Democratic convention live updates: Party luminaries to speak on night two; Trump responds to Michelle Obama

Democrats are offering a twist Tuesday on the traditional keynote address at their convention: Instead of a single speaker, they will feature 17 “rising stars,” including 2018 Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.

“The convention keynote has always been the bellwether for the future of our party and our nation, and when Americans tune in … they’ll find the smart, steady leadership we need to meet this critical moment,” Joe Solmonese, chief executive of the convention, said in a statement.

Others scheduled to appear as part of the keynote address include three Democratic members of Congress — Reps. Colin Allred (Tex.), Brendan Boyle (Penn.) and Conor Lamb (Penn.) — as well as an array of state and local officials.

Trump on Tuesday attacked John Kasich, the former Republican governor of Ohio, who delivered a speech to the Democratic convention on Monday in which he accused the president of pitting Americans against one another.

“John Kasich did a bad job in Ohio, ran for President and was easy to beat, and now went to the other side desperate for relevance,” Trump said in a tweet in which he also called Kasich “another loser!”

“Many of us have been deeply concerned about the current path that we’ve been following for the past four years,” Kasich said in his address. “It’s a path that’s led to division, dysfunction, irresponsibility and growing vitriol between our citizens. Continuing to follow that path will have terrible consequences for America’s soul because we’re being taken down the wrong road by a president who has pitted one against the other.”

Trump lashed on Tuesday at Miles Taylor, a former senior Trump administration official who on Monday called the president “dangerous” and endorsed Biden.

“Many thousands of people work for our government,” Trump tweeted. “With that said, a former DISGRUNTLED EMPLOYEE named Miles Taylor, who I do not know (never heard of him), said he left & is on the open arms Fake News circuit. Said to be a real ‘stiff.’ They will take anyone against us!”

Taylor, a longtime Republican who served as chief of staff to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, explained his support for Biden in a video produced by the group Republican Voters Against Trump and in an op-ed published by The Washington Post, in which he said Trump “has governed by whim, political calculation and self-interest.”

“After serving for more than two years in the Department of Homeland Security’s leadership during the Trump administration, I can attest that the country is less secure as a direct result of the president’s actions,” Taylor wrote.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will hold a hearing Friday with Postmaster General Louis DeJoy on the U.S. Postal Service’s vote-by-mail financial requirements, according to two people familiar with the decision.

It will be DeJoy’s first opportunity to publicly answer lawmakers’ questions about the nation’s embattled mail service, which is experiencing delays as a result of policies DeJoy implemented cutting overtime and eliminating extra trips to ensure on-time mail delivery.

A USPS representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

DeJoy and USPS Board of Governors Chairman Robert M. Duncan are also set to testify before the House Oversight Committee on Monday.

Clamors from Democrats in both chambers for hearings with DeJoy grew over recent days after Trump said he wanted to withhold funding from the Postal Service to attempt to hobble its ability to process election mail.

The Postal Service is in the process of removing 671 high-speed mail-sorting machines nationwide this month, a process that will eliminate 21.4 million items per hour’s worth of processing capability from the agency’s inventory.

On Thursday and Friday, it began removing public collection boxes in parts of California, New York, Pennsylvania, Oregon and Montana.

The agency said Friday that it would stop mailbox removals, which it said were routine, until after the election. And White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that it would also halt sorting-machine removals.

Trump has repeatedly attacked voting by mail as a less secure method than absentee voting, claiming without evidence that it will lead to rampant fraud and creating confusion about whether there is a difference between those practices.

The bottom line: Some states prefer one term over the other, but both “absentee voting” and “mail-in voting” refer to the method of using the mail to deliver ballots to voters. Regardless of the term used in your state, all ballots delivered to voters by mail are verified before they are counted.

Trump responded Tuesday to a searing convention speech by former first lady Michelle Obama, asserting that the performance of her husband, former president Barack Obama, was responsible for his election in 2016 and saying that she delivered an unenthusiastic endorsement of Biden.

“Somebody please explain to @MichelleObama that Donald J. Trump would not be here, in the beautiful White House, if it weren’t for the job done by your husband, Barack Obama,” Trump tweeted. “Biden was merely an afterthought, a good reason for that very late & unenthusiastic endorsement.”

Trump went to tout his performance responding to the coronavirus pandemic and his handling of the economy.

“My Administration and I built the greatest economy in history, of any country, turned it off, saved millions of lives, and now am building an even greater economy than it was before,” he said. “Jobs are flowing, NASDAQ is already at a record high, the rest to follow. Sit back & watch!”

More than 167,000 Americans have died during the pandemic — a figure Trump claims would be significantly higher if not for his actions. Democrats say his administration’s response has led to additional deaths. They also say that Trump inherited a surging economy from President Barack Obama.

In her speech on Monday, Michelle Obama cast Trump as incapable of meeting America’s needs and said Biden would usher in racial justice and ease the coronavirus pandemic.

As Democrats prepare for the second night of their virtual convention, Trump is scheduled to touch down in two more presidential battleground states on Tuesday: Iowa and Arizona.

Trump plans to visit Cedar Rapids, Iowa, for an update on recovery efforts in the wake of a derecho that moved through the state a week ago. From there, he heads to Yuma, Ariz., where he is scheduled to receive an update on border wall construction and deliver remarks on immigration. Trump’s pledge to build a border wall was central to his 2016 campaign.

Tuesday’s planned travel marks the second day in a row that Trump will have visited key states while Democrats hold an unconventional convention amid the pandemic. On Monday, Trump staged events in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

In 2016, Trump carried both Iowa and Arizona against Democrat Hillary Clinton. Polling has showed competitive races in both states this year against Biden.

Biden has scheduled a pair of virtual events Tuesday featuring celebrities — Tom Hanks and Lin-Manuel Miranda — ahead of Tuesday night’s convention program.

Hanks is headlining a “grassroots” fundraiser with Biden in the afternoon, while Miranda is booked to take part in a “virtual conversation” with Biden, along with the Latino Victory Project.

Biden also plans to speak virtually Tuesday to convention delegations from Pennsylvania and Florida, two presidential battleground states.

On the chaotic day Joe Biden called Sen. Kamala D. Harris to ask whether she would be his running mate, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s phone rang. As one of four co-chairs on Biden’s vice-presidential selection committee, Garcetti was one of a handful of people privy to that extensive and secretive process. On the other end of the line was someone even more involved in the decision: Biden’s wife of 43 years, Jill Biden.

So central was Jill Biden’s role in the process that the selection committee had presented its initial findings to the Bidens as a pair. With Jill’s input, Joe narrowed the field of more than 20 to the 11 whom he then interviewed one on one. Joe called the other contenders to tell them Harris was his choice, and Jill was the one calling the four selection committee co-chairs to tell them the news.

The extent of Jill Biden’s influence on big decisions in her husband’s campaign to unseat President Trump is both mysterious and not. “It’s a marriage” is her standard line, which is to say, of course they’ve talked about this, they bounce things off each other all the time, and we don’t get to know the details.

WILMINGTON, Del. — The Democratic Party fully embraced the imagery and themes of the Black Lives Matter movement on its convention’s first night Monday, highlighting family members of Black men who have been killed by police and showing footage of marches through American cities.

At one point, the program was paused so viewers could observe a moment of silence for George Floyd, whose death at the hands of Minneapolis police ignited the current racial reckoning.

“When this moment ends, let’s make sure we never stop saying their names,” said Philonise Floyd, one of George Floyd’s brothers, echoing one of the protesters’ slogans.

The demonstrators have urged Americans to remember the names of the victims of police brutality, rather than consigning them to anonymity as has happened so often in the past. Overall, the night’s program reflected a remarkable development in American politics, as a major party sought to associate itself fully with an emerging protest movement.

John Kasich, Ohio’s former Republican governor, spoke last night at the Democratic National Convention, urging Americans to cast aside partisanship and vote for Biden.

Kasich is the most high-profile Republican yet to publicly oppose Trump, arguing the president’s actions have betrayed the party of Lincoln. “Many of us cannot imagine four more years,” he said in pretaped remarks filmed at the intersection of two gravel roads on a grassy field.

But Democratic strategists say Kasich’s Biden bear hug doesn’t mean Ohioans will do the same. Much like the Republican Party, Ohio has undergone a transformation of its own during the past decade. With a population that’s older, whiter, and less educated than the rest of the country, it’s no longer a bellwether state but one expected to vote for Republicans in presidential contests.

“Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country,” the former first lady said, looking intently at the camera. “He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment.”

“He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us,” she continued. Then she said with a sigh: “It is what it is.”

In a matter of moments, those last five words — it is what it is — went from an old platitude to the buzziest sound bite on the Internet, becoming the instant highlight of a speech anchoring the convention’s first night.

Angela D. Alsobrooks first read about Kamala D. Harris in Essence Magazine in 2009, when Alsobrooks was launching an underdog run for state’s attorney in the Maryland suburb where she grew up.

Harris was making history as the first Black woman to serve as district attorney in San Francisco. Alsobrooks (D), who was trying to accomplish the same feat in Prince George’s County, was impressed. But what really wowed her was that Harris was focused on restorative justice, long before the concept took hold among liberal prosecutors.

On the campaign trail, Alsobrooks began talking about how, if elected, she would implement initiatives like “Back on Track,” a program created by Harris that allowed first-time, nonviolent felony drug offenders to join a program that provided education and job training instead of jail time.