Trump’s former rivals to stage show of unity as Haley, DeSantis and Rubio expected to address Republican national convention – live | Republican national convention 2024

In addition to getting Donald Trump back in the White House, Republicans really want to retake the majority in the US Senate in the November elections, and have dedicated much of the convention tonight thus far to promoting their candidates for crucial seats.

In addition to Kari Lake, who is vying for Arizona’s open senate seat, the convention has heard from Eric Hovde, the party’s candidate to beat incumbent Democrat Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin. Here’s what Hovde told the crowd:

Tammy Baldwin called the Biden administration the most successful in generations. Can you believe that one? I mean, seriously, this shows how detached she is from everyday Wisconsinites. It doesn’t have to be this way. Under President Trump, family budgets were more secure, our border was secure, our world was secure. Where Biden and Baldwin have failed, President Trump and I will get the job done.

Next up was Bernie Moreno, the Republican candidate to beat Sherrod Brown in Ohio. Brown is a top target for Republicans this year, since Ohio has become increasingly conservative over the past decade. In his speech, Moreno described himself as a child of Colombian immigrants who is seeing his American dream destroyed by Democratic policies:

I love America, and I’ve lived the American dream. I married my best friend, raised a family, built successful businesses and created thousands of jobs for hard-working Americans. But the American dream that I lived is under attack from Joe Biden and his enablers in the Senate like Sherrod Brown.

Sam Levine

Earlier in the day, Chris LaCivita, the co-manager of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, gave an extremely confident assessment of the state of the race, underscoring how good the campaign feels about its chances.

“We have nearly 20 paths to get to where we need to get,” he said at a brunch hosted by Georgetown University’s Institute of Politics and Public Service in downtown Milwaukee. “They have one, maybe two,” he continued, referring to the Biden campaign.

LaCivita, who spoke for about an hour as anti-abortion protesters could be heard outside, said the campaign would deploy JD Vance, Trump’s newly minted running mate, across the country.

“As young as he is, he’s going to be everywhere,” he said. “We have a very, very aggressive schedule for him. He communicates I think really well.”

LaCivita also distanced Trump from Project 2025, the Heritage Campaign’s [sic] extensive and radical plan to reshape the federal government in a possible second Trump term.

“The left is all of a sudden focused on this Project 2025 crap, which we had been attacking relentlessly for months,” he said. “Then the boss was like: ‘OK, I’ve had enough,’ because apparently he wanted to start nuclear testing again, but no one told him.

“A lot of my friends in the media love to find somebody that used to work for Trump or had a cousin who worked for Donald Trump who’s come up with a policy that they’re gonna let the aliens walk around.”

He also said that Americans didn’t need Project 2025 to know what Trump would do as president: “I always tell people, if you want to know what a Trump second term would look like, just look at the first.”

He also described efforts to remove Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee as a “coup” and said campaign messaging wouldn’t change much if a new nominee took over the Democratic ticket. There has been some reporting that the Trump campaign strongly favors Biden staying in the race

Asked about his hopes for a second debate, LaCivita said “can’t wait” and that the campaign wanted a third debate to be added to the schedule.

He also didn’t share much about what Trump will say in his speech on Thursday.

“Should be a great show, that’s for sure,” he said. “Not a whole lot of doubt about that.”

Kari Lake was welcomed to the stage at the Republican national convention with loud applause – which grew even louder as she attacked the journalists in the arena.

“Hello, America! Welcome, everybody who’s watching at home, and welcome, everybody in this great arena tonight. We love you all,” said Lake, who failed in her bid for Arizona governor in 2022, and is now running for its open senate seat.

“Actually, actually, wait a minute, I don’t mean that. I don’t welcome everybody … in this room. You guys up there in the fake news have worn out your welcome. You’ve worn it out,” she said, to another wave of claps.

Lake then moved on to attacking Joe Biden and Ruben Gallego, the Democratic representative vying to win Arizona’s senate seat.

“Americans are waking up to the truth about the disastrous Democrat policies pushed by Joe Biden and his favorite congressman, my opponent, Ruben Gallego,” Lake said.

Joan E Greve

Before Kari Lake‘s speech at the Republican national convention tonight, her opponent in the Arizona Senate race, Democratic representative Ruben Gallego, released a new attack ad against her.

The ad highlights Lake’s baseless claims of election fraud in the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial race, which she lost to Democrat Katie Hobbs.

“As Arizonans tune into the RNC convention, they’ll be reminded that Kari Lake will say anything to get power – even if it means lying to Arizonans and undermining our elections,” said Hannah Goss, Gallego’s spokesperson.

“Lake remains focused only on herself – not Arizona families – which is exactly why voters will reject her at the ballot box yet again this year.”

Joan E Greve

Several Republican Senate candidates in key battleground states – including Kari Lake of Arizona, Dave McCormick of Pennsylvania and Eric Hovde of Wisconsin – will deliver remarks at the Republican national convention tonight.

The candidates will play a crucial role in Republicans’ plan to regain control of the upper chamber of Congress, and Senate Democrats’ campaign arm is already out with a statement attacking tonight’s speakers.

“Republicans’ roster of flawed Senate recruits offers something to repel every kind of voter,” said David Bergstein, communications director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “Nothing these candidates say on stage will change the fact that their ever-growing list of scandals, baggage and vulnerabilities make them unelectable in their states.”

A recent set of polls conducted by YouGov showed Democratic Senate candidates consistently running ahead of Joe Biden in battleground states, buoying the party’s hopes of maintaining their narrow majority in the upper chamber.

Joe Biden is planning to announce his endorsement for supreme court term limits and other major reforms of the country’s highest court, according to a report from the Washington Post.

The president is expected to soon call for legislation to establish an enforceable ethics code for the supreme court, and will weigh whether to call for a constitutional amendment to eliminate broad immunity for presidents and other constitutional officeholders, the Post reports, citing anonymous sources.

The report has not yet been independently verified by the Guardian. If Biden does announce support for such reforms, it would be a radical shift for a president who has previously resisted calls from progressive lawmakers to reform the supreme court.

JD Vance’s close ties to the fossil fuels industry and eagerness to please Donald Trump pose a major threat to Americans and the planet, environmental advocates have warned.

The Republican nominee for vice-president, a wealthy venture capitalist who was elected to the US Senate in 2022, went from voicing concern about the climate crisis before running for political office to voting to roll back environmental protections and to repeal landmark climate legislation boosting renewables and electric vehicles.

“The selection of JD Vance as a potential vice-president is a dangerous step backward for climate action in the United States,” said Cassidy DiPaola, spokesperson for Fossil Free Media’s Make Polluters Pay campaign. “Senator Vance’s record shows a clear pattern of prioritizing fossil fuel interests over the urgent need to address the climate crisis.”

The Ohio senator – who once was a strident critic of Trump – has received $340,289 from the oil and gas industry in campaign contributions since 2019 and is among the top industry benefactors so far this election cycle, according to OpenSecrets, a campaign finance watchdog site.

“JD Vance not only flip-flopped on supporting Trump, he flip-flopped on climate,” said Stevie O’Hanlon, communications director for the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led environmental justice group. “Vance will empower Donald Trump to enact even worse damage on our planet in a second Trump administration.”

The Ohio senator has questioned the role of humans and fossil fuels in global heating, despite the overwhelming scientific consensus. “I’m skeptical of the idea that climate change is caused purely by man,” Vance told the American Leadership Forum during the Senate race, as he sought Trump’s endorsement.

In his home state, Vance has become an outspoken champion of hydraulic fracking, a highly polluting process that involves injecting water, sand and toxic chemicals into the ground to extract hard-to-reach oil and gas.

Joan E Greve

On Tuesday, Republicans are expected to focus their attention on crime and immigration, as the theme of the day will be “Make America Safe Once Again”.

Immigration reform has become a rallying cry for Republicans, with Trump and his allies repeatedly and falsely accusing Biden of supporting “open borders”.

Trump has previously called for the deportation of 15 million to 20 million undocumented immigrants if he wins re-election, and Vance voiced his own support for mass deportation in an interview with the Fox News host Sean Hannity on Monday.

“We have to deport people,” Vance told Hannity. “We have to deport people who broke our laws who came in here. And I think we need to start with the violent criminals.”

Welcome to our rolling coverage of US politics.

The Republican national convention is now under way with Donald Trump as the party’s official presidential nominee and Ohio senator JD Vance as his running mate. Tonight’s theme is “Make America Safe Once Again”. Speakers are expected to promote Trump’s vision for extreme crackdowns against immigrants at the US border, including mass deportations and detention camps.

Tonight, a number of Trump’s former foes, including Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, will address supporters at the RNC as the party strives to show unity following the attempted assassination of the former president last weekend.

• Haley, who ran against Trump in the primaries and said the former president was unelectable and unfit for office, had not been expected to speak and two days ago said she had not been invited.

• Mike Johnson, the House speaker, and Marco Rubio, the Florida senator who was passed over to be the Republican vice-presidential nominee, will also be speaking at the convention today.

• The former first lady, Melania Trump, is expected to attend on Thursday, when her husband will formally accept his party’s presidential nomination, NBC reported, citing a senior Trump campaign official. She has been notably absent from the campaign trail, though she issued a statement on Saturday after the former president was shot in the ear in an assassination attempt.

• The Democratic National Committee (DNC) is quietly moving ahead with plans to formally nominate Joe Biden as the party’s presidential candidate weeks before the Democratic national convention next month, according to a report. Party chiefs are moving to kill off efforts to force Biden from the party’s presidential ticket by rushing ahead with plans for convention delegates to vote electronically in a week-long roll call starting in late July, Axios reported.

• Vivek Ramaswamy, the biotech entrepreneur and former Republican presidential candidate, said he is interested in filling the Ohio Senate seat occupied by JD Vance, if the Trump-Vance ticket wins in the presidential election this November and Vance, a US senator from Ohio, has to relinquish his seat. He was a peer of Vance’s at Yale Law School.

• Robert F Kennedy Jr, running for the White House as an independent candidate, has apologized to Donald Trump after footage of a private phone call between the two was leaked online. In the video of RJK Jr standing with his phone talking to Trump, the former president can be heard discussing the assassination attempt on him at the weekend. Trump described the bullet that grazed his ear as feeling like “the world’s largest mosquito”. Trump can also be heard criticizing vaccines, with RFK Jr being known as a vehement anti-vaxxer, and telling Kennedy that “we’re going to win” the election in November.

Follow along for live coverage.