RNC speakers tonight include Haley, DeSantis, Rubio and JohnsonDonald Trump’s presidential primary opponents, the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley and the Florida governor Ron DeSantis, are expected to speak at the Republican national convention today.Among those scheduled to speak on Tuesday are:

House speaker Mike Johnson

Former UN ambassador Nikki Haley

Florida governor Ron DeSantis

Florida senator Marco Rubio

Florida senator Rick Scott

Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders

West Virginia governor Jim Justice

Louisiana congressman Steve Scalise

New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik

Minnesota congressman Tom Emmer

Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy

Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump

Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake

Ohio Senate candidate Bernie Moreno
ShareUpdated at 19.19 CESTKey eventsShow key events onlyPlease turn on JavaScript to use this featureA police officer has reportedly shot an individual while working in Milwaukee as part of the security efforts surrounding the Republican national convention.According to a Columbus Dispatch report, Brian Steel, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Capitol City Lodge No. 9, said details are limited but he was contacted about a possible shooting in Milwaukee involving a Columbus police officer.Several dozen Columbus officers are in Milwaukee, as are officers from other cities around the country, to assist with security, according to the paper.SharePolice officers have shot an individual near the Republican national convention in Milwaukee, according to the talkshow host Dan O’Donnell.More details to follow.🚨🚨🚨BREAKING🚨🚨🚨 A man is dead a mile away from the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee after he was shot by a Columbus, Ohio Police officer in Milwaukee to help with TNC security.— Dan O’Donnell (@DanODonnellShow) July 16, 2024The intersection is in a residential neighborhood about a mile from the Fiserv Forum, site of the convention. The Columbus officers are in Milwaukee to provide security for the RNC. pic.twitter.com/nOLZejrYRR— Dan O’Donnell (@DanODonnellShow) July 16, 2024ShareUpdated at 21.18 CESTJoan E GreveDuring their press conference in Milwaukee, Biden campaign officials also defended their decision to move forward with a virtual roll call vote to nominate the president before the party’s convention in August next month.The roll call plan was initially formulated to meet a ballot deadline of 7 August in Ohio, but state legislators passed a bill to address that concern. Still, campaign officials said they would continue with their plans, even as 19 congressional Democrats have publicly called on Biden to step aside.“We have moved forward,” said Quentin Fulks, Biden’s principal deputy campaign manager.
We instituted this before they had a fix, and we’re going to continue on that path because we’re not going to leave it up to them to change the rules again.
ShareJoan E GreveBiden campaign officials held a press conference in Milwaukee this morning, where they attacked Donald Trump’s policy proposals and his selection of JD Vance as a running mate.“Donald Trump’s Republican party will always choose big, greedy, anti-union extremists over the working men and women of America,” said Quentin Fulks, Biden’s principal deputy campaign manager.
President Biden is the most pro-union, pro-worker president this nation has ever seen.
Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, who traveled to Milwaukee for the press conference, said Vance’s selection alarmed him given the Ohio senator’s past comments on the 2020 election.In an interview with ABC News in February, Vance argued that Congress should not have immediately certified Biden’s victory because of concerns about tainted results, even though Trump presented no substantive evidence of widespread election fraud.“Vice-President Pence did the right thing for our democracy,” Booker said.
And now [Trump] has chosen a vice-president who said that he would not have done that. If he was the vice-president then, he would have marched our country perhaps into its worst constitutional crisis in my lifetime.
ShareUpdated at 21.06 CESTJoan E GreveThe congressman Ruben Gallego, who is running for a Senate seat in Arizona, has joined calls for the senator Bob Menendez to resign in the wake of his conviction on corruption charges.“Given today’s guilty verdict, it is clear that Senator Bob Menendez must do what is right and resign,” Gallego said in a statement. “His constituents and this country both deserve better.”ShareUpdated at 21.00 CESTUS received intel weeks ago about Iranian plot to assassinate Trump – reportThe United States received intelligence from a human source in recent weeks about an Iranian plot to try to assassinate the former president Donald Trump, CNN reported moments ago, citing people briefed on the matter.CNN reported that there was no indication that the 20-year-old who tried to assassinate Trump on Saturday was connected to the plot, the Reuters news agency reports.The cable news channel says there appears to be no connection between any such Iranian conspiracy and the attempted assassination of Trump at the weekend by a gunman in Pennsylvania.ShareUpdated at 20.49 CESTInterim summaryHello, US politics and Republican national convention (RNC) watchers, it’s been a busy news morning and there’s much more in store this afternoon and evening, so stick with the blog to read about developments as they happen.Here’s where things stand:

Speakers due to address everyone at the RNC tonight in Milwaukee include late entrant Nikki Haley, the former US ambassador to the United Nations during the Trump administration and the Republican challenger who stayed in the primary contest against Donald Trump longer than any other rival, criticizing him assertively, until she had to cave and then of course threw her lot in with the former president. Also the House speaker, Mike Johnson, and Florida senator Marco Rubio, who was passed over to be the Republican vice-presidential nominee yesterday in favor of JD Vance.

The US senator Bob Menendez was found guilty in federal court in New York on all counts, in his federal corruption trial. The New Jersey Democrat, 70, had pleaded not guilty to 16 criminal charges including bribery, acting as a foreign agent and obstructing justice. He had refused to step down from the chamber during his case but after the verdict, Senate majority leader and New York Democrat Chuck Schumer and Menendez’s fellow New Jersey senator, Cory Booker, called on him to resign. Menendez said he would appeal the verdict, but the governor of New Jersey, Phil Murphy, a Democrat, said the Senate should vote to oust him if he doesn’t quit. Arizona congressman Ruben Gallego also called publicly for Menendez to resign.

The former first lady, Melania Trump, is expected to attend the Republican national convention on Thursday, when her husband, Donald Trump, will formally accept his party’s presidential nomination, NBC reported, citing a senior Trump campaign official. She hasn’t much been seen or heard from on the campaign trail or during Trump’s criminal trial in New York. But she issued a statement on Saturday after the former president was shot 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 is a peer of Vance’s at Yale Law School.

The director of the US Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, said that the attempted assassination of Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania campaign rally on Saturday was not acceptable adding that though “the buck stops with me”, she would not resign. “It was unacceptable,” Kimberly Cheatle told ABC News on yesterday evening. “And it’s something that shouldn’t happen again.”

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. He 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.

The Republican national convention (RNC) headed into its second day in Milwaukee, Wisconsin – now with Donald Trump as the party’s official presidential nominee and Ohio senator JD Vance as his running mate.
ShareUpdated at 20.33 CESTJoanna WaltersThe New Jersey senator Cory Booker said that the need for his counterpart, Bob Menendez, to resign after being found guilty by the jury in a federal corruption case was urgent.Posting on X, Booker said “with this conviction, the urgency for Senator Menendez to step down and for the governor to appoint a replacement has even more urgency”.Phil Murphy, the governor of New Jersey, also a Democrat, will have the duty of appointing someone to fill Menendez’s seat if he resigns or is ousted from the Senate, as the seat would become vacant between elections.Cory Booker arrives at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee on Capitol Hill, 11 July 2024, in Washington DC. Photograph: Rod Lamkey/APShareUpdated at 20.19 CESTCory Booker joins chorus calling on Senator Menendez to resignJoanna WaltersNew Jersey’s junior US senator, Cory Booker, moments ago joined other senior figures in calling on the state’s senior senator, Bob Menendez, to resign from Congress following his conviction in a federal corruption trial earlier today.Booker, a fellow Democrat, to whom Menendez was a mentor, posted a statement on X, formerly Twitter, calling it “a dark painful day for the people of New Jersey”.Booker had already called on Menendez to resign once, earlier in the legal process, to no avail, but with Tuesday’s overwhelming conviction on all 16 counts by a jury, Booker joined the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, and the New Jersey governor, Phil Murphy, in issuing calls today for Menendez to step down.The junior senator said that Menendez had was afforded his due process rights and able to mount a full defense before a jury of his peers, but was convicted nonetheless.ShareUpdated at 20.07 CESTJoanna WaltersThe US senator Bob Menendez will appeal his conviction at trial on charges related to corruption, after being found guilty this morning in a federal court in New York.The New Jersey senator, 70, was convicted on 16 criminal charges including bribery, acting as a foreign agent and obstructing justice.The governor of New Jersey, the Democrat Phil Murphy, stated moments ago that if Menendez refuses to resign from his seat that the congressional chamber should vote to expel him, Reuters reported.Murphy had posted on X, formerly Twitter, that the verdict “demonstrates that the Senator broke the law, violated the trust of his constituents, and betrayed his oath of office. In America, everyone – no matter how powerful – is accountable to our laws.”Today’s verdict finding Senator Bob Menendez guilty on 16 counts demonstrates that the Senator broke the law, violated the trust of his constituents, and betrayed his oath of office.In America, everyone – no matter how powerful – is accountable to our laws. pic.twitter.com/ljJrQFB2eu— Governor Phil Murphy (@GovMurphy) July 16, 2024ShareUpdated at 19.56 CESTSchumer calls on Menendez to resign after convictionChuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, has called on Bob Menendez to resign after the Democratic senator from New York was convicted on all 16 criminal counts he faced including bribery at his corruption trial.Schumer, in a post to X, wrote:
In light of this guilty verdict, Senator Menendez must now do what is right for his constituents, the Senate, and our country, and resign.
In light of this guilty verdict, Senator Menendez must now do what is right for his constituents, the Senate, and our country, and resign.— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) July 16, 2024

ShareUpdated at 19.57 CESTRNC speakers tonight include Haley, DeSantis, Rubio and JohnsonDonald Trump’s presidential primary opponents, the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley and the Florida governor Ron DeSantis, are expected to speak at the Republican national convention today.Among those scheduled to speak on Tuesday are:

House speaker Mike Johnson

Former UN ambassador Nikki Haley

Florida governor Ron DeSantis

Florida senator Marco Rubio

Florida senator Rick Scott

Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders

West Virginia governor Jim Justice

Louisiana congressman Steve Scalise

New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik

Minnesota congressman Tom Emmer

Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy

Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump

Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake

Ohio Senate candidate Bernie Moreno
ShareUpdated at 19.19 CESTSam LevineI just spoke with one of the protesters, Caroline Smith, who is the executive director of the progressive anti-abortion uprising. They’re standing just outside an outdoor area where Republican attendees are having brunch.“There’s this fancy, rich neighborhood with a bunch of people in here discussing the road to 2024 just days, hours, after they have erased the lives of unborn people from their own platform,” she said.
The GOP is supposed to be the pro-life party and they watered down, completely erased pre-born children from their platform.
You can faintly hear the protest inside the hotel where the event is set to take place. So far I’ve seen the Republican congresswoman Elise Stefanik and the US Senate candidate Kari Lake here.ShareUpdated at 19.17 CESTSenator Bob Menendez found guilty in federal corruption trialThe senator Bob Menendez has been found guilty on all counts in his federal corruption trial.The New Jersey Democrat, 70, pleaded not guilty to 16 criminal charges including bribery, acting as a foreign agent and obstructing justice.Menendez denied accepting bribes – including gold bars, a luxury car and almost half a million dollars in cash – as he promoted Egypt’s interests in his influential role as chair of the Senate foreign relations committee.Menendez’s wife, Nadine Menendez, was also charged in the case, but her trial was postponed indefinitely after her breast cancer diagnosis.Robert Menendez. Photograph: Mike Segar/ReutersShareUpdated at 19.18 CESTThe Biden campaign will resume political advertising this week, according to Reuters, days after it suspended ads following the attempted assassination of Donald Trump.The Democrats’ presidential campaign, already in disarray amid uncertainty over Biden’s fate after his calamitous debate performance, was plunged into further confusion after the shooting.They suspended a $50m advertising blitz and quickly pulled television attack ads, in moves consistent with Biden’s plea in a Sunday night speech from the White House to “lower the temperature in our politics”.The Biden campaign also told staff members to “refrain from issuing any comments on social media or in public” and to “pause any proactive campaign communication across all platforms and in all circumstances until we know more”, NBC reported.SharePeter Navarro, the former Trump White House adviser who is currently in jail on contempt of Congress charges, is expected to speak at the Republican national convention after his release from prison.Navarro is due to finish his four-month sentence at the federal prison camp in Miami on Wednesday morning.According to CNN, Navarro’s fiancee plans to pick him up from prison and drive him to Miami airport, where a private plan provided by his book publisher will be waiting to take him to the convention in Milwaukee.Peter Navarro arrives to speak to the press at the Country Mall Plaza before reporting to prison in Miami, Florida on 19 March 2024. Photograph: Chandan Khanna/AFP/Getty ImagesNavarro was found guilty in September of contempt of Congress charges for refusing to cooperate with a congressional investigation into the 6 January 2021 attack.ShareUpdated at 18.50 CESTMelania Trump to attend RNC on Thursday – reportThe former first lady Melania Trump is expected to attend the Republican national convention on Thursday, when Donald Trump will formally accept his party’s presidential nomination, NBC reported, citing a senior Trump campaign official.ShareUpdated at 19.44 CESTSam LevineI’ve just arrived at a hotel in downtown Milwaukee, where Chris LaCivita, one of Donald Trump’s campaign managers is set to speak shortly. Outside, a small group of anti-abortion protesters has gathered.Earlier this month, the RNC omitted a national abortion ban from its platform for the first time in 40 years.ShareDonald Trump and his running mate, Ohio senator JD Vance, are scheduled to appear in the hall of the Republican national convention every night, according to AP.Vance is expected to give his own speech on Wednesday night, and Trump will headline Thursday night’s closing evening.Share