CHICAGO — The Ukrainian Village, a neighborhood nestled only a mile north and slight jog west of the United Center, where Democrats are convening this week, is the heart of the Ukrainian diaspora in Chicago — a compact enclave of faith, hope, resilience, anxiety, fear and a notably transformed political sensibility shaped by old memories and the harsh reality of the Russian invasion of the homeland.

Reminders of that war are everywhere here, more than 5,000 miles from the battlefield. It might be the other war, the largely forgotten war, in much of America and the world, overshadowed by the bloody events in Gaza that are drawing all the noise and protest now, but to the people of Ukrainian Village, it is never far from mind.

The war in Ukraine torments Oksana Ambroz, a fashion designer whose bitter feelings about Russia go back to stories about her father. At age 2, starved and weakened by the Holodomor, the Soviet-caused famine of 1932, he was thrown into a mass trench by Russian soldiers and left to die before his horrified mother pulled him to safety. The war haunts Slava Pillyuyko, a psychiatrist who each night calls his friends and family in the Ukrainian city of Khmelnytskyi, trying to help them deal with the trauma of constant shelling. If they drink, he said, they now drink more; if they had insomnia before, they now sleep even less, never knowing whether the next day will be their last.

Walk the streets of the Ukrainian Village and feel the sorrow of a distant war. “Stop Putin, Stop War” posters in storefront windows. Flower-bedecked memorial crosses in churchyards. Blue and yellow flags fluttering in the late summer breeze. Photo exhibits of wounded soldiers and uprooted families in the museum. Pockets of newly arrived refugees huddling outside a building that offers relocation assistance. And endless discussions in English and Ukrainian, about the war — what is happening from Kursk to Kyiv, what might happen next, and what the 2024 presidential tickets are doing and saying about it all.

Despair here over Republican diffidence, or outright dismissal, of Ukrainian pleas for support in fighting Russian aggression has rearranged the political landscape. “This area used to be totally Republican,” said Marta Farion, vice president of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, who lives across the street from the Sts. Volodymyr and Olha Ukrainian Catholic Church and has visited Ukraine 55 times. The dominant viewpoint was conservative and staunchly anti-communist. “Ronald Reagan was revered here,” she said. “When he said ‘Tear down this wall!’ he was speaking for all of us who suffered under the Soviets.”

But even as Ukrainian Villagers remain culturally conservative and generally receptive to GOP positions on abortion and crime, they saw a vast distance between the old party of Reagan and the party that President Donald Trump has refashioned as more isolationist.

Many expressed dismay over Trump’s cozy relationship with Vladimir Putin and the way as Trump seemed to trust the autocrat’s propaganda more than the findings of U.S. intelligence services. They blamed recalcitrant Republicans in the House for delaying U.S. aid that Ukraine desperately needed. “Each of those six months added hundreds more killed,” Pillyuyko lamented. And then came Trump’s new running mate, JD Vance, who once was quoted as saying, “I got to be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.”

If Trump returns to the White House, Farion said, she feared that “he will sell Ukraine down the pike. He says he will end the war right away, but that only means he will make a deal with Putin. We know he is going to make a deal with Putin. … The future of Ukraine is on the line in this election.”

Farion spoke while seated at a round table in the basement cafeteria of Sts. Volodymyr and Olha after a Sunday service, not far from a spread of Ukrainian pastries. Dozens of parishioners were drinking coffee and eating desserts at nearby tables. Seated next to Farion was Chrystya Wereszczak, vice chair of the church council, who nodded her head in agreement, then said, “It will be the biggest desecration in U.S. history of the defense of freedom.”

Wereszczak was quick to add that the neighborhood still had many Republicans who came to the party because of its opposition to abortion and strong history of anti-communism. “But a lot say either they’re not going to vote or not vote for Trump.” Illinois has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1992 and is expected to continue its streak this fall.

At the Ukrainian National Museum across the street from the church, Ambroz and Pillyuyko work as volunteer tour guides. Ambroz, who arrived in America penniless in 1997 and built her own design company from scratch, had just returned from a month’s visit to see her son and other relatives in Kyiv. She came away with a renewed sense of hope and deep admiration for her people. “I am so proud of Ukrainians as humans, and the very heroic way they’ve endured, these little acts that reveal the most about them.”

She talked about how the elevators in her nephew’s apartment had little boxes on the floor filled with water and crackers and anxiety medications in case people were trapped in them when Kyiv officials felt the need to turn the electricity off, which happened almost every day. When it did, she would walk up the 19 floors to the apartment just like everyone else. And she recalled the time when a missile exploded between two nearby buildings and blew out all the windows of the first-floor coffee shop. “It happened at 3 in the morning, and by 9, the people had cleaned out all the glass and replaced it with plastic so the shop could open again. Little things like that, acts of resilience every day.”

When Ambroz returned to the United States, she fell back into the habit of searching for news about Ukraine at all hours. “I look before I go to bed at night. I wake up at 3 to try to get the latest. And then I look again when I wake up for good at 7. I can never get enough information.”

Generations of mistreatment shaped her antipathy toward Russia, she said. Her grandfather, an economist, spent eight years in a Soviet prison. Other relatives on her mother’s side disappeared into Siberia and were never heard from again. This family history shaped her politics. She became an American citizen 15 years ago and has voted in every election since. “This country has always supported freedom and the soldiers of Ukraine are fighting for freedom,” Ambroz said. “I will vote for whoever will fight for freedom.”

Pillyuyko, the psychiatrist, who was also a national billiards champion in Ukraine, arrived in Chicago in 2022, only five days before the war started. His take on American politics was subtle and complicated. He said he was reluctant to criticize Trump and Vance because he was not yet a U.S. citizen, but added, “If they are elected, it will be more difficult.” He appreciated the support that President Joe Biden has given his homeland, fearing that without it, the death toll would be in the millions, then added, “But none of this might have happened if Obama had responded more strongly when Putin seized Crimea 10 years ago, so it’s not perfect on any side. But Ukrainians are grateful to the world anyway. Putin said he’d have Kyiv in three days. It’s now getting near three years.”

From his home in Chicago, after hearing harrowing stories in his phone calls to Ukraine, he tries to keep his mood in balance by listening to progressive rock, especially Jethro Tull and Genesis, and searching for humor on social media. When he finds something good, he sends it back home. “I need it. They need it. We all need it,” he said.

CHICAGO — In 2016 Hillary Clinton addressed the Democratic National Convention as the barrier-busting standard-bearer — the presidential nominee who many supporters felt was on track to shatter what she has called “that highest, hardest glass ceiling.”

On Monday night, Clinton will return to the convention stage in a different role — the candidate who lost to Donald Trump eight years ago and is now emblematic of a unrealized goal suddenly resurrected with the nomination of Vice President Kamala Harris. It’s a bittersweet moment for many Democrats, who are eager to “finish the job,” as some of them put it this week.

“It’s about the unfinished business of electing a woman president,” said former Clinton adviser Mini Timmaraju, who leads a national abortion rights group. She said Clinton alums grew emotional at a reception the other night in Chicago and noted that some are playing leading roles in the effort to get Harris elected president.

Along with Clinton, the first night of the convention will feature President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden in the spotlight. Clinton’s speech will cap decades of appearances at Democratic conventions, where she has worn many hats — speaking as first lady when Bill Clinton was president in 1996, as a rising candidate herself in 2000, as a vanquished presidential contender in 2008, as the nominee in 2016 and as a party elder in 2020.

Now she is playing a supporting role for another woman going up against Trump. She and her husband endorsed Harris almost immediately after Biden dropped out of the 2024 race. Harris’s sudden ascent to the top of the Democratic ticket has intensified some parallels to 2016, even as Harris puts less emphasis on her gender than Clinton did.

“She’s got a lot of wisdom that can be imparted,” Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) said of Clinton, “and I’m sure she’s excited to see another woman nominated.” Dingell said she is also happy to see a woman become the presidential nominee but added: “I’m looking forward to the day that we stop looking at someone’s gender.”

Clinton’s 2016 loss to Trump was a stinging blow for many Democrats, who looked at some pre-election polls with confidence and felt she was poised for victory. Since then, she has occupied a complicated place in the party — a respected figure but one associated with a painful moment that set off plenty of debate about Democrats’ strategy and direction, as well as the influence of sexism in politics. Some Democrats viewed Clinton as a political albatross and worked to distance themselves from her in subsequent elections.

She remains a polarizing figure and a villain for Republicans. As doubts mounted this summer about Biden’s ability to lead the ticket, Trump advisers gleefully promoted the long-shot idea that Clinton could take his place.

Clinton has been a fixture of Democratic conventions since the 1990s. A video clip of her clapping along enthusiastically to the “Macarena” at the 1996 convention — when she was first lady — continues to amuse the internet and resurfaced on social media ahead of her latest convention appearance.

In multiple speeches, she has nodded to the trailblazing nature of her political career. In 2008 — as the vanquished primary rival unifying behind Barack Obama — she noted, “My mother was born before women could vote,” and said, “My daughter got to vote for her mother for president.” In 2016, she declared, “We just put the biggest crack in that glass ceiling yet.”

In a memoir after Trump’s victory in 2016, Clinton acknowledged making mistakes but also blamed factors beyond her control, said she felt she was “shivved” and suggested she could not explain many voters’ distaste for her.

“Why am I seen as such a divisive figure and, say, Joe Biden and John Kerry aren’t?” she wrote. “They’ve cast votes of all kinds, including some they regret, just like me? What makes me such a lightning rod for fury? I’m really asking. I’m at a loss.”

Trump launched deeply personal attacks against Clinton, at times zeroing in on her gender and accusing her of playing the “woman’s card” in her career; the GOP nominee has taken a similar tone with Harris, mocking her name, laugh and intelligence and calling her weak.

In 2020, Clinton reemerged to speak at the Democratic convention as Biden challenged Trump. She focused on promoting Biden’s and then-vice-presidential pick Harris’s records over Trump’s and said little about her gutting loss four years earlier.

She briefly flicked at Harris’s historic role as the first Black and Indian American woman on a major-party presidential ticket.

“Tonight I am thinking of the girls and boys who see themselves in America’s future because of Kamala Harris — a Black woman, the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, and our nominee for vice president,” Clinton said. “This is our country’s story: breaking down barriers and expanding the circle of possibility.”

Timmaraju, president of Reproductive Freedom for All and former national women’s vote director for Clinton’s campaign, argued that Clinton helped awaken a “sleeping giant of American women’s political power” that has been on stark display since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

She said her 79-year-old mother was so enthusiastic about Clinton that she cast a write-in vote for her in the 2008 general election. Now she is eager to hear from Clinton. For some women in her mother’s generation who weren’t sure they would ever see a woman president, Timmaraju said, Clinton is a reminder of “the unfinished business of their life.”

YORK, Pa. — Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Monday questioned whether Democrats knew where Vice President Kamala Harris “came from,” reprising a tactic that he has previously used against other Democrats, including former president Barack Obama and women of color in Congress.

Trump also freshly described Harris’s policy positions as a “regulatory jihad,” without explanation, using a loaded Arabic term often translated as holy war. He consistently mispronounced her first name, which her supporters see as demeaning and racist toward Harris, a Black and Indian American woman. At another point, he questioned her upbringing.

“I wonder if they knew where she comes from, where she came from, what her ideology is,” Trump said, referencing Harris’s father, a distinguished Jamaican economist. Harris has said that she was raised primarily by her mother. Donald Harris’s scholarship focuses on international development; Trump misleadingly called him “Marxist,” though it is common for economists to study Karl Marx. Trump made the remarks as part of complaining that Democrats replaced President Joe Biden with Harris on their presidential ticket.

In his comments, Trump echoed his 2019 barb against several Democratic congresswomen of color — Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) and Ayanna Pressley (Mass.) — telling them to “go back” to where they came from. That comment was widely condemned at the time as racist and xenophobic.

Trump rose to prominence in Republican politics more than a decade ago by baselessly questioning Obama’s birthright citizenship, and he has also spread false challenges to Harris’s eligibility to be vice president. Last week, he defined his own task in running against Harris since she took Biden’s place in the race last month as portraying her as “a communist or a socialist or somebody that’s going to destroy our country.”

“Even though she was born in the U.S. to U.S. citizens, the phrase ‘where she comes from’ has been used by Trump to call into question the citizenship status of non-white colleagues,” Jennifer Wingard, an associate professor at the University of Houston who specializes in political rhetoric, wrote in an email. “His yoking the discussion of ‘where she is from’ to her father’s scholarship … Trump is furthering his and the right wing’s idea that those who are not ‘legitimate citizens’ of this country are suspect in not only their presence here, but also their ideals.”

Trump’s continued emphasis on personal insults has dismayed some allies and advisers who have urged him to stick to policy contrasts. Monday’s speech, on a Precision Custom Components factory floor here, was billed as an economic policy address to kick off a week of campaign events opposite the Democratic National Convention. Trump is scheduled to address crime in Michigan on Tuesday, national security in North Carolina on Wednesday and immigration at the Arizona-Mexico border on Thursday.

His economic proposals on Monday were light on specifics. He vowed to halve energy prices, without specifying how he would accomplish that, other than reiterating a promise to expand oil and gas drilling. Domestic production is already at a record high, and prices are set in global markets.

Trump also defended his plans to impose tariffs on foreign goods by mischaracterizing those measures as taxes on foreign countries, when in fact they are paid by American consumers.

He also misrepresented his own economic record and current conditions. Though he claimed that the country was in a “manufacturing recession,” manufacturing employment is higher than it was under Trump, and the United States has added more than 765,000 manufacturing jobs since January 2021. He falsely claimed that he was the first president to raise any federal revenue from import duties on China, when tariffs on China raised between $3 billion and $10 billion annually during the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations, according to Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a Washington-based think tank.

“That is another lie about economic policy,” Posen said.

Trump also falsely alleged that Harris plans to sign “illegal aliens” up for Medicare and Social Security. Undocumented immigrants pay into the programs but do not receive payments from them, meaning they help sustain the programs’ solvency. Harris has not produced plans to extend Medicare and Social Security eligibility to undocumented immigrants.

And Trump repeated the baseless accusation of widespread voter registration by undocumented immigrants, an unsubstantiated claim that he has made since at least 2017 to justify his loss of the popular vote in the previous year’s presidential election.

The visit to Pennsylvania was Trump’s second in a three-day span. On Saturday, he held a rally in Wilkes-Barre. The former president is visiting five battleground states this week, in an effort to retake the narrative from Harris, as Democrats gather in Chicago for their national convention.

During his speech, Trump attacked Harris for changing her position on fracking — a method of extracting natural gas form the earth — calling her a “non-fracker.” Harris’s campaign said she now supports it.

York County is a reliably Republican area. Trump won about 62 percent and 61 percent of the vote here in 2016 and 2020, respectively. The county also supported Mitt Romney in 2012, John McCain in 2008, and George W. Bush in 2004 and 2000. While many parts of Pennsylvania away from Philadelphia and Pittsburgh have been losing population, York and surrounding counties have gained population in the past decade.

Elsewhere in the state on Monday, Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), spoke at a warehouse in northern Philadelphia to deliver his own critique of Harris’s economic proposals.

“She says that on Day 1 she wants to make groceries and homes more affordable for American citizens,” he told a crowd of about 200. “Well, Kamala Harris, where have you been? Because you have been vice president for about 1,300 days. Day 1 was 3½ years ago. You should have been doing your job.”

Vance dismissed recent polls showing a tight race or Harris leading. “I don’t believe the polls when they say that we’re up,” he said. “I don’t believe the polls when they say that we’re tied. I don’t know the polls that say that we’re down.”

LeVine reported from York. Cheeseman reported from Philadelphia. Dan Keating contributed to this report.

CHICAGO — In one of his last major appearances before he leaves office in five months, President Joe Biden formally passed the torch to his vice president, Kamala Harris, as a packed convention hall screamed and chanted in adulation for a prolonged stretch as he took the stage Monday night.

For about five minutes after Biden appeared just before 11:30 p.m. Eastern time, thousands of delegates and supporters cheered for him in a show of thanks for the decades he has served in public office. Convention organizers handed out “We love Joe” signs before the president’s speech, which the crowd held up and chanted in addition to “Thank you, Joe.”

Biden’s daughter, Ashley, introduced him, and he dabbed tears from his eyes as he took the stage and embraced her. First lady Jill Biden, who spoke shortly before her husband, also teared up and appeared visibly emotional throughout the final portion of the evening, including during the sustained standing ovation the president received — along with second gentleman Doug Emhoff and Gwen Walz, wife of Democratic vice-presidential contender Tim Walz.

“I love you all, folks,” Biden said. “And America, I love you.”

Biden opened his speech by rallying the crowd for Harris, in a bittersweet moment that marks the unofficial end of his half-century in politics. He then turned to what he and other Democrats have characterized as the historic nature of his presidency, including multiple pieces of consequential legislation that passed under his leadership — at one point reminding the audience that Harris served as the tiebreaking vote on many of those bills, seeking to prop her up even as he celebrated his own accomplishments.

“Let me ask you: Are you ready to vote for freedom?” Biden asked at the opening of his speech. “Are you ready to vote for democracy and for America? Let me ask you: Are you ready to vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz as president and vice president of the United States?”

Biden’s speech late Monday capped a remarkable two months in American politics, one in which a dismal debate performance pushed many Democrats to question the president’s ability to beat Republican nominee Donald Trump and ended in his stunning decision one month ago to exit the race. Rather than accepting his party’s nomination this week, Biden instead headlined the opening night of a historic convention that will see the Democratic Party nominate the first woman of color to lead its ticket.

While the rest of the week will look ahead to the momentous occasion of nominating Harris, Monday night in many ways was a tribute to the Democratic leaders who paved the way for her.

Biden, who spoke for more than 45 minutes in an energetic and animated speech, took a sort of victory lap over his four years in office and sought to cement his legacy. He also spoke of the work that still lies ahead: supporting Ukraine against its invasion of Russia; securing a cease-fire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas to end the devastating war in Gaza; and bringing home wrongfully detained Americans.

At many points, Biden spoke angrily about the threats he said Trump posed, including to American democracy and international alliances. His speech was frequently interrupted by chants from the audience.

At several points, when enthusiastic delegates chanted “thank you, Joe,” Biden would add: “And thank you, Kamala.”

The president also sought to dispel any notion that he was angry about having to step out of the presidential race when his intention was always to seek a second term.

“You see, it’s been the honor of my lifetime to serve as your president. I love the job, but I love my country more,” Biden said. “And all this talk about how I’m angry [at] all those people who said I should step down — that’s not true.”

At one point, a small group of delegates protesting Biden’s handling of Israel’s war in Gaza sought to stage a demonstration during his speech, holding up a banner that read “stop arming Israel.” But delegates quickly blocked them with “We heart Joe” signs and drowned them out.

Earlier in the evening, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, celebrated the various women who preceded her and Harris, marking the historic nature of Harris’s nomination and the echoes between her role and Harris’s. Eight years ago, it was Clinton who headlined a triumphant Democratic convention and appeared poised to be the nation’s first woman president, only to lose to Trump in a race that devastated the party.

“Afterwards, we refused to give up on America,” Clinton said, speaking of the ensuing years. “We marched, many ran for office, and we kept our eyes on the future. Well, my friends, the future is here.”

She added, “Together we put a lot of cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling. And tonight, we are so close to breaking through once and for all.”

Numerous speakers who appeared before Biden reflected on his presidency and his “selfless” decision in exiting the presidential race to make way for Harris, a younger, more energetic candidate whom most Democrats feel has a better chance of defeating Trump.

Biden had come under unrelenting pressure from Democrats to step aside after his June 27 debate performance against Trump that, for many in his party, renewed questions about his ability to defeat the former president and potentially his fitness for a second term. The president bitterly fought leaders of his party for more than three weeks, insisting he was best positioned to beat Trump, before deciding to drop his reelection bid on July 21.

Clinton also joined the other speakers in expressing gratitude for Biden’s record.

“Let’s salute President Biden,” Clinton said. “He has been democracy’s champion at home and abroad. He brought dignity, decency and confidence back to the White House. And he showed what it means to be a true patriot. Thank you, Joe Biden, for your lifetime of service and leadership.”

Jill Biden took the stage shortly before her husband appeared, citing the times he had comforted grieving people he met on the campaign trail or stopped to encourage a child who suffered from a stutter. Saying Biden knows that America’s greatness comes in part from small acts of kindness, she added, “Kamala Harris knows that, too.”

Harris herself also made a brief surprise appearance early in the proceedings, to a rapturous reception from the crowd.

The vice president emphasized that she wanted to “celebrate our incredible president, Joe Biden.” She added, “Joe, thank you for your historic leadership, your lifetime of service to our nation, and all you will continue to do.”

The first night of the Democratic convention featured a conscious show of traditional patriotism, with American flags on display throughout the United Center and the waving of “USA” signs that were distributed to the thousands of delegates. Some of the speakers were greeted with chants of “USA” as they took the stage, an echo of the recent Olympic Games.

Monday’s speakers also leaned heavily into Trump’s criminal conviction for falsifying business records, seeking to position the race as one between a former prosecutor and a felon. When Clinton noted that Trump would be the first felon to run for president, the crowd began chanting, “Lock him up” — a striking moment for a woman who endured “Lock her up” chants from Trump crowds in the 2016 campaign.

But for all the praise of Biden, many of those celebrating his presidency — when he passed numerous pieces of consequential legislation long sought by Democrats and led the U.S. response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — are the same people who pressured him to leave the race even as he resisted.

Convention organizers have sought to strike a delicate balance between celebrating what many Democrats see as Biden’s historic presidency and his more than 50 years in politics, and maintaining the jubilant energy and excitement that has surrounded Harris’s sudden ascension to the top of the ticket when Biden stepped aside.

While Biden knows his legacy is directly tied to Harris’s ability to beat Trump in November, the rapid enthusiasm that Harris has generated has created a bittersweet mix of emotions for the president, according to people close to the president, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private dynamics.

Biden has made peace with his decision, these associates say, even if he still harbors some resentment toward those who he feels abandoned him when he was convinced he could defeat Trump. The president and his circle believe he was wounded politically not just by his debate performance, but by the ensuing weeks of second-guessing from leaders of his own party.

Toward the end of his speech, Biden promised to be “the best volunteer Harris and Walz have ever seen.” He ended by reflecting on all he had given the country and what it meant to him.

“America, I gave my best to you. I made a lot of mistakes in my career. But I gave my best to you for 50 years,” Biden said. “I’ve been too young to be in the Senate because I wasn’t yet 30, and too old to stay as president. But I hope you know how grateful I am to all of you.”

CHICAGO — Welcome to The Campaign Moment, your guide to the biggest developments in the 2024 election, where the Democratic National Convention so far is largely about Donald Trump.

(Make sure you are subscribed to this newsletter here. You can also hear my analysis weekly on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.)

The big moment

The convention kicked off Monday with President Joe Biden speaking approximately 72 hours earlier than he and we would have expected a month ago. (The new nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, speaks Thursday.)

Former secretary of state and former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton also spoke, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) delivered a barn-burner.

But they weren’t the only stars of the show. So too was Trump, whose name was uttered more than 150 times and who was frequently featured in video packages.

Below are some takeaways from Night 1.

1. Biden’s big send-off

Democrats were pulled in two directions at the end of Monday’s program. On the one hand, they wanted to send Biden off with a moment he could be proud of and a focus on his legacy; on the other, this convention is about the race ahead, and Biden is an unpopular president.

So Biden’s swan song sought to thread the needle between promoting his own record and framing up the 2024 race. Biden went into extensive detail about his proudest accomplishments, while interspersing attacks on Trump and playing up Harris’s contributions. And he sought to downplay any hard feelings about being ushered out of the race.

“Because of you, we’ve had one of the most extraordinary four years of progress ever, period,” Biden said. “When I saw ‘we,’ I mean Kamala and me.”

Biden mentioned Harris’s help in capping insulin at $35 a month and passing a significant gun safety bill. He talked about working on reopening schools and businesses with Harris. He noted she cast a key tie-breaking vote in the Senate on prescription drugs.

The speech was otherwise a mostly standard-issue campaign address lined with Biden’s accomplishments. But the crowd clearly made an effort to show Biden gratitude.

Biden entered the stage while dabbing at his eyes after being introduced by his daughter, Ashley Biden. The crowd applauded for minutes, chanting “Thank you, Joe.”

And Biden didn’t shy away from the elephant in the room.

“I love the job, but I love my country more,” Biden said, before adding: “And all this talk about how I’m angry at all those people who said I should step down, that’s not true. I love my country more. And we need to preserve our democracy in 2024.”

Perhaps the biggest applause line came near the end.

“America, America, I gave my best to you,” Biden said. “I made a lot of mistakes in my career. But I gave my best to you for 50 years.”

2. Ocasio-Cortez’s coming out party

If there’s to be a lasting moment from a politician in Monday’s program — beyond Biden’s de facto farewell after a lifetime in politics — it’s likely to be Ocasio-Cortez’s rousing speech.

Ocasio-Cortez cast Trump as no ally of working people, saying he would “sell this country for a dollar if it meant lining his own pockets and greasing the palms of his Wall Street friends.”

She targeted Republicans who like to attack her for being a former bartender. She said she would be happy to go back to that occupation “any day of the week, because there is nothing wrong with working for a living.”

The crowd absolutely ate it up. It seemed to be the moment that Ocasio-Cortez completed her journey from left-wing “Squad” provocateur — and a thorn in the side to her party’s leaders in the past — to being a bona fide Democratic establishment star.

It wouldn’t be surprising to see clips of the speech for years to come.

3. Abortion and covid feature prominently

Perhaps the two most notable attacks on Trump on Monday night involved abortion and the coronavirus.

The program in primetime featured three women who faced arduous circumstances related to abortion. One was a rape survivor whose stepfather impregnated her when she was 12; another waited three days for an abortion for a nonviable pregnancy; another was turned away from emergency rooms despite miscarrying. The latter two stories involved severe pain.

The rape survivor, Hadley Duvall, noted Trump has called the patchwork of state abortion laws “a beautiful thing.”

“What is so beautiful about a child having to carry her parent’s child?” Duvall said.

Abortion bans are a major liability for the GOP right now. Trump has sought to emphasize states’ rights and leave it at that. But the program emphasized how far red states have taken things after Trump-nominated justices overturned Roe v. Wade.

(Duvall’s pregnancy pre-dated the end of Roe, but Kentucky doesn’t currently have a rape exception in its abortion ban.)

The pandemic was a more surprising focus — but also one with a personal touch. Speakers spoke about Trump’s lack of leadership, his efforts to downplay the threat and his conspiracy theories. And more than one speaker spoke from the heart as the relative of someone who died.

Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) mentioned the deaths of his health-care-worker mother and stepfather and added, “When Donald Trump and his MAGA extremists like Marjorie Taylor Greene downplayed the horror of the pandemic, it should make us all furious.”

An emotional Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan (D) spoke of her brother’s death and said, “Our communities were suffering. Our economy was struggling. And Donald Trump was playing games. Our country was brought to the brink by his failure to respond.”

Covid was a significant liability for Trump when he left office, with a poll showing Americans disapproved of his handling of it 63 percent to 34 percent.

4. Few signs of major divisions so far

The move from Biden to Harris has been about as seamless as Democrats could have hoped, and enthusiasm is off the charts. But a big question this week is whether any divisions might emerge in the bright spotlight.

So far, there’s little sign of that — even aside from Biden’s speech.

Pro-Palestinian protests near the convention loom, particularly with organizers suggesting tens of thousands would show up. But the actual turnout thus far appears quite a bit lower.

A small group of the protesters briefly broke away from a planned march Monday, creating a tense standoff with police. Some apparently uncommitted delegates unfurled a banner during Biden’s speech. And Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), meanwhile, suggested Harris should be unafraid to differentiate herself from Biden’s long-standing pro-Israel stance.

There is also some question about whether there might be any hard feelings about the very public effort to nudge Biden aside.

A leader of that effort, former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), had some blunt comments for anyone looking backward. She said on CNN on Monday that if people are upset, “I’m sorry for them. But the country is very happy … I don’t know who they are, but, you know, that’s their problem, not mine.”

The Democratic Party is indeed very happy. And polls suggest few harbor ill feelings about the switch. A poll shortly after Biden dropped out showed just 4 percent of Democrats strongly opposed it.

5. An attack is born: “Trump’s a scab”

Trump has sought to appeal to labor unions, even featuring Teamsters President Sean O’Brien prominently at the Republican National Convention last month.

But a comment Trump made last week on the subject led to one of the biggest rallying cries Monday night. And it would seem likely to feature plenty moving forward.

During an X event last week, Trump praised Elon Musk for firing striking workers. The comment drew O’Brien (who hadn’t endorsed Trump despite his speaking slot) to accuse Trump of “economic terrorism.”

United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain spoke Monday night and unveiled a red t-shirt that read, “Trump is a scab. Vote Harris.” The crowd responded by lustily chanting, “Trump’s a scab! Trump’s a scab!”

Ocasio-Cortez spoke right after Fain and called Trump “a two-bit union buster.”

Labor union members have drifted somewhat toward Trump, making Trump’s comment low-hanging fruit for Democrats.

Take a moment to read:

• “FBI concludes Iran tried to hack campaigns of Trump, Biden-Harris” (Washington Post)
• “With false ‘coup’ claims, Trump primes supporters to challenge a Harris win” (Washington Post)
• “Harris holds slight national lead over Trump, Post-ABC-Ipsos poll finds” (Washington Post)
• “Trump campaign attempts to reset with candidate who sometimes has his own plans” (Washington Post)
• “Trump’s ‘the media fakes poll results’ attack makes no sense” (Washington Post)
• “How Democrats Reversed the Script on the GOP” (Politico)
• “Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris: Inside Their Quietly Close Bond” (New York Times)

The first night of the 2024 Democratic National Convention featured many attacks on former president Donald Trump, some of which quoted him out of context. Here’s a roundup of a dozen claims that caught our attention, in the order in which they were made.

As is our practice, we do not award Pinocchios for a roundup of statements made during convention events.

“We tried to expand Social Security and Medicare. Donald Trump tried to cut them year after year after year.”

—Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-Ill.)

This is mostly false. Earlier on this first day of the convention, we awarded the Harris-Walz campaign Three Pinocchios for a version of this claim.

On Medicare, virtually all anticipated savings sought by Trump would have been wrung from health providers, not Medicare beneficiaries, as a way of holding down costs and improving the solvency of the old-age health program. Trump, in fact, borrowed many proposals from Barack Obama, who had failed to get them through Congress.

Marc Goldwein, senior vice president at the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which seeks to lower the budget deficit, closely studied the Trump proposals each year.

“The basic argument here is quite ridiculous,” he said of the Harris-Walz campaign tweet. Goldwein noted that the Inflation Reduction Act, in which Harris cast the tiebreaking vote for passage, also reduced health-care costs for Medicare, such as through inflation caps. “By the same logic, you could say Joe Biden cut Medicare.”

As for Social Security, Trump kept his promise not to touch retirement benefits, bucking longtime efforts by Republicans to raise the retirement age. But Trump did seek, without success, to reduce spending for Social Security Disability Insurance as well as Supplemental Security Income, which is administered by the Social Security Administration.

Goldwein said that the reductions generally were intended to make the programs more efficient, such as eliminating double payments of both unemployment insurance and disability (also sought by Obama). He also said the proposals were relatively small.

Trump has insisted he will not cut benefits for Medicare or Social Security if he is elected president again.

“He [Trump] told us to inject bleach into our bodies.”

—Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.)

This is exaggerated. Trump did not say people should inject bleach into their bodies. Instead, at a pandemic briefing in 2020, he spoke confusingly of an “injection inside” of lungs with a disinfectant. He made the remarks after an aide presented a study showing how bleach could kill the virus when it remained on surfaces. Trump later claimed he was speaking “sarcastically,” though he seemed serious at the time.

Readers can judge for themselves. Here are his full remarks on April 23 that year: “I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that, so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me.”

“When Donald Trump was president, corporate America ran wild. Donald Trump did not bring back the auto industry. When Donald Trump was president, auto plants closed. Trump did nothing.”

—Shawn Fain, United Auto Workers president

This is exaggerated. Trump often falsely bragged that before he became president, no new auto plants had been built for decades, but there were some new plants built during his presidency. Until the pandemic, Trump’s overall record on auto industry jobs was pretty good. From February 2017 to February 2020, just before the pandemic crashed the U.S. economy, Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows a gain of 34,100 auto manufacturing jobs and 36,400 auto retail jobs — for a total of more than 70,000 jobs in three years.

“She [Kamala Harris] won’t be sending love letters to dictators.”

—Former secretary of state and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton

There is no evidence that Trump sent such letters. Clinton is making a bit of a leap to suggest that Trump has written “love letters” to dictators.

Clinton appears to be referring to a 2018 comment from Trump about North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un: “We fell in love, okay? No, really, he wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”

That’s certainly an unusual statement, but he’s referring to letters written by Kim. We do not know what Trump wrote to Kim — or other dictators, for that matter.

Former national security adviser John Bolton, in his tell-all memoir, “The Room Where It Happened,” described one of Kim’s letters as “pure puffery, written probably by some clerk in North Korea’s agitprop bureau, but Trump loved it.” After another such letter, Trump even mused that he wanted to invite Kim to the White House — what Bolton called a “potential disaster of enormous magnitude.”

“It has to be some form of punishment for the woman. Yeah, there has to be some form.”

—Trump, quoted in a DNC video

Trump quickly walked back this statement. This March 3, 2016, quote from Trump pops up in the video as a woman, Amanda Zurawski, describes how she was not able to seek an abortion in Texas after her water broke early and her pregnancy was no longer viable. “I was punished for three days, having to wait for either my baby to die or me to die, or both. I was stuck in this horrific hell of both, wanting to hear her heartbeat and also hoping I wouldn’t,” Zurawski said.

The juxtaposition might leave the impression that Trump still believes this. But he walked back the statement the same day he made it in a town hall.

“If Congress were to pass legislation making abortion illegal and the federal courts upheld this legislation, or any state were permitted to ban abortion under state and federal law, the doctor or any other person performing this illegal act upon a woman would be held legally responsible, not the woman,” Trump said in a statement. “The woman is a victim in this case as is the life in her womb.”

“JD Vance says women should stay in violent marriages, and that pregnancies resulting from rape are simply inconvenient.”

—Kentucky governor Andy Beshear

Vance has said his comments have been twisted by Democrats. Here they are in context so readers can make their own judgment.

Violent marriages. In a 2021 event Vance participated in at Pacifica Christian High School in California, concerning his book “Hillbilly Elegy,” the moderator asked Vance: “What is causing one generation to give up on fatherhood when the other one was so doggedly determined to stick it out even in tough times?”

Vance praised his grandparents, who raised him, for staying together, even though his grandmother once poured lighter fluid on his grandfather and struck a match after he came home drunk, he wrote in his book.

Vance said: “This is one of the great tricks that I think the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace, which is the idea that like, ‘Well, OK, these marriages were fundamentally, you know, they were maybe even violent, but certainly they were unhappy. And so getting rid of them and making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear, that’s going to make people happier in the long term.’ And maybe it worked out for the moms and dads, though I’m skeptical. But it really didn’t work out for the kids of those marriages.”

Inconvenience. In a 2021 interview Vance was asked whether laws should allow women to get abortions if they were victims of rape or incest.

“My view on this has been very clear and I think the question betrays a certain presumption that is wrong,” Vance replied. “It’s not whether a woman should be forced to bring a child to term, it’s whether a child should be allowed to live, even though the circumstances of that child’s birth are somehow inconvenient or a problem to the society. The question really, to me, is about the baby.”

“I ran for president in 2020 because of what I saw in Charlottesville in August of 2017 … When the president was asked what he thought had happened, Donald Trump said, and I quote, ‘there are very fine people on both sides.’ My God, that’s what he said. That is what he said and what he meant.”

—President Joe Biden

Trump’s meaning is in dispute. The march on Charlottesville by white supremacists in August 2017 — and President Trump’s response to it — was a central event of his presidency. Over the course of several days, Trump made a number of contradictory remarks, permitting both his supporters and foes to create their own version of what happened.

Biden has frequently claimed that Trump said the white supremacists were “very fine people.” But the reality is more complicated. Trump was initially criticized for not speaking more forcefully against the white nationalists on the day of the clashes, Aug. 12. Then, in an Aug. 14 statement, Trump actually condemned right-wing hate groups — “those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.”

But Trump muddied the waters on Aug. 15, a day later, by also saying: “You had people — and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists — because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists.” It was in this news conference that he said: “You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.”

Trump added: “There were people in that rally — and I looked the night before — if you look, there were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee. I’m sure in that group there were some bad ones.”

The problem for Trump is that there was no evidence of anyone other than neo-Nazis and white supremacists in the Friday night rally on Aug. 11. He asserted there were people who were not alt-right who were “very quietly” protesting the removal of Lee’s statue.

It’s possible Trump became confused and was really referring to the Saturday rallies. But that’s also wrong. A Fact Checker examination of videos and testimony about the Saturday rallies found that there were white supremacists, there were counterprotesters — and there were heavily armed anti-government militias who showed up on Saturday.

The evidence shows there were no quiet protesters against removing the statue that weekend.

“[We’re] removing every lead pipe from schools and homes so every child can drink clean water.”

—Biden

This is exaggerated. Biden secured $15 billion through the bipartisan infrastructure law for lead pipe replacement. But the Environmental Protection Agency has projected that replacing the nearly 10 million lead pipes that supply U.S. homes with drinking water could cost at least $45 billion.

“More children in America are killed by a gunshot than any other cause in the United States — more die from a bullet than cancer, accidents or anything else in the United States of America.”

—Biden

This is not quite right. Biden is using a statistic on gun deaths of “children and teens,” meaning it includes deaths of 18- and 19-year-olds, who are legally considered adults in most states. When you focus only on children — 17 and younger — motor vehicle deaths (broadly defined) still rank No. 1, as they have for six decades, though the gap is rapidly closing. Deaths of children from gun violence have increased about 50 percent from 2019 to 2021, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data shows.

“We know from his own chief of staff, four-star General John Kelly, that Trump while in Europe would not go to the gravesites in France of the brave service members who gave their lives in this country, he called them ‘suckers and losers.’ ”

—Biden

Kelly did not exactly say this. Trump, on repeated occasions, had vehemently denied this story. In 2023, however, John F. Kelly, Trump’s White House chief of staff in 2018 — who had previously not commented on the controversy — issued a statement to CNN that Trump “rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.”

Note that Kelly’s statement is carefully worded and does not directly say Trump refused to visit the graves because he thought they were losers, as Biden claimed. He says Trump thinks war dead are losers and he did not want to go to the cemetery. Both could be true — but not connected.

“We have a thousand billionaires in America. You know what is their average tax rate they pay? 8.2 percent.”

—Biden

Biden is comparing apples and oranges. We’ve given the president two Pinocchios for this claim.

The “lower tax rate” refers to a 2021 White House study concluding that the 400 wealthiest taxpayers paid an effective tax rate of 8 percent. But that estimate included unrealized gains in the income calculation. That’s not how the tax laws work. People are taxed on capital gains when they sell their stocks or other assets. So this is only a figure for a hypothetical tax system.

According to IRS data on the top 0.001 percent — 1,475 taxpayers with at least $77 million in adjusted gross income in 2020 — the average tax rate was 23.7 percent. The top 1 percent of taxpayers (income of at least $548,000) paid nearly 26 percent.

“Donald Trump says he will refuse to accept the election result if he loses again … He’s probably seeing a bloodbath if he loses — in his words.”

—Biden

Trump is being quoted out of context. Biden suggests Trump said there would be a “bloodbath” if he lost the election. But in a March 16 rally, Trump used the word when talking about the impact of Chinese electric vehicles on the U.S. auto industry.

“China now is building a couple of massive plants where they’re going to build the cars in Mexico and think, they think, that they’re going to sell those cars into the United States with no tax at the border,” Trump said. “We’re going to put a 100 percent tariff on every single car that comes across the line, and you’re not going to be able to sell those cars. If I get elected. Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath, for the whole — that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country. That’ll be the least of it. But they’re not going to sell those cars.”

The Trump campaign noted that one of the definitions of “bloodbath,” in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is “a major economic disaster.” It also means “a notably fierce, violent, or destructive contest or struggle.”

Trump, of course, frequently quotes his opponents out of context and unfairly twists their words.

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CHICAGO — President Joe Biden, for several moments, couldn’t speak. At first, it was because he was dabbing his eyes. Then, it was because the cheers were so sustained.

“Thank you,” he said nearly two dozen times, unsuccessfully trying to begin his speech amid a sea of “We love Joe” signs.

His wife, first lady Jill Biden, kept crying. His daughter, Ashley, dabbed her eyes. His son, Hunter, looked on from backstage. The crowd was electrified, eager for a cathartic moment after a weeks-long barrage of can-you-believe-this moments. Biden looked out at his family, who have been a backbone of his career and sounding board for the most difficult decisions of his political life.

“My dad used to have an expression,” he said. “He’d say, ‘Joey, family is the beginning, the middle and the end.’”

Biden has played many roles over his long career. He was introduced as the “young fella” in his 1988 presidential campaign. He was the foreign policy statesman during the eight years he served as vice president. And he was the elder wise man during his 2020 presidential campaign.

On Monday night, as he took the stage for his 13th Democratic National Convention, he was the torch passer. He tried to occupy this new role, one that required a recognition that his time as the party’s chief standard-bearer was nearing an end. He spoke to a crowd that Democrats compared to those of 1960 and 2008, but with the recognition that the catalyst was not him but the new optimism and joy that have overtaken the party since he stepped aside and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris.

For much of Biden’s presidency, Harris has been the understudy. As vice president, she is often in the background, never wanting to appear to overshadow the principal.

That relationship has been shifting for weeks now, but never more clearly than when Harris took the stage early Monday evening. She urged the crowd — her crowd, at her convention — to start the week by paying homage to the president.

“I want to kick us off by celebrating our incredible president, Joe Biden, who will be speaking later tonight,” she said. “Joe, thank you for your historic leadership, for your lifetime of service to our nation and for all you will continue to do. We are forever grateful to you. Thank you, Joe.”

“Thank you, Joe Biden, for your leadership,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said shortly after.

“Let’s salute President Joe Biden,” Hillary Clinton said. “He has been democracy’s champion at home and abroad.”

As the evening switched to focus on Biden, his family was a constant presence. Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) quoted Biden’s mother (“You’re defined by your courage and redeemed by your loyalty”), talked about Biden’s record, and thanked Jill Biden as the crowd held aloft green signs that read, “JILL.”

His daughter Ashley introduced him with tales of how he “is the OG girl dad” and how he remains her best friend.

But the program dragged on so long that Biden’s remarks fell outside of prime-time television coverage on the East Coast. He didn’t take the stage until 11:25 p.m. Eastern time.

Chants of “Thank you Joe! Thank you Joe!” broke out throughout the night, and resumed as he took the stage. At one point, television cameras pointed toward Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker who played a critical role in signaling that Biden should drop out of the race, as she chanted the words. The two longtime allies haven’t spoken in weeks, and Pelosi has publicly expressed worry that their relationship may be irreparably damaged.

At one point, Biden reflected on the reports of divisions and sought to bat them down. “It’s been the honor of my lifetime to serve as your president,” he said. “I love the job, but I love my country more. … And all this talk about how I’m angry at all those people who said I should step down — that’s not true.”

Biden has often used public speaking to mark major moments in his life. He has used speeches not only to outline policy or ask for votes, but also to express grief or vent his emotions. He prepared for Monday’s speech as he had for most others, gathering several senior advisers — in this case longtime adviser Mike Donilon and speechwriter Vinay Reddy — and bouncing ideas around with historian Jon Meacham. Several hours before the speech, he walked across the convention stage. Asked if it was bittersweet for him, he responded, “It’s a memorable moment.”

A reporter asked if he was ready to pass the torch.

“I am,” he said.

But rarely has he faced a moment like the one he saw Monday night.

The crowd loved him. Some loved him for his career as a top Democrat and as party standard-bearer. Some also loved him for making the decision to step aside.

His family, though, loved him for being a father, a husband, and a grandfather. Biden has often idolized, and sought to emulate, the Kennedys. For much of his career he thought that his eldest, Beau, would succeed him. He thought Beau would be the one who would be president, the one who would carry the political banner for the family.

After Beau’s death in May 2015, the patriarch sought to live up to his late son’s wish that he stay engaged and keep his purpose in life. That initially meant writing books and giving speeches. It eventually meant launching a presidential campaign in 2019, his third attempt to win the nation’s highest office.

Jill Biden, during her remarks, pointed to her husband’s moments of humility, and reflected on the moment a few weeks ago when he ended his reelection bid.

“I saw him dig deep into his soul and decide to no longer seek reelection and endorse Kamala Harris,” she said. “With faith and conviction, Joe knows that our nation’s strength doesn’t come from intimidation or cruelty. It comes from the small acts of kindness that heal deep wounds.”

In the Biden family, Beau Biden’s memory is not far away. And Jill Biden invoked him and the friendship he forged with Harris.

“Our son, Beau, first worked with Kamala when he was attorney general of Delaware,” she said. “He told me at the dinner table one night. Mom, she’s special. Someone to keep your eye on. And he was right.”

Ashley Biden also mentioned Beau, and how they recovered from the devastating loss.

“Dad knows that family is everything. When Hunter and I lost our brother Beau to cancer in 2015, the grief and the pain felt like it might never end,” she said. “Dad had the capacity to step out of his own pain and absorb ours. And I know that Beau is here with us tonight as he is always with us.”

As Biden got to the end of his speech, he ended where he began, his eyes near tears.

“I made a lot of mistakes in my career. But I gave my best to you for 50 years,” he said. “Like many of you, I give my heart and soul to our nation.”

And he grew wistful of the circumstances that have changed over the past few weeks.

“I’ve either been too young to be in the Senate because I wasn’t 30 yet or too old to stay as president,” he said. “But I hope you know how grateful I am to all of you.”

As he concluded, his family joined him onstage and he soaked up the moment. Harris joined him in a long embrace.

The convention will continue on Tuesday, with remarks from former president Barack Obama, and on Wednesday, with the vice-presidential acceptance speech from Tim Walz. Thursday will be marked by Kamala Harris’s acceptance speech.

But Biden will be long gone. After his speech on Monday night, he was scheduled to board Air Force One to start two weeks of vacation in California and at his home in Rehoboth Beach, Del. His family will join him.