AP News in Brief at 11:04 p.m. EDT

Donald Trump is feted by his former rivals in a show of Republican unity after rally shooting

MILWAUKEE (AP) — Donald Trump was celebrated Tuesday at the Republican National Convention by former rivals who just months ago leveled harsh critiques about him, a show of unity that contrasts with the divisions increasingly ripping through the Democratic Party.

Nikki Haley, the former U.N. ambassador who was Trump’s final challenger in the GOP primary, directly addressed her supporters after taking the stage to a mix of cheers and boos.

“My message to them is simple: You don’t have to agree with Trump 100% of the time to vote for him,” Haley said.

She was followed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a onetime Trump ally turned primary rival who has worked to rebuild his relationship with the former president since dropping out of the primary.

“Donald Trump has been demonized. He’s been sued. He’s been prosecuted. And he nearly lost his life,” DeSantis told the crowd. “We cannot let him down. And we cannot let America down.”

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Unity at the RNC, knocks on Trump’s prosecutions and Senate politics: Takeaways from day 2

MILWAUKEE (AP) — The Republican National Convention marched into its second day Tuesday, showcasing classic GOP themes like border security and public safety that have become the centerpieces of former President Donald Trump’s campaign.

With Trump’s primary rivals speaking, it was also an occasion for the GOP to demonstrate its unity, a sharp contrast to the Democratic party’s mounting concerns over the viability of President Joe Biden.

Here are some takeaways from the convention’s second day.

Donald Trump isn’t known for easily moving past a grudge. He was so frustrated that some of his fellow Republicans dared to challenge his bid for this year’s nomination that he wouldn’t participate in the party’s debates.

But on Tuesday, Trump watched from his box inside the convention hall as as two of his most prominent primary challengers — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley — urged the party to unite behind its nominee.

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Sen. Bob Menendez guilty of taking bribes in cash and gold and acting as Egypt’s foreign agent

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez was convicted of all charges Tuesday in a sweeping corruption trial in which he was accused of accepting bribes of gold and cash from three New Jersey businessmen and acting as an agent for the Egyptian government.

A jury in Manhattan deliberated for parts of three days before finding the Democrat guilty of 16 crimes, including bribery, extortion, honest services fraud, obstruction of justice and conspiracy.

Prosecutor said he abused the power of his office to protect allies from criminal investigations and enrich associates, including his wife, through acts that included meeting with Egyptian intelligence officials and softening his position toward that country as he speeded its access to millions of dollars in U.S. military aid.

Menendez, 70, looked toward the jury at times and appeared to mark a document in front of him as the verdict was read. Afterward, he sat resting his chin against his closed hands, elbows on the table. He vowed to appeal as he left the courthouse.

“I have never violated my public oath. I have never been anything but a patriot of my country and for my country. I have never, ever been a foreign agent,” Menendez said before a collection of microphones before walking briskly to a waiting car.

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Out-of-state officers shot and killed a man wielding two knives blocks away from the RNC, police say

MILWAUKEE (AP) — Ohio police officers in Wisconsin for the Republican National Convention shot and killed a man who was wielding two knives near the convention, Milwaukee’s police chief said Tuesday.

Five members of the Columbus, Ohio, police department fired on the man, who had a knife in each hand, refused police commands and charged at an unarmed man before police fired, Milwaukee Chief Jeffrey Norman said at a news conference. Two knives were recovered from the scene, the chief said.

Police released body camera footage that showed officers on bikes talking before one of them says, “He’s got a knife.”

Several officers then yell “Drop the knife!” as they run toward two men standing in a street. When the armed man moved toward the unarmed man, police fired their weapons.

“Someone’s life was in danger,” Norman said. “These officers, who were not from this area, took it upon themselves to act and save someone’s life today.”

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A dam fails after rain, wind, tornadoes pound the Midwest. The Chicago area is cleaning up

CHICAGO (AP) — Hundreds of people in a southern Illinois town were ordered to evacuate Tuesday as water rolled over the top of a dam, just one perilous result of severe weather that raged through the Midwest overnight with relentless rain and tornadoes and hit the Chicago area especially hard.

Hundreds of thousands of people lost power, and even weather forecasters had to briefly scramble for safety. The National Weather Service cited a tornado in Des Moines, Iowa, one in Chicago and at least four others in the Chicago area as storms rolled through Monday afternoon and into the night. Police responded to calls about utility poles that snapped in two. A woman in Indiana died after a tree fell on a home Monday night.

“We kind of heard a gust of wind that came up quick and we decided — my uncle decided — that we’d all go into the basement,” said Mihajlo Jevdosic, 16, in Norridge, Illinois, where residents swapped stories of the storm and watched a crew clear a tree. “And as we went in the basement, we heard a big thump and the tree fell on the house.”

The weather service’s Chicago office said preliminary findings indicated that an EF-1 tornado struck an area of Chicago that included the western portions of the Loop on Monday night. The weather service said EF-1 tornadoes struck two other areas of suburban Chicago in Illinois. EF-0 twisters were reported in Illinois and Indiana suburbs of Chicago.

Water overtopped a dam near Nashville, Illinois, and first responders fanned out to ensure everyone escaped safely. There were no reports of injuries in the community of 3,000, southeast of St. Louis, but a woman was rescued after reporting that she was in water up to her waist in her home, said Alex Haglund, a spokesperson for the Washington County Emergency Management Agency.

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Biden says cooling political rhetoric doesn’t mean he’ll ‘stop telling the truth’ about Trump

LAS VEGAS (AP) — President Joe Biden returned to the campaign trail on Tuesday for the first time since the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, continuing his calls to calm the divisive rhetoric on both sides but also arguing that doing so “doesn’t mean we should stop telling the truth” about his Republican rival.

Addressing the NAACP convention in Las Vegas, Biden said curbing political violence in the country should mean combating all kinds of bloodshed — including reducing police brutality and banning weapons like the AR-style rifle used in the weekend attack on the former president.

“Our politics have become too heated,” Biden said.

That didn’t stop him from tearing into Trump, though, listing why the former president’s administration was “hell” for Black Americans, including his mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, skyrocketing unemployment amid early lockdowns and attempts to, as Biden put it, erase Black history.

“Just because we must lower the temperature in our politics as it relates to violence doesn’t mean we should stop telling the truth,” Biden told the crowd that often broke into chants of “Four more years!”

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JD Vance is a relative political unknown. He’s been asked to help Donald Trump avenge his 2020 loss

MILWAUKEE (AP) — JD Vance is supposed to help Donald Trump win the Midwest this fall.

But almost immediately after the Ohio senator was announced as Trump’s vice presidential pick on Monday, one thing became clear: Vance, a 39-year-old Republican with less than two years in Congress, is not well-known among many in his party, even in the swing states Trump hopes he’ll deliver.

Michigan Republican Party Chairman Pete Hoekstra offered a blunt response when asked about Trump’s pick minutes after it was announced: “We don’t know him.”

“If he’s from Ohio, he understands our state and the other northern battlegrounds,” Hoekstra said, standing on the floor of the Republican National Convention. “But we haven’t had a chance to take his measure yet.”

Trump’s team now has less than four months to strengthen Vance’s profile in the states that matter most this fall in his 2020 rematch against Democratic President Joe Biden. Already, a collection of political foes — Democrats and Republicans — is working to fill the void by seizing on Vance’s inexperience in government, his nationalist views and his critical comments about Trump himself.

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Violence plagued all levels of American politics long before the attempt on Trump’s life

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — Long before a would-be assassin wounded former President Donald Trump, the fuse of political violence had been burning across America.

Members of Congress have been shot. One lawmaker’s staffers in Virginia were attacked with a baseball bat. In Louisville, a bullet grazed the mayor’s sweater after someone stormed into his campaign office. Someone put a tracking device on the Reno mayor’s car. Officials in South Carolina received death threats over a solar panel plant. And outside Buffalo, a man threw a dummy pipe bomb through the window of a county clerk candidate’s home — with a message reading: “If you don’t drop out of this race, the next pipe bomb will be real.”

“There are people who’ve come to me and said, ‘I contemplated running for my town office, and I could never imagine my family going through what you did, so I chose not to,’” said Melissa Hartman, who was targeted in the pipe bomb episode and ran for county clerk after serving as town supervisor in Eden.

The attempt on Trump’s life was the latest and most stunning example of political violence and harassment playing out regularly across America, shaking the foundations of democracy and causing grave concern the atmosphere will worsen as Election Day nears. Trump and President Joe Biden each called for unity after the shooting, with the president telling the nation, “We can’t allow violence to be normalized.”

Intense partisanship, punctuated by violence, has long been a part of American politics. In 1798, congressmen from opposing parties brawled in the U.S. House chamber, beating each other with a cane and fireplace tongs. Four presidents have been killed by assassins, with other presidents and candidates wounded or targeted. Yet the attack on Trump evoked memories of more recent incidents.

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Israel’s military will begin drafting ultra-Orthodox men on Sunday. It could rattle the government

JERUSALEM (AP) — The Israeli military on Tuesday said it would begin sending draft notices to Jewish ultra-Orthodox men on Sunday — a step that could destabilize Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

The announcement followed a landmark Supreme Court order for young religious men to begin enlisting for military service. Under long-standing political arrangements, ultra-Orthodox men had been exempt from the draft, which is compulsory for most Jewish men.

The exemptions created resentment among the general public in Israel, especially after more than nine months of war against Hamas militants in Gaza. The army summons is the beginning of a monthslong enlistment process that could be difficult to enforce if there is large-scale refusal to comply. The army did not say when it expects ultra-Orthodox men to begin serving or how many it expects to enlist.

The court ruled that the system of exemptions, which allow religious men to study in Jewish seminaries while others are forced to serve in the army, was discriminatory. Ultra-Orthodox leaders say religious study is equally important for the country’s future and that their generations-old way of life will be threatened if their followers serve in the army.

Netanyahu’s government relies on the support of ultra-Orthodox parties that oppose changes to the system. Religious leaders have not said what steps they will take. If they leave the ruling coalition, the government would likely topple and the country would be plunged into early elections two years ahead of schedule.

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Jarren Duran’s 2-run HR gives AL a 5-3 win over NL in All-Star Game started by rookie pitcher Skenes

ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — Boston’s Jarren Duran, the All-Star MVP, hit a tiebreaking two-run homer in the fifth inning and the American League beat the National League 5-3 on Tuesday night for its 10th win in the past 11 All-Star Games.

Pittsburgh rookie Paul Skenes pitched a hitless first for the NL, twice hitting 100 mph, and Shohei Ohtani hit a three-run homer in the third for a 3-0 lead.

Juan Soto hit a two-run double and scored on David Fry’s single to tie the score in the third, and Duran went deep off Cincinnati’s Hunter Greene.

Oakland right-hander Mason Miller got the win after throwing a 103.6 mph pitch, the fastest in the All-Star Game since tracking began in 2008. Hard-throwing Cleveland closer Emmanuel Clase struck out two in the ninth for the save.

The 22-year-old Skenes, who has pitched only 11 big league games since being the No. 1 overall pick in the draft last July, became the first rookie starter since 1995 and had the fewest games played for any player to make an All-Star team. The right-hander threw a hitless first, with a two-out walk to Soto before his Yankees teammate Aaron Judge grounded into a forceout on the next pitch.

The Associated Press