The government works on barricades ahead of the 2024 Republican National Convention on Saturday, July 13, 2024, in Milwaukee.
Matt Rourke/AP
MILWAUKEE — A man wearing a handgun and balaclava was arrested a few blocks from the Republican National Convention last week, police said.
Around 1 p. m. On Monday, U. S. Capitol Police “observed the suspect hunting suspects, wearing a ski mask and wearing a giant tactical backpack” in the 1200 block of North 11th Street, according to a Milwaukee police report. It is about 4 blocks from the downtown stadium which hosts the most RNC events.
Officers arrested the 21-year-old and discovered a firearm in his backpack, police said. According to police, he had a concealed shipping permit. Wisconsin is an open port state.
Charges pending Tuesday night, police said.
On Tuesday, out-of-state police officers shot and killed a man just blocks from the Republican National Convention, raising questions about a security plan that had otherwise gone well earlier this week.
An unknown number of Columbus, Ohio, police officers opened fire on the man in the afternoon near King Park, the government said.
It is about 4 blocks from the downtown security perimeter where Republican Party delegates meet before the presumptive presidential candidate, Donald Trump. Agents from more than a hundred departments across the country, including Chicago, are in Milwaukee to assist with Congressional security.
Columbus police said the shooting occurred “in the operation to which our officers were assigned. “
“At this time, it appears this incident is similar to the convention,” Columbus police said in a statement.
Residents and activists in the area rejected this police account, saying Milwaukee police had promised them that out-of-town officials would be stationed near the downtown stadium where conference events will be held until Thursday.
Wanda Campbell said she lived near the scene of the shooting and saw the shooting near a homeless encampment near the park.
“He was shot in the back,” said Wanda Campbell, who said she lived near the scene of the shooting and saw the shooting unfold. “They shot him like a dog. . . None of this would have happened if the NCR had taken place. “
A woman who said her brother was shot declined to give further details.
The Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office showed a death near 14th and Vliet streets, but did not release the man’s call or the manner of his death.
Milwaukee police called it a “critical incident” but did not release further details without delay. A news conference is expected Tuesday afternoon.
Laray Sharpe, who said he was the victim’s cousin, knew him as Samuel Sharpe Jr. , a man in his 40s who lived at the King Park campground.
“What are you doing in our city, coming here and shooting at people?” she said through tears.
Teens Jaquan Thomas and Amarion Washington said they were playing basketball in King Park when they saw at least four police officers enter the park on bicycles toward the campground, where two other people appeared to be fighting.
“They didn’t want to kill this man,” Thomas said.
One company now sells $299 shoes depicting Donald Trump with bloodlines on his cheek and raising his fist in the air after being the target of an assassination in Pennsylvania.
The white high-tops are sold as “FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT High-Tops” for $299 on an online site that sells Trump-branded shoes and is run through CIC Ventures LLC, a company Trump said he owns in his statements. monetary of 2023. The company said that the new shoes are limited edition and that only 5,000 pairs will be available and they are expected to ship in September or October. He also indicated that 10 pairs would be signed at random.
“These limited-edition high-top sneakers, featuring Trump’s iconic raised-fist symbol, honor his unwavering determination and courage,” it reads. “With only 5,000 pairs available, each one is a true collector’s item. Show your patriotic pride with those exclusive sneakers that capture a defining moment in history.
CIC Ventures is the same company that launched “Never Surrender High-Tops,” shiny gold shoes with an American flag on the back, for $399.
Democrats on Tuesday attempted to link the far-right “Project 2025” timeline to former President Donald Trump and his vice president JD Vance, calling the radical policy plan “dangerous to our country. “
Project 2025 is the Heritage Foundation’s 900-page plan for the next Republican administration, and it was highlighted by Democrats this week at the RNC.
Trump has tried to distance himself from the plan, saying this month that he knew “something” about the 2025 plan and knew who developed it. But Vance praised him publicly.
The plan, written and developed through several former Trump appointees, calls for abolishing the Department of Education, putting the Justice Department and FBI directly under presidential control, building camps to detain youth and families at the border, sending in the military to expel millions of people. other people who are in the country illegally and pursue those who send abortion pills, among other plans.
“It is our duty to denounce what we see at the level and what we know Trump and Vance are proposing for America,” said Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wikler. “It’s all written in Project 25, which JD Vance says is full of clever concepts. But we know that these concepts are not only bad, but also harmful. They are harmful to our country.
AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler called the plan union-busting and said it would eliminate the Affordable Care Act because it includes putting Medicare on the path to privatization.
“Will my life be better when they gut the Affordable Care Act and eliminate health care? When will they end Social Security and Medicare as we know them? Programs that staff have earned and contributed to throughout their careers life?” Shuler said. The systems that Trump’s new running mate, JD Vance, points out are the biggest obstacles to fiscal fitness.
Trump and Vance will attend a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Saturday.
The planned rally comes just a week after the attempted assassination of Trump at a cross-party rally last Saturday, in which Trump was wounded, one attendee was killed and two others were seriously injured.
Michigan, an swing state, narrowly came close to Trump in 2016, with about 11,000 votes out of about 4. 5 million votes cast. Biden won the state with about 155,000 votes in 2020.
Former President Donald Trump appears at the Republican National Convention on Monday and shakes hands with his new running mate, Ohio Sen. J. D. Vance.
Ashlee Rezin/Chicago Sun-Times
Pennsylvania Republican Party Chairman Lawrence Tabas said he expects Trump’s assassination on Saturday to set the tone nationally, starting with the former president’s speech at the Republican National Convention on Thursday.
“I think his speech can be very important. Notice that when he gave the impression in court (Monday), he was more sober than usual, almost humiliated,” Tabas said in an interview with The Associated Press after the visit of the Pennsylvania Republican Party delegation. Breakfast in the suburbs of Milwaukee. ” After being close to death, I believe – by the way – that his message will be greater and I think it will appeal to our most productive emotions. “
“It has a huge amount of compassion and empathy that doesn’t come through,” he said.
The Rev. Corey Brooks of Chicago will deliver the closing prayer on Tuesday, the second night of the convention.
The South Side pastor, who tours the city in between filming scenes, said on social media that he was “grateful for this opportunity and looking forward to saying hello to Chicago. “
Brooks is a Republican who has Republican candidates.
Reverend Corey Brooks, shown in December 2021 in the more sensible shipping box where he remained in Woodlawn.
Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times
Southern Illinois delegate and state representative Terri Bryant, R-Murphysboro, said her niche showed the GOP was a “big party. “
“When you look at African Americans, you look at Latinos and I think we’ll see other demographic teams that will be represented, I think America will see very obviously that the big party is here,” he said. Bryant said. “We are united and, honestly, someone like Corey Brooks speaking candidly tonight sends the message that we are united in this message and we are united for the future. “
Brooks was nicknamed “Pastor on the Roof” for two extended stays in the tallest of the Woodlawn neighborhood buildings, in his church, to protest online violence and also to raise money to do something.
Heavily Democratic Illinois can only be a Republican stronghold if only everyone who owns a gun could vote, according to Donald Trump’s top staunch supporter in Congress.
U. S. Rep. Mary Miller made the assessment after addressing the Illinois delegation to the Republican National Convention at her hotel outside Milwaukee on Tuesday.
Asked what the state GOP wants to do to support the former president and Republican presidential nominee, Miller said, “We want other people to vote. “»
U. S. Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill. , speaks to reporters Tuesday while in Wisconsin for the Republican National Convention.
Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times
“If only gun owners would get out and vote in Illinois, we could turn the state red,” Miller told reporters. “Get other people to vote. Each one has a domain of influence. Get busy, other friends! »
Miller said the party would have a better chance of winning a middle electorate “if the media reported, as they should, who President Trump is and what he has done for the American people. ”
“I can tell other people one thing: Parents who are on Chicapass and their children are forced to move on to failing schools,” Miller said. “There are three things that give privileges to a child: parents who are married and stay together, faith. . . and a wonderful education, and you destroy a child for life by giving him a terrible education. »
Earlier, he told delegates that Democratic majorities in the state capital had turned it into an “idea factory. “
“We abandoned the entire state of our wonderful President Abraham Lincoln to [government. J. B. ] Pritzker and the Radical Left,” he told delegates from Illinois. “We’re in a race to the end with California and New York. “
Illinois Republican Party Chair-elect Kathy Salvi also mingled with delegates at the hotel breakfast Tuesday, the first since she was chosen last week as the next face of the party.
Kathy Salvi, chairwoman-elect of the Illinois Republican Party, greets delegates during their breakfast Tuesday at a hotel near Milwaukee. The delegates are in Milwaukee for their party’s national convention.
Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times
As delegates prepared for the organizational breakfast at their hotel in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, Salvi spoke with current President Don Tracy, who announced his resignation last month, complaining about the ongoing conflicts within the party.
Salvi, who will officially assume the party presidency on Friday at the end of the Republican National Convention, is expected to meet with delegates on Wednesday.
He ran unsuccessfully for U. S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill. , in 2022.
President Joe Biden’s crusade on Tuesday defended his resolve to hold a now-unnecessary virtual call weeks before the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Biden had “earned that right. “
Democrats briefly suspended their counter-messaging at the RNC in Milwaukee, adding billboards and press meetings with Biden’s most sensible representatives after the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump on Saturday at a rally in Pennsylvania.
On Tuesday, billboards returned, with at least one virtual billboard circling downtown Milwaukee with a Trump symbol and the message “Dictator on Day One. “
Biden will be summoned in a virtual pre-election to the Democratic National Committee in Chicago, a plan announced ahead of the president’s damaging debate on June 27. The early nomination was a reaction to an Ohio law that would have kept Biden’s call out of the election if he had been elected. He was not nominated on August 7. However, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed a bill extending the voting deadline to Aug. 31.
A previous nomination would well end widespread debates and calls to update Biden as a candidate. But Biden’s crusade ended with Tuesday’s resolution, refusing to “play over who’s on that ballot. “
“We’re not going to let Ohio Republicans make sure that President Biden shows up in the polls in each and every state,” Quentin Fulks, Biden’s deputy campaign manager, said at a morning news conference.
“He has this well-deserved right. He has earned this right. So we are going to continue down that path and we will not play games about who is on that ballot, to ensure that there will be an election in which the applicants of both primary parties are on the ballot, as well as all third-party applicants who qualified and have met the signature requirements to appear on the ballot.
Gov. J. B. Pritzker, a Biden surrogate, was originally scheduled to appear at a news conference Monday morning in Milwaukee. But Democrats opted for a brief pause in their messaging after Trump’s shooting. It’s unclear if Pritzker will attend more events in Milwaukee this week.
For all the statements from Illinois Republicans about fixing the RNC’s intrapartisan barriers in Milwaukee, some of the state’s biggest Republican names in recent years are largely absent from the state’s delegation.
This is former moderate Gov. Jim Edgar, former Illinois House Minority Leader Jim Durkin and former U. S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a vocal critic of Trump.
“All Illinois Republicans had the opportunity to sign up for the Illinois delegation to the Republican National Convention,” committee member and Palatine Township delegate Aaron Del Mar told reporters.
“Whether they decide to take advantage of this opportunity or not is a resolution that each of them made individually, based on their own thoughts, ideas and ideals about what is the most productive vision for Illinois and the United States in the future. . So if Jim Durkin doesn’t want to attend the RNC convention, participate in moving the process forward, and stay home, that’s a decision Jim Durkin has made.
State Rep. Chris Miller, R-Hindsboro, and other Illinois delegates had breakfast at the Comfort Suites Milwaukee Airport hotel in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, on Tuesday, the second day of the Republican National Convention.
Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times
And members say there’s plenty of room for those who don’t like Trump, who remained unpopular with suburban Chicago voters in the 2020 election.
“There are a lot of Republicans here in America, and specifically in Illinois, who may not be Trump’s biggest supporters, but they need to make sure America is a place,” Array Del Mar said.
State Rep. Charlie Meier, R-Okawville, said members “understand that a Republican running in collared counties will run on a platform that is a little different than a Southern Illinois Republican. “
“I reach out to a lot of people and tell them, ‘I don’t like this guy [Trump], but I like his policies and I’m going to vote for him. “We want those other people to vote for this platform and for me. ” He will bring other Republicans with him. We have to grow,” Meier said.
Collaborator: Associated Press
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