Here's the latest
• Keynote speech: President Donald Trump, in his address to the GOP midterm convention, vowed to pay every American adult $5,000 if Republicans retain control of the House and Senate, an extraordinary attempt to seemingly buy votes to keep his party in power. He did not explain how he would make it happen.
• Economic push: In a speech replete with misleading facts, the president also touted the success of his administration’s economic policies despite CNN’s poll of polls showing his approval rating stands at 35%. Read our fact check here.
• Unscheduled event: Earlier, Democratic Sen. John Fetterman made a surprise appearance, speaking in a short video to praise his Republican colleague from Pennsylvania.
• CNN’s 20/26 Vision newsletter: The road to the midterms starts now. Each week, Aaron Blake cuts through the political noise with sharp analysis of the races, candidates and trends that could decide control of Congress. Sign up here.
Our live coverage of the first night of the GOP midterm convention has ended. We’ll have more coverage from night two on Thursday. Catch up here on the key takeaways from the night.
Our CNN experts analyzed Trump's keynote speech as it happened
In pictures: Trump delivers keynote speech at first-ever Republican midterm convention
Republicans gathered tonight in Dallas for an unusual 2026 GOP midterm convention — an event backed by President Donald Trump — and designed to energize voters, raise money and highlight key Republican candidates ahead of the November election.
In pictures: The first-ever Republican midterm convention
The convention featured more than 100 speakers, with Trump serving as both the keynote speaker on Wednesday night and the closing speaker on Thursday.
The event comes after Trump pressed for a convention-style gathering in 2026, prompting Republican leaders to amend rules that traditionally called for conventions only during presidential election years.
Vance points to tariffs as possible source of $5K dividends to US adults
Vice President JD Vance suggested that tariffs could pay for President Donald Trump’s promise to pay every American adult $5,000 if Republicans retain control of the House and Senate.
“Those penalties have generated a lot of revenues; they’ve helped us pay down debt. What the president is just saying is, if you keep it going — to the American people, if you keep us in power and allow us to continue to do these things, then you’re going to share in some of the benefit of this incredible wealth that we are creating in the United States of America,” Vance continued, adding he doesn’t “think it’s a controversial idea.”
Trump offered no details on how he would pay for such a move, which he equated to companies paying shareholders dividends and the extra $1,776 checks his administration issued to members of the military last year.
Fact check: Trump's campaign promises
President Donald Trump claimed tonight, “Every single promise I made you as a candidate, I’ve delivered on. I’ve delivered on everything.”
Trump certainly hasn’t kept every promise he made as a candidate.
To cite two prominent unkept promises from his 2024 campaign, he repeatedly vowed to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of returning to office, or even before being inaugurated, and to end inflation.
During his 2016 campaign, he famously vowed that Mexico would pay for his border wall, which also did not happen.
Fact check: Talarico and masking
Mocking James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for the US Senate in Texas, President Donald Trump said Talarico was seen wearing a mask “a few months ago.”
CNN could find no evidence that Talarico was seen wearing a mask that recently. Republicans have lampooned Talarico over a video showing him wearing a mask at an event in 2022.
This wasn’t a one-time exaggeration by Trump. He said in May that Talarico was wearing a mask “six months ago” and in an interview released in early June that it was “a couple of months ago.” He provided no evidence for those claims.
Trump vows $5K dividends to US adults if GOP keeps control of Congress but doesn't say how
President Donald Trump vowed to pay every American adult $5,000 if Republicans retain control of the House and Senate – an extraordinary promise that would amount to effectively trying to buy the votes to keep his party in power, if he could actually pull it off.
“Here is my promise: If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them,” he said. “I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000.”
Trump did not say Wednesday how he would fund the enormous cost of a $5,000 payment to the estimated 270 million adults in the nation, nor did he offer any specific details of executing the payments. When Trump previously proposed issuing $2,000 tariff rebate checks to most Americans, his Treasury Secretary noted, “We need legislation for that.”
Trump compared the latest offer to the dividends that some companies periodically pay their shareholders, and equated it to his decision last year to pay members of the military an extra $1,776 — money that was diverted at the time from an account created by Republicans’ sweeping tax-and-spending legislation.
But it marked perhaps Trump’s most audacious effort yet to win the votes that the GOP needs to maintain its majority amid broad dissatisfaction with his administration’s agenda.
“If the Republicans win, you win with us and you get $5,000,” he said. “It will be called the Trump dividend.”
Fact check: Who’s paying for Trump’s ballroom
President Donald Trump claimed tonight that his White House ballroom will use “zero tax dollars.”
It’s not yet clear what the final breakdown of the project’s costs will be, but the current plan is to use taxpayer funding at least for security measures related to the project, which includes a secretive underground bunker complex that Trump claims is critical for national security.
The Post and the New York Times have reported this year that the Secret Service has acknowledged it will use public funds for security measures connected to the project.
And this spring, Senate Republicans proposed that nearly $1 billion in public funds go in part toward security related to the project; although that proposal ultimately failed, it acknowledged that there would be taxpayer costs associated with the construction.
CNN’s Betsy Klein contributed to this item.
Fact check: Global drug prices
President Donald Trump repeated his frequent claim that the United States now has the lowest drug prices in the world.
Several experts told CNN they highly doubt that the prices for brand-name drugs in the US are generally less than they are in other countries, and the Trump administration has not provided details to prove the claim.
The US paid about three times the price of other developed countries for brand name medications in 2022, according to a highly cited RAND study. (Notably, Americans paid less for generic drugs, which make up 90% of prescriptions in the US, than patients elsewhere.)
During his second term, Trump has signed “Most Favored Nation” deals with more than two dozen pharmaceutical manufacturers. The drugmakers promised to provide steep discounts to Medicaid (which already receives substantial discounts); launch new drugs at the lowest price available globally; and sell some of their products on TrumpRx, a direct-to-consumer clearinghouse for patients willing to pay cash — in return for a three-year exemption from tariffs. The terms of the deals have not been disclosed.
There are currently 80 brand-name drugs listed as “presidential deals” on TrumpRx — a small fraction of the number of medications on the market.
Analysts at ING told CNN that the US does not have the world’s lowest drug prices. The “Most Favored Nation” agreements largely have an impact on drug prices in Medicaid, which is only 10% of the US market, said Diederik Stadig, senior healthcare economist at ING.
That said, Trump’s agreements with Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk to reduce the cash-pay prices of their blockbuster GLP-1 weight loss medications have led to an equalization in their cost in the US and abroad, Stephen Farrelly, ING’s global lead for pharma and healthcare, told CNN.
Previously asked about the president’s claim, White House spokesman Kush Desai said Trump is correct but did not respond to CNN’s request to substantiate this claim.
Trump suggests renaming the Strait of Hormuz after himself
President Donald Trump continued an ongoing theme during his midterm convention speech: Promising to rename places like Lake Ontario, New Mexico and even the Strait of Hormuz after himself and America.
Trump said he “should get something out of” controlling the Strait of Hormuz: “It’s going to be called, ladies and gentlemen — I’ll have an announcement. We’ll call it the Trump Strait, and I’m sure the Iranian leadership will be thrilled with that.”
On Lake Ontario, Trump said “we’re going to call that now Lake America,” a reference to an executive order he signed last week renaming the lake amid a tense trade war with the United States’ northern ally.
Trump also suggested renaming Texas’ neighboring state, New Mexico, to “New America,” an idea he has floated more and more in recent days. And he again suggested he would consider renaming the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean after America.
Trump says new White House ballroom will "top" China's Great Hall
President Donald Trump said during tonight’s GOP midterm convention that he wants the new White House ballroom to surpass China’s Great Hall in scale and grandeur.
Trump touted the scale of the planned venue, saying it would dwarf the current capacity for White House events. “But we have like 101 people. We could have 2,000 people. I could have this whole stadium would like to go there,” he said.
He then directly compared the project to a landmark he encountered on a previous trip to China.
Late last month, the Supreme Court cleared way for Trump to continue construction on the ballroom, rejecting a challenge from a preservation group that sought to indefinitely halt the project.
The administration has been racing ahead with work on the nearly 90,000-square-foot ballroom, which Trump views as the foundation of his presidential legacy. He has said the ballroom is necessary for national security reasons, citing state-of-the-art features intended to protect the White House from an attack.
Fact check: Iowa gas prices before the Iran war
President Donald Trump claimed, as he has on numerous previous occasions, that gas prices were just “$1.85” per gallon in Iowa before he launched the war against Iran in late February. There is no apparent basis for this claim.
On the day he visited Iowa in late January, the average price in the state for regular gasoline was $2.57 per gallon, according to AAA. The firm GasBuddy found just four stations in the state selling that day for under $2 per gallon — $1.97, to be specific, not $1.85 — out of 2,036 stations the firm was tracking there. A CNN reporter also noticed that the station right outside the venue where Trump spoke was at $2.69 per gallon that day.
It’s possible Trump was referring to the price of E85, an ethanol-gasoline blend that is sold in a minority of gas stations and can only be used in the small percentage of vehicles that are compatible with it. The blend was selling for around $1.85 per gallon in Iowa at the time of his visit.
But as when he made this claim about Iowa gas prices on previous occasions, he offered no indication here that he was talking about a niche product.
Trump commiserates with Mavs fans over Doncic trade
President Donald Trump, speaking at the Republican midterm convention hosted at the American Airlines Arena – home of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks – weighed in on the team’s controversial decision to trade away star player Luka Doncic last year.
The president, a longtime sports fan, suggested that “it might go down as the worst trade in the history of sports.” But he reconsidered, ranking it behind the legendary Babe Ruth trade between the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees in baseball.
“You know the worst trade in the history of sports, right?” Trump said. “The great Babe Ruth. Babe Ruth, 19-year old pitcher, for a 36-year-old third baseman and $100,000. At that time that was like $10 million I guess, because Boston needed money. So Babe will always be the worst trade.”
According to the Baseball Hall of Fame, Ruth was 24 years old at the time of the trade in 1920 and no other player was involved in the transaction.
Still, Trump expressed dismay at the Mavericks’ decision to move Doncic, a six-time All Star who led the team to the NBA Finals in 2024.
“Luka? That’s not a good – that wasn’t good. Maybe we could redo that trade. I redo deals all the time. We gotta redo that deal. I don’t get that deal,” Trump joked.
Notably, the Mavericks are owned by Miriam Adelson and her family. Adelson, the widow of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, is a major donor to Trump and Republican causes.
Fact check: Trump and prices
President Donald Trump boasted about how the price of eggs has fallen sharply during his administration, which is true. But then he also said, “Food prices and almost every other item are rapidly going down.”
That is not even close to true; prices keep going up.
The most recent available inflation rate, for July, showed a 3.4% year-over-year increase — higher than the 2.9% rate in former President Joe Biden’s last full month in office, December 2024, and the 3.0% rate in January 2025.
The vast majority of products and product categories tracked by the federal Consumer Price Index have increased in price, not decreased in price, since Trump returned to office in January 2025. You can see a chart of these changes here.
Overall consumer prices are up 4.3% since January 2025, while food prices are up 4.3% and grocery prices in particular are up 3.4%.
Trump cites "movement" at Iranian nuclear site, floats striking it
President Donald Trump said tonight he is aware of activity at Pickaxe Mountain, a suspected Iranian nuclear site near the Natanz nuclear complex, roughly 140 miles south of Tehran, raising the possibility of even further military action against Iran.
“There’s another place called Pickaxe Mountain, another nice place,” Trump told the crowd in Dallas during tonight’s keynote speech at the GOP midterm convention. “We may have to give him a shot there too because somebody said there was a little movement at the site,” Trump said of Iran.
Trump’s comments came hours after CNN reported that the site, which is buried under granite, has seen a flurry of construction work this year amid the war between the US and Iran, according to a group of analysts who reviewed six years of satellite imagery.
“We don’t need much,” Trump added. “We can see everything.”
Pickaxe Mountain has long been a focus for intelligence agencies, which view it as a likely location for Iran to safeguard future nuclear program efforts.
A new satellite imagery analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, shared exclusively with CNN, found “a clear surge in construction activity” at the site this year.
Fact check: Taxes on Social Security
President Donald Trump repeated his usual false claim that he achieved “no tax on Social Security” for seniors, as other speakers did earlier tonight.
The big domestic policy bill Trump signed in 2025 did create an additional, temporary $6,000-per-year tax deduction for individuals age 65 and older (with a smaller deduction for individuals earning $75,000 per year or more), but as the White House has implicitly acknowledged, millions of Social Security recipients will continue to pay taxes on their benefits even before the temporary new deduction expires after 2028.
The Social Security Administration said in 2025 that “the bill ensures that nearly 90% of Social Security beneficiaries will no longer pay federal income taxes on their benefits.”
CNN’s Tami Luhby contributed to this item.
Fact check: The number of Americans working
President Donald Trump on Wednesday night declared that “right now, in the United States of America, we have more people working than we have ever had before.”
This is true, but Trump didn’t explain that this statistic he frequently cites is nearly meaningless.
Every US president since at least 1948, when modern federal data collection began, could have accurately said at some point during their tenure that more people were working in the US than ever before.
That’s because the number of people working in the US generally rises over time simply because the population rises over time. With the exception of recessions, like those caused by the financial crisis of 2008 or the Covid-19 crisis of 2020, the number of employed people tends to just get higher as the years pass.
Better ways to measure the labor market, like the unemployment rate, the employment-population ratio, the labor force participation rate and the pace of job creation, show it has been far from historically strong this term.
You can read more here.
Trump says he attacked Iran despite Treasury Secretary's concerns about economic fallout
President Donald Trump said tonight he struck Iran despite hearing reservations from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that going to war would hurt the economy.
Trump’s remarks represented his latest attempt to cast the war with Iran as unavoidable, even as it’s dragged on well past his initial four-to-six-week timetable and deepened the US’ own economic affordability challenges.
The president on Wednesday acknowledged the war in Iran had taken a toll on the economy, claiming he told Bessent and other officials that he was “sorry to do this” just as the US was on a financial upswing.
Fact check: Migrants and murder
After denouncing the Biden administration on immigration, President Donald Trump claimed that Democrats allowed “11,888 murderers” to enter the country.
It’s not true that the Biden administration in particular or Democrats in general allowed in all these murderers. As he has on numerous prior occasions, Trump was inaccurately describing federal data.
They were convicted of homicide at some point, usually in the US after their arrival, and are still in the US while being listed on Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s “non-detained docket” – which includes people who are currently serving their prison sentences.
Trump defends Senate leader Thune amid chorus of boos
President Donald Trump’s mention of Senate Majority Leader John Thune during his keynote speech spurred loud boos from the GOP convention crowd, forcing Trump to defend the top Republican lawmaker as a hard worker.
The response to Thune’s name came after Trump spent months criticizing the majority leader for failing to marshal the votes needed to pass a sweeping federal elections overhaul bill.
The president repeatedly pressed Thune to advance the legislation, even after it became clear there were not nearly enough Republicans in support of it.
The convention crowd’s response to Thune contrasted sharply with their loud ovation for House Speaker Mike Johnson, who Trump has frequently hailed for helping advance his agenda in Congress.
