Barack Obama to deliver ‘forceful affirmation’ for Kamala Harris in Democratic convention speech – live

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Secret Service looking into bomb threats in downtown Chicago - report

The US Secret Service was checking into bomb threats made at “various locations” in downtown Chicago where the Democratic national convention is taking place, AP reported.

A threat was emailed to the Fox 32 Newsroom which said pipe bombs were placed at four hotels in downtown Chicago, including the Nobu Hotel, the Hotel Chicago West Loop and the Hyatt House Chicago in West Loop and the University District, the outlet reported.

The threat mentioned the Democratic national convention that is taking place this week, it said.

Tim Walz received a huge response from the youth council meeting at the Democratic convention, riling up young people by recalling his time as a high school teacher and a football coach.

Once the word “coach” was uttered by the person announcing Walz, the crowd started moving toward the stage and cheering. Walz, the governor of Minnesota, and Kamala Harris’s running mate, credited his former students with getting him involved in politics.

“Be careful: next thing you know, you’re the next vice presidential nominee,” he joked.

He brought up issues key to young voters, like the cost of college, saying that the generation before him invested in his generation, so the cost of college back then “wasn’t so damn expensive.”

And he implored the young people to get out and work hard over the next few months to elect Democrats in this election, telling them they can sleep when they’re dead. As he left the stage, the crowd chanted “Coach! Coach!”

Hillary Clinton has just posted a clip on X from her speech at the DNC last night.

“Kamala Harris will never rest in defense of our freedom and safety. Donald Trump fell asleep at his own trial,” she said, prompting gales of laughter around the convention floor.

Clinton continued: “When he woke up, he made his own kind of history—as the first person to run for president with 34 felony convictions.” This elicited pantomime boos from the crowd.

Interim summary

Hello US politics blog readers, there is an awful lot going on at the Democratic Convention (DNC) in Chicago as well as on the 2024 election campaign trail for both the Democrats and top Republicans. And it’s going to be another huge night on the convention stage, so stick with Guardian US for all the developments as they happen.

Here’s where things stand:

Barack Obama will deliver a forceful affirmation that Kamala Harris is the “right leader for the moment” during his speech on Tuesday night at the DNC, an adviser to the former president told CNN.

Chicago police said there was a “brief breach” of security fencing “within sight and sound of the United Center” on Monday evening, where the DNC is being held. Some 13 protesters were arrested on charges ranging from criminal trespass and resisting and obstructing an arrest to aggravated battery of police officers. The pro-Palestine demonstrations have brought thousands to the city.

Donald Trump will deliver remarks on Tuesday in Howell, Michigan, a city with historical links to the Ku Klux Klan and where white supremacists marched through the streets last month and chanted “We love Hitler. We love Trump.” Trump is scheduled to speak this afternoon about “crime and safety” at Livingston County Sheriff’s County in Howell, a city of about 10,000 residents northwest of Detroit. It will be Trump’s sixth visit to Michigan this year.

Stephanie Grisham, a former White House press secretary under the Trump administration, will speak at the Democratic national convention today to show her support for Kamala Harris. Grisham worked in a number of different roles for Trump – as a press aide during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, as chief of staff and press secretary for then-first lady, Melania Trump, and as White House press secretary and communications director. She resigned in the aftermath of the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol.

Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, will attend a campaign rally in Wisconsin today where she is scheduled to deliver remarks at around 8pm Central Time.

Doug Emhoff, the second gentleman of the US, is due to address the DNC later today.

Barack and Michelle Obama and Bernie Sanders are all scheduled to make speeches at the DNC today.

Andy Beshear, the Democratic governor of Kentucky, has insisted that he does not “wish harm on anyone” after the Trump-Vance campaign accused him of calling for a member of Ohio senator JD Vance’s family to be raped.

Beshear was speaking on MSNBC this morning when he criticized Republicans for “fear tactics” on abortion messaging, noting Vance’s previous comments about abortion. Beshear said:

JD Vance calls pregnancy resulting from rape inconvenient. Inconvenience is traffic, I mean, it is, uh, make him go through this.

Beshear was referring to a comment Vance made in 2021, while running for Ohio senate, where he said he did not support rape and incest exceptions in abortion bans.

The Trump-Vance campaign quickly jumped on Beshear’s comments today, with Vance asking why the Kentucky governor is “wishing that a member of my family would get raped?!?”

Asked if that had been his intent, Beshear replied: “Of course not” and called Vance’s response an example of the party’s “deflection”, adding:

Obviously, I never wish harm on anyone. It just, again, deflection, trying to make himself and Donald Trump the victims.

It has been suggested that Joe Biden holds Barack Obama partly culpable for his political demise when he stepped down in July. Obama did not encourage the president to end his campaign, but nor did he rally to his side when pressure mounted.

That context will make Obama’s keynote speech on Tuesday all the more poignant. It was already imbued with personal significance for Obama.

It was the soaring keynote speech that Obama made at the Democratic national convention in Boston, Massachusetts exactly 20 years ago – in which he talked of the “audacity of hope” of “a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too” – that rocket-launched him from his then relatively lowly status as a state senator in Illinois into the presidency just four years later.

In his speech on Tuesday night, Obama is expected to set out Harris’s qualifications for the world’s most powerful job. Earlier this month he commended her on X, saying:

She has the vision, the character, and the strength that this critical moment demands, and I know she will deliver.

Obama to deliver 'forceful affirmation' for Harris in speech

Barack Obama will deliver a “forceful affirmation that [Kamala] Harris is the right leader for the moment” during his speech on Tuesday night at the Democratic national convention, an adviser to the former president told CNN.

A source familiar with Obama’s prepared speech told the Washington Post that he will “affirm why Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are precisely the leaders the country needs right now, lay out the task in front of Democrats over the next eleven weeks, and bring into focus the values at stake in this election and at the heart of our politics.”

Carrying the flame on the second night of primetime speeches on Tuesday will be the Obamas, with Michelle Obama addressing the convention shortly before her husband Barack takes the stage.

The couple’s endorsement of Harris in July was seminal in securing the Democratic presidential nomination for the current vice-president, helping to bypass a potentially ugly internal fight.

The Obamas stamped their approval on a Harris bid for the White House on 26 July, five days after Joe Biden stepped aside, recording a video of their phone conversation which promptly went viral. Michelle Obama said:

I can’t have this phone call without saying to my girl Kamala that I am so proud of you – this is going to be historic.

Independent presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr. and his running mate, tech lawyer Nicole Shanahan, are considering dropping out of the race and supporting Donald Trump, Shanahan said.

In a interview on the End Tribalism in Politics podcast that aired today, reported by the Washington Post, Shanahan 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 Waltz presidency because we draw more votes from Trump.

Or we walk away right now and join forces with with Donald Trump and explain to our base why we’re making this decision.

13 protesters arrested during first day of convention, says Chicago police

Chicago police said there was a “brief breach” of security fencing “within sight and sound of the United Center” on Monday evening.

Some 13 people were arrested on charges ranging from criminal trespass and resisting and obstructing an arrest to aggravated battery of police officers, Chicago police superintendent Larry Snelling said, AP reported.

An estimated 3,500 protesters participated in the march and rally, Snelling told a news conference on Tuesday, adding that just a small group breached the security fence. The vast majority of protesters were peaceful, he said, adding:

I’m not going to tie that event – what happened with the breach – with the entirety of the protest.

Donald Trump said he would not enforce a 150-year-old federal law to restrict the sale of abortion medication by mail.

Trump was asked in an interview with CBS whether he would enforce the Comstock Act, a 1873 law that Trump allies have eyed as a way to ban all abortions nationwide under a second Trump administration. He replied:

No. We will be discussing specifics of it, but generally speaking, no, I would not.

In its 920-page blueprint for a second Trump administration, the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 calls for enforcing Comstock’s criminal prohibitions to provide or distribute abortion pills.

John Giles, the mayor of Mesa, Arizona, is among the Republicans who will be speaking at the Democratic national convention this week.

Giles, who is expected to speak at the convention today, released a statement:

I’ve been a Republican all my life. But since Donald Trump refused to accept the results of the 2020 election, the Republican Party has spiraled further and further into political extremism.

Last month, Giles wrote an op-ed in the Arizona Republic calling on Republicans to join him in “choosing country over party this election and to vote against Donald Trump.”

Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican congressman for Illinois, has also confirmed that he will be speaking at the Democratic national convention this week.

Kinzinger, posting to X this morning, said that he will be using his speech on Thursday to argue that “true conservatism has been replaced with a cult”.

Geoff Duncan, a Republican former lieutenant governor of Georgia, will speak at the Democratic convention this week, the Harris campaign has announced.

Duncan will have a “prominent” speaking slot on Wednesday night, CNN reported, citing a source familiar with the speech. Duncan’s remarks will be “directed at Republicans who are sick and tired of making excuses for Donald Trump,” the source said.

In a statement shared by Fox News, Duncan said:

As a lifelong conservative Republican, I do not recognize my own party. Donald Trump does not care about America’s working families; he only cares about revenge and retribution. Americans know Donald Trump’s extremist agenda is a threat to our country, and it’s time to move past his incoherence and division.

In May, Duncan said he would vote for Joe Biden because Trump had “disqualified himself through his conduct and his character.”

Trump to campaign in Michigan city a month after white supremacist rally

Donald Trump will deliver remarks on Tuesday in Howell, Michigan, a city with historical links to the Ku Klux Klan and where white supremacists marched through the streets last month and chanted “We love Hitler. We love Trump.”

Trump is scheduled to speak this afternoon about “crime and safety” at Livingston County Sheriff’s County in Howell, a city of about 10,000 residents northwest of Detroit. It will be Trump’s sixth visit to Michigan this year.

In the 1970s, KKK Grand Dragon Robert Miles had a Howell mailing address and held meetings on a nearby farm, Reuters reported. A cross burning on the lawn of a Black couple rocked the city in the 1980s, and it was the site of a KKK rally in the 1990s, CNN reported. Last month, about a dozen white supremacists chanted “Heil Hitler” and carried signs reading “White Lives Matter” during a march through downtown Howell.

Kamala Harris’s campaign has criticized Trump for planning the event in Howell while failing to condemn what it called a “blatant display of racism and antisemitism in his name.” A statement by the Harris campaign said:

The racists and white supremacists who marched in Trump’s name last month in Howell have all watched him praise Hitler, defend neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, and tell far-right extremists to ‘stand back and stand by. Trump’s actions have encouraged them, and Michiganders can expect more of the same when he comes to town.

A Trump campaign spokesperson rejected criticism of the site of the event, promising Trump would speak against “hate of any form”.

Former Trump press secretary Stephanie Grisham to speak at Democratic convention tonight

Stephanie Grisham, a former White House press secretary under the Trump administration, will speak at the Democratic national convention today to show her support for Kamala Harris.

Grisham worked in a number of different roles for Donald Trump – as a press aide during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, as chief of staff and press secretary for then-first lady, Melania Trump, and as White House press secretary and communications director. She resigned in the aftermath of the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol.

In a statement announcing her appearance at the Democratic national convention this week, Grisham said:

I never thought I’d be speaking at a Democratic convention. But, after seeing firsthand who Donald Trump really is, and the threat he poses to our country, I feel very strongly about speaking out.

Grisham, whose attendance at the DNC was first reported by NBC News, added:

While I don’t agree with Vice President Harris on everything, I am proud to be supporting her because I know she will defend our freedoms and represent our nation with honesty and integrity.

Roy Cooper, the Democratic governor of North Carolina, said he has “that 2008 feeling” about the party’s chances of winning his state with Kamala Harris on the top of the ticket.

Cooper, speaking at a Bloomberg event at the Democratic national convention on Tuesday reported by AP, acknowledged that he did not have the same optimism about his state just weeks ago, when Joe Biden was at the top of the ticket.

Before Biden dropped out, Democrats “were not united, Cooper said, adding that he was “grateful” for the president’s decision to step aside “because it brought everybody together.”

“Everyone loves President Biden,” he said, but added of the decision to drop out:

It was the time to do this, it was the time to make history.

The Democratic national convention’s programming tonight will begin earlier after how late it ran last night, CNN is reporting, citing DNC organizers.

Doors at the United Center in Chicago are scheduled to open at 4pm CT, with main programming beginning at 6pm CT.

The theme for today’s edition of the convention will be “A Bold Vision for America’s Future”.

As the presidential election approaches, a recently designated neo-Nazi terrorist group is covertly seeding violent propaganda on to mainstream social media channels – exposing tens of thousands of unknowing followers to radicalizing messages – according to background research and a report provided to the Guardian by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD).

One of those channels on Telegram purports to be associated with Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, with an administrator claiming in group chats discovered by ISD to have had direct contact with the longtime Donald Trump ally who is well-known for playing footsie with extremists and admitting to fomenting revolution.

The UK government listed the Terrogram collective as an official terrorist entity in April. The move spiked public interest in the shadowy network of violent neo-Nazi propagandists on Telegram that preaches accelerationism, which demands followers hasten the collapse of society through acts of terrorism.

Terrorgram has already had success inspiring adherents. The Bratislava shooter who killed two people outside of a gay bar in 2022 cited it in his manifesto. Just last week, a teenage suspected supporter in Turkey carried out a mass stabbing at a mosque. Followers of Terrorgram in Canada and in the US have already been subject to terrorism-related charges in recent years.

Read the full report here: Neo-Nazi terrorist group using Steve Bannon account to radicalize people