©  AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minn.) will take the stage Wednesday night at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago for the biggest speech of his career.

Vice President Harris picked Walz in part to help shore up support among the working class voters in the Midwest and Rust Belt states that have gravitated toward former President Trump over the past decade.

The Trump campaign was making a serious play to turn Minnesota red before Walz joined the ticket.

• Democrats have celebrated Walz for his everyman qualities and his Midwest sensibilities. They’ve sought to portray him as an ordinary dad.
  
  
• Walz is a former high school teacher and football coach. He served 24 years in the National Guard, won a House seat in a district previously held by Republicans and went on to become governor of Minnesota.

But Walz’s biography has come under scrutiny by the news media and Republicans, who have found instances of loose talk and embellishments about his past.

• Fifty Republican military veterans in the House and Senate released a letter excoriating Walz for “misrepresentations” of his military service.
  
  
• Walz served overseas but did not see combat. He has made past remarks about carrying weapons “in war.”
  
  
• He resigned from the National Guard months before his unit was deployed to Iraq. Some members of his unit have criticized him for this.
  
  
• Walz has referred to his rank as command sergeant major. He had that rank for a few weeks, but he retired at a lower rank.
  
  
• Walz’s wife Gwen Walz also clarified that they conceived through intrauterine insemination (IUI), rather than IVF. Walz has attacked Republicans who oppose IVF, saying he wouldn’t have had children without it. Some Republicans oppose IVF, but IUI conception is not a political issue. 
  
  

Polls show Walz is currently more popular than Trump’s running mate JD Vance, but he is mostly unknown nationally, making his Tuesday speech a pivotal moment for the campaign.

Other big names on tap tonight:

• Former President Clinton will address a Democratic Party that looks far different than it did when he was in the White House.
  
  
• Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will address Harris’s nominating convention after helping to push President Biden out of the race.

Themes: “A Fight for Our Freedoms”

• Democrats will argue that Walz spent his career championing the rights of “working families” and that he’s been a “staunch defender” of fundamental freedoms.
• They’ll attack Trump, accusing him of running on “an extreme agenda” that will “turn back the clock on all the freedoms we hold dear.”
  
  

Speakers (in no particular order):

• Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D)
• Former President Clinton
• Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg
• Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.)
• Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.)
• Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-N.M.)
• Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)
• House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.)
• Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D)
• Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D)
• Former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan (R)
  
  

Perspectives:

• The Hill: Walz owes Democrats some answers.
• The American Prospect: The making of progressive Tim Walz.
• The Wall Street Journal: Walz’s liberal record opens GOP attack lines.
• The Liberal Patriot: Campaigns are not for loyalists.
• The Hill: Walz can win young men back for Democrats.
• The Atlantic: The DNC is a big smiling mess.
• The New Republic: Democrats reclaim ‘freedom.’
• The Atlantic: Democrats aren’t taking the high road anymore.

Read more:

• Walz set for most impactful speech of his life at Democratic convention.
• 20 million viewers watched the first night of the DNC, surpassing RNC.
• Harris has raised $500 million in the month since she took over.
• Trump says it’s “pretty sad” for Democrats to focus on him at convention.
• Democrats stifle doubt about Harris’s campaign proposals.

Welcome to Evening Report! I’m Jonathan Easley, catching you up from the afternoon and what’s coming tomorrow. Not on the list? Subscribe here.

• The Bureau of Labor Statistics says the economy added 818,000 fewer jobs than initially reported, larger than the typical annual revision. 

  Unemployment remains low, but nearly one-third of Americans are looking for new jobs.
  
  

• The Department of Homeland Security watchdog says immigration officials lost track of thousands of unaccompanied children that crossed the border.
  
  

• Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) has died at age 87.
  
  
• Google will face trial over claims Chrome misled users on data collection.

©  AP Photo/Hans Pennink

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will deliver an address Friday in Arizona about his campaign’s “path forward,” as speculation swirls he may drop out of the presidential race and endorse former President Trump.

Kennedy’s running mate Nicole Shanahan said on a podcast this week that the campaign is debating internally about what to do.

Trump and his campaign have been making overtures to Kennedy and his supporters amid the speculation, as polls show Kennedy drawing support away from Trump.

• Trump said he’s open to giving Kennedy a role in his administration.
  
  
• Trump Jr. said he’d support giving Kennedy an agency he can “blow up.”

Trump’s running mate Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) made his pitch to Kennedy voters on Fox News this morning:

“I’ve never talked to RFK about this, but my pitch to him and to a lot of his voters would be, the Democratic Party of my grandparents that supported his uncle, John F. Kennedy, for president has been completely abandoned by the modern leadership of the Democratic Party. I mean, that was a party that believed in strong borders. That was a party that believed in building and making things in America, that believed in a strong national security, and really believed that we were all part of the same American family. This modern Democratic Party is focused on division. It’s focused on putting people into racial and gender buckets and then using those divisions for political power, and it doesn’t believe in anything common sense like American manufacturing or a strong American border.”

More from the campaign trail…

The latest Economist national survey finds Vice President Harris narrowly leading Trump, as insiders brace for the race for the White House to go down to the wire.

“This will still be a tight race in a closely divided country,” former President Obama noted in his convention speech on Tuesday night.

Democrats have reason to be optimistic with Harris at the top of the ticket instead of President Biden, who appeared headed for a landslide defeat.

Harris campaign adviser David Plouffe said the Sun Belt swing states — Georgia, Arizona Nevada and North Carolina — are back in play with Harris on the ticket.

“I think prior to Joe Biden’s really brave and selfless decision, we really were down to Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Now those other states are back in play. You see the Trump campaign starting to dramatically spend more money in those states so they see it too.”

• Trump is campaigning Wednesday in North Carolina, followed by trips to Arizona and Nevada, that will include a stop at the Southern border.
  
  
• Trump has made several visits to North Carolina recently, indicating he needs to shore up support in a battleground that Democrats have won only once since 1980.
  
  
• Trump has been sitting for interviews with alternative media personalities who have massive reach, particularly among young men. The latest: Comedian Theo Von regaled Trump with tales of his cocaine-laden nights. 
  
  

Perspectives:

The New Yorker: Can Democrats solve their Latino turnout problem?

Read more:

• Trump holds first outdoor rally since assassination attempt.
• Ramaswamy says he talked to Trump about potential role in administration.

At least 72 pro-Palestinian protesters were arrested after clashing with police outside the Israeli consulate Tuesday night in Chicago.

Fights broke out between masked demonstrators and the police, who carried shields and batons and wore helmets.

It’s the most intense skirmish to date, as Democrats try to get through the nominating convention with unrest kept to a minimum.

• Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) interview on CBS’s “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” was interrupted twice as they taped on Tuesday night.
  
  
• More than a dozen protesters were arrested on the first day of the convention after they broke through a perimeter fence, which has since been fortified.
  
  
• Protesters are preparing to march Thursday, the final day of the convention, for an end to the war in Gaza.
  
  
• The conflict has largely been ignored inside the convention, with speakers occasionally acknowledging the protests.
  
  

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is wrapping up his trip to the Middle East to broker a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.

A deal has been elusive, and talks appear to be on the brink of collapse.

Voters in Arizona and Montana will decide whether abortion is a constitutional right, bringing the total number of states that will feature abortion measures this fall to eight.

• The Arizona Supreme Court tossed out a lawsuit from an anti-abortion group Tuesday, ensuring the measure to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution would see a vote in November.
  
  
• Montana’s secretary of State’s office certified Tuesday that a measure to amend the state constitution to legalize abortion will be on the ballot.
  
  
• All but one of the eight states that will vote on abortion this November are seeking to amend their state constitutions.
  
  
• Abortion rights measures have been successful in nearly all instances since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Seven ballot initiatives, including in red states, have passed since then.
  
  

Democrats plan to put abortion rights front and center this election cycle. They believe it will drive turnout up and down the ballot in 2024, as it did in 2022, when the widely forecast “red wave” failed to materialize in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision on Roe v. Wade.

Kate Cox, a Texas woman who had to leave the state to get an abortion, spoke Tuesday night at the Democratic National Convention.

• Trump says he does not regret the Roe decision sending the issue back to the states, but he’s warned Republicans to speak sympathetically about the issue.
  
  
• Politico reports that if elected, Trump says he will not enforce the Comstock Act to ban the distribution of abortion pills and equipment by mail, angering some anti-abortion activists.

©  Associated Press/Wilfredo Lee/Jose Luis Magana

Some quick hits from the primary elections in Florida and Alaska last night…

• Former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D-Fla.) will take on Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.). Democrats don’t have many pick-up opportunities in the Senate this cycle, but they’re hoping energy from Vice President Harris’s campaign will help them take down GOP incumbents in Texas and Florida. “I’m very encouraged with what I see in those states,” Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chair Sen. Gary Peters (Mich.) told reporters at the Democratic National Convention. “We have very strong Democratic candidates.”
  
  
• Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) easily won his primary over a GOP challenger backed by former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Fla.), the latest battle in their bitter war.
  
  
• Alaska Rep. Mary Peltola (D) advanced to the general election for Alaska’s at-large House seat. She’ll face off in a winner-take-all against Republicans Nick Begich and Nancy Dahlstrom, as well as one other candidate that will be known soon.
  
  
• Democrats picked Whitney Fox to challenge Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) in a critical swing-district.

Read more:

• Mike Bloomberg donated $10 million to the largest House Democratic super PAC.

“The Taliban is stripping women of their freedom and dignity,” by The Guardian’s editorial board.

“Should schools ban phones?” by Jacqueline Nesi for After Babel.

20 days until the first presidential debate between Harris and Trump.

30 days until early in-person voting begins in Minnesota and South Dakota.

41 days until the vice presidential debate between Vance and Walz.

76 days until the 2024 general election.

152 days until Inauguration Day 2025.

Wednesday

• Night 3 of the Democratic National Convention.

Friday

• Trump holds a rally in Glendale, Ariz.

There a story you think should be getting more attention? Something people should be talking about? Drop me a line: jeasley@digital-staging.thehill.com

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