JD Vance formally accepted the Republican vice-presidential nomination on Wednesday with a deliberate, and at times divisive, pitch to re-elect Donald Trump in November.

Addressing delegates in Milwaukee on the third night of the convention, Vance, the junior senator of Ohio, presented the Republican party as a champion of working-class Americans while denouncing Democrats as out of touch and ineffective. The populist-tinged rhetoric offered the latest sign of how Trump has reshaped the Republican party and rejected much of the traditional conservatism of its past.

“From Iraq to Afghanistan, from the financial crisis to the Great Recession, from open borders to stagnating wages, the people who govern this country have failed and failed again,” Vance told the energized crowd. “That is, of course, until a guy named Donald J Trump came along. President Trump represents America’s last, best hope to restore what, if lost, may never be found again.”

Vance leaned into his own personal story, first shared in his bestselling and controversial memoir Hillbilly Elegy, to bolster his message. He recounted experiences with childhood poverty in Middletown, Ohio, and his later acceptance to Yale Law School as he introduced himself to a much larger audience of Americans for the first time. In an emotional moment, Vance acknowledged his mother in the crowd and celebrated her 10 years of sobriety after decades of struggling with drug addiction.

With a mention of the battleground states that could determine the outcome of the election, he vowed that a Trump-Vance administration would deliver economic opportunity for working-class communities.

“In Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio and every corner of our nation, I promise you this: I will be a vice-president who never forgets where he came from,” Vance said. “And every single day for the next four years, when I walk into that White House to help President Trump, I will be doing it for you, for your family, for your future and for this great country.”

Democrats scoffed at Vance’s attempt to appeal to working Americans, accusing him of backing “an economic agenda that will raise costs on American families, while giving billionaires and corporations tax cuts”.

Michael Tyler, communications director of the Biden campaign, added, “JD Vance is unprepared, unqualified and willing to do anything Donald Trump demands.”

In his speech, Vance joined the scores of Republican lawmakers who have condemned the assassination attempt against Trump on Saturday. Vance urged Americans to unify in the face of violence, even as he vilified Democrats who previously criticized Trump.

“I want all Americans to go and watch the video of a would-be assassin coming a quarter of an inch from taking his life,” Vance said. “Consider the lies they told you about Donald Trump, and then look at that photo of him defiant, fist in the air. When Donald Trump rose to his feet in that Pennsylvania field, all of America stood with him.”

In another sign of Trump’s takeover of the Republican party, Vance echoed the former president’s “America first” approach to foreign policy. Since joining the Senate last year, Vance has become one of the most outspoken critics of US aid to Ukraine and he doubled down on that isolationist stance in his speech.

“Together we will make sure our allies share in the burden of securing world peace – no more free rides,” Vance said. “We will put the citizens of America first, whatever the color of their skin. We will, in short, make America great again.”

The selection of Vance has unsettled some Republican lawmakers who embrace America’s active role on the global stage, and his speech underscored how Trump’s re-election could fundamentally reshape the relationship between the US and its European allies at a perilous moment. One senior European diplomat told the Guardian that Trump’s choice of running-mate was “terrible news” for Ukraine, adding, “[Vance] is not our ally.”

Nodding at the ideological differences within his party, Vance encouraged Republicans to engage in a robust debate over key policy issues.

“Shouldn’t we be governed by a party that is unafraid to debate ideas and come to the best solution?” Vance said. “That’s the Republican party of the next four years, united in our love for this country and committed to free speech and the open exchange of ideas.”

Voters will determine in November if that Republican party will indeed have the opportunity to govern for the next four years.

With political winds at his back, Donald Trump on Thursday is expected to use his first speech since surviving an assassination attempt to plead for national unity.

Strategists view the Republican national convention address, likely to be watched by tens of millions of Americans on prime time television, as a unique opportunity to redefine the former US president as more palatable to moderate voters.

But critics remain sceptical that a Trump reset can last, citing past supposed “pivots” that were hyped by the media only for the septuagenarian to soon revert to dark, divisive and incendiary outbursts.

“That was a profound existential moment and I’m sure it’s impacted him in the short run, but you are who you are,” David Axelrod, a former chief strategist for President Barack Obama, said. “He isn’t by habit or orientation a unifier.

“Maybe so long as the race is going well others can persuade him that it’s better to be quiet than noisy. But you never know what happens in two in the morning when he’s got his phone in his hand and an impulse in his head.”

In opinion polls, Trump is running 11 percentage points ahead of where he was nationally in the 2020 race of the White House. He is surfing a wave of sympathy and adulation after his right ear was injured by a would-be assassin’s bullet at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday.

Two days later, his ear bandaged, Trump received a hero’s welcome from cheering, sign-waving supporters at the convention in Milwaukee. Some echoed Trump’s initial response to “Fight! Fight! Fight!”

Speaker after speaker suggested that Trump’s life was spared by God’s providence so that he can continue a sacred mission for the nation. But they backed away from early accusations that Democrats were to blame for the shooting.

Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, who on Saturday tweeted that the Joe Biden campaign’s rhetoric “led directly” to the attempted assassination, struck a different tone in his convention address on Wednesday night.

“Now consider what they said. They said he was a tyrant. They said he must be stopped at all costs. But how did he respond? He called for national unity, for national calm literally right after an assassin nearly took his life.”

He added: “He is tough – he is – and he cares about people. He can stand defiant against an assassin one moment and call for national healing the next. He is a beloved father and grandfather and, of course, a once in a generation business leader.”

In another move aimed at softening Trump’s image, his granddaughter Kai Madison Trump made her debut on the political stage. “He calls me during the middle of the school day to ask how my golf game is going and tells me all about his,” she said. “Grandpa, you are such an inspiration and I love you. The media makes my grandpa look like such a different person but I know who he is.”

Some have shifted their emphasis from “Make America great again” (Maga) to “Make America one again”. Lara Trump, his daughter-in-law and co-chair of the Republican National Committee, told the convention on Tuesday that Americans should remember “there is more that unites us than divides us”.

In a nod towards moderation, Trump invited his erstwhile Republican rival Nikki Haley to speak. She was greeted with cheers and some boos but quickly quelled the latter by giving Trump a full-throated endorsement. “You don’t have to agree with Trump 100% of the time to vote for him,” she said. “Take it from me.”

Republicans’ show of harmony offers a stunning contrast with Democrats, who have spent weeks mired in intra-party tensions over whether 81-year-old Biden should abandon his reelection bid after a hapless debate performance. A national NBC News poll found that just 33% of Democrats are satisfied with Biden as their party’s presidential nominee, versus 71% of Republicans satisfied with Trump.

Speaking at an event in Milwaukee organised by the Cook Political Report and University of Chicago Institute of Politics, Republican pollster and strategist Tony Fabrizio said: “Right now the Democrats are the perfect circular firing squad and, while they’re the perfect circular firing squad, we have the run of the field, and the run of the field for us is to do exactly what we are doing. Running the messaging we are running. The president doing what the president is doing.”

Trump’s near-death experience, and the ensuing national attention, present an opportunity when he formally accepts the party’s nomination to face Biden in a rematch of 2020. His wife Melania and daughter Ivanka, both of whom have been mostly missing from the campaign trail, are expected to attend.

Some Republicans hope that Trump can recreate Ronald Reagan’s defiant optimism after he survived an assassination attempt in 1981, casting himself as unifier-in-chief. On Sunday Trump told the New York Post newspaper that he had intended to deliver biting remarks against Biden until the shooting prompted him to throw them out.

Trump is understood to have been reworking his remarks with his speechwriter Ross Worthington since the shooting, according to a person close to Trump, and has discussed making himself sound like he is still the president, as opposed to just a candidate.

But at an event hosted by the Axios website, Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, suggested that even if Trump shifted to a gentler tone, his core political attacks were likely to continue. “You can be nicer on the margins but you still have to call out insanity when you see insanity,” Trump Jr said when asked about more caustic language turning off potential voters, for instance on transgender issues. “That’s different, that’s not about tone.”

Trump Jr also said that, even though he believed that Trump’s unity tone would last until the vice-presidential debate, he expected Trump to counter-punch if attacked by Biden, who recently urged the country to tone down the political rhetoric in a televised address from the Oval Office.

“I think he’s going to be tough when he has to be. That’s never going to change. He’s not going to just take an attack. My father will always be a fighter, that’s never going to change, but he’s going to do his best to moderate that. He’s never going to stop being Trump when attacked, that’s what makes him an effective leader because he doesn’t cower under fire – quite literally.”

At an event hosted by Georgetown University on the sidelines of the convention, Trump’s co-campaign chief Chris LaCivita acknowledged that the unity messaging would not come at the expense of winning the election in November.

LaCivita said: “This is obviously an opportunity to bring our country together. But let’s not forget we’re in the middle of a campaign. Our focus is very much on putting everything back squarely on the issues that are hurting everyday Americans and providing them an answer to those.”

Indeed, for all the talk of a softer, more inclusive Trump, he has sat in a box in the convention hall alongside extremists such as Tucker Carlson, a broadcaster who has promoted white nationalism and praised Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and Marjorie Taylor Greene, the representative who once floated a conspiracy theory involving “Jewish space lasers”.

Many of the speeches in Milwaukee have been centered on the theme of law and order and infused with Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, with speakers angrily denouncing Biden’s southern border policies and referring to an “invasion”. Delegates waved signs that said, “Mass deportation now” and chanted, “Drill, baby, drill!”

There are also some striking absences: the former president George W Bush, the former vice-president Mike Pence and senators Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Susan Collins (Maine), Todd Young (Indiana), Mitt Romney (Utah) and Rand Paul (Kentucky) are all skipping the convention.

Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist, said: “‘New’ Trump is teleprompter Trump. He comes out once every six months or so, sticks around for a few minutes and then disappears. He’ll talk about unity and use all the buzzwords for one night but let’s not kids ourselves: it’s an act.”

Donald Trump and his campaign see his running mate, Senator JD Vance, as a way to expand Trump’s voter base, according to sources familiar with the matter, intending to lean into past criticisms from Vance to convince voters who disliked the former president to back him in the election.

In the years before Vance ran for the US Senate, he repeatedly criticized Trump and his presidency in interviews where he made clear he never liked the former president and considered him “cultural heroin” and in private conversations, where he suggested Trump was “America’s Hitler”.

But the criticisms, which once angered Trump, are now being seen by the Trump campaign as a unique asset that could resonate with voters who could be in a similar position: people who have previously found Trump unsavory but might prefer him to Biden, the sources said.

The Trump campaign has suggested it wants Vance to lean in to the fact that he was previously a so-called “Never Trumper”, with the hope that it could give independent and uncommitted voters a path towards supporting the former president in November.

Vance could be the standard-bearer for that message in TV appearances and on the campaign trail through battleground states on the Rust belt, the sources said. One aspect that Trump is said to admire in Vance is his ease with appearing on adversarial networks such as CNN and MSNBC.

The thinking offers a window into how the Trump campaign intends to deploy Vance over the next four months and explains in part their confidence that the Biden campaign highlighting Vance’s prior attacks against Trump could ultimately play into their hands.

A Trump spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump announced Vance as his running mate on Monday at the Republican national convention after deciding against the two other leading candidates shortlisted for the vice-presidential pick, the Florida senator Marco Rubio and North Dakota’s governor, Doug Burgum.

A source close to Trump described the former president as vacillating on whom to pick until the very end, even more so than in 2016, when he ultimately settled on Mike Pence, who was seen as a candidate who could bring evangelical voters otherwise skeptical of Trump.

The other two candidates had problems: Rubio had the residency problem – Trump now lives in Florida, and so Rubio might have had to move to comply with rules that say the president and vice-president must be from different states – and Burgum was seen as lacking nationwide presence.

But Trump did not commit to a running mate choice even in private and was floating the pros and cons of each while on the flight to Milwaukee, a day before the Republican party’s nominating convention began, the source said.

Vance appears to have ultimately received the nod in large part because he gelled with Trump personally, had the endorsement of several key players who had Trump’s ear, and was comfortable sparring with critics on TV and on the debate stage back when he ran for the Senate, the source said.

Trump first met Vance in person at his Mar-a-Lago club in February 2021, shortly before Vance announced his bid to be the junior US senator from Ohio, and their encounter started with Trump bluntly saying Vance had said nasty things about him, according to a person close to Vance.

Vance, the author of the bestselling memoir about his troubled upbringing, Hillbilly Elegy, needed Trump’s endorsement in the race. In that moment, Vance decided to apologize and explained he had been misled by what he described as media lies.

The apology disarmed Trump. At the end of the meeting, Trump told Vance that the other candidates in his primary had begged for his endorsement. Vance told Trump he would not do that – and suggested Trump endorse him down the line if he thought he was running a good race.

Starting in that meeting in 2021, Vance also proved his loyalty to Trump – one factor that has remained crucial for the former president. Vance promised Trump he would not attack him in the media, a vow that has carried through to his recent appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Vance’s close relationship with Trump’s eldest son, Don Jr, also appears to have been helpful. The younger Trump has endorsed Vance for months and made the case to his father, on Vance’s behalf.

Republicans had a new chant on Wednesday night: not just “Trump! Trump!” but also “JD! JD! JD!” in honor of Trump’s new vice-presidential pick, Ohio senator JD Vance, who introduced himself to the country Wednesday night in a confident and personal primetime address.

Also new: the professionally printed signs reading “Mass Deportations Now,” a reference to Trump’s campaign pledge to engage in the biggest mass deportation of undocumented migrants in US history.

Here are five key takeaways from the night:

Chris Stein and Carter Sherman contributed reporting

Joe Biden has caught Covid-19 and cancelled a speaking engagement at the last minute, before he was due to address a conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday afternoon, the White House has confirmed.

The US president had developed symptoms, and just before he was going to address the UnidosUS annual conference in Nevada – after a long delay – the organization’s president and chief executive, Janet Murguía, told those gathered he would not be taking the podium.

Shortly afterwards, the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, issued a statement saying, in part: “Earlier today following his first event in Las Vegas, President Biden tested positive for Covid-19.”

She added: “He is vaccinated and boosted and he is experiencing mild symptoms. He will be returning to Delaware where he will self-isolate and will continue to carry out all of his duties fully during that time. The White House will provide regular updates on the president’s status as he continues to carry out the full duties of the office while in isolation.”

The news came at a time when Biden is under severe pressure in his campaign for re-election, facing calls to step down as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee because of his age and episodes of slipping acuity, most notably a dire debate performance against Donald Trump last month.

On Wednesday, the California congressman and Senate candidate Adam Schiff became the most high-profile Democratic representative to call for Biden to quit his campaign. His statement was followed by a report from Jonathan Karl of ABC News that Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader and a staunch ally of the president, had told Biden on Saturday that he should end his bid for another term in the White House.

After news that he had tested positive, Biden was seen walking very slowly up the steps of Air Force One in Las Vegas, preparing to return to Delaware, where he resides when he is not at the White House. He told reporters traveling with him that he felt good.

Jean-Pierre had earlier included with her statement from the White House a “note from the president’s doctor” saying that the president had a runny nose, a non-productive cough and “general malaise” and would be taking the anti-viral drug Paxlovid.

The note continued that Biden “felt OK for his first event of the day, but given that he was not feeling better, point-of-care testing for Covid-19 was conducted, and the results were positive for the Covid-19 virus”.

It went on: “Given this, the president will be self-isolating in accordance with [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] guidance for symptomatic individuals. PCR confirmation testing will be pending. His symptoms remain mild … [He] has received his first dose of Paxlovid. He will be self-isolating at his home in Rehoboth [Delaware].”

Biden previously had Covid in 2022.

Pressure for Joe Biden to step aside as the Democrats’ presidential pick to face Donald Trump had eased since the Republican survived an assassination attempt last weekend, but began to rise again on Wednesday.

The tension rose as Biden was diagnosed with Covid and cancelled events to self-isolate at his home in Delaware.

Adam Schiff, the influential US representative from California, said publicly that Biden should quit, becoming the most well-known lawmaker so far to do so openly.

Then ABC News reported that Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader and the most senior Democrat in Congress, had told Biden in a meeting on Saturday it would be better for the country and the Democratic party if the president ended his re-election campaign.

However, a spokesperson for Schumer called the report “idle speculation”.

“Unless ABC’s source is Senator Chuck Schumer or President Joe Biden, the reporting is idle speculation,” the spokesperson said. “Leader Schumer conveyed the views of his caucus directly to President Biden on Saturday.”

Later on Wednesday a second report from CNN said the former house speaker Nancy Pelosi told Biden that polling showed he could not beat Trump, and that would affect the Democrats’ chances in the House of Representatives this November.

Also on Wednesday afternoon, David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to Barack Obama as president, increased his persistent pressure campaign on Biden as he warned that the president had not done enough to relieve voters’ concern about his age since last month’s hapless debate performance.

“I’ve said for a long time, it’s not in any way a commentary on his record, which I think will be honoured more by history than it is by voters right now, but it’s a very hard case to make that anyone should be elected president in the United States at the age of 82, not for political reasons but for actuarial reasons,” Axelrod told the Guardian in Milwaukee.

Having already riled Biden with criticism of his re-election bid, Axelrod continued the attack at an event on the sidelines of the Republican national convention, where Trump is expected to receive the official party nomination on Thursday.

Asked whether he thinks Biden can survive as the Democrats’ presumptive nominee, the chief strategist for the 2008 and 2012 Obama presidential campaigns replied: “That’s entirely in his hands.”

His and Schiff’s comments followed those of a “prominent strategist” who was moved to say of the internal rebellion against Biden’s candidacy for re-election: “It’s over,” in a sign of how sharply divided the party stands. The strategist spoke anonymously to the Hill.

At a press conference in Milwaukee, Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor and a party grandee, said Biden would be confirmed as the Democratic nominee by virtual vote between 1 and 7 August, before the Chicago convention.

Walz told reporters: “We need to get these things done. We need to get the roll call done. But it won’t happen before 1 August.”

The debate over Biden’s age and cognitive fitness is likely to stoke more nasty public splits.

On Wednesday morning, as a new ABC-Norc poll found nearly two-thirds of Democrats saying Biden should withdraw, the blogger and podcaster Nate Silver linked to video of moments in a speech in Las Vegas the night before, in which the 81-year-old president seemed to struggle.

Silver said: “It’s just so weird living through this real-life Emperor Has No Clothes Moment. He obviously shouldn’t be president for four more years. Everyone knows this.”

Schiff followed reports that he had predicted heavy Democratic losses under Biden by going public on the matter.

Biden “has been one of the most consequential presidents in our nation’s history” but it was time “to pass the torch”, Schiff, now a Democratic candidate for US Senate, told the Los Angeles Times.

“A second Trump presidency will undermine the very foundation of our democracy, and I have serious concerns about whether the president can defeat Donald Trump in November.”

Biden insists he is up to the job, telling one interviewer he will be the nominee “unless I get hit by a train”.

White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement on Wednesday: “The president told both leaders he is the nominee of the party, he plans to win, and looks forward to working with both of them to pass his 100 days agenda to help working families.”

Silver also said it was “incredibly revealing which people are willing to lie” about Biden’s age and the problem facing his party.

That was a reference to Silver’s public argument on Tuesday with Jaime Harrison, the Democratic National Committee chair, over plans to confirm Biden’s nomination before the convention, officially related to uncertainty over election law in Ohio and the deadline for ballot inclusion.

Harrison wrote: “Love y’all but when it comes to election law and ballot access, I put my trust in our legal team who make a living understanding these laws and processes and not in the pollster who promised us the red wave. #ClassDismissed.”

He was referring to predictions that the 2022 midterms would see Republicans retake the Senate and strengthen their hold on the House, which did not transpire.

Silver answered: “Jaime, I’m not a pollster and I didn’t promise a red wave. The data is here. Actual experts have weighed in and said you’re spreading misinformation. You should probably stop lying.

“You and the White House have run the whole campaign on the premise that you could bullshit your way through things. It’s early enough so as not to be unsalvageable, but you’ve put Democrats in an incredibly difficult position. Enough with the BS.”

Silver also accused Harrison and the Democratic National Committee of “blatantly lying” about a need to confirm Biden before the convention, adding: “The good news is that there very much will be consequences if they force Biden’s nomination [through] and he loses.”

Harrison said: “Nate … you can call me a lot of things but a liar is definitely not one of them. I know you THINK you know every thing but class is now truly in session. Pull up a chair.”

He then offered an explanation of the plan for an early confirmation, in light of events in Ohio. Silver said he was “trying to gaslight people based on a technicality”.

Elsewhere, the Ohio secretary of state said the election law issue was “resolved”, adding that Democrats “know that and should stop trying to scapegoat Ohio for their own party disfunction”.

Amid it all, Ron Klain entered the chat.

The former White House chief of staff, who remains close to Biden and his campaign, posted a FiveThirtyEight prediction of a Biden electoral college victory and said: “But I thought he had ‘no path’ according to donors and the electeds following the donors?”

Klain added: “Based on working in two campaigns against Trump I am unchanged in my view that Joe Biden is uniquely capable of defeating him – that’s my gut view based on experience.”

Silver said: “You’d say that whether you really believed it or not. But come on the podcast Ron and we’ll see how many mental gymnastics you’re willing to do to defend this position.”

Klain, Silver added, was “the one person on the campaign who might be smart enough to know he’s full of shit and will write a memoir in five years saying Biden’s inner circle was incorrigible and he had to provide the most help he could to Biden under the circumstances”.

Also on social media, Simon Rosenberg, a pollster and strategist who correctly said there would be no “red wave” in 2022, made an appeal for sanity, posting on X, in part: “Fellow Dems, every moment you attack other [Democrats] you are helping Trump win. Stop it.”

Harrison reposted the message.

The US military-built pier for carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza will be dismantled and brought home, ending a mission that has been fraught with repeated weather and security problems that limited how much food and other supplies could get to starving Palestinians.

Vice Adm Brad Cooper, deputy commander at US Central Command, told reporters in a Pentagon briefing on Wednesday that the pier had achieved its intended effect in what he called an “unprecedented operation”.

As the US military steps away from the sea route for humanitarian aid, questions swirl about Israel’s new plan to use the port at Ashdod as a substitute. There are few details on how it will work and lingering concerns about whether aid groups will have enough viable land crossings to get assistance into the territory besieged by war between Israel and Hamas.

Cooper said the Ashdod corridor would be more sustainable and it has already been used to get more than a million pounds of aid into Gaza.

“Having now delivered the largest volume of humanitarian assistance ever into the Middle East, we’re now mission complete and transitioning to a new phase,” said Cooper. “In the coming weeks, we expect that millions of pounds of aid will enter into Gaza via this new pathway.”

Sonali Korde, assistant to the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, told reporters that aid groups had confidence that “Ashdod is going to be a very viable and important route into Gaza”.

But, she said, “the key challenge we have right now in Gaza is around the insecurity and lawlessness that is hampering the distribution once aid gets into Gaza and to the crossing points”.

Israel controls all of Gaza’s border crossings and most are open, although Israel has been criticised by aid organisations for limiting the amount and type of aid allowed through and accused of using starvation as a “weapon of war”.

Critics call the pier a $230m boondoggle that failed to bring in the level of aid needed to stem a looming famine. The US military, however, has maintained that it served as the best hope as aid only trickled in during a critical time of near-famine in Gaza and that it got close to 20m lb (9m kg) of desperately needed supplies to Palestinians.

Joe Biden, who announced the building of the pier during his State of the Union speech in March, expressed disappointment in the pier, saying: “I was hopeful that would be more successful.”

Aid groups criticised the US military pier as a distraction, saying the US should have instead put pressure on Israel to open more land crossings and allow the aid to flow more quickly and efficiently through them.

Planned as a temporary fix to get aid to starving Palestinians, the project was panned from the start by aid groups that condemned it as a waste of time and money. While US defense officials acknowledged that the weather was worse than expected and limited the days the pier could operate, they also expressed frustration with humanitarian groups for being unable and unwilling to distribute the aid that got through the system, only to have it pile up on shore.

A critical element that neither the aid groups nor the US military could control, however, was the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), whose military operation in Gaza put humanitarian workers in persistent danger and in a number of cases cost them their lives.

As a result, the pier operated for fewer than 25 days after its installation on 16 May, and aid agencies used it only about half that time due to security concerns.

Stuck in the middle were the more than 1,000 US soldiers and sailors who largely lived on boats off the Gaza shore and struggled to keep the pier working but spent many days repairing it or detaching it, moving it and reinstalling it due to the bad weather. It has not been used since June, when it was moved to Ashdod due to rough seas.

The tensions played out until the final moments, as senior Biden administration officials signalled the end of the pier project days ago but US Central Command balked, holding out hope the military could reinstall it one last time to move any final pallets of aid ashore.

The UN has long said maritime deliveries are no substitute for land access.

It said land routes needed to remain the focus of aid operations in the enclave, where a global hunger monitor last month said there is a high risk of famine.

Aid officials say about 600 trucks of humanitarian and commercial supplies are needed in Gaza daily to meet the needs of the population.

Yoav Gallant said on Tuesday that a new Pier 28 would soon be established at Israel’s Ashdod port for delivering aid to the Gaza Strip as a replacement for the US military-built pier. The Israeli defense minister did not say when it would start operating.

The largest and most complete stegosaurus fossil ever discovered sold for $44.6m at Sotheby’s in New York on Wednesday to become the most valuable fossil sold at auction.

The dinosaur remains, nicknamed “Apex”, exceeded its pre-sale low estimate by more than 11 times.

It was discovered on privately owned land in Moffat County, Colorado, fittingly near the town of Dinosaur, by commercial palaeontologist Jason Cooper at his property in 2022.

“Apex” measures 3.4 metres (11ft) tall and 8.2 metres (27ft) long from nose to tail, more than 30% larger than “Sophie”, the previously most intact stegosaurus specimen, which was on display in London’s Natural History Museum.

It was sold to an anonymous buyer who intends to explore loaning the specimen to a US institution. After the sale, the buyer remarked: “Apex was born in America and is going to stay in America!”

Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby’s global head of science and popular culture, said: “‘Apex’ lived up to its name today, inspiring bidders globally to become the most valuable fossil ever sold at auction.

“This sale has been years in the making, and at every turn, we have worked closely with Jason Cooper, from the moment of its discovery in Dinosaur, Colorado, to its sale in New York.

“I am thrilled that such an important specimen has now taken its place in history, 150m years since it roamed the planet. This remarkable result underscores our unwavering commitment to preserving these ancient treasures.”

“Apex” ranks high among the most complete skeletons ever found, with 254 fossil bone elements of an approximate total of 319.

The skeleton belonged to a large, robust adult and there was evidence of rheumatoid arthritis, indicating that it lived to an advanced age, according to Sotheby’s.

The specimen showed no signs of combat-related injuries or evidence of postmortem scavenging.

It was preserved in hard sandstone, which protected the bones from being distorted.

“Apex” was the star attraction of Sotheby’s natural history auction, with other lots including meteorites, minerals, gogottes and, for the first time, paleolithic tools.

The auction made $45.8m (£35.2m) overall, the highest ever total for a natural history auction.

The European parliament will decide whether to confirm Ursula von der Leyen as European Commission president in a knife-edge vote on Thursday that will either result in a second term for the EU executive’s first female leader or tip the bloc into a summer crisis.

Von der Leyen was nominated by EU leaders last month for a second five-year term leading the EU executive, which is responsible for drafting and enforcing EU law. Now she needs to secure the backing of at least 361 MEPs, a simple majority of the newly elected, more right-leaning parliament.

On paper, von der Leyen has the numbers, as the three groups that officially backed her in 2019 – the centre-right European People’s party, the Socialists and Democrats and the Renew centrists – have 401 MEPs.

But European parliament groups are not very disciplined, and experts expect about 10-15% of MEPs to deviate from the party line under cover of the secret ballot. She cannot even count on the unanimous support of her own EPP group.

The Renew group could be particularly difficult for von der Leyen – its four Fianna Fáil members have said they will not vote for her, arguing that she has been too supportive of Israel in its war on Hamas in Gaza. Billy Kelleher, a vice-president of Renew, said under her watch the EU had stopped being “seen as an honest broker in the Middle East peace process”.

Since her nomination, von der Leyen has spent hours in windowless meeting rooms with different political groups, listening to their wishlists and appealing for their votes.

Talks within the groups continued into Wednesday evening. She will set out her programme for the next five years in a speech to the Strasbourg assembly at 9am local time on Thursday.

That programme is likely to focus on ramping up the EU’s competitiveness amid concerns – especially from her own EPP group – that Europe’s economic heft is diminishing vis-à-vis the US and China. She is also expected to promise the continuation of the green deal and set out ideas to fund the green transition required to meet the climate crisis.

Other topics likely to be high on her agenda are Ukraine’s accession to the EU and the hybrid threat from Russia, including Moscow’s suspected role in using the threat of migration to weaken and pressure the EU.

Von der Leyen may strike a more muted note when it comes to protecting Europe’s critically degraded forests, meadows, peatlands and seas. She previously scrapped plans to cut pesticide use and watered down pollution targets in the face of big farmer protests and is facing calls from the right to weaken environmental legislation.

The Greens, potential kingmakers with 53 MEPs, tend to be more disciplined than other groups but have insisted they will not decide how to vote until von der Leyen appears on the floor of the Strasbourg assembly on Thursday morning.

“We had good discussions with the president,” Bas Eickhout, the Green group’s co-president, said. “On the basis of the political guidelines [her programme] and her speech we will decide.”

The Greens voted against von der Leyen in 2019, meaning she scraped through with only nine votes to spare.

If von der Leyen loses, EU leaders have one month to propose an alternative candidate. As well as creating a leadership vacuum, a rejection would trigger huge uncertainty about the bloc’s direction, as the war in Ukraine grinds on and Europe wrestles with how to deal with the possible return of Donald Trump.

“This is a much more difficult European setting than five years ago. We are very well aware. And I think we take that into consideration,” Eickhout said. “So we are not expecting a full European green programme from this candidate. But clearly it needs to have some clear lines.”

On Tuesday the Greens endorsed Roberta Metsola, the centre-right Maltese MEP, for a second term as speaker of the European parliament, in a sign that the group is leaning towards von der Leyen.

Some EU sources suggested that the secret ballot could work in von der Leyen’s favour, allowing MEPs to loudly criticise her and discreetly vote yes to avoid an institutional crisis.

One wildcard, however, is Giorgia Meloni’s European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group. In the European Council, the Italian prime minister abstained on von der Leyen’s reappointment, furious at being excluded from a deal on top jobs hashed out between six male leaders from three mainstream political groups.

But since Meloni came to power she has had a fruitful relationship with von der Leyen’s commission, which has released funds under a €194bn post-Covid recovery plan for Italy and followed Rome’s lead in setting up deals with African countries designed to curb the number of people crossing the Mediterranean to reach Europe.

The 78 ECR MEPs are likely to split, with Poland’s Law and Justice voting against von der Leyen and the Civic Democratic party, led by Czech prime minister, Petr Fiala, supporting her. After a recent meeting with von der Leyen, the ECR group tweeted that the next commission “needs a serious change of course”.

The Socialists and Democrats leader, Iratxe García Pérez, told Spain’s El Diaro her group would not give von der Leyen “a blank cheque”, but also that it would not make its decision based on other groups.

David McAllister, a senior EPP MEP and close ally of von der Leyen, said there would be no second chance if she does not get through on Thursday.

“That means throughout the summer the European Union would be in an institutional crisis because the whole package agreed between the political groups after the elections would be endangered,” he said, referring to the complex deal on three top jobs that takes into account geography and political affiliation. “We would not have clear leadership at the helm of the commission,” he added.

“The enemies, the opponents of a united Europe would be laughing their heads off.”

The European parliament will decide whether to confirm Ursula von der Leyen as European Commission president in a knife-edge vote on Thursday that will either result in a second term for the EU executive’s first female leader or tip the bloc into a summer crisis.

Von der Leyen was nominated by EU leaders last month for a second five-year term leading the EU executive, which is responsible for drafting and enforcing EU law. Now she needs to secure the backing of at least 361 MEPs, a simple majority of the newly elected, more right-leaning parliament.

On paper, von der Leyen has the numbers, as the three groups that officially backed her in 2019 – the centre-right European People’s party, the Socialists and Democrats and the Renew centrists – have 401 MEPs.

But European parliament groups are not very disciplined, and experts expect about 10-15% of MEPs to deviate from the party line under cover of the secret ballot. She cannot even count on the unanimous support of her own EPP group.

The Renew group could be particularly difficult for von der Leyen – its four Fianna Fáil members have said they will not vote for her, arguing that she has been too supportive of Israel in its war on Hamas in Gaza. Billy Kelleher, a vice-president of Renew, said under her watch the EU had stopped being “seen as an honest broker in the Middle East peace process”.

Since her nomination, von der Leyen has spent hours in windowless meeting rooms with different political groups, listening to their wishlists and appealing for their votes.

Talks within the groups continued into Wednesday evening. She will set out her programme for the next five years in a speech to the Strasbourg assembly at 9am local time on Thursday.

That programme is likely to focus on ramping up the EU’s competitiveness amid concerns – especially from her own EPP group – that Europe’s economic heft is diminishing vis-à-vis the US and China. She is also expected to promise the continuation of the green deal and set out ideas to fund the green transition required to meet the climate crisis.

Other topics likely to be high on her agenda are Ukraine’s accession to the EU and the hybrid threat from Russia, including Moscow’s suspected role in using the threat of migration to weaken and pressure the EU.

Von der Leyen may strike a more muted note when it comes to protecting Europe’s critically degraded forests, meadows, peatlands and seas. She previously scrapped plans to cut pesticide use and watered down pollution targets in the face of big farmer protests and is facing calls from the right to weaken environmental legislation.

The Greens, potential kingmakers with 53 MEPs, tend to be more disciplined than other groups but have insisted they will not decide how to vote until von der Leyen appears on the floor of the Strasbourg assembly on Thursday morning.

“We had good discussions with the president,” Bas Eickhout, the Green group’s co-president, said. “On the basis of the political guidelines [her programme] and her speech we will decide.”

The Greens voted against von der Leyen in 2019, meaning she scraped through with only nine votes to spare.

If von der Leyen loses, EU leaders have one month to propose an alternative candidate. As well as creating a leadership vacuum, a rejection would trigger huge uncertainty about the bloc’s direction, as the war in Ukraine grinds on and Europe wrestles with how to deal with the possible return of Donald Trump.

“This is a much more difficult European setting than five years ago. We are very well aware. And I think we take that into consideration,” Eickhout said. “So we are not expecting a full European green programme from this candidate. But clearly it needs to have some clear lines.”

On Tuesday the Greens endorsed Roberta Metsola, the centre-right Maltese MEP, for a second term as speaker of the European parliament, in a sign that the group is leaning towards von der Leyen.

Some EU sources suggested that the secret ballot could work in von der Leyen’s favour, allowing MEPs to loudly criticise her and discreetly vote yes to avoid an institutional crisis.

One wildcard, however, is Giorgia Meloni’s European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group. In the European Council, the Italian prime minister abstained on von der Leyen’s reappointment, furious at being excluded from a deal on top jobs hashed out between six male leaders from three mainstream political groups.

But since Meloni came to power she has had a fruitful relationship with von der Leyen’s commission, which has released funds under a €194bn post-Covid recovery plan for Italy and followed Rome’s lead in setting up deals with African countries designed to curb the number of people crossing the Mediterranean to reach Europe.

The 78 ECR MEPs are likely to split, with Poland’s Law and Justice voting against von der Leyen and the Civic Democratic party, led by Czech prime minister, Petr Fiala, supporting her. After a recent meeting with von der Leyen, the ECR group tweeted that the next commission “needs a serious change of course”.

The Socialists and Democrats leader, Iratxe García Pérez, told Spain’s El Diaro her group would not give von der Leyen “a blank cheque”, but also that it would not make its decision based on other groups.

David McAllister, a senior EPP MEP and close ally of von der Leyen, said there would be no second chance if she does not get through on Thursday.

“That means throughout the summer the European Union would be in an institutional crisis because the whole package agreed between the political groups after the elections would be endangered,” he said, referring to the complex deal on three top jobs that takes into account geography and political affiliation. “We would not have clear leadership at the helm of the commission,” he added.

“The enemies, the opponents of a united Europe would be laughing their heads off.”

Saudi exiles living in the UK have spoken of threats to their lives and harassment over their support for improvements in human rights in their home country.

Saudi Arabia has been attempting to present itself as a reformed state since the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi by a Saudi hit squad at its consulate in Istanbul in 2018.

It has spent billions on sporting deals and promoting tourism in the country and was recently named host of a UN commission on women’s rights, despite what Amnesty International called its “abysmal” record on women’s rights.

However, Saudis living in the UK say they have faced a barrage of threats and abuse after speaking out on rights and the Saudi authorities’ jailing of women’s rights activists.

In one case, a knife was left outside the London home of a human rights activist. His wife and son were approached separately and told that if they disagreed with his views, they could get help from the Saudi embassy.

“As a father, it really left me worried,” said Yahya Assiri, who has run the human rights organisation ALQST (al-qist means “justice” in Arabic) since 2014. “For the first time, the threat felt real.

“I took my kids away from my own country and brought them here to the UK because it says it upholds democratic values and human rights,” he said.

Saudi Arabia, along with Iran, Russia and Turkey, has been identified by activists as one of the biggest perpetrators of attacks on people outside its borders in a tactic known as transnational repression, which aims to stifle debate or criticism from exiles and refugees who have fled abroad.

At least half a dozen threats to life to Saudis living in exile in the UK and elsewhere in Europe have been reported by the US-based human rights organisation Freedom House.

“If they decide to go after you, there’s no place that’s really safe,” said the Saudi journalist and film-maker Safa al-Ahmad.

“When they decide to kidnap someone, they can do it in any country. They murdered Jamal [Khashoggi] and now it’s business as usual. They were never held accountable [for the killing].”

Exiles living in the UK and elsewhere also fear for the safety of their relatives still living in Saudi Arabia. Activists say the Riyadh authorities retaliate against family members in an effort to coerce those living in exile to return to the country.

Joey Shea, Saudi Arabia researcher at Human Rights Watch, said: “It’s very rare that they’ve managed to get their whole family out of Saudi, so those who remain are extremely vulnerable.

“The physical risks here [in the UK] and the risk to family members back in Saudi Arabia are huge,” she said.

“The Saudis pioneered a lot of the transnational repression we see today, including using death sentences and decades-long sentences in retaliation against people whose family members are active abroad.”

One of Fawzia al-Otaibi’s sisters was banned from leaving Saudi Arabia and another was jailed for 11 years after she herself had been forced to flee the country over her social media posts in support of women’s rights.

“I believe they are punishing and torturing my sisters because they are unable to punish me,” said al-Otaibi, who added that she continued to be threatened while in exile in the UK.

“Almost daily [I am receiving] death threats saying that they will poison me and send people loyal to their homeland to kill me at any cost, so that no one will imitate me.

“They tell me I’m a traitor not just for the purpose of saying it as a kind of bullying, because that’s exactly what they said about Khashoggi. And if they call a person a traitor, it means that they threaten to punish [them] as a traitor, which is to kill,” she added.

Assiri and others said the UK authorities were not yet taking the threats that Saudi exiles received seriously. He said he contacted the police after finding the knife outside his home.

“They visited me and said they’re investigating. They told me they will give me a report, but I received no response,” he said.

Assiri said he had since moved home in efforts to keep his family safe. “Whenever I speak to the [British] government, they always say to me: ‘Don’t worry. We are aware of everything; you are safe.’ So I think they mean I am safe physically.

“I strongly believe they allow them [the Saudis] to do things like monitoring, watching, and I believe they have the permission to do it.”

Assiri said Saudi Arabia was treated differently compared with other perpetrators of repression in the UK, such as Iran, because it was an ally of the UK.

One Saudi dissident living in London said he was told by a Metropolitan police officer last year to stop using social media to criticise Saudi Arabia over human rights.

Lina al-Hathloul, whose sister was jailed and banned from leaving Saudi Arabia after leading a campaign against the country’s prohibition on women driving, said the UK was turning a “blind eye” to Saudi Arabia and needed to “stop saying it is getting better for human rights”.

The Saudis had managed to “muzzle everyone’s voices”, she added.

Shea agreed and said that if the UK did not speak out about human rights abuses, it “emboldens the regime both domestically and internationally in continuing its campaign of transnational repression”.

Last week, it emerged the brother of a Saudi critic living in exile in the UK had been given a 20-year prison sentence for social-media posts critical of government policies.

The Guardian contacted the Metropolitan police for comment on the alleged “unseriousness” of the police response to complaints received from Saudi dissidents. A police spokesperson said they were dealing with a growing number of cases relating to foreign interference and that any allegations of crime were investigated, with individuals provided with “appropriate safety and security advice and support as required”.

The Saudi embassy in London was approached for comment.

The former CIA director Leon Panetta decried security failings around the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Pennsylvania last Saturday, particularly given reports of Iranian threats to the former president.

Speaking on the One Decision podcast, which he co-hosts with Sir Richard Dearlove, a former head of the British intelligence service MI6, Panetta said: “It’s particularly disturbing because of what we found out: that the intelligence community provided information to the Secret Service that there’s … assassination threats from Iran, on former President Trump as well as others, but they as a result of that supposedly increased the deployment of Secret Service protection.”

News of the Iranian threat was widely reported on Tuesday.

“And if that’s true and they still failed to be able to establish a perimeter, I mean, the excuse that somehow this is outside the perimeter of the event is nuts.”

Facing calls to resign, the Secret Service director, Kimberly Cheatle, must also deal with questions about how the 20-year-old gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, was able to reach the roof from which he fired at the Butler county show grounds, despite being seen by multiple witnesses and security officers.

Speaking to ABC on Monday, Cheatle said: “In this particular instance, we did share support for that particular site and the Secret Service was responsible for the inner perimeter. And then we sought assistance from our local counterparts for the outer perimeter. There was local police in that building – there was local police in the area that were responsible for the outer perimeter of the building.”

Local authorities questioned that account. On Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that the Secret Service was told local police did not have sufficient resources to watch the building concerned.

Panetta, 76, was a congressman from California from 1977 to 1993, White House chief of staff to Bill Clinton from 1994 to 1997, CIA director from 2009 to 2011, and secretary of defense until 2013, the last two positions both under Barack Obama.

His is therefore a weighty voice in a growing chorus of concern.

Trump was wounded in his right ear. One rally-goer was killed and two were critically injured. The gunman was shot dead by a sniper. An explosive device was found in his car, a detonator next to his body.

Panetta said: “Speaking from my own experience, our purpose in protecting the president was to make sure that there was a secure bubble around the president, and that it included every area from which a possible assassin could strike. And so what you do is you look at every possibility within that area, and try to make sure you secure it.

“And that’s why you put the snipers at a high position, to make sure that they’re constantly looking at where possible assassins could strike from. And what really puzzles me is whether their sight was somehow interfered with or what?

“Here is a guy with a gun climbing on the roof of a building within 150 yards of the former president … what it really raises is the failure of the Secret Service to do what they’re supposed to do.

“And we are now going into the heart of this campaign and there’s going to be … a number of rallies, a number of political events of one kind or another. And they had better quickly learn what went wrong, in order to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

After the assassination attempt, Joe Biden has called for a cooling of campaign rhetoric. At the Republican national convention in Milwaukee, Trump has appeared with a bandaged ear while speakers celebrate his narrow escape.

Panetta said: “Beyond the investigation of what happened, I think it also raises questions about where we’re going as a country, and whether or not this will only increase greater political violence as we move towards the election, or whether both candidates, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, decide that it really is important to try to get this country to reject that kind of violence, and be more unified.

“In our approach to dealing with politics, I would like to believe that path is still possible in this country. But considering the history we’ve just been through, and what we’ve seen happen, I’m afraid we’re headed in the wrong direction.”

Scarlett Johansson has spoken out against OpenAI and deepfake technology, saying it was “so disturbing” and she was “so angry” after the company seemingly mimicked her voice for its ChatGPT system Sky.

The actor made headlines earlier this year when she issued a public statement saying OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman, had contacted her in September 2023 to provide the voice for Sky, in an ode to her role in the Spike Jones film Her, but she had declined for “personal reasons”. In May, as the company released Sky, Altman shared a tweet that simply read “her”.

After Johansson’s public statement, and having her lawyers contact OpenAI to have the voice of Sky pulled, OpenAI did so but maintained that “Sky’s voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice”.

Altman later said the actor voicing Sky was hired before he approached Johansson to be an additional, sixth voice, but apologised to Johansson and said they had paused Sky “out of respect for” her.

Speaking to the New York Times, Johansson said she had “actively avoided being a part of the [AI] conversation, which was what made it so disturbing. I was like, ‘How did I get wrapped up in this?’ It was crazy. I was so angry.”

“I felt I did not want to be at the forefront of that,” she added. “I just felt it went against my core values. I don’t like to kiss and tell. He came to me with this and I didn’t tell anybody except my husband … I also felt for my children it would be strange. I try to be mindful of them.”

Johansson went on to describe deepfake technology as a “dark wormhole you can never climb your way out of”.

“Once you try to take something down in one area, it pops up somewhere else. There are other countries that have different legislation and rules. If your ex-partner is putting out revenge, deepfake porn, your whole life can be completely ruined,” she said.

“I think technologies move faster than our fragile human egos can process it, and you see the effects all over, especially with young people. This technology is coming like a thousand-foot wave.”

Asked if Altman could make for a good Marvel villain, she said: “I guess he would – maybe with a robotic arm.”

Johansson’s public battle with OpenAI came three years after her legal battle with Disney over the release of her Marvel movie Black Widow, which was released in theatres and on streaming service Disney+ during the pandemic. Johansson claimed her contract contained a stipulation that Black Widow be released exclusively in theatres, arguing that her fees were based on the box office performance of the film and that Disney hybrid release would impact her compensation.

Disney’s initial response was unexpectedly combative, taking the unusual step of revealing Johansson’s upfront fee of $20m. Johansson responded by calling the studio “misogynistic”.

The two parties eventually settled for an disclosed amount but Deadline reported Disney would pay Johansson more than US$40m (£29.7m, A$59.5m).

Speaking to the New York Times about that fight, Johansson said: “I don’t hold a grudge [against Disney]. I think it was just poor judgment and poor leadership at that time. It just felt very unprofessional to me, the entire ordeal. And honestly, I was incredibly disappointed, especially because I was holding out hope until, finally, my team was like, ‘You have to act’.”