White House says Biden has tested positive for Covid but has mild symptoms The White House confirmed Joe Biden has been tested positive for Covid. According to the press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, the president is “vaccinated and boosted” and has mild symptoms. “The White House will provide regular updates on the President’s status as he continues to carry out the full duties of the office while in isolation,” she said in a statement to the press. The president’s doctor said that Biden “felt okay for his first event of the day, but given that he was not feeling better, point of care testing for Covid-19 was conducted, and the results were positive”,” in a statement shared with media. “His symptoms remain mild, his respiratory rate is normal at 16, his temperature is normal at 97.8 and his pulse oximetry is normal at 97%. The President has received his first dose of Paxlovid. He will be self-isolating at his home in Rehoboth.” Joe Biden is headed back to Delaware. Meanwhile at the Republican national convention, Paul Manafort, Trump’s 2016 campaign chair, has been spotted on the floor. Manafort was pardoned after being found guilty of several financial crimes in 2018, following an investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller and his team. Manafort, 69, was convicted on Tuesday of five counts of tax fraud, two counts of bank fraud and one count of failure to report a foreign bank account. Trump had signalled that he wanted to bring Manafort back in the fold for his latest campaign, but it is unclear whether he has been officially enlisted and, if so, in what capacity. White House says Biden has tested positive for Covid but has mild symptoms The White House confirmed Joe Biden has been tested positive for Covid. According to the press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, the president is “vaccinated and boosted” and has mild symptoms. “The White House will provide regular updates on the President’s status as he continues to carry out the full duties of the office while in isolation,” she said in a statement to the press. The president’s doctor said that Biden “felt okay for his first event of the day, but given that he was not feeling better, point of care testing for Covid-19 was conducted, and the results were positive”,” in a statement shared with media. “His symptoms remain mild, his respiratory rate is normal at 16, his temperature is normal at 97.8 and his pulse oximetry is normal at 97%. The President has received his first dose of Paxlovid. He will be self-isolating at his home in Rehoboth.” “He needs to take the precautions that have been recommended,” Murguía said. “He obviously didn’t want to put anybody at risk. He said to tell my folks that we’re not going to get rid of him that quickly – we’re going to hear from him in the future directly.” Biden was scheduled to deliver the keynote address at the conference, before 1,500 Latino leaders, advocates and allies. Joe Biden tests positive for Covid Joe Biden has cancelled a speaking engagement at the UnidosUS annual conference because he has tested positive for Covid, according to the organization’s president and CEO Janet Murguía. “We appreciate very much his wanting to have been here,” she announced from the podium where he was expected to speak shortly. Peter Navarro, a former Donald Trump White House adviser who was just released from prison, has been spotted in Milwaukee: The Associated Press reports that Navarro was released today from the prison where he was serving a four-month sentence after being convicted of contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the January 6 committee. He is expected to address the Republican national convention tonight. Biden campaign resumes advertising after Trump assassination attempt The president’s re-election campaign has ended the pause on advertising it imposed following the Saturday assassination attempt against Donald Trump, a Biden-Harris campaign official told the Guardian’s US politics live blog. The first new ad features abortion-rights activist Hadley Duvall, and in addition to attacking Trump singles out JD Vance, Trump’s newly announced running mate. See it here: Special counsel appeals dismissal of Trump"s classified documents case Jack Smith, the justice department special counsel, has filed an appeal of judge Aileen Cannon’s ruling earlier this week dismissing Donald Trump’s indictment on charges of illegally possessing classified documents. Trump campaign declines to schedule vice-presidential debate, citing uncertainty over Democratic ticket The Trump campaign has announced that it will not yet schedule a debate between JD Vance and Kamala Harris, citing uncertainty over who will be the Democratic nominee for vice-president. The decision is a reference to continued tension among Democrats over whether Joe Biden should seek re-election, after his poor showing at his first debate with Donald Trump. The president insists he has no plans to step aside, but if he did, the new nominee would have to find their own running mate. “We don’t know who the Democrat nominee for vice-president is going to be, so we can’t lock in a date before their convention. To do so would be unfair to Gavin Newsom, JB Pritzker, Gretchen Whitmer, or whoever Kamala Harris picks as her running mate,” Trump campaign senior adviser Brian Hughes said in a statement. The Biden-Harris campaign had previously proposed three possible dates for the vice-presidential debate, all before the beginning of the Democratic convention on 19 August, where the party will formalize the presidential ticket. Trump campaign moved to tone down convention rhetoric – report Donald Trump’s campaign has encouraged speakers at the Republican national convention to stay away from extreme rhetoric, and in some cases directly edited their speeches, NBC News reports. At the convention thus far, there have been few to no mentions of topics liked the January 6 insurrection, or Trump’s baseless claims that he lost the 2020 election unfairly. That’s a deliberate strategy his campaign shifted to following the assassination attempt on Saturday, as it now looks to project an image of unity. Here’s more on that, from NBC: Trump said that he had rewritten his own speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination ahead of Thursday night after surviving an assassination attempt. The Trump campaign has said that now he intends to home in on the theme of unifying America. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga, said Wednesday before delivering his convention address, ‘Frankly, they sent the same message to those of us giving speeches.’ ‘We always planned to be a reflection of our party’s unity and remind the American people of the difference between President Trump’s success and Crooked Joe Biden’s failure,’ Brian Hughes, a senior Trump campaign adviser, said in a statement. ‘The convention messages from everyday Americans and policymakers have met that goal. This convention is one of the greatest ever held and will launch us forward to victory in November.’ While convention speakers this week have served up plenty of red meat to the thousands of delegates in attendance, particularly on the issues of immigration and crime, they have steered away from some of the party’s more divisive topics and talk of seeking retribution. Through the convention’s first two nights, speakers have not mentioned the following issues: unfounded claims of stolen elections; the Jan 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol; investigating Trump’s political opponents, including Biden; and investigating the prosecutors who have sought indictments against him, like Special Counsel Jack Smith, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg or Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. A video where Trump mentions the unsubstantiated threat of Democrats ‘cheating’ in the upcoming election was played during the first two nights of the convention. Asked if the toned-down theme would continue through the week, Rep. Dan Meuser, R-Pa., said, ‘I do.’ ‘I mean, it starts with Trump,’ he continued. ‘Hopefully, JD [Vance] picks that up. And others. Trump said he didn’t want people to change their speeches, but I think that they will.’ Anyone attending the Republican national convention could be forgiven for thinking they have stepped into a mirror world where Donald Trump is a saint, not a twice-impeached former president convicted of 34 felonies. On Wednesday, Brenna Bird, the attorney general of Iowa, was asked why she travelled to New York to support the former US president during his hush-money trial. “I was glad to go out to New York to support him during that trial because I’m a prosecutor and I have prosecuted many criminal defendants, but I’ve never seen anything like that,” Bird told international reporters at a Foreign Press Centers briefing. “It’s a travesty. It’s not how the legal process is supposed to work. As a prosecutor, I’ve never taken someone’s politics into account when deciding whether to charge a crime. That is just wrong and, if it’s allowed to happen, it breaks down the rule of law and the constitutional order.” Bird added: “I went there specifically as a prosecutor to support President Trump because what was happening was an injustice and I wanted to be there and stand up for what was right and support President Trump. I think we saw his character during that trial. He doesn’t give up and he keeps on moving forward and that’s exactly what our country needs right now.” In May, Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records alleging he was involved in a scheme that sought to cover up extramarital affairs in advance of the 2016 presidential election. The New York state prosecution had no connection to Biden and there was no evidence of jury bias against Trump. Interim summary Here’s where the day stands: Joe Biden said he would consider dropping out of the presidential race if a “medical condition” emerged, the New York Times reports, citing an excerpt released from Biden’s interview with Ed Gordon of BET News. According to the Times, Biden was asked if there was any reason that would make him reconsider staying in the presidential race. In response, Biden said: “If I had some medical condition that emerged, if somebody, if doctors came to me and said, you got this problem and that problem.” John Hinckley, the man who shot and wounded president Ronald Reagan in 1981, has released his own statement following Donald Trump’s assassination attempt on Saturday. In a tweet on Wednesday, Hinckley, who was released in 2022 after spending 41 years under federal oversight, wrote: “Violence is not the way to go. Give peace a chance.” Kamala Harris has accepted a third possible date to hold a CBS-hosted vice-presidential debate against Trump’s newly announced running mate, Ohio senator JD Vance. The Biden-Harris campaign said it was open to a showdown with Vance on Monday, 12 August, as well. Harris had previously agreed to participate in the debate on either Tuesday, 23 July, or Tuesday, 13 August. The high-profile California Democrat Adam Schiff has called on Joe Biden to drop out of the presidential race. Schiff, in a statement to the Los Angeles Times, said that Biden “has been one of the most consequential presidents in our nation’s history, and his lifetime of service as a Senator, a vice president, and now as president has made our country better” adding: “But our nation is at a crossroads.” Joe Biden lashed out at a “tense” meeting with dozens of House Democrats who bluntly questioned his viability as their party’s presidential nominee, according to reports. During the Saturday Zoom call, Colorado representative Jason Crow told Biden that voters are concerned about his vigor and strength, and noted the importance of national security in the November election, the reports say. Lloyd Doggett, the Texas representative who became the first House Democrat to publicly call on Joe Biden to step aside, has doubled down and urged the president to withdraw from the ticket in the face of “the reality of steadily, worsening poll numbers”. “My call for President Biden to step aside remains even more urgent,” Doggett said in a statement on Wednesday. During the Democratic press conference in Milwaukee, the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, was pressed on the party’s plans to nominate Joe Biden via a roll call vote in the coming days. Walz, who co-chairs the Democratic national convention’s rules committee, confirmed that delegates would not begin voting before 1 August, and the governor’s spokesperson confirmed that the process should wrap up by 7 August. Donald Trump does not have stitches but has a “nice flesh wound”, his son Eric Trump said following his father’s assassination attempt. In an interview with CBS, Eric said: “You know, he was millimeters away from having his life expunged ... I’m sure the ear doesn’t feel well.” Nearly two-thirds of Democrats want Joe Biden to withdraw his re-election bid, a new AP-NORC poll has found. According to the poll, which was mostly conducted before Donald Trump’s assassination attempt on Saturday, 65% of Democrats say that Biden should withdraw. Overall, seven in 10 American adults say that Biden should drop out of the race. The Democratic National Committee said that its virtual roll call to officially nominate Joe Biden as its party’s presidential nominee will happen in August, CBS reports. In a letter obtained and reported by CBS on Wednesday, the chairs of the Democratic national convention’s rules committee, Leah Daughtry and Tim Walz, wrote: “We have confirmed with the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic National Convention that no virtual voting will begin before August 1 … .” Biden hasn"t done enough to ease age concerns - former top Obama adviser David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama, warns that Joe Biden has not done enough to relieve voters’ concern about his age since last month’s hapless debate performance. “I’ve felt for a long time, and I’ve said for a long time, it’s not in any way a commentary on his record, which I think will be honoured more by history than it is by voters right now,” Axelrod told the Guardian in Milwaukee on Wednesday. “But it’s a very hard case to make that anyone should be elected president in the United States at the age of 82, not for political reasons but for actuarial reasons. This is the hardest job on the planet. It takes a lot out of you. It’s a legitimate concern that people have and that concern has been intensified by what happened at the debate. I don’t think anything that’s happened has relieved that concern.” Axelrod, chief strategist for the 2008 and 2012 Obama presidential campaigns, was speaking after an event organised by the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and the Cook Political Report on the sidelines of the Republican national convention. Asked whether he thinks Biden can survive, Axelrod replied: “That’s entirely in his hands and that’s been the case. This whole race has been in his hands, his decision to run and now his decision to stay. “There’s a lot to think about because I know he’s laid out the stakes in this election. The question he has to answer is, what are the odds of his winning? Would the odds be better with another candidate? I’m sure there’s a lot of discussion about that.” Following Rudy Giuliani’s fall at the Republican national convention in Milwaukee on Tuesday, the 80-year-old disbarred lawyer’s spokesperson Ted Goodman released the following statement on Wednesday: Mayor Rudy Giuliani appreciates everyone’s concern after tripping over a dip in the walkway on the convention floor of the convention. The mayor and I were both filming footage for his social media and livestream programs on the floor of the convention, when he turned to set some equipment on a chair and tripped over a dip between the walkway and chairs. Those falsely suggesting anything else are misleading the public for their own agendas. The rift among Democrats is deepening over Joe Biden’s presidential candidacy despite party leaders saying Biden is the nominee. Joan E Greve and Martin Pengelly report for the Guardian: Demands for Joe Biden to step aside as the Democrats’ presidential pick to face Donald Trump have slowed since the Republican survived an assassination attempt last weekend, to the extent that on Wednesday one “prominent strategist” was moved to say of the rebellion: “It’s over.” The strategist spoke anonymously to the Hill – and before the influential California congressman Adam Schiff said publicly that Biden should quit. Nonetheless, in Milwaukee, at a press conference during the Republican national convention, Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor and a party grandee, said Biden would be confirmed as the Democratic nominee by virtual vote between 1 and 7 August, before the Chicago convention. Joe Biden’s campaign team released a new ad on Wednesday featuring Hadley Duvall, a 22-year-old abortion-rights activist from Owensboro, Kentucky. In the ad, Duvall, who was in an emotional ad last year during governor Andy Beshear’s re-election campaign, describes her experience of being impregnated by her stepfather, who raped her when she was 12 years old. She said: I’m from Kentucky where, because of Donald Trump, an extreme abortion ban is now in place, with no exceptions for rape or incest. During the overturn [of Roe v Wade], I went back to the time I was 12 years old and I was holding my first pregnancy test in my hand … Trump brags about overturning Roe v Wade. He is ‘proudly responsible’ for each and every abortion ban across the country. And he calls them a ‘beautiful thing to watch.’ What is so beautiful about telling a 12-year-old girl that she must have the baby of her stepfather who raped her? The stakes of this election could not be higher for our choices.