David Smith

Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House of Representatives, has not ruled out Republicans mounting a legal challenge if Democrats try to change their presidential nominee.

“We’re looking into all the alternatives,” Johnson said at a CNN-Politico Grill event on the sidelines of the Republican national convention in Milwaukee. “Look, I will say the Democrats pride themselves on being the party of small ‘d’ democracy – they talk about it incessantly and they claim that we are not, which is absurd.

“If they go about the process of having a few people in a backroom make this magical decision and kick their candidate off the ballot, it defies all the work that’s been done for 14 months. They went through the democratic process – the small ‘d’ process – and they chose Joe Biden.

“He’s the duly selected candidate for president for reelection and I don’t know they can just wave a magic wand and make it all go away without violating at least some great tradition and probably some statutory law itself, at least in some of these states.”

Some “preliminary research” into the legality of the move is being done, added Johnson, noting that each state has its own distinct system. “There’s some very unique statutes out there and there’s some real impediments to just making an easy switch like that. So I think in the states where it could be contested I expect that it will be and they’ll have an interesting battle on their hands.”

Based on personal interactions, Johnson said he does not believe Biden is fit for office. “We have ourselves an unprecedented situation here. I mean, there’s never been a scenario like this. You have hot wars around the globe. You have very aggressive adversaries who are ready to pounce. Anything could happen at any moment and you have the weakest president in the Oval Office in memory, probably in the history of the country.”

Robert Tait

Nancy Pelosi has been widely reported as orchestrating the renewed pressure on Joe Biden to give up his re-election bid, which has intensified in recent days after a brief pause following last Saturday’s failed assassination attempt on Donald Trump, to which the US president responded with a series of authoritative statements calling for calm.

Adam Schiff, the California congressman who on Tuesday became the latest elected Democrat to urge Biden to stand down, is known to be particularly close to the former speaker.

“The speaker does not want to call on him [Biden] to resign [as the Democratic nominee], but she will do everything in her power to make sure it happens,” the Politico website has reported one Pelosi ally as saying. Our full report here.

Nancy Pelosi, revered in Democratic circles as the former long-serving and first female speaker of the US House of Representatives, thinks Joe Biden can be convinced before long to quit the top of the party’s re-election ticket, the Washington Post has just reported, citing anonymous sources.

Pelosi, 84, who has represented California in Congress for decades, appears to have had some private discussions, the Post reports, that indicate a key factor in the president’s decision would be doubts about whether he can beat Donald Trump in November, the Republican former president who is about to receive his party’s formal nomination tonight.

There have been reports in the past 24 hours that Pelosi is pivotal in the pressure campaign to persuade Biden to jump out of his re-election attempt. More details shortly.

She appears to have been speaking in code for the past couple of weeks, referring in a TV interview to Biden having to make up his mind, when the president had already said emphatically that he had made up his mind to stay in the race. This all follows Biden’s dire debate performance against Trump last month.

Donald Trump has met up with the director of the US Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, while both are in Milwaukee for the Republican national convention (RNC), in the wake of the attempted assassination of the former president last weekend, ABC is reporting.

The TV network reports that the meeting took place at the hotel where Trump is staying in the Wisconsin city for the convention and was held on Tuesday, three days after a 20-year-old fired an assault rifle at the former president during a campaign rally in western Pennsylvania and narrowly missed killing him.

ABC cites an unnamed source. There has been a chorus, led by Republicans and including members of Donald Trump’s family, for Cheatle to step down from her role after the failure of the federal agency to protect the former president, whose right ear was injured as a bullet grazed it.

We’ve put together an explainer going through the finer details of the closing evening of the Republican national convention, including when Donald Trump is expected to speak, how you can watch his address, and who else from the Trump family may be in the room.

Give it a read here:

Good evening US politics blog readers, and thank you for joining us as we cover the last night of the Republican national convention. Donald Trump is set to formally accept the GOP’s nomination to be its presidential candidate with a speech at the convention’s end. Before that, we’ll be hearing from a slew of speakers in a night themed “Make America great once again”. These include Tucker Carlson, the rightwing commentator who has struck off on his own show after Fox News fired him last year, the former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, the Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO, Dana White, and the retired professional wrestler Hulk Hogan.

As he usually is, Trump is the star of the show, and the convention has him scheduled to speak for a whole 90 minutes, beginning at 9pm CT. This will be his first public address since an assassin tried to kill him on Saturday, and he’s still sporting a bandage on his right ear from the attempt, which led to the death of a rally-goer. This will also be the highest profile speech Trump has made since his first debate with Joe Biden in late June. The president’s fatigued performance in that showdown has led to a growing wave of Democrats – reportedly including the party’s leaders in Congress – to urge that he reconsider his bid for a second term in office. The Republicans, meanwhile, have been united around Trump, and his speech this evening will serve as a chance for him to elaborate on his plans for a second term in office.

Here’s what we’ll be watching out for:

• Will Trump cast himself as a unifier? After his brush with death on Saturday, the former president has tried to play up the theme in his statements, and several speakers at the convention thus far have tried to cast him as a family man – perhaps as a way to detract attention from his often tawdry legal troubles.

• Convention speakers over the past three nights have made plenty of rightwing policy promises – but not quite as many as expected. Though attendees have waved signs reading “Mass deportations now” and some speakers have claimed, without evidence, that undocumented people have cast ballots, there has not been much mention of conspiracy theories around the 2020 election, plans to use the national guard to carry out mass deportations, or Trump’s vow to have the justice department to retaliate against his enemies. Will the former president mention those themes in his speech?

• Who else might Trump attack? It’s a given that he’ll go after Biden, but the Democrat is facing a backlash not seen in decades to his re-election campaign, and could step aside. Some earlier convention speakers have made a point of criticizing Kamala Harris, perhaps as a hedge to her ascension as the Democratic candidate. We’ll see if Trump follows suit.