President Joe Biden will deliver remarks at the 115th NAACP National Convention in Las Vegas, Nevada, at 4 p.m. Eastern time.

This will be Biden’s first political speech since the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. Since then, Biden has shifted his rhetoric, having pulled its television ads attacking the former president.

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Biden’s keynote address at the convention is another attempt by his campaign to boost black voter support for the president.

Last month, a USA Today-Suffolk University poll found black voter support for Biden has dropped roughly 20 percentage points in both Michigan and Pennsylvania since the last election. 

After months of speculation, former President Donald Trump named Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) as his pick for vice president. 

Serving as Ohio’s senator since 2023, Vance, 39, is now the youngest vice president candidate since Richard Nixon. 

Vance has been married to his wife, Usha, for 10 years. The couple share three children together: Ewan, born in 2017; Vivek, born in 2019; and Mirabel, born in 2021.

The couple’s romance began while they were both students at Yale Law School. They reportedly met while working together to organize a discussion group focused on the “social decline in rural white America.” Usha Vance was the executive development editor of the Yale Law Journal and the managing editor of the Yale Journal of Law & Technology. She was involved with the Supreme Court Advocacy Clinic, the Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic, and the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project.

The two got married a year after they graduated in 2014.

Usha Vance was born to Indian immigrants and grew up in the suburbs of San Diego. She attended the University of Cambridge as well as Yale, earning degrees at both institutions.

Usha Vance has led a successful law career. She worked as a litigator for Munger, Tolles & Olson, from 2015 to 2017 and later served as a law clerk for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, then-Appeals Court judge Brett Kavanaugh, and Judge Amul Thapar. She returned to Munger, Tolles & Olson in 2019.

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She’s been by J.D. Vance’s side ever since he started his career in politics. J.D. Vance credits his wife for making his journey through the political realm a bit smoother. 

“I’m one of those guys who really benefits from having sort of a powerful female voice over his left shoulder saying, ‘Don’t do that, do that,’” he told Megyn Kelly in a 2020 interview on her podcast, The Megyn Kelly Show.

Video footage recorded by attendants at former President Donald Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday shows the suspected shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, crawling around on the roof of a nearby building. 

As the former president is speaking, the Trump supporter shows people watching Crooks. A woman starts yelling, “he’s on the roof. Right there, flat on the roof.”

A police officer was reported to have encountered Crooks on the roof, but after Crooks pointed his gun at the officer, he climbed out of the shooter’s line of sight. Moments later, Crooks started shooting, grazing Trump but killing firefighter and father Corey Comperatore. 

The building where Crooks was camped out, hundreds of feet from the stage, was outside the event’s security perimeter. However, the Secret Service was aware of the security risk, sources told NBC News.

The Secret Service collaborated with Butler authorities in detailing its security plan but had designated the area around the rooftop as being under the jurisdiction of local law enforcement. However, Butler County District Attorney Richard Goldinger was told by Butler’s Emergency Services Unit that the responsibility for securing areas outside the venue was on the Secret Service. 

A former Secret Service agent said in the case of a threat, it always falls on the Secret Service to act beforehand or in the moment.

“Just because it is outside of the perimeter, it doesn’t take it out of play for a vulnerability, and you’ve got to mitigate it in some fashion,” the source told NBC News.

Now lawmakers and former Secret Service agent Anthony Cangelosi are questioning how Crooks was able to get on the roof.

“You don’t surrender the discretion of what’s supposed to be done to the local police,” Cangelosi told NBC News. “In other words, you guys have the outer perimeter, but you would want to say, ‘We need an officer on that roof.’ Not ‘that’s your responsibility. Do what you see fit.’”

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Jim Cavanaugh, a retired special agent in charge with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, said he sees the Secret Service’s failure to post an officer on the roof as a major lapse in judgment.

Rep. Mark Green (R-TN) sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas requesting documentation related to the event’s security plan. Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) sent a letter to Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle requesting to see if a proper threat assessment was conducted, if authorities and agents were alerted of the risk, and if protocols were properly followed.

Millions of people can expect to see their August  Supplemental Security Income checks, worth up to $943, in 17 days.

These payments are made to people with a serious disability that affects their ability to work, according to the Social Security Administration.

To qualify, one must be partially blind or have a “physical or mental condition(s) that seriously limits their daily activities for a period of 12 months or more, or may be expected to result in death.”

Single recipients can receive a maximum of $943 per month, and couples filing jointly can receive up to $1,415. An essential person, which is someone who lives with a recipient and cares for them, will receive up to $472.

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Due to inflation, these amounts have increased by 3.2% since last year.

Recipients can use a calculator from the SSA to determine their total payment.

The second round of retirees can expect to see their July Social Security payments in just two days.

Beneficiaries born between the 11th and 20th of a month will receive their checks, worth as much as $4,873 for the highest-income earners who retire at 70, on Wednesday.

Social Security payments typically start on the second Wednesday of the month, with subsequent payments on the third and fourth Wednesdays.

Retirees born between the first and 10th of a month received their payments on July 10. The final round of payments goes out on July 24 to beneficiaries born on or after the 21st of a month.

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The earliest age a person can begin collecting social security is 62, but the most they will be able to collect is $2,710 per month. Retiring at the full retirement age of 67 will give one a maximum benefit of $3,822 per month.

Payments in 2024 are adjusted by 3.2% from 2023 to reflect cost-of-living increases due to inflation.

A federal judge in New York dismissed Rudy Giuliani‘s bankruptcy case just seven months after the former New York City mayor first began to pursue bankruptcy protection after being ordered to pay millions in a defamation case.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Sean Lane in the Southern District of New York claimed Giuliani was using the legal proceedings to avoid paying election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss the $148 million claim allotted to them in a defamation lawsuit. 

The former mayor had wrongfully accused the two women of helping to steal the 2020 presidential election from former President Donald Trump.  

Now Freeman, Moss, and other creditors are able to pursue legal action to collect their money. Also, all pending lawsuits against Giuliani that were put on hold because of the proceedings are now resumed. Giuliani faces a couple of more defamation suits against him by voting machine companies Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic, as well as a sexual harassment claim by former associate Nicole Dunphy.

Over the course of the proceedings, Giuliani did not give the judge an accurate presentation of his financial assets and income, having blown off court deadlines and filing incomplete monthly financial disclosures.

Giuliani listed that he has $153 million in debt, including $3.7 million in legal fees and more than $1 million in state and federal taxes. The financial disclosure found that he had less than $100,000 in the bank at the end of May and was living off of a retirement account. However, he failed to include what his net worth was and also financial information about his businesses.

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With suspicions that Trump’s former lawyer was hiding assets, creditors’ lawyers subpoenaed My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, who had done business with Giuliani, in an effort to get a better understanding of the scope of Giulani’s assets.

“Since day one, Giuliani has regarded this case and the bankruptcy process as a joke, hiding behind the facade of an elderly, doddering man who cannot even remember the address for his second multimillion dollar home and claims impending homelessness if he must sell that second multimillion dollar home,” Philip C. Dublin, an attorney for the committee of creditors, wrote in a July 8 court filing that accused Giuliani of treating the bankruptcy process “with utter disrespect and without accountability.”

The GOP’s 2024 platform drastically differs from previous party platforms when it comes to the issue of abortion, prompting 18 delegates on the platform committee to draft a symbolic “minority report.”

The final vote for the party platform was 84 to 18. However, in order for dissenters to submit a formal “minority report” to the full convention, they must capture 25% of the vote. 

Dissenting delegates are disappointed that the new platform does not include support to add a “human life amendment” to the Constitution, thus granting legal protections to the unborn, nor does the platform “call for the Fourteenth Amendment’s protection application to children before birth.” 

The 2016 party platform went into great detail about how the party will protect the conscious objections of healthcare workers from partaking in abortions and call on Congress to enact a 20-week abortion ban. 

However, the 2024 platform does not include language recognizing the sanctity of the unborn child and only goes as far as stating it is against late-term abortion. Meanwhile, the party celebrates that abortion rights have returned to be a matter decided by the states. 

“We proudly stand for families and Life,” the platform stated. “We believe that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees that no person can be denied Life or Liberty without Due Process, and that the States are, therefore, free to pass Laws protecting those Rights.”

The party platform also includes its support for access to birth control and in vitro fertilization.

Dissenters argue that the GOP is watering down its staunch opposition to abortion that has been central to the party for years.

“In no season, under no rationale spurred by the exigencies of a political moment, can or should we abandon the high principles that have created and sustained this party, with God’s grace, into a third century,” the dissenting delegates wrote.

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Former President Donald Trump has been adamant that the abortion issue should be left up to states to decide, having publicly opposed a national abortion ban. 

Conservative delegates also complain that the 2024 platform fails to uphold a view of marriage that in previous platforms explicitly opposed same-sex marriage. Now, the platform does not make a distinction and says “Republicans will promote a Culture that values the Sanctity of Marriage.”

Seattle homeowners may soon be paying an average of $546 a year in order to cover expenses related to the city’s transportation needs.

Mayor Bruce Harrell approved a $1.5 billion transportation bill, the largest tax proposal in the city’s history, leaving it up to voters to decide in the November election.

“Yes, that’s a lot of money, but [the levy is for] the treasures, and the payoff, and the benefits for our children and our grandchildren,” Harrell said at a Wednesday press conference.

The levy, which is expected to last eight years, will cover the costs of building sidewalks, paving streets, repairing bridges, and improving transit connections. 

The current levy, which expires at the end of 2024, costs residents around $300 on their property tax bill. It is responsible for around 30% of the Seattle Department of Transportation’s budget. 

The largest sum of the money, $430 million to be exact, will go toward street maintenance and modernization. Of those funds, $330 million will go toward arterial roadway maintenance, which would repave 15 major corridors.

The city will allocate $193 million on pedestrian safety, and $160.5 million on Vision Zero, school and neighborhood safety programs.

City council members had previously signed an amendment which would allocate $20 million in funding to complete the gap in the Burke Gilman Trail. 

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However, some have expressed concern that this tax levy may be too massive to manage.

“This troublesome transportation tax increase is like the Titanic — too big, hardest on the poor, and destined to fail everyone,” former Seattle City Councilman Alex Pedersen said in a statement. “It’s insensitive for politicians to act like cheerleaders for such a massive transportation tax increase while renters, homeowners, and small businesses struggle to stay in Seattle.”

An MS-13 gang leader in New York pleaded guilty to racketeering in a case involving the murders of eight people, including the brutal 2016 murders of two high school girls.

Alexi Saenz, 29, admitted in his plea deal that he was responsible for ordering the murders of eight people. New York prosecutors had previously decided against pursuing the death penalty for Saenz. Instead, Saenz will spend up to 70 years in prison.

Also Known as “Blasty” and “Big Homie,” Saenz was in charge of the MS-13 clique that operated in Brentwood and Central Islip in Long Island. The gang gained national attention, including from former President Donald Trump, after the bodies of Nisa Mickens, 15, and Kayla Cuevas, 16, were discovered mutilated. Prosecutors said Saenz greenlighted the murders in September 2016 after a fight broke out involving Cuevas at Brentwood High School.

Their deaths and the discovery of three additional teenagers in the following months led to a national outcry and pressure on law enforcement in the area.

Saenz is also charged in the Long Island killings of Michael Johnson, Oscar Acosta, Javier Castillo, Marcus Bohannon, Dewann Stacks, and Esteban Alvarado-Bonilla.

However, Saenz’s plea deal with authorities will only stand if his brother Jairo also pleads guilty. 

​​“His brother is not prepared to plead guilty today,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Scotti said in court. “To protect the interests of the government, if his brother does not plead we reserve the right to withdraw the plea agreement. We are attempting to enter a global plea.”

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Saenz, his brother, and several other gang members were indicted in 2017 on murder and racketeering charges.

MS-13 is a criminal organization that grew in Los Angeles during the 1980s as a result of Salvadorans fleeing to the United States from a civil war.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) told reporters that he is “deeply concerned” about President Joe Biden’s reelection chances.

“I am deeply concerned about Joe Biden winning this November because it is an existential threat if Donald Trump wins,” Blumenthal said. “I think we need to reach a conclusion as soon as possible. Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee has my support.”

Blumenthal’s call on both his party and Biden to settle calls for the president to step down, followed by reaffirming his support for the president, highlights the conundrum that Democratic leadership is in. 

With news anchors asking questions about Biden’s cognitive ability, top Democratic leadership including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) remain publicly behind the president while a mounting list of Democratic Congress members wants the president out of the race. 

In closed-door meetings, Democrats are divided on their support of Biden, with many fearing he will have a negative effect on races up and down the ballot.

Blumenthal’s concerns on Tuesday are a shift from the strong support he voiced previously.

“Biden is the Democratic nominee for president of the United States, he has my support. He needs to make his case aggressively and vigorously to the American people,” he said.

However, Blumenthal clarified his words to reporters saying that he himself worries about his election no matter what the circumstances may be — extending that same expectation to the president.

“Let me just be absolutely clear,” Blumenthal said. “Winning elections requires worrying about the results, no matter where you are, or whatever the election. I’ve always said that about my own election. I always run like I’m 10 points behind.

Pressure on Biden appeared to subside slightly on Monday after the president sent a letter to congressional Democrats telling them in no uncertain terms that he is going to stay in the race. Shortly after the letter was sent, Biden called into Morning Joe and reiterated his message for viewers and any officials watching.

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But the tide turned Wednesday when Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) made her own appearance on the program and opened the door for Democrats to continue asking in public the questions they had tried to keep under wraps the day before.

“I want him to do whatever he decides to do, and that’s the way it is,” Pelosi said. “It’s up to the president to decide if he is going to run. We’re all encouraging him to make that decision.”