DNC Live: Kamala Harris makes history by accepting vice presidential nomination while hailing her immigrant roots
Day 3 of the Democratic Convention is set to begin. You can follow along through the night by refreshing this page for live coverage.
Sen. Kamala Harris, seeking to become the first woman in the White House, delivered a message of inclusivity Wednesday as she made history in accepting the Democratic nomination for vice president.
"I accept your nomination for vice president of the United States of America. I do so committed to the values [my mother] taught me, to the word that teaches me to walk by faith and not by sight," Harris said during her DNC speech. "And to a vision passed on through generations of Americans, one that Joe Biden shares, a vision of our nation as a beloved community, where all are welcome."
Harris, the daughter of immigrants from India and Jamaica, said she wants a country “where all are welcome, no matter what we look like, where we come from, or who we love.”
“Today, that country feels distant,” Harris said on a live feed from Wilmington, Del.
She extolled running mate Joe Biden as a leader who will bring people together.
And she accused Trump of being a failed president who is costing “lives and livelihoods.”
“Right now, we have a president who turns our tragedies into political weapons,” Harris said. “Joe will be a president who turns our challenges into purpose.”
Harris addressed the virtual convention on a night that was both a reminder of the powerful force women have become in the Democratic Party -- as well as the limitations they still face in breaking what Hillary Clinton described after her 2016 loss as that “highest, hardest glass ceiling.
Speaking earlier in the evening, Clinton said she knows something about the "slings and arrows" Harris will face.
"And, believe me, this former district attorney and attorney general can handle them all," she said.
— Maureen Groppe
Obama slams Trump as ‘reality show’ president
Former President Barack Obama ripped into President Donald Trump during an address to the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday, arguing that his successor has turned the presidency into “one more reality show that he can use to get the attention he craves.”
“What we do these next 76 days will echo through generations to come,” Obama said in one of the most closely watched addresses in the convention’s third night. “I did hope that…Donald Trump might show some interest in taking the job seriously….but he never did.”
Though Obama has criticized Trump’s policies before, his remarks Wednesday were far more pointed – and personal – than he’s been in the past. Obama, speaking live from Philadelphia, rarely mentions Trump by name but was expected to do so several times Wednesday.
Obama, who burst into national politics with a memorable convention speech in 2004, is hoping to rally the coalition of Black and young voters who twice propelled him to the Oval Office – many of whom stayed at home during the 2016 election.
The former president’s remarks were preceded by a video of Obama awarding Biden the Presidential Medal of Freedom, a display intended to underscore the friendship the two men enjoyed.
Trump wasted no time firing back. Responding to excerpts of Obama’s remarks earlier in the day, Trump described Obama as “so ineffective, so terrible” as he offered an extended criticism of the Iran nuclear agreement intended to slow Tehran’s path to a nuclear weapons program.
“The reason I’m here is because of President Obama and Joe Biden,” he said.
Obama described former Vice President Joe Biden as a key ally during his administration, an adviser who helped propel many of his policies forward.
It was exactly the kind of validation that many Democrats hoped Obama would bring the convention.
"For eight years, Joe was the last one in the room whenever I faced a big decision," Obama said. "He made me a better president – and he’s got the character and the experience to make us a better country."
Democrats hoped Obama, who spoke live from Philadelphia, would highlight Biden's efforts on passing the 2009 health care law as well as overseeing the economic stimulus that helped the U.S. climb out of the Great Recession.
"Along with the experience needed to get things done, Joe and Kamala have concrete policies that will turn their vision of a better, fairer, stronger country into reality," Obama said.
Obama accused Trump of using the military as a "political prop," a reference to the president's photo-op during Black Lives Matters protests in Washington.
"They understand that in this democracy, the Commander-in-Chief doesn’t use the men and women of our military, who are willing to risk everything to protect our nation, as political props to deploy against peaceful protesters on our own soil," Obama said of Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris.
"They understand that political opponents aren’t 'un-American' just because they disagree with you; that a free press isn’t the “enemy” but the way we hold officials accountable," he added.
Obama was referring to an incident earlier this year in which Trump brandished a Bible after strolling through a park near the White House that had been cleared of protesters minutes earlier. The incident drew criticism from Democrats and Republicans and became a turning point in the way Trump characterized the Black Lives Matter protesters.
— John Fritze
Elizabeth Warren persists in supporting Biden
Sen. Elizabeth Warren persisted Wednesday in arguing that voters who have struggled through the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting economic catastrophe should elect Joe Biden as president.
“They’ve taken one gut punch after another,” said Warren, D-Mass., said of working-class families while speaking from an empty early childhood education center in Springfield, Mass. “The devastation is enormous.”
Warren was part of Biden’s efforts to unify the Democratic Party after the contentious primaries. Biden’s $2 trillion proposal to invest in clean energy and shift the fleet of federal vehicles from gas to electric followed Warren’s argument that investing in clean energy would spur innovation in the industry. She also supported his proposals dealing with student loans, bankruptcy law and caregivers.
“It’s time to recognize that child care is part of the basic infrastructure of this nation,” Warren said.
Warren gained the national spotlight in January 2017 during a confrontation on the Senate floor with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. She continued reading a letter critical of then-Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., during his confirmation as attorney general while others objected and the Senate voted to silence her.
“She was warned. She was given an explanation,” McConnell said at the time. “Nevertheless, she persisted.”
On Wednesday, Warren urged people to vote because the fight continues.
“After November, we all need to stay in the fight to get big things done,” Warren said. “We stay in this fight so that when our children and our grandchildren ask what we did during this dark chapter in our nation’s history, we will be able to look them square in the eye and say we organized, we persisted and we changed America.”
— Bart Jansen
DNC highlights violence against women
With a trio of advocates against sexual assault and domestic violence and an emotional video featuring survivors’ testimony, Democrats highlighted Joe Biden’s history and action on issues related to violence against women.
Mariska Hargitay, an actress who also advocates on behalf of assault and domestic violence survivors, discussed an issue she has long been involved with: untested rape kits. Biden made a cameo in the show Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, on which Hargitay stars, in 2016 as vice president to speak about the issue.
Carly Dryden, an adviser for the Obama administration’s It’s on Us initiative to combat sexual assault on college campuses, said she would be voting for Biden after going “from survivor to advocate.”
Ruth Glenn, president of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence and survivor of domestic violence, described her experience escaping her abusive husband and said rates of domestic violence are rising as people stay home during the pandemic.
“I didn’t even know the name for what was happening to me then: domestic violence,” Glenn said. She said the Violence Against Women Act, spearheaded by Biden in 1990, needs to be revamped and that we “need leaders who believe a woman’s life is worth fighting for.”
“I am voting for Joe Biden on behalf of all victims and survivors of domestic violence,” Glenn said.
—Jeanine Santucci
Convention hits Trump on ‘dreamers’ policy
Continuing with a series of segments on policy, Democrats turned to immigration during their convention Wednesday by featuring an 11-year-old girl who wrote a letter to President Donald Trump about the deportation of her mother.
The mother of the Florida girl was deported to Mexico in 2018, according to news reports at the time that noted she is married to a Marine veteran.
“You tore our world apart,” the girl reads to Trump. ”Now my mom is gone.”
Interspersed between those discussing how deportations had affected their families were clips of Trump claiming immigrants in the country illegally are “animals” and that he doesn’t “want them in our country.”
The convention also featured the daughter of Sylvia Sanchez, a dreamer.
Biden has vowed to make the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program permanent if elected. The Supreme Court ruled in June against the Trump administration’s effort to suspend that program, once again leaving some 700,000 beneficiaries in a state of legal limbo.
Immigration is an issue that split the Democratic candidates running for the nomination last year, with Biden occasionally heeling to the polices of the Obama administration while sometimes staking out more left-leaning positions.
He has called for allowing immigrants in the country illegally to purchase insurance coverage through Obamacare and he has vowed to overturn many of Trump’s executive actions on immigration.
— John Fritze
A call to end the ‘existential threats’ of climate change and the Trump presidency
Joe Biden disappointed progressive Democrats by not embracing the Green New Deal, but the party showcased during the convention what he would do to combat climate change.
One step Biden would take is having the U.S. rejoin the international Paris Accord, a global treaty to curb carbon emissions that Trump abandoned shortly after he became president.
Arizona asthma sufferer Alexandria Villasenor, Michigan corn farmer Andrew Adamski and Nevada clean energy activist Katherine Lorenzo all appeared by video to trumpet the need to address the dangers the continuing use of carbon-emitting fossil fuels poses to the planet, a warning echoed by the overwhelming majority of climate scientists.
New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, speaking in a solar field in Albuquerque, spoke about how the Trump administration’s expansion of oil and gas drilling has increased the urgency to act.
“We know time us running out to save our planet,” she said. “We have the chance this November to end two existential crises: the Trump presidency and the environmental annihilation he represents.”
— Ledyard King
Giffords: ‘We can let shooting continue or we can act’
Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who survived being shot in the head, spoke Wednesday for the victims of gun violence and urged voters to support Democratic nominee Joe Biden to pursue gun control.
“I’ve known the darkest of days, days of pain and uncertain recovery,” said Giffords, D-Ariz., who stood in front of a large U.S. flag. “Confronted by despair, I’ve summoned hope.”
Giffords has campaigned for gun control since recovering from an assassination attempt in January 2011 during her third term in the House. She survived being shot while meeting with constituents at an event outside a grocery store in the Tucson area, in an attack that killed six people and wounded another dozen.
“I put one foot in front of the other. I found one word and then I found another,” Giffords said. “My recovery is a daily fight, but it makes me stronger. Words once came easily. Today, I struggle to speak, but I have not lost my voice.”
As she relearned how to walk and talk, Giffords received a standing ovation when she returned to the House floor in August 2011. Before her speech Wednesday, a video showed steps in her recovery, from being scarred in a hospital bed to playing the French horn.
She urged voters to support Biden in his fight against the gun lobby to restore a prohibition against assault rifles and to prevent criminals from getting guns.
“We can let the shooting continue or we can act. We can protect our families, our future,” said Giffords, whose husband Mark Kelly, a former astronaut, is campaigning to unseat GOP Sen. Martha McSally in Arizona. “We must elect Joe Biden. He was there for me. He’ll be there for you, too.”
— Bart Jansen
DNC features gun violence victims
The issue hasn’t featured prominently in the presidential race so far, but Democrats sought to make gun violence a central issue during their convention Wednesday by giving a platform to several victims.
DeAndra Dycus, an Indiana woman, told the story of how her son was shot by a stray bullet and is now unable to walk or talk. Dycus said she has been able to see her son only three times since March.
“One shot changed our lives forever,” Dycus said as images of her son appeared on the screen. “In every town across America there are families who know what a bullet can do.”
Several other victims told their stories, along with students who have been forced to lockdown because of active shooters in their schools.
“Gun violence isn’t just going to stop until there’s a force fighting against it,” one advocate said. “We’re going to make this change.”
— John Fritze
Wisconsin Gov. Evers kicks off Day 3 of convention
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers kicked off Day three of the Democratic National Convention Wednesday, saying it was unfortunate the pandemic made it a virtual event.
Evers, 68, had hoped to personally welcome Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and thousands of party delegates to Milwaukee for the convention but the coronavirus pandemic upended those plans and turned the event into a
“We were really looking forward to having you here in America’s Dairlyand,” the soft-spoken Evers said at a podium on a crowd-less stage.
Democrats hope the former schoolteacher’s narrow defeat of two-term GOP incumbent Gov. Scott Walker in 2018 is a promising sign for Biden’s chances in November. Trump beat Hillary Clinton by 22,748 – less than 1% - in Wisconsin, one of three key battleground states (along with Michigan and Pennsylvania) that propelled the Republican businessman into the White House.
— Ledyard King
Pelosi will says Trump does not respecting women
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the nation’s highest elected female, went after President Donald Trump’s treatment of women in her remarks at the Democratic National Convention.
“As speaker, I’ve seen firsthand Donald Trump’s disrespect for facts, for working families, and for women in particular – disrespect written into his policies toward our health and our rights, not just his conduct,” Pelosi will say, according to excerpts of her remarks released hours before her appearance. “But we know what he doesn’t: that when women succeed, America succeeds.”
Pelosi is scheduled to speak during Democrats’ observance of the 100-year anniversary of women getting the right to vote. That segment of the schedule is titled: “A More Perfect Union...Means Women Lead.”
Pelosi, the nation’s first female House speaker, owes her current gavel to the female candidates, campaign contributors and voters who flipped the House in 2018 after Trump’s 2016 victory of Hillary Clinton galvanized women across the country.
“We come together again, not to decry the darkness, but to light a way forward for our country,” Pelosi will say. “That is the guiding purpose of House Democrats. We are fighting for the people.”
- Maureen Groppe
Hillary Clinton: don’t make this another 'woulda coulda shoulda election'
Hillary Clinton said she still hears from Americans who say they didn’t realize how “dangerous” Donald Trump would be as president.
On Wednesday, the former secretary of state who ran – and lost – to Trump in 2016, is expected to urge those voters not to be complacent this time.
“This can’t be another woulda coulda shoulda election,” she’s expected to tell viewers during the third day of the Democratic National Convention according to excerpts released by the DNC.
“If you vote by mail, request your ballot now, and send it back as soon as you can. If you vote in person, do it early,” she’s expected to say. “Bring a friend and wear a mask. Become a poll worker. Most of all, no matter what, vote. Vote like our lives and livelihoods are on the line, because they are.”
More: Democrats argue case for Joe Biden as empathetic. Now what would a President Biden do?
Trump, who lost the popular vote to his Democratic rival four years ago, still brings up Clinton from time to time. Last week, he tweeted that Clinton “was much smarter and sharper” than Biden to show why he believes he’s well-positioned to win re-election.
Clinton Wednesday is expected to say the country was experiencing “heartbreak” even before the coronavirus pandemic struck but Trump has made it worse.
“But, as the saying goes, the world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places,” she’s expected to say. “Joe Biden knows how to heal, unify, and lead, because he’s done all of that for his family and his country.”
— Ledyard King
Kamala Harris to call for a more inclusive nation
In her speech tonight as the first woman of color nominated for a presidential ticket by a major party, Kamala Harris will paint a vision of a country where everyone is welcome and looks out for each other – “no matter what we look like, where we come from, or who we love.”
“Today, that country feels distant,” she will say, according to excerpts of her remarks released hours before her address will cap the penultimate night of the Democratic National Convention
Harris will also lash into President Donald Trump, charging that his “failure of leadership” is costing “lives and livelihoods.”
“Right now, we have a president who turns our tragedies into political weapons,” Harris will say in her remarks from Wilmington, Del. “Joe (Biden) will be a president who turns our challenges into purpose.”
If the Biden/Harris ticket wins in November, Harris will be the first Black woman and first Asian American woman to serve as vice president.
Harris is the daughter of the late Shyamala Gopalan, a breast-cancer scientist who immigrated from India, and Donald Harris, a professor of economics who immigrated from Jamaica.
— Maureen Groppe
Obama to rip into Trump by name at Democratic convention
Former President Barack Obama will offer some of his most pointed criticism of President Donald Trump during remarks at the Democratic convention Wednesday, arguing that his successor “hasn’t grown into the job because he can’t.”
“I never expected that my successor would embrace my vision or continue my policies,” Obama will say, according to excerpts of his remarks released hours before his address. “I did hope, for the sake of our country, that Donald Trump might show some interest in taking the job seriously; that he might come to feel the weight of the office and discover some reverence for the democracy that had been placed in his care.”
Though Obama frequently discusses Trump administration policies, he almost never mentions the current president by name – even as Trump has slammed his administration on a near-daily basis.
“He’s shown no interest in putting in the work; no interest in finding common ground; no interest in using the awesome power of his office to help anyone but himself and his friends,” Obama will assert in a live address to be delivered from Philadelphia.
“Donald Trump hasn’t grown into the job because he can’t,” Obama will say. “And the consequences of that failure are severe.”
— John Fritze
Rep. Dent focuses on 'right and wrong'
Former Republican Rep. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania announced his support for Joe Biden Wednesday.
Dent didn't support President Donald Trump in 2016, and told CNN that he was not going to help reelect the president in 2020. Dent said that right now for him it's not about "Right or Left," but about "right and wrong."
"I feel that we need to return some sense of normalcy to the function of government," Dent told CNN"s Jake Tapper. "We simply don't have that now. And that's why I'm going to be voting for Joe Biden for President."
Dent, a moderate Republican, retired in May 2018 from Congress. In his farewell speech to Congress, Dent lamented that "too many Republicans expect unquestioning — blind, unquestioning — loyalty and obedience to President Trump, no matter how absurd or disruptive the comment or behavior."
— Rebecca Morin
How to watch
DNC speeches will be broadcast from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. ET Monday through Thursday.
The event will be broadcast on all major television networks. Viewers also can tune in using Amazon Prime and Amazon Fire devices, including listening via Alexa, as well as watching on Apple TV and Roku TV.
Who is speaking?
Within the theme of "A More Perfect Union," the lineup includes some of the Washington officials who have drawn prolonged criticism from Republicans. The speakers will cover a variety of subjects that are priorities for Democrats.
Two women will discuss their goal of reducing gun violence. DeAndra Dycus' son was paralyzed by a stray bullet at 13. Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., survived being shot in head at a community event while serving in Congress. Her husband, former astronaut Mark Kelly, is running to unseat Republican Sen. Martha McSally in the presidential battleground state.
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, whom Biden considered as his running mate, will speak about climate change. A video will describe Biden's $2 trillion proposal to spur development of clean energy and youth activists will chat about the plan.
Billie Eilish will sing a song.
Sylvia Sanchez, an undocumented worker in North Carolina, will talk about immigration policy. Her daughter, Jessica, is nicknamed a "dreamer" for seeking to legitimize her status.
Prince Royce, a Dominican American singer, will perform.
Suffrage is on the agenda on the 100th anniversary of women winning the right to vote. Hillary Clinton, a former secretary of state and 2016 nominee for president, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., will speak about women leaders.
A video will describe one of Biden's legislative achievements, the Violence Against Women Act. Ruth Glenn, CEO of National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, will speak about it.
Hilda Solis, a former labor secretary and former House member from California, will speak about the economy. Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Iowa Rep. Cindy Axne will talk to small business owners.
A former primary rival of Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, will speak before Obama and Harris complete the night.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Live DNC coverage: Kamala Harris, Barack Obama give speeches
