RNC chair Joe Gruters kicks off midterm convention: 'This is history in the making'

Joe Gruters, the Republican National Committee (RNC) chair, has kicked of the GOP midterm convention. Expected to be full of party pageantry, Gruters said the two-day event in Dallas would be about “defying history”.

Wielding a super-sized gavel, Gruters said that Republicans didn’t come to the American Airlines Center to “to talk about winning. We came here to do it.”

“This isn’t just another convention; this is history in the making,” Gruters added.

The RNC chair also flagged that tonight’s programming will include every day Americans and several GOP candidates in midterm races this November.

A reminder that both nights of the convention will end with speeches from Donald Trump.

Joe Gruters speaks on the first day of the 2026 Republican National Convention at the American Airlines Center, 09 September 2026 in Dallas, Texas. Photograph: Alex Wong/Getty Images

Key events

Here's where things stand today

• An unconventional GOP midterm convention is set to kick off in Dallas. Pulled together at Donald Trump’s request, the two-day event will feature remarks from the president himself, along with several members of his cabinet and his top Republican allies in Congress. The convention is meant to rally the party as it seeks to hold on to its narrow margins in Congress. But it’s also left some Republicans uneasy, as they seek to distance their own campaigns from a president whose actions – including a seemingly directionless conflict with Iran – they fear have alienated some voters.

• Trump, en route to Texas, teased a possible pardon for his former fixer. After being held up by what appeared to be an inspection of the inflatable emergency slide on his Qatari-gifted Air Force One replacement, Trump suggested he might be open to pardoning his one-time lawyer Michael Cohen. Cohen once testified against Trump in his Manhattan criminal trial, which ended in Trump’s conviction, but has since sought to get back into the president’s favor.

• Speaking in Texas, JB Pritzker accused Trump of trying to rig the vote. As Republicans geared up to sell the American people on President Trump’s first term, Pritzker, the Illinois governor joined Texas Democrats in speaking out against them. A potential presidential contender in 2028, Pritzker accused Trump of trying to rig the election to avoid having to win on an unpopular platform.

• Rhode Island’s Democratic governor faces steep odds in Wednesday’s primary. Voters are going to the polls today for Rhode Island’s primary election. Daniel McKee, the state’s governor, faces tough odds in a primary rematch with Helena Foulkes, whom he narrowly beat in 2022. McKee has faced criticism for drawn-out repairs on a vital bridge in Providence.

• Trump gave massive cash gifts to close White House aides, including Natalie Harp. Circling back to Trump, financial disclosures released by his administration reveal that he showered his White House aides with tens of thousands of dollars as apparent holiday gifts. Those included a $45,000 payment to Natalie Harp, the executive assistant whose constant presence at Trump’s side has attracted scorn from his opponents. The Washington Post first reported the payments late on Tuesday.

Before taking off for Texas, Trump avoided taking a hard stance when pressed about the coalition of countries, including the UK, France and Canada, that has imposed new sanctions on Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

“I’ll be speaking to Israel, I’ll be speaking to them, and I’ll find out what’s their thinking,” Trump said.

He also predicted, again, that Iran would cave as soon as the midterm election is over, but only if Republicans win.

“They’re desperate to try and affect the election so that we can get a nice, weak group of people in there, and leave them alone, and let them have their nuclear weapon,” Trump said.

Trump signals openness to pardoning Michael Cohen, his former fixer

Trump on Wednesday said he was open to pardoning Michael Cohen, his former lawyer and fixer who once testified against him in court before again seeking his favor in his second term.

“If everything is checking out, it’s something I would consider,” Trump said of a possible pardon for Cohen. He was asked about the subject on the tarmac before departing to the GOP midterm convention in Dallas.

It might seem like ages ago, so in case you forgot, Cohen testified in Trump’s 2024 criminal trial in Manhattan that the then-former President had directed him to illegally misclassify hush money payments to a porn star as legal fees. Trump’s conviction on 34 counts in that case could’ve landed him in prison, if not for his 2024 presidential election victory.

Trump’s remarks on the tarmac come a week after he took to social media to claim that Cohen had fully recanted his testimony against him. In actuality, Cohen has so far stopped short of such a step, saying only that he felt pressured by the prosecution in Trump’s cases without disputing the accuracy of his testimony.

Over the course of a decade, Cohen has traced a winding path from the President’s former fixer, to a key witness in legal proceedings against him, before finding his way back into Trump’s good graces in his second term. Along the way, he served a three-year prison sentence in connection with the hush money payments he later said he made at Trump’s behest, along with other offenses.

“What they did to Michael Cohen was a disgrace,” Trump continued on the tarmac. “They forced him to say things that he didn’t want to say, and that he didn’t believe. And I appreciate that at least he came out, although late, he came out and rectified the situation.”

Pressed on the tarmac about global oil prices surging past $100 a barrel, Trump predicted that those prices would start coming down again… just not until after the midterm elections.

“Right after the election, oil prices are going to be tumbling downward,” Trump said, boasting that he’d get gasoline below $2 a gallon.

But, he caveated, “I think it’s going to take a little longer than the midterms.”

Trump also played up the administration’s efforts to economically isolate Iran, claiming the country’s economy was teetering on collapse, and that the economic shockwaves are justified by the administration’s aims.

“I think it’s very easy to explain to America,” Trump said of the high oil prices. “All you have to do is say, will you let Iran have nuclear weapon? And the answer is no.”

Emergency slide deployed on Qatari Air Force One delays Trump en route to Dallas

Donald Trump boarded a flight to Dallas for the GOP’s midterm convention, after being delayed as an emergency slide on his Qatari-gifted replacement for Air Force One was unfurled on the tarmac.

Crew members pictured on live news feeds inspected the slide while Trump waited aboard Marine One. After being stuck on Marine One for about 20 minutes, the president boarded the jet as crews continued to look at the inflatable slide.

The president, speaking briefly to reporters before boarding the plane, said that crews were performing a safety check on the slide, but that there was no real danger.

“They want to make sure everything works perfectly,” he said.

Crews appeared to cart away the emergency slide just before the jet took off.

The jet, an unusual gift from Qatar meant to serve as a temporary replacement for Air Force One, has experienced significant security vulnerabilities, which led to it being temporarily removed from service for upgrades. In July, those vulnerabilities prompted Trump’s security team to smuggle him to a different plane aboard a catering truck before flying him out of Turkey. It’s unclear what exact upgrades were made to the jet since then, or when.

Asked he was sure the jet was now safe to fly, Trump responded: “Yeah, I am, or I wouldn’t be on it.”

The Trump administration has removed a Tetris-themed video game from its online arcade a few days after the company behind Tetris made a veiled legal threat to go after the administration for copyright infringement.

The game, a Tetris clone complete with the retro pixelated graphics, had players stacking bricks to build a wall along the southern border. It was one of several edgy Maga-themed arcade games the White House had posted to its new online arcade and promoted widely on social media.

The Tetris Company responded to the game with a statement saying it played no part in the White House arcade game’s creation. It concluded with a warning: “We take copyright infringement very seriously.”

Other games on the site were equally transparent rip-offs of popular retro titles. Rio Run – in which the player controls a pixelated immigration agent detaining migrants at the border – is clearly designed to play like Snake, once a fixture on 90s Nokia cellphones. Another, Flappy Bill, is a clear reskin of the infuriating mobile game Flappy Bird.

Using video game culture to promote his presidency isn’t a new move for Trump; he’s been riffing on popular titles from Halo to Pokémon for years.

A screenshot from one of the White House arcade games, Build the Wall Photograph: The White House

Elsewhere this morning, the US attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeanine Pirro, made it clear that she does not want to talk about the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool.

The former Fox News host was taking questions at a justice department news conference announcing enforcement actions taken against a Chinese scam marketplace. The reporter had barely begun asking his question about the reflecting pool before Pirro shut him down.

NO! … No, and no. Who wants to know about this? How many times do I have to say no? I am not talking about that. Anyone want to talk about this case?

You can watch the clip here.

In the last few months, Pirro butted heads with Donald Trump over the apparently never-ending reflecting pool drama.

After Trump repeatedly accused “vandals” of damaging the pool, Pirro’s office accused former US Olympian David Hearn of vandalism, but later dropped the charges after investigators found the damage was actually the result of shoddy construction work, not vandalism.

The whole affair irritated Trump, who publicly criticized Pirro for “folding like an umbrella”. He said he was “really disappointed in her” and suggested that he hadn’t made a decision on whether to remove her from her post.

Texas Republican in race for key House seat under fire for derogatory comments

A Republican candidate for a key congressional district in Texas has come under scrutiny over a series of derogatory comments made about women in his social media posts and videos.

Brandon Herrera, who is the GOP candidate for Texas’s 23rd congressional district, has made a string of insults while fashioning a rightwing online persona as the “AK Guy”, and hosts a YouTube channel with more than 4 million subscribers that tests and reviews firearms.

The comments, first reported by CNN, include Herrera taking aim at people he opposes politically, and women. In a 2023 video, he said that a gun range dummy’s empty head was “full of mush – much like the average Austin feminist”, and in a separate 2024 video, he likened the weight of “angry blue-haired” feminists to that of orca whales and elephants.

Brandon Herrera at a campaign event in Uvalde, Texas, on 25 February. Photograph: Brenda Bazán for the Washington Post for Getty Images

In 2020, Herrera filmed himself firing a gun at bottles of ranch dressing and, after they exploded, rubbing the condiment on to himself and declaring that this would “make me irresistible to the fat bitches”. While discussing the merits of a car on X in 2023, Herrera opined that “4 doors means more whores”.

Other groups have also been the focus of Herrera’s online content. In 2020, while firing a gun at a ham, Herrera said that while purchasing a ham for target practice was expensive, it was “still cheaper than a homeless person”.

This isn’t the first time that Herrera has come under scrutiny. In 2024, during a run for Congress, Herrera said: “I am not, nor have I never [sic] been, a neo-Nazi” after describing a Nazi-era gun as “the original ghetto blaster”. The Republican Jewish Coalition condemned him at the time as “a goose-stepping extremist”.

Herrera said that all these comments were jokes, and took aim at his opponent in this November’s midterm election, Democrat Katy Padilla Stout. “It’s disappointing that CNN would allow someone to allege that jokes about feminism lead to violence when Stout is fighting to return children to the parent convicted of abusing them,” Herrera said in a statement to CNN, referring to a case in which Stout was appointed as a defense attorney for a father seeking to restore parental rights after a domestic abuse allegation.

Asked to comment on his previous statements made online, Herrera said via his campaign that it was “disappointing” that “alleged journalists” would “ignore” the Stout case. He did not reference his own past statements.

The past comments could add to Republicans’ challenge of holding on to the US House of Representatives seat. Herrera is attempting to replace Tony Gonzales, a Republican lawmaker who resigned in April amid a House ethics committee investigation into his relationship with a former aide.

While Democrats have not prevailed in this district since 2015, the party has recently added it to its target list and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has sent funding to Stout, a former teacher and attorney, in what is expected to be a strong year for Democrats amid rising voter dissatisfaction with Donald Trump.

Donald Trump often brings up September 11, the devastating al-Qaida attack that struck his home town New York City almost 25 years ago.

His recollections of that day have repeatedly included exaggerations and falsehoods – including this week, when he shared an anecdote at a White House event commemorating the attacks that appears to be untrue.

Ahead of the anniversary on Friday, my colleague Chris Stein has compiled some of the ways Trump has stretched the truth about September 11, beginning shortly after the attacks and continuing into his second presidential term:

A final outtake from the Democrats’ press conference ahead of the GOP midterm convention: Kendall Scudder, the chairman of the Texas Democrats, made an impassioned defense of Jasmine Crockett, the Texas congresswoman who lost the party’s Senate primary. Some Democrats have said Crockett isn’t doing enough to rally voters around the current Democratic Senate nominee, James Talarico, who bested Crockett in that contest.

“I think y’all need to get off Congresswoman Crockett’s case, OK,” Scudder told a reporter in the crowd. “The day after the election, she endorsed James Talarico. She is a phenomenal team player as a member of our delegation while we’re able to have her, and she has been a team player for years.”

Pressed on a timeline for a potential decision to run for president, Pritzker kept things vague.

“First of all, I’m running for re-election as governor, and I do want to serve as governor of the state of Illinois,” Pritzker said. “And any decisions that get made after that are going to be about whatever’s best for the people of our state.”

Democrats accuse Republicans of 'working to rig' midterms

JB Pritzker has taken the microphone a few more times for the Democrats in Texas, fielding questions from reporters. He’s accused Republicans stumping for Trump of “bootlicking”, and alleged that Trump’s efforts to enact restriction on mail-in voting amount to a promise to end fair elections in the future.

“If Democrats don’t win, if they don’t win in this election, we may not have other elections,” Pritzker said. “Or certainly we’re going to have future elections, every single one of which will be rigged.”

Pritzker leveled a similar allegation earlier in the press conference. Republicans, he said, are seeking other ways to win the midterms to compensate for waning voter support for President Trump and his policies.

“Republicans know that they can’t win on the merits of their unpopular policies, so they’re working to rig the 2026 election,”

Local Texas Democrats speaking to reporters in Dallas have repeatedly brought up Texas Republicans’ mid-decade redistricting push, which Donald Trump heavily pushed for, as an example of presidential overreach. That move saw the state’s congressional maps redrawn in 2025 to make district lines more favorable to the GOP, likely securing the party extra seats in the midterms.

The redistricting effort in Texas was the first shot in a redistricting war that has seen congressional maps redrawn across the country, with both Democrats and Republicans carving up districts in an effort to win more seats.

Illinois governor attacks Republican party as 'self-dealing, racist, misogynist grifters'

Democrats are holding a press conference in Texas ahead of the GOP’s Dallas-based midterm convention.

JB Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois, was just speaking to the assembled reporters. He lambasted the Trump administration for, in his words, launching a war on Iran that worsened inflation, for trying to undermine voting rights, and for engaging in corruption and self-dealing – lines of attack we can expect to hear frequently through the midterms.

“Republicans are lying, and they’re corrupt,” Pritzker said.

He continued: “I’m done pretending that these self-dealing, racist, misogynist grifters are an aberration of the Republican party. They are the mainstream of the Republican party now.”

Pritzker, a potential contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, notably faced off with Trump when the President sent a legion of ICE agents – and later the national guard – to target to the city in a mass deportation operation in 2025.

What to expect at tonight's GOP convention in Dallas

Republicans are descending on Dallas today to prepare for an unconventional midterm convention, convened at Donald Trump’s request, to try to rally the party ahead of a testy midterm election. The US president himself is slated to take the stage twice during the convention’s two-day run, as well as JD Vance, top congressional Republicans and several members of Trump’s cabinet.

The convention’s first night will kick off at 3pm, local time. Among the speakers on deck are Steve Scalise, the House majority leader; Mehmet Oz, the television personality turned head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services; the Texas Senate candidate Ken Paxton; and Scott Bessent, Trump’s treasury secretary. Expect plenty of breaks in between for music and hype videos.

All of it will build up to Trump’s keynote address, scheduled for after 8pm.

The interior of the American Airlines Center on the first day of the 2026 Republican National Convention in Dallas, Texas. Photograph: Brandon Bell/Getty Images

Americares, a non-profit that delivers medical supplies and other aid to poverty- and disaster-stricken parts of the world, received a record $50m donation in light of cuts to US foreign aid programs.

Donald Trump has taken a hatchet to US-funded foreign aid programs in his second term, including the dismantlement of the US Agency for International Development. Those cuts have left non-profits scrambling to make up for canceled funds and programs covering food and medical aid, in addition to other kinds of assistance, around the world.

The $50m donation, announced on Wednesday, is the largest in Americares’ history, the organization said in a statement. It will go toward expanding access to critical medicines in the countries Americares serves.

Nebraska's governor, a backer of Trump's immigration crackdown, employed undocumented immigrants, report finds

Nebraska’s Republican governor, a staunch conservative who has backed Trump’s mass deportation campaign, has employed undocumented immigrants in his massive pork production business, a report published by the Flatwater Free Press and the New York Times found.

The governor, Jim Pillen, rose to prominence as the founder of Pillen Family Farms, now one of the country’s biggest pork producers. He won Nebraska’s governorship in 2022, and more recently he has embraced and aided Trump’s deportation crackdown.

But according to the Times and Flatwater Free Press’ reporting, at least 20 hog farms under Pillen Family Farms relied on labor from the same undocumented workers Trump is pushing to deport en masse.

Pillen has echoed Trump’s rhetoric on immigration as he runs for re-election, facing off against Democratic nominee Lynne Walz.