not the worst.”

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SNL's Kenan Thompson on Project 2025: 'A document that can kill a small animal'

Saturday Night Live’s Kenan Thompson has now taken the stage, with the large Project 2025 book with him:

Y’all remember this big old book from before? This is Project 2025 – the Republican blueprint for a second Trump term. Yeah, boo! It is a real document that you can read for yourself ... You ever see a document that can kill a small animal and democracy at the same time? Here it is.

Thompson is chatting virtually with voters who would be negatively impacted by Project 2025.

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Stevie Wonder takes the stage: 'We need to choose joy over anger'

Stevie Wonder has taken the stage, energizing the crowd and sharing a message of “joy”:

The choice is clear … We need to choose joy over anger, kindness over recrimination and peace over war every time … We must keep on, keeping on until we truly are a united people of these United States … and then we will reach a higher ground.

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Former January 6 committee chair Thompson warns Trump is 'plotting again'

Next up was Bennie Thompson, the former chair of the bipartisan committee that investigated the January 6 attack, who joined the ranks of those warning that Donald Trump is setting the stage to challenge the results of the November election:

He lied about the election fraud. He called his conspiracy-led mob to Washington. He would rather subvert democracy then submit to it. Now he’s plotting again. His campaign proclaims that elections won’t end until the moment of inauguration. We will win, or it was rigged. We win, or else. This is Donald Trump’s America.

Elections are about choice. Choose democracy, not political violence. Choose the America we always taught our children to love. Choose Kamala Harris.

We just saw some of the first footage of January 6 that has aired during the convention.

The video that played on the big screen showed Donald Trump’s speech to the crowd at the National Mall that would then go and march to the Capitol, and graphic images of police being overwhelmed, and the building stormed.

It also included more recent comments from Trump, where he talked about pardoning people convicted of charges related to the insurrection.

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Georgia's Republican former lieutenant governor draws cheers as he condemns Trump

Some of the most enthusiastic applause of the night thus far came as Geoff Duncan, the Republican former lieutenant governor of Georgia, scorned Donald Trump before the convention.

“These days, our party acts more like a cult, a cult worshiping a felonist thug. Look, you don’t have to agree with every policy position of Kamala Harris. I don’t. But you do have to recognize her prosecutor mindset that understands right from wrong, good from evil. She’s a steady hand and will bring leadership to the White House that Donald Trump could never do,” Duncan said, to loud and sustained applause.

Duncan was in office under the state’s current governor, Brian Kemp, from 2019 to 2023.

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Former Pence advisor says serving in Trump administration was 'terrifying', warns of worse to come if he is re-elected

Last night, Donald Trump’s former press secretary denounced him before the convention. Tonight, we heard a similar message from Olivia Troye, a former homeland security advisor to vice-president Mike Pence.

“Being inside Trump’s White House was terrifying. But what keeps me up at night is what will happen if he gets back there,” Troye said.

“The guardrails are gone, the few adults in the room the first time resigned or were fired.”

She warned that he was preparing to claim fraud if he lost the November election, which would undermine national security:

He’s doing it again, lying and laying the groundwork to undermine this election. It’s his MO, just sow doubt and division. That’s what Trump wants, because it’s the only way he wins, and that’s what our foreign adversaries want, because it’s the only way they win.

Next up is Chris Murphy, the Connecticut senator who earlier this year participated in bipartisan talks that led to a deal on tightening immigration policy – only to see Republicans turn against the compromise, at Donald Trump’s urging.

“Trump killed that bill, and he did it because he knew that if we fixed the border, he’d lose his ability to divide us, his ability to fan the flames of fear about people who come from different places, right?” Murphy said.

“You guys know this, Right? Hate and division, that’s Trump’s oxygen, right? People, people like Trump and JD Vance, they need it to survive in politics. People are saying that they’re weird, that they’re creepy, and they are weird, they are creepy, but even worse, they’re weak.”

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Uncommitted movement still pushing for a Palestinian speaker

The emotional speech from parents of a US citizen kidnapped by Hamas came as members of the uncommitted movement have continued to advocate that a Palestinian leader have an opportunity to speak at the convention.

Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric doctor who has treated patients in Gaza, spoke as part of a panel centered on Palestinian human rights at the convention, marking the first time the Democratic party has directly hosted an official panel on the topic. Haj-Hassan was part of a group medics who sent a letter to the Biden administration in July outlining their experiences in Gaza.

But pro-Palestinian protesters have pushed, unsuccessfully, for a speaker like Haj-Hassan to address the main stage while saying they were supportive of the parents of a hostage speaking as well:

Protesters have continued to rally against Israel’s war on Gaza in Chicago and have called for an arms embargo on Israel, which was not part of the Democrats’ platform. More from the panel earlier in the week:

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Immigration, and, in particular, the surge in migrants who have entered the country from Mexico under Joe Biden, is a major liability for Democrats.

Donald Trump is campaigning on carrying out mass deportations and “closing” the southern border, and polls have shown that immigration is a top issue for voters this year.

Texas congresswoman Veronica Escobar, whose district lies along the Mexican border, just made a counter-attack to Trump’s policies, in a speech to the convention crowd:

He and his Republican imitators see the border and immigration as a political opportunity to exploit instead of an issue to address. Congress hasn’t passed comprehensive immigration reform in nearly four decades. The three times they tried, Republicans blocked legislation that would have funded border security and created a more humane immigration system. They are not serious people. You know who is serious? Kamala Harris.

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New Jersey senator Cory Booker is on stage now, making a lengthy denunciation of Donald Trump.

“He viciously attacks Democrats and Republicans. His put-downs know no shame,” Booker said. He then named two Republicans who fell afoul of Trump:

John McCain’s military service. Nikki Haley’s heritage. Women, people with disabilities, trans people, our veterans. He is indiscriminate in his put downs. His is the politics of smear and fear, not inspiration and elevation. Donald Trump speaks more of American carnage than American compassion.

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Democrats say 81m watched convention, 'beating RNC ratings'

Democratic national convention officials say that 81 million people watched the second night on television and online. Officials said the convention averaged 20.6 million viewers across 12 networks on television on Tuesday.

Democratic officials noted this figure exceeded the 14.8 million viewers on the second night of the GOP convention, saying in a news release, “now for two nights in a row, the DNC has beaten the RNC’s ratings on TV”.

Across the streaming platforms of the convention and Harris campaign, the first two nights were streamed by more than 13 million people, the announcement said.

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Jon Polin applauded efforts by Democrats and Republicans to pursue a ceasefire deal that would see the hostages held in Gaza released.

“This is a political convention, but needing our only son, and all of the cherished hostages home, is not a political issue. It is a humanitarian issue,” he said.

Polin continued:

The families of the American eight hostages meet every few weeks in Washington. We’re heartened that both Democratic and Republican leaders demonstrate their bipartisan support for our hostages being released. We’ve met with President Biden and Vice-President Harris numerous times at the White House.

They’re both working tirelessly for a hostage and ceasefire deal that will bring our precious children, mothers, fathers, spouses, grandparents and grandchildren home, and will stop the despair in Gaza.

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Rachel Goldberg is describing how her son was kidnapped from the Nova music festival, where Hamas killed hundreds of young people:

As rockets began to fall, Hersh, [his best friend] Aner, and 27 other young festival goers took refuge in a five-foot-by-eight-foot bomb shelter. Terrorists began to throw grenades into the shelter. Aner stood in the doorway and repelled seven of those grenades before the eighth one killed him. All together at the Nova music festival, 367 young music lovers were killed. This was just one of the many attacks on neighborhoods and communities in southern Israel on that terrible day. In total, 1,200 were killed, including 45 Americans. Hersh’s left forearm, his dominant arm, was blown off before he was loaded onto a pickup truck and stolen from his life, and me and John, into Gaza.

“Since then, we live on another planet. Anyone who is a parent, or has had a parent, can try to imagine the anguish and … misery that John and I, and all the hostage families are enduring,” Goldberg said.

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Parents of US citizen kidnapped by Hamas address convention

Now at the podium are Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg. Their son, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, was kidnapped by Hamas on 7 October.

As they took the stage, the crowd began chanting: “Bring them home!”

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The convention is now seeing footage of Kamala Harris’s days on the Senate judiciary committee, when she became known for asking tough questions of Republicans.

The video was edited in a way that is favorable to the vice-president, and showed her questioning Donald Trump’s attorneys general, Jeff Sessions and William Barr, as well as conservative supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh. Footage of that last questioning drew loud and sustained applause – Kavanaugh is not well liked in this crowd.

As the video concluded, the words “She won’t back down” against a blue background came on screen.

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Now on stage is Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison, who came out waving his hands in the air, like he wanted the audience on their feet.

But the subject matter of his remarks is a somber one.

“I’ll never forget when I first saw the video of the murder of George Floyd. I was heartbroken, I was angry, and that morning, my phone rang, and on that line was Governor Tim Walz,” he said.

Ellison led the prosecution of Floyd’s murderer, Derek Chauvin, and after he was found guilty, the attorney general said, “my phone rang again, and it was vice-president Kamala Harris calling to congratulate my team.

“Now, Kamala and Tim, they understand the legacy of George Floyd. No one is above the law and no one is beneath it. No one is outside the circle of our compassion. In the Republican party, everyone thinks they’re above the law. Hell, nearly a dozen of their own lawyers are facing serious charges. Even their lawyers need lawyers.”

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It’s back!

The big prop book representing Project 2025 that Democratic speakers have periodically brought onstage throughout the convention is now in the hands of Colorado governor Jared Polis.

“Right here, on page 562, it says that Donald Trump could use an obscure law from the 1800s to singlehandedly ban abortion in all 50 states, even putting doctors in jail. Page 486 puts limits on contraception. Page 450 threatens access to IVF. On page 455, Project 2025 says that states have to report miscarriages to the Trump administration,” Polis said.

The Colorado governor made a point to say that he was a Swiftie – a fanatic of Taylor Swift. He ended his remarks by putting a twist on a familiar chant from Kamala Harris’s rallies:

We aren’t going back, like ever, ever, ever.

Speakers promote LGBTQ+ rights: 'Trump wants to erase us'

At the start of the third night of the convention, speakers promoted LGBTQ+ rights, a sharp contrast from the Republican national convention which repeatedly featured extremist, anti-trans rhetoric.

Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, one of the largest LGBTQ+ organizations in the US, said:

Progress is happening. The 20+ million LGBTQ+ Americans are living proof of it. We are your friends and your neighbors, your classmates and your family … Donald Trump wants to erase us. He would ban our healthcare, belittle our marriages, bury our stories. But we are not going anywhere. We are not going back. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are champions for LGBTQ+ freedom. So tonight, we’re fighting for lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer and trans freedom without exception. We’re fighting for equality for all without exception. We’re fighting for joy.

Robinson highlighted stories of a gay couple who were married by Kamala Harris in San Francisco; trans youth going to their first prom; and LGBTQ+ service members who fought against the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. At the GOP convention in July, speakers frequently mocked trans people and LGBTQ+ inclusivity.

The speakers over the past few minutes have reflected several different Democratic priorities.

The mayors of Cincinnati, Aftab Pureval, and of Milwaukee, Cavalier Johnson, talked about the positive impacts of the bipartisan infrastructure law Joe Biden signed in 2021.

They were followed by Rashawn Spivey and Deanna Branch, advocates for the removal of lead pipes, who also praised the law. Then came congresswoman Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware, who is running to become the first Black senator from the state.

“Ladies and gentleman, bright hope is four words: madam president Kamala Harris!” she said.

The convention is now hearing from Tom Suozzi, a New York congressman who in February won a special election to replace the fabulist George Santos following his resignation from the House of Representatives.

“I’m Tom Suozzi, and earlier this year, I flipped a seat from red to blue,” he began.

Suozzi’s victory put the Democrats a little bit closer to retaking the majority in Congress’s lower chamber, a job they hope to complete in the November election.

As for Santos, he just pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges.

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Mini Timmaraju, the president of the advocacy group Reproductive Freedom for All, highlighted that Arizona and Montana will have abortion-rights referendums on ballot this year.

The referendums are also expected to energize Democratic voters in those states.

“If there are two people who should know that our private lives are nobody’s business? It’s Donald Trump and JD Vance,” she said.

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Alexis McGill Johnson of Planned Parenthood is now speaking, on a night that is themed “A Fight for Our Freedoms”.

“We trust women,” she said. “We trust doctors. And we trust Kamala Harris.”

Democrats have continued to highlight that reproductive rights are on the ballot in November, as Donald Trump and Republicans work to further erode those rights.

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Speeches begin in DNC's third night

To start, a schoolteacher from Minnesota sang the national anthem:

In his remarks tonight, Bill Clinton will speak about the honor of serving as president.

Here’s an excerpt of his speech, which was sent to reporters:

Not a day goes by that I’m not grateful for the chance the American people gave me to be one of the 45 people who have held the job. Even on the bad days, you can still make something good happen. Kamala Harris is the only candidate in this race with the vision, the experience, the temperament, the will, and yes – the sheer joy – to do that on good and bad days. To be our voice.

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Tim Walz to highlight ‘small-town values’ at Democratic convention

Tim Walz will seek to build on the intense enthusiasm surrounding his and Kamala Harris’s campaign on Wednesday, as the newly anointed vice-presidential nominee headlines the third night of the Democratic national convention in Chicago.

Wednesday’s programming will also include some of the best-known names in the Democratic party, including the former president Bill Clinton and the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi. Top congressional Democrats like Hakeem Jeffries, House minority leader; Cory Booker, senator of New Jersey and Amy Klobuchar, senator of Minnesota, are slated to speak as well. And some of the party’s biggest rising stars – including the US transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, Maryland governor, Wes Moore, and Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro – will address the convention.

Walz’s speech will give him an opportunity to introduce himself to a much wider audience of voters, as most Americans were unfamiliar with the Minnesota governor before Harris selected him as her running mate earlier this month. An ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted last month, shortly after Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race and endorsed Harris, showed that only 13% of Americans knew enough about Walz to register an opinion of him.

“He will introduce himself to the American people tonight on the convention stage, highlighting the small-town values that have shaped his lifetime of service and his commitment to safeguarding the freedoms that we all hold dear,” said Alex Hornbrook, convention committee executive director.

Oprah Winfrey expected at the DNC tonight

Among the many celebrities making appearances at the DNC tonight will be Oprah Winfrey.

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Who's speaking at the DNC and what else you need to know

If you’re just reading in to our convention coverage today, speeches are about to start.

Tim Walz will be headlining tonight – he and Bill Clinton are the main speakers.

Other big names to address the convention today include:

  • House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries

  • Nancy Pelosi

  • Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro

  • Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg

Here’s what you need to know:

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Midwestern guys: Vance and Walz’s opposing views of being from the US heartland

For 30 years, Michael Bailey worked at the former Armco steel plant in Middletown, Ohio, eventually becoming president of a union that represented thousands of workers. Among them was James Vance, grandfather and sometimes stand-in father of the Republican party’s current vice-presidential candidate, JD, who worked as a skilled tradesperson at the plant.

So Bailey, today a 71-year-old pastor at the Faith United church in downtown Middletown, says he’s confused by claims from Donald Trump’s running mate that he “grew up as a poor kid” in Middletown.

“As a rigger, [James Vance] made good money. Where he lived, on McKinley Street, he didn’t live in poverty,” he says. “JD came up in a middle-income family. He didn’t come up on the rough side of town.”

Politicians assuming working-class identities to attract votes is nothing new. But this year’s election pits vice-presidential candidates against each other – ostensibly picked for their “real American” chops – who hold contrasting views of what it means to be a boots-on-the-ground midwesterner.

Endless corn fields, small towns and wide-open highways are characteristics of life in the midwest that most can agree on. Beyond that, experts say the region is far more complex.

Cities such as Chicago, Detroit and Cincinnati are home to millions of people that, for a time during the 20th century, were among the most innovative in the world.

“Midwesterners have historically been on the frontlines of progressive politics and education. Midwesterners also have been innovators in both an economic and cultural sense,” says Diane Mutti Burke, the director of the Center for Midwestern Studies at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

In an interview with the Guardian’s David Smith, David Axelrod, a former top adviser to Barack Obama, explained why he felt the ex-president’s speech last night, together with Michelle Obama’s, were so potent against Donald Trump:

Barack and Michelle Obama have cast Kamala Harris as the heir to their political movement and flipped the script on Donald Trump, former Obama adviser David Axelrod told the Guardian on Wednesday.

The Obamas delivered electrifying speeches at the Democratic national convention in Chicago on Tuesday night. The former US president compared Harris’s ascent to his own by observing: “I’m feeling hopeful because this convention has always been pretty good to kids with funny names who believe in a country where anything is possible.”

Michelle, the former first lady, invoked her husband’s hope-and-change campaign by remarking: “Something wonderfully magical is in the air, isn’t it?… A familiar feeling that’s been buried too deep for too long. You know what I’m talking about? It’s the contagious power of hope.”

Both addresses were lauded by Axelrod, chief strategist for the 2008 and 2012 Obama presidential campaigns, in an interview after an event organised by the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and the Cook Political Report on the sidelines of the convention.

He said: “When Barack Obama got the call in 2004 that he was going to give the keynote speech at the Democratic convention, he said immediately, I know what I want to say, I want to talk about my story as part of the larger American story, and he’s always done that. He and Michelle are great American stories and they take pride in that and the values associated with that.

“You heard it last night and Kamala Harris is very much rolling down those same tracks. They flipped the script on Trump. Trump’s play is to try and make people alien and what they did was make Trump alien to the values that most Americans share, so I thought those speeches were incredibly effective.”

At an event hosted by Politico, Kamala Harris’s campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon was asked about how Robert F Kennedy Jr’s reported intention to end his presidential bid would affect the race.

One of the biggest questions of this year’s election is whether Kennedy is syphoning support from voters who would otherwise back Harris, or Donald Trump, and we may get a better idea of the answer to that if he ends his campaign.

Either way, O’Malley Dillon told Politico she did not think it would be a big deal:

We are very confident that the vice-president is going to win whether she’s running against one candidate or multiple candidates. I don’t think it’s really going to interfere with the race too much.

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Nancy Pelosi delighted a well-heeled crowd at the University Club of Chicago on Wednesday afternoon, sharing anecdotes about her extraordinary career arc that she described as “housewife, House member, House Speaker.”

Now considered one of the most powerful House speakers in modern political history, Pelosi said she faced doubts as she climbed the ranks in Congress from male colleagues who admonished her to wait her turn.

“I became interested in running [for leadership] because we kept losing the elections: 94, 96, 98, and then it was 2000 I thought, ‘I’m so tired of losing … for the children,’” she said, using a Pelosi-ism, that everything she does is “for the children”.

When she made her decision to run for Democratic leadership known, Pelosi said she was immediately met with skepticism, especially among her male colleagues. “Who said she could run?” Pelosi recalled them saying. Their incredulity only encouraged her further.

“Light my fire, why don’t you, poor babies?” Pelosi said, drawing laughs. In an aside to the audience, she emphasized that she was telling a story that occured “this century.”

Pelosi continued, saying she was told there was a “pecking order” and she wasn’t in it.

“They said, ‘These people have been waiting a long time,” Pelosi recounted. “So I said: ‘Was it over 200 years?’”

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The uncommitted movement continues to press for the Democratic convention to allow a Palestinian to address delegates.

Earlier in the day, the movement said it approved of a reported decision to allow the family of an Israeli hostage to address the convention, but said a Palestinian voice should also be heard:

Here’s more about their quest to get Democratic leaders to allow them to speak from the convention stage:

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Two of Donald Trump’s surrogates will hold a press conference tomorrow in Chicago to criticize Kamala Harris’s record on handling immigration and other issues, hours before she is to deliver the closing address at the Democratic national convention.

The Trump campaign has not had much of a presence in the city as Democrats have gathered to celebrate Harris’s entry into the race. That will change tomorrow when Vivek Ramaswamy and Carlos Trujillo, a former Trump administration official, address reporters from the Trump Hotel & Tower downtown.

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Walz to 'introduce himself to the American people' in keynote address

Kamala Harris’s running mate, Tim Walz, is tonight’s keynote speaker, and will deliver a speech focused on telling American voters about his life and career, the Biden-Harris campaign said.

“In his remarks at the Democratic national convention, Governor Tim Walz will introduce himself to the American people. He will highlight the values that he learned growing up in a small town in Nebraska, which shaped his service in the national guard, as a teacher, football coach, member of Congress, and governor, and that he will bring to the White House. Governor Walz will lay out what Vice-President Harris will do for working families and call on the American people to work together to elect Kamala Harris president,” according to the campaign.

Musicians John Legend and Sheila E will introduce Walz, who will be nominated by Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar and Ben Ingman, a former student of the governor.

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Gaza solidarity protesters interrupted an environment and climate crisis council meeting at the convention on Wednesday, chanting “free, free Palestine”.

“If you want to show some political courage, go and interrupt one of Donald Trump’s rallies,” responded Maryland representative Jamie Raskin, who was speaking. “We’re organizing against Trump, we’re organizing against the reactionary autocrats, plutocrats and kleptocrats.”

“Anybody who interferes with that is objectively helping Donald Trump and Tim Walz,” Raskin continued, mistakenly naming Harris’s vice-presidential pick instead of Trump’s. “So cut it out,” he added before the protestors were escorted away.

Some climate groups, however, are pushing for the Harris campaign to stop supporting Israel’s deadly war in Gaza by backing an arms embargo. Among them is the Sunrise Movement, the influential youth-led environmental justice group who spearheaded the push for a Green New Deal.

“Young people want a livable world for our generation and generations. We want everyone to have clean air and water and safe homes,” said Stevie O’Hanlon, a Sunrise Movement spokesperson. “Everyone must have those rights and freedoms, including Palestinians.”

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Those of us who have shown up early to the United Center in Chicago (such as your live blogger) are getting a sneak peek at one of the night’s musical guests: Stevie Wonder.

He’s sound-checking his 1972 hit Higher Ground, and was earlier at the podium rehearsing some remarks. Wonder has with him backing dancers, as well as a bassist, guitar player and someone who looks to be playing turntables. He is, of course, playing piano.

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Robert F Kennedy Jr, who is reportedly planning to drop out of the 2024 presidential race and considering throwing his support behind Donald Trump, was asked by ABC News’s Jonathan Karl about Trump calling the climate crisis “a hoax”.

Here’s how Kennedy responded:

Kennedy spent decades working as an environmental lawyer who sued polluters and founded a large non-profit focused on protecting clean water. Trump has long questioned human-made global warming, including calling it “mythical”, “nonexistent” or “an expensive hoax”, or suggesting that the climate could “change back again”.

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Pink is expected to take to the stage on Thursday for a closing-night performance at the Democratic national convention, CNN is reporting.

The award-winning singer-songwriter will perform on Thursday evening before Kamala Harris’s speech, according to the outlet.

As we reported earlier, John Legend will be performing tonight before Tim Walz’s remarks.

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Donald Trump Jr said he “loved the idea” of having Robert F Kennedy Jr appointed to a role in a potential Trump administration so that he can take a government agency and “blow it up”.

The Republican presidential candidate’s son, in an interview with conservative radio host Glenn Beck reported by the Hill, said:

I loved the idea, love the idea of giving him some sort of role in some sort of major three-letter entity or whatever it may be and let him blow it up.

He added that he believes Kennedy is “a smart guy” and that “he’s actually got very good views on certain things”. Trump said:

I think that’s what we need. And so, I think that kind of unity, even where there may be certain disagreements on certain things, I think he could be a really great asset for that.

The former House speaker Nancy Pelosi demurred and deflected when asked by the Democratic strategist David Axelrod to share how difficult it was to have “that conversation” with the president.

Pelosi, who pushed subtly but forcefully in public and private for the president to step aside, said it was ultimately Joe Biden’s decision to make but one that ultimately set the party on a path to winning that they had not been on when he led the ticket.

“A great sacrifice was made here,” she said. But the rupture between Biden and Pelosi, two devout Catholics who have known each other for decades has been hard on her, she said. “I’ve cried over this. I’m sad about this,” she said.

Her highest priority then and now was to win – and not just the White House, but the House and the Senate. She said the prospect of a second Trump term was too dangerous.

“Thank God I was the speaker on January 6, last time,” she said, suggesting the assault on the US Capitol would have been far worse if Republicans had been in charge that day. She said:

You have to make the decision to win, and you have to make every decision in favor of winning.

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Trump 'open' to giving RFK Jr role in administration

Donald Trump, in an interview yesterday, said he would “certainly” be open to appointing Robert F Kennedy Jr to a role in his administration, if the independent presidential candidate drops out of the race and backs him.

“I like him, and I respect him,” Trump told CNN after a campaign stop in Michigan on Tuesday.

He’s a brilliant guy. He’s a very smart guy. I’ve known him for a very long time. I didn’t know he was thinking about getting out, but if he is thinking about getting out, certainly I’d be open to it.

Trump said he would “love that endorsement, because I’ve always liked” Kennedy.

Asked if he would consider appointing Kennedy to a role in his administration if he wins in November, Trump replied:

I probably would, if something like that would happen. He’s a very different kind of a guy – a very smart guy. And, yeah, I would be honored by that endorsement, certainly.

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Robert F Kennedy Jr is leaning toward endorsing Donald Trump but the decision is not yet finalized and could still change, ABC News is reporting, citing sources.

Kennedy’s hope is in part to finalize things quickly in order to try to blunt momentum from the DNC, one source told the outlet.

Kennedy told ABC News’s Jonathan Karl that he would not confirm or deny reports that he is endorsing Trump, adding: “We are not talking about any of that.”

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Robert F Kennedy Jr, who will address the nation about “his path forward” on Friday, has held “advanced discussions” with Donald Trump and his campaign team about dropping out of the race and endorsing the Republican presidential nominee, the Washington Post is reporting, citing multiple sources.

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RFK Jr to drop out of race by end of week – report

We reported earlier that independent presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr’s campaign announced that he will make an address to the nation on Friday about “his path forward”.

ABC News is now reporting that Kennedy plans to drop out of the race by the end of the week.

It comes after Kennedy’s running mate, the Silicon Valley attorney Nicole Shanahan, said the pair were considering abandoning their campaign in order to help the election of Donald Trump.

Kennedy was a member of the Democratic party and attempted to run as its nominee before choosing to stand as an independent.

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Donald Trump can’t seem to help but double down on his election lies – he offhandedly commented: “they’re great at cheating in elections,” in the middle of his remarks on Russia’s war with Ukraine, which he said he would get “settled” if elected.

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Nancy Pelosi said she wanted to see Kamala Harris shatter the glass ceiling, but that should not be her message to voters.

The prospect of Harris becoming the first woman president in American history “brings tears to my eyes” said Pelosi, the first – and so far only – female speaker of the House, “but not votes to the ballot box”.

“There isn’t that much time that people give to politics, and we want them to know what it means to them in their lives,” Pelosi continued, speaking at the University Club of Chicago.

Harris has nodded to the historic nature of her candidacy, but it is not a feature of her pitch to voters.

“However wonderful it is, it’s icing on the cake but it ain’t the cake,” Pelosi underlined.

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John Legend will take the Democratic national convention stage tonight ahead of the vice-presidential candidate and Minnesota governor Tim Walz’s remarks.

Legend is expected to perform a tribute to Prince, one of Minnesota’s most iconic artists, to welcome Walz to the stage, Rolling Stone reports.

Donald Trump praised Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, calling the authoritarian leader “very strong”, and claiming the Hungarian leader “said the only thing that’s going to save the whole world is Trump has to be president again”.

Trump and his allies on the right have formed closer ties with Orbán in recent years, with the prime minister even visiting Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate earlier this year.

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Uncommitted delegates and their allies rallied in a park near the United Center this morning to reiterate a call that the Democratic convention include a speech from a Palestinian American on the main stage.

The family of Israeli hostages since Hamas’s 7 October attack are expected to speak on the stage tonight, a move that the uncommitted movement said they support. They also want to see a space for a Palestinian speaker, but the DNC has not yet responded to their demand.

Abbas Alawieh, a leader of the Uncommitted National Movement and an uncommitted delegate from Michigan, held up his phone and said he was waiting for their call. Time left in the convention is dwindling. He said:

If the issue is we don’t have room for Palestinian Americans in the party, we’ve got a problem.

The congresswomen Cori Bush and Ilhan Omar joined the delegates to pressure the Biden administration for a ceasefire and arms embargo. The group is not in opposition to the Democratic party, Bush said: “We are the party.”

Doctors who worked in Gaza also again shared what they witnessed, the latest of many attempts to tell Democrats the gravity of what people living in Gaza are facing.

“I don’t want to be here,” said Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan, explaining that she is not normally involved in politics. “But I don’t know how else to save lives.”

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Donald Trump is speaking in Asheboro, North Carolina, where he made his first appearance in an outdoor rally since he survived an assassination attempt in July.

He made his speech behind bulletproof glass, as captured in the clip below:

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Donald Trump, speaking at a campaign rally in Asheboro, North Carolina, brought back his false assertion that Nato countries have failed to pay “their dues” as members of the alliance.

In fact, Nato members are not legally obligated to pay the 2% of gross domestic product on defense that the alliance outlines as a target contribution.

Trump’s claim that Nato allies have somehow defaulted on their monetary obligation has generated outrage in the past.

“Oh, the fake news gave me a hard time for that,” said Trump, maybe anticipating the response his inflammatory comments would elicit. “The press went crazy.”

RFK Jr to address 'path forward' amid reports of backing Trump

Robert F Kennedy Jr will address the nation on Friday about “his path forward”, his campaign has announced, amid reports that he is considering dropping out as an independent presidential candidate to support Donald Trump.

Kennedy’s campaign said he will deliver remarks at an event in Phoenix, Arizona, on Friday. Trump is holding a rally of his own in Arizona on Friday evening.

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Donald Trump called on about two dozen sheriffs and North Carolina’s Republican gubernatorial candidate, Mark Robinson, to join him on stage.

The group shuffled in and out of the bulletproof pen quickly before Trump launched into his speech.

“Comrade Kamala,” Trump exclaimed, doubling down on the claim that Kamala Harris is a far-left candidate and repeatedly claiming in his opening remarks that under a second Trump presidency, the country would experience economic prosperity.

Pro-Palestinian protesters have been gathering for a third day at a park near the United Center in Chicago where the Democratic national convention is being held, as they reiterated calls to end US aid of Israel’s war in Gaza.

Ilhan Omar, the Democratic congresswoman for Minnesota, was among the speakers who attended today’s rally, as well as doctors who have traveled to Gaza to treat injured Palestinians, AP reported.

From the Intercept’s Akela Lacy:

Donald Trump has taken to the stage to deliver remarks on the topic of national security at a North Carolina rally – part of a swing state tour coinciding with Democratic national convention.

It’s an outdoor event, and the former president is standing behind tall, bulletproof glass panels.

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Democratic officials were asked at the morning briefing about whether Tim Walz’s experience with fertility treatments would be mentioned in his speech tonight.

The question came a day after the governor’s wife, Gwen Walz, clarified that they conceived their two children through IUI, also known as artificial insemination.

Walz had previously indicated that he and his wife had relied on IVF, in-vitro fertilization, in their family-planning journey. IVF has come under increased attack since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022.

“I think he’s been very clear so far that infertility is a deeply personal journey that he and his wife have been courageous enough to share,” said Michael Tyler, the Harris campaign communications director.

I think that should be celebrated. I think it’s, frankly, very relatable to millions of American families across this country who have gone through the same struggle.

Andy Beshear, the Kentucky governor, added:

I know that without fertility treatments, regardless of the three letters of that fertility treatment, without that, those children wouldn’t be walking on this earth.

Democrats are clearly fired up about their chances of victory with Kamala Harris and Tim Walz at the top of the ticket, even as they warn their supporters against complacency in the race.

“We are seeing more momentum on the ground and across the country than I’ve ever seen in politics, than I’ve ever seen in my life – not just here, but in the states that will decide this election,” Andy Beshear, the Kentucky governor, said at a briefing this morning.

But Democratic officials underscored that the election is expected to be extremely close, and there is not a moment to spare. To demonstrate that, Harris and Walz made a campaign trip to Wisconsin yesterday, as the convention continued in Chicago.

“I cannot emphasize this enough: this will be a very close election, and this campaign isn’t wasting any time talking to the voters that will decide this election,” said Michael Tyler, the Harris campaign communications director.

At Harris’s Wisconsin rally, one attendee yelled out: “You already won!” Harris sharply replied: “No, we haven’t already won – 77 days of work to do, my friends.”

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Tim Walz will have the chance to introduce himself to a much larger audience tonight, as he headlines the third night of the Democratic national convention. Polls suggest that most of the country was unfamiliar with the Minnesota governor before Kamala Harris selected him as her running mate.

“He will introduce himself to the American people tonight on the convention stage, highlighting the small town values that have shaped his lifetime of service and his commitment to safeguarding the freedoms that we all hold dear,” Alex Hornbrook, convention committee executive director, said at a briefing this morning.

The Kentucky governor, Andy Beshear, who was also named as a potential running mate for Harris, praised Walz as a “good man” who would serve as a “great role model for all Americans”.

“When you look at Tim, you see a Democratic governor delivering results in every community, from the cities to the suburbs to rural towns,” Beshear said. “Like Vice-President Harris, he has worked around the clock to help middle-class families get ahead.”

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Veteran Black and Latino political leaders including Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers, Martin Luther King III and Al Sharpton have come together to announce a new partnership designed to supercharge the power of minority voters.

Speaking at an event at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Huerta was met with a chorus of “si se puede” as she entered the room. That’s the phrase she coined in 1972 during the 25-day fast of her co-founder, Cesar Chavez’s – later translated into English by Barack Obama and used as the motto of his 2008 presidential campaign – “Yes we can”.

Huerta is 94, and brought an effortless sense of history into this already historic-feeling convention. She recalled when Coretta Scott King, the civil rights leader and wife of Martin Luther King, told her that “we will never have peace in the world until women take power”.

Huerta is not one to settle for the past, telling the room that she would prefer to revise King’s aphorism. “We will never have peace in the world until feminists take power,” she said, adding: “Not all women are feminists.”

Coretta and MLK’s elder son Martin Luther King III talked about the power that is gained from uniting communities. His family organization, the Drum Major Institute, is announcing a new union with one of the largest Latino and immigrant political networks, Mi Familia Vota.

“With an election on the horizon we must work together to empower our cities at the ballot box, to ensure equal access to what Dad said was our most sacred right, the right to vote,” he said.

Al Sharpton, the longtime New York civil rights activist, leant his support to the new fusion of Black and Latino political movements. He urged the two communities to forge closer unions.

“We cannot date politically, we got to get married – because we have mutual enemies,” he said. “The biggest threat they fear is for the Black and Latino communities to come together and vote together like a block.”

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Interim summary

Here’s a look at where thing stand:

  • Kamala Harris’s campaign raised four times as much money last month than Donald Trump’s campaign, Reuters reported, citing federal disclosures filed late on Tuesday. The Harris campaign told the Federal Election Commission it raised $204m in July, compared to $48m reported by Trump’s main fundraising group.

  • Dozens of people were arrested in Chicago on Tuesday night during a protest against the Biden administration’s position on Israel amid its deadly war in Gaza that has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians in the last nine months. The National Lawyers Guild Chicago, which provided legal observers for Tuesday’s protests, said more than 70 people were arrested.

  • JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, said it would be “good” for the Trump campaign if Robert F Kennedy Jr dropped out as an independent presidential candidate and joined forces with him and Donald Trump. Vance, in an interview with Fox & Friends this morning, was asked about reports that Kennedy and his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, are considering abandoning their campaign to help the election of Trump.

  • The former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, and other Democratic heavy-hitters flocked to a breakfast of Michigan delegates on Wednesday as they try to build enthusiasm in a key battleground state with polls close to a dead heat. The Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer, and the senator Gary Peters also attended the breakfast, which was meant to recognize the congressman Dan Kildee and the senator Debbie Stabenow, who are not running again.

  • Polling data shows Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s running mate, has had a smoother launch as the Democratic vice-presidential candidate than JD Vance for Donald Trump. About one-third of American adults, or 36%, have a favorable view of Walz, compared with about one-quarter (27%) who have a positive opinion of Vance, according to a survey by the Associated Press-Norc Center for Public Affairs Research.

  • A group of 50 Republicans in Congress who have served in the armed forces have signed a letter accusing the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, the Minnesota governor Tim Walz, of lying about his time in the Army National Guard. The letter, shared with Politico, accuses Walz of “egregious misrepresentations” of his military service and calls on him to “come clean”.

  • More than half of Americans who are in generation Z say they have “very little” trust in the presidency, according to a new poll. The Gallup-Walton Family Foundation survey published today shows 53% of voting-age members of generation Z – which it defines as those under the age of 28 – said they have “very little” trust in Congress, 51% said the same about the presidency, and 44% of the supreme court.

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Here are some images coming from the newswires in Chicago where anti-war demonstrators are protesting against the US’s military support for Israel’s war in Gaza that has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians since October:

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Dozens arrested at pro-Palestinian protests at Democratic convention

Dozens of people were arrested in Chicago on Tuesday night during a protest against the Biden administration’s position on Israel.

The National Lawyers Guild Chicago, which provided legal observers for Tuesday’s protests, said more than 70 people were arrested.

Chicago police superintendent Larry Snelling said between 55 and 60 people, including three journalists were arrested at the protest.

Eva Longoria, actor, Democratic activist and proud Tejana, urged Democrats to sharpen their economic pitch to Hispanic voters.

“The argument of the economy is something that I think we’re not articulating well enough to our Latino brothers and sisters,” she told attendees of the Hispanic caucus meeting on Wednesday morning.

And so I encourage you guys to get out there and really get rid of that disinformation, the misinformation, especially in Spanish language.

She argued that many of the White House’s economic policies have disproportionately buoyed “Latino families and Latino pocketbooks”, pointing to the Covid stimulus plan that helped Americans recover from the pandemic.

Longoria represented Texas in Tuesday afternoon’s roll call vote.

“It’s a very clear choice, because we have one candidate who’s using Latino issues and Latinos as a scapegoat, as a political agenda, really demonizing who we are, demonizing our contributions, minimizing our contributions to this country,” she said on Wednesday.

“There’s a lot of people who want us to stay home,” Longoria added.

And there’s a reason, because they know the Latino vote will be the deciding factor in this election.

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The Ohio senator JD Vance’s comments on Fox & Friends this morning followed reports that Robert F Kennedy Jr is considering abandoning his campaign as an insurgent independent presidential candidate in order to help the election of Donald Trump.

The startling disclosure was made by Nicole Shanahan, Kennedy’s vice-presidential candidate, who said the pair were considering dropping their campaign over fears it might help elect Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, as president.

Shanahan, a wealthy Silicon Valley attorney, reportedly worth $1bn as a result of her former marriage to Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google, said:

There’s two options that we’re looking at, and one is staying in, forming that new party, but we run the risk of a Kamala Harris and [Tim] Walz presidency because we draw votes from Trump … [Or] we walk away right now and join forces with Donald Trump … and we explain to our base why we’re making this decision.

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Vance says it would be 'good' if RFK dropped out and teamed up with Trump campaign

JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, said it would be “good” for the Trump campaign if Robert F Kennedy Jr dropped out as an independent presidential candidate and joined forces with him and Donald Trump.

Vance, in an interview with Fox & Friends this morning, was asked about reports that Kennedy and his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, are considering abandoning their campaign to help the election of Trump.

Vance said he thinks “it would be good for the campaign” but added that he had not spoken to Kennedy about it, adding:

My pitch to him and to a lot of his voters would be the Democratic Party of my grandparents, that supported his uncle John F Kennedy for president, has been completely abandoned by the modern leadership of the Democratic Party.

Vance argued that the Democratic party has “gone so far in the leftward direction” that Kennedy is “no longer welcome” in the party.

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“We’re hiring another football coach,” Mankato West high school principal John Barnett told Scarlets head football coach Rick Sutton after interviewing Tim Walz about a geography teaching position. “You’re definitely gonna want to talk to him.”

This was back in the spring of 1997, when Walz was a thirty-something national guardsman relocating to Minnesota from Nebraska so his wife could be closer to her family. So Sutton arranged a second informal interview at his house, one that would ultimately decide whether Walz’s $25,000-a-year teaching gig would come with a $2,500 bonus for working with the football team. “I knew very, very early on in our conversation that this was a guy that I definitely wanted on my staff,” Sutton recalls of Walz, who took the job.

By all accounts Walz made as strong a first impression with Kamala Harris; strong enough that the Democratic presidential nominee picked him to be her running mate over more popular choices. On Wednesday, the Minnesota governor takes center stage at the Democratic national convention to accept the party’s vice-presidential nomination. His primetime speech could well come off sounding like one of his old half-time pep talks.

Walz, whose progressive wins in the state legislature also recommended him for the job alongside Harris, has only recently emerged as a national figure since describing Maga Republicans and their retrograde politics as “weird”. With that one simple word, which suddenly has the right taking offense, Walz did in a single news cycle what Democrats haven’t been able to do in 16 years – and that’s retake control over the national political narrative by stealing a page from Donald Trump’s negative-branding playbook.

Read the full story here: ‘Clear eyes, full heart’: the unlikely championship that launched Tim Walz

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Bill Pascrell, a Democratic congressman for New Jersey, died this morning aged 87, his family said.

Pascrell “fought to his last breath to return to the job he cherished and to the people he loved”, according to a statement posted to X.

Pascrell represented the Paterson area in New Jersey in Congress for nearly three decades, after being first elected to Congress in 1996 and having served on the House ways and means committee since 2007, according to local media.

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Vladimir Putin exploited Donald Trump’s “ego and insecurities” to exert an almost mesmeric hold over the former US president, who refused to entertain any negative evaluation of the autocratic Russian leader from his own staff, and ultimately fired his national security adviser, HR McMaster, over it.

The bold assessment of Trump’s fealty to Putin comes in McMaster’s book At War With Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House, published by HarperCollins and arriving on 27 August. The Guardian obtained a copy.

“After over a year in this job, I cannot understand Putin’s hold on Trump,” McMaster recalls saying in the memoir covering the turbulent 457 days the now retired general served as national security adviser from February 2017 until he was effectively fired by tweet in April 2018.

The comment, to McMaster’s wife, Katie, came in the aftermath of the poisoning in the UK by Putin’s agents of Sergei Skripal, a Russian former intelligence officer, and his daughter, in March 2018.

Read the full story here: Vladimir Putin manipulated Donald Trump’s ‘ego and insecurities’, book says

Trump to hold first outdoor rally since assassination attempt

As we reported earlier, Donald Trump will be campaigning in Asheboro, North Carolina, today. It will be his first outdoor campaign rally since surviving an assassination attempt on 13 July at an open-air rally near Butler, Pennsylvania.

Trump’s event today has enhanced security from past outdoor rallies, including panes of bulletproof glass boxing in the podium where he will speak.

From AP’s Michelle L Price:

Delegates called November’s ballot a “get out the vote” election and said that they needed to make clear to Michigan voters that Democrats stand for “freedom”.

“I’d say Michigan is ground zero for the presidency and for the control of the US Senate, and for control of the US Congress,” Jason Morgan, a state representative for the college town of Ann Arbor and vice-chair of the Michigan Democratic Party, told the Guardian.

And we have several US House seats that are open, that we need to win and hold on to. We have a US Senate seat that’s up and up for the first time in decades that is critical to the control of the US Senate, and we are the top battleground state in the country when it comes to the presidency.

We know that Michigan can go blue. We believe it will, but it’s going to take everything that we have to make sure we’re turning out voters, ensuring that they know how important this election is and winning every vote.

Morgan, who was dressed in a T-shirt and baseball cap, said he thought he would “just pop down and grab food” before he “realized we had such a robust program this year”. The energy was the highest he had felt in the state since 2008, he said, when Barack Obama was the candidate.

Having Nancy Pelosi here to talk to us is certainly exhilarating. And you know, it’s just something special.

Updated

The former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, and other Democratic heavy-hitters flocked to a breakfast of Michigan delegates on Wednesday as they try to build enthusiasm in a key battleground state with polls close to a dead heat.

The Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer, and the senator Gary Peters also attended the breakfast, which was meant to recognize the congressman Dan Kildee and the senator Debbie Stabenow, who are not running again.

But attention was focused on races up and down the ticket in Michigan, as part of a larger strategy of protecting a blue wall of states for the presidency and in both the house and the senate. Pelosi, who remains one of the Democratic party’s most influential operatives, said:

We fully intend to hold the house and to win you cannot add by subtracting. You cannot add by subtracting. So we have to win. All the seats that we have were very important.

Jeffries called Michigan a “critical state in the battle for our future”/

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Polling data shows Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s running mate, has had a smoother launch as the Democratic vice-presidential candidate than JD Vance for Donald Trump.

About one-third of American adults, or 36%, have a favorable view of Walz, compared with about one-quarter (27%) who have a positive opinion of Vance, according to a survey by the Associated Press-Norc Center for Public Affairs Research.

Significantly more adults also have an unfavorable view of Vance than Walz, 44% to 25%, the poll shows.

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The US job market appears weaker than first thought, according to official figures released on Wednesday.

The US created 818,000 fewer jobs than first calculated in the twelve month to the end of March, a 0.5% decrease, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ quarterly census of employment and wages.

The news comes as the Federal Reserve weighs a cut in its benchmark interest rate, the first since March 2020. The chair of the Fed, Jerome Powell, has signaled that the central bank is now leaning towards cutting rates after raising them to tamp down inflation. Powell will give an update on his views this Friday at the central bank’s annual meeting in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

The news also comes in an election season when the economy is the top priority for voters. The outgoing president, Joe Biden, has received low marks from voters for his handling of the economy despite a remarkable recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. While inflation is fading, voters remain unhappy about prices.

Some 16m jobs have been created since Biden took office and average unemployment has remained lower than during any administration in 50 years.

Tim Walz, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee and Minnesota governor, has also faced accusations from his opponent, the Republican Ohio senator JD Vance, of lying about his family’s experience with in vitro fertilization (IVF).

Walz has repeatedly spoken about his struggle to have children with his wife, Gwen, while on the campaign trail and characterized the issue of IVF access as “personal” to him and his family. Walz told supporters at a rally in Glendale, Arizona, earlier this month:

This one’s personal for me about IVF and reproductive care. When we wanted to have children, we went through years of fertility treatment.

But on Tuesday, Gwen Walz issued a statement clarifying that she and her husband went through a different process known as intrauterine insemination, or IUI, to conceive their daughter, Hope. IUI is often attempted before IVF but does not face the same level of political controversy because it does not risk destroying unused embryos, according to AP.

Gwen Walz said that a neighbor, who was a nurse, helped administer “the shots I needed as part of the IUI process”, adding:

Our fertility journey was an incredibly personal and difficult experience. Like so many who have experienced these challenges, we kept it largely to ourselves at the time.

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Since being named as Kamala Harris’s running mate, Walz’s 24-year record in the Army National Guard has become a target of attack from Republicans.

His Republican opponent, the Ohio senator JD Vance, has accused Walz of leaving the service in 2005 as a means of avoiding deployment to Iraq. Walz chose to leave the Guard in 2005 to run for Congress, and there is no evidence to suggest he retired to avoid wartime deployment.

Neither Walz nor Vance, who served in the Marine Corps for four years, have combat experience.

In 2018 during a gubernatorial campaign, Walz said “we can make sure those weapons of war that I carried in war” are not on America’s streets. A spokesperson acknowledged recently that he “misspoke”.

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GOP military veteran lawmakers accuse Walz of lying about his military service

A group of 50 Republicans in Congress who have served in the armed forces have signed a letter accusing the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, the Minnesota governor Tim Walz, of lying about his time in the Army National Guard.

The letter, shared with Politico, accuses Walz of “egregious misrepresentations” of his military service and calls on him to “come clean”. It is signed by members of the House and Senate across the spectrum of Republicans, including allies of Donald Trump and more moderate members.

The letter states:

You have stated that you are “damn proud” of your service, and like any American veteran, you should be. But there is no honor in lying about the nature of your service.

“You have violated the trust of our brothers and sisters in arms,” the letter continues.

Their blood, sweat, and sacrifice are the only reason our nation is able to exist. Until you admit you lied to them, there is no way you can be trusted to serve as Vice President.

A spokesperson for Walz responded by pointing to a recent statement signed by Democratic military veteran members of Congress defending Walz from attacks on his record, as well as an open letter of support featuring signatures of 1,000 military veterans.

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The Harris campaign said about 15,000 people attended the rally at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee on Tuesday night to hear Kamala Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, in battleground Wisconsin.

More than half of Americans who are in generation Z say they have “very little” trust in the presidency, according to a new poll.

The Gallup-Walton Family Foundation survey published today shows 53% of voting-age members of generation Z – which it defines as those under the age of 28 – said they have “very little” trust in Congress, 51% said the same about the presidency, and 44% of the supreme court.

The survey was conducted in April and May, before Kamala Harris announced her candidacy and pledged to earn the votes of young people in this election.

Tuesday night featured the ceremonial roll call when delegates from each state announce their support for the nominees. This portion of the event was led by the Grammy-nominated DJ Cassidy and had party vibes as each state had its own song.

Celebrities made surprise appearances – the film-maker Spike Lee with the New York delegation; the rapper Lil Jon with Georgia; the Stranger Things actor Sean Astin with Indiana; and the actor Wendell Pierce with Louisiana.

Lil Jon sang a spin on his hit Get Low, saying, “VP Harris … Governor Walz” to the tune of the “To the window … to the wall.”

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The Democratic national convention on Tuesday featured former Republicans, including a former Trump aide, as the party works to appeal to beyond their core voters.

The DNC brought out Stephanie Grisham, Donald Trump’s former press secretary, to offer a first-hand account of the Republican nominee’s character. Grisham, a Republican operative who also served as spokesperson for former first lady Melania Trump, said Donald Trump “has no empathy, no morals and no fidelity to the truth”.

Before Grisham, Kyle Sweetser, an Alabama voter, told the convention crowd he previously voted for Trump and donated to his campaign, but was now supporting Harris:

I’m not leftwing, period. But I believe our leaders should bring out the best in us, not the worst. That’s why I’m voting for Kamala Harris.

John Giles, mayor of Mesa, Arizona, said:

I have a confession to make. I’m a lifelong Republican. But I feel more at home here than in today’s Republican party.

Updated

Michelle Obama, the former first lady, had one of the most energetic receptions of the night at the Democratic national convention on Tuesday.

She reflected on how the Republican nominee had attacked her family:

For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us. See, his limited, narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hardworking and highly educated, successful people who happen to be Black.

She offered heartfelt praise for the vice-president, praising the “steel of her spine, the steadiness of her upbringing, the honesty of her example, and yes, the joy of her laughter and her light”. Obama said:

Kamala has shown her allegiance to this nation, not by spewing anger and bitterness, but by living a life of service and always pushing the doors of opportunity open to others. She understands that most of us will never be afforded the grace of failing forward. We will never benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth.

The former first lady described “a deep pit in my stomach, a palpable sense of dread about the future”. But she got a standing ovation when she said: “America, hope is making a comeback.”

Updated

Bernie Sanders, the independent Vermont senator, detailed an extensive progressive agenda that he said Democrats must enact if Kamala Harris and Tim Walz take the White House.

Sanders mentioned Harris’s name only a handful of times and instead focused his forceful speech on the need to expand healthcare access, reduce the cost of higher education and raise the minimum wage.

In a nod to big money that has targeted progressives in primaries, Sanders said:

Billionaires in both parties should not be able to buy elections, including primary elections.

He also earned cheers when he said:

We must end this horrific war in Gaza, bring home the hostages and demand an immediate ceasefire.

A group of uncommitted delegates earlier in the night told reporters that they still hadn’t heard back from the Democratic convention on their demand to have a Palestinian American leader speak on stage.

Updated

Amid chants of “Yes, she can!”, Barack Obama returned to the scene of past triumphs on Tuesday to pass the mantle of political history to Kamala Harris – and eviscerate her opponent Donald Trump.

The former president delivered the closing speech on night two of the Democratic national convention in his home city of Chicago. Obama prompted raucous cheers as he delivered a withering critique of Trump, who succeeded him in the White House in 2017.

It was another night crackling with energy in the packed arena as the US’s first Black president made the case for the nation to elect the first woman and first woman of colour to the Oval Office.

Obama was speaking 20 years after he first exploded on to the political stage at the Democratic convention in Boston. That summer, Harris helped host a fundraiser for Obama’s run for the Senate in Illinois. Four years later, she backed him against Hillary Clinton in the presidential primary, a campaign in which he coined the phrase “Yes, we can!”

The same chant greeted Obama when he took the stage in Chicago just after 10pm ET on Thursday and embraced his wife, Michelle. But halfway through his speech, Obama broke from his teleprompter remarks to ad lib: “Yes, she can!” The crowd instinctively chanted, “Yes, she can!” in response.

Updated

Harris campaign raised four times more than Trump in July

Kamala Harris’s campaign raised four times as much money last month than Donald Trump’s campaign, Reuters is reporting, citing federal disclosures filed late on Tuesday.

The Harris campaign told the Federal Election Commission it raised $204m in July, compared to $48m reported by Trump’s main fundraising group.

Harris’s figures include money that was raised during the month before she launched her candidacy on 21 July, after Joe Biden stepped aside. Biden endorsed Harris, who took over control of Biden’s fundraising group.

Harris also outspent Trump last month, spending $81m compared to $24m, according to their FEC reports.

Updated

Kamala Harris appeared at a rally in Milwaukee on Tuesday at the same time the Democratic national convention was running in Chicago.

Harris and her running mate, the Minnesota governor Tim Walz, took the stage in Milwaukee, the largest city in a crucial battleground state, moments after they were reaffirmed as the Democratic nominees following the state-by-state role call at the convention.

In her speech, Harris took aim at Donald Trump and criticized him for saying that he had “no regrets” about the supreme court’s ruling that overturned Roe v Wade.

Here’s a clip from Harris’s speech in Milwaukee:

Updated

Here are some images from the newswires from the Democratic national convention on Tuesday night.

Updated

Trump calls his supporters ‘basement dwellers’, says ex-press secretary

In Chicago, the Democrats are making a play for disaffected Donald Trump voters – and they used one of his former White House staffers to make their case on Tuesday night.

Stephanie Grisham, Trump’s former press secretary who also served as a spokesperson to Melania Trump, offered firsthand accounts of the former president’s behavior behind closed doors and said he “has no empathy, no morals, and no fidelity to the truth”. Grisham said:

I wasn’t just a Trump supporter, I was a true believer, I was one of his closest advisers. The Trump family became my family. I saw him when the cameras were off … Trump mocks his supporters. He calls them basement dwellers. On a hospital visit one time when people were dying in the ICU, he was mad that the cameras were not watching him.

Grisham earned applause when she said she was the first senior staffer to resign that day. She ended her short speech with an endorsement of Kamala Harris, saying:

I love my country more than my party. Kamala Harris tells the truth. She respects the American people and she has my vote.

Read the full story here.

Updated

Trump and Vance campaign in North Carolina

Donald Trump will be campaigning with his running mate, the Ohio senator JD Vance, in Asheboro, North Carolina, on Wednesday where he will speak about national security in the swing state.

The Republican presidential and vice-presidential candidate will deliver remarks at the North Carolina Aviation Museum & Hall of Fame this afternoon.

This will mark Trump’s third visit to North Carolina this month, after he spoke in Charlotte on 24 July and in Asheville on 14 August.

Updated

Although Kamala Harris’s big speech is scheduled for Thursday, she made a surprise appearance at the convention yesterday when her large Milwaukee rally with Tim Walz was live-streamed in Chicago. The moment allowed her to energize two large crowds at the same time.

On Monday at the start of the convention, Harris also made a surprise speech on stage to thank Joe Biden.

In Milwaukee, Harris criticized Donald Trump for comments earlier in the day saying he had “no regrets” about Roe v Wade. She also told her supporters:

We know this is going to be a tight race until the very end.

Updated

Pelosi and Buttigieg to address DNC today

Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was instrumental in persuading Joe Biden to step aside a month ago, will also address the Democratic national convention today.

Retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg, a former adviser to Donald Trump on security and foreign policy, will also speak as part of Democrats’ enlistment of Republicans, Reuters reports.

Convention organizers have dubbed the theme for Wednesday “a fight for our freedoms”.

Associated Press reports that it is a nod to the concept around which Kamala Harris has organized her presidential campaign.

She frames Donald Trump as a threat to abortion rights and personal choices, but also to democracy itself.

Walz to headline third night of Democratic national convention

Tim Walz will seek to build on the intense enthusiasm surrounding his and Kamala Harris’s campaign on Wednesday, as the newly anointed vice-presidential nominee headlines the third night of the Democratic national convention in Chicago.

The speech will give Walz an opportunity to introduce himself to a much wider audience of voters, as most Americans were unfamiliar with the Minnesota governor before Harris selected him as her running mate earlier this month. An ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted last month, shortly after Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race and endorsed Harris, showed that only 13% of Americans knew enough about Walz to register an opinion of him.

But Walz has an early advantage in cultivating a positive image, as he has captured the internet’s imagination in the past few weeks. Fans of the friendly governor have showered social media platforms with memes depicting him as the father figure that America needs right now. On the campaign trail, Harris often introduces her running mate as “Coach Walz” to remind voters of his background as a teacher and football coach.

Opening summary

Good morning and welcome to our coverage of the Democratic National Convention with former president Bill Clinton and prospective vice-president Tim Walz due to address the crowds in Chicago later.

Last night delegates were treated to speeches by Bernie Sanders, who said that “billionaires in both parties should not be able to buy elections,” and Kamala Harris’s husband Doug Emhoff who told the audience that his wife was “ready to lead,” adding: “She brings both joy and toughness to this task, and she will be a great president we will all be proud of.”

Michelle Obama energized the crowd, telling them that “hope is making a comeback” as Harris prepares to take on Donald Trump. Her husband, concluding the evening with his keynote speech, mocked Trump for his “childish nicknames”, “crazy conspiracy theories” and “weird obsession with crowd sizes”.

Barack Obama ended the second night of the convention with a characteristic call to action: “We’ll elect leaders up and down the ballot who will fight for the hopeful, forward-looking America we believe in. And together, we too will build a country that is more secure and more just, more equal and more free. So let’s get to work.”

You can read our report here:

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