That’s all from the blog for today. We will pick up from here again tomorrow. Here’s a summary of what’s been happening:

• The Republican National Convention kicked off, with delegates and officials descending on Wisconsin amid the tumult that follows a Saturday assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump as he prepares to become the GOP’s official nominee.
• King Charles III wrote to Trump after the shooting in Pennsylvania, Buckingham Palace said.
• Trump said he has rewritten his speech for the Republican National Convention to focus on uniting the country.
• He spent much of Sunday on the phone with friends, news hosts and local and foreign officials, including Sir Keir Starmer.
• Ohio Pastor Darrell Scott, a longtime ally, said Trump “was in great spirits” when they spoke on Sunday morning, hours after the shooting.
• The 20-year-old man who tried to assassinate Trump first came to law enforcement’s attention at Saturday’s rally when spectators noticed him acting strangely outside the campaign event. The tip sparked a frantic search, but officers were unable to find him before he managed to get on a roof, where he opened fire.

• In the wake of the shooting that killed one spectator, investigators are hunting for any clues about what may have driven Thomas Matthew Crooks, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, to carry out the shocking attack.
• The FBI said they were investigating it as a potential act of domestic terrorism – but the absence of a clear ideological motive by the man shot dead by Secret Service allowed conspiracy theories to flourish.
• The director of the Secret Service said she was confident in the plan to secure the Republican National Convention in the wake of an attempt on the life of presidential candidate Trump.
• A criminal case against Trump accusing him of illegally holding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida was dismissed by a US judge.

• Florida-based Judge Aileen Cannon, who was nominated by Trump, ruled that Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the prosecution, was unlawfully appointed to his role and did not have the authority to bring the case.
• The ruling on Monday marked another legal victory for Trump, after the US Supreme Court handed down a landmark ruling on 1 July that means the former president is partially immune from prosecution for actions taken while in the White House. 
• Trump told Fox News that he would announce his pick for his vice presidential running mate later on Monday.
• Trump was believed to have narrowed his list to three candidates: JD Vance, Doug Burgum and Marco Rubio.
• But on Monday, US Senator Rubio of Florida and North Dakota governor Burgum were reportedly both told they would not be Trump’s running mate, leaving JD Vance as the presumptive pick for VP.

This morning I wrote that the stars were aligning for Donald Trump. And so it continues.

The one criminal case in which the former president appears truly bang to rights has now been dropped.

In case you’ve forgotten in the swirl of Trump’s legal proceedings, he has been charged, with the help of copious photographic evidence, of improperly taking classified documents, including defence papers, and splaying them all around his Mar-a-Lago mansion, and even discussing them with visitors, before attempting a conspiracy to cover up his crimes.

The inexperienced Trump-appointed judge in charge of the case, Aileen Cannon, has now decided to dismiss proceedings after ruling that the government-appointed special counsel Jack Smith’s role as prosecutor violates the Constitution.

Smith is likely to appeal the ruling, and will be on strong grounds to do so… but that will take more time.

Read more here.

Fox News and CNN have reported that North Dakota governor Doug Burgum, an unsuccessful challenger for the GOP nomination, has been informed he will not be Donald Trump’s pick for vice president.

Trump was believed to have narrowed his list to three candidates: JD Vance, Mr Burgum and Marco Rubio – who has also reportedly been ruled out.

Mr Vance is said to be the most ideologically aligned with the former president and would energise his base. At 39, he would add a millennial contrast to the older men at the top of their parties’ tickets. He has served in the Senate for less than two years, though, which may mean he would be perceived by the electorate as inexperienced.

It is still unknown who Trump has chosen to run on the presidential ticket with him, but an adviser has reportedly told The Washington Post he will make the announcement at 4.37pm Eastern time (9.37pm GMT).

The US Secret Service postponed a meeting on Monday when it was due to field questions from Congress about why agents failed to prevent a gunman from almost killing Donald Trump, as the agency increases protection for the former president.

Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle had been due to brief the House Homeland Security Committee in an afternoon virtual meeting but asked for the session to be rescheduled, according to a panel aide. The aide said the committee expected to receive an alternative briefing date from Secret Service promptly.

The Secret Service was also due to brief members of the House Oversight Committee on Tuesday, and Ms Cheatle was expected to appear before that panel for a full-scale hearing on 22 July.

The assassination attempt has raised serious concerns in Congress about how the alleged shooter was able to access a nearby rooftop with a direct line of sight to where Trump was speaking.

US Senator Marco Rubio of Florida has been told he will not be Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s running mate, Reuters reports.

Sources told the news agency that advisers for Trump, who is expected to formally announce his vice presidential pick later today, viewed Mr Rubio’s residency in Florida as a drawback.

The US Constitution bans the electors who formally select the president and vice president from choosing two candidates both from their home state. Both Trump and Rubio call Florida home.

Mr Rubio was thought to be in the running for Trump’s vice-presidential pick along with Ohio senator JD Vance and North Dakota governor Doug Burgum.

Donald Trump has signalled a willingness to work with Sir Keir Starmer as the two men spoke for the first time after the former president was shot by a would-be assassin.

The Prime Minister decided to phone Trump for a conversation in the wake of the failed attempt on the Republican leader’s life on Saturday evening.

Aides had initially suggested sending a note of sympathy, but Sir Keir decided that he wanted to speak to Trump instead in order to emphasise his sincerity, i understands.

British officials were pleased by how quickly the Trump team agreed to the suggestion once it was put to them via the British Embassy, despite the chaos surrounding the presidential candidate after the shooting at his rally in Pennsylvania.

The conversation on Sunday afternoon lasted up to 10 minutes and mostly focused on the immediate situation, but Trump also took the opportunity to congratulate Sir Keir on becoming Prime Minister.

The two men had never previously spoken directly or indirectly.

Read more from Hugo Gye and Arj Singh here.

The Republican National Convention has kicked off in Milwaukee, with some 50,000 people expected to attend the four-day event in Wisconsin, a critical battleground state in November’s presidential election.

Donald Trump is expected to announce his vice presidential pick this evening.

It is a weapon so ubiquitously popular that it has been dubbed “America’s rifle” by gun enthusiasts.

And yet the AR-15 is also so lethal that it has been used in at least 10 of the 17 deadliest mass shootings in the US in the past 12 years.

When police recovered what they described as an “AR-style” semi-automatic rifle from beside the body of the shooter in the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump on Saturday, it was only the latest chapter in a long history of a gun of which some 20 million examples now exist in American homes.

The AR-15 comes in many variants capable of firing at least nine different gauges of ammunition.

A former Scotland Yard firearms specialist told i that it appeared the weapon recovered from beside Thomas Matthew Crooks was manufactured to fire .22 calibre bullets, which are slower than standard ammunition and less “suitable” for the sniper-style shooting attempted on Trump.

Read more here.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has said he was grateful that the injuries former president Donald Trump suffered during an assassination attempt over the weekend were not more serious and that the event marked a “sad day for our country”.

The Federal Reserve is the central bank of the United States and the most powerful economic institution in the country.

“Political violence has no place in our society, and I condemn it in the strongest terms. I know we all do,” Mr Powell said at an event at the Economic Club of Washington.

“I’m grateful that the injuries to the former president were not more serious.”

Trump and Mr Powell are understood to have a strained relationship, one that will get closer attention should the 78-year-old regain the White House.

Mr Powell was first appointed to the Fed Board of Governors by former president Barack Obama, but it was Trump who picked him to lead the central bank, a post Mr Powell assumed in early 2018.

Trump turned against him soon after, railing against the interest rate hikes that the Fed delivered during Mr Powell’s first year at the helm.

Mr Powell’s current term as chair expires in 2026, and Trump has said he would not reappoint him. Trump has also said he believed the Fed chief would lower interest rates to help President Joe Biden’s prospects for re-election.

Donald Trump has called for independent presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr to “immediately” receive Secret Service protection.

Mr Kennedy, whose father senator Robert F Kennedy and uncle US president John F Kennedy were both assassinated, revealed last year that his request for Secret Service protection had been denied.

Calls for Mr Kennedy to be granted protection have renewed following the attempted assassination of former president Trump at a weekend rally in Pennsylvania.

Writing on his Truth Social social media platform, Trump said: “In light of what is going on in the world today, I believe it is imperative that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. receive Secret Service protection — immediately. Given the history of the Kennedy Family, this is the obvious right thing to do!”

Security for Donald Trump has been “spread thin” and doesn’t match protections for Joe Biden, a former presidential bodyguard has claimed.

Former US Secret Service agent Joseph LaSorsa, who was a member of Ronald Reagan’s security detail, also claimed that the agency suffers from a “limited budget” and will need to “upgrade and escalate security measures” after Trump was fortunate to survive an assassination attempt on Saturday.

The Secret Service is charged with protecting US political leaders, their families, and visiting heads of state or government, as well as investigating crimes against the US financial system.

With the service facing intense questions over how gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks was able to shoot at Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania from a nearby rooftop – killing one spectator and injuring two others – Mr LaSorsa believes it will now “forego any kind of budgetary consideration”.

Although the Secret Service budget has been growing, questions have been raised over how the money has been used in the aftermath of the attack.

Read more here.

The Trump campaign will announce its pick for Donald Trump’s vice presidential running mate at around 8pm (4.30pm local time) during the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, a familiar source has told Reuters.

Three candidates are thought to be in the running: Ohio senator JD Vance, North Dakota governor Doug Burgum and Florida senator Marco Rubio.

Immediately after the shooting of Donald Trump, social media became a hotbed of online conspiracy theorists spreading hyperbole, lies and fake news that claimed the assassination attempt of the former US president was an “inside job”.

Conspiracy theories were shared across the political divide, with the far right invoking the QAnon narrative by saying the shooting was payback for Trump exposing a cabal of Satanic-worshipping paedophiles.

Right-wing Republican politicians suggested that Joe Biden had ordered the shooting, while those on the left alleged the gunfire was a hoax to bolster Trump’s 2024 presidential run.

Assassination attempts are not new in American politics, but this is the first in the age of social media and its web of fake social media accounts, online sleuths and the spread of disinformation and misinformation.

Analysis by the Israeli tech firm Cyabra found that 45 per cent of the accounts using hashtags such as #fakeassassination and #stagedshooting were inauthentic.

Read more from Caolan Magee here.

Fox News reporter Bret Baier said that US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump told him he would announce his pick for his vice presidential running mate on Monday.

Baier made the comments to Fox TV. 

Republican Donald Trump leads Democratic US President Joe Biden in Pennsylvania, but trails in Virginia, according to New York Times/Sienna College polls of registered voters conducted in those states on 9 to 11 July and published on Monday.

The polls, conducted before the attempted assassination of Trump on Saturday, show Trump leads Mr Biden 48 per cent to 44 per cent in Pennsylvania, while in Virginia Mr Biden leads Trump 46 per cent to 44 per cent.

The poll of 872 registered voters in Pennsylvania had a margin of error of 3.7 percentage points, and the poll of 661 registered voters in Virginia had a margin of error of 4.2 percentage points.

After that close shave with a sniper’s bullet, Donald Trump is feeling energised, according to those close to him.

“You would think he would be down,” said Fox News host Lawrence Jones, who told his network he had just spoken with Trump early on Sunday morning. “He’s in the saddle. He’s excited.”

The egotistical former president is probably chuffed with images of his defiant, blood-streaked face dominating front pages and TV screens from Milwaukee to Timbuktu.

Officials working for Trump’s campaign say they are moving full-speed ahead with the GOP convention that starts on Monday, in the expectation the event will be turbocharged by the presidential candidate’s apparent ability to brush off the assassination attempt.

“Our boss is leading the way,” one Trump campaign official told Politico. “He set the tone, which is ‘Let’s get back to it and go win.’”

The former president spent much of Sunday on the phone with friends and Republican allies, and and no doubt enjoyed the sympathetic phone calls from world leaders, including Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, whose messages of condolence are becoming fulsome now that his re-election prospects look better than ever.

He has even promised that we will see a new, more statesman-like version of Donald Trump.

Read more here.

Donald Trump has said that the dismissal of the case accusing him of illegally holding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort “should be the first step”.

In a post on his Truth Social platform, he said that all of the four cases against him should be dropped, claiming that the Justice Department “co-ordinated all of these political attacks, which are an election interference conspiracy against Joe Biden’s political opponent, me”.

He urged his supporters to “come together to end all weaponisation of our justice system”.

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are getting an updated briefing from homeland security and law enforcement officials on the investigation into the attempted assassination of Donald Trump.

The briefing is taking place in the Situation Room, the White House says.

The attorney general, homeland security secretary, FBI director and the director and deputy director of the US Secret Service are among those briefing Mr Biden and Ms Harris.

The US Secret Service on Monday will begin fielding questions from Congress about why agents failed to prevent a gunman from almost killing Donald Trump, as the agency increases protection for the former president.

Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle was due to brief the House Homeland Security Committee in a virtual meeting on Monday afternoon, according to a congressional aide.

The Secret Service will also brief members of the House Oversight Committee on Tuesday, while Cheatle is expected to appear before the panel for a full-scale hearing on 22 July.

MILWAUKEE – The attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump has not only led Republicans to unify around his candidacy in greater numbers ahead of November’s election. It has also abruptly frozen the efforts of a growing number of Democrats to urge President Joe Biden to abandon his re-election quest.

NBC reported on Sunday that the shooting had brought Democratic efforts to dethrone Biden “to a standstill”. One prominent strategist Democrat told i “any predictions are hazardous to make in the current climate”, but argued that it is “quite possible that the way is now clear” for Biden to remain in the race all the way through until Election Day.

Biden raced back to the White House in the hours after Saturday’s shooting, upending his plans to spend the weekend with family in Delaware assessing whether his press conference at the end of the Nato summit on Thursday had done enough to see off the threats to his re-election campaign.

On Sunday night, for only the third time, the President interrupted primetime entertainment programmes with a televised address from the Oval Office. His topic: the urgent need for the country to combat political violence in the wake of the attempted assassination in Pennsylvania, and the immediate requirement for Americans to lower the temperature, and unite around the age-old principles of its founding fathers.

“Disagreement is inevitable in American democracy,” he said. “It’s part of human nature. But politics must never be a human battlefield, or God forbid, a killing field.” He urged Americans to “take a step back… everybody must be treated with decency and respect. Hate must have no safe harbour”.

The shooting of his rival has presented Biden with an opportunity to use the bully pulpit of the presidency to helm the country through a genuine national crisis: the first attempted assassination of a sitting or former president since March 1981, when Ronald Reagan was wounded by gunman John Hinckley Jr outside the Washington Hilton. 

Read more from Simon Marks here.