Biden makes first public speech since Trump shooting; Harris invites Vance to VP debate – live | US elections 2024

At a lawmaker panel hosted by the rightwing organization Moms for Liberty – a group that has earned a reputation for advancing local book bans – the conversation, which was largely focused on the virtues of private education, shifted to teachers’ unions.

“You have the teachers, and then you have the union,” said the Florida congressman Byron Donalds, to jeers from the crowd. “The Democrats can’t win elections without the power of unions.”

Proponents of private education rarely speak so candidly about the political motives behind the push to defund public education. Donalds’ acknowledgment of the electoral power of unions offers a more complete picture of the conservative push to expand private schools, where union density is low.

Former UK prime minister Boris Johnson has said he has “no doubt” that Donald Trump would continue supporting Ukraine, following a meeting with him.

In a post on X, Johnson wrote: “We discussed Ukraine and I have no doubt that he will be strong and decisive in supporting that country and defending democracy.”

The meeting comes amid growing concern that Trump could withdraw support for Ukraine and possibly seek a peace deal directly with the Kremlin that may involve territorial concessions.

Boris Johnson met Trump on the sidelines of the Republican national convention in Milwaukee. He’s not the only former British prime minister to swing through:

Kamala Harris has formally invited JD Vance, the Ohio senator who Donald Trump yesterday named as his running mate, to debate, the Biden-Harris campaign said.

“Vice-President Harris reached out to Senator Vance and left a message to congratulate him on his selection, welcome him to the race and express her hope that the two can meet in the vice-presidential debate proposed by CBS News,” a campaign official said.

It is unclear when the debate will happen. CBS News proposed 23 July or 13 August, which the Biden campaign has accepted.

Joe Biden is expected to soon make his first speech in public since a gunman attempted to kill Donald Trump at a campaign rally over the weekend.

In the aftermath of the failed assassination, in which a rallygoer and the gunman were killed, Biden and Trump have dialed back their relentless attacks on each others’ records ahead of the 5 November election.

The president is scheduled to address the convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People civil rights group in Las Vegas, Nevada, a swing state that could prove crucial to both campaigns.

Biden is once again late to begin his speech, but we’ll let you know he says when it starts.

Adam Gabbatt

Sharon Yancey, 77, said she has been a Republican voter for 10 to 15 years.

“He’s a patriot and I’m a patriot. I love America, and he does too. And he wants to make America the best for everyone, all people, that are here, including the minorities,” Yancey, who was wearing a red Make America great again hat, said of Trump.

“Other groups of people, they vote their conscience and they’re not vilified for it, they’re not looked down on and told to feel like you’re less of a person if you don’t vote Democrat,” she said.

“One of my son-in-laws is white; he votes the way he wants to vote. And I have another son-in-law who’s Asian; he votes the way he wants to vote. So why am I vilified and called you know, less than a human being, and all those other derogatory things they say about Black people who don’t follow the line?”

Adam Gabbatt

Tim Scott, the South Carolina senator who was among the candidates to be Donald Trump’s vice-presidential pick, stopped at an outreach event for Black voters in Milwaukee on Tuesday.

Speaking at the Wisconsin GOP’s Black coalition headquarters, alongside four local politicians, Scott was more subdued than he had been on Monday night, when he literally roared into a microphone after dubbing Trump an “American lion”.

As Scott entered the room there were 16 people seated, 10 of whom were Black, and they sat through a rather dry conversation about “opportunity zones”, a bipartisan 2017 program designed to boost investment in lower-income communities.

There was no mention of Trump, and little mention of the Republican party as a whole, aside from Scott saying: “We have not been as good at marketing the success that’s come out of the conservative movement as we should be.”

In a room which had portraits of Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr, Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump mounted along one wall, some people said they would vote for Trump in November.

“I’ve just recently made the shift over to being a Republican. My family were Democrat, I think I was just born into it,” said Mario Dickens. A local business owner, he said he became a Republican about a year ago.

“We just haven’t seen much benefit at all over last four years. And four years prior things were going great for us,” Dickens said.

David Smith

Donald Trump Jr joked with his father about hair in the aftermath of Saturday’s assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.

Don Jr was out fishing with his daughter in Jupiter, Florida, when he received a call from his fiancee, Kimberly Guilfoyle, informing him that Donald Trump had been shot.

“It was 90 minutes before I even knew he was alive,” Don Jr said at Axios House on the sidelines of the Republican national convention in Milwaukee.

That was a tough moment and then finally, get hit him on the phone and honestly, considering the heaviness of that moment, sort of give me a window for some levity and I asked him, well, most importantly, how’s the hair?

The audience laughed and Don Jr proceeded to imitate his father’s voice: “The hair’s fine, Don, the hair’s fine. A lot of blood in it but it’s fine.”

Reverting to his normal voice, Don Jr added:

To be shot and to stand up with that kind of resolve, I just felt like: you’re the biggest badass I know. That was my opening salvo and then we started joking hair and I said, can I call you Evander Holyfield because of the little missing chunk of ear?”

[Heavyweight boxer Holyfield had a part of his ear bitten off by opponent Mike Tyson in 1997.]

Don Jr claimed this is why the world was at peace during Trump’s presidency.

Compare and contrast that honestly to just about any clip of Joe Biden these days.One exudes strength, the other exudes weakness. And when you exude weakness, it’s the nature of predation: predators prey on the weak. Our enemies will prey on us.

Even so, Don Jr promised that Trump’s Thursday speech will be “toned down” and warned against complacency in the Republican ranks. “People are like, ‘Oh, after Saturday it’s over,’” he told the Axios gathering.

Nothing is over. There’s no level the other side won’t go. There’s no nonsense they won’t play. This is not in the bag. We have to keep our foot on the gas every second of the day until November.

Don Jr welcomed the idea of Robert Kennedy Jr serving under Trump in a second term – “Maybe there’s a great place for him somewhere in an administration” – and described his own potential role in a presidential transition.

All I want to do is block the guys that would be a disaster. I want to block the liars. I want to block the guys that are pretending they’re with you … You guys pick the guy that’s right. I want the veto power to cut out each and every one of those people.

Asked by interviewer Mike Allen for his “least Trumpy” quality, Don Jr replied: “I don’t play golf.”

Lauren Gambino

The Texas congresswoman Veronica Escobar, a co-chair of Biden’s campaign, said the president will tout his record during remarks at the UnidosUs conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday.

Among Joe Biden’s accomplishments, she said, was being the steward of record low unemployment for Latinos. Latinos are also starting businesses at a record pace. Meanwhile, she added, crime is down and wages are up.

But polls have shown Donald Trump making inroads with Hispanic voters, particularly men. Escobar said the Biden campaign was pouring resources into reaching Latino voters, but that more was needed before November.

Referencing the Heritage Foundation’s radical plan to reshape the federal government, she said:

We’ve been talking to Latino communities, I’ve traveled the country to meet with Latino groups, to hear them out, to talk to them about the president’s positive vision for America and contrast that with the incredibly dark, terrifying vision that the Trump-Vance campaign has laid out through Project 2025.

“There’s a lot of work we still have to do to make sure that Latino voters feel heard and that we inspire them to get to the polls,” she continued. “That’s the work that we have been doing and will continue to do on the Biden-Harris campaign.”

Lauren Gambino

Immigration advocates are pre-empting what they anticipate will be a “dark and dystopian vision” on display during the second night of the Republican national convention, themed “Make America Safe Again.”

The congresswoman Veronica Escobar, a co-chair of Biden’s re-election campaign, said she wanted to “sound the alarm” on Republicans’ escalating attacks on immigrants.

As the Democratic congresswoman from El Paso, Texas, where five years ago a white supremecist targeted Latino shoppers at a Walmart in the city, killing 23 people, Escobar said she knows first hand how dangerous rhetoric can have deadly consequences. She told reporters on a call Tuesday:

The incredibly dark vision that Donald Trump and his running mate and the Republican GOP have in store for America is a throwback to very, very dark days that we have seen in American history.

She added that Republicans “want the American public to fear and loathe immigrants”.

On the call, advocates warned that Republicans would likely twist the facts and repeat many of their false claims about immigration and crime. “Here’s what they won’t tell you,” Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of America’s Voice, said.

They will not tell you about the essential role that immigrants play in the Wisconsin economy and across the country. They won’t tell you about the fact that there is no correlation between crime and immigration. And they also won’t tell you that despite their anti-immigration crusade and the millions of political ads being spent this cycle on immigration, the support for citizenship is durable and consistent.

The quote by Vanessa Cárdenas was amended.