GEOFF BENNETT: Good evening.

I'm Geoff Bennett.

AMNA NAWAZ: And I'm Amna Nawaz.

On the "News Hour" tonight: Vice presidential nominee J.D.

Vance prepares to take the stage at the Republican National Convention here in Milwaukee.

A look at his political views and how they have shifted in recent years.

DAVID WEIGEL, Semafor: A lot of Americans got to know him in 2016 as a Rust Belt working-class conservative who thought Donald Trump had the wrong prescriptions to save people like the ones he grew up with.

GEOFF BENNETT: Plus: A number of convention speakers claim past elections have been rigged and noncitizens are voting, all despite a lack of evidence.

We lay out the facts.

AMNA NAWAZ: And a detailed Human Rights Watch report accuses Hamas of war crimes for the October 7 attack on Israel.

(BREAK) AMNA NAWAZ: Welcome to the "News Hour" from inside the Republican National Convention here in Milwaukee.

Tonight, the stage behind us belongs to J.D.

Vance, who will headline the evening and accept his party's nomination for vice president.

GEOFF BENNETT: Last night belonged to Donald Trump's one-time rivals in the bruising primary race making peace with the nominee and urging the party to put aside its differences.

Lisa Desjardins starts our coverage tonight from the floor.

LISA DESJARDINS: As we have got ready for day three, last night, it felt like the convention started to find its energy with a night of big speakers and one big message.

A night to unite the party.

GOV.

RON DESANTIS (R-FL), Presidential Candidate: Let's send Joe Biden back to his basement and let's send Donald Trump back to the White House!

(CHEERS) (APPLAUSE) LISA DESJARDINS: Former rivals of Donald Trump, now eager allies.

GOV.

RON DESANTIS: Donald Trump has been demonized.

He's been sued, he's been prosecuted, and he nearly lost his life.

We cannot let him down and we cannot let America down.

LISA DESJARDINS: A political 180 from those who were critics just months ago.

GOV.

RON DESANTIS: Nobody is entitled to be nominated, nobody, especially anybody that couldn't even stop Joe Biden.

FMR.

GOV.

NIKKI HALEY (R-SC): Donald Trump was totally unhinged.

Unhinged.

LISA DESJARDINS: Most closely watched, former presidential candidate Nikki Haley.

She was not initially set to speak here after she held off on endorsing Trump for months.

But, on stage, she left zero doubt.

FMR.

GOV.

NIKKI HALEY: I will start by making one thing perfectly clear.

Donald Trump has my strong endorsement, period.

(CHEERING) (APPLAUSE) LISA DESJARDINS: Haley is important, but the convention knows her voters are even more so, representing a spectrum of never-Trump to no thank you.

She spoke to them directly.

FMR.

GOV.

NIKKI HALEY: You don't have to agree with Trump 100 percent of the time to vote for him.

(CHEERING) (APPLAUSE) FMR.

GOV.

NIKKI HALEY: Take it from me.

I haven't always agreed with President Trump, but we agree more often than we disagree.

LISA DESJARDINS: And she went further, challenging the party to look beyond Trump's MAGA base.

FMR.

GOV.

NIKKI HALEY: To my fellow Republicans, we must not only be a unified party.

We must also expand our party.

LISA DESJARDINS: It was also a family affair.

Trump's daughter-in-law and RNC co-chair, Lara Trump, stressed his immediate actions after Saturday's assassination attempt.

LARA TRUMP, Co-Chair, Republican National Committee: Millimeters separated him from life and certain death.

And yet it was in the midst of it all, as he was jostled offstage by Secret Service, that he knew how defining that moment would be for our country, and he hoisted his fist in the air.

(CHEERING) (APPLAUSE) LISA DESJARDINS: House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, who survived a politically motivated shooting in 2017 himself, added a poignant note.

REP. STEVE SCALISE (R-LA): Not many know that, while I was fighting for my life, Donald Trump was one of the first to come console my family at the hospital.

(CHEERING) (APPLAUSE) REP. STEVE SCALISE: That's the kind of leader he is.

LISA DESJARDINS: But amid praise of Trump, on a night focused on law and order, Republicans generally ignored Trump's own 34 felony convictions, except as evidence of what they see as a weaponized justice system.

SAVANNAH CHRISLEY, Reality TV Star: Today, we have a two-faced justice system.

Just look at what they're doing to President Trump, all while, let's face it, Hunter Biden is roaming around free and attending classified meetings.

KATIE SANDERS, Editor in Chief, PolitiFact: So this is unproven.

LISA DESJARDINS: We spoke with PolitiFact's Katie Sanders.

The organization is checking statements made at both 2024 conventions.

In this case, the claim comes from an NBC report about Hunter Biden.

But: KATIE SANDERS: That report did not say anything about Hunter Biden attending classified briefings.

That would be something that would be illegal, because he does not have a security clearance to be in those sessions.

So it's not a proven claim.

LISA DESJARDINS: Last night, a barrage of statements were also made about immigrants and the border.

Some, PolitiFact found to be true, like this one from Anne Fundner, whose son died of fentanyl poisoning.

ANNE FUNDNER, Mother of Fentanyl Victim: We have seen the highest number of fentanyl deaths during the Biden/Harris administration.

LISA DESJARDINS: But several other statements didn't hold up, like this from Scalise: REP. STEVE SCALISE: On the border, Biden and Harris opened it up to the entire world.

Prisons are being emptied.

KATIE SANDERS: This claim is false.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have not opened up the border.

Even more egregious here is the idea that there's an organized effort to recruit people from prisons in other countries.

We have done research to look into whether it's been documented that these governments, these countries, there's some group that's organizing prisoners and releasing them to the U.S.

It's just not proven.

LISA DESJARDINS: On the campaign trail, for his first official solo event, just over a mile from the Convention Center was a jocular GOP V.P.

nominee, J.D.

Vance.

SEN. J.D.

VANCE (R-OH), Vice Presidential Candidate: I joke with the president that I'm very excited about this evening and I don't plan to screw it up, but, if I do, it's too late.

He made the pick, right?

LISA DESJARDINS: As for the man at the top of the ticket, former President Trump prepared for his biggest moment of the week taking a look at the convention podium, the first podium he's stood at since he was shot behind one Saturday.

He's slated to speak from here tomorrow night.

And something that you may see more of on the convention floor tonight, you can see behind me some delegates are actually using paper and putting bandages on their ears, symbolic, of course, of the assassination attempt.

This is the Arizona delegation.

I see several people doing this.

For folks who want to follow live, PolitiFact will be live fact-checking tonight's speeches, and I recommend folks go to our Web site, PBS.org/NewsHour, to follow that.

They're doing a lot of work on that -- Anna, Geoff.

GEOFF BENNETT: Lisa, we are set to hear from the Republican vice presidential nominee, J.D.

Vance, later this evening.

What should we expect to hear from the senator?

LISA DESJARDINS: This is a critical moment for this campaign.

We have a vice presidential nominee who really isn't very well-defined yet.

He's going to have to define himself tonight.

Given what he told people at that campaign event earlier today, just down the street or about a mile-and-a-half away from where we are, he spent a lot of time talking about how he hopes to appeal to working-class Americans, especially Americans in Appalachia.

He also spent a lot of time talking about the media.

So, I think he is going to go on the attack even more against the media.

We expect former President Trump to continue to do that too, but almost the first words out of J.D.

Vance's mouth today to those around him were, the media has been telling lies about Donald Trump.

So, it's traditional for a vice presidential nominee to go on the attack, and we may see some of that tonight.

AMNA NAWAZ: And, Lisa, as you reported, and we saw here in the room, when Vance was first announced, delegates still seemed largely unfamiliar with him.

Is that still the case?

And what does the Trump campaign hope that he will do for them?

LISA DESJARDINS: It is.

There is still uncertainty from delegates here about who exactly J.D.

Vance is.

And I did hear something new today talking to just one or two delegates.

This is a group of people who are largely anti-abortion.

They want abortion restrictions across the country.

This is the reason that Roe v. Wade was overturned, largely people in this room.

But there is some nervousness here that perhaps he could be seen as being too conservative on abortion.

His position has changed in different times.

But his most recent position was actually taken off of his Web site, according to a reporter from The Huffington Post.

So there is some question about whether perhaps he may not bring on board those kinds of voters that Nikki Haley was reaching out to.

Others, though, love him.

They think that he might be the kind of sort of full-blooded attack dog that they want to see, not the calmer tone, but this is a group that, as you said, has been chanting "Fight, fight" for the last couple of days.

One other note, people who are not here, Mike Pence and also Speaker -- former Speaker Paul Ryan.

We don't expect them to attend.

And it's fascinating that we have a vice presidential nominee here tonight with the two former, last, most recent vice presidential nominees apparently not feeling welcome or deciding not to be here.

GEOFF BENNETT: Lisa, the theme tonight is "Make America Strong Again."

In terms of what?

Tell us more about this focus.

LISA DESJARDINS: Right.

Tonight it's going to be about the military, defense.

And we're also going to hear themes about energy.

I do want to point out some of these speakers, it's important to note they're Gold Star families.

They're going to have harrowing and touching stories that Republicans think are important.

But there are also some that I talked to that are on the election denial spectrum.

One of those people is David Lara.

He's a delegate from Arizona.

I spoke to him yesterday.

He was involved in the production of "2000 Mules," largely a conspiracy theory movie.

He was able to find a case of ballot harvesting that was real.

That was -- there was a conviction for harvesting of just four ballots in Arizona.

But based on that one case, a lot of conspiracies came out.

I talked to him yesterday, still an election denier.

He will be talking about immigration today, but it's just to show that there is still a lot going on beneath the surface of this convention.

AMNA NAWAZ: Lisa, we saw the former president, former President Trump, in this arena earlier at the podium doing a walk-through.

And of course, he still had that bandage on his ear reminder of what he endured just a few days ago.

Where does that investigation into the attempt on his life now stand?

LISA DESJARDINS: A bit of news.

First of all, Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell just in the last few minutes has asked for the Secret Service to get new leadership, this as we know there's been a subpoena issued by the House Oversight Committee for the Secret Service director to appear next week.

Also, the Department of Homeland Security inspector general, I believe, is launching an investigation into that as well.

GEOFF BENNETT: Lisa, as we have been speaking, we have learned that President Biden has tested positive for COVID and won't be delivering a speech, as planned today, in Las Vegas.

Meantime, earlier today, a top Democrat came forward and said that President Biden should withdraw from this race.

Tell us more about who it is and what this member of Congress had to say.

LISA DESJARDINS: There was a pause on these kinds of calls after the assassination attempt, but now Adam Schiff, top Democrat in the House and Senate candidate from California, issued this statement, writing that: "A second Trump presidency will undermine the very foundation of our democracy.

And I have serious concerns about whether the president, President Biden, can defeat Donald Trump in November."

That is probably the most senior member of the House leadership to openly call for Biden to step aside.

We will have to wait for the response from the Biden campaign and White House.

AMNA NAWAZ: That is our Lisa Desjardins live on the convention floor for us.

Lisa, thank you so much.

LISA DESJARDINS: You're welcome.

AMNA NAWAZ: In the meantime, vice presidential nominee J.D.

Vance is a one-time critic of former President Trump who's turned into a fierce defender.

GEOFF BENNETT: Earlier today, I spoke with David Weigel.

He's a national political reporter for Semafor who's covered J.D.

Vance for years.

No vice presidential nominee has had a more meteoric rise since Richard Nixon.

Help us understand J.D.

Vance's political ascent.

DAVID WEIGEL, Semafor: Yes.

Well, Vance literally wrote himself into history.

He was a working-class kid from Ohio.

Nobody disputes that, had a rough upbringing.

He went to military, then to Ohio State, graduated in two years, went to Yale Law School, and while there was mentored into writing "Hillbilly Elegy," which has sold, I think, at this point, selling more now, two million copies.

So a lot of Americans got to know him in 2016 as a Rust Belt working-class conservative who thought Donald Trump had the wrong prescriptions to save people like the ones he grew up with, that they were being misled by Donald Trump.

And he did evolve.

And during the Trump presidency, the way he tells it is that the scales fell from his eyes.

He started to see that what he was told about Trump were lies.

At various points, he's talked about breaks he had with the liberal consensus.

So, the Kavanaugh nomination, he thought he was being railroaded.

He thought attacks on Trump were unfair.

He ran for Senate in 2022 as an America first candidate, completely in line with Trump's policies, successfully getting his endorsement and telling that conversion story, telling Republican voters who saw lots of ads of him bashing Trump on TV from 2016 that they could be like him.

He was wrong.

And he, on the road to Damascus, saw the light and supported Trump.

GEOFF BENNETT: So based on your reporting, is that conversion sincere?

Because his critics point out that to go from comparing Donald Trump to Hitler to serving it -- as his running mate, that that evolution is really craven and calculated.

DAVID WEIGEL: Well, lucky for him, it's a very common story and it's one of the themes of the RNC this week.

He will be one of several speakers who say they were told lies about Donald Trump, then they saw him act in office, then they were converted to him.

And even outside this convention, a refrain you hear from a lot of people and you have heard from Vance is that the media focuses on his tweets, focuses on the way he speaks, doesn't focus on the results.

So, within the Republican Party, that's a very safe place to be.

Talking to Democrats about how they want to run against Vance, a lot of them think that's a dead end.

Saying that he is -- is it helpful, is it going to be helpful in a debate maybe that he can be made to defend that and flip-flops?

Potentially.

They're more focused on the conservative record he had once he started running for office, including some disagreements with Donald Trump, some static with other members of the party, who didn't want him as the nominee.

GEOFF BENNETT: His opposition to Ukraine aid has been a real feature of his time in the Senate.

How rooted is his noninterventionist view, how rooted is that in his military experience?

DAVID WEIGEL: It's very rooted in his own military experience.

He enlists before he goes to college, serves in Iraq, and he comes away with a critique that Donald Trump adopts eventually too, which is that there are forever wars around the country -- around world.

There are nation-building exercises that George W. Bush and a lot of Democrats engaged in, and they made America weaker.

They took resources away from the heartland.

You saw when he came to the floor yesterday, when he was joining the rest of the evening's program, he comes on stage to Merle Haggard's "America First," which is an anti-Iraq War song.

It's about spending resources here and not over there.

And he has been consistent on that in a very short political career.

He has anti-interventionist.

He is a -- has a different stance on Iran, like a lot of Republicans, but that is the biggest point of disagreement between him and a lot of Republicans.

And it was litigated in the primary in 2022, when the Ukraine war had just begun.

Russia had just invaded.

His position was he didn't care.

He didn't care about Ukraine's interests.

It wasn't worth spending American money there.

And that is a disagreement between him and a lot of Republicans who worry that, if Trump gets back in office -- and I talked to a few yesterday -- with this ticket, people around the world, Vladimir Putin will say, yes, we know what to expect from these guys.

America's going to pull out of its responsibilities around the world.

GEOFF BENNETT: Is the expectation that he would have more policy influence in the West Wing if they win, because Donald Trump is not as invested in policy as past presidents have been?

DAVID WEIGEL: Well, a lot of people want to be writing policy for the Trump administration.

That's been one of the biggest arguments inside the party and from Democrats pushing outside.

So, Vance, for example, wrote the forward to the president of The Heritage Foundation's upcoming book.

The Heritage Foundation developed Project 2025.

Vance is much more aligned with national conservatives, again, anti-interventionist, in favor of family formation, in favor of limiting abortion, basically getting back to sort of 1950s American norms and immigration norms even.

Those policies are pretty -- now, he's only been in politics for a little while, but those policies have a real pedigree.

And he came up reading people, reading conservative writers who've already thought this stuff out who do want a policy role in the administration's.

So the sort of people who were hoping that they could push a Trump administration to the right compared to what was in 2016, when he didn't have -- apart from his close circle, he didn't -- he was relying on the Paul Ryan Republican Party.

They do view this as a victory.

The Paul Ryan Republican Party, the George Bush Republican Party, they're not going to be in the room, they're not going to be at the table.

Who is going to be at the table?

It is the anti-war national conservatives who have a completely different view of how you should spend money and where you should send troops.

GEOFF BENNETT: Those views extend to abortion.

Vance opposes abortion rights even in the case of rape or incest, a position that differs from Donald Trump's public stance.

He says abortion rights should be left to the states after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe.

DAVID WEIGEL: On policy, they'd have a disagreement from how Vance ran for Senate.

He said he was 100 percent pro-life.

He has ameliorated that position a little bit in interviews since then and talked about, what's realistic?

He's supported Lindsey Graham's 15-week national ban, but that's probably not going to happen.

What's important, I think, is his intellectual framework for this.

He's called himself a natalist.

He's called himself - - he has three kids.

He talks about a lot.

He's criticized the left for what he calls the childless nature of the left.

He has argued in speeches and writing that the problem -- one problem with the left in America -- and that's Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, who are running the country right now, is that they're prioritizing family planning, they're prioritizing alternative lifestyles that are not traditional marriage with children, and that has been bad for America, same reason that you should limit abortion, that we should be encouraging, in his view, stricter policies that make it tougher to get divorced, to get an abortion, because look at his life.

He did not have a lot of advantages growing up, and look where he is now.

He tells that story and sort of it universalizes it to the rest of the country.

And that is something Democrats think they can argue against, because, in Ohio, where Vance won, there was a ballot initiative that that enshrined abortion rights that Vance was against that won by I think 18 points.

Most people do not agree with that framework of how you need to bring the country back to kind of 1950s mores.

GEOFF BENNETT: This week, the country will be introduced to Vance's family.

His wife, Usha, is an accomplished litigator.

She clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh when he was a federal judge.

The daughter of Indian immigrants, she grew up in a suburb of San Diego.

DAVID WEIGEL: Vance met his wife, Usha, at Yale Law School.

They have three kids and that's been part of his story.

In his Senate campaign, if you look at even his advertising, it started out by talking about immigration, much more hard-edge, MAGA, America first stuff.

It ended by emphasizing his family life.

It ended by emphasizing look what he built in Ohio.

Look what he was able to build himself.

It even comes up in "Hillbilly Elegy" before he would run for office.

It was very central to him.

His success meant that he was able to have a stable family, dogs running around the house, kids running around the House.

And that has been -- that is important to his story.

That is also -- keep in mind, if there's -- if he's contrasted with Kamala Harris, it's a story that they don't mind telling.

Because some of Harris got married late in life.

She's the stepmother to Doug Emhoff's kids from a previous marriage.

Not so subtly, this is part -- this is some of the argument about the choice facing America, that this is somebody who formed a traditional family, somebody with a different religion, different background.

They came together and they have -- they have had the American dream unfold for them.

That's part of the Vance story.

And this is a family that people, if they're watching FOX News, they're watching some of the family interviews he did or those TV ads, they know a little bit about them, but they will be the people most introduced to the country tonight, because a lot of people have read the book, but don't know the family.

GEOFF BENNETT: David Weigel, thanks so much.

DAVID WEIGEL: Yes.

GEOFF BENNETT: Appreciate it.

Some speakers here at the Republican National Convention have repeated the unsubstantiated claim that Democrats are rigging the presidential election, specifically about noncitizens voting.

SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): How did we get here?

It happened because Democrats cynically decided they wanted votes from illegals more than they wanted to protect our children.

(BOOING) KARI LAKE (R), Arizona Senatorial Candidate: Just last week, Ruben Gallego voted to let the millions of people who poured into our country illegally cast a ballot in this upcoming election.

AMNA NAWAZ: That claim is just one of many conspiracy theories about the security of America's election system that are being spread in the lead-up to November.

Our White House correspondent, Laura Barron-Lopez, has been covering this, and she joins us now.

Now, Laura, we should point out this claim isn't new, but it is now frequently repeated by Republicans.

Where did it come from in the first place?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: This lie dates back to 2016, Amna, when then-candidate Donald Trump said that he lost the popular vote because three to five million noncitizen immigrants voted for Hillary Clinton.

That's -- of course is not true.

But now it's become much more pervasive among Republicans this election cycle, going all the way from Republican nominee Donald Trump to House Speaker Mike Johnson, who has repeated this baseless claim over and over again.

And the House -- House Republicans just last week passed a bill that makes it illegal for noncitizens to vote, requiring proof of citizenship.

It's important to note, Amna, that it is already illegal for noncitizens to vote under federal law.

GEOFF BENNETT: And, Laura, another key figure peddling this false claim is tech billionaire Elon Musk, who actually just endorsed Donald Trump.

Help us understand how he is sowing doubt about the presidential election.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Just to give some context about Elon Musk's presence on X, on social media, he has more than 189 million followers on X.

And it's widely reported that the algorithm, since he started owning that platform, the algorithm boosts his post more than other users.

And Musk has written posts on X that attack the voting system, specifically saying that -- quote -- "The system is designed to make it impossible to prove fraud.

Mail-in and drop box ballot should not be allowed."

Now, Musk has also amplified on X a baseless claim posted by another user that said -- quote -- "The number of voters registering without a photo I.D.

is skyrocketing in three key swing states, Arizona, Texas and Pennsylvania."

And Stephen Richer, Maricopa County recorder, responded specifically on X to Musk, pointing out that voter rolls have actually decreased in Arizona, again, refuting that claim that Musk was amplifying.

I spoke to Stephen Richer today about the impact of Musk posting and reposting these types of inaccuracies.

And he told us that, ultimately, he's concerned that a lot of people are going to believe this and that it makes the job of election officials like himself unsustainable.

STEPHEN RICHER (R), Maricopa County, Arizona, Recorder: Despite the millions of dollars that we have invested and the countless hours that we have invested to tours, to livestreams, to tele-town halls, to videos, to articles, to reports, it doesn't seem like we have made a significant dent in this culture, in this movement, in this false characterization of election administration.

At some point, people are going to throw up their hands and just stop, stop trying.

After four years of doing this, I'm personally nearing that point.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: As you can hear there, Stephen Richer is pretty disheartened about the situation.

He has invited Elon Musk to come to Maricopa County to tour their voting facilities, to ask any questions that he might have about how voting is administered there.

And Musk has not responded to Richer.

And we also put out a request to X about these conspiracy theories that Elon Musk is posting and received no response.

AMNA NAWAZ: Laura, you can hear the frustration in his voice there.

So how are other election officials like Richer in other key swing states responding to all of this?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: I also spoke to Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson today, Amna.

And she said that her office has -- quote -- "guardrails in place" to prevent noncitizens from voting.

And if a noncitizen does vote, they have effective ways of catching that afterwards and making sure that that vote is not counted.

She said, ultimately, though that she's concerned that these lies about noncitizens voting could have a really negative impact on the system overall.

JOCELYN BENSON (D), Michigan Secretary of State: We invite people, however, with questions to ask them so that we can answer them, as opposed to simply just amplifying misinformation.

Because the ramifications of amplifying easily debunked untruths and lies about who's able to vote or who's voting in our elections leads to eligible voters being harassed and intimidated at the polls because someone may be showing up thinking or presuming wrongfully that that person's not eligible to vote.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Secretary of State Benson in Michigan also said that she's concerned that this could lead to some eligible voters, American citizens, just deciding that they don't want to engage and that they may not participate in this year's election.

GEOFF BENNETT: Well, tell us more about that, Laura.

I mean, how do these baseless claims fit into the overall effort among some Republicans to undercut confidence in the next election?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: This is part of a larger effort, Geoff, to sow doubt about America's election system, to convince the electorate that the country system can't be trusted and that the -- and that, if Donald Trump were to lose, that that result is not legitimate.

And an example of this comes from Heritage Foundation, the right-wing think tank that has issued a blueprint for a potential second Trump term.

Mike Howell, executive director of The Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project, said recently at an event that: "As things stand right now, there is a zero percent chance of a free and fair election in the United States of America."

And that transition report from Heritage Foundation also claimed -- without any evidence -- that President Biden will retain power -- quote -- "by force" and that President Biden will disregard the will of the voters, whatever the ultimate result is.

And so some fear from election security experts that I have spoken to is that what happens with all this disinformation if Donald Trump were to lose, that it could potentially result in some political violence in the end, Geoff.

GEOFF BENNETT: Laura Barron-Lopez.

Laura, thanks so much.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Thank you.

AMNA NAWAZ: While the battle at the top of the ticket has dominated the news this election cycle, there are several key downballot races that could shift the balance of power in Congress.

GEOFF BENNETT: The majorities in the House and Senate are razor-thin.

While Republicans in the House have a five-seat majority, Democrats in the Senate hold on by only two seats.

All of this could change with several toss-up races come November.

Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter has been tracking all of this very closely and joins us now.

Great to see you.

AMY WALTER, The Cook Political Report: Hello.

GEOFF BENNETT: Hello.

Hello.

So... AMY WALTER: It's been so long since I have seen you.

(LAUGHTER) AMY WALTER: So long.

GEOFF BENNETT: A mere minute.

(LAUGHTER) GEOFF BENNETT: So let's start with the Senate... AMY WALTER: Yes.

GEOFF BENNETT: ... because Cook Political has four Senate races listed as toss-ups in this election cycle.

That's Montana, Nevada, Michigan, and Ohio.

These are all currently Democratic-held seats.

AMY WALTER: That's right.

GEOFF BENNETT: So what are you watching here?

AMY WALTER: What we're seeing is, overall, this is the map, and the reality of the map has been that Democrats have to defend many more seats than Republicans overall.

And, in fact, all of the competitive seats this year, seats that we consider to be competitive, are Democratic-held seats.

And as you pointed out, Democrats can really only afford to lose two seats.

More important, though, it's actually one seat if they don't win the presidency.

They lose one seat, it's a 50/50 Senate and a Donald Trump victory would mean that Republicans then have control of the Senate.

Coming into the cycle, Democrats knew what the map looked like.

They were aware of how challenging this would be.

And they had really three priorities.

One was that they were hoping that Republicans would have bruising, competitive, difficult primaries and would nominate flawed candidates.

That hasn't really happened, except for in one state, which is Arizona, where very flawed candidate Kari Lake, who lost the race for governor in Arizona last year, is their standard-bearer.

Many Republicans are basically accepting the fact that that is not a race that they're likely to win.

They still have other places where they feel very good, those four being that.

The other thing they were hoping is that Joe Biden would be running strong enough to give their candidates an opportunity to build on whatever momentum he had.

And so that, of course, has not been happening up until this point.

AMNA NAWAZ: Let's talk about more on that in just a moment, but let's talk about the House as well... AMY WALTER: Yes.

AMNA NAWAZ: ... which is where it was moderate Republicans, especially in New York, that were key to helping the party... AMY WALTER: That's right.

AMNA NAWAZ: ... got a majority just two years ago.

A lot of those races are now competitive again.

AMY WALTER: Yes.

AMNA NAWAZ: What's animating those House races that could make it tougher for those Republicans to win?

AMY WALTER: That's right.

So there are 16 Republicans who sit in a district Joe Biden won.

And if you think about the math, right, Democrats only need to win four seats; 16 of them are places that Biden already carried.

All right, that's pretty easy.

Just win some of those over.

However, those are not as easy as they look on paper.

And what's also challenging for Democrats is, they have their own incumbents in - - five of them in states that Trump carried And -- and this is what -- we have been having this conversation this entire week about why the top of the ticket matters and why Biden struggling really matters for these candidates.

Because if he is, say, in a district that he carried by 10 or 15 points in 2020, is only winning by two or three points this time around, well, that sure helps the Republican candidate.

It's not as much of an uphill climb as it would be if he were getting -- if Biden were getting those same numbers that he got in 2020.

GEOFF BENNETT: So what does adding J.D.

Vance to the Republican ticket, how does that affect downballot races for Republicans if you have Democrats in some of these races, in the Senate races, overperforming?

Does Donald Trump have coattails?

AMY WALTER: Right.

GEOFF BENNETT: Does a Trump/Vance ticket help downballot?

AMY WALTER: Well, this has been the most fascinating piece for those of us who are political nerds.

The thing that is not lining up right now is the fact that, even as Biden is not doing well in these battleground states or even in the states that are already red or like Ohio and Montana, but incumbent Democrats are out running him by a pretty significant margin.

And so the question is whether that can hold for the next four months.

One reason those Democrats are doing better than Biden, they're doing better with Democratic-leaning groups, younger voters, women, voters of color, than Biden is.

The challenge for these downballot candidates, why you're hearing so much hand-wringing from them is that the worry is, those voters, traditional Democratic voters, they may like the Democratic candidate, but they don't show up to vote because they don't feel enthusiastic about Biden.

AMNA NAWAZ: That is Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter.

I feel like we have a lot more to talk about.

AMY WALTER: I feel like we will have a couple things to talk about later.

AMNA NAWAZ: We will see you back here for prime-time coverage later tonight as well.

AMY WALTER: Yes.

OK. All right.

AMNA NAWAZ: Amy, thank you so much.

AMY WALTER: You're welcome.

AMNA NAWAZ: Severe weather refuses to let up across large parts of the U.S., with heavy rains and tornadoes wreaking havoc.

GEOFF BENNETT: For that and all of the day's other headlines, we head back to Washington and our Stephanie Sy, who has the details -- Stephanie.

STEPHANIE SY: Yes, Amna and Geoff, Arkansas is the latest state to deal with extreme flooding.

Nearly 11 inches of rain turned backyards into ponds and sent water rushing through streets and parts of Marion County.

Officials said dozens of residents had to leave their houses.

At least 80 people were evacuated from a local nursing home, while, in the Northeast, Upstate New York is cleaning up after a tornado ripped through Oneida County.

Governor Kathy Hochul said her flight to the area gave her a bird's-eye view of the damage.

GOV.

KATHY HOCHUL (D-NY): You cannot imagine the impact of seeing from the sky how vast the destruction is, when you see entire swathes of trees just collapsed like they were toothpicks.

STEPHANIE SY: Meanwhile, across the U.S., hundreds of thousands are still without power after a series of storms without outages spanning from Texas in the South through Illinois and up to New York in the Northeast.

Prosecutors have formally appealed of federal judges ruling to toss out Donald Trump's classified documents case.

On Monday, district Judge Aileen Cannon ruled that special counsel Jack Smith had been unlawfully appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Cannon's decision went against decades of precedent by other federal courts that upheld such appointments.

The decision was the latest legal victory for the Trump camp following the Supreme Court's ruling earlier this month that gave broad immunity to presidents while in office.

This appeal could result in months of legal wranglings, meaning any outcome would come well after November's presidential election.

In the Middle East, an Israeli delegation touched down in Cairo, Egypt, today, where international mediators are trying to push forward a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas.

Talks resumed as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faced criticism from opposition lawmakers in Jerusalem for his management of the war.

But he insisted today that Hamas will only bow to heavy pressure.

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, Israeli Prime Minister (through translator): We are making progress in achieving the war goals, freeing hostages, eliminating Hamas, and ensuring Gaza will not be able to pose another threat to Israel, thanks to combining military and political pressure.

And I can tell you unambiguously that Hamas is indeed under pressure.

The more we persist with the pressure, the more they will give up.

STEPHANIE SY: Also today, Israel released 13 Palestinians who had been detained for several weeks.

That's according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.

Some wept when they reunited with loved ones.

Others described brutal beatings and showed signs of bruising, though those claims have not been independently verified.

Commemorations have taken place to mark 10 years since the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17.

In the Netherlands, relatives of passengers and crew gathered at a memorial close to Schiphol Airport, where the doomed flight departed on July 17, 2014.

More than half of those on board were Dutch.

Another memorial event was held near the crash site in the Donetsk region of Ukraine; 298 people were killed when the flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was shot down by a missile fired from territory held by pro-Russian rebels.

Russia has denied any involvement.

Russia and Ukraine have completed their latest prisoner swap, exchanging 95 captives each.

Patriotic cheers rang out from the Ukrainians as they celebrated their newfound freedom.

Video released today showed soldiers exiting a transport bus looking gaunt, but relieved.

For its part, Russia released footage of their soldiers, some looking weary and making calls to home.

This was the first such prisoner swap in three weeks and the 54th since Russia's invasion in 2022.

In France, the mayor of Paris today took a dip in the Seine River to prove it's clean and ready for the Olympic Games.

With a crowd cheering on, Anne Hidalgo fulfilled a promise to show the waterway is suitable for hosting open water swimming competitions.

Since 2015, officials have spent more than a billion dollars to clean up the Seine.

Swimming there has been banned for over a century.

The Paris Olympics kick off July 26.

A pair of FX shows lead the pack in this year's prime-time Emmy nominations.

"Shogun" came out on top with 25 nominations.

The 17th century Japanese drama earned nods for best drama series, best actress and best actor.

"The Bear," also an FX hit, set a new record for comedies with 23 nominations.

Its star, Jeremy Allen White, will try for a repeat win in the best actor category.

Ayo Edebiri will compete for best actress after winning in a best supporting role last year.

This year's nominations come just six months after the industry held its last Emmy ceremony, which had been delayed due to the writer's strike.

On Wall Street today, stocks ended mixed as a drop in big tech stocks weighed on markets.

The Dow Jones industrial gained more than 200 points to close well above 41000, but the Nasdaq posted its worst day since 2022, dropping more than 500 points.

The S&P 500 also ended sharply lower.

And a dinosaur in New York has crushed prior records for archaeological auctions.

An unidentified buyer paid $45 million for this 27-foot-long stegosaurus skeleton known as Apex.

That's about 10 times the original estimate set out by auction house Sotheby's.

The spiked creature roamed the Earth more than 160 million years ago.

It was excavated last year in Colorado.

Sotheby's had billed it as the finest stegosaurus fossil ever to come to auction.

Still to come on the "News Hour": a new Human Rights Watch report lays out the evidence that Hamas committed war crimes on October 7; and thousands in Houston remain without power in the Texas heat more than a week after Hurricane Beryl.

A new report released by Human Rights Watch today concludes that Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during the October 7 attacks last year.

The report shows how Palestinian fighters conducted a coordinated assault -- quote -- "designed to kill civilians and take as many hostages with them."

Nearly 1,200 people were killed in Israel that day, including more than 800 civilians; 251 people were taken hostage, with some 120 still held captive in Gaza.

For more detail, I'm joined by Ida Sawyer.

She's the director for crisis and conflict at Human Rights Watch in Washington.

Ida, thank you so much for joining the "News Hour."

As you know, since the October 7 attacks, there have been so many witness accounts, videos, photos that have come out.

Tell me what is new about this report and why it's so important to compile all of this research into one document.

IDA SAWYER, Director, Crisis, Conflict and Arms Division, Human Rights Watch: So this is the first comprehensive report that examines almost every attack on a civilian site on October 7.

As you said, while much has been written about October 7, this report is important because it documents specific crimes, provides clear information about which groups were responsible, and it shows the high degree of planning and coordination that went into the crimes.

We found that the killing of civilians and the taking of hostages were all central aims of the planned attack, and not actions that occurred as an afterthought or as a plan gone awry or as isolated acts, for example, solely by the actions of unaffiliated Palestinian civilians from Gaza.

And we hope that this documentation could support accountability efforts.

It's also important for victims and their families to know that what they experienced is well-documented and will not be forgotten.

STEPHANIE SY: This question of intent is really important, isn't it?

When we talk about war crimes and crimes against humanity, terms that get thrown around quite loosely these days, it's the coordination.

It's the intent.

Not every horrific act qualifies.

Can you talk about what you found that confirmed your belief that these were war crimes?

IDA SAWYER: What we were able to document is that the Palestinian armed groups committed a widespread and systematic attack directed against a civilian population, according to the definition that's required for crimes against humanity.

There's strong evidence of an organizational policy to commit multiple acts of crimes against humanity.

And then we're calling for further investigation into other potential crimes against humanity, including persecution against any identifiable group on racial, national, ethnic or religious grounds, rape or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity and extermination.

STEPHANIE SY: You referred to rape there, but did your report reach any new conclusions when it comes to sexual violence that occurred on October 7, which has obviously been a very fraught and debated issue ever since?

IDA SAWYER: Yes, so our research found evidence of acts of sexual violence, including forced nudity and the capturing and sharing on social media without consent of sexualized images.

But we were not able to gather verifiable information through interviews with people who were survivors of or witnesses to rape during the assault on October 7.

And there's only one public account reportedly from such a survivor.

But we have relied on the findings of the U.N. special representative of the secretary-general on sexual violence and conflict and her team, who conducted a mission to Israel, and they were able to conclude that there were reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred during the attacks in multiple locations across the Gaza periphery, including rape and gang rape in at least three locations.

So, based on this, we're confident that sexual violence did occur, but we do not know the full extent and we were not able to reach conclusions on the question of whether sexual and gender-based violence was specifically ordered or encouraged by those who planned and ordered the attack.

STEPHANIE SY: You talked to some 94 survivors of the attack as well in these interviews.

Was there one particular story, Ida, that stuck out to you?

IDA SAWYER: We just heard story after story of people describing their sheer terror that they experienced when they realized their community was under attack.

Many hid in their safe rooms trying to remain as silent as possible while frantically texting loved ones and neighbors to try to understand what was happening and see if they were OK. And then they described the horror they experienced later in the day when they were able to go outside and saw all the bodies and blood everywhere or they discovered that a family member was missing and presumably taken hostage back to Gaza.

There's one man, a nurse from Kibbutz Be'eri, where 97 civilians were killed.

And he described how he dragged a rapid response team member who'd been shot into the kibbutz's dental clinic to try to treat his wounds.

"There was a blood trail," he said.

"I cannot erase it from my mind, all the blood."

STEPHANIE SY: Ida, there have been accusations and denials of war crimes on both sides of the conflict, with Israel's military response to the October 7 terrorist attacks having claimed now more than 38,000 lives according to Gaza officials.

Ultimately, what kind of accountability or justice do you hope to see for parties on both sides of this conflict?

IDA SAWYER: So what we are really pushing for is, one, for the hostages who are still being held to be urgently released, and then for all parties to the conflict to protect civilians and to respect international humanitarian law and for all those responsible on both sides, for serious crimes to be held to account.

The key message that we want to get across is that, in any armed conflict around the world, atrocities by one side cannot justify atrocities by the other.

This is known as non-reciprocity, and it's a foundational principle of international humanitarian law or the laws of war.

So, no atrocities attributable to Palestinian armed groups, such as those that we documented in this report on October 7, can justify the use of starvation as a weapon of war, collective punishment, and unlawful airstrikes being carried out by Israeli forces against Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

And what we're really calling for to stop this endless cycle of abuses in both Israel and Palestine is for the need to address root causes and hold violators of all grave crimes to account.

And that, we believe, is in the interest of both Palestinians and Israelis.

STEPHANIE SY: Ida Sawyer with Human Rights Watch, thank you.

IDA SAWYER: Thank you.

STEPHANIE SY: It's been more than a week since Hurricane Beryl made landfall, and utility repair crews across Houston are still working to restore power to the last 50,000 customers, who have been without electricity through a brutal stretch of hot weather.

Some residents and local politicians say they have had enough.

William Brangham is here with more.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: That's right, Stephanie.

A lot of that anger and frustration is being directed at the local utility in Houston, CenterPoint Energy, after thousands of residents have endured a heat wave with no power and no air conditioning.

At least half-a-dozen deaths have been attributed to the heat and lack of power, and emergency rooms have seen a surge of heat-related cases.

Amid rising anger against CenterPoint, there have been reports of residents threatening some of the utility's line crews.

Texas' governor, Republican Greg Abbott, gave the utility until the end of the month to develop a plan to minimize future outages.

For the latest on this, we are joined by Dug Begley of The Houston Chronicle.

Dug, thank you so much for being here.

As I mentioned, about 50,000 people still don't have power.

That's down from a quarter-of-a-million a few days ago and nearly three million when the storm first came.

But Hurricane Beryl was only a Category 1.

Yes, it's still a hurricane, but just a Category 1, when it hit Texas.

Why is it that that storm did so much damage?

DUG BEGLEY, The Houston Chronicle: Well, I think that's one of the things that a lot of people here are wondering, is that a Category 1 that surged inland and gained strength as it hit the coast had extraordinary winds that came a little further than the normal Category 1.

And I think, if you ask CenterPoint Energy, they are seeing damage north of Houston that would be more categorized with a strong -- slightly stronger storm.

But the other consideration, because CenterPoint Energy's distribution system is what took the brunt of the damage, not the transmission lines that bring power into the Houston area, is that, simply, vegetation fell into the lines.

Trees toppled poles, trees brought lines down, and a series of just sort of neighborhood-by-neighborhood, street-by-street issues led to a lot of the outages.

However, a lot of people just have questions about that and how the system could be that vulnerable to what is, like you said, a Category 1.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: As I mentioned, a lot of criticism and frustration and anger from residents, from the governor.

Is it your sense that this has just reached a breaking point, that it's been -- the power has been out for so long and people are just livid?

DUG BEGLEY: I think so.

I mean, I think that there's an element of it that it's hot in Houston.

And when we don't have air conditioning, people get increasingly testy and frustrated.

And they look to why their power isn't on, who is going to turn it back on and when.

But remember that also we had a derecho events and straight-line wins here in may that knocked almost a million people off, slightly less than that.

But that came unexpectedly, did a lot of damage to different power lines.

And that followed by a Category 1 that knocks 2.26 million off, followed by what seemed like a slow restoration, has a lot of people asking questions.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: And what are the answers to those questions?

If -- I know the governor said, you have got to give us a report at the end of the month to demonstrate how you're not going to do this going forward.

But what is the principal problem here?

DUG BEGLEY: I think the problem is, CenterPoint is challenged to keep this system operational, but there are key things they have to do and that they say they are doing through resiliency plans or through their routine maintenance that people in a lot of the neighborhoods simply don't see.

And that is primarily, at least in the last few days of talking to people, about vegetation and whether trees need to be trimmed better around the lines, whether they need to predict where the lines are going to be most susceptible to tree damage and harden that with either composite poles that are going to hold up better than wooden poles and other structural fixes.

But I think that the chief frustration and the chief thing that comes out through a lot of this is whether or not CenterPoint and the state -- because, remember, the state does regulate this.

So they already have an opportunity to oversee a lot of CenterPoint's activities and processes when it comes to power distribution -- whether those are being followed, and then whether those are being strengthened every time they ask us for a rate increase.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: When you talk to people who study electrical grids, they -- a lot of them will say that we built a grid for a climate that doesn't exist.

We know storms are going to keep coming on.

We know heat waves are going to keep coming on.

There's been a lot of criticism in Texas, in particular, that CenterPoint and the state have not done enough to build resiliency into that system.

Are those criticisms fair?

DUG BEGLEY: Whether or not they're fair, I think, is the question that's going to be hopefully raised as we go forward through the legislature and some of the Public Utility Commission of Texas oversight.

But the sense from residents is, absolutely, that there has not been enough done to protect this system from what is the most predictable series of natural disasters that the Houston and the Gulf Coast can have, which is strong winds and a lot of sudden rain, and that the constant loss of hundreds of thousands of residents is what one councilmember this morning called -- city councilmember here in Houston called unacceptable and which everyone is looking to a new -- a rethink of the system.

Whether that's buried lines, whether that is hardening the infrastructure that's out there now, or simply being able to bring people back online faster with better planning right before storms.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: All right, Dug Begley of The Houston Chronicle, thank you so much for joining us.

DUG BEGLEY: Thank you, sir.

STEPHANIE SY: Thank you, William -- Geoff and Amna, back to you in Milwaukee.

GEOFF BENNETT: Thank you, Stephanie.

And that is the "News Hour" for tonight.

We have much more coverage online.

And please join us for live coverage of tonight's events here at the Republican National Convention.

That starts at 8:00 p.m. Eastern on your PBS station and streaming on our Web site and YouTube pages.

I'm Geoff Bennett.

AMNA NAWAZ: And I'm Amna Nawaz.

On behalf of the entire "News Hour" team, thank you for joining us, and we will see you soon.