This year's Republican National Convention continued Wednesday with a packed list of speakers including vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance, Donald Trump Jr. and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
Here's who you can expect to take the stage Wednesday as RNC 2024 enters its back half of events in a day focused on foreign policy, dubbed "Make America Strong Once Again."
Trump family and appointees
While former U.S. president Donald Trump isn't expected to speak until the convention's closing on Thursday, members of America's prospective first and second families are set to voice their support for the Republican ticket in advance of Trump's return to the spotlight.
Vance is scheduled to close out the night, his most prominent appearance since Trump announced him as his pick for the Republican vice-presidential nomination. Once a notorious critic of Trump, Vance has hewed closely to the former president in the years since the 2016 election and his own political ascension with a 2022 senate win.
Vance's wife and a lawyer who clerked for two U.S. Supreme Court justices, Usha Chilukuri Vance, will speak immediately before the newly crowned nominee.
Donald Trump Jr., the president's eldest son and executive vice president of the Trump Organization, will speak late in the day, joining his teenaged daughter Kai Trump, who will have an additional speaker's slot of her own.
Finally, recognizable names from the former Trump Administration are among the listed speakers, including then-counsellor to the president Kellyanne Conway and Ric Grenell, former acting director of national intelligence.
Congressional conservatives, past and present
High on Wednesday's speakers list are prominent voices in the House GOP.
Speakers from U.S. Congress include representatives Nancy Mace of South Carolina, Ronny Jackson and Monica De La Cruz of Texas and, from Florida, Brian Mast, Anna Paulina Luna, Michael Waltz and Matt Gaetz.
Also early in the schedule is former house speaker Newt Gingrich, another longtime supporter of Trump who described his surviving Saturday's shooting at a Butler, Pa. rally as "providential," invoking the possibility of divine intervention in saving the former president’s life.
"Neither America – nor President Trump – will ever be the same after [Saturday night's] assassination attempt," Gingrich wrote in a Wednesday blog post.
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GOP Governors
Alongside their federal-government counterparts in Wednesday's events are two Republican governors: Greg Abbott of Texas and Doug Burgum of North Dakota.
Abbott is central to a key plank of Trump's platform: amid revived plans to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, of which Abbott's home state of Texas makes up close to half.
In recent months, Abbott has drawn battle lines against the federal government under U.S. President Joe Biden, overseeing a protracted jurisdictional dispute between the nation's border patrol authorities and his state's own.
Abbott has been a loud and consistent voice against Biden's handling of the situation at the border, and has including Washington, D.C., New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Denver, Colo., as of a May press release.
Also speaking is Burgum, a former Republican primary rival of Trump's who was also popularly known to be on his shortlist for the vice presidential nomination.
In a post to X Monday wrote that VP nominee Vance's "small town roots and service to country make him a powerful voice for the America First Agenda," and that he will "look forward to campaigning" for the former president.
With files from The Associated Press
