President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference at the White House, Thursday, July 23, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
By Zeke Miller
President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he has canceled segments of the Republican National Convention scheduled for Florida next month, citing a "flare-up" of the coronavirus. Convention events will still be held in North Carolina.
"To have a big convention is not the right time," Trump said of Jacksonville.
Trump moved parts of the GOP convention to Florida last month amid a dispute with North Carolina's Democratic leaders over holding an event indoors with maskless supporters. But those plans were steadily scaled back as virus cases spiked in Florida and much of the country over the last month.
A small subset of GOP delegates will still gather in Charlotte, North Carolina, to formally renominate Trump on Aug. 24. Trump said he would deliver an acceptance speech in an alternate form.
Republican Tom Emmer abruptly abandoned his bid to become House speaker, withdrawing hours after winning the internal party nomination once it became clear he would not have enough support from GOP colleagues for the gavel.
Eighty-five-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz spoke of a “hell that we never knew before and never thought we would experience” as she described the harrowing Oct. 7 assault on her kibbutz by Hamas militants and the terror of being taken hostage into the Gaza Strip.
Jenna Ellis, an attorney and prominent conservative media figure, reached a deal with prosecutors Tuesday and pleaded guilty to a reduced charge over efforts to overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia.
U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez returns to court Monday to enter an expected not guilty plea to a conspiracy charge alleging he acted as an agent of the Egyptian government when he chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Hamas militants on Friday freed two Americans -- a mother and her teenage daughter who had been held hostage in Gaza since militants rampaged through Israel two weeks ago, the Israeli government said.
