J.D. Vance’s speech at the Republican National Convention completed his transformation from Never-Trumper to Trump’s MAGA torch-bearer.
Vance dutifully spent his first five minutes praising the GOP leader sitting in front of him. “Consider the lies they told you about Donald Trump,” he told the crowd. “And then look at that photo of him, defiant fist in the air.”
When he turned to policy, he sounded especially Trumpian.
What happened to the Ohio GOP? For generations, it was the epitome of a sane, high-functioning party with a boringly predictable pro-business sentiment that seemed to perfectly fit the state. Today, it has been remade in the image of native son J. D. Vance, the first vice-presidential candidate to sanction coup-plotting against the U.S. government.
Today, for the third time in two years, President Joe Biden tested positive for COVID-19, the White House said. The president was in Las Vegas—attempting to convince voters, donors, and his fellow lawmakers that he is still the candidate best poised to defeat former President Donald Trump in November—when he fell ill with a runny nose and cough, according to a White House statement. He’s already taking the antiviral Paxlovid and will isolate at his home in Delaware.
President Joe Biden has spent the past three weeks desperately trying to convince Democrats that he’s still got what it takes to win reelection. He’s campaigned more vigorously than he has in years, holding rallies, sitting for televised interviews, conducting an hour-long press conference, and pleading his case directly to members of Congress in phone calls and Zoom meetings.
It’s not working.
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The Republican National Convention is more than halfway through, and the mood is serene—even spiritual. I spoke with my colleague Mark Leibovich, who is at the convention in Milwaukee, about how the attempted assassination of Donald Trump has only reinforced confidence within his party.
The Democratic National Committee is moving to confirm President Joe Biden as the party’s presidential nominee with a “virtual roll call” as early as next week, despite serious doubts from many Democratic lawmakers and voters about his viability following a disastrous debate performance in late June. “Joe Biden could be nominated for president next week, even though the convention is almost a month away,” says The Nation’s John Nichols.
Anti-immigrant hate speech and misinformation about the U.S.-Mexico border took center stage on the second day of the Republican National Convention. Donald Trump’s campaign screened an ad that scapegoated migrants and asylum seekers for rising crime in the U.S. and falsely claimed Biden’s so-called open border policies have facilitated the smuggling of fentanyl.
Ohio Senator J.D. Vance is preparing to make his first speech Wednesday at the Republican National Convention after being tapped by Donald Trump to be his running mate. On Tuesday, ProPublica published a newly uncovered speech Vance made a year before he was elected to the Senate in which he said “the devil is real,” praised conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, denigrated transgender people and more. We speak with reporter Andy Kroll, who says the video “gives this unvarnished look into what J.D.
Activists and community members in Milwaukee gathered in the streets Tuesday to condemn the police killing of 43-year-old Milwaukee resident Samuel Sharpe. The officers who killed Sharpe, an unhoused Black veteran, are from Ohio, part of a group of 4,500 law enforcement officials in Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention. But the shooting took place a mile from the RNC’s proceedings.
A federal jury on Tuesday convicted New Jersey Democratic Senator Bob Menendez of corruption on all 16 counts he faced. He was found guilty of bribery, wire fraud, extortion, obstruction of justice, conspiracy and acting as a foreign agent for Egypt. Award-winning investigative reporter Bob Hennelly, who has been covering Menendez for decades, says it’s a “condemnation of the political culture of New Jersey that’s corrupt.
The Federal Trade Commission investigation of DaVita and Fresenius Medical Care follows years of consolidation in the dialysis industry.
The FTC action would target often high costs by trying to curb rebates it says drug makers pay to steer patients to their brand name products.
Abortion opponents know they need to win hearts and minds. They’re using women’s stories to do so.
The shakeup, which has not been previously reported, comes as anti-abortion groups petition Trump, his campaign advisers and members of the RNC not to make significant changes to the party’s platform on abortion.
The 21-year-old President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief is credited with saving 25 million lives, but its budget is strained.
Though hiring remains strong, voters blame President Joe Biden for persistent high prices.
The president has a compelling antimonopoly record. But he doesn’t always lean into it. And voters don’t really know of it. The debate could change that.
Friday’s good jobs numbers may be a boost. But boosts haven’t yet materialized into political benefits.
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.
For a moment on Saturday, it felt as though we might start to see a gentler, more unifying political climate. But Donald Trump is still Donald Trump, and his message is incapable of bringing America together.
But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.
For a snapshot of our present political moment, imagine this: a 70-something woman in a bright-red sweater bobbing around a sticky dance floor at a bar in downtown Milwaukee. Thanks to the rain last night, the Jamboree at the RNC, the official celebration party on the first night of the Republican National Convention, was mostly empty. Still, DJ Milk N Cooks was in the corner, pumping out beats, and there was Susan, dancing with abandon, glittering flag earrings dangling from her ears.
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Donald Trump’s luck in the courts has turned.
Trump became the first former president to be convicted of a felony when a jury in Manhattan found him guilty of 34 counts in May. That followed decisive and costly losses in civil cases: Trump was fined more than half a billion dollars when courts found that he had defamed the writer E. Jean Carroll and committed financial fraud in his business.
Republicans opened their national convention with a surprising sense of serenity. Wandering the floor last night at Fiserv Forum, in Milwaukee, I heard nothing about the key theme of Donald Trump’s reelection campaign—retribution. People swayed and sang along to a live rendition of Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” as Trump, a white bandage affixed to his ear, 48 hours after surviving an assassination attempt, held court next to his just-announced running mate, J. D. Vance.
This year marks the tenth Prime Day, the shopping holiday that Amazon invented for itself in 2015, in honor of the company’s 20th anniversary. The marketing effort was so successful, according to Amazon, that sales exceeded those from the previous year’s record-breaking Black Friday. Early Prime Day success was also measured in Instant Pot 7-in-1 multifunctional pressure cookers: 24,000 were purchased on the first Prime Day; on the second, 215,000.
A lawsuit led by Palestinians and Palestinian Americans that accused President Joe Biden and other top U.S. officials of enabling genocide in Gaza was rejected Monday by a federal appeals court, which upheld a lower court’s dismissal of the lawsuit. The three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court ruled that courts cannot review the executive branch’s decisions on foreign policy, even when there is a risk of breaking domestic and international law.
As Donald Trump and his new running mate J.D. Vance try to soften their anti-abortion position ahead of the 2024 election, new documents uncovered by The Lever show Vance lobbied just last year to let police track people who cross state lines for abortions.
We speak with journalist Robert Kuttner about Donald Trump’s selection of Ohio Senator J.D. Vance to be his running mate in the 2024 election. Vance rose to fame in 2016 after writing the memoir Hillbilly Elegy about his upbringing in Appalachia. He was elected to the Senate in 2022 with the backing of right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel, who spent $10 million on his candidacy.
“We were given a genocidal man and a fascist man, and that is a terrible decision to pick from,” says one of the protesters who joined a broad coalition of progressive groups and unions to march in Milwaukee against the Republican Party Monday on the first day of the Republican National Convention. We speak with people calling for an end to racist policies supported by the GOP; defending the rights of women, LGBTQ people and abortion access; supporting Palestine and more.
As the Republican National Convention opened on Monday, Donald Trump scored a major legal victory when a Trump-appointed federal judge in Florida dismissed the criminal case against the former president for illegally keeping classified national security documents after his presidency ended. Judge Aileen Cannon ruled Attorney General Merrick Garland had no power to appoint Jack Smith as a special counsel. Her ruling stunned many legal experts, and the Justice Department plans to appeal.
The Federal Trade Commission investigation of DaVita and Fresenius Medical Care follows years of consolidation in the dialysis industry.
The FTC action would target often high costs by trying to curb rebates it says drug makers pay to steer patients to their brand name products.